Since the holes are valued at cost, and filling them in also valued at cost, and since the peasants working in the Lord sector are well paid, better paid than ordinary peasants, though not quite as well paid as the lord and his retainers, and since the Lord and his retainers also took a modest pay rise for arranging all this prosperity, total value produced, total GDP is now a whopping eight hundred and fifty thousand sacks of wheat, a fourfold rise in GDP. One of the Lord’s retainers is an economist, who gets a Nobel prize for explaining that the Lord has done such a good job.
Category: economics
Nobel prize for corruption and fraud
The Nobel for economics is being awarded on the same basis of as the Nobel for peace.
You read it here first 1
Me me me me. I predicted first.
Gold
At present prices gold has little practical use, except as money. So if you buy gold, you are buying insurance against paper money going to hell, and people using gold as money. When the $%@# hits the fan, you will be able to eat, and maybe buy some assets cheaply. On the other hand, if the $%@# never hits the fan, you will probably lose money over time, because gold’s value as anything other than money is considerably less than …
Accounting fraud
The financial crisis was in large part accounting fraud. America has lost trillions of dollars through accounting fraud. Accounting fraud is a felony. Yet those who were primarily responsible for this fraud continue in positions of wealth and power, for example Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Representative Barney Frank (D-MA). Further, the fraud continues. Hot air summarizes “Mark to Myth†and other blogs reporting on the continuing fraud. Zero hedge tells us restoring trust is the key to recovery, and …
Why “stimulus†does not work.
We do not want jobs. We want creation of wealth. Regrettably, creating wealth usually requires an unreasonable amount of work. Even more regrettably, doing an unreasonable amount of work is unlikely to create wealth. Thus if we try to “create jobsâ€, we are likely to destroy, rather than create, wealth. It is very easy to create jobs. The chain on the chainsaw breaks, and one has to use an axe. Think of all the jobs created! Ban chainsaws! “Green jobs†…
The Cathedral and social decay
In 1984, I said the Soviet Union was falling. In November 2005, I said the mortgage market was collapsing. I was very far from being the first to say those things, but I was in a minority when I said them. And here is another prophecy:  The decline of our currency, and the our inability to rebuild the two towers, are symptoms of an illness that will bring about American collapse and crisis around 2020 or so. As to what …
Arnold Kling predicts inflation
Inflation has already come back.
Inflation comes roaring back
People who argue for “stimulusâ€, or more “stimulusâ€, often correctly point out that no one doubts that government can increase nominal GDP.  Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany are excellent examples of government rapidly increasing nominal GDP. The question is, can government spending, particularly government spending on favored individuals and groups cozy with the government, increase useful employment, create real jobs that produce real value, create jobs where people work to produce what other people want and care about? The cpi supposedly …
Delong’s solution
Brad DeLong concludes the benevolent government should put those people to work – without, however, worrying as to what they will be doing, forgetting that people should work to produce the particular goods and services that other people want, or perhaps confidently believing that the wise folk of the government have lots of useful work for idle people to do, forgetting that a large part of the unemployed are unemployed because they were producing things, such as financial services or housing for non Asian minorities, that the recipients are demonstrably unwilling to pay for.