Category: Economics
David Stockman Explains The Keynesian State-Wreck Ahead – Sundown In America
David Stockman, author of The Great Deformation [79], summarizes the last quarter century thus: What has been growing is the wealth of the rich, the remit of the state, the girth of Wall Street, the debt burden of the people, the prosperity of the beltway and the sway of the three great branches of government […]
Continue Reading
An Empire of Money and Privilege in Decline: Portrait of a Tragic Policy Error
“Everybody, sooner or later, sits down to a banquet of consequences.” Robert Louis Stevenson “They don’t have intelligence. They have what I call thintelligence. They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they call it ‘being focused.’ They don’t see the surroundings. They don’t see the consequences.” Michael Crichton The Fed is faced with […]
Continue Reading
The Fed’s ‘hidden agenda’ behind money-printing
The markets were surprised when the Federal Reserve did not announce a tapering of the quantitative easing bond buying program at its September meeting. Indeed, its signal to the market that it was keeping interest rates low was welcome, but there may be a hidden agenda. Since it began in late 2008, QE has spurred […]
Continue Reading
At 77 He Prepares Burgers Earning in Week His Former Hourly Wage
It seems like another life. At the height of his corporate career, Tom Palome was pulling in a salary in the low six-figures and flying first class on business trips to Europe. Today, the 77-year-old former vice president of marketing for Oral-B juggles two part-time jobs: one as a $10-an-hour food demonstrator at Sam’s Club, […]
Continue Reading
Bakken – Hype Versus Reality
As Wall Street, CNBC, and feckless politicians tout American energy independence from the miracle of shale oil, reality is already rearing its ugly head. Production grew by 24% over the first six months of 2012. Production has grown by only 7% over the first six months of 2013. That is a dramatic slowdown. The fact […]
Continue Reading
A River of American Money Flows to D.C.
Jeffrey H. Anderson September 23, 2013 12:50 PM The question at the core of most of today’s debates in American politics is whether all people have an unalienable right to keep the fruits of their own labor—as the Founders believed and the Declaration of Independence (properly understood) asserts—or whether the government should funnel vast sums […]
Continue Reading
Chart Of The Day: The Fed’s “Renormalization” Shock (All 600 bps Of It)
As we noted earlier, Bernanke’s actions this week make it very clear that between “financial conditions” and the fragility of growth, the US is incapable of surviving without ZIRP and QE (for now). As Barclays notes, ultimately, normalisation should proceed according to a timeline that does not threaten recovery, yet will result in a neutral […]
Continue Reading
USA: Stagflation Here We Come!
Just when you think that the worst has come, been and gone, there will be more stuff hitting the fan in the very near future and that should serve as a lesson to the next head of the Federal Reserve that central banks don’t usually necessarily have the people in mind when they take things […]
Continue Reading
Is War Now “Inevitable”
In a moment of surprising clarity, Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid pointed out what is largely taboo in the financial industry – the truth. “Looking back, real GDP growth in the US through the latter half of the 2000s and the 2010s has been at the lowest levels since the cyclically scarred decades of the Great […]
Continue Reading