To agree the 1970 notion is true, but they were long living on borrowed time by 1970 - at least 5 years and probably more. Just witness the speed w/ which it collapsed between 73 and 82.

 

There's a book on the what happened in the 1970 that pretty much says what you do, that the seeds of decline started in the 1960s, as you note. 

 

Pivotal Decade: How the US Traded Factories for Finance...

 

 

Manufacturing is still huge in this country.  It is the major economic driver in Ohio.  People conflate the huge job losses that are largely due to automation with our jobs going to Japan and China. 

 

I don't like the message, because it discourages people from pursuing manufacturing careers.  I would advise young people to study quality systems, accounting, "enterprise resource" software, personell, economics, etc.

STEM and the trades.

Manufacturing is still big, but it takes so many fewer people to make stuff. The problem of automation is real and has plagued industrial economies literally from day one, when they replaced brutes w/ water power.

Also the rhythms of an industrial economy (which by nature includes periodic layoffs) does not fill well w/ our contemporary culture in many ways (time, hard work, intellectual engagement of a certain kind), but I think they should all go into History (I kid). I hope one of the educational responses to the changing economy would be the development of a liberal arts trade school - a place where folks can learn a valuable trade and a good basis in the traditional liberal arts.

I'd like to get the stats over time for (a) the percentage of after-tax income devoted to mortgage payments, (b) the velocity of money passing through banks over time

 

Someone pointed me to this chart that shows the velocity of M2 money over the past 35 years.  Not exactly what you are asking, but it does show an interesting drop corresponding to the rise of mortgage lending 8 years ago ( along with drops for the double-dip recessions of the early 1980s and the current one)....

 

http://www.crystalbull.com/stock-market-timing/Velocity-Of-Money-chart/m2/

came across these statistics on Wikipedia (hard to find them elsewhere unless you really know where to look, I guess)

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_Joe

 

For year 2005....

 

the median houshold income: $46,326/yr or $3,860/month.  for dual-earner households, it's $67,348/yr or $5,612/mth

 

the median home value: $167,500

 

the median mortgage payment:  $1295

 

So take your pick of numbers and see what you get for mortgage payment as a percent of gross income...

 

for median household income:  $1295 / $3,860 = 33.5% of gross monthly income

 

But not all median households are homeowners.  Not by any imagination.  So using the median household income of dual wage earners is probably a better approximation of mortgage servicing calculations (although by no means a perfect way to do it, but this is on the fly..)

 

median dual-earner household income: $1295 / $5,612 = 23.1% on gross monthly income

 

The link goes on to say that for year 2002, Middle income households tended to spend roughly 18% of their monthly income on housing.

 

Would be interesting to see how this changes over time, as you say.

 

damn  I wish my mortgage was $1295!

damn  I wish my mortgage was $1295!

 

to get that payment, would you accept an annual salary equal to the median household income (which-ever is appropriate) ?

There was an interesting article in the Economist from mid-September. It noted that during the recession work hours by blue collar and the highest paid workers have actually increased, but the middle-manager and clerk class has decreased by quite a bit. They pointed to the fact that these folks are being displaced by investment in IT and the internet. I'd provide a link by The Economist is very pay-walled.

^For a long time I thought overtime was pretty ridiculous. So you're going to pay someone 1 1/2 to 3 times as much for work time where their productivity is constantly dropping and their chance for mistakes and injury increase dramatically? Then I realized that so much of a full-time worker's pay consists of their benefits (especially healthcare) that it's still cheaper to pay them twice as much cash for crummy "tired guy work" than it is to hire another person. The more overtime worked, the higher health and workers' comp insurance rises since all that work makes people unhealthy and dangerous, the effect snowballs. More people have to be fired to keep the 80 hour a week guy going. Meanwhile, high paid white collar workers have to spend more time on e-mail and other BS rather than actual work since they lost their middle managers and clerical staff. Eventually, you're paying them a ton of money to do work that could be done more cheaply and efficiently by someone else. But at least you didn't have to pay a second person's healthcare. This is why employer-paid health care is stupid. It fosters a culture where people are pushed to the max so much that their health goes in the crapper while creating unemployment at the same time.

