In a time of chimpanzees, I was a penguin.
The religious right is motivated by the suspicion that someone, somewhere,
is having fun -- and that this must be stopped.
It's not just Krugman who looks all hangdog nowdays. Even non-Krugman economists are now saying that all it will take is one more economic shock to push the economy completely into a new Great Depression.
Siiiiiigh. [bumbles off, looks for herring to drown troubles in.]
-- Badtux the Depression Penguin (or is that "depressed"?)
Ground rules: Comments that consist solely of insults, fact-free talking points, are off-topic, or simply spam the same argument over and over will be deleted. The penguin is the only one allowed to be an ass here. All viewpoints, however, are welcomed, even if I disagree vehemently with you.
WARNING: You are entitled to create your own arguments, but you are NOT entitled to create your own facts. If you spew scientific denialism, or insist that the sky is purple, or otherwise insist that your made-up universe of pink unicorns and cotton candy trees is "real", well -- expect the banhammer.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.
Yeah. Check this out.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/11/obama-debt-could-cause-a-double-dip-recession.html
The FDR legacy is dead - not even a new deal zombie on the horizon.
Obama hasn't learned the lesson of 1938.
We are SO fucked. Why didn't I just vote for MsShame and bring Armaggedon on that much quicker?
Now, I must go hug a squid.
(Actually ,I am far more likely to encounter granddaughters - they will have to do.)
Yours in screwtitude
JzB the bending over trombonist
Obama hasn't learned the lesson of *1932", what are you talking about, 1938?! He is repeating exactly the mistakes of Herbert Hoover, even if the downturn did start before he entered office rather than afterwards.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, Obama is just rote-reciting "conventional wisdom", which, as I've pointedly noted, is utterly divorced from reality and might as well be occurring in an alternative universe where squid walk on land and up is down. It's crazy and it's nonsense and it's ridiculous, but... well f*** it.
-Badtux the Disgusted Penguin
Exactly what I've been saying too.
ReplyDeleteAnd I have hated it every time I had to say it.
It has seemed like he really didn't know anything about economics (or history) and when told to appoint all the Goldman Sachs hitmen to fix the problem they had caused, actually thought he wasn't going to be found out so quickly.
But that's just me.
Pass the herring.
S
I've worked for several insurance corporations as a temp or contract worker.
ReplyDeleteI was tasked with designing and implementing new filing systems of mortgages in vaults.
Insurance investment managers have a single refrain, "There is nothing better than a fixed rate mortgage on a single family home with two incomes."
When people sit around mumbling about what happened on wall street, no one seems to have a lot of interest in exactly where did the mortgages go? Who has the paper? It did not just magically disappear, there is a title to land somewhere.
If anyone ever audits what is in the vaults at the insurance companies, then you will see the tsunami of tsunamis. I believe, they are all technically bankrupt.
The fact that the insurance industry is getting a massive injection of money under the medical ripoff plans may not be an accident.
Do some research on the "assets" listing for some of the big corporations. Figure at least 10 percent is gone forever. Check that against shares issued and the current price per share.
I am on disability. The pension isn't fantastic but I can live on it. Right now, for 1 year of my pension payments, I can buy two three bedroom homes, on city water, sewer and electric, with 2 baths in a large town in Texas and still have enough to live on if I go to South America for a year.
I'm saying that if I discount the dollar to what it was worth in 1980, I could not have bought a single lot for the current price of two homes.
The price of gold goes up another hundred dollars per troy ounce and I'm liquidating everything and leaving. This latest 15 per cent jump while the IMF is talking of selling tons to the Indians is scary.
It might not be a bad idea to send some honest chemists, laborers and accountants to go and physically see and weight and verify how much gold really is in Ft Knox and at the Fed in New York.
Of course, I will admit freely to having bought gold at $660 per oz in 1980 and selling it for $300 in 1985.
The price of gold is a worthless measure of anything. Gold is just a metal, it's not magical or mystical or anything. As I'm fond of saying, you can't eat gold. It's being used to stuff mattresses, and makes mighty lumpy mattress stuffing, and is also useful for plating electronic connectors and as a dental restoration material, but isn't particularly useful for anything else. We've had asset price bubbles in all sorts of assets over these past 15 years, doesn't surprise me that gold has gone all bubbly too, doesn't mean a thing.
ReplyDeleteRegarding what's in the vaults of insurance companies, I'm not too worried about insurance companies. F*** insurance companies. Banks, on the other hand... banks have a unique place in our capitalist system. They are the place where money is created. Banks print money via the action of fractional reserve lending, and unprint it when they quit lending and start accumulating reserves instead -- or go completely out of business. A capitalist system relies on banks to leverage current income in order to produce future incomes, and if we don't have a functional banking system, capitalism fails. And we don't have a viable replacement for capitalism, the natterings of Communists and socialists nonwithstanding, so that would, needless to say, be a Bad Thing. So yeah, the problem of, "what assets do these banks *really* have and what are they *really* worth" is enough to drive me to the herring sauce. But then, that's been pretty much the case for me (hitting the herring sauce, that is) ever since the Shrubbery decided it'd be a great idea to invade that country that his Daddy said would be a bad idea to invade... sigh!
- Badtux the Saucy Penguin
I feel like I am living out the script for some Disaster Movie. Some day soon there may not "be" any more economy and then we all go down in anarchy. All while the Resident President parties in great style. Kind of like Russia did but with way more violence.
ReplyDeleteThis is not a story that I want any part of. Pass the Herring Sauce, please.
w3ski
I mentioned '38 because he talked about a double bottom.
ReplyDeleteBut - point taken.
Obama as the new Hoover.
That sucks!
Cheers!
JzB the vacuum abhorring trombonist
Speaking of which . . .
ReplyDeletehttp://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/invisible-bond-vigilantes/
Cheers!
JzB the depressed trombonist