Eighteen percent of commenters agree.
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Eighteen percent of Americans are unemployed or underemployed.
underemployed
How do you think this place keeps going?
Eighteen percent seemed a bit high (although I guess 27% is the magical crazy number, so maybe it'll go up yet)
43% say they don't know his religion, and I'd be surprised if many of these were not of the "Well, he says he's a Christan, but ..." persuasion.
Eighteen percent seemed a bit high
Heh. I didn't even mean to write it that way, but now that re-read it, "a bit high" seems charitable. They're totally fucking stoned.
Also:
Almost 1 in 5 (18 percent) of Americans believe their online image gives an inaccurate portrayal of themselves
You all think my cock is huge, don't you?
I'm just disappointed that not even 1 percent think he's Jewish.
I kind of hope he's secretly atheist.
12: There could be strong evidence. For instance, he might support building edifices that are not churches at Ground Zero.
But what percent is in all of these categories simultaneously?
You all think my cock is huge, don't you?
The first 18% of it.
18% "thought it was very likely the government had been involved in the assassination of JFK" (1997 poll).
But what percent is in all of these categories simultaneously?
Probably very few, but they must be fascinating people.
The first 18% of it.
The last third is the problem.
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What percentage know that there is a World Barista Chanpionship? Each year, champions representing more than 50 Nations each prepare 4 espressos, 4 cappuccinos, and 4 original signature drinks to exacting standards in a 15-minute performance set to music.
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19: My local joint sends someone, I think. But not the bassoon Republican barista, who seems to be no longer employed there.
20: Somehow I figured you might be in the 18%. Current champion is with Intelligentsia Coffee: Intelligentsia Coffee's mission is to provide our customers, staff, and community with an unparalleled and complete coffee and tea experience in an environment steeped in understanding, knowledge, skill, service and mutual respect.
I like my women like I like my coffee, in an environment steeped in mutual respect.
I like my women like I like my coffee, in an environment steeped in mutual respect.
So do I, but you don't see me entering international competitions about it.
One thing I find interesting about living in this part of New Jersey is the apparent total lack of pretentious coffee places like that.
I estimate that 18% of Americans are clinically insane, and an additional 32% are functionally retarded.
Not even over by the university?
Not so far as I can tell, no, although the university is huge and has several campuses, only one of which is very familiar to me.
But not so far away....
Yeah, that's the kind of place that doesn't seem to exist around here. The density and diversity of this state is astonishing.
The density and diversity of this state is astonishing.
Eighteen percent of it is delicious tomatoes.
Eighteen percent of it is delicious tomatoes.
Also corn and blueberries.
Tomato and blueberry polenta is the best.
New Jersey imports obnoxious Chileans, because it can't grow those locally. (I didn't know Snooki was Chilean until I went and looked up her birthplace just now; my sympathies, Chile.)
30: You think that's bad, wait until to you the other people I'm gonna haunt until they move to gringo-land.
30: If you look carefully you'll see that like many people on that show, she is not in fact from New Jersey at all.
32: Actual people from New Jersey are often too horrible to put on the TV.
I expected Zombie Presidente Allende would have a better command of English. Communists! Can't trust 'em for nothin'.
So far, I've believed all of these statistics, but this one is just too hard to credit: "only eighteen percent of Americans comprehend the nature of monetary policy"
Only? Only? If eighteen percent of Americans actually comprehended the nature of monetary policy I would be flabbergasted. I'd be somewhat taken aback to hear that eighteen percent of Americans could even pronounce "monetary policy".
32: Like all people on that show except this one, in fact.
36: Monetary policy is the policy by which monets are regulated. This is important as monets can cause cancer is laboratory rats.
Erroneous: actually monads can cause cancer if you have fractional quantities of them. (free radicals)
More polling numbers, via Sausagely:
In a June 6-8 poll*, 37% of Americans told Gallup they believe in haunted houses, while 46% say they don't, and 16% aren't sure.
If true, can I switch Randalls?
I estimate that 18% of Americans are clinically insane, and an additional 32% are functionally retarded.
I love it when you say things like this, Apo, but be realistic: you need to define things down a bit.
Alright, alright. Look, this is a big country, and a lot of people don't graduate from high school, and even if they do, they might still believe the sun revolves around the earth, but that is not a reflection on their intelligence, just their educations.
