Once again, the economic news is “unexpected†bad. Official inflation is supposedly 3.2% annualized while real GDP is supposedly 1.3% annualized. I suspect actual inflation is higher, which would mean that actual growth was correspondingly lower, but even if we take these figures at face value, they still do not support the Keynesian account of the crisis.
Category: economics
The debt limit charade
US politicians are engaged in passionate debate and confrontation over the debt limit and spending. The question is whether to “cut†two trillion over the next ten years, which is to say, about two hundred billion dollars a year, which is to say, whether, after ten years, spending will be five or six trillion dollars a year more than it is now, or whether it will be five or six …
How well run is Oslo?
According to the bloggers who speak for our ruling elite (such as Matthew Yglesias) Norway is wonderfully well run. But according to the terrorist Breivik, it is run much like Chicago, where the ruling party’s political mobilization of the disproportionately criminal underclass has produced a criminal party.
The curious solvency of Japan
By any objective measure, Japan is more broke than Italy. Indeed, nearly all the advanced countries are as broke as each other, but some of them are in trouble, and some of them are not. Japan can borrow money at low interest. Italy cannot. Looking at past financial crises, there is no objective level of solvency at which a country goes down the tubes. They get along fine until they …
Retrodicting climate
Warmist climate models do a fine job of retrodicting the climate, yet a woefully bad job at predicting the climate. Their prediction tends to be doom in the next few years, while their modeling of the past is perfectly spot on. Thus their predictions grow old fast.
Solving the immigration problem
Roissy complains that Libertarians are in favor of open borders and that open borders are having disastrous consequences. But what is having disastrous consequences is not open borders by themselves, but open borders combined with democracy and the welfare state. Even if the government had the will to stop the flood of low IQ migrants, the effect would be limited. Does not stop drugs.
Taxing beyond the laffer maximum
Why do governments tax beyond the Laffer maxium? You have probably read about the California’s Amazon tax. Amazon said it would flee the tax, promptly did so, and so, predictably, instead of gaining two hundred million, the state lost taxes on something like one hundred and fifty million of income.
Poorer, dirtier and shabbier
In the comments, some have disagreed with my proposition that BLS statistics are unbelievable because the US is becoming dirtier and shabbier. Dirtier and shabbier is rather subjective, so reasonable people can disagree.
Quantitative easing comes back again from the undead
QE2 was supposed to end, and it has. However, as it ends, the federal reserve opens up open ended dollar lending to foreign central banks. Supposedly there is no risk, since these are central banks, and we all know central banks always repay their debts.
More fake violence in Greece
A little of the violence is real, indeed more and more of it is real, but the vast majority of it is still imitation violence by astroturf, which I conjecture is imitation riot theater instigated by the government against itself to dramatize its imitation austerity theater. Observe the trash fires at 0:14. Real rioters burn stuff more valuable than trash, and light bigger fires. Observe at 0:24 the group of …