Ken Barrows
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Ken BarrowsParticipant
Housing starts, meh. What about the super Philly Fed survey? Only point here is that statistics aren’t going to change things much. When Microsoft-type layoffs proliferate, then we know something’s going down.
Ken BarrowsParticipantWhy exactly is the marginal barrel from shale $85-90? Is it because the source says so? The table from the Bakken shows a much higher cost than that? It’s like solving a math problem in school; I want to see how you got the answer.
July 8, 2014 at 11:33 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Jul 8 2014: The Future Of Banking Is Pay Cash Only #13933Ken BarrowsParticipantWhat Mr. Gorman implicitly assumes is that debt will forever expand faster than economic output. It has done so for decades, so why not for decades more?
Why not? Well, marginal cost to marginal revenue of about 20:1 in the Bakken is one reason.
July 4, 2014 at 7:52 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle 4th of July 2014: If All Else Fails, You Eat Your Kids #13844Ken BarrowsParticipantThere is a third option: don’t have kids. Unfortunately, you are still punishing your nephews and nieces.
July 1, 2014 at 6:11 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Jul 1 2014: Lowest Rates in 500 Years, Oil Shortages in 10 Years #13798Ken BarrowsParticipantOil is about the cost of the marginal barrel. I have looked at the Bakken table put out by the State of North Dakota for a while now and the ratio of marginal cost to marginal revenue is about 20:1. Maybe someone will tell me this is not so, but in the meantime I cannot see how anyone can think the shale boom won’t be over within a few short years.
June 26, 2014 at 6:18 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Jun 26 2014: I Give You: The GDP of Sillyland #13716Ken BarrowsParticipantI don’t think debt diminishes “growth.” These GDP numbers should be assumed to have wide margins of error. With a guess about inflation thrown in, 5% as the margin seems reasonable. Debt is pulling demand forward. Without it, activity decreases and deflation hits. Just like TAE says.
Ken BarrowsParticipantGood points in the comments. I think it’s because most humans are lazy. We don’t want to work hard physically, so we delude ourselves into thinking neither we nor our descendants have to toil.
June 15, 2014 at 5:39 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Jun 14 2014: The Busted Myth Of War And Growth #13512Ken BarrowsParticipantI propose that TAE ignores all articles that mention growth without referencing debt. Dr. Tyler Cowen’s musings regarding our predicament are irrelevant. Without them, policymakers would still make ass backwards decisions. And the NY Times gets less relevant by the day, too.
June 13, 2014 at 6:33 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Jun 13 2014: American Consumers Paused For Breath In May? #13493Ken BarrowsParticipantA children’s game comes to mind: Red light! Green light! Repeat ad nauseum.
June 9, 2014 at 11:09 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Jun 9 2014: Stupidity Is Not A Valid Defense For Us #13405Ken BarrowsParticipantNo, oil is inexhaustible!
Or so many still think.
June 3, 2014 at 11:24 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Jun 2 2014: A Few More Days To Dream About A Better World #13323Ken BarrowsParticipantThat video on the Federal Reserve, if I am not mistaken, said it has a monopoly on the creation of money and credit. Of course, that is 100% wrong, just ask the bank that gave me a loan to buy a house.
May 28, 2014 at 11:28 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle May 28 2014: Everything You Think You Own Has Been Borrowed #13202Ken BarrowsParticipantInterest rates won’t go up significantly, ever. It’s because TAE is right: deflation will win. Credit still expands and interest rates stay low. Imagine when credit collapses. As the frog might say, NIRP, NIRP.
Ken BarrowsParticipantVariable81,
One minor quibble with your post: people not only believe debt can grow forever, they believe it can grow faster than output forever.
May 7, 2014 at 11:22 pm in reply to: First Time In 800,000 Years: April CO2 Levels Above 400 ppm #12722Ken BarrowsParticipantDiogenes,
It seems you are hanging your hat on a plateau in land temperatures, which have still seen most months in the top 10 of a 140 year record. Fair enough. But why no mention of deep ocean temperatures or acidification of said oceans? If you want to make the case against climate change, please offer more than What’s Up With That talking points.
