How would you respond, Robert Oak? Do you also consider use of the word "axiomatic" to be evidence of mental illness (autism) and/or "not backed up by statistical facts?"
As a tool of capitalist hegemony the doctrine of general equilibrium is very useful. It assumes that the normal condition of society is for the state to play as little a role in economic life as possible, because the market is part of human nature and the most efficient form of economic organization. The theory, therefore, has a role in legitimizing capitalist hegemony.
A tool of capitalist hegemony? My, what harsh language! One can almost visualize GE theorists visiting smoke-filled rooms to accept bribes from their cigar-puffing benefactors. Indeed, Post-Autistic economists, after observing the word “axiomatic” in the title of my book (Aguilar, 1999), dismissed it out-of-hand, denouncing me as a bought-and-paid-for stooge of Big Business. Apparently, just that one word was enough to convince them of this about me.
But before we dismiss this talk of an epistemological approach being a “tool” of Big Business to “legitimize” their obviously anti-social behavior, let us at least see if the socialists are consistent. James Yunker (2007) writes:
This article evaluates the performance of contemporary capitalism relative to that of a hypothetical alternative designated “profit-oriented market socialism.” In most respects, profit-oriented market socialism would closely mimic contemporary market capitalism. The major difference would be that most profits and interest generated by the operations of publicly-owned business enterprises would be distributed to the general public as a social dividend proportional to household wage and salary income rather than in proportion to household financial assets. The basis of the comparison is a small-scale but comprehensive computable general equilibrium model.
Here we read that GE Theory is not a tool of capitalist hegemony, but a tool of profit-oriented market socialism, that is, publicly-owned business enterprises (e.g. Fannie, Freddie, AIG, etc.) that mimic contemporary market capitalism. And it is not a “tool” in the sense of legitimizing the socialists (presumably, their legitimacy is derived from emotional appeals of the “Gosh, there sure are a lot of poor people – darn capitalists!” variety), but a tool in the literal sense of defining a software model.
Well, which is it? Reglar thinks that GE Theory "assumes that the normal condition of society is for the state to play as little a role in economic life as possible." Yunker sees GE Theory as the basis for a central planner to "mimic contemporary market capitalism" while retaining for himself the authority to distribute the social dividend – hardly a "little role in economic life."
The primary (actually, the only) criticism that socialists have of my writing is that it lacks “substantial references.” Apparently, he whose writing is filled with the most quotations from the most august of academic journals wins. Thus, having observed that Reglar and Yunker have opposite views of GE Theory, we clearly need a tie-breaker. Cristobal Young (2005) writes:
General equilibrium theory – the mathematical analysis of a market economy as a whole – has its roots in the late 19th century works of Leon Walras and Vilfredo Pareto… However, the project failed to attract much following and soon faded into dormancy.
It was the end of the Great Depression, ironically, that saw a tremendous revival of the General Equilibrium (GE)/Welfare economics project. In the US, a loose grouping of devout socialists were busy detailing the elegance of the market equilibrium. The leaders of the GE revival – Oskar Lange, Abba Lerner and Abram Bergson – were cutting-edge mathematical economists and true believers in Soviet-style central planning…
The GE framework, given sufficient mathematical complexity, is actually a grand narrative on the fragility and implausibility of perfect market equilibrium. Successive mathematical torturing has outlined an extensive list of unlikely conditions required to demonstrate general market efficiency. Mark Blaug has nicely summarized a partial inventory: “perfectly rational, omniscient, identical consumers; zero transaction costs; complete markets for all time-stated claims for all conceivable contingent events, no trading at disequilibrium prices; no radical, incalculable uncertainty…; only linearly homogenous production functions; no technical progress requiring capital investment, etc” (1997, p. 5)…
For an economic system that failed to satisfy such assumptions, there seemed a need for government intervention. General equilibrium theory provided a sort of checklist for market critics.