Yeah, I'm shocked by Sharon Angle, Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party as well.
Just remember, 50% of the people have IQs of lower than 100. And that Newt has a Ph.D.
I'm not sure how those two facts tie together, except as both being depressing.
Just remember, 50% of the people have IQs of lower than 100. And that Newt has a Ph.D.
Three of each hundred people that get Ph.D.'s have IQ's of 100 or less.
max
['Newt is easy to solve.']
Is Obama a Muslim? Was Aldrich Ames a loyal American?
Is Obama a liar? My edge of the blogosphere doesn't believe a word to come out of his mouth, or ever came out his mouth. We just care more about Social Security than about his secret Mooslem identity (like not at all), or about the wingnuts (like not at all). More and more we have decided that those who are scared and twitchy or giggly about the wingnuts don't give a fuck about jobs or Social Security.
47: More and more we have decided that those who are scared and twitchy or giggly about the wingnuts don't give a fuck about jobs or Social Security.
Nice night for a (s)troll bob!
I figure if the wingnuts KEEELLLLL MMMMEEEE it hardly matters if I have social security or a job. Beyond that it matters rather a lot. But then back in March of last year I was all complaining about how Obama wasn't doing enough for the economy.
max
['Too late to complain about it now.']
Is Obama a Muslim?
Yes. He was also born in Kenya and his real father was Frank Marshall Davis. This is because his birth and education was part of a long term plan by the Soviet Politburo.
I love it when you say things like this, Apo, but be realistic: you need to define things down a bit.
Fuck me. He needs to define things up a bit.
My edge of the blogosphere
There is a place where the liberals end
And before the truthers begin,
And there the screens glow soft and white,
And there the truth burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
51: That's pretty good. It even scans well.
And then I found five fuck you clowns.
My edge of the blogosphere
Should definitely be a Shel Silverstein book.
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Given the various juggalo stories going around, I was curious to see how our pal Gallagher fared during his gig. Have not found anything directly describing it, but he does come up tangentially in a couple of stories and videos. First:
... but I can say without hyperbole that the weirdest night of my life was last Friday. It started with me introducing Tom Green to Gallagher and ended with me watching Vanilla Ice perform to a crowd of thousands. And somewhere in the middle, Tila Tequila was assaulted by several hundred clowns. Oh, and I should also mention that Ron Jeremy was there the whole time.Sign me the fuck up. And then a Tom Green video covering the same time period--Gallagher shows up briefly near the very end. [Don't watch it if you don't have a high tolerance for, um, idiocy, but if you do it has its moments.]
but as I passed the "Freak Show Tent" I heard a familiar sound. "Go ninja, go ninja, go!" It was Vanilla Ice playing his hit from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 sound track. My peeps!
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Should definitely be a Shel Silverstein book.
Or a Standpipe post.
50:Less & less every day.
Chris Bowers of Open Left has taken a better position at DKos, following Matt Stoller who became a paid political consultant. I have been following the co-optation of the dissenters since Willem Buiter took the job at Goldman Sachs. I doubt they can get to the crew at FDL, but MY and Ezra have done their jobs or marginalization and demonization. The "veal pen" of Non-Profits like NARAL and Sierra understands that all donations are now centrally controlled.
All in preparation for this December. The Catfood Commission's recommendations of SS cuts and new VAT taxes are now locked in according to plan. Who knows what else they will reveal Dec 1st.
It will be an amazing two weeks, Rahm will move a cot to the floor of Congress to pass out the checks and phone numbers. Obama does not fight when he might lose, so he will get his neo-liberal scumbag way. He will high-five Rahm once again and count his future billions.
The rest of us will live the rest of our lives in fear of living at an underpass, and do whatever our bosses want. Yes, Obama is the boot stomping forever. He is.
Because Hilary Clinton would have been sooooo much better. She's not part of the establishment!
Don't blame me. I voted for the guy that looked like the elf.
William Schallert ran for president?
I voted for the guy that looked like the elf.
The edge of the blogosphere also includes many many academic economists, who imagine mismanagement rather than perfidy.
