LITEROTICA PODCAST
LIT CAMS (200 Free Tokens)ADULT TOYSVOD MOVIES

What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Tinker Bell is Dead
[This article originally ran on LewRockwell.com, June 20, 2012.]

If you have seen the stage version of Peter Pan, you know the scene in which the audience is asked to clap if they want Tinker Bell to live. It's time.

Janet Daley wrote a provocative essay in London's Telegraph on the day before the Greek election (June 16). She did her best to explain why the eurozone is in crisis. Europe's leaders are living in an illusion of their own making.

She began with what should be obvious to the financial markets by now. By entering into the eurozone, the politicians surrendered control over the money supply.

The problem is not that politicians surrendered control over the money supply: it is that they surrendered it to the European Central Bank (ECB). They should have surrendered it to the free market.

The politicians of Europe asserted control over the international money market in 1914, when they abandoned the international gold standard. They set the precedent. Everything that has followed has been one fiat-money crisis after another. But only Austrian School economists teach this. In Europe, bureaucratic control over money has run the show ever since 1999.

The economy is now beyond the control of national governments, and therefore outside the remit of democratic politics. It has become truly global, and thus a law unto itself; nation states have gone broke in their attempt to feed its gargantuan appetites for consumption and debt.
Click to expand...
It is not the "world economy" that has a gargantuan appetite for debt. It is each nation's politicians, who want something (increased spending) for almost nothing (borrowed money at low rates). That was what northern commercial bankers gave the PIIGS governments at German rates of interest until the spring of 2010, when the Greek socialist government announced that its predecessor had cooked the books.
Click to expand...
http://mises.org/daily/6087/Tinker-Bell-Is-Dead
 
Who knew Obama had so many voters in Europe too!

The voters do not want major cutbacks in government welfare spending. They will throw out of office any political party that suggests this as a permanent remedy.

The voters also do not want to see their treasuries raided by the Eurocrats and commercial bankers to bail out the PIIGS one more time, because this will never end.

They also do not want to surrender political sovereignty to the eurozone. They do not want Germans to have a say as to how large a deficit to run.

They also do not want to leave the eurozone, because they expect Germany to foot the bill for the deficits forever, letting locals build up bank accounts in euros in Germany rather than their own insolvent banks.

All calls to have another round of ECB inflation are calls for the destruction of the euro. The voters say they don't want that, either.

What do the voters want?

They want to clap and cheer and keep Tinker Bell alive.
Click to expand...

:eek:
 
Conclusion:

Tinker Bell has terminal cancer. The audience can clap all it likes. The audience will find that, after the show is over, their banks have a stack of IOUs on their books that cannot be collected in stable euros.

This is reality. This is not the fantasy of the bailouts.

It is the underlying reality of every Western nation. They have all written IOUs that cannot be repaid. The eurozone's politicians found out sooner because there are 18 nations that have made impossible promises, and idiot bankers who made loans to these politicians. They all expect the Germans to bail them out.

Think of Tinker Bell as Angela Merkel with wings. Not too appealing, is it? Not too believable, either.
Click to expand...
 
4est_4est_Gump said:
I'm doing just fine.

Do you have anything topical to add?

Or, are you "winning" too?
Click to expand...

Topical? Coming from you? That's hilarious.

How exactly are you winning?

I mean, Charlie has a couple mil in the bank and two women on his lap... what do you have?

Or perhaps for you, winning is simply just a state of mind.
 
:rolleyes:

I have plenty.

I'm not "WINNING." You and Throb are although I seriously doubt if the two of you combined are anywhere near my worth in assets...
 
[Day 7 of Robert Wenzel's 30-day reading list that will lead you to become a knowledgeable libertarian, this Mises Daily was originally published June 6, 2012.]


It is bad enough that opponents of the free market wrongly blame capitalism for environmental pollution, depressions, and wars. Whatever the failings of their causal theories, at least they are focused on undoubtedly bad things. We have really gone beyond the pale, though, when the market is blamed for something good.

