Meanwhile, however, the US government is engaged in a sufficiently determined attack on tax havens, having recently successfully pressured the Swiss to deny financial services to Americans, blissfully unaware of the increasing dependence of the American economy on entrepeneurial skills and knowledge mediated through such havens. Interpreting the golden goose as a parasite, as a challenge to their authority and a rejection of their superior wisdom, they prepare to slay the golden goose.
Category: economics
The vast majority of defaults were black and hispanic
Hat tip Steve Sailer who provides the breakdown of defaults. The proximate cause of the international crisis is that the US$, the international reserve currency, lost much credibility. The proximate cause of the US$ losing credibility was massive defaults by blacks and Hispanics, and the proximate cause of the massive defaults by blacks and Hispanics was affirmative action lending to people whom I could tell at a glance from twenty paces were highly unlikely to repay their debts. In the …
The government can inflate its way out of debt
Megan McCardle tells us You Can’t Inflate Your Way Out of Debt, which is dead wrong: Look, for example at the Wiemar republic.
“We may be seeing the beginning of the end of the recessionâ€
My prediction is for high unemployment, high inflation, or both.
Kaufman predicts soaring unemployment
as everything goes to hell, doubtless capitalism will be blamed, and Krugman and the rest will declare that they have been proven right – that all the bad things happening are proof that capitalism does not work and therefore they did not crush it enough.
British political prisoners.
Two british nazis, Simon Shappard and Stephen Whittle, were charged with writing heresy. They fled to the USA, but last month were forced back to Britain, where they have each been jailed for two years and two months for publishing thought crimes: They posted on their web site that Hitler did not exterminate the Jews, but that he should have.
Goldman Sach’s hand caught in piggy bank.
They admit their hand was in the piggy bank, but say they were just feeling the money, not stealing it. Proprietary secret software should not be in trading computers. Any software in those computers should be subject to scrutiny by all major traders. Any secret software in trading computers is compelling evidence of wrongdoing.
A politician speaks the truth!
Usually, any statement or report emanating from government, any government white paper, is a lie, but in a remarkable fluke outburst of truthfulness, the U.S. House of Representative Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has issued a report: The Role of Government Affordable Housing Policy in Creating the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 The long and the short of the report being that the government pressured financiers to issue easy money bad loans to irresponsible borrowers, which government policy eventually …
I predict: 1. Seemingly good economic news
I predict that around 2009 October or so, there will be lots of seemingly cheerful economic news. Quite possibly sooner, possibly some time in August. I predict that the Keynesian element of the depression will rapidly and visibly diminishing towards the end of the year. Crises that are well described by Keynes (aggregate demand falling below aggregate supply) never last long, except to the extent government intervenes to forbid businessmen to adjust to them. Say’s law is observed to be …
Speaking power to truth
If an economist wants to get places, he had best tell politicians and bureaucrats what they want to hear. The danger is that if says it often enough, he will himself come to believe it. Larry Summers is an economist. When Bush was in power, he believed in Bushonomics, which got him into trouble in an academic environment of rigid, mindless, and unthinking left wing orthodoxy. Now, however, it seems he firmly believes in Obanomics.