Category Archives: political-economy

Inflation or deflation?

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Since I’ve posted and linked many videos of Peter Schiff, I feel obligated to post this link to “Peter Schiff was wrong.”

I’ve always associated inflation with an increase in the money supply.  But what if “money” is not only cash?  What if it includes easy credit.  If everything has been priced on the assumption that consumers had easy credit, then prices are already inflated.  The credit itself is part of the inflation.

Then when credit stops, prices have to fall.  A lot.

Basically, via credit we are bringing “new money” into the economy from the future.  If that suddenly goes away, then the money supply decreases.

So I have no idea what the future holds.  I don’t know how all this will translate.  I just thought I’d let readers no.

What I find much more confusing is the claim that foreign markets will not recover without our buying.  This seems counter intuitive.  You would think that people who make things in India and China would be able to trade with each other and leave US behind.  But that doesn’t seem to be happening.

Pravda for the UltraPork Bill

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An unusual aspect of the recent debate in Washington is the lengths that supporters have gone to marginalize anyone who questions the so-called stimulus plan.

Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s labor secretary and member of President Obama’s transition team, claims “almost every economist will tell you the stimulus has to be massive.” Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman accuses skeptics of “making totally non-serious arguments.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, says “economists agree” that doling out large sums to state governments is “effective.” Vice President Joe Biden says that “every economist that I’ve spoken to” believes the spending package “has to be big.”

Perhaps the vice president should broaden his social circles. The truth is that, instead of being uniformly in favor of the massive spending bill, which is being championed by congressional Democrats with Obama’s support, economists remain divided.

You may have heard that respectable economists, including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, say stimulus spending should be high or higher. But some news organizations have been less than diligent in telling you that other respectable economists are deeply skeptical of the idea, flatly oppose it or favor competing proposals such as additional tax relief.

Read the rest: For Many Economists, Stimulus Falls Flat, Declan McCullagh: Amid Loud Calls For Economic Rescue, Skepticism Abundant – CBS News.

Anarchy from Middle Earth

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“My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) — or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inanimate realm of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remain obstinate!… Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people… The most improper job of any man, even saints, is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.” — J.R.R. Tolkien

via KarenDeCoster.com Web Log: Tolkien Was a Hoppean Archives.

I think my dad read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings to me when I was six or seven.  So no wonder.

2 out of 3 means Amerika is well nigh to a police state

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Radley Balko asks, “What does it take to get a police officer fired?”

Shoving a 71-year-old Walmart greeter to the ground and, when another customer came to assist, shoving that customer through a glass door?

Nope, even though that particular officer has had several complaints filed against him, and was involved in another altercation a year earlier.

How about three DWI incidents within a one-year span, including one in which the officer ran a roadblock, then had to be tasered, pepper-sprayed, and wrestled to the ground; another in which he hit another car, then left the scene of the accident; and another in which he fell asleep in his cruiser in front of a school, while in drive, with his foot resting on the brake?

Nope. It took a fourth DWI incident to finally get him suspended.

How about an officer with an otherwise stellar record, who has a reputation in the department for honesty, but who became an outspoken critic of the war on drugs, and on one occasion declined to arrest a man after finding a single marijuana plant growing outside the man’s home?

Yep, that’ll do it.

We are really heading into a bad bad place in the US in many ways.

Does our government or our media even pretend to have any other goal except to make us serve powerful corporations?

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Karen DeCoster’s blog reminded me that “National Bankruptcy Day” is coming.  Read the entry and follow the links. Does anyone doubt that this law was promoted by retailers to kill competition from resale stores?

Of course, what this really means is that all goods are now worth less since their longetivity has just been decimated.  Once again the state makes the people within its grasp poorer.

Hard not to hate the state when it so obviously hated you first.