Recently in Economics Category

Why Teacher's Unions need to die

| No Comments

This was presented at a training session for the Colorado Education Association:

20230504-CEA.jpg

It has since been edited a bit but this demonstrates their core ideology.

Marxism has failed everywhere it has been tried.  His central thesis is based on a poor understanding of Capital. He neglects the fact that Capital is fungible - it can be created and it can be destroyed.  His writings are based on the idea that there is a fixed pool of capital and that the social inequities stem from this Capital being poorly distributed.  That some people "hoard" Capital and make it impossible for someone else to acquire it.

The real problem is that this sounds entirely plausible to the low-information citizen.  Someone who doesn't think about basic economics and business will see this as true and SOMETHING MUST BE DONE.

And yes, I have read Marx.  When I was in my 20's, I found the ideas interesting so dug into them.  His writing is turgid and opaque - almost like he knew his theories were bullshit and wanted to conceal this from the average reader.  Also read his contemporaries.

The kid has a good question

| No Comments

20230325-banks.jpg

Now this is encouraging - banks

| No Comments

Wonderful bit of news from Town Hall:

'Rapid Deterioration': Major Rating Service Downgrades U.S. Banking System
Following the biggest bank failure since the financial crisis of 2008, Moody's Investor Service has downgraded its rating of the U.S. banking system in the latest sign that President Biden's Monday morning attempt to assuage concerns went over like a lead balloon. 

Moody's — one of three major rating entities — downgraded its outlook for the U.S. banking system from "stable" to "negative" on Tuesday morning "to reflect the rapid deterioration in the operating environment following deposit runs at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Silvergate Bank, and Signature Bank (SNY) and the failures of SVB and SNY," Moody's explained.

In addition to downgrading the entire banking system, Moody's also issued warnings for several individual banks "with substantial unrealized securities losses and with non-retail and uninsured US depositors" that "may still be more sensitive to depositor competition or ultimate flight" and end up "with adverse effects on funding, liquidity, earnings and capital."

Buckle up - going to be an interesting ride.

I have several K in small-denomination silver as well as plain old greenbacks.
Use local banks and credit-unions for my financial services.

Now is a good time to go small and play everything close to your vest...

Looks like the banks are starting to teeter...

From the New York Post:

Rothschild family to take Paris-listed investment bank private
In a show of confidence that strengthens the Rothschild family’s grip on its Paris-listed investment bank, the financial dynasty said Monday it plans to take Rothschild & Co. private.

This is the family that has bankrolled Europe for centuries. Wealthy is an understatement.

Why are they doing this and why now?

Modern Monetary Theory is smoke and mirrors.  Academics love it but it is not working in the real world.
The Austrian School (Mises, Hayek, Menger, et. al.) works every time.
It is the truth that underlies the way we value work and "capital"
Reminds me of Vox Day's aphorism:

In academia there is no difference between academia and the real world; in the real world there is

20230127-mises.jpg

That would be my reaction too

| No Comments

20230127-mmt.jpg

Interesting look at our economy from Political Calculations:
Tip of the hat to Bayou Renaissance Man for the link.

The Price History of Campbell's Tomato Soup
Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup is one of America's most iconic consumer products. First introduced to American consumers by Campbell Soup (NYSE: CPB) in 1898 after having been formulated by John Dorrance the year before, it now ranks as the company's second-most popular soup, selling 85 million cans each year.

That's quite an achievement for a 126 year old product. Campbell Soup sells 440 million cans of soup each year, so its sales of tomato soup represent over 19% of its sales. Only the company's Chicken Noodle soup, introduced in 1934, outsells it with annual sales of more than 250 million cans.

Political Calculations has tracked the price history of Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup over the past 126 years because of its remarkable consistency as an identifiable product over time. In fact, if you had a time machine and could travel to nearly any point in time from January 1898 to the present, you could likely find a 10.75 ounce size (Number 1) can of Campbell's condensed tomato soup stocked for sale in American grocery stores.

That long-running consistency makes Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup an ideal product to follow to understand how inflation has affected American consumers through its history. Today, we're updating our chart visualizing that history from January 1898 through January 2023.

