Posts Tagged ‘ great depression ’

Why Bother Working?

Sep 8th, 2011 | By | Category: Economics
What Robert Reich and people like him are saying is that working in productive employment is not at all necessary. To follow his logic to the fullest extent, we should just have people save gas and stay home. The government could borrow and/or print money, then send it to foreign ...read more

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Posted in Economics | 4 comments


The Biggest Financial Deceptions of the Decade Have Nothing on the Fed

Jan 11th, 2010 | By | Category: Economics, Featured
Enron? Bear Stearns? Bernie Madoff? They’re all big stories about big losses and have hurt a lot of employees and investors. But none come close to getting my vote for the decade’s most dastardly deception... First came Enron, with $65.5 billion in assets, going belly-up and becoming the largest bankruptcy in ...read more

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Posted in Economics, Featured | 3 comments


Inflation, Deflation, Peak Oil and Complex Systems

Sep 29th, 2009 | By | Category: Featured, Macro Economics
In my father's house are many mansions. Surely one of them has a room with no elephants in it.... Not to crunch too many metaphors right here at the top, but a consensus seems to be firming up in the animate jello of the Internet that we have entered the Season ...read more

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Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 5 comments


Dude, Where’s My Buggy Whip?

Jun 29th, 2009 | By | Category: Featured, Morning Whiskey
Gary seemed down, today, so I'm going to share that I got a dandy nasty gram from a charmless young liberal thug who implied that all the evil in this nation is due to you spoiled Baby Boomers (Don't blame me!  I am a war model and my darling Charles ...read more

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Posted in Featured, Morning Whiskey | 7 comments


S&P Ends Its Rally and Government Debt Still a Problem

Apr 27th, 2009 | By | Category: Featured, Macro Economics
Buenos dias. The obvious story to lead with to begin the week is the outbreak of swine flu in Mexico. But as there is nothing any of us can do about that, we'll report that Chinese gold reserves have grown 75% since 2003 to over 1,000 tonnes. That's small compared ...read more

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Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 1 Comment »


Assessing How Serious the Financial Crisis Can Get

Apr 23rd, 2009 | By | Category: Featured, Macro Economics
It’s time to call the global crisis what it is: the worst financial collapse since 1929. That’s no surprise to our readers, who have been amply warned over the last five years. But now even government officials, after trying to ignore the facts on the ground for the last couple ...read more

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Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 3 comments


Fear, Lust and That 1930s Feeling

Mar 16th, 2009 | By | Category: Featured, Investing Strategies
I’ve had this ongoing project of reading as much as I can about the 1930s and the Great Depression. I favor the first-person accounts, stuff written by people who were there -- like Damon Runyon. Some of his early stories written in the 1930s reflect on the mood of the era. ...read more

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Posted in Featured, Investing Strategies | No Comments »


The Real Causes of Depression

Feb 6th, 2009 | By | Category: Energy, Featured, Macro Economics
Let's dispense with the usual recap of bad news today and go straight to more important matters, like the weather. "Is that rain?" asked a co-worker the other day. "No. It's the sound of leaves blowing down the street," we speculated. And it was. Huge drifts of leaves have accumulated on the footpaths in ...read more

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Posted in Energy, Featured, Macro Economics | 2 comments


Silver Currency

May 16th, 2008 | By | Category: Currencies
Are you old enough to remember when the U.S. used silver coins? I am. U.S. coins used to contain 90 percent silver. In some ways, it was a sign of mutual respect between the people and their government. The people trusted the U.S. government to keep an honest currency. And ...read more

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Posted in Currencies | 1 Comment »


From Recession to Depression

Feb 4th, 2008 | By | Category: Macro Economics
If you credit Austrian School Economic Theory, which I certainly do, you’re forced to believe that the business cycle exists. The business cycle is driven largely by government intervention in the economy, in the form of taxes, regulation and, most importantly, currency inflation. These things give false signals to businesses ...read more

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Posted in Macro Economics | No Comments »