 

Other countries know this. Somehow it goes right over America's head.

damn  I wish my mortgage was $1295!

 

to get that payment, would you accept an annual salary equal to the median household income (which-ever is appropriate) ?

 

HELL NO!

Something tells me the rise in income, in August, do to the return of umeployment extensions didn't equate to much of a rise in consumer spending (expect for gas and food).

 

September consumer spending weakens while incomes dip

 

"Americans slowed their spending in September to the weakest pace in three months and their incomes fell for the first time in 14 months.

 

Personal spending rose at an annual rate of 0.2 percent in September, the Commerce Department said Monday. That's below the 0.5-percent gains recorded in July and August.

 

Incomes fell 0.1 percent in September, following a 0.4-percent rise in August that had been pushed higher by the return of extended unemployment benefits."

http://www.ibj.com/september-consumer-spending-weakens-while-incomes-dip/PARAMS/article/23158

At the minimum, this should be seen as a warning shot to the 'To Big to Fail' crowd or this could be step one setting into motion some future actions on these instititutions. Could only hope.

 

New Rules on Bank Breakups

FDIC Expected to Use Discretion to Rank the Creditors; That Can Be Tricky

 

"The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., as part of a proposed rule, is expected to say that all creditors of large, nonbank financial firms should expect losses in a failure, according to people familiar with the government's plans. The rules are part of a broader effort to end the era when certain institutions were judged "too big to fail" because the government had no orderly way to dismantle them."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704011904575538483479899308.html

I haven't read the proposed regulations myself, but I actually see a fair number of echoes in existing Chapter 11 bankruptcy law and practice in those proposed regulations, at least as summarized by the WSJ.  Interestingly, the analogue that leapt immediately to mind was the practice of moving for preferential treatment of essential trade creditors (business-to-business vendors, primarily) for Chapter 11 debtors.  It's a practice that has mixed support among the bankruptcy judiciary, but which companies often strenuously argue for.  The argument makes sense from a business perspective: There very often *are* specific contractual parties with whom an ongoing relationship is of absolutely paramount importance.  A restaurant might very well absolutely need to keep its account in good standing with Sysco, for example, because getting cut off there would effectively shut down the business (just inventing an example off the cuff to avoid having to pull one from an actual client--I don't know if Sysco really does have that potentially life-or-death power over restaurants, but it could).  Therefore, the debtor will often move the bankruptcy court for leave to pay these "critical vendors" early in the case.  Whether that business intuition can be permissibly vindicated by bankruptcy courts, which are theoretically also supposed to treat all similarly situated creditors equally, is something of an open question in bankruptcy law, but the general practice has been to let it go.  Quite often, such motions don't even meet with objections, and bankruptcy judges are seldom going to start rocking the boat when they've got a motion before them that has no opposition.

 

Moving back to the wind-down authority for large financial institutions: What this law effectively does is legitimate the concept in this specific context, and proceed to treat money itself as the "goods" and short-term lenders as the "vendors."  For a financial institution, that's actually not as dramatic a shift as one might think.  Banks borrow money in short-term markets incredibly frequently--basically every day.  They pay for it, generally fairly low short-term interest rates.  It's not too big of a conceptual stretch to say that they're "buying" money from "vendors," and that their ability to continue borrowing in the short-term markets is very much like the relationship of a manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer, etc. to its critical vendors.

Some positive news.

 

Private sector October job growth beats expectations

 

"NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. companies added to payrolls more than expected in October, slightly boosting optimism about the job market ahead of Friday's government employment report.

 

U.S. private employers added 43,000 jobs in October compared with a revised loss of 2,000 jobs in September, payrolls processor ADP Employer Services, which developed the report with Macroeconomic Advisers LLC, said on Wednesday."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101103/bs_nm/us_usa_economy

 

Of course the unemployment numbers continue to grow by about 400,000 a month, even with this job growth.

