Showing posts with label Asia Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Asia Times. Show all posts

Friday, August 12, 2016

Trump thanks Gen. Hayden and the fifty for coming forward so everyone can know who the foreign policy fuck-ups are

From Spengler, here, who points out that it's bad enough that the emperor wears no clothes, but the empire has no tailors, either:

Trump responded, “The names on this letter are the ones the American people should look to for answers on why the world is a mess, and we thank them for coming forward so everyone in the country knows who deserves the blame for making the world such a dangerous place.” That is exactly correct. He might have added that they are incapable of learning from their mistakes and doomed to repeat them if given the opportunity.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

The 2010s Will Be Grim, a Depression of Spectacular Severity

So says Martin Hutchinson (who blames the Federal Reserve for the Great Depression) for the Asia Times:

[T]he 2010s will be a grim decade, because the transitional and wealth effects of eliminating the government debt markets that have formed the centerpiece of the last three centuries will be enormous - a Reinhart/Rogoff depression of spectacular severity.

Bond market investors, take note.

Read the rest here.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Forget GDP: 'Real GPP in 1944 was a quarter below its 1932 nadir.'

So says Martin Hutchinson, here, for The Asia Times.

He thinks the present is a Bond Bubble akin to the Tulip Bubble, and is about to go Pow!

Let's see. A $35 trillion bond market taking a 30 percent haircut wipes out $10.5 trillion vs. a $16 trillion equity market taking a 50 percent haircut wipes out $8 trillion.

Isn't this why cash is so attractive? Especially cash of the Swiss Franc variety backed by relatively enormous gold reserves compared to every other currency?

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Beware Of Greeks Defending TARP

James Pethokoukis of Reuters actually defends the fact that American politicians have ROBBED the taxpayers, always the last in line for money, to rescue the bankers, who are always first:

Of course, voters should be skeptical of paying for other people's financial mistakes. But it seems short-sighted for them to penalize politicians when they actually do something that's unpopular but right. And the TARP bailout does seem to have been the right thing. Despite its high sticker price, the final cost to American taxpayers will likely be a fraction of that thanks to speedy bank repayment of government capital injections.

Yeah. Speedy repayments. Sort of like GM's with TARP funds. If they could do it so quickly, maybe you overestimated the gravity of the original problem, and discount now how banks' profits are made possible by capital from the taxpayers.

Maybe it's because of what Spengler has recently observed about the Greeks, James:

[C]orruption pervades Greek society to the point that to purge it would destroy the social fabric: all political and social relations are premised on corruption.

You may be willing to justify theft, but the voters in Utah don't accept accommodation with corruption, throwing out Senator Bennett in the Republican PRIMARY. And now the voters in West Virginia have joined them, throwing out Representative Mollohan in the Democrat PRIMARY. All this after Germans just voted against Angela Merkel last Sunday after agreeing to bail out the Greeks.

Do you see a trend here, James?

Better get used to it.