http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveschaefer/2011/11/30/bernanke-ecb-throw-more-dollars-at-europes-crisis/You know, back in 2006 I didn’t resort to calling people ‘idiots’ when they suggested that the world was decoupling. (I leave the name calling to Paul Krugman.)
If there was any illusion left, it was wiped away today.
Source date (UTC): 2011-11-30 22:31:00 UTC
Efficiency and equality are dirty words. http://www.capitalismv3.com/index.php/2011/11/efficiency-and-equality-are-dirty-words/
Source date (UTC): 2011-11-25 14:57:08 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/140081590268207104
Efficiency and equality are dirty words.
Break up the eurozone. That’s what should be done.
Why create another even more totalitarian bureaucracy that abuses our freedoms in europe to match the one in the USA?
THe west is special because no one was unable to consolidate power, and had to rely upon the balance of powers, specialization and trade.
China solidified, the muslims and ottomans solidified, the hindus solidified at least somewhat, and look what happened. The west, despite being poor and backward invented the industrial revolution TWICE. No one else invented it even once.
The balance of power and freedom are more important to us and to humanity than efficiency and equality.
“Efficiency and equality are dirty words.”
Source date (UTC): 2011-11-24 16:41:00 UTC
The learning curves and forgetting curves of individuals in society, are shorter than the learning curves and the forgetting curves of money in society. … fiat money makes it far too easy to boil the frog.
🙂
Source date (UTC): 2011-11-19 16:36:00 UTC
“Capitalism without failure is like Christianity without Hell. You have to have atonement for ridiculous levels of spending both the US and Europe have gone through. The spending idiocy of the world is going to catch up to itself. And that’s where we are today.” — Kyle Bass, Hayman Capital
Source date (UTC): 2011-11-19 07:55:00 UTC
On the Economist’s View, a Dr Why, a commenter says
In the United States, countercyclical fiscal and monetary policies redistribute income mainly from the rich to the poor, which is politically acceptable. In Europe, countercyclical policies also redistribute income from the German pensioners to the Greek civil servants and the Italian Mafia, which is much less acceptable. Eventually, Germany will probably have to capitulate, since it needs the euro more than anyone else; but for now German politicians have no choice but to play this game of chicken in order to get the best possible deal for their voters.
This is true ideologically but not not in practice. The resistance we see in the states is driven by a redistribution from white to non-white. Today’s poll numbers, divided along racial lines, illustrate natural human tribal sentiments. And that any concept of ‘fair’ is governed by the transfer of status signals in exchange for money. This means that groups with different status signals will never permit monetary transfers. And since racial groups contain different status signals, they will, at least under duress, fail to be charitable with their money. The status signal economy provides all human incentives because it determines access to mates and experiences. THe status signal economy is as real an equilibrium as are supply and demand or IS-MP curves. It is unscientific to believe otherwise.
On the Economist’s View, a Dr Why, a commenter says
In the United States, countercyclical fiscal and monetary policies redistribute income mainly from the rich to the poor, which is politically acceptable. In Europe, countercyclical policies also redistribute income from the German pensioners to the Greek civil servants and the Italian Mafia, which is much less acceptable. Eventually, Germany will probably have to capitulate, since it needs the euro more than anyone else; but for now German politicians have no choice but to play this game of chicken in order to get the best possible deal for their voters.
This is true ideologically but not not in practice. The resistance we see in the states is driven by a redistribution from white to non-white. Today’s poll numbers, divided along racial lines, illustrate natural human tribal sentiments. And that any concept of ‘fair’ is governed by the transfer of status signals in exchange for money. This means that groups with different status signals will never permit monetary transfers. And since racial groups contain different status signals, they will, at least under duress, fail to be charitable with their money. The status signal economy provides all human incentives because it determines access to mates and experiences. THe status signal economy is as real an equilibrium as are supply and demand or IS-MP curves. It is unscientific to believe otherwise.
On Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Nick Rowe asks “Why isn’t NGDP targeting a lefty thing?” and asks why the right seems to support it, instead of supporting inflation targeting. My reply was: Nick, I think you miss the point that from the right’s position, NGDP targeting would require that the government focus its efforts on industrial policy in order to be able to fund redistribution, and therefore cooperate rather than prey on business and industry. This in turn would require we correct our dysfunctional education system that creates uncompetitive workers, and it would reduce class warfare by focusing on specific policy initiatives that would make the nation competitive rather than devolutionary. The right originally abandoned industrial policy because of the collaboration between unions and the state. Now that they see unions as weak and foreign states as a threat, they would prefer to return to industrial policy and very likely, away from free trade – which was just a vehicle for competing against the government-union alliance while the USA had a temporary postwar technological advantage. Conservatism is the sentiment and subsequent philosophy of inter-temporal group persistence by the concentration of capital in all it’s forms. In the USA conservatism also includes an allegiance to the status quo of classical liberalism, which in itself is a commercial meritocratic philosophy that retains the english system of class cooperation through multiple houses of government. The democratic socialist movement is an attempt by the proletariat and public intellectuals to obtain political and economic power by propagating the mythos of equality in order to undermine the multi-class system of government in which tehy are at a disadvantage compared to the commercial productive classes. But it is nothing more than an appeal to power for the purpose of material gain. Nothing more and nothing less. While conservatism is more likely to rely on historical metaphor and moral argument because of their inter-temporal content, and the left is more likely to argue for empirical positivism because it specifically lacks that inter-temporal content and replaces that historical view with an absolute faith in the human ability to manage it’s own destiny, that does not mean that conservatism cannot be articulated as a rational philosophy. It simply means, that because it is more complex, it is harder to do so. But then again, concepts of this depth are usually outside of the understanding of macro economists, and are instead the provenance of political philosophers and historians to whom economic activity is a predictable cycle driven by little more than institutions, military power, trade routes, and population composition.
On Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Nick Rowe asks “Why isn’t NGDP targeting a lefty thing?” and asks why the right seems to support it, instead of supporting inflation targeting. My reply was: Nick, I think you miss the point that from the right’s position, NGDP targeting would require that the government focus its efforts on industrial policy in order to be able to fund redistribution, and therefore cooperate rather than prey on business and industry. This in turn would require we correct our dysfunctional education system that creates uncompetitive workers, and it would reduce class warfare by focusing on specific policy initiatives that would make the nation competitive rather than devolutionary. The right originally abandoned industrial policy because of the collaboration between unions and the state. Now that they see unions as weak and foreign states as a threat, they would prefer to return to industrial policy and very likely, away from free trade – which was just a vehicle for competing against the government-union alliance while the USA had a temporary postwar technological advantage. Conservatism is the sentiment and subsequent philosophy of inter-temporal group persistence by the concentration of capital in all it’s forms. In the USA conservatism also includes an allegiance to the status quo of classical liberalism, which in itself is a commercial meritocratic philosophy that retains the english system of class cooperation through multiple houses of government. The democratic socialist movement is an attempt by the proletariat and public intellectuals to obtain political and economic power by propagating the mythos of equality in order to undermine the multi-class system of government in which tehy are at a disadvantage compared to the commercial productive classes. But it is nothing more than an appeal to power for the purpose of material gain. Nothing more and nothing less. While conservatism is more likely to rely on historical metaphor and moral argument because of their inter-temporal content, and the left is more likely to argue for empirical positivism because it specifically lacks that inter-temporal content and replaces that historical view with an absolute faith in the human ability to manage it’s own destiny, that does not mean that conservatism cannot be articulated as a rational philosophy. It simply means, that because it is more complex, it is harder to do so. But then again, concepts of this depth are usually outside of the understanding of macro economists, and are instead the provenance of political philosophers and historians to whom economic activity is a predictable cycle driven by little more than institutions, military power, trade routes, and population composition.
http://www.capitalismv3.com/index.php/2011/11/why-does-the-right-lean-toward-ngdp-targeting/Why the right leans toward targeting NGDP.
(If I was only this patient when I wrote all the time.)
Source date (UTC): 2011-11-15 11:03:00 UTC