"Of course the unemployment numbers continue to grow by about 400,000 a month, even with this job growth. "

 

Not sure what you mean by this number.  There are approx 450k NEW unemployment applications each month.  But a lot of people are also finding jobs, probably more than the number of people losing jobs at the moment.  So the count of employed people is probably inching up at the moment.

 

Now, there are approx 100k new job entrants each month based on population growth projections.

 

So, with the number of "newly jobless" pretty much matching the number of "newly employed" each month, it's fair to say the US is falling behind "needed jobs" by some 100k jobs/month (may be 150k, I don't remember).

 

But I don't think the 400k/month number seems right.

Der Spiegel has an excellent, and long, 6-part set of articles on the US economic debacle...

 

Superpower in Decline

 

(they are talking about economic decline, not military decline). 

 

 

"Of course the unemployment numbers continue to grow by about 400,000 a month, even with this job growth. "

 

Not sure what you mean by this number.  There are approx 450k NEW unemployment applications each month.  But a lot of people are also finding jobs, probably more than the number of people losing jobs at the moment.  So the count of employed people is probably inching up at the moment.

 

Now, there are approx 100k new job entrants each month based on population growth projections.

 

So, with the number of "newly jobless" pretty much matching the number of "newly employed" each month, it's fair to say the US is falling behind "needed jobs" by some 100k jobs/month (may be 150k, I don't remember).

 

But I don't think the 400k/month number seems right.

 

Trying to understand what you are saying.

 

Yes,

We are seeing about 450,000 new unemployment claims each month. I don't believe the economy is creating 450,000 new jobs each month. ADP doesn't show that and the government numbers don't show that. By what I see in the data, we continue to have more and more unemployed people each month in the US.

 

What I am hoping for the ADP and other stats is the amount of people that are joining the unemployment ranks each month are starting to decline. But, at this rate we are still going deep into the unemployment hole, just at a slower rate.

 

I think we are probably saying the same thing?

For an economy that not in a recession, the FEDs sure act like that is not the case. Maybe its an illness that is much bigger and different than just a recession? Maybe the article Jeffery just posted above is touching on the bigger issue? If nothing else, the currency war just took a step forward.

 

Fed to buy $600 billion in bonds to aid economy

 

"WASHINGTON—The Federal Reserve announced a bold plan Wednesday to try to invigorate the economy by buying $600 billion more in Treasury bonds. The Fed said it would buy about $75 billion a month in long-term government bonds through the middle of 2011 to further drive down interest rates on mortgages and other debt.

This is in addition to an expected $250 billion to $300 billion in Fed purchases over the same period from reinvesting proceeds from its mortgage portfolio."

 

Read more: Fed to buy $600 billion in bonds to aid economy - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_16512900#ixzz14G6kr3mL

Der Spiegel has an excellent, and long, 6-part set of articles on the US economic debacle...

 

Superpower in Decline

 

(they are talking about economic decline, not military decline). 

 

 

 

 

I read the whole thing. There are some excellent insights in the article, distilled in a manner that could explain to a lot of Americans (ones that don't 'get it' yet) why things aren't like 1964 any more and that we can't go back.

 

One key point in the article was made about how Obama doesn't buy into the American Dream since he comes from a Kenyan background. The people that can't relate to him (and there are a lot of them) were raised with the American Dream-style sense of entitlement. While Obama's heritage may be part of it, the fact is that he knows that the dream is over. He is incapable of pretending or lying that it is not, unlike other politicians. Kind of like how Carter refused to come up with scams to temporarily relieve energy issues or surgarcoat what was going on with them. The people got rid of him for that.

 

During the 2000s, nobody was willing to say that all this creative financing stuff was BS except professors and a few personal financial advisers (mostly small town ones). The meltdown actually had to happen for people to listen. What other financial and cultural crises will be allowed to happen after so many stick their fingers in their ears and yell "na na na na na na na"?

One key point in the article was made about how Obama doesn't buy into the American Dream since he comes from a Kenyan background.

 

???  How so?  He never lived there and barely knew his Kenyan father.  I think he has only been there 2 times in his entire life and both came after his father had died in a car crash.

I didn't say it, the article did.

