Meltdown

[Coopmv]

I'm planning to get that Victoria set. I've had some good experiences with Noone and his ensemble.

It get the thumbs up by Harry!

Q

One thing that the EU politicians fail to grasp and that is, the longer they drag their feet to come up with a sound solution to resolve the EU debt crisis, the more financial damage will be inflicted on American consumers like me via our investment portfolios.  At some point, we may just scale back buying from across the pond in a big way ...

[kishnevi]

OTOH, if the Euro devalues sufficiently I might actually get around to ordering those CDs from BeethovenHaus....

[Coopmv]

OTOH, if the Euro devalues sufficiently I might actually get around to ordering those CDs from BeethovenHaus....

That exchange rate advantage for the Dollar is a piddling amount compared with the losses most of us have already sustained in our 401K and IRA accounts and the end is nowhere in sight ...

[Karl Henning]

Few thought the Eurozone's problems would ever get bad enough to threaten Italy's stability, much less Germany's bond sales. But it did. That doesn't really mean we've hit bottom. It means we don't really know where the bottom is.

RTWT here.

[snyprrr]

So, who gets downgraded today?

[Karl Henning]

You've heard it said ere now: When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping . . . .

Black Friday sales set records this year, pulling in $52.4 billion, according to figures from the National Retail Foundation. Those numbers, which represent sales over a four-day period that starts on Thanksgiving, are up 16.7 percent compared with the same period last year.

RTWT here.

[drogulus]

That exchange rate advantage for the Dollar is a piddling amount compared with the losses most of us have already sustained in our 401K and IRA accounts and the end is nowhere in sight ...

     Remember back in 2009 when some people were predicting a slow and largely jobless recovery? I do. So I'd say that the end, in the sense that developments have been foreseen, has been in sight all along. The jobs will begin to appear after the election, when the Republican strategy of destroying any possibility of recovery will have either failed or succeeded, but in any case have been replaced by a new one. Hmmm....what's the Republican word for stimulus?

     Oh yeah, last week Crazy Eyes Krugman said something I really liked that went like this:

     Newt Gingrich is a stupid person's idea of what a smart person is like.

     Exactamente!

[Todd]

Newt Gingrich is a stupid person's idea of what a smart person is like.

I hope Krugman didn't try to pass that off as his own, because it's a chestnut that's been around since at least the mid-90s.

[drogulus]

 
   I think he was quoting. I saw him on the Sunday show where George Will says Wise Things.

[drogulus]

     Give Newt credit for a very shrewd move. His immigration statement shows he knows how to sacrifice base appeal (in both senses ) for the sake of a general election position that makes him look like a problem solver, someone who wants to get an important task done. In effect he tells voters that he's just as good as Romney on governance. But do Republicans care about this? Evidently not, but Independents care a great deal about exactly that. Newt thinks he has a good chance at the nomination, so the earlier he pivots towards the electorate as a whole the better chance he has of winning in 2012. I think he will burn out like the last few Fox darlings of the week, but this is the right way to play the hand Newt has dealt himself so far.

[Coopmv]

     Remember back in 2009 when some people were predicting a slow and largely jobless recovery? I do. So I'd say that the end, in the sense that developments have been foreseen, has been in sight all along. The jobs will begin to appear after the election, when the Republican strategy of destroying any possibility of recovery will have either failed or succeeded, but in any case have been replaced by a new one. Hmmm....what's the Republican word for stimulus?

     Oh yeah, last week Crazy Eyes Krugman said something I really liked that went like this:

     Newt Gingrich is a stupid person's idea of what a smart person is like.

     Exactamente!

Unfortunately, we always have a bunch of misfits who want to be president ...

[Coopmv]

     Give Newt credit for a very shrewd move. His immigration statement shows he knows how to sacrifice base appeal (in both senses ) for the sake of a general election position that makes him look like a problem solver, someone who wants to get an important task done. In effect he tells voters that he's just as good as Romney on governance. But do Republicans care about this? Evidently not, but Independents care a great deal about exactly that. Newt thinks he has a good chance at the nomination, so the earlier he pivots towards the electorate as a whole the better chance he has of winning in 2012. I think he will burn out like the last few Fox darlings of the week, but this is the right way to play the hand Newt has dealt himself so far.

