The Puget Sound Business Journal reports on consumers deleveraging:
84 percent said they’re using cash more to help control spending and manage budgets. Another 69 percent said they’re using cash more because they’re worried about credit card debt.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson should not be allowed to rewrite history. Unless he lied to the world, he never saw this financial crash coming.
Yesterday the market crashed farther than any since the Great Depression. In fact, it is crashing further, faster than what may soon be called World Depression I:
This looks like World Depression II. What will happen when this chart of credit / gdp reverses itself like it did during World Depression I?
I care very little about what the mainstream media says or does. They are a waste of time — endlessly regurgitating the same information. Nor do they have any credibility, as FSK notes:
The mainstream media released a huge amount of negative stories about Sarah Palin immediately after the election. Their excuse is “We didn’t want to unfairly influence the election, so we didn’t mention this until afterwards.”
This is tantamount to an admission that the mainstream media has no credibility whatsoever. The mainstream media claims that it’s their job to filter the candidates and decide who’s deserving. By admitting they covered up these “negative horrible stories”, they’re essentially admitting they have no credibility.
If these stories about Palin are true, didn’t the public deserve to know them before deciding whether to vote for her?
Does the GOP still believe in representative government? Campaign For Liberty on problems in Arizona’s 4th Legislative District:
A large group of Constitutional Republican Reformers including many Ron Paul supporters showed up and established a clear majority. The flustered chair, upon realizing his predicament, gaveled the meeting to a close without electing delegates at all
It sure does not seem like it. How can anyone support the rampant corruption in the GOP?
Does Bob Burges believe in liberty or the rule of law? It does not seem like it. I hope he has an explanation.
I read yesterday that each active GM or Ford employee must produce enough for nearly 10 people:
GM, Ford, and Chrysler employ 240,000. They provide healthcare to 2 million, pension benefits to 775,000
That is unsustainable and unfair to young workers.
People who believe it essentially to support this business model are missing an important point. People will always want to get around — and that probably includes cars — but every dollar the federal government spends supporting insolvent companies like GM is a dollar that someone else cannot spend building a better car company to build better cars.
The Ayn Rand Institute captures the importance of failures succinctly:
Overlooked here is that in a free market business failures are not just normal, they’re crucial for the best products and ideas to emerge. Most restaurants fail in their first three years because customers have other preferences. Many mom-and-pop grocers go out of business because Walmart offers better selection and lower prices. Even whole industries–think typewriters, 8-tracks and horses and buggies–vanish because new inventions and competitors arise.
None of these failures are a problem, nor do they threaten the system. On the contrary, they are an inherent part of the progress which only capitalism makes possible.
Well said.
People are stopping their driving:
Japan, the largest holder of US debt, wants US Treasuries issued in Japanese Yen:
Japanese economists, increasingly concerned that the United States might seek to pay its enormous and growing debt obligations in a weakened US dollar, are looking to the possibility of US Treasuries being issued in yen.
This would make it far more expensive for the US to issue more debt, threatening a reversal of this trend:
Why are the people of Irvine paying the federal government to lease them propery it took for free?
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has leased 200,000 square feet of space in Irvine for a temporary office that will manage receiverships and liquidate assets from failed financial institutions in the western United States.
Why not just default and sell the buildings to the highest bidder? I’ll bid it for $1.
Commercial Real Estate is way over capacity. Defaults are bound to increase:
General Growth Properties, the second largest mall owner in the U.S. behind Simon Property, has hired bankruptcy counsel
It is sad that people view Bush as a champion of free-market economics. The Bush administration expanded government interference into US citizens’ private affairs, both social and economic, more than any other. Bush nationalized our financial system and is replacing what is left of our meritocracy with a kleptocracy:
Mr. Paulson under George Bush in 2008 is looking like the U.S. counterpart to Anatoly Chubais under Boris Yeltsin in 1996. Just as Russian neoliberals led by Chubais were promoted by Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin of Goldman Sachs, today’s Wall Street power grab to replace the government as the economy’s central planner is being orchestrated by another Treasury Secretary from Goldman Sachs, empowered to decide which kleptocrats are to receive what public resources and on what terms, aided by “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve. Mr. Bernanke’s famous quip about helicopters dropping money to get the economy moving seems to be limited to Wall Street for use in buying financial assets, not real goods and services for the population at large.