Here's L Randall Wray with a rant
Make no mistake. The wingnuts are likely to win these battles. President Obama will not put up a fight--he's already bought the Peterson story, hook, line and sinker. Social Security is a done deal. It is going to be "reformed". That is, it will be handed over to Pete Peterson, who will manage it right down the rat hole where all the private pensions are going. Wall Street will gamble away all the funds, whilst enriching itself with management fees. And Fannie and Freddie will be shut down so that Wall Street will have free reign in the housing market. Homeownership rates will plummet. Predatory mortgages will be the rule. Wealth will trickle up. Democratic Party coffers will be replenished. Obama will declare Social Security and Fannie and Freddie to be reformed--just like the healthcare system.
To please the deficit hysteria crowd we will need to offset all of this spending. So let us propose that beginning in 2050 all seniors above age 65 will be ground to produce soylent green burgers, with a proviso that implementation can be postponed by majority vote of the population annually from 2050 on....this is a quote
Wray's pretty fucking pissed. He's not alone. I can tell the good guys from the bad. All bloody-screamers aren't good, but no one good is not screaming bloody-murder.
It's little things that add up.
Yves Smith Visits Tim Geithner who went overlong, cutting into Yves drinking time
The most revealing bits were the asides and the use of language (for instance, the first remark on housing included a mention of renters; the fact that they see this as a group to be concerned about suggests the officialdom will be loath to do too much for homeowners...Yves Smith.
Now connect the concern for renters rent-property owners with Wray's remarks above about Frannie and Freddie, and can you get just the hint of a long, decades-long, plan? Crash the housing market, drive homeowners into rental property owned by those enriched on Wall Street, drive down wages...this is not hard to understand, just hard to accept by the naive and idealistic.
67: My landlord is a guy on Wall Street? He told me he worked for a plumbing company. What a lying sack of shit.
67: Crash the housing market, drive homeowners into rental property owned by those enriched on Wall Street, drive down wages
I was with you until you got to the "decades-long" part. What part of this has not already happened?
Shorter 69: It's time for the healing to start.
who went overlong, cutting into Yves drinking time
Yes, that would piss me off, too, in spite of the check that I get from Soros every month to tolerate such indignities comment on blogs.
ND: Flying Dog's Horn Dog Barley Wine. A nice, malty brew, with a bit of a cherry and chocolate aftertaste. Better for crisper weather.
Surely, given the choice between a longer or a shorter 69, the choice is obvious.
Let's pretend I used a synonym for "choice" that second time, shall we?
Pro-choice are the good guys right? let's ask bob, he'll know.
18% of American journalists neither know nor care about statistics so they just throw in the number from the last article they remember reading.
Make that: at most 18% of all journalists know - or care - about statistics, which is the reason why the 18 percenters are here to stay.
I have been following the co-optation of the dissenters since Willem Buiter took the job at Goldman Sachs.
Willem Buiter was the chief economist of the European Central Bank, and a well-known hardcore, shoot'em down IMF monetarist. That's not what I call a fucking dissenter.
Trotsky is still alive and working for CITI.
A Polite Suggestion...that Creditors...not be bailed out ...one more post, then to GS
Now the IMF might prefer private default and haircuts to sovereign default, but Goldman-Sachs and their flunkies would shit bricks at the idea. The entire business model is based on low risk premiums based on expected bailouts, and, for instances, the Greek restructuring and US Finance "reform" pointedly did nothing to change that. Although, of course, they lie.
Yeah, Buiter was fucking dangerous. Even Krugman is scared to fuck with creditors and bonds. Krug freaks at a rise in the TED spread.
Buiter was also calling for massive tax increases. The link above can be used to read his last posts.
Even Krugman is scared to fuck with creditors and bonds. Krug freaks at a rise in the TED spread.
The TED spread is to do with the perceived riskiness of interbank lending. (It's the T-bill/Libor spread). It's not really a measure of bond quality. You're maybe thinking of CDS spreads?
We need an EU level macro-prudential stability board. The current proposals for the ESRB are, however, deeply misguided, as they make the central banks the dominant players in the systemic risk game. Central banks have neither the technical knowledge, nor the tools and instruments nor the legitimacy to dominate the macro-prudential financial stability framework. Back to the drawing board....Buiter
Yeah, let's get Bernanke & the FOMC out of the financial stability business. They will go along.
