[ypct_george]

disclaimer: the following is a joke.

GDP = consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports - imports) [sub][source: Wikipedia][/sub]

So, if the investment is negative and pulls the GDP down (together with imports), let's bail the country out by increasing the consumption and government spending!

Christmas is coming, give people money, see what it does (bailout for people). Also Iran disrespects laws of physics so let's teach it good manners and spend some money in the process (in largest war since wwII).

I'm so hoping I'm totally wrong on the Iran thing.

[Sixstrings]

virgincrude wrote:

Six strngs, I posted this when I first read it, and yeah, it's mathematically so.

Ah, so this was discussed and I missed it. I must have had a life that week.

I'm surprised this topic didn't spark a bigger discussion when you posted it. This stuff is the financial Peak Oil.

moderators, merge threads plz

[edit: ugh, posted on wrong thread]

[Jotapay]

I'm surprised this topic didn't spark a bigger discussion when you posted it.

Me too. This is so bad that this is what I would just call "the end". I see no reason why this will not spur massive chaos in the country. And most people are too ignorant to have any idea what is happening to them.

[virgincrude]

+1

That's why I posted it.

I think here on PO most of those who could make some constructive comments are jaded. Just too much confirmation of what we've been warned about, this is just like some of the serious doomer predictions of those who everybody thought was exaggerating.

Others, like pedalling faster want to buy themselves time by not even considering it for another 6 months!!

[Sixstrings]

Isn't it amazing that perhaps the single most powerful function of our government, in terms of impact on our lives, is not required study in civics courses.

Young people learn and sleep through lessons on "how a bill becomes a law," and the "branches of government," but the major external force in our lives is left in the province of the economists in the ivory towers.

It's just taken for granted that economics is somehow on the level of quantam physics, something so complicated that no average person should be bothered with it.

I daresay very few of our public school teachers and university professors even know how money is created.

[ReverseEngineer]

Isn't it amazing that perhaps the single most powerful function of our government, in terms of impact on our lives, is not required study in civics courses.

Young people learn and sleep through lessons on "how a bill becomes a law," and the "branches of government," but the major external force in our lives is left in the province of the economists in the ivory towers.

It's just taken for granted that economics is somehow on the level of quantam physics, something so complicated that no average person should be bothered with it.

I daresay very few of our public school teachers and university professors even know how money is created.

You cannot teach economics without a solid background in Differential Equations, or at minimum Multi-variable Calculus. The reason nobody studies it in college is almost nobody comes out of HS in America with a good ability to do Algebra or Trigonometry. Of course nobody understands money, they have no understanding of mathematics past addition and subtraction, and even that most people depend on calculators. This is why I quit teaching in the Public Schools. Its a pathetic excuse for education and a waste of time, its just warehousing for kids until they can become wage slaves. Or Zombies now.

Reverse Engineer

[seldom_seen]

You cannot teach economics without a solid background in Differential Equations, or at minimum Multi-variable Calculus.

Huh? Economics doesn't require any math? Economics is a social-science like Psychology or History.

Sure there are economists that try to incorporate Math in to their "models" to make them sound fancy and official and only to be understood by "experts." It's just a lot of preening and prancing by a cargo cult trying to sound official.

Take the genius Nobel-prize winner in economics Myron Scholes. He was one of the co-founders of Long Term Capital Management. The single hedge fund that just about took down the whole market and required a 3.6 billion dollar bailout from the Federal Reserve. The esteemed Mr. Scholes latest endeavor, the hedge fund Platinum Grove Asset Management recently froze up and halted investor withdrawals (or "redemptions" as the hedge fund managers like to call them).

[AlexdeLarge]

The proposal at the end of KD's latest rant is interesting...... "Ok, that's an incendiary title. Intentionally. But what is our financial system today? Let's step back just a bit and contemplate what our financial system is, and what it has become."

"Government should set up ten (10) new federal banks. Capitalize each with $20 billion dollars and immediately IPO off the bank to the public. The capitalization would carry a preferred coupon of 9%, incenting the bank to immediately replace that government capital with private capital, with dividends, executive bonuses and pay beyond $200,000 per annum (total compensation) being prohibited until the government capital is repaid in full.

This would provide an immediate aggregate lending potential of two trillion dollars into the economy just off the Government Tier Capitalization alone. Private capital would fly into these institutions since they would be established with no debt of any sort.

At the same time, withdraw all existing support programs by Congressional mandate. This includes Fannie, Freddie, the existing alphabet soup mess and all other taxpayer-funded backstops. The FDIC would be directed to provide deposit insurance only to the extent that it can document the safety and soundness, and expose same to public view, of the institutions it insures.

If The Fed (which is technically unable to be compelled to comply) refuses, revoke their right to regulate the money supply and replace them, leaving them as simply another private bank forced to compete for funds in the open market like everyone else. They will go along rather than die."

Market Ticker

[perdition79]

With rhetoric like that, Denninger is looking to share the same fate as Kennedy and Lincoln.

[Jotapay]

He has been wearing an actual tin foil hat on his avatar this week, if you haven't seen it. I didn't see the explanation, but I assume it's something akin to "we are all tinfoil now". I noticed he opened up his tinfoil forum again.

[Chuckmak]

I must say, sir. As much as we disagree on things, you have been on FIRE as of late! Good stuff!

By the way, the looney tunes characters are very fitting. Please bring back the Wyle E. avatar!

