All in Economics
the federal government makes the simple process of disposing of government properties into a kafkaesque nightmare. “The federal government has long owned more real estate than it knows what to do with — buildings that sit empty and sites that are underdeveloped — but it must jump through hoops before it can sell its holdings,”
“Bankruptcy fulfills the crucially important social function of preserving the available stock of capital. And it plays this role in all conceivable scenarios: when it results from fraud, when it results from insolvency, and when it results from illiquidity.”
We all want to be right, thus, we’re willfully blind about the accuracy of what we know and learn. “When you’re highly confident, your brain becomes more receptive to information that confirms your original view,” Zweig explains, “while the processing of other data that could disprove it is ‘abolished,’ a recent neuroscience study found.”
The US economy has become hyper financialized, says Pal. If the S&P 500 goes down, employees are laid off. And, we all know that one of the Fed’s mandates is maximizing employment. “It's like nothing will last long because the Fed will not allow it to.”
A Charmin spokeswoman, when confronted by reporters at WBUR about shrinking the size of their toilet sheet squares, pulled an explanation out of her you-know-what, suggesting it was the result of "innovations" allowing “consumers to, basically, wipe their butts more efficiently.”
Of course, the singing “Crypto revolutionary” believes climate change is a government conspiracy to control us. It seems funny that a “peace & liberty advocate” would assume that government force provides the only answer to climate change, if there is such a thing.
South African labor needs to employ more capital, but they can't because mining companies are afraid to provide the capital. These same companies need to open new mines as well, along with providing sustaining capital investments in the existing mines. But, why would they, they're not sure who's going to own the mines?
This generation of skilled labor was neutered long ago when parents insisted their kids go to college so they can get office jobs. At the same time, in population centers, neighborhood associations band together to stop any new development in their backyards. Especially any proposal for affordable homes.
Since when does forecasting a couple rate bumps two years from now be considered hawkish to the point of making the dollar pop and gold flop?
The government’s COVID mandate calling for lenders to cease and desist if borrowers didn’t pay expanded the market for this bit of accounting trickery. The market, forgetting that real estate sometimes falls in value, “viewed them as a relatively safe bet.”
My friend echoed those comments, talking about how cool the scene was. Playboy had a booth, there were ladies walking about dressed only in paint. To someone who has attended plenty of stodgy gold and natural resource conferences, not to mention Austrian economics confabs, the Miami happening sounds like a Grateful Dead concert by comparison.
Supply chain breaks and increased demand are not inflation. A more clear-eyed view is from Peter Boockver, who wisely looks at price inflation, first in services, and then in goods. In an interview with Real Vision’s Ed Harrison, Boockvar said, “When it comes to services, take out energy, so call it core services, over the last 20 years, it's averaged an annual gain of 2.7%.”
According to Bianco, the plumbers working at the Eccles Building don't understand their own plumbing. In September 2019 when the repo market blew up, Powell referred to it as a technical plumbing problem, in other words, too complicated for mere mortals and leave it to the monetary gods.
Weston Nakamura in an interview with Real Vision’s Jack Farley made the trenchant point, “This is what markets look like when you don't have global central banks artificially suppressing volatility, intervention of central banks buying every dip, putting a safety net under every single slight tremor or taper tantrum or whatever it may be, this is what happens.”
How on earth did monetary matters get tangled up with environmental concerns? Perhaps Bitcoin should send a representative to the aforementioned Central Banks and Supervisors Network for Greening the Financial System. No doubt Elon would be too busy, but perhaps Mr. CryptoWhale would sit in.
The disconnect between the stock market and the economy has created a conundrum, is it hemlines or is it jeans style? Going into the COVID crash skinny jeans were all the rage, now, according to The Washington Post, “the fashionistas are going for ‘the mom’ and the flare.”
Created as a joke, goofing on Bitcoin, dogecoin has gone from .03 cents to 61 cents as I write up 109,007.44 percent. Available wherever crypto is sold. It’s enough to make you mad. Happily, there’s something for that. Last November Oregon joined Denver, Colorado in decriminalizing psychedelics. And you thought all the libertarians had moved to New Hampshire.
To the sensible and experienced, it seems late indeed. But, does piling into U.S. dollars, made less worthy each day by the Powell Fed a good idea? The US central bank now has a climate change mandate, in addition to full employment. Soundness of the currency used to be top of mind for central bankers, but that horse left the Eccles building long ago.
When the pandemic struck, banks dumped plenty in their loan-loss provisions, $60 billion, expecting the worst. The cavalry arrived led by Jerome Powell’s Fed liquidity flood, Steven Mnunchin’s PPP loans, Congress’s CARES Act, and moratoriums on foreclosures and evictions. Instead of an Austrian Business Cycle cleansing, the cracks were papered over, including bailing out money-market funds allowing us to watch the pandemic comfortably on TV.
Using the same logic as shooting a hole in the barn and then painting the target around it to determine marksmanship accuracy, the USPS is trying to achieve its goals by gaming the metrics. “Last year, first-class mail hit its service target 89.7% on average, well below its 96% goal,” write Jennifer Smith and Paul Ziobro for the WSJ.