Unless there is a major change of direction among global economic and financial officialdom, we are at risk of ending up with a world in which liquidity provision is privatised and insolvency risk for banks is socialised. This would be the exact opposite of what makes sense: solvency is (or should be) a private good and liquidity is (or should be) a public good.
Had you been reading him?
The TED spread is to do with the perceived riskiness of interbank lending.
So why did it spike in 2007-2008? Which was in risk of default, T-Bills or Eurodollars? C'mon, of course it is/was about all the funny money/derivatives being passed around.
And Buiter's point that we should have just let all the MBS's and CDSs and CDOs crash and burn instead of having the Fed/Fannie/Freddie buy them up...was the point.
85: eurodollars aren't involved in the TED spread. It's the T-bill/Libor spread. It spiked because Libor went up far further than T-bills (obviously), because everyone was terrified of banks going insolvent. But it's not really directly related to the bond market, except inasmuch as bank bond yields would tend in aggregate to move with the TED (obviously).
because everyone was terrified of banks going insolvent.
I was kind of hoping for that, but I may have the occasional fit of pique that shouldn't be used to guide public policy. I still don't understand why you bail out a bank without tossing all of the leadership.
Banks going insolvent would have been rather a mess. But you are right in your second sentence. 92% of senior executives at banks that had to be bailed out are still in their old jobs. (The rest have probably been promoted.)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/01/banking-sector-remains-literally-unchanged/
88: The worry was that every bank would become insolvent simultaneously, even banks that hadn't done anything wrong.
89, 90: The bad banks played chicken against everybody else. Everybody else lost, despite the fact that Kevin Bacon was on this side.
Yes, it is all about bonds (a lot of economists use "bonds" to represent all assets in their models. It was "Money, Interest, & Employment" for Keynes
Appeasing the Bond Gods ...Krugman, today, via Thoma
comment by "Anne" on two Vanguard funds
7/31/2009 ( 13.72%)
7/31/2007 ( -6.82)
7/29/2005 ( -0.25)
7/31/2000 ( -0.86)
7/31/2009 ( 13.15%)
7/31/2007 ( 4.42)
7/29/2005 ( 5.44)
7/31/2000 ( 7.06)
Remarkable. I want my Revolution please.
Anybody been noticing the current acquisition binge? Potash, MacAfee, etc? Using borrowed money?
I gotta walk the dogs. Female got a little better, thanks, and we have the annual next week. The unreconstructed leg is still very iffy, and could go any day, but we want to get the cyberleg (and hips) as strong as possible before the surgery.
a lot of economists use "bonds" to represent all assets in their models.
Most economists use "Chief" as the name for all bartenders.
Speaking of polls, this graph completely summarizes the decline in what Americans expect to get out of life:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/08/consumption
Eighteen percent of Americans say they carry Mace
MACE? HA! NINETY-ONE PERCENT OF HYPERBOREANS CARRY BROADSWORD!
From the rant Bob quoted in 64:
Homeownership rates will plummet
If he's not going to explain why this is a bad thing I'm not going to take him seriously. Our homeownership rate has been artifically propped up for decades, and not, in my view, to the general benefit of society. Too many people own that should be renting, even before considering the recent boom-and-bust issues.
93 - Bob, Krugman has consistently been calling for real interest rates to be lower, which would enable Intel and the like to do more cheap borrowing and more takeovers. I guess this wouldn't matter much, since all asset classes are "bonds": T-bills, corporate debts, houses, crappy antivirus software, the world-famous Pink Panther diamond.
which would enable Intel and the like to do more cheap borrowing
Not sure how Intel is financing this deal, but Intel has buckets of cash, as you can see with a look at the balance sheet in the company's most recent quarterly report. They've got $18.3 billion in cash and cash equivalents , short-term investments and trading assets.
(This speaks to what I perceive to be bob's original point: that money is getting to easy and corporations are getting in over their heads.)
99 - Johnson and Johnson just issued a mountain of cheap long-term debt, despite having about the same amount of cash on the books as Intel. I'm just saying that Bob is incoherent on this point -- making home ownership easier*, if that's what he wants, and goosing employment needs cheaper money. But when interest rates are low, companies do things like buy out other companies or build more plants.
Also, Kobe.
* Modulo the effects of asset inflation.
