naked capitalism

mlnberger says:

Ms. Smith: I want to first say that your blog is consistently the most thought-provoking collection of referrals and commentary on the web –

I have no formal training in economics and so therefore found the articles from Cassandra on deflation and the Angry Bear referral to Money Illusion to be very unsettling to what I had understood to be common wisdom — i.e., that inflation (above say 2%) was, to paraphrase Friedman, at all times and all places a bad thing. Indeed, adding these views to other articles you have referenced, I am coming to see the fundamental problem for the United States is not inflation / deflation but rather income / wealth distribution. I had long thought that this development was not only morally repugnant and socially destabilizing, but now I can see is likely to be economically very corrosive. To be precise, inflation in the U.S. with its skewed income distribution is likely to be more damaging to our economic system than inflation in, say , Denmark or Sweden or Europe as a whole or deflation would be in Japan due to a more equitable distribution of income (and pain and benefits). For example, public benefits such as health care, education, and unemployment assistance and retraining are more likely to be jettisoned if the super rich have no stake in them. (The social segregation that follows from this maldistribution of wealth also enables the rich never acknowledge the role chance plays in their success, but that is a topic for another day.) I am now eager to start testing this thesis — but I wanted to thank you for giving me the information to formulate the thesis.

Anonymous says:

I know more about tracking oil inventories than grain inventories, but I can confirm for oil that Bobo is right. Oil inventories are closely tracked in all OECD countries. U.S. oil inventory data is particularly well-tracked by the EIA.

Iran is holding some high-sulphur oil in tankers at the moment, and the entire world has reports on how many tankers and how much oil.

Production reserves are much disputed and not at all transparent, but not inventories. Krugman is right–if the high price was due to speculation, we’d see high inventories, and we’re just not seeing inventory builds anywhere.

Moe Gamble

Scott says:

Any non-US comment calling for a new US military intervention is asinine. The rest of the world has been complaining incessantly about Iraq and now the Asia Times wants George Bush to invade Myanmar? Leaving aside the fact that the US military has been worn down due to the Iraq campaign, there is no political will here in the US for any new military adventures. The author of this editorial should be lose his job. His assertion that “A unilateral – and potentially United Nations-approved – US military intervention in the name of humanitarianism could easily turn the tide against the impoverished country’s unpopular military leaders, and simultaneously rehabilitate the legacy of lame-duck US President George W Bush’s controversial pre-emptive military policies” is absurd.

Scott says:

yves,
I didn’t mean to imply that you were advocating the AT position. I just thought that the editorial that you linked to needed a response.

I agree with you that in reality the US is seen as less of a threat than other large countries like India or China, or Russia. That is what makes the current international anti-American drumbeat so aggravating.

In any case, your blog is excellent and very informative.