Tag Archives | debt

Tomorrow, on Monday, May 7th, the US stock market will take a big hit.

The reason will be that the French and the Greeks appear to have unseated a couple of the governments which imposed or promoted austerity, which most of the major US market mavens have been saying, for weeks, is completely the wrong way to go. I guess the message is that they are so convinced of [...]

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The psychological impact of GDP rates.

The preliminary GDP numbers are our for first quarter 2012 and the same story we have heard lately is being re-played, personal expenditures are up but government spending is down. The early number for Q1 is 2.2% Now my question is what number do we need to sustain to take away the psychological funk created [...]

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Covering debt with the money supply.

This is an extension of the post I just wrote on Greek debt, but seemed to deserve a space of it’s own. I would like to put forward a couple thoughts on expanding the money supply to repair balance sheets hurt by absorbing bad debts and debt forgiveness. It seems that I often argue for the [...]

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A funny thing about the Greek debt crisis.

One thing I find odd about the continued angst over the Greek debt crisis is that so much worry is expended over what is a relatively small amount of money. First off what we are mainly concerned about is privately held debt, since central banks have the power to issue currency, now for Greece that [...]

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JOBS!!!

I was pleased to see the economy added 243,000 jobs last month.  I know it’s just one month, but I’m encouraged for three reasons:   1)  This is part of a long run of job creation (which has been in positive territory since October of 2010, and in six figures since September of 2011);   [...]

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Keynesians Vs. Austerians, Again!

On the sidebar under the Economist category is an article I would like to recommend, titled “Debating Economic Policy: Keynesians, Austerity, and the Weltgeist”. I repeat the last two paragraphs here:   If you think the German-led European solution to the euro-zone crisis is deeply confused, and a lot of Americans do, then you have [...]

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Mike Whitney on Bernanke: when all you have is a hammer…

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/30/bernankes-low-rate-crapshoot/   Nassim Taleb likened Bernanke’s ZIRP and QE antics to trying to get ketchup out of a bottle when it is stopped up. Ben is shaking the ketchup bottle violently with the same down motion, expecting the sauce to smoothly emerge.   Now Whitney calls out Bernanke for administering the same QE snake-oil again [...]

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Solving our unemployment problem

Salon.com has an article that indicts the Republican presidential candidates for having nothing to offer on the unemployment problem:   http://www.salon.com/2012/01/24/the_gops_unemployment_trap/   It is amazing how little Republicans talk about the issue (of the four remaining candidates, only one even mentions it on his website) when you take a look at how historically unusual our [...]

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The Fable Of The Bees: Does Austerity Promote Economic Growth?

To all here: I recommend the article “Does Austerity Promote Economic Growth” by the noted economist Robert Shiller which appears to your left here as a Project Syndicate link. It is related to my earlier post on Feldstein and Krugman. Very interesting reading!

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Artificial money meets the artificial market

Treasury Yield Is 20 Basis Points From Low Before Greek Talks – Businessweek.   10 year bond yield is at 1 7/8 %.   That is surreal.  When they created this money, it was designed to hold the benchmark interest rate roughly between 3% and 6%… which then became the platform for the value of money. [...]

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