Tag: deflation

Mar 01 2012

Inflation in what we need; deflation in what we want

 You’ve all seen the headlines: Gas prices are headed for record highs and inflation is tame.

How do you reconcile the two?

 Most people fall back to blaming “speculators”. But if that sounds like an over-simplified cop-out, its because it is.

 To blame rising prices on speculators is like blaming getting hurt on crashing your car.  While its true you got hurt in a car crash, you don’t respond by outlawing car crashes, or in this case, speculators. It would be useless to do either.

 Instead, you outlaw the reason why the car crashed. For instance, outlaw poorly-made brakes.

  When it comes to rising energy prices, you look at why there are so many darn speculators.

Aug 11 2010

QE II: Ben “Sikorsky Skycrane” Bernanke.

“We can do this!  Just tells us where you want it!”

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Drug-addled fifth columnists: “C’mon, Holmes.  We don’t want it.  At all.”

“Uh-oh.  Robert Gibbs is going to be very, very cross come November.”

“Yeah?  Well, he can suck my fat debt!”

Jun 03 2010

Stoneleigh’s take on Obama.

I personally find it difficult to restrain my criticism of Obama, as he appears to be a recidivist lickspittle to the plutocracy, completely unfit for duty to the nation, the most non-hopiest, non-change-iest fucker ever born.  Nevertheless, I found these admittedly grim comments by Stoneleigh on Obama’s “historical context” worth taking into account, as well.

Replying to Erltonsquire (first quote, all emphases mine), she writes:

Erltonsquire,

I don’t want America’s first black president to be blamed for the next depression. He means too much as a symbol.

I don’t want to see that happen either, as the consequences for racial harmony could be catastrophic. Unfortunately, however, circumstance dictates that is exactly what will happen. Anyone elected at such a time takes the blame, whether or not it can plausibly be construed as his fault. Look what happened to Hoover’s reputation.

The two candidates at the last election were fighting over the poisoned chalice. I think it’s very unfortunate that Mr Obama won at this particular time and is now in the line of fire. I actually feel very sorry for him and especially his family. I don’t think he has any idea what is about to hit him politically. Unfortunately he encouraged people to believe he had the power to change things, which he doesn’t. It is very dangerous for politicians to believe their own propaganda and willingly step up on to a pedestal. It just means they have further to fall.

Whatever one may think of current events, it actually makes little sense to focus on blaming the president, as his actions are so constrained, and events are so dependent on long term socieconomic moves that precede his term. The system is larger than any man and it is simply broken. A blame game won’t help anyone. Sadly nastier and nastier blame-games are exactly what increasingly angry people engage in in such times. I always suggest that people save their energies for more constructive purposes that can actually benefit their loved ones.

Mr Obama is in the wrong place at the wrong time. All he can do is cheerlead while presiding over a sclerotic and dysfunctional system that is completely unresponsive to the needs of the populace. Such a system can no longer do anything constructive. Sadly the destructive power that remains is still being deployed, and probably will continue to be so on a wider and wider scale. Tragically, this will be Mr Obama’s legacy, whatever he personally does or does not do.

June 1, 2010 8:24 AM

Hard to gainsay much of anything said above, and what a mouthful!  I do think Stoneleigh’s acuteness reaches its vanishing when she says,

I always suggest that people save their energies for more constructive purposes that can actually benefit their loved ones.

One last question: Can Wall Street create catastrophe bonds for politicians?  Because I want in!

May 01 2010

Good Morning, America: You’re Fired!

The empire is really sucking bilge water when they start firing key propagandists!

Job cuts at ABC leave workers stunned and downcast

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Photo: Good Morning America hosts demonstrating happy-happy-joy-joy to Disney-berg villagers.

If “Good Morning America” or “World News” look any different in the coming weeks, it might be because ABC News is employing nearly 400 fewer people.

Earlier this week, ABC News, a unit of the Walt Disney Company, largely completed one of the most drastic rounds of budget cutbacks at a television news operation in decades, affecting roughly a quarter of the staff. The cutbacks promise to change ABC both on- and off-camera.

The business of news is a particularly ugly one these days, and news outlets across the country have trimmed their staffs. But it is exceedingly rare for a newspaper or a network to shed a quarter of its employees all at once, as ABC has done.

For viewers, the effects will be felt on the individual broadcasts, like “World News with Diane Sawyer,” which lost two of its six senior staff members to buyouts. They will not be replaced.

In the future, more segments will be reported, filmed and edited by jacks-of-all-trades, called digital journalists, internally. They may lack the polish that a traditional four-person crew can provide, but they are much less expensive. Sometimes two of the digital journalists will team up for reports.

Hell, just sign up for an account at Docudharma!

And drop a nickel in the kitty.

Mar 13 2010

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in default

Some say by printing.

From what I’ve heard about the vaults

I hold with those who say default.

But if I could go broke minting

I know enough of fear

To say that for destruction printing

Is always near

And equally unstinting.

Apr 04 2009

Tom Ferguson: Obama’s Economy Plan “Recipe For Disaster”

Crossposted from Antemedius

Thomas Ferguson is a political scientist and author who studies and writes on politics and economics, often within an historical perspective. He is a Political Science professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston, a contributing editor of The Nation, and is also the author of several books, the most recent of which is Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political System.

Today, in the fourth of a series of interviews with Real News CEO Paul Jay, Ferguson calls the Obama/Geithner/Summers plan a “recipe for disaster”.

Real News – April 4, 2009

Obama should save the banks, not the bankers Pt.4

Tom Ferguson: Obama’s plan is a “recipe for disaster, if the US reflates, the rest of the world doesn’t”

Note: I believe this interview was done before the G20.

Oct 10 2008

Lessons of the 1990s recession in Japan

Original article, by Jared Wood and subtitled Is the US economy also heading for a ‘lost decade’?, via The Socialist (UK):

ECONOMISTS AND political leaders are looking to the recent economic history of Japan with growing fear. Japanese share prices are today 70% lower than at their 1989 peak, while property values are about 40% lower than they were in 1990. Economic (GDP) growth in the 1990s averaged less than 1% a year, leading economists to talk of the “lost decade”.

Sep 23 2008

Their desperate gamble with our money

Original article, an editorial subheaded Whether or not Henry Paulson’s rescue scheme works, one thing is already crystal clear: The capitalist system has failed spectacularly, via socialistworker.org:

THE BUSH administration’s treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, is demanding the financial equivalent of martial law–$700 billion and a blank check to rescue the Wall Street system from the catastrophe caused by the blind greed of the super-rich parasites who run it.