May 2, 2014 at 2:12 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle May 1 2014: How America Grows Its Way Into Poverty #12627Ken BarrowsParticipantThe USA is in an economic miracle. No real economic growth but huge job gains and increased productivity to boot! /sarc
Ken BarrowsParticipantRaleigh,
I think QE is the biggest upward redistribution of wealth and income is U.S. History. The problem is that savers and others getting the shaft hold on to notions of “growth.” Without QE, there’d be no pretense of growth and we’d have to deal with reality. And without growth, what would be the impetus to save in the current system?
Ken BarrowsParticipantIt’s funny to see those calling for interest rates to “normalize.” A 4% yield on a UST would destroy the economy that these same people want to grow. QE, however flawed it is, is keeping their delusion alive.
The task of the normalizers is to find a way to grow without adding debt. Good luck.
April 29, 2014 at 6:12 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Apr 29 2014: Economists Are Stupid, Useless And Dangerous #12579Ken BarrowsParticipanthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assume_a_can_opener
Why look in the other link?
April 29, 2014 at 6:06 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Apr 29 2014: Economists Are Stupid, Useless And Dangerous #12578Ken BarrowsParticipantThe “assume you have a can opener” joke should be in there:
https://netec.mcc.ac.uk/JokEc.html (Jokes about economists)
Ken BarrowsParticipantThe tricks will no longer work once the price of oil that the drillers need exceeds what the economy can bear. They may fail before that point.
April 22, 2014 at 6:59 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Apr 22 2014: What Is The Earth Worth (6 Years Later)? #12459Ken BarrowsParticipantI would put it this way: In a week, the world increases by 1.4M people, spews out about 1/2 billion metric ton of CO2, kills off a few hundred species, and burns through $55-60 billion of oil. Do you think efficiency can overcome that?
April 15, 2014 at 11:08 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Apr 15 2014: This Is Where We Say Good Night And Good Luck? #12315Ken BarrowsParticipantRaleigh,
We can get to 500 million if the net loss of people is 100,000 per day for the next 178 years or so. Of course, there are other options besides linear.
April 15, 2014 at 11:05 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Apr 15 2014: This Is Where We Say Good Night And Good Luck? #12314Ken BarrowsParticipantPeople were commenting more when the stock market was a sea of red. However, now everything is okay 😉
April 4, 2014 at 7:00 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Apr 4 2014: The Fed Desecrates The Constitution #12118Ken BarrowsParticipantStockman is interesting on financial issues, but I haven’t seen anything to think that he isn’t operating from an “infinite growth on a finite planet” perspective. When one writes articles peppered with the word “growth,” the reader who believes in limits has to raise an eyebrow, or both.
March 19, 2014 at 6:33 pm in reply to: The Bank of England Lights A Fuse Under the Field of Economics #11857Ken BarrowsParticipantI don’t know if Graeber’s argument that the BofE paper destroys the theoretical basis for austerity holds water. Finite resources (or how finite) will determine if austerity rules the day. Does Graeber think that more borrowing is the answer to the world’s problems?
Monetary policy just shifts around the claims on wealth/real resources. Current monetary policy shifts the claims upward and imposes austerity on the masses.
March 18, 2014 at 6:25 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Mar 18 2014: The Deep Dark Forest And The Crippled Trees #11840Ken BarrowsParticipantThe Bloomberg article mentions the USA reliably growing at 3% per annum. It doesn’t seem to mention that total credit market debt went up more robustly.
I think if you are a mainstream economist your assumption is that debt growth can exceed output growth forever. It’s unstated, however.
March 7, 2014 at 7:27 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Mar 7 2014: The US Economy’s Volatile Inertia #11658Ken BarrowsParticipantWhat will be the spark? I keep thinking about the marginal cost of a barrel of oil getting to the point where it’s greater than the global economy can bear. TPTB have kept the Brent price pretty stable for a while, but the costs to extract keep rising. But maybe they haven’t risen enough to push the cost of the marginal barrel into the red zone. Otherwise, what’s on the near term horizon? It seems money is “no object” as the supposed broke EU can lend Ukraine “money.”
March 3, 2014 at 7:18 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Mar 3 2014: Is Ukraine A Case of Botched Kingmaking? #11578Ken BarrowsParticipantI always find people funniest when they are not trying to be. It’s a rare charm for generally rapacious humans.
February 28, 2014 at 12:26 am in reply to: Debt Rattle Feb 27 2014: A Chessboard Filled With Guerrilla Pawns #11536Ken BarrowsParticipantKoso_man,
With what do you disagree? I am curious. Looking at the Bakken tables (and the 7/3/13 TAE article), I think Mr. Kopits, if anything, may be understating the supply problem.