20230119-soup.jpg

What gets me is where it starts to take off around 1975.  That is when President Nixon took the USA off the gold standard, and exited the Bretton Woods system, in 1971.  Since then, the dollar has steadily lost its buying power.  It's not that tomato soup has become more expensive:  it's that the dollar is that much weaker today than it was then.

Fun times...

Ho. Li. Crap.  Newsweek - famous for their We Are All Socialists Now front cover about ten years ago.

They got it right this time:

Climate Activism Isn't About the Planet. It's About the Boredom of the Bourgeoisie
The downfall of capitalism will not come from the uprising of an impoverished working class but from the sabotage of a bored upper class. This was the view of the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942. Schumpeter believed that at some point in the future, an educated elite would have nothing left to struggle for and will instead start to struggle against the very system that they themselves live in.

Nothing makes me think Schumpeter was right like the contemporary climate movement and its acolytes. The Green movement is not a reflection of planetary crisis as so many in media and culture like to depict it, but rather, a crisis of meaning for the affluent.

Take for example a recent interview with Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich on CBS's 60 Minutes. Ehrlich is most famous for his career as a professional doom monger. His first major book, The Population Bomb, gave us timelessly wrong predictions, including that by the 1980s, hundreds of millions of people would starve to death and it went downhill from there. Ehrlich assured us that England would no longer exist in the year 2000, that even modern fertilizers would not enable us to feed the world, and that thermonuclear power was just around the corner.

Ehrlich, who recently turned 90, is in the lucky position to have witnessed the complete failure of all his predictions—only to double down on them in his 60 Minutes interview Ehrlich has been wrong on every public policy issue he pontificated on for almost 60 years, yet the mainstream media still treat him like a modern oracle.

Why?

The best answer to this question comes courtesy of New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who in 2019 famously said that, "I think that there's a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually and semantically correct than about being morally right." In other words, no matter what nonsense one spews, as long as it is "morally right," it does not matter what the facts show.

Much more at the site.  110% spot on.

The author has quite a bit of cred:

Ralph Schoellhammer is an assistant professor in economics and political science at Webster University, Vienna.

Going to see if he has any books out...  Looks like someone with a good head on their shoulders.  Always been an Austrian economist.  J. M. Keynes has gotten too much traction much to the detriment of the world.  Modern Monetary Theory is bunk.  Trash. Discredited.

His observation cuts through the media bullshit - from Zero Hedge:

"This Is A F**king War": Jamie Dimon Slams Biden Begging Saudis For Oil, Says Investors "Don't Give A Shit" About ESG
Three days after Jamie Dimon sparked a marketwide selloff which sent stocks to fresh 2022 lows after he predicted a US recession in 6 to 9 months citing drivers including rising interest rates, persistent inflation and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and warned stocks could drop another 20%, the JPMorgan CEO who is expected to report earnings tomorrow (and hopefully clarify why his bank refuses to move its deposit rate above 0.01% in the process keeping $2.2 trillion in liquidity locked inside the overnight funding facility), doubled down today saying the Fed can’t cool the red-hot economy without bringing on a recession.

“I don’t know if it could be a soft landing -- I don’t think so, but it might,” the JPMorgan chief executive officer said at an industry conference in Washington Thursday, adding that the alternatives would be a mild or a severe recession. “In a tough recession, you could expect the market to go down another 20% to 30%”, adding an additional 10% to the number he first floated on Monday.

It got worse: besides predicting a hard-landing and a 30% crash, the CEO of the largest US bank also said his “gut” tells him that the Fed funds rate will probably have to rise higher than the 4% to 4.5% level many economists are predicting, as inflation persists.

Much more at the site - his thoughts on ESG are spot on:

And he did say when it comes to ESG “investors don’t give a shit” warning not to "cede governance to do-gooder kids on a committee”.

Yep...  Kids.  Spoken like a true adult in the room.

A point of order - economic difficulties

| No Comments

20220927-recession.jpg

Thanks Brandon - exchange rates

| No Comments

Used to be quite the other way around - even earlier this month:

20220924-euro.jpg

From 90 Miles:

20220921-keynes.jpg

For more background, this video is excellent.

