ECONOMICS: Janet Yellen and the “FED” should go to the trash pile of history

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

https://dailyreckoning.com/91851-2/

POSTED JANUARY 25, 2017
Trump Missed His Biggest Chance to Drain the Swamp
BY DAVID STOCKMAN 

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Janet Yellen insists that she would serve out her full term (until January 2018) and has rather cheekily lectured Congress about the dangers of political interference with the central bank.

Oh, my.

Before December — after the election — the Fed spent the past year sitting hard on interest rates for no plausible reason whatsoever. The main reason was to perpetuate the stock market bubble and thereby ensure the election of Hillary Clinton and a perpetuation of the current Wall Street/Washington regime.
To his credit, Donald Trump called her out on this blatant political meddling during the campaign, calling it “shameful” and designed to keep the stock averages levitated through November 8th.

He was exactly right. Yet notwithstanding his shocking victory, Yellen has the temerity of a pot calling the kettle black. Her Keynesian-statist party has been rebuked by the American public, but the terminally grating school marm who occupies the big chair in the Eccles Building petulantly insists that her right to rule has not been diminished by an iota.

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The Federal Reserve Bank is a misnomer. IT ain’t “federal”. It reserves nothing. And, it ain’t a “bank”. It is a private cartel of the elite banks run for their benefit and that of the entrenched politicians.

It’s designed to corrupt Americans and the world into accepting a unbacked fiat currency.

The benefit of a real gold standard is to restrict what the Gooferment can spend. Imagine if it couldn’t borrow and spend beyond what it could steal from the taxpayers. A lot less war and welfare spending, for sure.

Argh!

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ECONOMICS: The “invisible hand of the free market” makes life better for everyone

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

On Thursday, January 19, 2017 8:50 PM, I wrote:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/hobica/2017/01/18/jet-lag-altitude-sickness-dehydration/96677564/

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In a study entitled “Effect of Aircraft-Cabin Altitude on Passenger Discomfort” in the New England Journal of Medicine, the authors write that people who “travel to terrestrial altitudes above 6,500 feet experience acute mountain sickness, a syndrome characterized by symptoms of headache, nausea, vomiting, anorexia, lassitude, and sleep disturbance.” The researchers call this “Acute Mountain Syndrome.” The ill effects are even more pronounced the older you are.

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Laugh!

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Sharing with my Luddite friend this great and interesting news.

“Jet lag” is merely misdiagnosed “Acute Mountain Syndrome”!

Wow, what a finding.

The article says planes are being reengineered to eliminate this.

Great!

To which, he responds:

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Yeah, they will end jet lag because nobody will be able to afford to fly!

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No, it’s the “invisible hand of the free market”. Improve or die. Serve your fellow man or starve. 
Look at commodes. At one time only the ULTRA ULTRA rich kings could have indoor plumbing. Now virtually everyone has it.

Same with cars. Clean water. Computers.

Only in Gooferment projects does the costs escalate and the results plummet.

When entrepreneurs risk their own money, progress happens. Because no one watches the store like the owner.

Economics 201.

Laugh!

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Seems so OBVIOUS to me, Sigh!

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GOVEROTRAGEOUS: I think the SF “building department” is useless

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3865998/The-leaning-tower-San-Francisco-350-million-luxury-high-rise-Millennium-Tower-SINKING.html

The leaning tower of San Francisco: The $350 million luxury high-rise Millennium Tower is SINKING 

  • The Millennium Tower, in San Franciso, has already sunk 16 inches since it was completed seven years ago
  • The $350 million building has also begun to tilt –  and now has a six-inch lean at the top of the tower
  • Leaked documents show the city’s Department of Building Inspection and developer Millennium Partners were aware it was sinking faster than anticipated before it opened in late 2009 but didn’t make it public 
  • Engineers hired to assess the problem have said that it shows no immediate sign of stopping

By HANNAH PARRY FOR DAILYMAIL.COMPUBLISHED: 00:54 EST, 24 October 2016 | UPDATED: 03:35 EST, 24 October 2016

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Pamela Buttery noticed something peculiar six years ago while practicing golf putting in her 57th-floor apartment at the luxurious building. The ball kept veering to the same corner of her living room.

Those were the first signs for residents of the sleek, mirrored high-rise that something was wrong. 

‘What concerns me most is the tilting,’ says Buttery, 76, a retired real estate developer. ‘Is it safe to stay here? For how long?’

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Wow, there’s a “engineering blunder” as Brother Austin Barry would say.

I assume that the lawsuits will begin immediately!

