Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Capitalism: It really is the unknown ideal.

In the most literal sense, that is.

More from Billy Beck.

As far as the overall state of the economy these days, the minute some microcephalic cretin uses the term "double dip recession" within my earshot, everything they say after that goes all Charlie Brown's Teacher, because in order to have a double dip you need a recovery between the dips, and buying automakers, jiggering unemployment figures, and giving millions of Americans a summer temp job working as door-to-door annoyance peddlers for Uncle Sam does not count as a "recovery" to anybody with more economic sense than a turnip.

13 comments:

Unknown said...

The so-called "recovery" was due to some growth in GDP. Unfortunately, that growth was solely due to increases in federal spending. Even more unfortunately, that spending was via gigantic deficits.

Recovery? The words, "Fake, phony, fraudulent and BS" all come to mind.

We've yet to bottom out, and I'm afraid that we have a long way to go...

Art

Anonymous said...

Hah, my theory is the doule dip is like sliding down stairs.. one bump, leads to another, and if Feels like dip, but it's basically just bumping downwards.

Standard Mischief said...

"double dip" is two nose dives. They can have a general sense of slide between them.

BTW, the stock market "recovered", based on something less than a real economic recovery. However, the stock market going up is a leading indicator of economy (It's just not that good of an indicator, and can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent)

Bubblehead Les. said...

A Recession is when your neighbor loses their job, their house, etc. A Depression is when YOU lose your job, your house, etc. A Revolution is when EVERYONE loses their jobs, homes, etc. and uses Force to get them back. The problem lies in the Revolutionary Leaders, who may have forced the issue so as to gain power, such as the Commies did in Russia in 1917. There is a story about Lenin that illustrates this. During the Summer of 1917 in Russia, Lenin was addressing a Worker's Soviet. Someone in the Crowd yelled "Why don't you seize power?" Lenin's reply was "Not yet Comrade, THINGS ARE'NT BAD ENOUGH YET!" A few months later came the October Revolution. Got your Browncoat ready?

Tam said...

Standard Mischief,

Perhaps I would have been expressing my thoughts better if I had said "a recovery or at least a leveling-off".

I think that, while the rate of decline has been uneven, it has been a more or less constant decline. I think that the stock market is quite uncoupled from the reality of the larger economy and has been for some time, and that the true impact of the unemployment and debt problems has been hidden by number juggling, unemployment extending, and stimulus/census make-work nonsense. Now we're finally admitting we've run out of Monopoly money to give people for digging holes and filling them back up again...

Rabbit said...

Part of my "classical" education was in economics. It's not unusual for me to scream at the radio/tv during business news or when Congress does something (anything) that thwarts sane commercial 'policy'. I've been afflicted in this manner for decades. Bystanders become accustomed, eventually.

About 10 years ago it began making more and more sense to start liquidating all my assets which had any chance of depreciating or which did not provide a direct tangible benefit to me in terms of security or consumption. I've pulled back on investments aside from defense industries and even watched them dance like a fresh-caught fish on a hot pier (I'm bailing out of L3 this week). I've ditched Munis.

The short of this is that in order to have a 'recovery', you have to have some basic expectation of something to recover. I think SS is walking dead. I think Congress will defenestrate the .mil budget before January. Entitlements and other spending are going to be hard to slow down even if both Houses turn in November, because at least half of the voters still approve of their sacred cows.

If they paid taxes, maybe the realization of January 1, 2011's change will cause the scales to fall from their eyes sometime.

I'm gonna buy a CONEX, fix it up out on a few acres out in the wilds of the Texas prairie and live in it, and put all my money in coffeecans. I really am. Then I'm going to kill anything that crosses my property line without my invitation.

Regards,
Rabbit.

Kristophr said...

The proper term for our current woes is a "Dem"pression.

Like the one in 1929 ... started by a misguided Republican President deciding to fix things by messing with banks, and then stretched out into decades by a Democrat loon in the Whitehouse.

og said...

"Then I'm going to kill anything that crosses my property line without my invitation, and eat it or make jerky"

there. I fixeded it for you.

og said...

Whoa, in stereo!

Rabbit said...

I dunno, og, I'm not so much into long pork. Things might get that rough before they get better, however. Sewer rat does taste like punkin' pie, if you fix it right.

Joe in PNG said...

Les,
The thing with your scenario is that the people usually don't allow the wreckers of the economy to take power. Russia in 1917 had been rotting for years under the Tsars and WWI was just the thing needed to make the whole thing come crashing down. Weimer Germany, similar thing.

So, if Obama and Co. think that this will be a great opportunity to take over, well, no. He's not exactly endearing himself to the military- kind of an essential step when going for that militarist takeover thing.

Anonymous said...

To qualify as an economic recovery, a formerly higher index point has to be recovered, at least in large part.

While there is now a stock/bond rally and savings rates have improved, employment, CAPEX and housing are either stagnant or still declining.

This indicates a mixed recovery has occurred.

Given that municipal bonds are presently being downgraded because of looming state and local bankruptcies, the recovery in financial instruments will prove to be short-lived.

The next leg down in the stock market will produce a capitulation by the bulls and cause the announcement of a "double-dip" by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

Debating that we never recovered from the Lehman Bros collapse and so there is no recovery from which to dip lower seems like a moot point and your time is better spend putting in a garden or putting up more ammunition. Unless you enjoy semantic quibbles, there is very little meat on this bone.

MALTHUS

Anonymous said...

Tam:

You said: "I think that the stock market is quite uncoupled from the reality of the larger economy and has been for some time . . ."

The stock market isn't uncoupled from reality - it's just pointing to a reality that nobody wants to see, that of the inflated dollar.

If you look at the US stock market in constant dollars, I believe that the recent 'high' was at *best* almost even with the market at it's 2008 low right after the crash. We have printed so many dollars, that the stock market value is not actually going up, it's just reflecting the number of the new smaller dollars required to buy the same basket of stocks.

Jim Rodgers, the super investor who recently left the US for Singapore, and is teaching his daughters to speak Mandarin, says he expects the US stock market to go to 50,000 - in dollars inflated by the US.GOV's massive printing of money. While he's not *saying* that he expects it to take a wheelbarrow of dollars to buy a loaf of bread, he is trading his dollars for rinminbi at every opportunity that presents itself.

BoxStockRacer