DPC Ghosts in train concourse, Union Station, Washington DC 1910 Is the age of stimulus over? It may well be. That would expose global markets as the naked emperors they always were. From the point of view of America, it makes sense to taper. Not because of invented jobless and GDP growth data, though they do make it harder for the Fed not to quit QE. No, it makes sense because the negative impacts will be hugely outweighed by the
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Arnold Genthe Long Beach, New York Summer 1927 Oh yay, US Q2 GDP supposedly rose by 4%. Aw, come on. That’s only 7% more than in Q1 (or 6.1% in the once again revised Q1 number). Wonder what made that happen? Don’t bother. It’s complete nonsense. New home sales and lending home sales went down – again – recently, wages are not going anywhere, the ADP jobs report was – again – low today. There’s nothing that adds up to
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Arthur Rothstein Elm Street, Theater Row, Dallas Jan 1942 I don’t think it’s ever a good sign, no matter how funny it may look, when the US state Department makes one think of Monty Python. But it does. With a Silly Claims instead of Silly Walks department. Would these people really sit around a big table in the evening and brainstorm about what anti-Russia statement to feed to the press the next morning? What else could possibly be going on
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Arthur Rothstein Cow at Wabash Farms cooperative, Indiana May 1938 At this point, you may want to consider making it personal. Your government, wherever you are in the west, but especially in the US, takes you for a bunch of fools they can feed anything at all and fully expect you to believe all of it. As for the media who convey government messages, it’s up in the air whether they too take you for a flock of dimwits, or
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Lewis Hine 10-year-old oyster shucker, does 5 pots a day; been working 3 years Feb 1912 As the propaganda war over 298 innocent dead people plunges into ever deeper absurdity, I think we may have found the answer to a question that intrigued me over the past few days: why did Ukraine PM Yatsenyuk and his government resign all of a sudden last week? A banker, installed by the west, who produced some of the most over the top language
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DPC The Flatiron Building, NY 1903 I don’t really want to keep talk about Ukraine, but it’s too hard to avoid. Besides, it’s not the same story anymore that it was when the week began, since the economic war vs Putin and Russia is now escalating. For reasons that have nothing to do with the plane crash, though they may seem to, a fact that completely seems to escape 999 out of 1000 people. We still don’t know who shot
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Arthur Rothstein Children of citrus workers, Winter Haven, Fla. Jan 1937 “The fact that the coalition has fallen apart, that laws haven’t been voted on, that soldiers can’t be paid, that there is no money to buy rifles, that there is no possibility to fill gas storages. What options do we have now?” This is, as per Bloomberg, what US handpicked handpuppet and – now former – Ukraine PM Yatsenyuk told the Kiev parliament earlier today during a speech in
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Arthur Rothstein Home of worker in strip coal mine, Cherokee County, Kansas May 1936 A very impressive procession of hearses, containing the first 40 of the 298 caskets that will have to be ‘processed’, is going on as I speak in Holland, and has been for hours of slow driving, broadcast on live national TV. It’s a 100 mile or so distance, with thousands upon thousands of people along the route paying respect, from the airport where they landed form
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Jack Delano. Engine taking on coal at Illinois Central Railroad yard, Chicago Nov 1942 Amidst the heightened media hysteria that expresses itself in claims of an “increasing burden of proof” of Putin and separatist involvement in the MH17 crash, where there is still no proof anywhere to be seen after 5 days, events are taking a sharp left (can’t bring myself to say ‘right’) turn towards a new, next, phase. Which promises to not be pretty. It’s, as we say,
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NPC Confiscated still, Washington, DC 1922 I’m sorry, or I guess I am, but I find it hard not to constantly read up on the news about flight MH17 these days, and I let it drown out other things. Obviously, there’s plenty of it available in Dutch media, with much more to drown even that out in the English language press. For a country the size of Holland, losing 193 people in one go evokes the six degrees of separation.
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