Newt is no Ronald Reagan.  Lets leave it at that ...

[snyprrr]

Which Beatles song most aptly describes where we are along the 'Meltdown' timeline?

It Won't Be Long?

Taxman?

[Coopmv]

Which Beatles song most aptly describes where we are along the 'Meltdown' timeline?

It Won't Be Long?

Taxman?

The Long and Winding Road certainly describes this housing debacle that has no end in sight.  As the Russians say, we are beginning to see the tunnel at the end of light ...   

[North Star]

Help!

[drogulus]

     I'm reading a book by an economist that says I'm wrong about stimulating the economy. Well, he doesn't really say that, but he suggests that stimulus jobs are too expensive, the wrong jobs, and delay needed reforms. But there are other things in the book that puzzle me a bit. I wish he would explain the concept of "overinvestment" a little more. How would he explain the rise of Google, for example, a private initiative that wouldn't exist without a whole series of government investments that made it possible. Computers, the internet and GPS are all government projects that found private uses. Our economy would collapse in hours without them. Is that overinvestment? But perhaps the author is only suggesting that government investment has a poor batting average (Solyndra, for instance). Maybe, but in baseball 30% makes you an All Star. How good does government investment need to be in order to make the payoff worthwhile? What if one of our energy investments leads to a huge new industry?

     This is the book:

     

     There's more to the book than what I question, though, and in fact it's very good on the causes of the meltdown, which Rajan says are multiple and diffuse in nature. I'm learning from it.

[drogulus]

     I didn't even mention Apple and Microsoft. What is overinvestment in the context of these companies? Then you can go back and look at the railroads, the highways and bridges, dams and canals. Wow, this country was awful socialistic in the 19th century!

[Coopmv]

     I'm reading a book by an economist that says I'm wrong about stimulating the economy. Well, he doesn't really say that, but he suggests that stimulus jobs are too expensive, the wrong jobs, and delay needed reforms. But there are other things in the book that puzzle me a bit. I wish he would explain the concept of "overinvestment" a little more. How would he explain the rise of Google, for example, a private initiative that wouldn't exist without a whole series of government investments that made it possible. Computers, the internet and GPS are all government projects that found private uses. Our economy would collapse in hours without them. Is that overinvestment? But perhaps the author is only suggesting that government investment has a poor batting average (Solyndra, for instance). Maybe, but in baseball 30% makes you an All Star. How good does government investment need to be in order to make the payoff worthwhile? What if one of our energy investments leads to a huge new industry?

     This is the book:

     

     There's more to the book than what I question, though, and in fact it's very good on the causes of the meltdown, which Rajan says are multiple and diffuse in nature. I'm learning from it.

I saw some statistics a while back that showed the last stimulus plan - the $800B one, created a number of jobs at $300,000 each.  Surely, the job recipients did not make that kind of money.  That was what gave opponents to the stimulus plan the ammunition against any new stimulus plan.

[drogulus]

     

     But that's the cost of the whole plan, which was designed to keep the economy from completely collapsing. Only a portion of it was to create jobs. The main goal was to prevent the loss of millions of additional jobs. The plan, undersized as it was, worked on both counts. But you're right that the cost of the plan made further stimulus politically undoable. That's typical. The same thing happened in 1937, and we didn't recover until 1940, when a different kind of stimulus kicked in.

     

     

[Coopmv]

     

     But that's the cost of the whole plan, which was designed to keep the economy from completely collapsing. Only a portion of it was to create jobs. The main goal was to prevent the loss of millions of additional jobs. The plan, undersized as it was, worked on both counts. But you're right that the cost of the plan made further stimulus politically undoable. That's typical. The same thing happened in 1937, and we didn't recover until 1940, when a different kind of stimulus kicked in.

     

   

The US got out of the Great Depression because of WWII, plain and simple.  Without the war, I doubt any of FDR's plans would have produced any meaningful results ...