TAE has repeatedly made it clear from early 2011 that QE3 “money printing” would be anything but easy for the Fed to justify launching, and it looks like that thesis still remains firmly in play. The illusion of economic improvment in the U.S. due to its relative status against the backdrop of the crumbling Eurozone and its inaccurate/manipulated metrics continue to ironically destroy market confidence. In Who Killed the Money Printer, I made the following observation: I wouldn’t
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Detroit Publishing Co. Nôtre Dame de Montréal 1900 “Main altar, Church of Notre Dame, Montreal, Quebec.” This is a Guest Post by long time TAE regular, El Gallinazo. A subject that commonly comes up in TAE is what to do with your savings if you have too much to stuff in “that creative place” that Nicole often refers to. And what she suggests is that the safest place to put it is in short term treasuries. If you are
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While the equity markets remain stupified by the growing list of things that can go wrong in Europe over the next few weeks/months, like the classic deer in the headlights, the rest of us look on and sigh. Today’s “unexpected’ news came from Ireland, where the Attorney General and Irish Premier announced a public referendum would be held on the EU’s “fiscal compact treaty”. As a reminder, that is the one and only thing that was allegedly achieved at last
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The video Sunshine and Eclipse is a must see for anyone interested in economic history, and in the psychology of economics in the real world (as opposed to the ivory tower of modern neo-classical economics). The documentary is describing Canada in the period between 1927 and 1934, in other words, in the euphoric phase of the Roaring Twenties bubble and the credit implosion of the 1930s. It is of far broader interest than Canada, however. It is fascinating to look
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I'm not a big fan of venting opinions on the topic "capitalism", since I think it's a very poorly defined term, i.e. many people have many different ideas about what it really means. But the report below certainly deserves attention, in my view, if only as a driver of discussion. Do read the whole report, I'd suggest (click on the article title). This is a revised transcript of a presentation by Jonathan Nitzan at the 2nd Annual Conference of
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John Vachon Slop Sink June 1941 Erie County, Pennsylvania. “Each group of ten trailers in the FSA camp at Erie has a trailer service unit, water faucet, slop sink, and garbage pail” There have been many forms of “debt slavery” throughout history, and almost everyone is chained to the oppressive financial, corporatist system now in one way or another. Although, this fact has not even remotely sunk in for millions of people who, unfortunately, have absolutely no clue how bad
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In a radical first, German Interior Minister (Innenminister) Hans-Peter Friedrich has stated, in Der Spiegel, that he thinks Greece should leave the Eurozone in order to regenerate (regenerieren) itself and restore its competitiveness. The way to achieve this, according to Friedrich, is not to throw the Greeks out, but to make them an offer they can’t refuse – create incentives that [they] can’t say ‘no’ to… – (Anreize für einen Austritt zu schaffen die sie nicht ausschlagen können). Let’s put
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John Vachon Duet September 1940 St. Mary’s County, Maryland. “John and Louise Dyson, aged Farm Security Administration borrowers. Mr. Dyson was born into slavery over eighty years ago. Mrs. Dyson is the mother of fifteen children” “Debt” has been used as a means of slavery throughout human history, in ancient societies dating as far back as thousands of years ago, such as those in Mesopotamia, Egypt, North/South America, etc. Debtors in these societies would be forced to relinquish their
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While the global financial crisis (GFC) has the shortest time horizon for systemic disruption, the effects of our upcoming peak oil crisis (PO) should never be marginalized. The way I see it, there are three major reasons why: 1) The GFC and PO are inter-connected: systemic deleveraging that is ongoing from the GFC will feed back into energy supply shortages in the future, 2) the energy crisis is likely to make the disruption and devastation from the GFC feel like
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National Photo Co. Former Slaves 1916 “Washington, D.C., Convention of former slaves. Annie Parram, age 104; Anna Angales, age 105; Elizabeth Berkeley, 125; Sadie Thompson, 110” It is almost surprising that the concept of slavery is very foreign to those living in the developed world, especially the U.S., since it was extensively practiced as recently as 70 years ago. What’s more disturbing about this ignorance is the fact that the system of post-Civil War slavery in the U.S. was
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