Conservative commentators have been riling up their audiences recently with lots of talk about America ‘devaluing our money’ and expressing the horrors that befell us after the United States left the Gold Standard in 1972.
Let’s talk macroeconomic theory, and see why they’re wrong.
Dendreon, a Seattle-based biotech startup, just completed a successful phase III trial on an entirely new kind of cancer treatment.
1. In the best way we can, in the face of no viable alternatives beyond doom. From NOAA: NOAA’s National Weather Service has issued a report that analyzes forecasting performance and public response during the second deadliest tornado outbreak in U.S. history. The report, Service Assessment of the Super Tuesday Tornado Outbreak of February 5-6, […]
Ladies and gentlemen, I want metrics. In the spirit of objectively tracking the downfall of the global economy, I’ve decided to begin a semi-regular post conglomerating data on the (non-)functioning of the financial system. If I’m going to panic, I want evidence backing it up. Rather than focusing on the stock market (equity), like most […]
The illusion of risk-free, effortless gain is unraveling. So much of the growth of the past few decades has been concentrated in this bullshit, these lies we’ve told ourselves while clutching onto our ever growing private retirement accounts. It’s done.
Well, that was a lot of money chasing nothing. A vast pool of money, and a growing list of problems–why wasn’t the connection ever made? Why didn’t at least some of this wealth go to solving even a few of these problems?
We need to try something new, to start a new engine behind our economy.
What is leveraging? Investing with borrowed money.
Can anyone tell me why highly leveraged investment schemes are in any way desirable?
Want to distill down the New Deal-era financial reforms? If you want our money to bail you out, you have to play honestly and by our rules.
Today’s “solution” to the present crisis is all bailout, no regulation–the mirror image of FDR’s. It’s going to fail.
The Fed has lent nearly $200 billion. Should you worry?
The bailout of Bear Stearns was a mere appetizer to the cliff we’re falling over now.
Market theory would tell us the government should not intervene–these institutions should be allowed to fail, the unwise investments allowed to collapse and the money to be lost. At the last height of Laissez-faire economic policy, in the 1920’s, that was the plan. The institutions were allowed to collapse one-by-one, causing the Great Depression.
That didn’t work out so well. In the 1930’s, sifting through the rubble of the US economy, the next plan was regulation.
We’re now left in the worst situation: Propping up failing deregulated markets with taxpayer dollars.