Young supports Yunker’s position though, while they agree that central planning is the inevitable result of economists' acceptance of GE Theory, Young see this as a bad thing and Yunker sees it as a good thing. Nevertheless, the Review of Political Economy and the SSRN trumps an obscure conference of socialists idling on the taxpayer’s dime, drinking tea and refining their plans for world conquest. Two out of three quotes wins!
Steve Keen (2007, p. 173) has also observed that satisfying the ever-growing list of assumptions made by Debreu and his followers is “unrealistic”:
It is almost superfluous to describe the core assumptions of Debreu’s model as unrealistic: a single point in time at which all production and exchange for all time is determined; a set of commodities – including those which will be produced in the distant future – which is known to all consumers; producers who know all the inputs that will ever be needed to produce their commodities; even a vision of “uncertainty” in which the possible states of the future are already known, so that certainty and uncertainty are formally identical. Yet even with these breathtaking dismissals of essential elements of the real world, Debreu’s model was rapidly shown to need additional restrictive assumptions.
In the context of GE Theory, the conditions required for capitalism to be efficient are implausible in practice, though conceivable in theory. The former implies that the free market is always inefficient. The latter implies that a central planner can mimic how capitalism would work if it were efficient while the "profits and interest generated by the operations of publicly-owned business enterprises would be distributed to the general public as a social dividend."
In the context of GE Theory, there is no way for libertarians to get around this dilemma without being impaled on one or the other horn. Either we live with a system that can never be efficient in practice or we have an efficient system but renounce private property rights and put distribution of the "social dividend" in the hands of a central planner.
Far from being a “tool of capitalist hegemony," acceptance of GE Theory is the death of capitalism. Our only compensation is that, like a condemned prisoner who gets to choose the firing squad or the hangman, we get to choose inefficiency or tyranny. How did free-market economists respond to this dreadful choice? Milton Friedman invoked his famous “assumptions don’t matter” dictum (1953) to avoid having to admit that he could not untie the Gordian knot of GE Theory – but that is cowardice. Surely there must be a better way!
Instead of attempting to untie it, I cut the Gordian knot of GE Theory by throwing all of Walras’ and Pareto’s assumptions overboard and starting from scratch with my own set of axioms. When faced with a dilemma "in the context of GE Theory," I invented Axiomatic Economics. As Hannibal Barca said, "we will either find a way, or make one." The same goes for libertarians; we will never accept socialism.
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
The yellow metal has intrinsic value,
At least that’s what we are told.
Gary North says it’s so, and he would know.
He’s the investment guru of LewRockwell.com,
So it cannot – must not! – be a job of snow. No!
“A 50% drop in GDP during the first half of 2009.
Gloom! Doom!” cries Karl Denninger. But why,
Did he ban from Market Ticker this poem of mine?
“In coin shops all political truth can be found.”
So says Jeffrey Tucker. But how does he explain,
Why our golden investments have all run aground?
Zounds! $850, $250, $1000 and $700 in thirty years.
Gold prices are volatile, at least that much is clear,
I don’t get this dizzy after a whole case of beers!
Gold bugs claim: They’ve made millions since 1983.
But they’re living in plywood shacks in northern Idaho.
Should we believe what they tell us, or what we see?
In Moses’ time they danced around a golden calf,
Now Paulistas say, “Gold is money made by God.”
Not much has changed. What a laugh!
Black-Scholes is a derivative model for the rate to price options, timed investments.
That has nothing to do with CRA, which is a political policy.
If one wants to blame the CRA, then one must collect statistical data on the results, which ....again politically, are hard to come by and twisted. Case in point is the illegal immigrants are touted by using a TIN. The TIN is given to all foreign nationals buying residential as well as commercial investments in the United States. It normally has a higher percentage of down payments as well. So very obviously using the default rate on TIN loans has little to do with the illegal immigrant default rates via phony social security, liar loans, etc. But that also does not imply there is a higher default rate without the raw specific data....which of course no one wants anyone to examine objectively, due to politics.
