Officially, America has near zero inflation and a mere ten percent official unemployment. Odd that it has a mere ten percent unemployment when the proportion of young adult males with jobs has dropped a lot more than ten percent. As with third world and Marxist countries, the government’s reaction to bad news is to declare a new era of prosperity. The recession is officially over. With an unprecedented proportion of the workforce on the government payroll, productivity has officially risen …
Category: economics
Yet another vote for European style Social Democracy
As Europe collapses, Americans vote to be like Europe. The republicans now have control of the purse strings, and, among other things, have promised to reduce next years deficit from $1470 000 000 000 to $1370 000 000 000. We are in a bus heading towards a precipice at seventy miles and hour, and the republicans promise to slow down to sixty five miles an hour. Any tea party candidate that made vague noises in the general direction of doing …
Fixing the financial system
We are in trouble, the entire west is in trouble, in substantial part because the financial system has been leaking a lot of money. So has every other part of the governing apparatus, but the financial system is the biggest hole in the bucket. Now a lot of people are saying that this is a revolutionary election, it is about fundamental change. Thomas Sowell, a man I enormously respect, tells us this is a crossroads election. But is not. The …
hyperinflation of the US$
A great storm first manifest as clouds on the horizon. The Republicans are going to wish they had not won the 2010 November elections. Supposedly US inflation is near zero, yet food, fuel, and heating oil has risen substantially. Gonzalo points out Grains as a class have risen over 33% year-over-year. Refined oil products have risen just shy of 13%, with home heating oil rising 18% year-over-year. In other words: Food, gasoline and heating oil have risen by double digits …
War on masculinity
Roissy has a couple of great posts about the war on masculinity “Belittle League†and “The medicalization of malenessâ€
Who fortold the financial crisis?
Howard Husock did in 2000
Winning will be another Republican disaster
Everyone on the Republican side is sucking up to the anti capitalist left – including Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnel. None have the will to reverse the policies that are ruining the economy, making the middle class poor and insecure. So, when elected, will get the blame for the consequences of these policies. Since the supposedly hard core capitalism of the Republicans will not work, obviously the solution must be more socialism. Sarbanes–Oxley, the regulatory door revolving, and Basel, have …
Elections do not matter.
The most extreme of the “right wing” candidates are proposing measures far too feeble to make a difference. Consider for example, the mortgage scandal. Where is the candidate that suggests that to fix our financial system, the bums (the entire financial sector of wall street and the regulators to which they are connected by a revolving door) need to be fired for incompetence and imprisoned for fraud? A lot of people are proposing “solutions†for the mortgage crisis – but …
The whitewash proceeds
One of the bigger criminals in the mortgage scam was Former Countrywide CEO Mozilo. The SEC has made a symbolic settlement with him and a couple of his accomplices for seventy two million dollars, not a dime of which he has to pay personally, and which would be peanuts even if he had to pay it personally. As a part of the agreement, all potentially embarrassing details associated with his crimes are sealed from nosy outsiders. What little money will …
The enormous mortgage-bond scandal
Felix Salmon has found an interesting document in the financial crisis inquiry hearings. It seems the banks not only knew that the loans they were selling to investors generally failed to meet underwriting standards, they were so careless as to have documents lying around saying so in plain English. Seems like they were a bank of morons. When I was involved in criminal conspiracies, none of us would write in plain English, and we would very rarely speak in plain …