NPR's Marketplace is unspeakably bad, an indigestible mix of shitty and sloppy econ 101 reasoning and "insiders" talking about quantitative day-to-day market numbers. Also amoral and stupid; I remember an episode where some KGB market venture had what amounted to a press release touting their mapping and consulting services.
The local R&B station's morning show economic advice lady (a Suze Orman knockoff who goes into a lot of detail about tricks for living with bad credit) is much more interesting listening.
Markets daily jumps to be ignored IMO-- Nathan Silver's summary is pretty sensible.
I'm listeneing to Marketplace right now explaining there is "not much more that the Fed can do". How about PRINT SOME FUCKING MONEY?
Is "smarmy" really the right word?
I'm open to suggestions.
You've probably finished cooking dinner already, so tomorrow is fine.
5, if it's going to be that king of party...
Heebie's not going to going to deliver a dinner all the way out to Appalachia, Moby.
On the internet, no one knows you're a bearded anachronism.
I'm listeneing to Marketplace right now explaining there is "not much more that the Fed can do". How about PRINT SOME FUCKING MONEY?
srsly. bidding up most asset prices isn't even sort of tricky, like understanding bond prices going up vs down.
This is a pedantic point, but "Marketplace" is not an NPR program. It's from PRI. Usually PRI programs are better. They used to have Robert Reich on, and he talked a lot about government investment and the importance of jobs. That was more than you ever got on NPR.
AUSTERITY AND ANARCHY: BUDGET
CUTS AND SOCIAL UNREST IN
EUROPE, 1919-2009 ...2009 pdf from voxeu;h/t Thoma
Abstract:
Does fiscal consolidation lead to social unrest? From the end of the Weimar Republic in Germany in the 1930s to anti-government demonstrations in Greece in 2010-11, austerity has tended to go hand in hand with politically motivated violence and social instability. In this paper, we assemble crosscountry evidence for the period 1919 to the present, and examine the extent to which societies become unstable after budget cuts. The results show a clear positive correlation between fiscal retrenchment and instability. We test if the relationship simply reflects economic downturns, and conclude that this is not the key factor. We also analyse interactions with various economic and political variables. While autocracies and democracies show a broadly similar responses to budget cuts, countries with more constraints on the executive are less likely to see unrest as a result of austerity measures. Growing media penetration does not lead to a stronger effect of cut-backs on the level of unrest.
Of course, Thoma is the kind of liberal who thinks the poor thoughtless but well-intentioned oligarchs just don't understand the consequences of their policies.
Stupid stupid billionaires, have learned nothing from the last century of science, huh, Krugman.
They understand. In fact, they're depending on the unrest, and since the actual cuts are counter-productive, the unrest and divisions within society are the most important aim.
12: Sadly, "Marketplace" is now an almost entirely awful program.
4: "Insufferable"? You're right, I'm having trouble coming up with the right term: Glib? Disconnected? Pearl-clutching?
Okay, here's Bruce Wilder over at Crooked Timber
The economic context, today, is just the opposite of the 1960s U.S. The U.S. and U.K., today, are at an extreme of economic inequality, and the total global wealth--the proverbial pie--is shrinking, and appears likely to shrink for many decades to come. Instead of a Liberal Consensus setting the agenda, we have a Plutocracy dominating all. The only part of the "Left" represented in politics is a corrupt neo-liberalism, rationalizing every plutocratic theft and seizure as "serious" and "practical". If the filthy rich are to retain their stupendous claims on wealth and income, larger and larger swaths of the mass population will have to be progressively excluded from any hope of affluence and prosperity.This kind of progressive exclusion will require changes in law and police conduct. To a large extent, those changes in law have already taken place: Britain is, in formal legal terms, an authoritarian police state, complete with universal surveillance.
The oligarchs have everything, now the plan is create a society that allows them to keep it. They are not fucking dumb and understand their history and sociology.
The Lesser Depression is part of the design, to reduce the social dynamism and prevent the rise of competitive forces. I disagree with Bruce in that I think the social control will be much easier than he does.