But trying to associate a well known base derivative model to somehow equate with ethnicity based favored lending practices as well as loose evaluation of credit worthiness and other political types of agendas...
is not relevant. Mortgages, lending, the loan origination have nothing to do with derivative, timed evaluations at all. CDOs, CDSes, yes, but basic residential lending...nada.
Also, putting down some simply basic algebraic axioms on inequalities does not imply much on real economic theory and axioms.
For example, algebraic inequalities have no bearing on a Keynesian model for Stimulus.
Also, touting the linear, bounded assumptions of marginal utility have no real bearing on the CRA.
I mean that has no bearing on much of anything here, marginal returns simply implies there is an differential optimization point of a linear equation.
EP is a community blog but a reality based community site. You cannot write fuzzy loose associations on here ad hoc.
Outstanding column, and to anyone who's yet to study the bank "stress tests" protocol, it is interesting to note that the captioned items are EXEMPT from said stress testing!!!
Hmmmmm......????? No further discussion needed on this subject.
This reminds me of Kevin Phillips' thesis that the CPI is the primary cause for the present economic meltdown and this all simply "just happened."
Again, more misdirection and more of the same from Geoghegan. Really, obviously usury laws should be brought back into play and the act of legalizing crime and fraud, be it usury or the insurmountable investment/banking/insurance fraud brought to us courtesy of the Financial Services Modernization Act and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act still beggars the question: why haven't those GUILTY of these criminal acts been brought to justice? (Rhetorical question: obviously this is a nation of corruption, not a nation of laws!)
No, Geoghegan's thesis is as specious as Phillips' and makes a (critically) thinking person wonder about his motivation.
[Keyword search: Group of Thirty, Wolfsberg Group, InterContinental Exchange, Markit, Markit Wire, JP Morgan + Enron + SEC lawsuit, etc.]
A sinking ship drowns all the rats,
It used to be, a rising tide lifts all boats,
But not now, when we’re all eating cats!
And the SEC picks out the sacrificial goats.
Hayek said, higher-order goods are volatile,
Engineers are laid off first, salesmen last,
But now everybody the economy does rile,
Even restaurants fail as the people do fast.
Issuing the world’s reserve currency was
Like writing checks that no one cashed.
Instead they bought our T-bills because
We had nothing to sell. But it didn’t last.
China is now worried about the T-Bill.
If we stiff them, their army might come,
And if their treasury we cannot fill,
Wen Jiabao will break Obama’s thumb!
But not to worry! Obama says he’ll cut
The federal deficit in half. Just in time
For the election, we’ll jump out of that rut,
And the juggernaut will turn on a dime.
Yeah, right! And maybe aliens will come
And rescue us all with their technology.
Does Obama really think we’re that dumb?
To have bought a pie in the sky, we must be.
"The Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, said he was 'worried' about its holdings of US Treasuries and called on the United States to provide assurances that the investment was safe.
"Mr. Wen sought added reassurances on that front on 13 March 2009, calling on the United States to "maintain its good credit, to honour its promises and to guarantee the safety of China's assets."
"President Barack Obama has committed hundreds of billions of dollars to help revive the economy and is working on a plan to cut the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term."
The obvious answer to the death of the muscle car is to create an alternative energy vehicle which can generate so much love and enthusiasm.
It is possible to innovate cool, awesome power cars that don't destroy the planet and create a new culture...
but give people their time to grief. This is part of American culture, such as "NASCAR" is.
I personally hate NASCAR but there are swaths of America that live by NASCAR. Ya have to create something they can seriously get into. Poo pooing on their culture won't do it, we need something that gives that same sense of identity, fun, excitement as what the big 3 did in creating the "car culture".
... to people who are more interested in getting their jollies than in the deaths of American service men and women sent overseas in a vain effort to try to nail down the last big source of cheap oil so Americans can keep driving "muscle cars".
I don't know though, I'm a social conservative, government liberal. I want the government doing all of this stuff- I just want *NONE* of it to be secret. Governments shouldn't be involved in secrecy, and that goes for intelligence and military segments as well as financial.
In fact, neither should business.
