Nicole Foss talks to Max Keiser in On The Edge at PressTV The Automatic Earth's Senior Editor Nicole Foss talks to Max Keiser again, this time on PressTV's On The Edge with Max Keiser. Nicole and Max discuss Europe's shrinking pie, Canada's bursting bubble, the ongoing global debt deflation, the eternal tug of war between greed and fear, the greater fool, and the similarities the demise of the banking system in 14th century Venice has with Washington DC today. Interestingly,
Read More...In recent years, there has been more and more talk of a transition to renewable energy on the grounds of climate change, and an increasing range of public policies designed to move in this direction. Not only do advocates envisage, and suggest to custodians of the public purse, a future of 100% renewable energy, but they suggest that this can be achieved very rapidly, in perhaps a decade or two, if sufficient political will can be summoned. See for instance
Read More...Kükator Sumo wrestlers performing dohyo-iri Wikimedia Commons Japan is not a good example of how deflation typically plays out. As Ilargi points out, they were an exporting powerhouse exporting into the biggest consumption boom the world has ever seen. They also had a very large pile of money to burn through building their four lane highways from nowhere to nowhere, since they were the world's largest creditor when their bubble burst in 1989. This is clearly not our situation. No
Read More...It's time we do away with the notion behind the incessant flow of stories and warnings about upcoming hyperinflation in the US. It can't and therefore won't happen, at least not for years into the future. It would be a lot more constructive – and necessary – to focus on the reality we see before us than on such a purely mythological tale. Because that's all it is. Bubbles, and yes, that includes credit bubbles, have their own internal dynamics:
Read More...While everybody was asleep in a grandiose globalization and unification dream, a dream whose benefits and desirability were – and still are – hardly ever questioned if at all, separate languages and cultures simply remained what they were: separate. Now that globalization starts to show its dark and ugly flipside of economic depression, a repeal of many unifications and a split-up of larger entities, created for economic and political reasons only, into their smaller components, is inevitable. Unfortunately, the architects
Read More...Dorothea Lange Baby from Mississippi in truck at the Farm Security Administration camp at Merrill, Oregon October 1939 For all of you who like charts, this is a guest post by Josh Clark at chartistfriendfrompittsburgh.blogspot.com. I'll let it speak for itself. Josh Clark: Business Insider published the presentation David Rosenberg gave at last week's Big Picture conference. There are 57 slides in the show. One of them shows the 5 year percent change of household net worth. It's an
Read More...ERASWK Corrosion of the Celestial Sphere Woodrow Wilson Memorial, Ariana Park, Palais des Nations, Geneva, Switzerland Wikimedia While we're all watching Spain and Greece, their alleged saviors in the rich core of the eurozone are starting to show serious signs of corrosion. This makes all the hollow words and promises coming from the world of troikas and politics sound even emptier than they already did. Not that anyone in Holland or Germany seems to even be prepared to think their
Read More...Fitch has given the ESM, which reportedly became "operational" today, even though the Eurozone members will take years to full its coffers from today's €200 billion to the desired €500-600 billion, an AAA rating. The European (hey, what happened to Emergency?) Stability Mechanism needs this rating in order to sell bonds. Since eurobonds are not deemed acceptable by too many parties involved, the new pride of Europe will start selling … right, eurobonds, just under another name. With which, for
Read More...O euro precisava de ser repensado. No global recovery until 2018, says Oliver Blanchard at portfolio.hu.: It’s not yet a lost decade… But it will surely take at least a decade from the beginning of the crisis for the world economy to get back to decent shape. Well, that makes it easy then, you would think. Solves a lot of problems in one go. All bailouts and loans and other measures can now be halted and reversed when and where
Read More...Let’s be clear about this: Mitt Romney can only win the election if the American economy numbers plummet – significantly – in the next 30 days. Mitt's op-eds about the Middle East are not going to cut it. That is, of course, major caveat, unless Mitt has Diebold firmly in his pocket. But that for us is a known unknown. There can't of course be any doubt that the US economy is a really big, if not the number one,
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