naked capitalism

Zeke says:

Krugman wants FedGov to bailout the states, or at least the ones that are broke, like New York. He doesn’t like Arnold (he’s a Republican) but apparently sees nothing wrong with any other Governor.

He says we are just as able to pay for stuff as we were (except that we’re not, which is why the states are broke to start with).

I guess the part of the recession where we all learn to live within our means doesn’t include State Government.

In the last 5 years the population of California has increased about 8%. The California budget has increased 35%. 400% faster than the population growth. The number of state employees has increased 15%, 2 times faster than the population growth.

As the leading New Deal II promoting hyper-Keynesian I guess facts like this are meaningless.

One suspects that if Obama decides to follow this advice (I suspect he will) that New York will be a big beneficiary of the bailouts, while fiscally responsible states will essentially be subsidizing them.

Funny, I thoght that the $4 Trillion flowing to mostly NY based firms from various financial ‘bail outs’ might satisfy the rapacious thirst of NY to bugger the rest of us. How silly of me.

Andrew Bissell says:

Mish has a good post up today debunking Krugman’s “hangover theorists” article. Krugman’s idea that significant real economic losses can somehow be avoided in the wake of the largest asset bubble in history is absurd on its face. Throwing the term “liquidationist” around adds little or nothing of value to the public debate.

Anonymous says:

Israel seems intent to mark the end of its 60th year of existence the same way it has established itself — perpetrating massacres against the Palestinian people. In 1948, the majority of the indigenous Palestinian people were ethnically cleansed from their homes and land, partly through massacres like Deir Yassin; today, the Palestinians in Gaza, most of whom are refugees, do not even have the choice to seek refuge elsewhere. Incarcerated behind ghetto walls and brought to the brink of starvation by the siege, they are easy targets for Israel’s indiscriminate bombing.

Prof. Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and international law expert at Princeton University, described Israel’s siege of Gaza last year, when it was still not comparable in its severity to the current situation, as follows:

Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalised Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty. The suggestion that this pattern of conduct is a holocaust-in-the-making represents a rather desperate appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy.

The most brutal episode of this “collective tragedy” is what we have seen today.

http://debat.modkraft.dk/ read.ph…7,142559,142559

AThinkingAmerican says:

“Funny, I thoght that the $4 Trillion flowing to mostly NY based firms from various financial ‘bail outs’ might satisfy the rapacious thirst of NY to bugger the rest of us. How silly of me.”

Also unconstitutional for that exact reason. But no need for an old piece of paper to get in the way of the masters of universe….

Anonymous says:

Lets not forget the bombing of a civilian hotel (filled with westreners), back in the beginning by the Israeli “home land” terrorists. Did I just say teroists, I meant “just freedom fighters”.

Who is reacting to who again.

Skippy

Kevin de Bruxelles says:

50 Maginot Lines

Krugman is fighting the last war.

Anonymous says:

Following the links within the links at http://www.sciam.com/ I find this.

“….The Summerview wind farm, which Baerwald studied, kills hundreds of bats every year, particularly during the fall migration period that has just begun. But bats that find their way via sonar should have no trouble detecting fast-moving objects like the 200-foot- (60-meter-) long blades on the 300-foot- (90-meter-) tall turbines that spin as quickly as 160 miles (255 kilometers) per hour. And before the installation of these new, taller turbines bat kills had been practically nonexistent.

Pressure drops of as low as 4.4 kilopascals kill common lab rats and all the bats autopsied showed internal damage and bleeding consistent with this type of death, known as barotrauma. “If bats have a lungful of air as they fly through the air-pressure change, there’s nowhere for the air to go,” Baerwald explains. “The small blood vessels around the lungs burst and fill the lungs with fluid and blood.”

Anonymous says:

In the current cycle of Israel/Palestinian violence, the US press pretty consistently portrays the Israel attacks as retaliation for Hamas rocket fire. While technically accurate, it ignores the fact that Israel threw the first punch after the truce, oh, and by the way, on the day of the US elections, when it would be either not covered at all or relegated to a tertiary placement.

See:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/def4b5f8-d50f-11dd-b967-000077b07658.html

River says:

I think the Setzer article deserves a much closer look. The implications are very serious but, as usual, Brad’s tone is understatement but he is onto something big.

Jessee saw the implications of Setzer’s post and followed up with some comments worth reading, ammo for inflationistas:

‘My explanation is pretty straightforward.

Central banks were the main source of financing for the US deficit all along. Setting Japan aside, the big current account surplus countries were all building up their official reserves and sovereign funds — and they were the key vector providing financing to the deficit countries.”

The implications of this are rather profound. The much touted notion that the US is the preferred destination for private wealth, thus sustaining an out of balance trade deficit through a financial services economy, is rubbish at best, and propaganda at worst. It is rooted in the Dick Cheney nostrum that “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.”

What we have today is a very lopsided vendor financing arrangement, wherein the US is largely supported by China and Japan whose industrial policy currently recommends their support of a US debt that is increasingly unpayable.

If and when China and Japan are no longer able to support the continued growth of US deficit financing, the dollar and the bonds will contract (decrease) in value, and perhaps precipitously, like a house of cards. It is much worse than we had imagined, and more concentrated on these two countries, along with Saudi Arabia, than we had thought.’

and the money lines…

‘Japan and Saudi Arabia are understandable as virtual client states under US military protection, but we struggle with how China was taken into this arrangement which is so potentially destabilizing of their internal political and economic stability.

This is why the world has not developed a sound replacement for the dollar hegemony. It is because if they do, they must navigate around the probability, not possibility, of a collapse of their dollar reserves, and a dislocation of their own export driven economies, much worse than we might have imagined. It is not a matter of economic inventiveness; it has become a matter of will.

Who will be the first to flinch? History shows it is rarely a conscious decision, but rather some incident, an accident, some trigger event, even one so small, that it creates astonishment at the size of the avalanche it unleashes.

To make it clear and simple, this is the first evidence we have seen to suggest that hyperinflation is in fact possible in the US. As you know, we have been strongly adverse to the extremes in outcomes, both in terms of a sustained deflation and a significant hyperinflation.

That has now changed. The dollar is a Ponzi scheme, the waters of debt are overflowing the dam of artificial support, and only a few countries, two of them somewhat unstable, are holding back the deluge.’

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

http://blogs.cfr.org/setser/