Tim Jackson, a professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey, does just that in his article. "Let's Be Less Productive," which appeared in the New York Times, May 26, 2012.

...

What then is to be done? Jackson has an ingenious remedy. We should concentrate on jobs in low-productivity areas. "Certain kinds of tasks rely inherently on the allocation of people's time and attention. The caring professions are a good example: medicine, social work, education. Expanding our economies in these directions has all sorts of advantages." A cynic might wonder whether it is altogether a coincidence that Jackson is himself employed in one of these professions.

...

As Murray Rothbard notes,

Labor needs to be "saved" because it is the pre-eminently scarce good and because man's wants for exchangeable goods are far from satisfied.… The more labor is "saved," the better, for then labor is using more and better capital goods to satisfy more of its wants in a shorter amount of time.…

A technological improvement in an industry will tend to increase employment in that industry if the demand for that product is elastic downward, so that the greater supply of goods induces greater consumer spending. On the other hand, an innovation in an industry with inelastic demand downward will cause consumers to spend less on the more abundant products, contracting employment in that industry. In short, the process of technological innovation shifts work from the inelastic-demand to the elastic-demand industries.[1]
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

:eek:

http://mises.org/daily/6073/Is-Greater-Productivity-a-Danger
 
RobDownSouth said:
We should get together sometime and compare mutual fund statements! :)
Click to expand...

AJ is a financial jeen-e-us. I'm certain that his net worth is in the trillions, at least.

After all, he has been proven to understand market conditions so perfectly, that someone of his skill and knowledge must be rich beyond our wildest dreams.
 
richard_daily said:
AJ is a financial jeen-e-us. I'm certain that his net worth is in the trillions, at least.

After all, he has been proven to understand market conditions so perfectly, that someone of his skill and knowledge must be rich beyond our wildest dreams.
Click to expand...

AJ is sooo smart he can be simultaneously 100% vested in both the stock market AND in gold bullion!

Speaking of AJ, Fox News got caught this morning doin' some AJ-class "selective editing", trying to make President Obama look ineffective.
 
Unemployment rates rose in more than two-thirds of U.S. cities last month, evidence that the slowdown in hiring in May was felt nationwide.

Here are the cities with the highest and lowest unemployment rates last month:


Highest unemployment rates May 2012

Yuma, Ariz. 28.9
El Centro, Calif. 26.8
Yuba City, Calif. 17.9
Merced, Calif. 17.3
Modesto, Calif. 15.6
Fresno, Calif. 14.9
Hanford-Corcoran, Calif. 14.8
Visalia-Porterville, Calif. 14.7
Stockton, Calif. 14.5
Madera-Chowchilla, Calif. 14.3

Lowest unemployment rates May 2012

Bismarck, N.D. 2.5
Fargo, N.D. 3.0
Lincoln, Neb. 3.4
Burlington-S. Burlington Vt. 3.5
Iowa City, Iowa 3.6
Grand Forks, N.D. 3.7
Sioux Falls, S.D. 3.8
Midland, Texas 3.8
Ames, Iowa 3.9
Portsmouth, N.H. 4.1
Click to expand...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-06-27-18-17-02
 
42 Straight Months of Stupidly Optimistic Official Predictions About Economic Recovery
Once-a-month quotes from the Obama administration and the media about how the economy will be booming any minute now.
Tim Cavanaugh, Reason.com (Libertarian)
June 27, 2012

Washington economic experts have been proclaiming that economic recovery is right around the corner since before they were sure the patient was sick.

For those of us who have been saying all along that none of the economic interventions since 2007 would revive the economy—not the rescue of Bear Stearns and other financial institutions; not the Troubled Asset Relief Program; not the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; not Quantitative Easings I, II, and III; not the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; not Cash for Clunkers or Solyndra or the bailouts of Chrysler and General Motors—the cavalcade of wrongheaded, fantastical economic analysis coming out of official Washington and its media in recent years would be hilarious if it were not so infuriating.