Interesting times - a story from Finland

| No Comments

By way of Legal Insurrection:

Finnish economist: “I am telling you people that the situation in Europe is much worse than many understand”
So I saw this tweet from Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept:

If you turned the electricity off for a few months in any developed Western society 500 years of supposed philosophical progress about human rights and individualism would quickly evaporate like they never happened.

It reminded me of my post on January 25, 2022, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy, in which I tracked down the source of the phrase:

A bit of background and then this:

It might be worse. I saw this tweet thread by Finnish economist and professor Tuomas Malinen:

I am telling you people that the situation in #Europe is much worse than many understand. We are essentially on the brink of another banking crisis, a collapse of our industrial base and households, and thus on the brink of the collapse of our economies. Short thread. 1/4

We are also totally at the mercy of the authorities, and we have very little knowledge what they have planned. Will they be able to stop the onset of the banking crisis, yet again? I don’t know, but I am doubtful. 2/4

In any case the speed of deterioration is massive now, and it’s only a matter of time, when markets catch up. I am betting that we still have few weeks (months at max.) before “mayhem” truly begins. Take precautionary measures. Stock: 3/4

1. Cash.

2. Food.

3. Water.

4. Wood (if you have a stove).

5. Other necessities.

No harm will come from preparation, if somehow miraculously we can avoid the onset of an outright economic collapse. You just have more cash (no meaningful interest in banks), food, water and wood. 4/4

Wise words - Europe has been through hard times before.  This time, it is of its own making.  Post modernism and socialism is a failed philosophy.  Time for them to learn their lesson good and hard.  And I wonder if we in the USA will be able to ride to their rescue.

From the National Broadcasting Corporation:

Bank of America announces zero down payment, zero closing cost mortgages for first-time homebuyers in Black and Hispanic communities nationwide
Bank of America said it is now offering first-time homebuyers in a select group of cities zero down payment, zero closing cost mortgages to help grow homeownership among Black and Hispanic/Latino communities.

The option will first become available in certain neighborhoods in Charlotte, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles and Miami. The new mortgage, called the Community Affordable Loan Solution, aims to help eligible individuals and families obtain an affordable loan to purchase a home, the bank said.

Applicants do not have to be Black or Hispanic to qualify for the product, a bank representative said.

“Homeownership strengthens our communities and can help individuals and families to build wealth over time,” AJ Barkley, head of neighborhood and community lending for Bank of America, said in a release. “Our Community Affordable Loan Solution will help make the dream of sustained homeownership attainable for more Black and Hispanic families, and it is part of our broader commitment to the communities that we serve.”

And of course, those cities are all democrat-controlled shitholes.  Surprised Seattle and Portland are not in that list.

Someone is getting paid off and here we go with another mortgage crash.

Used to bank with BofA - quit them back in 2007.  Pulled all of my accounts out - investments, etc...  Chase is much better managed.  Use local credit unions for day-to-day and deal direct for investments (moved out of stocks and into bonds these days)

Voting with your feet - Chicago

| No Comments

Another one leaves - from The Western Journal:

Chicago's Wealthiest Man Pulls His $22 Billion Company from the City Following Crime Complaints, Will Relocate to DeSantis' Florida
Chicago’s wealthiest man is saying farewell to the Democrat-governed state of Illinois.

Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin is moving his company to the state of Florida.

Griffin, whose net worth is almost $29 billion, announced that he had personally moved his residence from Illinois to the Republican-governed Sunshine State in a Thursday letter to his employees.

Griffin said that Florida would become the new primary home of his company, Citadel Securities. The investor touted Florida’s business environment.

While he didn’t reference crime in his letter to employees, Citadel officials said that it was a factor in the move.

They do not say which city in Florida but just for the hell of it, let's use Miami. 
Time for another UHaul Index - Chicago to Miami and back again:

20220624-uhaul01.jpg

20220624-uhaul02.jpg

Yep - $903 more to rent a 10' box truck. More of them are leaving Chicago than Miami. And do not forget that this only looks at the subset of people who do their own moving in a rented truck. It ignores those who hire it out and those who move in a personal vehicle.

