A quick note on David Brooks's column today. I have no idea what he's talking about when he says, The Demand Siders don't have a good explanation for the past two years Funny, I thought we had a perfectly good explanation: severe downturn in demand from the financial crisis, and a stimulus which we warned from the beginning wasn't nearly big enough. And as I've been trying to point out, events have strongly confirmed a demand-side view of the world.
A quick note on David Brooks's column today. I have no idea what he's talking about when he says,
The Demand Siders don't have a good explanation for the past two years
Funny, I thought we had a perfectly good explanation: severe downturn in demand from the financial crisis, and a stimulus which we warned from the beginning wasn't nearly big enough. And as I've been trying to point out, events have strongly confirmed a demand-side view of the world.
The moral I've taken from recent years isn't Be Humble -- it's Question Authority. And you should too.
"BN 11:58 *KRUGMAN: U.S SHOULD USE `EVERYTHING WE CAN' TO BOOST GDP, JOBS BN 11:58 *NOBEL LAUREATE KRUGMAN COMMENTS IN BLOOMBERG TV INTERVIEW BN 11:58 *KRUGMAN SAYS FED SHOULD HAVE 3%-4% INFLATION TARGET LONG TERM BN 11:58 *KRUGMAN SAYS U.S. GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO `GO OUT AND HIRE PEOPLE' BN 11:58 *KRUGMAN SAYS SECOND MAJOR STIMULUS PLAN PROBABY WON'T HAPPEN BN 11:58 *KRUGMAN SAYS U.S. ECONOMY MAY BE FACING A `VERY LONG SIEGE' BN 11:58 *PRINCETON'S KRUGMAN: `MARKETS HAVE BEEN FAIRLY CALM SO FAR' BN 11:58 *KRUGMAN SAYS FEDERAL RESERVE SHOULD DO MORE QUANTITATIVE EASING" source Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
you can't win against these idiots.
Scott Adams warned of this trend in "Dilbert & the Way of the Weasel." Forget competition. No, capitalism breeds monopolies, it's a "financial system designed to transfer money from lesser weasels to greater weasels. Someday, if everything goes according to plan, one supreme weasel will have all the money and everyone else will be his or her domestic servant." .... ...99% of America's wealth remains concentrated in Wall Street's "Conspiracy of Weasels." They know only one thing, blindly "follow the money. If you took the same amount of money" traded daily on the NYSE, "sealed it in drums and dropped it in the ocean, 4 billion weasels would drown just trying to be near it." When Obama signs the so-called reform bill, blow a goodbye kiss to our last great hope for true reform: Obama failed. True reform will never happen. Wall Street gains more power fighting every new reform bill, making massive investments in lobbyists. Witness their rapid return to power since near-bankruptcy in 2008. No, the Weasel Conspiracy members didn't drown, they rule America. They killed democracy, destroyed capitalism and are consolidating vast new wealth and power in the hands of this conspiracy of Wall Street, Corporate CEOs, the Forbes 400 and Washington's pay-to-play power-players. Result: Less than one million co-conspirators control a nation of 310 million citizens. Here are 12 more warnings exposing the Weasel Conspiracy's phony financial reforms:
....
...99% of America's wealth remains concentrated in Wall Street's "Conspiracy of Weasels." They know only one thing, blindly "follow the money. If you took the same amount of money" traded daily on the NYSE, "sealed it in drums and dropped it in the ocean, 4 billion weasels would drown just trying to be near it."
When Obama signs the so-called reform bill, blow a goodbye kiss to our last great hope for true reform: Obama failed. True reform will never happen. Wall Street gains more power fighting every new reform bill, making massive investments in lobbyists. Witness their rapid return to power since near-bankruptcy in 2008.
No, the Weasel Conspiracy members didn't drown, they rule America. They killed democracy, destroyed capitalism and are consolidating vast new wealth and power in the hands of this conspiracy of Wall Street, Corporate CEOs, the Forbes 400 and Washington's pay-to-play power-players. Result: Less than one million co-conspirators control a nation of 310 million citizens.
Here are 12 more warnings exposing the Weasel Conspiracy's phony financial reforms:
:-D
Messiahs are a really Bad Thing.
Whether or not that's what Herbert was trying to say - I lack the knowledge to state one way or the other - I submit it's hard to argue against. Seems to me as soon as the Great Sky Father enters reason flees.