97:Because wealth is political power. Homeownership has been propped up because those who have or want homes have had the power to influence legislation.
Now maybe you think that the nation of renters will have the equivalent amount of wealth in Vanguard Funds. But the fact is that the homeownership society due to its universality was able to put pressure on wages, equality, and social programs so that homes could be afforded.
The homeownership society also created credit, directly and indirectly. An example of indirect credit would be Kenmore knowing there would be a market for washers in ten years.
Somebody might mention wage rates in NYC. Leaving aside the distribution issues, NYC is a perfect example of non-productive rentier-driven demand inflation, profits from inflation feeding off itself. The Big Bubble.
"Bob, Krugman has consistently been calling for real interest rates to be lower"
Total bullshit.
They are fucking freaked out by the ten-year and mortgage rates. Fucking scared silly, and you know it.
They want nominal interests to be higher because of inflation and expected inflation. They want some inflation.
(If you want to play games with real vs nominal, fuck off. Nominal works for me right now)
What on earth are you talking about, Bob? Who is "they"? In what way are "they" freaked out? Do I have to link to Krugman's op-ed of today to back up my claim that Krugman wants lower interest rates?
Real interest rates going lower is what triggers inflation. (We're in a non-inflationary environment, so the real versus nominal distinction doesn't matter.) It's also what makes money cheap for corporate buyouts. Saying "oh, it's Econ 101" is codeword for glibertarian bullshit, but this really is Econ 101.
103.last, expanded - Or, I should say (following Krugman), when the Fed is against the zero bound, it can't lower interest rates further, but there are other things that can be done to lower the effective interest rate and stop disinflation/deflation.
Back when I used to have to fly a couple of times a month, I started reading books about Alex Cross and then the other James Patterson books. For some reason, the serial killer was always a dude who could get an erection, but never could ejactulate. So, let me change that to, "No deflation before a reasonable period of time has elapsed, laydeez."
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"This song makes me want to build a mosque at Ground Zero."
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107: How did they know to produce that video and song back in the '80s? Maybe the 9/11 truthers are onto something.
103:it can't lower interest rates further
We're in a non-inflationary environment, so the real versus nominal distinction doesn't matter.
Well then. Fuck off with your babble.
No, Krugman and DeLong do not want to see a 1% ten-year T-Bill. (Revisiting today's Krug:can you read? The low interest rates are a fucking problem, that offers its own solution. They are saying we should use current low rates to borrow and fiscal spend, thereby driving up rates. My favorite line:"borrow til they make us stop" with spiked rates. The big reason this isn't being done, the reason we don't have fiscal stimulus, is that the Investment banks are using the huge spreads to repair their balance sheets. But this does not help the economy. )
And the big problem I have with the New Keynesians is that they are quasi-monetarists. This has filtered thru to Obama, who believes strongly in the money multiplier "money given to banks spreads 7 times to the economy" or whatever. So Krug and BdL are having a rough time explaining what they do want and how to get it.
What they really want is increased velocity but this is barely in the N-K toolkit or models.
You got me, Bob! Krugman wants the Fed to ratchet up interest rates, and his screaming at the Fed over their inflation hawkishness has in fact been a Straussian coded signal to keep up the good work.
112: It's a sign of how little I have to do today that I just sat through an Allstate ad with the full knowledge that I was about to be Rickrolled.
Krugman wants the Fed to have to ratchet up interest rates
I.e., to move from the zero-bound.
Dude, zero or near zero short rates are not a good thing. Now Krug can say things like "The Taylor Rule says we should have a -5% interest rate" but no, he doesn't really mean it. If we had a -5% short rate what that would mean, and what our current low rates mean, is that we would have an insane and destructive liquidity preference, a desire to hold cash instead of invest and circulate.
Money is hard to understand. It is ok.
It's a sign of how much I have to do that I didn't look around for a version without an ad.
Obviously Krugman doesn't want the Fed to keep rates low forever, because he wants the economy to rebound and the deflationary threat to go away. That said, yes, Krugman thinks we should have a negative interest rate. Following Samuelson and his own work on the Japanese lost decade, he also says that when you're up against the zero bound, monetary policy is ineffective. And so he's arguing for non-standard monetary policy like asset purchases on the part of the Fed to achieve the same effect.