The more I think about it, the more I think certain parts of freedom and privacy are just there to cover up unethical behavior.
-------------------------------------
Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.
;) I so often ignored all those focused on the Fed because so much of it is CT, but that said, I note Sen. Bernie Sanders is getting on the Federal reserve now as well for transparency and oversight and this is just scary as hell.
They are just doing whatever the hell they want and it's like a black hole in checks and balances.
Reality is that Fed over paid for all these assets - just look at the losses within months of closing. It is amazing the amount of risk the Fed assumed but I guess that doesn't matter because they got the printing press to back them up.
The Fed is doing all of this with no oversight. I just read that they are prepared to bailout all the banks that are "stressed" and need capital. They know that any "stressed" bank will be hard pressed to obtain private capital.
It looks like a dumping ground and a lot of gamesmanship to transfer taxpayer funds to our favorite Zombies to me.
Good work on trying to trace through the various transfers.
I'm not sure I totally get what's going on except isn't it wonderful that the Federal Reserve can now "choose to disclose" in "consolidated financial statements" what would be (my interpretation) Enron level fraud if this was a private sector publicly traded company?
"Fair market value"?
What is "fair market value" on a ABS CDO, which as i understand it is evaluated with daily "evaluations" of CDS rates? Which are also not based in reality at this point.
"Nobody there wants to return to a time when they had the Shogun. Where are you getting this?"
ONLY from this "no return" thing, that indicated to me a return to the time when Japan was a near autarky- almost completely self-sufficient with NO reliance on foreign trade.
" Back then they had a feudal system where the basic subject was worth nothing."
A feudal system isn't all bad in some cases. Under the Shogun dynasty- the average citizen had a choice. They could own LAND, or they could own WEAPONS, but not both. The Shogun was a military dictator, true, but the system worked for a thousand years, so the basic citizen wasn't exactly worth nothing.
"The average Japanese citizen doesn't want to go back to that. As for economic systems, unless it means ressurecting the old zaibatsu system, forget it."
I didn't say the AVERAGE citizen wanted to. I said perhaps some groups within their culture want to- seeing that as a more honorable era.
"Oh they may go on about things like honor or the bushido code. But when you hear them talk about "going back", its really to the time just before their defeat in the Second World War. A lot of them want a military that is something more than a "self defense force." This wasn't always the case, the stigma from the war pushed Japan in the opposite direction. But in recent years, given the rise of China and the belligerance of North Korea, some are even thinking what was once considered taboo over there.....getting the Bomb."
That's more likely true- though why this sudden interest in closing the borders again?
-------------------------------------
Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.
Anyone else notice this guy seems to have no ability to be specific? He sounds like a walking Public relations brochure, or ya know, that guy in your class who did presentations which were all boilerplate and showed little comprehension.
Anyone know what I'm talking about? It's creepy.
At least Paulson, you knew very specifically just how he was lying his head off.
Nobody there wants to return to a time when they had the Shogun. Where are you getting this? Back then they had a feudal system where the basic subject was worth nothing. The shogun was essentially a military dictator, there is nothing close to having something like that short of a military coup de' tat. The average Japanese citizen doesn't want to go back to that. As for economic systems, unless it means ressurecting the old zaibatsu system, forget it.
Oh they may go on about things like honor or the bushido code. But when you hear them talk about "going back", its really to the time just before their defeat in the Second World War. A lot of them want a military that is something more than a "self defense force." This wasn't always the case, the stigma from the war pushed Japan in the opposite direction. But in recent years, given the rise of China and the belligerance of North Korea, some are even thinking what was once considered taboo over there.....getting the Bomb.
Sorry but I had to ban Grozny. To Grozny, I'm not autistic but I do happen to have degrees in mathematics.
How would you respond, Robert Oak? Do you also consider use of the word "axiomatic" to be evidence of mental illness (autism) and/or "not backed up by statistical facts?"