I have been seeing rumblings about this - Sensing Online lays it out in living color:

Get ready for the catastrophic DEF shortage
DEF is the acronym for Diesel Exhaust Fluid. Every diesel truck that has been made since 2010 is required to use it. It's a product made of 32.5% urea (made from natural gas) and 37.5% de-ionized water. DEF is kept in a separate tank in the truck and the trucks using it will not start unless the DEF system is working properly. There are regulators inside the engine that mix DEF with the diesel exhaust to reduce diesel emissions. That's the purpose of DEF.

A bit more:

Urea is also an essential ingredient in fertilizer. Yet despite these production numbers, the United States is the world's third-largest importer of urea

Yeah - the Biden administration has screwed us over yet again. The people in DC are running a clusterfuck of epic proportions and they will only listen to those "experts" who have the proper credentials and who promote the same narrative.
Facts not allowed - don't even try.

Much much more at the site - trucking is going to get a lot more expensive.  A lot more.  The keystone of my plans for moving have been the two Connex boxes I purchased.  Fill them up and have them trucked to North Carolina.  I am budgeting about $3-5K for that.  Looks like I might need to budget as much as $20K.

Cash is king - the market

| No Comments

Sure, holding cash will net you a 15% "haircut" but this is a pittance compared with stocks these days.
From CNBC:

Dow slumps 600 points to start the week, S&P 500 falls back into bear market territory
Stocks sold off Monday, pushing the S&P 500 to a fresh 2022 low and back into bear market territory, as recession fears grew ahead of a key Federal Reserve meeting this week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 760 points, or about 2.1%, the S&P 500 fell 3% and the Nasdaq Composite tumbled 3.7%.

Those percentages are just for the one day.  Add these to the dismal last week and you are seeing some serious losses.

Lagniappe? A small gift given to a customer by a merchant at the time of a purchase (such as a 13th doughnut when buying a dozen), or more broadly, "something given or obtained gratuitously or by way of good measure (a curious etymology as well).

There is a fee-based stock trading website called Unusual Whales 

If you click on the "building" glyph in the top menu bar (between Options Profit Calculator and Alerts) you will be brought to this wonderful set of pages: I am the Senate    What follows is an in-depth tracking of the trading records of our Senators and Representatives. Most of them are doing a lot better than the various indicies.  Helps to have an inside line on what legislation is going to be passed and when.

Worth checking out.  I'll be looking into this once I am done with the move.
Got a bunch parked in some index funds now but getting nervous...

The best and the brightest - inflation

| No Comments

I could have told them - from July 2020 - a scant two years ago:

20220419-inflation.jpg

But that's what you get when you play with Keynesian Economics.
Me? Old school Austrian. Hayek worked then and still works now:

So true - April 1st

| No Comments

20220401-policies.jpg

Unintended consequences - Russia

| No Comments

Looks like Russia is in for a bit of a hard time.  It is already a very poor nation.  Now?
From Market Watch:

Russian central bank lifts interest rates to 20% as ruble plunges over Western sanctions
The Russian central bank more than doubled interest rates to 20% on Monday, as the ruble plunged following further sanctions by Western powers to over the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

The ruble USDRUB, +17.34% hit an all-time low of 119.25 per dollar on Monday, according to FactSet. In volatile, sporadic trade, it was last down 18% to 98.94. The interest-rate hike, meanwhile, ratcheted up the key lending rate from the already high level of 9.5%.

“External conditions for the Russian economy have changed dramatically. An increase in the key rate will make it possible to ensure an increase in deposit rates to the levels necessary to compensate for the increased devaluation and inflation risks. This will help maintain financial and price stability and protect citizens’ savings from depreciation,” said the central bank in a statement.

“The Bank of Russia will make further decisions on the key rate based on an assessment of risks from external and internal conditions and the reaction of financial markets to them, and taking into account the actual and expected inflation dynamics relative to the target, economic development over the forecast horizon,” it added.

And Biden will be taking credit for this in 3... 2... 1...

It must suck to be a legitimate small business owner in Russia.  Not connected?  Don't even try.

