Low hanging fruit of energy efficiency and conservation. Single easiest thing to do is insulate all the houses. Yes, the houses the landlords own, too. Insulation is like plumbing and electricity, now, it has to be in place and working. It’s the single most efficient economy we could be making right now, this summer, before winter comes.

Look farther ahead.

Resources two hundred miles or more away — straight up. Tag and release the next chunk of asteroid to come by. Continue that. Land steering motors on them (ion engines, solar powered) as soon as we can and start bringing them back to within reach in a measured way.

Stop whining. WE’ll all be dead in decades. Life goes on, we owe it the best push forward we can give. Your kids, my inlaws’ kids, everyone else’s kids.

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Captain Renault: Oh, please, monsieur. It is a little game we play. They put it on the bill, I tear up the bill. It is very convenient.

It feels a bit Nero a-fiddling.

We recognize the dampening effect of the global economy on our slide to what the optimist seems to describe as “the most dire deflationary predictions”.

While the more pessimistic hedge-funder sees the fallacy of our financial system almost exclusively in terms of its “paper” nature.

He correctly focuses on the truly amazing scale of our debts in the contrast to our economic system’s ability to ever repay those debts. Or, that paper, as he calls it.

Our economy is incapable of ever paying back the debts we already have.
But the FED bankers have one more feel-good plan.
The vehicle for keeping the economy slip-sliding, rather than crashing, into oblivion is the highly-popular method called issuing more debt.
Lots of it.
Hello, taxpayer?

Now, this is where we should be seeing the image of the cat chasing its tail.

Given that every dollar in new debt (money) that is issued to grease the slide must be repaid about three times over by future dollars, and, given that each and every one of those additional future dollars are going to come into being as debt, that will have to paid back threefold to the holders of that debt, well, right there we come more to the point of the dog that caught the truck.

But my point is not how, or where or when or how much.
Its more about who and why.

The Federal Reserve bankers were responsible for whatever happened in the banking system and the economy.
This is all their doing.
Their money-centric economic policies are now playing out.

The expansion of the debt-money system in this country was used principally for the purpose of rewarding those who had the money.

What else do capitalists do with money but use it to make more money?

Are these the guys we want looking out for full employment or the environment?

We have invested in, or should I say become debtors to, the money economy brought about by the Federal Reserve bankers.

It has bankrupted the country and the economy.

The time of their debt-money system has run its course, having trampled upon the well-being of the American worker and our natural resources.

It is time for fundamental reformation of the monetary system in this country.

Put the FED bankers out to pasture.
Allow them to play with their own money, rather than that of the American taxpayer.

And put the taxpayers and their government in charge of creating the nation’s money.

And, paper or gold has nothing to do with it.

The US economics establishment is determined to find every way to debase the dollar. The tipping point cannot be far.

In examining corporate earnings, Wall Street analysts distinguish ongoing, “operating” profits, which spring from the usual efforts of the business, ie, continuing revenues, which stem from sales of the companies products or services, versus one-off gains which usually consist of gains on sales of assets.

Outsourcing produced a one-time gain in the profits component of GDP. By moving production (and services such as call centers) off shore, companies got to produce at lower cost while selling the same product to US customers at retail, thus plumping up margins. We should note well, Corporate Germany and Corporate Japan have been loth to do this, and keep jobs in their respective home countries when they can. If you don’t have customers at home with good jobs, they can’t buy your products. Corporations got themselves a one-time gain, but consumers (aided by foreign purchases of US securities, which kept rates low) were able to keep buying goods for a longer time than expected because they raided the housing ATM. Unfortunately, as consumers are finding out, you can only gut the equity of your home once.

As an aside, we have priced oil as cheaply as we could in this country, rather than taxing it and encouraging the development of renewable and sustainable sources of energy. Again, you can only burn a barrel of oil, once.

As Richard Kline and others pointed out, the game goes on longer than we expect, but it does end. We are about to find out what our economy looks like, when we have burnt all our furniture.

Economy holding up so well, bah. What idiocy.

Interesting article on the human side of the equation.
“Human development is concerned with what I take to be the basic development idea: namely, advancing the richness of human life, rather than the richness of the economy in which human beings live….” said the Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen, who developed the HDI in 1990

http://www.financialarmageddon.com/

Whenever a self-avowed 'Austrian' says something like that I want to ask them for their credentials… "Your papers, pleeeze."

Haven't they forgot about fiat? Its pretty much unlimited UNTIL it is no longer accepted. As long as Duy is 'right' about the FCBs & SWFs eating our paper Scott will be 'wrong' about his computations.

So how long will the FCBs & SWFs continue to eat our paper? That's the gazillion dollar question. Probably as long as they are more worried about their populace eating them than they are about the real returns from that paper – and I'm quite serious about that.

This is more about the politics of development & 'decoupling' than about our deficit & profligacy (symptoms & resultants – not causal factors IMHO). If 'they' ever get 'rich enough' to no longer worry about their street & our market access THEN Scott will be right & our paper will be exposed for what it is – empty promises. I don't think that is happening soon.
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Job losses: Duy’s point is well taken that the employment hit for such demand destruction as we have seen has been substantially overseas. So far. The domestic airline and auto industries _will_ take a hit, but that isn’t even in the pipeline yet. Construction has sagged, but that is where those rebate checks come in, just enough demand juice to mask the downtrend for a few more months.

More importantly, the US didn’t get into its bubble alone; the rest of the world climbed in there with us. And they can’t get out of their macrofinancial strategies quickly, emphasis on the modifier. China evidently _tried_ to rebalance itself a bit more toward Europe in the Spring, but they evidently got the stiffarm behind the curtain and stopped. they and the Gulfies, and most others may not WANT to keep funding us, but they will need time to come up with another play. So it’s more of (our) money after bad until they can catch a train outta here. They will not fund us _at current levels and terms_ indefinitely. Two more quarters, maybe; then, new deal. Unless we come up with a New New Deal first. Don’t count on it.