RedStateEclectic

Indian Paper Offers Superb Analysis of Our Economic Nightmare

They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob,

When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job.

They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,

Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?

                              – Yip Harburg, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime” (1931).

So begins an article in India's leading English language newspaper, Frontline.The author is quite savvy about just what the hell's going on in, for example, the manipulation of government-provided statistics about economic matters in order to make things look less dire than they are.

How fascinating that the largely Indian audience of this magazine is being treated to this sort of unfliching analysis - I have yet to see anything quite this honest in our media here.

Here's an excerpt, but be sure and read the whole thing.

QUOTE  Statistician John Williams (whose newsletter is available at www.shadowstats.com) reanalyses the government numbers using the pre-Clinton era methodology. He finds that the current unemployment rate hovers between 13.5 per cent and 18 per cent(using two different data sets and formulae). As Williams lifts the statistical camouflage off the faked numbers, the situation seems more drastic. As columnist Alexander Cockburn put it, “the air is whistling out of the American economy”. It is this deflating balloon that worries even those within the inner circle of American power. Obama’s leading economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, recently said that the government must “contain what is a very damaging and potentially deflationary spiral”. The people who have lost their jobs have no cushion to maintain their lifestyles. The social security nets have been eviscerated, and of these, unemployment benefits are minuscule (indeed, because employers are penalised when their former workers go on unemployment, there have been many cases of workers being fired so that their departure does not increase the unemployment insurance that a firm must pay). Additionally, since the 1980s, the saving rate has plummeted. UNQUOTE

~~~~~

 

 

 

A Deeper Hole

*sigh* I have a feeling Schiff is right.

Schiff has nailed the Ponzi schemers. The Fed has been run by the same people who brought us over 10 trillion dollars' worth of new debt in ten years. The Hedge funds are run by Ponzi masters who created $600 trillion worth of new debt instruments (That's $100k for every human being on the planet -- do the math!). The pain will be Weimar Republic to the 200th power. Every nation will face hyperinflation & underproduction - starvation, lack of useable energy, and lack of all basic government services. "Unmitigated disaster" is likely the right assessment.

QUOTE  The problem, he says, is the government is trying to perpetuate a "phony economy" based on borrowing and spending. With the U.S. consumer tapped out, the government is "now taking on the mantle" of consumer of last resort, he continues, predicting the bond bubble will soon burst - if it hasn't already - ultimately leading to a collapse of the dollar and an "inflationary depression worse than anything any of us have ever seen." UNQUOTE

My Hero, Michael Phelps

Adding to RobertoLibre's post on the brouhaha over swimming superstar Michael Phelps bong bust ~ I last had a hit of good old maryjane when I was 18 years old, I was on my way to a drug-free Christian commune in San Francisco and vowed I would have no more until the day it was legalized. Now I have a glaucoma dianosis and the beta-blockers prescribed by my opthamalogist make me siiiiick, so he took me off them. To my chagrin, Nebraska is not one of the 18 states where Doc Sutton could just write me a scrip for medial marijuana. Maybe Mr. Phelps will usher in a final and productive debate which will lead to the decriminalizing of a medical herb which, if used properly, has its place in the pharmacopia.

BongHit Economics               :D

Name That Free Market Advocate

From news of this past week: who said the following:

"In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state's role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated."

and  "Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors, and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state."

a.) Rep. Ron Paul

b.) Barry Goldwater, Jr.

c.) Lew Rockwell

d.) Vladimir Putin

It is d.) Vladimir Putin. Lecturing the U.S.  about the virtues of free enterprise.  Whaaaaaat?

From Justin Raimondo at AntiWar.com, please click over and read the entire article.

QUOTE  Whether the Russian leader has been boning up on the works of the Austrian economists and has absorbed or at least understood their critique of central banking as the flaw in the otherwise beneficial ointment of Western-style capitalism, or has independently come to similar conclusions, is open to speculation. Suffice to say that the parallelism is astonishing. For the long period of American economic and imperial expansion, the dollar was the reserve currency of choice, its markets the freest and most profitable in the world. As we enter a perhaps even lengthier period of decline, the leading indicator of our protracted contraction is the end of the dollar-denominated world economy. Whereas the Chinese premier, in his Davos speech, merely called for closer monetary regulation and restraint on the part of his American trading partner, Putin called on the markets to dump the dollar. UNQUOTE

Dark Night

