emily x

Worst Housing Number in Decades: What Is the Wall Street Media Smoking?

"Another point to be made is how the media is trying so hard to support the current administration."

Clearly you've not been watching CNBC!

The Leading Cause of Personal Bankruptcy

Reading this, I wonder why I'm bothering to throw so much of my hard-earned money into health insurance (I have one of those university jobs that provides it) if they'd cancel me should I get seriously ill. I'm in good health and take no drugs. Maybe I'll just start saving those funds and collect the interest (or dividends!) myself, instead of giving it to Blue Cross. That seems to be the only card the American "consumer" (weren't we once the American people?) has left -- withhold the funds.

Does Bad Economic Policy Lead to Greater Financial Regulation?

I agree that the economic policy (if you can call it that) of the last 8 years has "created incentives for undisciplined behavior" (to say the least). But it looks to me like the slide in the value of the dollar is the result of several forces coming together, the main one being the administration's desire to make, or allow, the dollar go as low as possible. Far from being the result other nations' losing faith in us, the extremely weak dollar is very much a feature of current republican economic policy. It's a cause, not an effect.

Irrational Exuberance Got Buried Yesterday: Now What?

"The Chinese don't have to sell. They just have to stop buying more US debt to show the USA that a debtor is never in the position do dictate terms unilaterally." -- True, but like everything in the vast new global economy, it works at least 2 ways: China also has to be concerned about a backlash against poor quality/dangerous products from her biggest customer -- us.

What's strange is how often we've been here before, with gigantic debt suddenly being called in and nobody actually having the cash. What happened to that "huge amount of liquidity" that's supposedly been "sloshing around the globe" lately, according to the wise folks on CNBC? I guess if history teaches us anything, it's that history doesn't teach us anything!