I guess last weeks headline, about the G20 promising no currency war, that Wall Street and the financial markets all cheered was a little premature. This could get ugly pretty fast. Its the battle to make your goods more affordable on a the world market. While the US has been devaluing its currency for some time now, Japan and China are king at this right now.

 

Emerging market policymakers vow to combat Fed's QE2

 

SEOUL/BEIJING (Reuters) - Policymakers from the world's new economic powerhouses in Latin America and Asia pledged on Thursday to come up with fresh measures to curb capital inflows after the U.S. Federal Reserve said it would print billions of dollars to rescue the economy.

 

"As long as the world exercises no restraint in issuing global currencies such as the dollar -- and this is not easy -- then the occurrence of another crisis is inevitable, as quite a few wise Westerners lament," Xia Bin, an advisor to China's central bank wrote in a newspaper managed by the bank.

 

South Korea's Ministry of Finance and Strategy said it had sent "a message to the markets" on Thursday and would "aggressively" consider controls on capital flows while Brazil's Foreign Trade Secretary said the Fed's move could cause "retaliatory measures".

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Emerging-market-policymakers-rb-1608515460.html?x=0

It's a move in the right direction. We are still on a downward slope, with a growing unemployment number. But, the slope is not as steep as it was.

Good news on payrolls isn’t good enough

Commentary: Population is still growing faster than jobs are

 

"WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Finally, the economy is starting to deliver some good news. Not great news, but good.

 

After struggling through the summer, the labor market is strengthening again. Payrolls rose by 151,000 in October, the Labor Department reported, beating the economists’ predictions handily. What’s more, the job losses in August and September weren’t as deep as previously reported."

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/good-news-on-payrolls-isnt-good-enough-2010-11-05

 

I guess last weeks headline, about the G20 promising no currency war, that Wall Street and the financial markets all cheered was a little premature. This could get ugly pretty fast. Its the battle to make your goods more affordable on a the world market. While the US has been devaluing its currency for some time now, Japan and China are king at this right now.

So, should I *not* buy US Savings Bonds?

QE2 is the most depressing thing in the world.

I didn't say it, the article did.

 

The article was quoting D'Nesh Disouza. 

 

Here's the context:

 

"

 

Indeed, the United States of 2010 is a hate-filled country.

 

D'Souza says that Obama's father was an anti-colonialist and that he dreamed of his native Kenya liberating itself from its British colonial rulers. His son Barack has the same dream, says D'Souza. He wants to put America, the neo-colonial power of the 21st century, in its place. "The most powerful country in the world is being governed according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s," D'Souza writes. "America today is governed by a ghost."

 

.....D'Souza himself thinks he knows why so many people believe that Obama was not born in the United States and is a Muslim. People can't identify with him, says D'Souza, because he doesn't believe in the American dream.

 

This is the climate in the country leading up to the Congressional elections on Nov. 2. It isn't shaped by logic or an interest in rational debate."

The Germans are aghast at "Quantitative Easing" (and our economic policy of weakening the dollar):

 

Results of Stimulus Could be Horrendous

 

Germany is not impressed. One day after the United States Federal Reserve announced that it would pump $600 billion (€423 billion) into America's banking system over the next eight months, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble sharply criticized the decision.

 

 

"I don't think they are going to solve their problems that way," Schäuble told German public broadcaster ZDF in a Thursday evening interview. "They have already pumped an endless amount of money into the economy via taking on extremely high public debt and through a Fed policy that has already pumped a lot of money into the economy.

I didn't say it, the article did.

 

The article was quoting D'Nesh Disouza.  Here's the context:

"  Indeed, the United States of 2010 is a hate-filled country.

 

D'Souza says that Obama's father was an anti-colonialist and that he dreamed of his native Kenya liberating itself from its British colonial rulers. His son Barack has the same dream, says D'Souza.

America was founded on an  anti-colonialist "dream" of liberating herself from British colonial rulers

 

He wants to put America, the neo-colonial power of the 21st century, in its place.

D'nesh Disouza is a pernicious douchebag.

