Recent comments

  • Refusal to face any reality, refusal to realize the U.S. workforce, U.S. middle class is the real economy and the nation?

    Are they that stupid? (oops anyone who put the corporate fortunes at the feet of CDOs based on liar loans and fictional income/people mortgages....hmmm, maybe this is rhetorical).

    Reply to: The Precipitous Decline in the U$D   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • Can you elaborate on how;

    Treasury and Fed trying to add leverage to help households sustain their own unsustainable levels of debt;

    they plan to do this? I mean we have already been down the road twice with so called "stimulous" checks.

    Tax breaks? Obama was pulling back the payroll tax break he instituted this year starting next year. (short lived middle class tax break)

    Reply to: The Precipitous Decline in the U$D   15 years 6 months ago
  • BTW - nice list idea. I put Greenspan at the top.

    Anyway my take. I dont think they are trying to turn the US into a third world country. Ultimately it may happen but I believe all their efforts are being geared towards trying to put things back to the way they were. Simple as that.

    Prior to the crash the economy was working great for the top 1% as their incomes were increasing several fold while the rest of us were losing ground without any real increase in income since the last decade. Multi national corporations were praising the New World Order of globalization as they have found an entire world of cheap labor. Their short sighted vision was only about the here and now and they needed the US consumer to keep on buying crap they don't need and have no place to store it.

    The powers that be (answering to the ultra wealthy) will pull out all the stops to try and return us to the way it was. Their hold on power will only increase as they change the rules in an attempt to try and rebalance the playing field. They will devalue the currency to wipe out the debt that they are creating .... ultimately it will fail and they will take the country, the middle class and poor, and whatever other country that ties themselves to the almighty dollar.

    This is why you are seeing other countries starting to limit their exposure. Nobody wants to create a stampede to the door but those that are paying attention are slowly inching that way and hoping nobody else notices.

    Reply to: The Precipitous Decline in the U$D   15 years 6 months ago
  • Wouldn't that make a nice Letterman list?

    Ok, I have a theory, which maybe in outer space, that they are trying to turn the United States into a 3rd world currency for the purposes of globalization, trade and most of all, using currency exchange rates to try to reduce the deficit in reality.

    yet at the same time, trying to avoid the problem of the dollar now longer being a reserve currency for oil trading.

    But, all of this will backfire and turn the United States.....into a 3rd world country.

    Anyone really tracking on this want to conjecture as to the real motivations? I know midtowng, you are tracking this extensively with your history knowledge of Bretton Woods.

    Reply to: The Precipitous Decline in the U$D   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • The NY times noticed the dollar's fall this past week.

    “Those little footsteps coming down the hallway have begun to frighten many people,” said David M. Darst, chief investment strategist at the Global Wealth Management Group of Morgan Stanley. “The dollar has sold off inexorably, slowly but surely. The key thing driving it is psychology.”

    The Federal Reserve is printing money from thin air, and the government is issuing trillions of dollars in new debt as it tries to spend its way out of the recession with a huge stimulus package, new lending programs, health care overhauls and automotive rescues.

    Experts warned there might not be enough demand to sop up all those new dollars and dollar-denominated Treasury securities. That led investors to fret about the sustainability of the United States government’s AAA sovereign credit rating after the Standard & Poor’s ratings agency warned this week that the sovereign rating of Britain — which is spending hundreds of billions of pounds to engineer a recovery — is under threat.

    And the LA Times noticed the fall in treasuries.

    This week couldn't end fast enough for the Treasury bond market or the dollar, both of which were hammered again today as investors bailed out in thin pre-holiday trading.

    The yield on the 10-year T-note jumped to 3.45%, up from 3.35% on Thursday and 3.14% a week ago. The yield now is the highest since mid-November.

    So much for the idea of Treasuries being a haven: The iShares Barclays 20+Year Treasury exchange-traded fund, which owns long-term government bonds, has lost 22% of its value since the start of the year as rising market yields have depressed older bonds’ prices.

    Reply to: The Precipitous Decline in the U$D   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • The worldwide move away from the dollar is incredibly slow and extended, but it is happening. More importantly, once the trend is established, it would be almost impossible to reverse it.

    Reply to: The Precipitous Decline in the U$D   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • There was a good article in the Financial Times this past week by David Roche. He three flaws why any notion of a "V-shaped" recovery and bull market were flawed and, at the time, he thought the markets were gravely mistaken about any recovery:

    1) U.S. households have not fully deleveraged yet (actually I am working on a story about this);

    2) Treasury and Fed trying to add leverage to help households sustain their own unsustainable levels of debt;

    3) Insolvency problem has not been dealt with by Fed and Treasury.

    It is a good article.

    Reply to: The Precipitous Decline in the U$D   15 years 6 months ago
  • I just read this post on Naked Capitalism and he brazenly accuses the Federal Reserve of risking hyperinflation.

    So, while we are currently in a deflationary period, what is going on with the dollar is now started to hit the big "H" word.

    He also calls this impending recovery, fake.

    Reply to: The Precipitous Decline in the U$D   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • Reply to: Bank Failure Friday Comes on Thursday - BankUnited - Failure 34 for '09   15 years 6 months ago
  • Anybody using mobile devices or what some sort of twitter interface etc.?

    I don't use twitter at all but it's all the rage these days so I might be able to find some "mobile" and texting types of add ons.

    Seems kind of ridiculous in a way because a blog's best feature is the fact we can write detailed long posts with lots of references, so trying to boil down our thought to 16 words at a time...well, what would that be? TEIF? (The Economy is fucked).

    Reply to: EP Upgrade Site Wish List   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • We may not always agree but one thing for sure. We will debate it at the facts and not marginalize.