Feel sorry for anyone who bought one after it was discovered but before it became public knowledge.

Argh!

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ECONOMICS: Anyone still naïve about politicians and who they serve

Monday, October 17, 2016

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/10/15/exclusive-american-worker-forced-train-foreign-replacement-reveals-how-hillary-clinton-betrayed-him/

EXCLUSIVE — American Worker Forced to Train Foreign Replacement Reveals How Hillary Clinton Betrayed Him
by JULIA HAHN
15 Oct 2016
Washington D.C.

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As Emmons watched Clinton’s office rebuff his “desperate” pleas for help–choosing, instead, to stand with a foreign corporation at the direct expense of the American workers she was elected to represent–that was the moment, “my naïveté was over,” Emmons said. “That was when I realized exactly what this was: I realized it’s the government against the people.”

“As naïve as I was then, I now know that politicians like Hillary are not out to do what’s right for the people of America; they’re out to do what’s right for the people who donate money to them,” Emmons said.

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The story of citizens like Mike Emmons and his colleagues has become an all-too-familiar one: American tech workers are gathered together for a meeting with their executives—in this case, by Siemens in Lake Mary, Florida, in 2002. The unsuspecting workers are then informed that, despite their stellar performance record and years of service to the company, they’re all being fired and replaced by predominantly foreign-born Indian workers. However, before they are to be officially let go, they’ll be forced to train their foreign replacements. If they refuse, the American workers will not receive their severance. Companies like Siemens, Disney, Southern California Edison, Xerox, Northeast Utilities, and countless others are able to do this through forming contracts with India-based outsourcing firms like Tata that import thousands of foreign workers into the country on L-1 and H-1B visas and use them to supplant American workers who had been working there previously.

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All of us in the Information Technology field have seen this type of competition.

The H-1B visa program is supposed to be for “critical skills” not available in the American marketplace.

What a joke.

The politicians have been paid off by corrupt Crony Capitalists.

And, it’s Joe and Jane Sixpack that get screwed.

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ECONOMICS: CFC — Gooferment ekkynomics that keeps on giving

Saturday, October 15, 2016

http://ericpetersautos.com/2016/10/08/buy-steel-not-gold/

Buy Steel (Not Gold)
By eric – October 8, 2016

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First, it decreased supply via the infamous “Cash For Clunkers” program (a “clunker” being defined not by mechanical condition, incidentally, but by the car’s gas mileage numbers). The government paid people inflated sums of other people’s money (an estimated $3 billion) to turn in perfectly roadworthy used cars in for unwarranted, early destruction … in order to “stimulate” demand for new cars.

This was like burning down every third house in a neighborhood to create a “need” for new housing.

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I like that “burn down every third house” as a short hand description.

Sorry, but how can these “RXes” possibly help the economy.

The USA would be so much better off if the Gooferment would take a long vacation!

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ECONOMICS: Four reasons for a dim employment forecast

Sunday, October 2, 2016

http://larrysummers.com/2016/09/26/men-without-work/

Men Without Work
09/26/2016
Over the weekend, the FT published my review of Nicholas Eberstadt’s important new book Men Without Work.  

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I think this is likely a substantial underestimate unless something is done for a number of reasons.  First everything we hear and see regarding technology suggests the rate of job destruction will pick up.  Think of the elimination of drivers, and of those who work behind cash registers.  Second, the gains in average education and health of the workforce over the last 50 years are unlikely to be repeated.  Third, to the extent that non-work is contagious, it is likely to grow exponentially rather than at a linear rate.  Fourth, declining marriage rates are likely to raise rates of labor force withdrawal given that non-work is much more common for unmarried than married men.

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This is a really dismal view of what’s in store for the men of the future.

As well as for the uneducated, or those who can not generate value.

Sad. 

Everyone better be teaching their children to be entrepreneurial.

Argh!

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ECONOMICS: The US Military is obsolete and just misdirected

Thursday, September 29, 2016

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/09/fred-reed/bombing-enemies-cant-fight-back/

An Obsolescent Military: Bombing Everything, Gaining Nothing
By Fred Reed
September 26, 2016  

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All of which is to say that while the US military looks formidable, it isn’t particularly useful, and aids China by bankrupting the US. Repeatedly it has demonstrated that it cannot defeat campesinos armed with those most formidable weapons, the AK, the RPG, and the IED. The US does not have the land forces to fight a major or semi-major enemy. It could bomb Iran, with unpredictable consequences, but couldn’t possibly conquer it.