I received word that my dear Aunt Patricia, always my "favorite" aunt, my mother's elder sister and the last surviving sibling of her family, has had a very bad stroke and is entering hospice.
It can be said of Aunt Pat that she has been always kind to me from early childhood up, and to my husband and my children. Always. Unfailingly kind, unselfish and thoughtful. How many people can anyone say that of?

So I may be a bit slow in the posting department for a while, I'm not feeling very political. If you are so inclined, please pray for my aunt and her family as they go through their dark night of the soul.

There's No One as Irish As Barack O'Bama

Batten down your coffee cup, because otherwise you may laugh-spew it all over your pc's monitor.

There's No One As Irish As Barack O'Bama by The Corrigan Brothers

And Now For Something Completely Different

It is your Sunday sermon, RSE-style. Hat tip to Liza at The Incorruptibles.

A minister decided that a visual demonstration would add emphasis to his Sunday sermon.

Four worms were placed into four separate jars.


The first worm was put into a container of whiskey.
The second worm was put into a container of cigarette smoke.
The third worm was put into a container of chocolate syrup.
The fourth worm was put into a container of good clean soil.


At the conclusion of the sermon, the Minister reported the following results:


The first worm in the whiskey -Dead

The second worm in cigarette smoke ˆDead

Third worm in chocolate syrup -Dead



Fourth worm in good clean soil -Alive


So the Minister asked the congregation
What can you learn from this demonstration?


Maxine was sitting in the back, quickly raised her hand and said,


"As long as you drink, smoke and eat chocolate, you won't have worms!"

And that pretty much ended the service.

Peggy Noonan On the Inauguration ~ An Historic Moment

The fabulous and wise Miz Noonan dishes out some good advice on the upcoming festivities in D.C. ~ suspend your disbelief, for a week or so at least, and enjoy the historical pagaentry. That may prove more difficult for some than others, but send your inner cynics and curmudgeons to the Bahamas for a week, and just enjoy the spectacle. You may or may not agree with his platform (I certainly disagree vigorously with his abortion stance for example) but the hugeness of his victory diminishes not a whit.

QUOTE  And this has grown old, and maybe it's the last time to say it, history moving so fast, but there's something we all know so well that we are perhaps forgetting to see it in the forefront. But a long-oppressed people have raised up a president. It is moving and beautiful and speaks to the unending magic and sense of justice of our country. The other day the journalist John O'Sullivan noted that 150 years after slavery, a black man stands in the place of Lincoln in the inaugural stands, and this country has proved again that anything is possible, that if we can do this we can do anything. That is a good thing to remember at a difficult time......

To believe, suspend disbelief. We have been through this before, the flags and fine speeches, the brass donkey paperweight, the glass elephant, the rise and fall of administrations, the coming and going of figures great and small. It's good to put that aside for a few days, to remove yourself from politics, partisanship and faction, to suspend your disbelief, to be grateful that the signs and symbols endure, as does the republic, and raise a toast: "To the president of the United States." UNQUOTE

Mo' Money, Mo' Money, Mo' Money

A.) Bank of America asks for bailout money

B.) BOA gets bailout money

C.) BOA buys Merrill Lynch

D.) ?????? what ???

E.) BOA asks for more bailout money...

From The New York Times

QUOTE  Mr. Bernanke, tacitly acknowledging the unpopularity of the bailout program, said the public was “understandably concerned” about pouring hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into financial companies — especially when other industries were getting the cold shoulder. UNQUOTE

Terrorism Defined

From Salon.com comes an excellent analysis by Greenwald of NYT's Tom Friedman's chilling endorsement of the classic definition of terrorism, where violence against innocents, many of them children and noncombatants (BTW in the case of Gaza some of them are Christians, not that that makes it any worse or better to slay innocents) is used to further a political case or to frighten the victims into changing their ways. Basically Thomas Friedman is saying that Palestinian civilians must suffer and die to teach the Palestinian nation "a lesson".  In my book, that is terrorism.

QUOTE  In Gaza, I still can’t tell if Israel is trying to eradicate Hamas or trying to “educate” Hamas, by inflictinga heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population.If it is out to destroy Hamas, casualties will be horrific and the aftermath could be Somalia-like chaos. If it is out to educate Hamas, Israel may have achieved its aims. UNQUOTE

I am neither an Israel nor a Palestine "supporter" ~ what I am is a weary human being who thinks we have had quite enough eye-for-an-eye blood-lust done Don Corleone-style. Would it kill everyone to just chill out? If the IRA and the Orangemen can bury the hatchet, there is hope for the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Spiritual note: IMHO Terrorists of every stripe are going to get a rude comeuppance when they finally do come face-to-face with God/Allah/Jesus/Karma (or however they conceive of The Deity, who I believe is Christ the Lord) who has made it crystal clear and obvious to the most casual observer in the revealed revelation of every religion that He hates wars and loves peace.