Jack Delano Young Negro farm laborer, Stem, North Carolina May 1940 There are two elections coming up this week that have the potential to shake up a lot of things, not least of all the global financial markets, both in their own way and for their own reasons. First of all, the May 22-25 European parliament elections, which as far as I’m concerned should simply be declared illegal in at least a few of the 28 EU member countries they’re
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Detroit Publishing 12th Street bascule bridge, Chicago 1900 If we can agree for a moment that there is a very real possibility that we will have both much less capital and less energy available to us in the future, what should we do to define our response to this possibility? The obvious answer would seem to be to scale down, and do that as best we can without causing our societies to crumble because of it. We could take comfort
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Harris & Ewing Sandwich vendor, Washington DC 1919 In essence, it’s really simple. We’ve seen over the last few days that the European Union is a federation of sovereign countries whose leadership has been found painfully – if not criminally – lacking in democratic principles, and several leaders of member states have been accomplices, on more than one occasion, in assaults on elected fellow leaders. That should say enough, and there is no doubt that down the line it will.
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Arthur Siegel Farmhands drinking beer, Jackson, Michigan Fall 1941 It’s a fun day in finance so far today. Eurozone growth is not going anywhere, but there’s no lack of positive anticipations for the future. Is there ever? Q1 GDP in the Netherlands actually shrank to the tune of -1.4%, but they have a great explanation for that. It’s because of – drumroll, wait for it – … the mild winter! The weather can be used to explain anything and everything
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Joel Baldwin Johnny Cash near the Arkansas farm where he grew up 1968 Yeah, no kidding, as if reports from the US weren’t bad enough, with soaring student debt – that drivers debtors out of the housing market-, collapsing mortgage originations, increasing household debt and slumping retail sales. But still, today, the major news comes from China once again. The government issued a batch of data overnight that shine yet another and clearer light on what is going wrong in
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Jack Delano Information desk, Union Station, Chicago January 1943 This morning I saw an article by Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg that got my few remaining active neurons going (or I think it was them). The title alone, The Parasites of Finance, did that, actually. I sort of knew, since I’ve known Barry’s work at the Big Picture site for quite some time, what he would talk about, and I knew I wouldn’t – fully – agree. Or rather, it’s like
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Arthur James Northwood Maori woman with catch of fish on Northland coast, New Zealand 1910 Atamai Village in New Zealand is an ambitious project aimed at providing its villagers’ basic needs, food, water, shelter, once the global economy and its energy resources start running dry. Changes to the climate are also on many people’s minds. The idea is to build a community that has an internal economy, with people buying each other’s products, in which permaculture plays a major role,
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Russell Lee Agricultural day laborer family near Spiro, Sequoyah County, Oklahoma June 1939 Every people has the right to self-determination, but only if it pleases a bunch of self-elected overlords and if it serves their purpose. How else can we interpret the fact that the Donetsk self-organized referendum was rejected by the West and even labeled criminal by the Kiev government that in turn is labeled criminal in Donetsk, all of whom say the May 25 across-Ukraine election is the
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Alex Bush Make a paying crop leave the land better, Camden, Wilcox County, Alabama March 25, 1937 I want to share two graphs that Tyler Durden posted yesterday and let you make up your own mind as to what they mean. We’ve all been able to see how US Q1’s official GDP growth was revised to 0.1%, after which Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan said they put the number at -0.6% and -0.8%, respectively. But Goldman, not to be outdone by
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Ben Shahn Urbana, Ohio August 1938 We’re not doing very well overall, are we? We’re always busy chasing something, but we don’t know what it is we’re chasing, and we don’t even know why we’re doing it. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you what they really want is to be happy, but you just know they don’t know how to get there. So they all grab onto stuff, material things, which are much easier to handle than some non-tangible idea
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