 

The RW gets a huge amount of misinformation into the minds of Americans.  That was a perfect example of how they do it.

 

For another example, voters thought that President Obama had raised taxes, when in fact most Americans got a big tax cut. 

First off, any raising or lowering taxes that Obama may have done has been minor; in fact, I don't even know what tax bill you're talking about.  The real issue is what happens after this year to the Bush tax cuts.  Incidentally, I support repealing those in their entirety.  I know the GOP doesn't, of course.  However, the point here is that I'm having trouble understanding what kind of tax relief you're saying Obama has actually moved through Congress.

 

Second, increases in debt are just promises to raise taxes later.  A certain amount of debt can be refinanced indefinitely, of course, but even if so, that will simply mean a greater and greater share of the federal budget is consumed by debt service payments, forcing the country to choose between increasing taxes anyway or cutting spending later by more than would otherwise be necessary.  From my personal perspective, this is particularly galling because the day of reckoning is likely being (i) exacerbated with every additional dollar borrowed, and (ii) put off until basically exactly my likely peak earning years.  Even those who can't say the latter can appreciate the former, however.

 

People forget that even during the Great Depression, while the debt was nonzero, the U.S. was actually a net *creditor* nation.  Even Keynes, the patron saint of leftist tax-and-spend fiscal policy, didn't advocate that nations already heavily in debt borrow even more in order to try to revitalize their economies.

 

  "My likely peak earning years."

 

  Chances are that you are in your peak earning years right now.  :-o

Eeek.  Don't say that.  November is annual reviews month.  :drunk: :cry:

First off, any raising or lowering taxes that Obama may have done has been minor; in fact, I don't even know what tax bill you're talking about.  The real issue is what happens after this year to the Bush tax cuts.  Incidentally, I support repealing those in their entirety.

 

A couple of statements, not necessarily directed toward you, but nonetheless inspired by your comments, and then a few direct questions.

 

Statement:

It's interesting how the whole Bush tax cut issue is being framed as "repeal" or a "tax increase".  The expiration date was set in the law.  Any action either to keep in their entirety or in part is in fact a subversion of the intent of the law.  They were passed purposefully for a finite period of time.  In fact, if I recall correctly, they were sold as "stimulus".

 

People forget that even during the Great Depression, while the debt was nonzero, the U.S. was actually a net *creditor* nation.  Even Keynes, the patron saint of leftist tax-and-spend fiscal policy, didn't advocate that nations already heavily in debt borrow even more in order to try to revitalize their economies.

 

Statement:

I'm not sure why "tax-and-spend" policies are considered leftist when they are the very policies enacted during the most recent undivided Republican/conservative period of government.  These are verifiable facts.  Whether American money is spent on Americans or Iraqis, it's still tax and spend.  Whether it's all spend and no tax, it's still tax and spend, because anything spent has to be raised through a tax.

 

Questions:

Why does it make any difference if you are a net creditor nation or a net debtor nation for Keynesian policy to be effective?  What difference would it make?  What kind of a word is "nonzero"?  Do you mean the government was running a surplus during the Depression?

First off, any raising or lowering taxes that Obama may have done has been minor; in fact, I don't even know what tax bill you're talking about. The real issue is what happens after this year to the Bush tax cuts. Incidentally, I support repealing those in their entirety.

 

A couple of statements, not necessarily directed toward you, but nonetheless inspired by your comments, and then a few direct questions.

 

Statement:

It's interesting how the whole Bush tax cut issue is being framed as "repeal" or a "tax increase". The expiration date was set in the law. Any action either to keep in their entirety or in part is in fact a subversion of the intent of the law. They were passed purposefully for a finite period of time. In fact, if I recall correctly, they were sold as "stimulus".

 

You're overcomplicating the issue, from the perspective of someone living in 2010.  Most people care far more about the simple question "what am I going to be paying in taxes?" than the nuances of the action/inaction distinction, default or baseline assumptions, etc. etc. etc.

 

People forget that even during the Great Depression, while the debt was nonzero, the U.S. was actually a net *creditor* nation. Even Keynes, the patron saint of leftist tax-and-spend fiscal policy, didn't advocate that nations already heavily in debt borrow even more in order to try to revitalize their economies.