The granddaddy of these economic inanities is Federal Reserve Bank chairman Ben Bernanke's March 2009 declaration that he could see economic "green shoots":

I think as those green shoots begin to appear in different markets and as some confidence begins to come back, that will begin the positive dynamic that brings our economy back.

With the benefit of hindsight it's easy to laugh at Bernanke, and some folks have been known to do so.

Trillions of dollars have been spent on monetary expansion and economic recovery since the beginning of the Obama administration. At least a trillion had already been spent before President Barack Obama was sworn in.

Throughout that period, headline unemployment has exceeded predictions every single month, growing from 7.3 percent to 8.2 percent (and topping 10 percent during the period when the Recovery Act's purported benefits were at their peak). Labor force non-participation (that is, work-eligible Americans who have left the workforce entirely and now are not even counted in unemployment statistics) has climbed from 34.3 percent to 36.2 percent. Contrary to both Keynesian and monetary theory, this period of flat growth has been accompanied by pronounced Consumer Price Index inflation that has robbed your dollar of 10 percent of its value since 2007.

Here's a far-from-exhaustive list (we could have filled every month's quota using nothing but gaffes from Vice President Joe Biden) of insane, disinformed, spectacularly wrong statements from Obama's ever-shrinking brain trust, with a sprinkling of mots justes from the commentariat.

One quote per month, followed by that month's rate of U-3 unemployment and labor force non-participation:
Click to expand...
http://reason.com/archives/2012/06/27/economic-recovery-stupid-predictions
 
Tottering Dominoes...

Bankia Valued at EUR -13.635 Billion; Spain Becomes Sole Owner, Shareholders Totally Wiped Out; Entire Bankia Board Resigns

Five days ago we heard from the Bank of Spain that Spanish banks only need between €16bn and €62bn in new capital.

For details, see Laugh of the Day: Stress Tests Show Spanish Banks Only Need Between €16bn and €62bn in New Capital; ECB to Accept BBB- Rated Debt (One Step Above Junk) as Collateral

In the same report we also heard that the three largest bank groups do not need any capital at all. Bear in mind that was allegedly in a "stress" scenario.

Today we learned that Bankia is Valued at EUR -13.635 Billion

The seven banks that founded Bankia be left out of the shareholders of the entity and the State will be made with one hundred percent of the group's parent, Bank Savings Financial (BFA), the latter having a negative value of 13.635 million euros According to the assessment commissioned by the state.

After the assessment, the FROB becomes the sole owner of BFA.

Thus, the seven savings banks that created the group, Caja Madrid, Bancaja, La Caja de Canarias, Caja de Avila, Laietana Caixa, Caja Segovia and Caja Rioja, stay out of the shareholders.

Finally, BFA proceed to recapitalize its subsidiary, Bankia, with an injection of 12,000 million euros. He will do through a capital increase in which existing shareholders will have preferential subscription rights. It is expected that the capital increase in Bankia be completed during October.

The European Commission today gave its approval temporary nationalization and recapitalization of the matrix BFA waiting for Spain to send to Brussels a restructuring plan of the institution in the next six months.
Click to expand...
I strongly suspect that a valuation of -13.635 billion euros is on the wildly optimistic side.
Click to expand...
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

RobDownSouth
Remember those dire predictions of a "Recession in 2023-2024"? The White House does!
Replies
0
Views
319
RobDownSouth
RobDownSouth
Counselor706
Joe Biden and the powerless presidency
Replies
5
Views
444
John_von_Neumann
John_von_Neumann
Ulaven_Demorte
New and Improved "Doom and Gloom™" Thread
2 3
Replies
51
Views
4K
IrezumiKiss
IrezumiKiss
K
Paul Krugman: "In Defense of Obama"
5 6 7
Replies
155
Views
9K
IrezumiKiss
IrezumiKiss
Ulaven_Demorte
About all of the minimum wage "Doom and Gloom"
2
Replies
30
Views
1K
bronzeage
bronzeage
Back
Top