Cutting the Gordian Knot of GE Theory
Steve Reglar (2005) writes:
A tool of capitalist hegemony? My, what harsh language! One can almost visualize GE theorists visiting smoke-filled rooms to accept bribes from their cigar-puffing benefactors. Indeed, Post-Autistic economists, after observing the word “axiomatic” in the title of my book (Aguilar, 1999), dismissed it out-of-hand, denouncing me as a bought-and-paid-for stooge of Big Business. Apparently, just that one word was enough to convince them of this about me.
But before we dismiss this talk of an epistemological approach being a “tool” of Big Business to “legitimize” their obviously anti-social behavior, let us at least see if the socialists are consistent. James Yunker (2007) writes:
Here we read that GE Theory is not a tool of capitalist hegemony, but a tool of profit-oriented market socialism, that is, publicly-owned business enterprises (e.g. Fannie, Freddie, AIG, etc.) that mimic contemporary market capitalism. And it is not a “tool” in the sense of legitimizing the socialists (presumably, their legitimacy is derived from emotional appeals of the “Gosh, there sure are a lot of poor people – darn capitalists!” variety), but a tool in the literal sense of defining a software model.
Well, which is it? Reglar thinks that GE Theory "assumes that the normal condition of society is for the state to play as little a role in economic life as possible." Yunker sees GE Theory as the basis for a central planner to "mimic contemporary market capitalism" while retaining for himself the authority to distribute the social dividend – hardly a "little role in economic life."
The primary (actually, the only) criticism that socialists have of my writing is that it lacks “substantial references.” Apparently, he whose writing is filled with the most quotations from the most august of academic journals wins. Thus, having observed that Reglar and Yunker have opposite views of GE Theory, we clearly need a tie-breaker. Cristobal Young (2005) writes:
Young supports Yunker’s position though, while they agree that central planning is the inevitable result of economists' acceptance of GE Theory, Young see this as a bad thing and Yunker sees it as a good thing. Nevertheless, the Review of Political Economy and the SSRN trumps an obscure conference of socialists idling on the taxpayer’s dime, drinking tea and refining their plans for world conquest. Two out of three quotes wins!
Steve Keen (2007, p. 173) has also observed that satisfying the ever-growing list of assumptions made by Debreu and his followers is “unrealistic”:
In the context of GE Theory, the conditions required for capitalism to be efficient are implausible in practice, though conceivable in theory. The former implies that the free market is always inefficient. The latter implies that a central planner can mimic how capitalism would work if it were efficient while the "profits and interest generated by the operations of publicly-owned business enterprises would be distributed to the general public as a social dividend."
In the context of GE Theory, there is no way for libertarians to get around this dilemma without being impaled on one or the other horn. Either we live with a system that can never be efficient in practice or we have an efficient system but renounce private property rights and put distribution of the "social dividend" in the hands of a central planner.
Far from being a “tool of capitalist hegemony," acceptance of GE Theory is the death of capitalism. Our only compensation is that, like a condemned prisoner who gets to choose the firing squad or the hangman, we get to choose inefficiency or tyranny. How did free-market economists respond to this dreadful choice? Milton Friedman invoked his famous “assumptions don’t matter” dictum (1953) to avoid having to admit that he could not untie the Gordian knot of GE Theory – but that is cowardice. Surely there must be a better way!
Instead of attempting to untie it, I cut the Gordian knot of GE Theory by throwing all of Walras’ and Pareto’s assumptions overboard and starting from scratch with my own set of axioms. When faced with a dilemma "in the context of GE Theory," I invented Axiomatic Economics. As Hannibal Barca said, "we will either find a way, or make one." The same goes for libertarians; we will never accept socialism.
My assumptions are three:
1) One's value scale is totally (linearly) ordered:
i) Transitive; p ≤ q and q ≤ r imply p ≤ r
ii) Reflexive; p ≤ p
iii) Anti-Symmetric; p ≤ q and q ≤ p imply p = q
iv) Total; p ≤ q or q ≤ p
2) Marginal (diminishing) utility, u(s), is such that:
i) It is independent of first-unit demand.
ii) It is negative monotonic; that is, u'(s) < 0.
iii) The integral of u(s) from zero to infinity is finite.