 

Statement:

I'm not sure why "tax-and-spend" policies are considered leftist when they are the very policies enacted during the most recent undivided Republican/conservative period of government. These are verifiable facts. Whether American money is spent on Americans or Iraqis, it's still tax and spend. Whether it's all spend and no tax, it's still tax and spend, because anything spent has to be raised through a tax.

 

Say rather that they were borrow-and-spend, not tax-and-spend.  That obviously was not popular either, given the outcomes of the 2006 and 2008 elections (which may well repeat themselves if the GOP doesn't learn from the drubbing it took then).

 

Questions:

Why does it make any difference if you are a net creditor nation or a net debtor nation for Keynesian policy to be effective? What difference would it make? What kind of a word is "nonzero"? Do you mean the government was running a surplus during the Depression?

 

Because if you're a net debtor nation and plunging yourself further into debt, that way does not lie recovery--that way lies Greece.

 

America was not running a surplus during the Great Depression.  We were a net creditor nation to other nations, however, before the Great Depression, somewhat like China is today.

Because if you're a net debtor nation and plunging yourself further into debt, that way does not lie recovery--that way lies Greece.

The USA produces 43 times what Greece produces, and we have control over our currency.  I'm not sure why people keep bringing Greece up as some example that we should be wary of.

 

Our problem right now is not that we’re “living beyond our means” as a country; in fact, total private consumption plus gross private domestic investment plus government spending is considerably less than our capacity to produce goods and services. If we stimulate demand, the real cost of the resulting production is zero. The position of the short-run deficit hawks is that we should continue to leave money on the table, on the ground that (other people’s) pain is good.

 

America was not running a surplus during the Great Depression.  We were a net creditor nation to other nations, however, before the Great Depression, somewhat like China is today.

Why does it make a difference for Keynesian policies to be effective if you are a net creditor nation or a net debtor nation?  What does nonzero mean?

The fact that we produce many times what Greece produces means nothing; our obligations are larger as well.  What matters is the debt-to-GDP ratio.  We are not in Greece's territory yet, but we are approaching it.  As to our currency independence, that exists precisely because we have not abused our currency as much as other nations have.  That hardly serves as a good excuse to start.  The fact that you wish to ignore the Greek example (and every other example of where debts have buried a state and/or government) is equally immaterial; that is a motivated blindness on your part unsupported by credible evidence or rational economic theory.  It is simply waving away evidence that would discredit your notion that we can spend our way into prosperity.

 

As to why the fiscal starting point matters, I will see if I can find the more technical explanation than "common sense."  I don't bookmark every article I read for the purpose of relinking in eventual online debates.

The fact that we produce many times what Greece produces means nothing; our obligations are larger as well.  What matters is the debt-to-GDP ratio.  We are not in Greece's territory yet, but we are approaching it.

Once again, Greece is a terrible analogy when one has Japan readily available.  Their population and GDP is much closer to the US.  They have a ridiculous debt-to-GDP ration and on top of that, they have a declining population; despite this, they are paying for immigrants to return home.  And this has been happening there since the 90s.  Yet they are able to sell debt at perfectly manageable interest rates.

 

As to our currency independence, that exists precisely because we have not abused our currency as much as other nations have.  That hardly serves as a good excuse to start.

Our currency independence exist because we are a sovereign nation.  That's it.

 

Joining the euro was a political decision.  It had nothing to do with 'historical currency abuse'.  Hungary is in the European Union, they had the worst case of hyperinflation ever recorded, yet they've maintained their own currency.

 

The fact that you wish to ignore the Greek example (and every other example of where debts have buried a state and/or government) is equally immaterial; that is a motivated blindness on your part unsupported by credible evidence or rational economic theory.  It is simply waving away evidence that would discredit your notion that we can spend our way into prosperity.

