Well…I have had a few posts here that dealt with the severe austerity that has been imposed by the IMF on Europe (not the personal austerity that prompted me to try to use coffee grounds twice with no success), and have been adamant that trying to grow any economy with austerity just doesn’t work. I have even been supported by a Nobel prize winner, Paul Krugman, but anyone that has had Econ 101 would recognize that going against Keynes is a bad bet. Now, the IMF has come up with a report on the imposed austerity that has sent Europe back into recession saying that the negative multiplier effect (yeah, I know kind of an arcane term) is much larger for budget cuts than they thought it was. What this report said was that the estimate of .6 Euro in lower growth was wildly wrong when the data was in….the negative multiplier actually was closer to 1.5 Euros per dollar of cuts….which means that the planners in Greece, Spain, and Portugal were misled by the IMF and the austerity hawks into tanking their economies just to protect the banks and the rich…how many more times are we going to allow the rich to rig the game and steal more and more from the middle class across the world? The real problem here is that the IMF is not even reading their own reports since they are still pushing the austerity nonsense here in the US when they know that it will result in making the economy worse…right now, with the pushback on austerity by the dems, our economy is still growing which should be the model across the world instead of the crushing of middle classes to keep the banks happy…geez…
Category Archives: Misc
I promised another one….
Well…the recovery has started to take hold so I thought I’d came back for the second one that I promised today…don’t have a big topic but just some reminders and thoughts as we stumble over the fiscal bump…first, let’s forget the notion that SS has anything to do with the deficit…it is supported by its own tax structure and no general revenue or borrowing goes into supporting it…so let’s stop talking about using slashes to it to help the deficit…it won’t, and the only reason it is being talked about is that the repubs hate any program that helps anyone but their rich welfare recipients…the 1% and the corporations that pay no taxes. Hmmm….it has been a slow week for politics with everyone out of town from DC, so maybe I should talk about something else? There was a cool article in Slate today by Phil Plait…their astronomy writer about a star quake on a magnetar over 50,000 light years away that released so much energy 8 years ago that it almost fried satellites that are circling the earth…that was some frickin explosion….from an object that is halfway across the galaxy….and I think it’s cool that the explosion happened 50,000 years ago and it just got here 8 years ago….yep, I’m an astronomy geek….
I just don’t understand it…
Well…I was sitting here bored last night and thought I’d watch a movie to try to alleviate some of it…and, with all of the praise that has been heaped on the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy over the years, I thought I’d give the last one a try since it was on tv and nothing else looked good. I guess I just don’t understand the attraction…yes, the stories appear to be epic and there is a certain scale that is cool to watch, but the stories and the characters left me cold…it appeared to me that it was an exercise in epic film making more than an epic film….it may be that I have never been a fan of Tolkien but I think I know a good movie when I see it but this one was just a time killer without any there there….oh, well…I guess this stuff is a matter of taste…give me “Casablanca” or “Gone with the Wind” or even the somewhat opaque “Blade Runner”…or one of Kubricks best and I am happy…
A terrible, terrible day…
Well….how can you make sense of 20 kindergartners being murdered? My heart is broken in so many pieces and I cannot imagine living a parents worst nightmare…..not much else to say right now…
Sunken Condos….
Well…just made a mad dash and spent the last of my cash,…with the top down, I headed across town, to the building with the ticket on the side, and found what I was wishing for…more from Donald and a few more…okay, I know, I’ll never be Donald Fagen but I had to do something special to celebrate the release of “Sunken Condos”, Donald’s new CD….I’m on my second run through it right now and find the themes of the songs at once the same as always but different…of course you have the old guy, young woman theme in “Slinky Thing”, how could he do a cd without a song about that? But there are twists and turns that are unexpected…in “I’m not the same without you” Donald turns the breakup song on it’s head with the breakup turning the protagonist into a superman who “grows an inch taller and has heroic escapades”. I won’t go into all of the songs, there are nine after all, but one last one I want to mention is “Memorabilia”…a song about the aftermath of the nuclear tests and even mentions one of the tests names “Castle Bravo” in it…how the hell does he come up with this stuff? It looks like, to me anyway, that Donald has done again what Donald does…slinky, funky music that has all the biting lyrics that we have come to expect…if you’re a Dan fan…give it a try…it’s already in the mp3 player for the bike ride tomorrow…
This is what’s wrong with Romney’s vison of America…
Well…just had to do a short one on a bit of news that was revealed in the papers today that reveals in stark, graphic detail what is wrong with ole Mitt’s vision for America. In case you haven’t heard, the CEO of Citigroup retired today, under duress, and walked away with a golden parachute of almost 290 million dollars and he and the incestous board of directors feels that he deserved it….yeah, he deserved it when he presided over an almost 90 percent decline in shareholder value over his tenure…and this means something since, if you have an IRA or 401K, you probably lost money on this deal…in effect, this crook walked away with your money and my money and ole Mitt doesn’t think there is anything wrong with it…how do these people live with themselves? geez…
Find the cost of freedom…
Well…from the revolutionary war that founded this country up to the tragic deaths of our four diplomats yesterday, there are few words that amply describe what the cost of freedom is….I think these are the best courtesy of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young…”Find the cost of freedom…buried in the ground…mother Earth will swallow you…lay your body down…”
This is what the 1% does…
Well…I didn’t get back to the first post yet since this has been a recovery day for me…mostly from not eating enough yesterday…but, I did read an interesting article in the Guardian UK that states that the rich have gamed the system across the globe so much that they have been able to hide 21 trillion dollars from being taxed anywhere…yep, that’s trillion with a t…more money than the entire US economy with Japan thrown in for good measure. So, the next time you hear the rich start bitching about paying too much in taxes, you know it’s a lie….the tax rate on the upper income folks is at an 80 year low right now and where are the jobs these low tax rates are supposed to create? Not here in Michigan that I can see…geez…
I’m in shock…
Well…not going to do a political one today…it just doesn’t seem important with the massacre in Colorado…I just can’t figure out stuff like that….what can drive a person to do that? Not much else to say….
The rantings of a crazy man…
Well….this is just going to be a short one on something that struck me as funny out on the bike ride…why don’t you get to keep your minutes on your cell phone if you don’t use them all? The corner gas station doesn’t come and siphon the unused gas out of your car at the end of the month, the grocery store doesn’t come and take the unused food out of your fridge at the end of the month, so why can the phone companies take back your minutes? Just asking….