Some numbers - USA Oil Imports

| No Comments

We get most of our imports from Canada but Russia is #2.
Data from the US Energy Information Administration (last complete year is 2020):
(units are in 1,000's barrels per day)

For 2020:
Canada - 3,193
Russia - 540
Saudi Arabia - 514
Colombia - 185
Iraq - 176

A great quote

| No Comments

Sums it up in a few words:

Economics and politics confront the same fundamental problem:
What everyone wants adds up to more than there is.
—Thomas Sowell

Right up there with Margaret Thatcher's epigram on socialism:

20220223-thatcher.jpg

From the London Daily Mail:

'Honestly, I would just can this whole bill': Elon Musk rips Biden's 'Build Back Better' Plan despite its massive subsidies for electric cars

    • Biden's plan includes big subsidies for purchasers and manufacturers of electric cars
    • Musk blasted the legislation despite its subsidies for electric vehicles
    • Purchasers get up to $12,500; manufacturers can get $4,500, but only union shops in the U.S.
    • Musk called to 'get rid of all the subsidies'
    • He also blasted giving 'capital allocation' to the government
    • He has been unloading shares and assets while facing a massive tax bill

Tesla founder Elon Musk tore into President Joe Biden's 'Build Back Better' plan over its tax hit on millionaires and its regulatory framework – even as the plan prepares to provide big subsidies for electric cars.

Musk, who has gone after Democratic tax policies in the past, slammed the proposal in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

'Rules and regulations are immortal,' he said. 'They don't die. The vast majority of rules and regulations live forever ... there's not really an effective garbage collection system for removing rules and regulations, so this hardens the arteries of civilization where you are able to do less and less over time.

Love that last paragraph - so true.  President Trump was very careful about sunsetting two regulations whenever a new one was introduced.  Cuts down the red-tape. And, to be clear:

'I'm literally saying get rid of all subsidies,' he said.

The government actually makes very little money of its own — land and mineral leases and a few other sources.  All monies for subsidies come from our wallets - our tax dollars. So much money is wasted on subsidies that our economy has grown bloated and inefficient. Time to tighten the belt - let the well run businesses thrive and let poorly thought out and poorly run businesses fail.

I fail to understand why the guy won the 2008 Nobel Prize.  He is clueless.

From his twitter account:

No shit Sherlock - anyone and their brothers were saying that inflation would happen.
What numbers were you looking at, Paul?

As things get interesting - Evergrande

| No Comments

From Gateway Pundit:

China’s Evergrande, the World’s Most Indebted Corporation, Officially Goes Insolvent Today
We’ve reported about the challenges that Evergrande is in while facing insolvency.  Today the company officially went bankrupt. 

This morning it was reported out of Germany:

China Evergrande Group today again defaulted on interest payments to international investors. DMSA itself is invested in these bonds and has not received any interest payments until today’s end of the grace period. Now DMSA is preparing bankruptcy proceedings against Evergrande and calls on all bond investors to join it.

China Evergrande Group, the second largest real estate developer in China, defaulted on interest payments on two bonds back in September, with the 30-day grace period still ending in October. However, shortly before the end of the grace period, the public was misled by rumors about alleged interest payments. The international media also took the rumors for granted. Only the DMSA – Deutsche Marktscreening Agentur (German Market Screening Agency) already recognized the default at that time and proved in a study that the bankruptcy of Evergrande, the world’s most indebted corporation, could ultimately lead to a “Great Reset”, i.e. the final meltdown of the global financial system.

Time to hunker down.  Gonna be a long and difficult ride.

Let's go Brandon:

20211110-inflation.jpg

An interesting website - WTF 1971

| No Comments

A lot of things changed that year and the repercussions are still being felt today.

The website is a compilation of graphs and it raises a very good question.

Go and visit - well worth your time... More here: wtf1971

1971 was the year that the United States officially went off the Gold Standard. We debased our currency - one dollar is no longer backed up by $1.00 worth of gold held in the Federal Mint. This action (as well as others) is known as The Nixon Shock

Eaton Rapids Joe is a daily read for me.
Here, he talks about China's energy problems as a metaphor for the worlds financial status:

Another thought on the Chinese energy crisis
If you have been following the news then you are aware that hundreds of millions of people in China have been under rolling electrical black-outs and brown-outs. The crisis came out of nowhere. One week there was plenty of electricity. Then next week multiple provinces in northeast China had shortages.

I want to offer one way that could have happened.

The upshot:

Physical possession is 99.9% of ownership.

The financial and derivatives "economy" dwarfs the real, nuts-and-bolts economy. Everybody is getting rich laundering each others' bytes.