3) First-unit demand conforms to proportionate effect:
i) Value changes each day by a proportion (called 1+εj, with j denoting
the day), of the previous day's value.
ii) In the long run, the εj's may be considered random as they are not
directly related to each other nor are they uniquely a function of
value.
iii) The εj's are taken from an unspecified distribution with a finite
mean and a non-zero, finite variance.
REFERENCES
Aguilar, Victor. 1999. Axiomatic Theory of Economics. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
Blaug, Mark. 1997. “Ugly Currents in Modern Economics.” Policy Options. 18: 3-8
Friedman, Milton. 1953. “The Methodology of Positive Economics.” in Essays in Positive Economics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Keen, Steve. 2001. Debunking Economics. Annandale, NSW Australia: Pluto Press
Reglar, Steve. 2005. "The Descent of Political Economic Theory: Keynes, Keynesian economics, from bastardised Keynesianism to Neo Liberal Hegemony.” http://www.elequity.com/contego/pdfbooks/IncorporatingAmericanMinds.pdf
Young, Cristobal. 2005. “The Politics, Mathematics and Morality of Economics: A Review Essay on Robert Nelson’s Economics as Religion.” http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=898914
Yunker, James. 2007. “A Comprehensive Incentives Analysis of the Potential Performance of Market Socialism.” Review of Political Economy. 19 ( 1): 81-113 http://econpapers.repec.org/article/tafrevpoe/v_3A19_3Ay_3A2007_3Ai_3A1_...
____________________________________________________________
website: www.axiomaticeconomics.com
motto: Critiques and rebuttals are how science advances.
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
The yellow metal has intrinsic value,
At least that’s what we are told.
Gary North says it’s so, and he would know.
He’s the investment guru of LewRockwell.com,
So it cannot – must not! – be a job of snow. No!
“A 50% drop in GDP during the first half of 2009.
Gloom! Doom!” cries Karl Denninger. But why,
Did he ban from Market Ticker this poem of mine?
“In coin shops all political truth can be found.”
So says Jeffrey Tucker. But how does he explain,
Why our golden investments have all run aground?
Zounds! $850, $250, $1000 and $700 in thirty years.
Gold prices are volatile, at least that much is clear,
I don’t get this dizzy after a whole case of beers!
Gold bugs claim: They’ve made millions since 1983.
But they’re living in plywood shacks in northern Idaho.
Should we believe what they tell us, or what we see?
In Moses’ time they danced around a golden calf,
Now Paulistas say, “Gold is money made by God.”
Not much has changed. What a laugh!
Click here to read more of my poetry.
____________________________________________________________
website: www.axiomaticeconomics.com
motto: Critiques and rebuttals are how science advances.
Black-Scholes is a derivative model for the rate to price options, timed investments.
That has nothing to do with CRA, which is a political policy.
If one wants to blame the CRA, then one must collect statistical data on the results, which ....again politically, are hard to come by and twisted. Case in point is the illegal immigrants are touted by using a TIN. The TIN is given to all foreign nationals buying residential as well as commercial investments in the United States. It normally has a higher percentage of down payments as well. So very obviously using the default rate on TIN loans has little to do with the illegal immigrant default rates via phony social security, liar loans, etc. But that also does not imply there is a higher default rate without the raw specific data....which of course no one wants anyone to examine objectively, due to politics.
But trying to associate a well known base derivative model to somehow equate with ethnicity based favored lending practices as well as loose evaluation of credit worthiness and other political types of agendas...
is not relevant. Mortgages, lending, the loan origination have nothing to do with derivative, timed evaluations at all. CDOs, CDSes, yes, but basic residential lending...nada.
Also, putting down some simply basic algebraic axioms on inequalities does not imply much on real economic theory and axioms.
For example, algebraic inequalities have no bearing on a Keynesian model for Stimulus.
Also, touting the linear, bounded assumptions of marginal utility have no real bearing on the CRA.
