Djinni

Obama's Donut Economics

I'm glad somebody is standing up against the absurd idea that protecting American jobs is
an evil form of protectionism. We have been sold to the Enemy within and the poorest of the poor are singing His praises as they buy Chinese goods from the Devil's helper, Sam Wall.

Recession a Buzzkill for Alcohol Industry

It's a good sign that people aren't "crying in their beer" over the recession. I've noticed some interesting alternatives to summer entertaining, like parties in a park or at the beach, where alcohol is simply off the agenda by law. Water, soda and iced tea provide healthy alternatives and eliminate the risk of driving home tipsy. Maybe people are getting their priorities straight and the hospitality industry needs to reset its priorities on quality food and entertainment.

Depressionary Bust in Ireland Echoed in California

Actually, California has a flourishing legal marijuana industry (medical marijuana) already. As for Edward Harrison's analysis, I wish I could believe otherwise. Californians want all the world's luxuries like expensive homes, R.V.s and free higher education and none of its burdens like taxes, the effort required to become informed voters and the courage to stand up against an invasion of corporate and individual welfare freeloaders. In short, they're ordinary Americans (and American wannabes).

Forced optimism is the name of the Obama game. The new White House team had to have seen disaster coming. Perhaps their idea was to create a rally of faith where financial measures were simply untenable and hope for a miracle. Maybe they believed some redemptive grassroots effort like the Victory Garden movement in WWII would pull people together toward a sweat equity solution to the mortgage and financial crisis. These guesses may sound lame, but what we've been hearing is glib rhetoric, as usual, just with better English than what we heard from the Shrub. Who knows? Does Obama, even?

Economics Is a Useless Profession, At Least for Now

I appreciate Brad DeLang's articulation of the argument, but I think the most obvious reason the profession of economics has come to seem useless is that our entire financial world is dealing with a collapse caused by system manipulators completely devoid of morality. Absolute depravity does not lead to healthy economic cycles, which are what the "science" of economics tries to observe and use for predicting the Almighty Markets.

Adherents of the motto "Let another's greed fill my need" created the free-fall chaos. A lot of people in alternate press blogs are screaming "It's the Jews!" who caused the melt-down, which sounds terribly paranoid (or like agit-politik), though I did notice that most of the people complaining in Harper's about being ripped-off in Madoff's get-rich-quick-at-some... scheme had Jewish last names. More than a few pundits are also pointing out that American Jews, with increasing control over key positions in Washington, are manipulating the U.S. toward further embroilment in the Middle East.
Clearly, it's also the oil companies and plenty of other unscrupulous Americans who got us into this dual mess of unending war and financial ruin, but as DeLang suggests, it's not going to be academic or practical economics of any stripe that saves the day.

Wal-Mart and Offering Employees 'Strategic' Healthcare

Freedom in the marketplace is what got us into this mess. Unfettered greed is not democracy, it's the rape of the poor by the unscrupulous.

China Is Now in Firm Control of U.S. Debt Markets

You sound like an English teacher! Of course, nobody reads the stuff; people use the comment forums to post their own propaganda, just as students hand in bogus term papers to test their luck with teachers' tolerance for the easy pass. Many of my students haven't even read the downloaded papers they hand me. I get that when I ask them questions about "their" arguments in draft conferences. Similarly, most responders don't pay attention to the content of your post. They're trawling for readers for their own blogs.

I've been reading "borrowed" research papers for days (80% are completely stolen, if only a chunk here, a chunk there; 15 percent are very badly written; and 5% are from the few students who show real promise) and my take on the whole of American life is that we're lost to dishonesty and incompetence. We live in a society of greed. The mantra is "Get rich quick, no matter who or what you trample in the process." The bad quality of prose in responses ought to give you a clue to people's investment in self-education.

I'll follow your blog, as I think you've got some intelligent insights, but I'm not convinced anybody will take your advice. Americans are all locked in greed or survival mode, now.