Leftfield

The King Canute Economy: Governments' Futile Attempt to Stem the Tide

While this may come as shocking news to some, putting the debt of private connected failures onto the public balance sheet will not make it go away unless governments acquire a new ability to actually generate wealth.
I hope our SUV governments become more like the Tata, only then do we have a chance to regenerate in the new era. So far, ours are intent on becoming 12-wheeler semi sized.

The Truth Behind China's Currency Peg

Instead of using the earliest $trillions to ensure a safety net for average Americans, TARP began an explicit Washington policy of propping up the worst perpetrators of leverage and bubbles and thus, prices to Main St.
Our leaders are set against simple price relief to the average citizen by letting more of the markets take their natural course. The rich, the connected, the favored, must receive endless bailouts to maintain this course because the largest failures are maintained in place along with the higher prices, gargantuan debt and perpetual failure they bring to our economy.
You and I could adjust to a decline of the dollar as it would be less drastic because the markets would have clear signals and genuine market-clearing prices to operate with. Higher prices for Chinese goods would be offset by lower commodity prices, for example.
No, we have added $trillions of debt for our kids and grandkids to thank us for, to guarantee the continued bubbles, financialism and high crony prices and taxes that also hits our pocketbooks hard. Even before the inevitable, now far higher, adjustment sto paying more for imports.

The Great Bubble of China: Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?

Gifted that China is in many ways, I think we underestimate how stifling and error-prone the jackboot of state control is. They squelch the masses so they don't have to hear unpleasant ideas and realities. This also squelches great ideas.
Here we have had a middle class culture that has produced the greatest prosperity ever known (up to about 40 years ago). The freedom allowed Edison, the Wright brothers and countless other tinkerers who weren't beholden as beholden to the state as we are now the leeway to be independent and create. Steve Jobs is a great recent example.
Now we have oppressive government fraudulently controlling us via out-of-control rules, laws, procedures and taxes which threatens to extinguish the greater freedom we mostly had to be individuals. With that, we lose the creativity that comes, not from state-sanctioned narrow channels of thinking but by experiment and accident.
The idea of wildly excessive lending for consumption has paralleled the rise of out-of-control government and the same bubble paradigm cannot be restarted. Either we face the pain of shrinking the gross misallocation we've allowed in our economy and for government, or we will let the spark that has made us unique, go out.

Quantitative Easing and the Disappearance of Income

Short-term solutions and attempts to put Humpty-Dumpty together again. More of the same brought to us by the guilty parties of Wall St. and DC who largely remain in place.

Maybe they're a comedy team. They certainly lack honesty. We know that. They're supposed to be the best and the brightest. They're the best-paid, anyway. Give'em the hook.

Geithner on Yuan: Misstep or Warning Shot?

It's easier to take the shot at China than to clean up our act. In fairness, maybe Obama will work towards that too. His choices of members of the ruling class for his administration don't look good, especially Geitner.

The ruling class, both public and private, have made a profound mess of the U.S. while accruing unheard of privelege and wealth to themselves. Now the mess is exposed by the collapse of our ponzi banking system, which hid inefficiencies and messes everywhere including trade. While crushing the bottom 40% or so during "recoveries" past.

Leaders in this country used to be often self-made industrialists, skilled in solving real problems. Now they are skilled in parliamentary maneuvering in the "service" sector and in the gargantuan government. I don't know if they can do more than change perceptions in our house of mirrors, rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

A guiding light should be the Constitution, and not what I fear they will do: Continue to ignore it or consider it only an obstacle to evade.