I mean that has no bearing on much of anything here, marginal returns simply implies there is an differential optimization point of a linear equation.
EP is a community blog but a reality based community site. You cannot write fuzzy loose associations on here ad hoc.
Is it okay if I use a cardboard box?
And what was that address that I mail my money to again?
____________________________________________________________
website: www.axiomaticeconomics.com
motto: Critiques and rebuttals are how science advances.
Outstanding column, and to anyone who's yet to study the bank "stress tests" protocol, it is interesting to note that the captioned items are EXEMPT from said stress testing!!!
Hmmmmm......????? No further discussion needed on this subject.
This reminds me of Kevin Phillips' thesis that the CPI is the primary cause for the present economic meltdown and this all simply "just happened."
Again, more misdirection and more of the same from Geoghegan. Really, obviously usury laws should be brought back into play and the act of legalizing crime and fraud, be it usury or the insurmountable investment/banking/insurance fraud brought to us courtesy of the Financial Services Modernization Act and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act still beggars the question: why haven't those GUILTY of these criminal acts been brought to justice? (Rhetorical question: obviously this is a nation of corruption, not a nation of laws!)
No, Geoghegan's thesis is as specious as Phillips' and makes a (critically) thinking person wonder about his motivation.
[Keyword search: Group of Thirty, Wolfsberg Group, InterContinental Exchange, Markit, Markit Wire, JP Morgan + Enron + SEC lawsuit, etc.]
A Sinking Ship Drowns All the Rats.
A sinking ship drowns all the rats,
It used to be, a rising tide lifts all boats,
But not now, when we’re all eating cats!
And the SEC picks out the sacrificial goats.
Hayek said, higher-order goods are volatile,
Engineers are laid off first, salesmen last,
But now everybody the economy does rile,
Even restaurants fail as the people do fast.
Issuing the world’s reserve currency was
Like writing checks that no one cashed.
Instead they bought our T-bills because
We had nothing to sell. But it didn’t last.
China is now worried about the T-Bill.
If we stiff them, their army might come,
And if their treasury we cannot fill,
Wen Jiabao will break Obama’s thumb!
But not to worry! Obama says he’ll cut
The federal deficit in half. Just in time
For the election, we’ll jump out of that rut,
And the juggernaut will turn on a dime.
Yeah, right! And maybe aliens will come
And rescue us all with their technology.
Does Obama really think we’re that dumb?
To have bought a pie in the sky, we must be.
For reference:
At China 'worried' about safety of US T-bills we read:
"The Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, said he was 'worried' about its holdings of US Treasuries and called on the United States to provide assurances that the investment was safe.
"Mr. Wen sought added reassurances on that front on 13 March 2009, calling on the United States to "maintain its good credit, to honour its promises and to guarantee the safety of China's assets."
At Official: Obama plans to slash deficit in half we read:
"President Barack Obama has committed hundreds of billions of dollars to help revive the economy and is working on a plan to cut the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term."
____________________________________________________________
website: www.axiomaticeconomics.com
motto: Critiques and rebuttals are how science advances.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aMxqrd.6lkwg&refer=muse
They're asking for another four years -- in a just world, they'd get 10 to 20 ~~ Dennis Kucinich
People need time to grieve for the decedent.
The obvious answer to the death of the muscle car is to create an alternative energy vehicle which can generate so much love and enthusiasm.
It is possible to innovate cool, awesome power cars that don't destroy the planet and create a new culture...
but give people their time to grief. This is part of American culture, such as "NASCAR" is.
I personally hate NASCAR but there are swaths of America that live by NASCAR. Ya have to create something they can seriously get into. Poo pooing on their culture won't do it, we need something that gives that same sense of identity, fun, excitement as what the big 3 did in creating the "car culture".
... to people who are more interested in getting their jollies than in the deaths of American service men and women sent overseas in a vain effort to try to nail down the last big source of cheap oil so Americans can keep driving "muscle cars".
Goodbye Firebird. It' sad to see one of the muscle car brands go.
