Letters to the Editor
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Most people would prefer a recession than inflation
The Fed's #1 job is to check inflation. And most people and most businesses would prefer a recession to inflation anyway. Why? Because inflation is harder to manage. We saw this in the early 1980's when the prime rate peaked around 21.5% and it took several years to level out in fact the problems in the CMO market April 87 were in some ways the residual effect of inflation leveling out and reversing. So given that, if given a choice, you should hope for a manageable recession (the common definition of flat or zero growth for about half a year or so).
A 4% hit in the major US markets is ok. It's about half yesterday's drop in the Hong Kong market (total loss 14% in 2 days), it's half the loss in the French and German exchanges and far less of a problem than the huge drop in the middle eastern exchanges. We shouldn't worry that much until the major US markets drop 7% and that nebulous thing called GDP PPP growth dips below 1.5% or so annually.
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And in case you were wondering
Sovereign Wealth funds now have more of a reason to invest in the US given the relative health of the US markets in relation to other bourses.
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Save yourselves.
If you borrow a million dollars and spend it, it doesn't make you rich. It just makes it look that way. Since there's no way you could ever repay that million dollars, you're actually bankrupt. It'll just take a while for everybody to figure that out.
Multiply this situation by several millions and you begin to get a sense of what's been holding up the US economy the last several years: hot air.
Attend me.
US Nobel Laureate Slams Bush Gov't as "Worst" in American History
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0729-06.htm
I.M.F. Says U.S. Debts Threaten World Economy
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/08/business/08FUND.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
Bush drives the nation towards bankruptcy.
http://www.rense.com/general49/bankrupt.htm
Drowning, First-Class Style
http://www.tompaine.com/Archive/scontent/8019.html
American trade: hurtling towards the tipping point
http://goldismoney.info/forums/showthread.php?t=6318
Some think the dollar has fallen too far. On the contrary, it has not fallen by enough
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2404984
Bush Wants To Bankrupt America
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3977.htm
Jobs Bloodbath to Come
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/37588278-1bb1-11d9-8af6-00000e2511c8.html
Why would any administration deliberately unbalance the long-term finances of the federal government?
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/archives/001541.html
Derivatives Market Grows 20% to $170 Tln, BIS Says
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aR4pMAz.ogAA&refer=us
This was a couple of years ago. The global investment derivatives market is now hedged to the tune of $400 TRILLION - with a 't', not a 'b'. In other words, the world's financiers have short-sold - i.e, mortgaged - the entire world economy five times over, just to keep it going and to give the planetary economic system the appearance of looking a lot better than it really is. This collection of derivatives hedges is so gigantic that it can never be unwound. So the world is essentially bankrupt. It just hasn't been notified yet.
It's taken three and four years to get from the above articles to the current situation, but the end result has never been in doubt. It was predicted, long in advance. Transnational corporatists have no use for the US as a free country, but only as a vehicle for global military imperialism and as a corpse to bleed dry of its wealth.
Many scholars believe the last fifty years of progressive middle-class freedom and prosperity to have been only a temporary aberration of history, since most of human history has been characterized by large poor populations dominated by small ruling classes. It very much appears that we're about to return to the historical model. The coming economic catastrophe will finally enable the Powers That Be to foreclose on the US economy and federal government, and that will be that.
It hasn't even gotten ugly yet, much less weird ugly. You have to be patient. It will happen. It is happening.
Kassandra was never believed. But she was always right.
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A Free Market, Sometimes
Apparently capitalism is not built on too solid a foundation when one considers the amount of government intervention required to make it work.
A free market shouldn't need assistance from the state in order to be truly free. But we compromise here and we regulate there and, voila, American capitalism!
We truly have a "managed economy" after all, and this must drive the hard-core capitalists crazy.
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Nulla Sallus
Most people would prefer a recession than inflation
Baloney.
Most people would rather have a job, regardless of how their paycheck is depreciating, because without a job you don't even have any money to depreciate.
People lose jobs in a recession. So most people would rather have inflation than a recession. But we're going to have both, so take your pick.
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Anonymous
A Free Market, Sometimes
There's no such thing as a 'free market'.
When corporate types refer to 'free markets' they don't mean 'unfettered competition' or a 'level playing field'. They mean freedom to rig markets, or at least dominate them.
They mean a reduction or elimination of regulation, because regulation prevents them from rigging the markets. Markets invariably gravitate towards oligopoly and monopoly because capital organizations invariably seek to maximize profit, typically by increasing market share, which increases pricing power and control over vendors. The natural goal is to dominate a market, which makes that market 'not free'.
The only recourse to this market domination and oligopoly or monopoly is regulation, like anti-trust regulation. Regulation can therefore make markets more free, by reducing the dominance of the larger players. But such markets are still 'not free'.
The "free market" is merely a public relations myth with no basis in reality.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar07/Whitney04.htm
Paid for by taxpayers, of course.
Naturally, the obscenely rich insist that they be subsidized - and their wealth insured - by the poor and middle class.
"These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel."
Lincoln