¹ With new books STILL being published 14 years after Herbert ate it!
Don't read past the first volume. Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
Thought the chapter where the The Worm insists on a restructure of the basis of amortization of the Space Guild's ships one of the more moving passages in all of Science Fiction.
;-)
but I'll take your word that its a literary masterwork. Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
Newt Gingrich was the one who succeeded by creating and sucking the withered members of this kind of chaos. Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.
Frank Delaney ~ Ireland
Municipal Government To Spend 500 Million To Create 150 Jobs
Reykjavík's municipal government recommends spending 500 million on city development projects in addition to the 150 million that has already been approved for this year, according Eyjan.is. The coalition government claims this new budget will strengthen the city`s economy. Mayor Jón Gnarr was scheduled to present the proposal at the city council meetings over the weekend but the meeting was postponed to today. Some of the development projects that will be undertaken include bicycle and walking paths, playgrounds, maintenance for city-owned elementary schools and kindergartens. These projects are supposed to create 150 jobs by the end of the year.
The coalition government claims this new budget will strengthen the city`s economy. Mayor Jón Gnarr was scheduled to present the proposal at the city council meetings over the weekend but the meeting was postponed to today. Some of the development projects that will be undertaken include bicycle and walking paths, playgrounds, maintenance for city-owned elementary schools and kindergartens. These projects are supposed to create 150 jobs by the end of the year.
Source: The Reykjavik Grapevine
When the U.S., and then the world's money economy started to crumble, the first thing capitalist economists could think of to do was to monkey with the paper. That's all they knew how to do. It was unthinkable that the tertiary virtual economy, that great backroom fraud of debt manipulation and fiat money, might have finally reached the limits of the material earth to support. That the money economy's gaming of workers and Mother Nature might itself might be the problem never occurred to the world's economic movers and shakers. It still hasn't. (Except for Chavez, Morales, Castro and Lula). Jobs disappeared, homes went to foreclosure, and personal debt was at staggering all time highs. America's working folks were taking it square in the face. Not that economists or financial kingpins cared much one way or the other. In the capitalist financial world, everything is an opportunity. Cancer? Build cancer hospital chains. Pollution? Sell pollution credits. The country gone bankrupt?"Nothing to do," cried the mad hatters of finance, "but print more money, and give gobs of cash to the banks! Yes, yes, yes! Borrow astronomical amounts of the stuff and bribe every fat cat financial corporation up and down The Street!" All of which came down to creating more debt for the common people to work off. They seem willing enough to do it too -- if only they had jobs.Along with the EU, Japan and the rest of the industrial world, the US continues to flood the market with cheap credit. That would be hunky dory, if was actually wealth for anybody but a banker. The real problems are debt and fraud, and tripling the debt in order to cover up the fraud. And pretending there no natural costs of our actions, that we do not have to rob the natural world to crank up the money world through debt.
When the U.S., and then the world's money economy started to crumble, the first thing capitalist economists could think of to do was to monkey with the paper. That's all they knew how to do. It was unthinkable that the tertiary virtual economy, that great backroom fraud of debt manipulation and fiat money, might have finally reached the limits of the material earth to support. That the money economy's gaming of workers and Mother Nature might itself might be the problem never occurred to the world's economic movers and shakers. It still hasn't. (Except for Chavez, Morales, Castro and Lula). Jobs disappeared, homes went to foreclosure, and personal debt was at staggering all time highs. America's working folks were taking it square in the face. Not that economists or financial kingpins cared much one way or the other. In the capitalist financial world, everything is an opportunity. Cancer? Build cancer hospital chains. Pollution? Sell pollution credits. The country gone bankrupt?
"Nothing to do," cried the mad hatters of finance, "but print more money, and give gobs of cash to the banks! Yes, yes, yes! Borrow astronomical amounts of the stuff and bribe every fat cat financial corporation up and down The Street!" All of which came down to creating more debt for the common people to work off. They seem willing enough to do it too -- if only they had jobs.
Along with the EU, Japan and the rest of the industrial world, the US continues to flood the market with cheap credit. That would be hunky dory, if was actually wealth for anybody but a banker. The real problems are debt and fraud, and tripling the debt in order to cover up the fraud. And pretending there no natural costs of our actions, that we do not have to rob the natural world to crank up the money world through debt.
