Yosemite’s giant trees disappear BBC
Goods Orders, Home Sales in U.S. Probably Rose, Signaling Recession Waning Bloomberg, Reader Michael D saw the headline as an Orwell watch item.
China stuck in ‘dollar trap’ Financial Times and The (almost) $2.5 trillionaire … Brad Setser
A Fight to Protect Americans From British Libel Law New York Times
US bonds sale faces market resistance Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph
Decline in Consumer Spending creating Dead Malls The Economic Populist
Swine Flu Is Spreading More Widely Than Official Numbers Show Bloomberg, So far, no sign a more deadly version is taking hold.
Mounting sadness behind the happy headlines Tony Jackson, Financial Times
Assessing the risk of a cataclysm Reuters
State of Paralysis Paul Krugman, New York Times
363(f) and Dealership Agreements Steve Lubben, Credit Slips
Antidote du jour:
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re: the Dead Malls, Economic Populist link… In the short term at least, government will play an expanded role in the economy, increasing spending to fill the gap left by shrinking consumer demand, economists said. But over the long term, the nation will need to make fundamental changes by borrowing and consuming less, while saving, producing, and exporting more.
“We are going to need fewer malls and more factories,” said Edward Leamer, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, an economic research group at the University of California at Los Angeles, “and it’s going to be a long adjustment.”
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Consume less is a gimme, saving is for those with stable balance sheets and income streams, produce [?] (what and export to whom and in what quantity’s), whom is buying anything out side the distressed asset/merger boot sales going on today and for the foreseeable future.
The world economy is a 1950s overhead florescent light fixture, leaking PCBs, eating up more power than it gives off resulting in a Joe vs the Volcano societal disorder. This old construct is now due for an upgrade, unfortunately the retro fit must be accomplished with the power still on as the economy can not be shut off and on, to facilitate the exchange from old to new. This kind of work is physically/mortally dangerous and creates enormous disruption of lives until completed. In the end the effort is worth the pain, those that lament the lost of wealth, it was an illusion all along.
Skippy
“Mr Bernanke is betting that under a floating currency regime there is no risk of repeating the disaster of October 1931, when the Fed had to raise rates twice to stem foreign gold withdrawals, with catastrophic consequences. This assumption may be tested.” (AEP at Telegraph)
This is where Bernanke is 100% wrong. The dollar may now be a fiat currency – but for 40 years the Fed and Treasury has been telling the world that it is as good as gold.
They cannot pretend the dollar is still as good as gold for international trade and reserves – while electronically printing it like crazy in order to inflate away dollar denominated US debt.
There is no easy way out of this dilemma.
“No subversive forces can ever conquer a nation that has not first been conquered by ‘subversive inactivity’ on the part of the citizenry, who have failed in their civic duty and in service to their country.”
– J. Howard Pew, 1953
I’ve noticed that searching google for videos has been degraded.
What is going on? The content is no longer there in wholesale fashion for one to browse.
Krugman scales new heights of absurdity with an article arguing that the whole problem with California is that the tax burden is not high enough and there are still too many Republicans in the state.
Yeah, clearly our state would not be in this mess if only homeowners had been taxed on the full $800,000 value of their 2-bedroom homes back in 2005.
Gods, he can’t even stay consistent with his own absurd Keynesian doctrines anymore.