[Cid_Yama]

<i>No one seems to notice or care</i>

It seems we are wired in a way that that makes us approach things as if, "If we just ignore it long enough, it will go away."

Perhaps at some point in the evolutionary past, it was somehow survival enhancing. But now, we're toast.

I've noticed that seems to be the root of procrastination. If you wait long enough, you end up not having to do anything as it is too late.

Somehow we are evolutionarily screwed up. We've hit that evolutionary dead end where we become the failed experiment that dies off and makes way for the next thing.

[AlexdeLarge]

A nice list of economic bloggers ranked by traffic can be found here.

The EconDirectory:
Traffic Rankings for Business and Economics Websites

GONGOL.com

Surprised the market ticker was not listed very high.

[Sixstrings]

The problem is, there's a very high price to pay for predicting Doom and it then not happening. This is why our leadership is reluctant on this score.. if they say the sky is falling and then it doesn't, they lose all credibility and influence.

They won't call it a monetary collapse until it's too late.

[pedalling_faster]

this guy

http://campfire.theoildrum.com/node/4979#more

Todd Detzel, has been preparing for quite a while. the article is about their 50+ acres, fully prepped. he has a background as a chemical engineer & plant manager. seems he has been anticipating the course of events Denninger is ranting about, for quite some time.

[ReverseEngineer]

The problem is, there's a very high price to pay for predicting Doom and it then not happening. This is why our leadership is reluctant on this score.. if they say the sky is falling and then it doesn't, they lose all credibility and influence.

They won't call it a monetary collapse until it's too late.

True enough, but since it is ALREADY too late, why bother calling it at all? About everybody here with the exception of a few hard headed Cornucopians acknowledges the systemic failure is inevitable, so what good would it do for TPTB to acknowledge it? They already missed the boat to mitigate the destruction, it left the port around the time Bear Stearns went down the Toilet.

Now you get to just hang on for the ride. You have to admit, watching the Clowns running around trying to stamp out the fires with bare feet is pretty entertaining stuff

Reverse Engineer

[shady28]

The necessary GDP adjustment - a moderate recession - should have been taken in 1987. It was not, and instead a bubble was intentionally blown. We got the Internet Bubble.

The necessary GDP adjustment - now about 10%, or a mild depression - should have been taken in 2000. It was not, and instead an even bigger bubble was intentionally blown. We got the Housing Bubble.

The necessary GDP adjustment - now about 20%, or a moderate depression, should have been taken in the summer of 2007. Alarmed by the mathematics, Bernanke attempted to blow an even bigger bubble with the discount and interest rate cuts, plus manipulation of reserves and 23A exemptions. The money went into commodities but the bubble was very small and short-lived because the mathematical limits of debt in the system had been reached and by the summer of 2008 this became evident with the failure of Fannie, Freddie, Bear Stearns, Lehman and AIG, along with a collapse in the commodity, stock and credit markets.

We are now up to a near-30% necessary correction in GDP, a SEVERE DEPRESSION, as a direct and proximate consequence of the actions taken by you, Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan over the previous twenty years and, more recently, the previous eighteen months.

I agree with what he said above 100%.

Here's the depth of the matter. In the final 3 months of 2008 it's estimated US GDP was contracting at a rate of 5% / year.

At this rate, it will take us an additional SIX YEARS of deterioration like we had in October - December 2008 to reach a total contraction of -30%.

As bad as it sounds - it's probably about right. After 6 years of losing 6+ million jobs/year (500k+ per month) we will have lost about 35-40 million jobs, or something in the area of 25% of the workforce.

This is going to be a very long and harsh ride.

[NoWorries]

Every week Denninger announces the End is Nigh. He's the guy standing on the street corner with the placard around his neck warning of the end of the world.

He's so shrill in his doomerism he makes Peter Schiff look like a Pollyanna.

Besides, I think Schiff has better credentials, between the two.

[patience]

Denninger has been right a lot more often than Schiff. If you doubt that, read the Tickers on his forum. Karl has been saying deflation for months, while all the inflationists were still ranting. Months ago, he called the bond problem that is just now making the news, ranting against all the deficit funded bailouts that would jack up bond yields. He has led protests against the bank bailouts, and is now calling for Pres to put an end to CDS, to take pressure off the banks.

When Karl has something to say, I'm gonna listen.

Peter Schiff was stuck on stupid with his decoupling nonsense for way too long, and lost a lot of his followers a lot of money. Schiff has a lot of things right, but I don't hear any solutions from him like Karl offers.

[mefistofeles]

Denninger has been right a lot more often than Schiff.

He may be right recently but the question remains why can't the Fed simply print up $50 trillion dollars? This is the question I would like to see answered.

In the previous leg of the crisis deflation has been the reigning issue but oil and gold prices seem to be rebounding now and if deflation implies a price drop its hard to see that continuing.

Deflation implies that prices are dropping, I don't see that, in fact prices have held steady and are now increasing. Deflation can't occur inifinitely because an infinite deflation scenario implies ZERO pricing. At some point deflation must stop and reverse itself, regardless of how bad the economy is because pricing cannot go to zero.

The deflationists were right for one stage of the crisis but to I believe its absolutely impossible for them to be right for the entire crisis because that implies zero pricing. In a sense its why the real estate bubble couldn't continue because real estate prices cannot go to inifinite values.