I don't know anything about the context, but based on nothing but his comments I kind of like the older gentleman and London resident interviewed here:
On Tuesday, the BBC interviewed Darcus Howe, a 68-year-old West Indian writer, broadcaster and resident of one of the South London suburbs affected by the riots.
Howe was asked by a BBC host if he condoned the riots--and things turned ugly.
"What I am concerned about ... there is a man called Mark Duggan--he has parents, he has brothers, he has sisters," Howe said. "A few yards away from where he lives, a police officer blew his head off. Blew his face off!"
Fiona Armstrong, the BBC host, immediately cut Howe off.
"Mr. Howe, we have to wait for the official inquiry before we can say things like that," she said. "We are going to wait for the police report on it."
Armstrong then steered the discussion away from Duggan and to Howe's grandson, who he had mentioned earlier in the interview.
"They have been stopping and searching young blacks for no reason at all," Howe said. "I have a grandson, he is an angel. Police slapped him up against a wall, and searched him. I asked him the other day, having a sense that something seriously wrong is going on in this country, 'How many times have police searched you?' He said, 'Papa I can't count, there are so many times.'"
Armstrong cut him off again. "Mr. Howe, that may well have happened, and if you say it did, I'm not against you. But that is no excuse to go out rioting and causing the sort of damage we have been seeing over the last few days."
"Where were you in 1981 in Brixton?" Howe fired back, a reference to the bloody riots between Metropolitan Police and blacks in South London in April of that year. "I don't call it rioting--I call it an insurrection of the masses of the people. It is happening in Syria, it is happening in Clapham, it's happening in Liverpool, it's happening in Port-au-Spain, Trinidad, and that is the nature of the historical moment.""
Armstrong then tried to infer that Howe, himself, had a history of participating in riots.
"I have never taken part in a single riot," Howe snapped. "I've been part of demonstrations that have ended up in a conflict. Have some respect for an old West Indian Negro, and stop accusing me of being a rioter."
As the segment concluded, he added: "You sound like an idiot."
(Video clip at the link.)
"You say you're not shocked; does that mean you condone what happened?"
What a moron!
Actually, on the specific question of Duggan, I don't actually understand what the reporter was meaning to say. There isn't honestly any dispute about whether the police shot him, right? Was she meaning to raise doubt about whether the particular manner of shooting him was in the head (rather than some other body part) or was she honestly suggesting that there is doubt about whether the police are the ones who killed him?
19: typical BBC hysteria about not wanting to prejudice judicial inquiries I think, combined with wanting to cut off somebody who was going off script. Though they should've known better than to ask Darcus Howe what he thought about the riots if they wanted some nice placid quote of how awful they all are and should not be condoned.
Howe has a huge point btw about the stop and search powers the police has gotten under New Labour's anti terrorism law. There used to be the old sus laws that in the seventies and early eighties seemed to mainly be used to harass people being suspected of "having curly black hairs and thick lips", which inevitably led to huge riots which in turn provided enough pressure that these laws were abolished in 1981. Which lasted until New Labour's law 'n order fetish and anti-terrorism hysteria returned these powers to the police by the backdoor.
In the meantime there have been some attempts to make the various police forces less racist and some genuine outreach towards minority communities has happened, but there's still a a layer of racism espcially in the Met.
Darcus Howe is awesome and has been for a very long time. Related to CLR James, too, so it's in the blood.
the BBC has apologised to Darcus Howe. (I'm amazed.)
"Insufferable"? You're right, I'm having trouble coming up with the right term: Glib? Disconnected? Pearl-clutching?
It's hard! I wanted something insulting but it is not obvious what the insult should be.
cloying? unctuous? contrived? disingenuous?
Disingenuous, except it needs to be meaner.
duplicitous! mendacious! hypocritical!
"... and excuse me for finding them all a bunch of dirty rotten no-good not-nice cheating lying BADDIES!"