Krugman wants low rates continued by standard and non-standard means until such a time as Keynesian stimulus has gotten money circulating again.
In fact, I'm sure you know all this, Bob, and don't even disagree with any of it. I still don't know where your complaint about the MacAfee and Potash comes from; companies borrowing or spending down cash (ideally on expansion rather than simple reshuffling) is in fact the desired outcome here. And the housing stuff is simply irrelevant to the question of "what does Krugman think should be done to escape a liquidity trap?".
Money is hard to understand.
I think Henry Miller summed it up nicely when he wrote "The important thing for every man to learn is that money is not to be despised."
That said, yes, Krugman thinks we should have a negative interest rate.
No, he does not. The zero-bound exists for a reason, and if Krug says "the Taylor says we should..." that should needs to be interpreted.
Look, dude the bank pays me ten bucks to borrow 100 with perfect liquidity I set up a cot at the teller's window, and it will take a shitload of risk-premium to move me away. And that increased risk-premium is why the zero-bound is bad, and why negative rates can't ever work.
Look, dude the bank pays me ten bucks to borrow 100 with perfect liquidity I set up a cot at the teller's window, and it will take a shitload of risk-premium to move me away. And that increased risk-premium is why the zero-bound is bad, and why negative rates can't ever work.
Precisely. That's why nominal rates can't go below zero (except in the special case of the helicopter drop), which is where real rates come in. Unusual policy options would come into play to force *real* rates to fall to Taylor rules levels even if nominal levels never cross the zero bound.
max
['Yes, money is hard to understand, but not that hard to understand.']
the Investment banks are using the huge spreads to repair their balance sheets.
bob's other theories aside, this is something I've been wondering about. Are we, in effect, giving organizations at the top essentially interest free loans?
121: Yes. No need to qualify with 'in effect.'
The big banks returned to profitability pretty quickly. Are there estimates of how much of this was due to their privileged borrowing position?
All of it that isn't due to the feds boosting the people who owed them money or shaking down poor people with a bad math skills.
121:Duh
120:Unusual policy options would come into play to force *real* rates to fall to Taylor rules levels even if nominal levels never cross the zero bound.
Umm. This is the kind of stuff that Sumner & Yggles have been struggling over.
There is the empirical question of what the bond markets do when core CPI is 5% and ten year T-Bills are 2 1/2 %. It will happen so fast that the simultaneous conditions may not even be possible, and may be able to be handled theoretically or in models.
And this is what I mean when I say I (or Krugman) want interest rates to climb. I am presuming that a helicopter drop of sufficient size to generate inflation will instantly cause interest rates to go up. Then we have downward pressure on output that neutralizes the helicopter drop. So we double the copters? Shock and Awe, dudes! I can't deny it is becoming unclear to me.
Are we 1980 now?
And here we are at my Post-K differences with the New Ks. I think the only thing that will really work is a permanent gov't commitment to full employment, infrastructure or defense spending, price-levels, or something.
Since Krugman patiently writes a similar message over and over again, week after week, I thought even an economics-ignoramus like myself could pick up on what he's all about. But apparently not! I need that brilliant expositor of economic wisdom, bob mcmanus, to 'splain things to me.
a permanent gov't commitment to full employment, infrastructure or defense spending
Can we invade Peru if we go with defense spending? Whatever they put in their roast chicken is brilliant.
124: Do you have a source for that? I believe it, but I'd like something more authoritative than imaginary internet friend.
What's the justification for this? Is there some argument that says it is more efficient than, say, reducing withholdings?
128: I thought it was a clear interpretation of what I've been reading in the NYT and Calculated Risk over the past 2 years. I don't have a specific citation.
I have no idea of relative efficiency compared to reducing withholdings.
Snarkout-- what's the evidence that we're in a non-inflationary environment? Is this regionally adjusted? My subjective experience is that the cost of living is going up faster than wages. I'm sure that I'm misusing a whole bunch of terms here.
130 - The CPI, for one. "The overall CPI is up 1.2 percent from a year earlier, but the core index is up only 0.9 percent, slightly below the Fed's comfort zone of 1 percent to 2 percent, S&P said." The Producer Price Index was also down.
I'd add that we're not really in a deflationary environment, but rather a disinflationary one; there appears to be a zero-bound stickiness, like a 10,000 DJIA. And that we're getting fucked on wages (persistent 10% unemployment will do that). Here's a chart.
