Ray Lopez

How Much Is a Stimulus Job Worth?

User is largely right, and also this figure is suspect: " Net impact: +$77,000 for each employment-year rescued."

This assumes that the government intervention will not result in market distortions. Also it assumes that "but for" the government intervention you would not have a job. This is plainly Keynesian nonsense, that DeLong is famous for believing.

A better policy is for government, if it wants a Keynesian stimulus, to apply it across the board with a tax cut. Or better yet (in an alternate universe) get out of trying to steer the economy and let nature take its course--just like it did with sharp and swift depressions followed by V-shaped recoveries in the 19th century, before the creation of the 1913 Federal Reserve. As economic historian Angus Maddison has pointed out, growth rates in the late 19th century were largely the same as in the late 20th century (comparing apples to apples, since both periods were untainted by any war boom and you can also argue the open immigration policies of the USA of the late 19th century were essentially libertarian and free-market oriented).


On Nov 01 09:14 AM User 30417 wrote:

> Brad, let me see if I understand our new economics. We borrow money through the sale of treasuries and “create” mostly service economy jobs.

Paul Tudor Jones: Gold's Undervalued and Bonds Are a Curve Flattener Play

J. P. Tudor is a good man. He lives in Zimbabwe part of the year if memory serves. But if you look at his record (and taking nothing away from it), you'll notice he does better in bull markets than bear. This means he essentially is long on equities, possibly with leverage (he lost money for the first time ever last year, meaning he was in the same stuff as everybody else, albeit down -4% rather than -15% like most hedge funds). Also note he likes gold miners rather than gold itself, meaning once again he enjoys using leverage.

Long live JPT! I wish I was one of his clients. I also favor gold but realistically gold should level out once the bull market takes off again. However, due to government debt, I am betting it levels out at $2000 USD/oz rather than $1k.

How to Keep Tabs on the Government's Recovery Efforts

Brilliant! Reminds me of the "jobs saved" by protectionism--once calculated at over USD$100k per steel worker job.

Also $52 billion in stimulus compared to the $800 B alloted is less than 10%. Does Wall Street get the rest?

Airlines: Some Costs They Can't - And Shouldn't - Cut

Let's keep in mind that economics does not value utility as understood by most, but value as defined mostly by the laws of scarcity. Water is cheap, diamonds are expensive. Why?

This stat however was very telling: "Over the next 24 hours, these pilots will make over 13,500 take-offs literally around the world [without an accident]".

Very true. The only other place I know of that has this kind of precision and accuracy is semiconductor manufacturing. Well done by the pilots; too bad about the drop in wages.

Policy Lessons from the Great Depression

Amity Shlaes’ wonderful book, The Forgotten Man, A New History of the Great Depression (Harper Perennial, 2008) ... is not wonderful. It's a long, boring rehash of old facts.

A better book, shorter, cheaper, more scholarly, and yes, more ideological but at least it has a theme, is this one, written by a true scholar and not a speechwriter:

Rethinking the Great Depression (American Ways Series) (Paperback) ~ Gene Smiley

Buyer beware--Shlaes is getting a lot of press from her media friends. Her book is not worth the money--boring, boring, boring. And she misses or glosses over how the mini-Depression of 1937 was caused by a hard money policy. BTW I am not a fan of Keynes or FDR.

Nintendo: The Wii Bubble Has Burst

All of gaming is a fad, like cell phone model use. It goes in cycles.

Hands Off Goldman Bonuses

What you apologists for GS fail to realize is that GS took government guarantees and cash when nobody would lend to it and it was due to fall. The government foolishly gave money without taxpayer consent. GS paid it back--but now wants business as usual. That's wrong.

A special tax on Wall Street is in order. We don't need finance taking up 15% of the economy when the government is acting as a backstop. No other industry save the car industry (also a wreck) does that.

What's Next for Gold and the Dollar?

Article is doom and gloom, but I think the conclusion--buy gold--is sound. But never count out the dollar.

Long term, the other non-US countries (including China) are in worse shape than the USA. Yes, China, which will crash and burn soon.