So true. Only way to go...

First The Speech - Biden

| No Comments

Gave a thundering speech yesterday and today? Commissar Biden is singlehandedly raising everybody's prices.
Is there nothing that our Great and Fearless Leader can not do?  From Breitbart:

Producer Prices Soar a Record 8.3% as Bidenflation Runs Hotter Than Expected
Prices charged by U.S. businesses jumped higher than expected in August, data from the Department of Labor said Friday.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Producer Price Index rose 0.7 percent compared with July. Compared with a year ago, the index is up 8.3 percent, the fastest pace of price increases in data going back to 2010.

Economists had forecast PPI to rise by 0.6 percent on a monthly basis, down from the one percent rise reported for July and June. On an annual basis, prices were expected to be up 8.3 percent.

Prices for “final demand” services—those used for personal consumption or exports—rose 0.7 percent. The index for final demand goods moved up 1.0 percent.

And of course, take these numbers and multiply them by three for something approximating the real numbers.

Expecting nothing less from this regime.

Interesting times - China bond market

| No Comments

From Zero Hedge:

Evergrande Bonds Halted Amid Liquidation Panic As Contagion Spreads To Other Chinese Junk
With algos busy chasing upward momentum in futures and global stocks, the biggest - if largely ignored story - remain the ongoing collapse of "China's Lehman", the $300+ billion China Evergrande, where following our earlier reports (see below) that a bank run emerged among creditors of the biggest and most indebted Chinese developer as its bonds were no longer eligible collateral in the repo market after a ratings downgrade, on Monday the rout went from bad to catastrophic as various Evergrande bonds crashed amid a liquidation frenzy, prompting China's stock exchanges to halt trade.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange said in a statement that it had temporarily suspended trading in China Evergrande Group's 6.98% July 2022 corporate bond following "abnormal fluctuations." The exchange had also suspended trading in the bond on Friday.

More at the site - they seek to emulate Western things but they do not learn from Western mistakes.
Should be fun - make a bowl of popcorn and see how bad this is...

Dodged a bullet? Maybe. From Fabio Vighi writing at The Philosophical Salon:

A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY: SYSTEMIC COLLAPSE AND PANDEMIC SIMULATION
A year and a half after the arrival of Virus, some may have started wondering why the usually unscrupulous ruling elites decided to freeze the global profit-making machine in the face of a pathogen that targets almost exclusively the unproductive (over 80s). Why all the humanitarian zeal? Cui bono? Only those who are unfamiliar with the wondrous adventures of GloboCap can delude themselves into thinking that the system chose to shut down out of compassion. Let us be clear from the start: the big predators of oil, arms, and vaccines could not care less about humanity.

Follow the money
In pre-Covid times, the world economy was on the verge of another colossal meltdown.

Some history, some current events and some abject stupidity by the financial wizards and we wind up with this:

As claimed by economist Ellen Brown, it was “another bailout”, but this time “under cover of a virus.” Similarly, John Titus and Catherine Austin Fitts noted that the Covid-19 “magic wand” allowed the Fed to execute BlackRock’s “going direct” plan, literally: it carried out an unprecedented purchase of government bonds, while, on an infinitesimally smaller scale, also issuing government backed ‘COVID loans’ to businesses. In brief, only an induced economic coma would provide the Fed with the room to defuse the time-bomb ticking away in the financial sector. Screened by mass-hysteria, the US central bank plugged the holes in the interbank lending market, dodging hyperinflation as well as the ‘Financial Stability Oversight Council’ (the federal agency for monitoring financial risk created after the 2008 collapse), as discussed here. However, the “going direct” blueprint should also be framed as a desperate measure, for it can only prolong the agony of a global economy increasingly hostage to money printing and the artificial inflation of financial assets.

Quite the read.  A bit long but well worth your time. The elite think that they are so smart but in reality, they are just as error-prone as the rest of us.  Painting oneself into a corner is not a unique event. I may be naieve and not as "nuanced" as these people but I can certainly see that what they are trying to do is stupid and prone to failure. They got themselves into this and they are using us as pawns to avoid paying their butcher's bill.