My wife is currently in the third year of a salary freeze for Duke employees, but daycare costs have risen every year, so it sure doesn't *feel* non-inflationary.
125: I am presuming that a helicopter drop of sufficient size to generate inflation will instantly cause interest rates to go up.
That's the Austrian point of view. That's also the argument from those arguing that the bond market vigilantes will freak out. As long as the Fed is loaning money to the banks at zero percent, the banks can loan money out at whatever the rate they want to charge is and make money. They will loan money at such rates because they have to - otherwise inflation will eat their reserves so they're better off loaning it out. All you really have to do is drive up the real inflation rate, which won't happen instantaneously, as any movement towards a Taylor rule negative interest rate generates inflation of some amount, and if you hit it big enough you drive up inflation to above the target rate, which is where we're trying to go. (The liquidity trap is why you have to use extraordinary means to get out and you can't use normalinterest rate reductions to get out, right? Right.)
I think the only thing that will really work is a permanent gov't commitment to full employment, infrastructure or defense spending, price-levels, or something.
WWII. You want WWII. Good luck getting them to fund that.
max
['Hoo boy.']
134.1:Let me think on it.
"Bond market vigilantes"
This is one of the problems I have with BdL and Krug and Yggles, is that they will not acknowledge the degree of policy capture. The bond market isn't scared, they are making the big fucking bucks, and don't want the gravy train to slow. Bernanke is their buddy. This is not a failure in any way.
WWII. You want WWII. Good luck getting them to fund that.
Except for the bombing and killing stuff, yeah. Seriously, some of my sources put the insolvency in the range of 30-50T. 5-10T over ten years to get us back to 6% U-3 with no increase in equality? So my rough guess was 10% of GDP a year for at least a decade, say 15-20T of gov't spending, rising as the economy improves. I would like a permanent increase of gov't share to go from current 35% to 55% for a decade plus, then down to 45% forever.
You know, you Krugman worshippers need to think.
He says an additional 1/2 trillion in spring 2009 would have done the job? That's New Keynesian bullshit, using the paddles on a cancer patient. It still implies belief in stuff like the money multiplier, and misses how much of the economy is cannibalized by finance.
We needed enough "stimulus" to effect a restructuring of the economy. Krugman was off by at least a factor.
As long as I'm demonstrating my financial ignorance, let me ask this: am I right in thinking that, while it can certainly be useful for individuals, the ability to borrow against future earnings has some serious drawbacks in that it can increase inequality (wealthier people and organizations get more from the same leverage), it increase instability (being based on uncertain expectations of the future), and if it is widely available it may just lead to inflation?
You know, you Krugman worshippers need to think.
There is a great deal of ground between agreeing with you and being a Krugman supporter, let alone worshipper.
135: The bond market isn't scared, they are making the big fucking bucks, and don't want the gravy train to slow.
Well no. That's the point: money is moving into bonds away from everything else. That drives down the yield curve, which is predicting a recession, at this point, I would guess. (I'd need to look.) Bond traders aren't scared but people buying bonds are.
137: am I right in thinking that, while it can certainly be useful for individuals, the ability to borrow against future earnings has some serious drawbacks in that it can increase inequality (wealthier people and organizations get more from the same leverage), it increase instability (being based on uncertain expectations of the future), and if it is widely available it may just lead to inflation?
Yes, yes, and yes. However, the last once in particular is not a reason to argue against lending. Without the ability to borrow from the future somehow, it becomes difficult to invest and thus increase future surpluses... future surpluses being where the borrowed money came from in the first place. That's why you want to avoid contractionary spirals, since the contraction shrinks the future surplus which means less money to borrow now.
max
['Which means less in the future.']
140: Makes as much sense as 95% of what I've read about the economy lately.
140: "Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand."
143: How the fuck do they work?
Not well, apparently.
Fucking talking cars.
Is the word 'dinosaurs' missing from the beginning of that sentence?
Eighteen percent of Americans say they carry Mace or pepper spray.
Are there regional clusters, I wonder? (35-40 percent in one part of the country, less than 5 percent in another?). I swear to God, I don't know any of these people.
I have no doubt that there are regional clusters.