Gold: Is Now the Time to Buy?

The talk about AU/AG ratios is nonsense. Ratios change "permanently" all the time. Stocks used to offer huge dividends relative to their PE until 1958, and that ratio stopped working.

I am a gold bug, but the ratio of AU/AG is numerismatics. A better reason to buy gold is to see how governments all over the world are debasing their currency.

Federal Reserve: Exit Watch

Double. They (the Fed) have doubled their books by printing money, since December 2007.

Also see this:

tinyurl.com/pdljc9

raylopez99.blogspot.com/

Click on the first link for a graphic that shows uncertainty over TARP was the cause-in-fact of the equities crash of October 2008. This link is from the second link above.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

This figure is from John Taylor's paper on the crash, Critical Review:
A Journal of Politics and Society, Vol. 21, Nos. 2-3, 2009 Economic
Policy and the Financial Crisis: An Emperical Analysis of What Went Wrong – John B. Taylor


On Aug 21 04:35 PM Living4Dividends wrote:

> Because you are a Fed follower - answer me this
>
> How much money has the Fed printed since the crisis began? Would
> this be equal to the Fed's balance sheet?
>
> No one can seem to answer this question.

SuperNanke to the Rescue!

Author: "I will concede that without the emergency actions by the Fed and Treasury, our economic system could have fallen much harder (although the crash that we endured was by no means pleasant)."

Don't conceed this point. The late 19th century had similar growth rates to the late 20th century (Angus Maddison's data), and the former was before the 1913 creation of the US Federal Reserve. You can have a "V-shaped" recovery without a Fed. Otherwise, you risk a "U" or "L" shaped recovery, just like in Japan, with their failed Keynesian economics.

tinyurl.com/pdljc9

raylopez99.blogspot.com/

Click on the first link for a graphic that shows uncertainty over TARP was the cause-in-fact of the equities crash of October 2008. This link is from the second link above.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

This figure is from John Taylor's paper on the crash, Critical Review:
A Journal of Politics and Society, Vol. 21, Nos. 2-3, 2009 Economic
Policy and the Financial Crisis: An Emperical Analysis of What Went Wrong – John B. Taylor

Go here: groups.google.com/grou...;

for a discussion of this topic.

SuperNanke to the Rescue!

tinyurl.com/pdljc9

raylopez99.blogspot.com/

Click on the first link for a graphic that shows discussion over TARP was the cause-in-fact of the equities crash of October 2008. This link is from the second link above.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

This figure is from John Taylor's paper on the crash, Critical Review:
A Journal of Politics and Society, Vol. 21, Nos. 2-3, 2009 Economic
Policy and the Financial Crisis: An Emperical Analysis of What Went Wrong – John B. Taylor

Go here: groups.google.com/grou...;

for a discussion of this topic.

Lehman 2: The Collapsening. With the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy approaching, the BBC says it's producing a movie based on the firm's fateful September, with James Cromwell as Hank Paulson and Corey Johnson as Lehman chief Richard Fuld.

tinyurl.com/pdljc9

raylopez99.blogspot.com/

Click on the first link for a graphic that shows discussion over TARP was the cause-in-fact of the equities crash of October 2008. This link is from the second link above.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

This figure is from John Taylor's paper on the crash, Critical Review:
A Journal of Politics and Society, Vol. 21, Nos. 2-3, 2009 Economic
Policy and the Financial Crisis: An Emperical Analysis of What Went Wrong – John B. Taylor

Go here:
groups.google.com/grou...;

for a discussion of this topic.

U.S. Monetary Transmission System Remains Broken

tinyurl.com/pdljc9

raylopez99.blogspot.com/

Click on the first link for a graphic that shows discussion over TARP was the cause-in-fact of the equities crash of October 2008. This link is from the second link above.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

RL

Coming Soon: Banking Crisis of Historic Proportions

tinyurl.com/pdljc9

raylopez99.blogspot.com/

Click on the first link for a graphic that shows discussion over TARP was the cause-in-fact of the equities crash of October 2008. This link is from the second link above.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

RL