The wars in the Mid-East illustrate the principle nicely. Iraq didn’t work. Libya didn’t work. Iran didn’t back down. ISIS and related curiosities? The Pentagon is again bombing an enemy that can’t fight back—its specialty—but that it seems unable to defeat.

The wrong military, wrong enemy, wrong war, wrong world.

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Wow, Fred Reed had really nailed this one.

Militaries are famous for fighting the LAST war.

The Civil War was fought as if the war didn’t have any accurate weapons. WW1 was fought with massed troops fed into machine guns. WW2 was fought similarly. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Argh!

When will we realize that the Gooferment is fat, slow, and stupid.

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ECONOMICS: EBT — the hidden soup lines

Friday, September 9, 2016

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/09/04/the-anti-cinderella-man-part-one/

The Burning PlatformThe Burning Platform
THE ANTI-CINDERELLA MAN (PART ONE)

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First of all, if there were soup lines, the corporate media would just ignore them. If they don’t report it, then it isn’t happening. Secondly, the soup lines are electronic, as the government downloads the “soup” onto EBT cards so JP Morgan can reap billions in fees to run the SNAP program. Just because there are no pictures of starving downtrodden Americans in shabby clothes waiting in soup lines, doesn’t mean the majority of Americans aren’t experiencing a depression.

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Long-term discouraged workers were defined out of official existence in 1994. If you stop looking for a job because there are no jobs available, the BLS pretends you no longer exist and you are dropped from their unemployment calculations. John Williams at Shadowstats rightfully adds these discouraged workers, who are willing to work, back into the calculation and surprise, surprise, the real unemployment rate in this country has been between 18% and 23% for the last seven years. Those rates are identical to the worst years of the Great Depression.

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So what will it take to “make America great again”?

Well, they always say the first step to solving a problem is to admit you have one!

And, imho, “we” have several!

(1) honest money;

(2) Crony Capitalism;

(3) the FED;

(4) the warfare / welfare state; and

(5) the Gooferment Skrules.

None are easy to solve if we don’t have any moral, ethical, or personal backbone!

Argh!

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ECONOMICS: What will trigger an “Economic Depression”?

Friday, July 29, 2016

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/07/no_author/america-needs-old-fashioned-depression/

America Needs a Good, Old-Fashioned Economic Depression
By Jay Zawatsky The National Interest
July 25, 2016

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Yes, central bankers can print currency units, but not food, energy or other commodities necessary for sustaining life. As basic commodities become more scarce or are priced out of the reach of average folks, wars, riots, rebellions, diseases and repressive governments will result. All of this human suffering will be the progeny of ZIRP, QE, and NIRP, which in turn are the progeny of the replacement of the gold standard by the Ph.D. standard.

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If we stipulate that this is good “economic medicine” and central banks have no incentive to stop “printing currency units”, then what is the trigger for a depression? Or what is the recognition factor that wakes up “We, The Sheeple” to the reality of one big ugly “economic” chicken coming home to roost.

In Venezuela, it had to be the unavailability of toilet paper at any price.

What will it be here in the USA? 

Since “printing the currency units” will lead to inflation, it’s important to hide that fact from “We, The Sheeple”.

But sooner of later, the inputs to production will be bid up and that has to be reflect in the price to the end consumer. At some point, the outputs can not be produced for a profit and compensate for the risk involved.

So when the shelfs begin to be missing “stuff”, that’s the trigger.

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ECONOMICS: Krugman is Obama / Clinton cheerleader

Monday, July 18, 2016

http://contrakrugman.com/ep-43-krugman-says-investors-have-given-up-hope-so-what-happened-to-that-obama-recovery-paul/

Ep. 43 Krugman Says Investors Have Given Up Hope…So, What Happened to that Obama Recovery, Paul?
16 July 2016     |     Tom Woods  

This week, Krugman considers several possible explanations for why long-term interest rates are so low around the world. The one he settles on: investors have concluded that the weak economy is the new normal, so to speak, so they’re willing to accept low yields. But this explanation contradicts Krugman’s repeated insistence that the Obama recovery is stronger than ignorant right-wingers give it credit for. Which is it?

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If “economics” is a natural science — which I believe it is, then how can it’s “laws” be ignored without consequences.

Imagine physics if the speed of light was not a constant?

Imagine chemistry if elements’ characteristics were ignored.

Imagine math if π was published as 3.14 exactly. 

Chaos!

Economics’ supply and demand is an observed logically consistent “law” (i.e., lower your price and people can buy more; raise your price and the opposite happens).

Interest rates are a reflection of people’s time preference. Not what the Gooferment says it is.

Argh!

When the FED just “prints” money, people make terrible decisions!

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