I haven't ignored the Greece example, I've examined it and described how it is a poor analogy for the U.S.  I've then provided the much better analogy of Japan, which isn't "spending its way into prosperity" but certainly isn't suffering from any of the dreadful things so-called conservative commentators insist will be in our future.  California didn't even default, and they are much closer to Greece as a comparison.  From what I can tell, Greece is paying 8% more interest on its 10-year bonds than California is, and Cali is probably more restricted in their ability to actually raise revenue.

 

I can't think of a single example of an advanced nation that is similar to the U.S. in population, economic and political freedom, productive capacity that is generating the type of growth considered "not stagnant" with near full employment, along with few social programs and low levels of taxation.

 

What does "nonzero" mean?

Protectionism of internal employment and the ability to compete in the world markets is definitely growing. Will it just be more talk, or will someone finally start throwing toys in the sandbox at the other kids?

 

Fed Global Backlash Grows

China and Russia Join Germany in Scolding; Obama Defends Move as Pro-Growth

 

"NEW DELHI—Global controversy mounted over the Federal Reserve's decision to pump billions of dollars into the U.S. economy, with President Barack Obama defending the move as China, Russia and the euro zone added to a chorus of criticism."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703514904575602820114533804.html?mod=mktw

What does "nonzero" mean?

 

It means "<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Anonzero&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a">not zero</a>."

People forget that even during the Great Depression, while the debt was nonzero, the U.S. was actually a net *creditor* nation.  Even Keynes, the patron saint of leftist tax-and-spend fiscal policy, didn't advocate that nations already heavily in debt borrow even more in order to try to revitalize their economies.

+

It means "<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Anonzero&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a">not zero</a>."

=

"People forget that even during the Great Depression, while the debt was a quantity which is not zero; (of a quantity) not equal to zero; if real then either positive or negative;; the U.S. was actually a net *creditor* nation.  Even Keynes, the patron saint of leftist tax-and-spend fiscal policy, didn't advocate that nations already heavily in debt borrow even more in order to try to revitalize their economies."

So when the debt was either positive or negative, even Keynes didn't advocated that nations already heavily in debt borrow even more in order to try to revitalize their economies?

----------------

The U.S. should really be spending more on worthwhile infrastructure projects to maintain our infrastructure, improve what we've got, and reduce unemployment.

 

    Borrowing money can make a good business better, but it makes a bad business worse. The same goes for governments.

 

Borrowing money can make a good business better, but it makes a bad business worse. The same goes for governments.

 

Good thing we don't live in Haiti.

 

Borrowing money can make a good business better, but it makes a bad business worse. The same goes for governments.

 

Good thing we don't live in Haiti.

 

Less bad thing we don't live in Haiti.

^Have you pre-purchased your seastead platform?

Doesn't sound like much of a walkable neighborhood to me. :-P

I'm going on a short vacation to Las Vegas today; I'll take copious notes on the state of the economy there compared to Cleveland.

Alvaro Vargas Llosa on QE2 and the protectionist measures creeping into world policies without stating their name:

 

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/11/10/stealth_protectionism_107905.html

 

It's interesting that Rob Zoellick recently, and now Llosa, both actually mention the possibility of a return to a gold-backed international monetary system.  These are generally considered mainstream figures, not fringe goldbugs like Larry Kudlow and John Tamny.

 

Borrowing money can make a good business better, but it makes a bad business worse. The same goes for governments.

 

Good thing we don't live in Haiti.

 

Less bad thing we don't live in Haiti.

 

Where is there a good government, in your subjective estimation?

 

Borrowing money can make a good business better, but it makes a bad business worse. The same goes for governments.

 

Good thing we don't live in Haiti.

 

Less bad thing we don't live in Haiti.

 

Where is there a good government, in your subjective estimation?

 

There really isn't much of one, across the board.  There are lots of good ideas scattered out there, and more from recent history that have been lost.  (For example, Hong Kong had a lot more going for it before China took it back from the British.)

^I'm slightly curious as to what exactly that was.  Hong Kong was directly ruled by the British in a manner similar to how China does it today until.  They didn't even have 'one-person, one-vote' until the very end before the handover.

 

I guess Gramarye and I at least share a Calvinistic view of the depravity of man.