February 24, 2014 at 7:53 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Feb 24 2014: What Drives The Climate Debate Off Track #11481Ken BarrowsParticipantI’d state it like this if you think climate change is a potential extinction event:
We have to cut emissions by 90% (80%). It means you lose your job? Tough. It’s permaculture or die!
February 15, 2014 at 6:53 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Feb 15 2014: Kill The Middle Class, Kill The Nation #11329Ken BarrowsParticipantIt’s a shame that the income tax structure has changed and I believe almost none of the 1% are “wealth creators.” Rather, they are wealth destroyers–watch the Lamborghini burn that fuel!
Yet, is discussing this issue whistling past the graveyard? To me, discussion about adjusting the tax code to make things better assumes expanding output for decades to come. I know most people hold that output will indeed keep expanding, but TAE doesn’t.
TAE points out very well that a transition to a much smaller scale is necessary. The wealthy and powerful aren’t going to do s*** about redistribution, unless of course it’s upward, e.g. QE.February 14, 2014 at 7:38 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Valentine’s 2014: Inequality Leads to War and Crisis #11305Ken BarrowsParticipantJust a note on marginal tax rates: One argument is that the effective tax rate difference between the 1950s and now is not as great as the marginal rate difference because of changes in the tax code. I don’t know how right it is and I think the rich (top 10%) were certainly taxed more heavily in the 20 years after WWII. The same rich exerted the political power to change things. And change they did.
February 6, 2014 at 7:29 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Feb 6 2014: Remember “Uncharted Territory”? #11118Ken BarrowsParticipantI will state the obvious: Readers should know that people like Mr. Faber aren’t really interested in changing the way things are done. Rather, they are jawboning (much like central banks) so they can clean up as market conditions change. Seems to me that from a TAE perspective what Mr. Faber thinks is irrelevant. We already have Stoneleigh to actually explain what’s going on.
January 28, 2014 at 3:37 pm in reply to: Debt Rattle Jan 28 2014: Squandered Blood and Angry Birds #10867Ken BarrowsParticipantAs an American, I resemble that remark.
Many Americans don’t feel the same way. If we just get Hillary in there or Ron Paul or whatever flavor you like.
Ken BarrowsParticipantI wish the question had been asked of Mr. Bernanke or would be asked of Mr. Obama:
Can you purchase an economic recovery with credit? Or, in the alternative, can total credit/debt expand 5% to 6% per year for the foreseeable future? It is a shame that journalists don’t seem to want to ask basic questions.
Ken BarrowsParticipantI think the wage-deflation link nails it. How can inflation rear its ugly head when real wages have been stagnant (in the USA) for 80% of workers since the early 1970s? If wages begin to rise, I’d look at it again. But how can that happen when more and more work is part time?
November 8, 2013 at 3:26 am in reply to: Sometimes Humor Is The Best Way To Tell A Tragic Story #8969Ken BarrowsParticipantI know fewer comment here because the excitement of plunging stock markets isn’t happening right now. However, I think the ECB rate cut today shows that TAE is right on the mark when predicting deflation. To me, it’s becoming clearer day by day that hyperinflation isn’t going to happen, notwithstanding rising stock markets.
Ken BarrowsParticipantI’ll say this for the UK (my mother is Welsh). The older folks know how to live with some deprivation. As for we Americans who enjoyed 6-7% annual oil production growth from the early days of the industry until 1970 or so and plenty of credit thereafter, there is no such luck.
October 18, 2013 at 2:10 pm in reply to: Winter In America Gets Colder : Why We Choose Poverty #8885Ken BarrowsParticipantThe first question: Why does the USA measure its wealth by Gross Domestic Product? After all, in theory, one person could capture all the gains in a specific year. What about depreciation? Shouldn’t we measure our success by Net Domestic Product. Got to replace the infrastructure, you know.
The USA is not willing to have a discussion about what success means, so nothing will change. Oh well.
October 11, 2013 at 2:21 am in reply to: Gordon Gecko Moved To London To Finish Where He Left Off #9316Ken BarrowsParticipantProfit’s great, but everybody’s borrowing in order to make that profit. Which isn’t very profitable for society.
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