Tickle your fancy
Ilargi, The automatic earth
It’s often as amusing as it is surprising to me how readers react when I quote people who are perceived as being right-wing. My view is quite rudimentary: I’m not interested in the dividing lines in politics, but since I think a society needs to take care of its weakest, simply to survive, the only wing I seem to have is a left one. I also think a government needs to have a strong voice within a society, but as a force representing its people, not as some kind of separate entity. If people don’t feel their government speaks for them, they should get rid of it and get another, hard as that may be. The present rule of corporatism in countries such as the US is, then, not my idea of democratic representation.
Sometimes I quote the alleged right-wing to show how wrong their ideas are. And sometimes I quote them because they have interesting things to say and/or because they are simply right. If there’s one thing I take for granted today, it’s that we need all the good ideas we can lay our hands on, no matter where they originate.
In a few recent interviews in which Max Keiser talks to Mish Shedlock , I once again noticed that Mish and I see a lot of things the same way. Still, when his libertarianism rears its head, I’m out of here. And I agree with Max that Mish’s view of Ben Bernanke is far too benign.
Still, Mish, in the interview, cites a recent survey among 15,000 economists in which only 12(!) among them said deflation is the main economic threat going forward, not inflation. Neither Mish nor I were surveyed, but we both whole-heartedly agree with that view. I have long clamored for the demise of Fannie and Freddie and their perverting role in the US housing market, and Mish agrees with me on that…
(30 August 2009)
Re-Appointed Fed Chief Ben Bernanke Didn’t Get Us Out of the Economic Crisis, He Helped Cause It
William Greider, The Nation via alternet
The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer can be thought of as the Potemkin village of American democracy. Every evening, it presents a prettified version of political debate — ever so civil and high-minded — that thoroughly blots out the substance of dissenting critics or the untamed opinions of mere citizens. PBS’s sanitized version of news was deployed this summer to assist the charm offensive launched by the Federal Reserve and its embattled chairman, Ben Bernanke. The NewsHour staged a “town meeting” in Kansas City at which Bernanke fielded prescreened questions from preselected citizens. As town meetings go, this was strictly polite. As TV goes, it was deadly dull. The citizens were so deferential they seemed sedated. Jim Lehrer was so laconic, several times I thought he had nodded off.
The message, however, was reassuring. With folksy talk, Bernanke came across as a mild-mannered professor earnestly coping with financial complexities and sleepless nights. Gentle Ben struggles to save us from another Great Depression. People are angry at the Fed (and the elected government) for devoting so many trillions to bail out failing bankers while the populace copes with the disastrous results of the bankers’ folly. Bernanke said he too hated the bailouts but had no choice. “I am as disgusted as you are,” Gentle Ben allowed. To show further he is a good guy, Bernanke appointed a labor leader, Denis Hughes, as chairman of the board at the New York Federal Reserve Bank (the operating president, however, is a Goldman Sachs guy).
Bernanke’s down-home touch had instant appeal among the elite media. The theme was swiftly amplified by the Washington Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. As it happens, David Wessel, the Journal’s economics editor, has just published a new book — In Fed We Trust — that describes the Fed chairman’s struggle against the darkness in blow-by-blow detail. New York Times columnist David Brooks summarized the tale as “effective muddling through.” Yes, mistakes were made, Brooks conceded, “but they did avert disaster and committed only a few big blunders. In the real world, that counts as a job well done.”…
(27 August 2009)
Growing Poverty And Despair In America
Stephen Lendman, countercurrents.org
In 1962, Michael Harrington’s “The Other America” exposed the nation’s dark underside enough for John Kennedy to ask his Council of Economic Advisor chairman, Walter Heller, to look into the problem and for Lyndon Johnson to say (on January 8, 1964) that his administration “today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.”
In fact, it was little more than a skirmish that fell way short of addressing the real problem in the world’s richest nation. Today it’s even greater and increasing exponentially under a president who, unlike Johnson, declared war on the poor and disadvantaged to favor privilege over growing needs and essential social change.
In his book, Harrington wrote:
“In morality and in justice every citizen should be committed to abolishing the other America, for it is intolerable that the richest nation in human history should allow such needless suffering. But more than that, if we solve the problem of the other America we will have learned how to solve the problems of all of America.” Sadly, we didn’t then nor have we now…
(26 August 2009)
Peak Oil, Peak Credit and Investments – “So What the Hell Does One Do”?
Nate Hagens, The Oil Drum
(*Note: This posting was delayed due to the discovery that the mushrooms in the woods adjoining my parents cottage were black trumpets. 4 hours, 5 lbs of mushrooms, and some soaking wet clothes later, here, on my 4 year anniversary of being a member of this website, is tonight’s Campfire…;-)
A common theme in conversations of the peak oil/limits to growth aware is ‘What do I do’? Just slightly less common is ‘What do I do with my money?’ The biggest difficulty in contemplating/deciding/acting towards a new paradigm is one does this while the old paradigm is still going strong, if only on the surface and the media. In a temporary departure from usual Campfire topics, tonight’s discussion will revolve around the concept of investments, and the coming transition from the old finance based rules into new undefined territory.
…I rarely give investment advice, except to my closest friends and family. Clearly there are logical market neutral themes that should prove advantageous over time to those who primarily care about such goals. For example, long the low cost, low externality energy companies vs. short the companies making non-essential goods, long the companies that focus on top 10% of social demographic vs short companies that rely on general consumer, etc. However, other than needing to really understand someones objectives on risk, return, time frame, etc., I have stopped giving investment advice for other reasons.
(31 August 2009)