Ron Paul fans, that is....
I don't know though, I'm a social conservative, government liberal. I want the government doing all of this stuff- I just want *NONE* of it to be secret. Governments shouldn't be involved in secrecy, and that goes for intelligence and military segments as well as financial.
In fact, neither should business.
The more I think about it, the more I think certain parts of freedom and privacy are just there to cover up unethical behavior.
-------------------------------------
Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.
;) I so often ignored all those focused on the Fed because so much of it is CT, but that said, I note Sen. Bernie Sanders is getting on the Federal reserve now as well for transparency and oversight and this is just scary as hell.
They are just doing whatever the hell they want and it's like a black hole in checks and balances.
Reality is that Fed over paid for all these assets - just look at the losses within months of closing. It is amazing the amount of risk the Fed assumed but I guess that doesn't matter because they got the printing press to back them up.
The Fed is doing all of this with no oversight. I just read that they are prepared to bailout all the banks that are "stressed" and need capital. They know that any "stressed" bank will be hard pressed to obtain private capital.
It looks like a dumping ground and a lot of gamesmanship to transfer taxpayer funds to our favorite Zombies to me.
Good work on trying to trace through the various transfers.
I'm not sure I totally get what's going on except isn't it wonderful that the Federal Reserve can now "choose to disclose" in "consolidated financial statements" what would be (my interpretation) Enron level fraud if this was a private sector publicly traded company?
"Fair market value"?
What is "fair market value" on a ABS CDO, which as i understand it is evaluated with daily "evaluations" of CDS rates? Which are also not based in reality at this point.
"Nobody there wants to return to a time when they had the Shogun. Where are you getting this?"
ONLY from this "no return" thing, that indicated to me a return to the time when Japan was a near autarky- almost completely self-sufficient with NO reliance on foreign trade.
" Back then they had a feudal system where the basic subject was worth nothing."
A feudal system isn't all bad in some cases. Under the Shogun dynasty- the average citizen had a choice. They could own LAND, or they could own WEAPONS, but not both. The Shogun was a military dictator, true, but the system worked for a thousand years, so the basic citizen wasn't exactly worth nothing.
"The average Japanese citizen doesn't want to go back to that. As for economic systems, unless it means ressurecting the old zaibatsu system, forget it."
I didn't say the AVERAGE citizen wanted to. I said perhaps some groups within their culture want to- seeing that as a more honorable era.
"Oh they may go on about things like honor or the bushido code. But when you hear them talk about "going back", its really to the time just before their defeat in the Second World War. A lot of them want a military that is something more than a "self defense force." This wasn't always the case, the stigma from the war pushed Japan in the opposite direction. But in recent years, given the rise of China and the belligerance of North Korea, some are even thinking what was once considered taboo over there.....getting the Bomb."
That's more likely true- though why this sudden interest in closing the borders again?
-------------------------------------
Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.
Anyone else notice this guy seems to have no ability to be specific? He sounds like a walking Public relations brochure, or ya know, that guy in your class who did presentations which were all boilerplate and showed little comprehension.
Anyone know what I'm talking about? It's creepy.
At least Paulson, you knew very specifically just how he was lying his head off.
they used to bullshit about crop productivity numbers and we bullshit about the unemployment rate? Sounds plausible.
Nobody there wants to return to a time when they had the Shogun. Where are you getting this? Back then they had a feudal system where the basic subject was worth nothing. The shogun was essentially a military dictator, there is nothing close to having something like that short of a military coup de' tat. The average Japanese citizen doesn't want to go back to that. As for economic systems, unless it means ressurecting the old zaibatsu system, forget it.
Oh they may go on about things like honor or the bushido code. But when you hear them talk about "going back", its really to the time just before their defeat in the Second World War. A lot of them want a military that is something more than a "self defense force." This wasn't always the case, the stigma from the war pushed Japan in the opposite direction. But in recent years, given the rise of China and the belligerance of North Korea, some are even thinking what was once considered taboo over there.....getting the Bomb.
Pages