    Of course I would like to add that you're our ray of sunshine in dark and stormy waters. (:o)

    Reply to: Dollar decline taking on "life of its own"   15 years 6 months ago
  • And unreasonably so. As such- he's a good $100 Trillion short of providing the level of Keynesian stimulus he claims to believe in.

    Which means this fall, we'll start with DEFLATION, then STAGFLATION, followed by Bernake wising up and overreacting throwing us into HYPERINFLATION.

    And every stage of the way, the US Government will look like the kind of bumbling idiots international too-good-for-the-rest-of-us investors would rather avoid doing business with.

    -------------------------------------
    Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.

    Reply to: Dollar decline taking on "life of its own"   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • Right now they're being far too optimistic & conservative. I suspect we will see that end this fall- dramatically enough to see them become pessimistic and liberal.

    And it's the second that will truly destroy the currency. The first will remove it from being a reserve currency as it will turn out there isn't enough to take us back to a credit-free economy. The second, will devalue the currency very fast.

    -------------------------------------
    Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.

    Reply to: "Fed’s warn of possible inflation"   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • You're right that it is the right way to go- but with both housing and jobs, there's definitely a supply/demand curve, and Oregon's land use laws (which, BTW, I'm for, don't get me wrong here, I'm a life long 'gonie and I like my open spaces) do have a tendency to limit development (as they are supposed to). Less supply, raises the price on housing (even RENTING here is expensive) and keeps a lid on the total number of jobs available (though the current downturn is doing more of that).

    As to the creative class- well, Wieden-Kennedy is a major employer in Portland because they can tap into that creative class.
    -------------------------------------
    Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.

    Reply to: Where are the Stimulus Jobs?   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • This is an absolutely first-rate description of why this blog is important.

    Reply to: Dollar decline taking on "life of its own"   15 years 6 months ago
  • was multifold. First, there was no community blog anywhere devoted to all things economic. I believe economic policy is the most important policy of them all and that's because so often even wars are over economics.
    Of the "good blogs" on economics it's basically either one person or a select group and just recently they started to do guest posts. Now I can understand this because many are real Economists or real financial analysts, etc. but there was no place, no voice for the layperson or the occasional economist, the educated.

    It's also difficult (and we've had a few) to enable anyone to write a blog post and on top of it go to the front page and keep the credibility and quality up. Now so far, so fantastic....we have good credibility due to the diligence, good references, accurate statistics of everyone who is writing.

    It's all great to argue about whether the color of a touched up photo makes Obama look "more black" and therefore is discriminatory but when you've got 50% of all black students dropping out of high school, a huge percentage in jail and economic opportunity almost non-existent, huge disparity in economic justice (and I can tell you for sure in tech jobs....discrimination is RAMPANT to this day!) etc...

    that to me is the important thing.

    The other reason was I really cited my posts with credible references yet I would get "comments" in 15 seconds of posting so there is no way they even scanned the post...
    with some sort of BS that topic x was BS and the conclusion is y. This is especially true when I wrote about H-1B guest worker Visas and Professional labor issues but I got it even when writing a post about the brazen sex discrimination still going on in STEM occupational areas.

    I also discovered many a credible economics blogger and readers who won't go near DK because they feel the site has no credibility, not realizing that there is wide variance between bloggers.

    The final thing was while people believe sites like DK are a "community", it's really a top down site. It's owned by kos and he selects what is on the front page. Users cannot determine what post gets the most visibility. I wanted a "bottom up" control of the blog so users, readers can determine what should and should not be on the front page.

    i.e. try to create a "bottom up" architecture.

    BTW, this "buttom up" architecture is why it's taking me so friggin' long to do the upgrade. I've got some database conflicts with that mode and I want that....I'm trying to even improve it.

    Reply to: Dollar decline taking on "life of its own"   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • Too little and your efforts fail. Too much and you overshoot into inflation hell.

    Do it just right though ..... and ..... who are we kidding. These were the same cheerleaders who yammered about bringing the economy in for a soft landing, skirting a recession, economy is strong .... all bullshit.

    They will fail miserably and destroy the currency in the process.

    Reply to: "Fed’s warn of possible inflation"   15 years 6 months ago
  • Which is why I refuse to post there anymore.

    You may not see "asshole" right here in these statements .... but scratch the surface and the ad hominem insults appear right away.

    So .... if your looking to do battle .... gjohnsit (aka midtowng) has x-posted his diary (aka article) on the orange.

    As for me ... I like it here just fine.

    Reply to: Dollar decline taking on "life of its own"   15 years 6 months ago
  • It seems there is an array of not-so-great scenarios for the U.S. in between.

    Hyperinflation - Stagflation - Capital flight

    Either there is historical precedence for Bernanke's QE strategy (and we have an idea of the results) or there is no precedence and all bets are off

    Reply to: Dollar decline taking on "life of its own"   15 years 6 months ago
  • Keynes Stimulus was to directly increase individual income. It was income that was the key element in the equation...but that income had to go to citizens, people in the U.S. and of course back in 1920, they didn't have global labor arbitrage so of course this isn't being addressed.

    So, Keynes stimulus equation really means jobs, jobs, jobs or money directly into the pockets of people, that's raw money.

    His "buy cars and buy houses" is indirect money and zeroed in on areas that well, in my view really put the market out of balance. i.e. houses are too expensive and many cars are too. Who the hell is paying $40k for a new car anyway? Who is taking on these $400-800/month car payments?

    I don't see anything so "asshole" in his statements but if you are referring to people who "hound" you on DK just "because" or you might have hinted on some "thought" against their "religion" and he's that type...

    I'll take your word on it.

    Let's estimate the total number of hours wasted in useless comment wars on DK. ;) I sure now I got sucked into the vortex until I realized it wasn't an enlightening discussion by any stretch....

    Reply to: Dollar decline taking on "life of its own"   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:

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