Unreal - WOKE comes to the FED?

| No Comments

These people are screwing around with their little kiddie word games and they have zero clue what they are doing. From Politico:

AOC, Tlaib, Pressley call on Biden to dump Powell as Fed chair
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley on Monday called for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to be replaced, stepping up the pressure on President Joe Biden as he draws closer to a decision on the government’s most important economic post.

And what they want (raising their little fists into the air and waving them about)

They acknowledged that the Fed under Powell “has made positive changes” by steering the central bank toward a greater emphasis on reaching full employment. But they said they want to see someone at the helm who is more aggressive on financial regulation and climate change.

Climate change? The FED? These idiots have no clue what they are messing with.
It is all word games with them with no thought given to any consequences of their actions.

My surprised face again - from the London Daily Mail:

Biden asks Saudi Arabia and OPEC to produce MORE oil as inflation sends gas prices soaring - after HE shut down America's Keystone pipeline

    • Prices at the pump are about $1 higher, 42%, than they were one year ago
    • OPEC+ cut production by 10 million barrels per day at the height of the pandemic, and has only slowly started to increase production again
    • 'This is simply not enough,' National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said
    • Republicans have blamed Biden’s shift toward green energy, which includes nixing the Keystone pipeline permit and pausing new federal oil and gas leases

The Biden administration is sounding the alarm about fast-rising energy prices and demanding that Saudi Arabia and OPEC produce more oil - after the president paused all federal oil and gas leases.

Prices at the pump are on average about $1.00 higher, 42%, than they were one year ago.

'Higher gasoline costs, if left unchecked, risk harming the ongoing global recovery,' National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement Wednesday.

He called on the world's largest oil producers, including OPEC nations and Saudi Arabia, to up their production.

Heh - they own this.  Lock stock and barrel.  The Democrats shut down the pipeline on day one and now they are having to deal with the unforeseen (yeah riigghhhttt) consequences.  Why did they shut down the pipeline?  Because their bagmen make so much money shipping the oil by railroad.  Warren Buffet and others. Rail is a lot more expensive for shipping so the energy prices necessarily skyrocket.

The Democrats understanding of capitalism and basic economics is about at a 6-year old level.
Fits their personalities.

Paging Messrs Dunning and Kruger

| No Comments

Messrs Dunning and Kruger to the white courtesy telephone please:

20210708-smash.jpg

And that shopping list is just beginning.  How much for the leather backpack.  Those boots are a couple hundred.

Who knows, maybe this is just a phase and she will wise up.

Why people hate capitalism

| No Comments

In a society based on caste and status, the individual can ascribe adverse fate to conditions beyond his own control. He is a slave because the superhuman powers that determine all becoming had assigned him this rank. It is not his doing, and there is no reason for him to be ashamed of his humbleness. His wife cannot find fault with his station. If she were to tell him: “Why are you not a duke? If you were a duke, I would be a duchess,” he would reply: “If I had been born the son of a duke, I would not have married you, a slave girl, but the daughter of another duke; that you are not a duchess is exclusively your own fault; why were you not more clever in the choice of your parents?”

It is quite another thing under capitalism. Here everybody’s station in life depends on his own doing. Everybody whose ambitions have not been fully gratified knows very well that he has missed chances, that he has been tried and found wanting by his fellow man. If his wife upbraids him: “Why do you make only eighty dollars a week? If you were as smart as your former pal, Paul, you would be a foreman and I would enjoy a better life,” he becomes conscious of his own inferiority and feels humiliated.

The much talked about sternness of capitalism consists in the fact that it handles everybody according to his contribution to the well-being of his fellow men.
--Ludwig von Mises The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality

Much more at the site and yes, intellectuals are just that shallow in their understanding of capitalism.
The reason Marx is so popular is that his ideas sound good to people who are not that bright.

From Vox Day:

20210628-econ.jpg

Reminds me of this wonderful video from 11 years ago:

Me? 100% Austrian school. Anything else is ephemera. Do the numbers for yourself.

An excellent mental excercise:

20210621-money.jpg

20210618-print-money.jpg

May 2023

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
  1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30 31      

About this Archive

This page is an archive of recent entries in the Economics category.

Culture is the previous category.

Electronics is the next category.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Monthly Archives

Pages

OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID
Powered by Movable Type 5.2.9