Jack Delano Long stairway in mill district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1940 We at the Automatic Earth always try to steer clear of elections as much as possible, because there are no functioning democracies left in the west -no more than there are functioning markets-, and no journalists reporting on them either. Interesting question, by the way: how can a journalist report on a democracy that isn’t there? And where in that setting does news turn to mere opinion, and where
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Gottscho-Schleisner New York City views. Looking down South Street 1933 • Why Are Stock Prices So High? Borrowed Money (MarketWatch) • Break Up Big Banks (Senator Bernie Sanders) • Violent Bond Moves Signal Tectonic Shifts In Global Markets (AEP) • Bond Yields, Not Political Fallout, Should Be Worrying Us Now (Independent) • Rising European Yields Are A Worry For US Stocks (CNBC) • Stocks May Find It Tough To Wiggle Out Of The Bond-Market Mess (MarketWatch) • The Great German
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Harris&Ewing Happy News Cafe, “restaurant for the unemployed”, Washington, DC 1937 This is another essay from our friend Dr. Nelson Lebo III in New Zealand. Nelson is a certified expert in everything to do with resilience, especially how to build a home and a community designed to withstand disasters, be they natural or man-made, an earthquake or Baltimore. Aware that he may rub quite a few people the wrong way, he explains here why he has shifted from seeing what
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Unknown General Patrick’s headquarters, City Point, Virginia 1865 • 21 Countries Where a 40-Hour Work Week Still Keeps Families Poor (Bloomberg) • Central Bank Driven ‘Markets’ Have Nothing To Do With Economics (Stockman) • Yellen Says Stock Valuations Are ‘Quite High’ (MarketWatch) • El-Erian Warns Of Trouble As Bond Liquidity Dries Up (MarketWatch) • There Will Be No 25-Year Depression (Bill Bonner) • More Pain Ahead For China Steel (CNBC) • Brexit Threat Looms Over Britain’s Election And Europe’s Fate
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NPC Graf Zeppelin over Capitol 1928 In its German language edition, Der Spiegel ran a piece last night (translation is mine) about a proposal from the German Green Party (Die Grünen) to deal with the Greek debt crisis that is radically different from how its own government has so far approached the situation. The Greens are not in the Berlin government, but they are a force in German politics regardless, if only because the country loves so much to portray
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Jack Delano Foggy night in New Bedford, Massachusetts 1941 • Death Of The American Dream As A Big Bubble Readies To Pop (MarketWatch) • US Trade Deficit Soars To Worst Since 2008; Q1 GDP To Be Negative (Zero Hedge) • 3 Out Of 4 US Retirees Receive Reduced Social Security Benefits (MarketWatch) • One In Five US Adults Have No Credit Score, Can’t Borrow Money (MarketWatch) • California’s Drought Could Upend America’s Entire Food System (ThinkProgress) • Steve Keen Explains
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Jack Delano Row houses, Baltimore 1940 • Liquidity Drought Could Spark Market Bloodbath, Warns IIF (Telegraph) • “Nor Any Drop To Drink,” Citi Maps The Liquidity Paradox (Zero Hedge) • Economic Policy Turned Inside Out (Stephen Roach) • Most Greeks Want Euro Even With New Bailout Deal (Kathimerini) • Deal Or No Deal, Greece Still Faces Bankruptcy (CNBC) • France’s Far-Right Leader: EU Is Mocking Greece (CNBC) • IMF Takes Hard Line On Aid As Greek Surplus Turns To Deficit
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I very rarely read back any of the essays I write. But maybe that’s not always a good thing. Especially when they deal with larger underlying issues beneath the problems we find ourselves in, why these problems exist in the first place, and what we can and will do to deal with them. Not all of these things can and perhaps should be re-written time and again. Commentary on daily events calls for new articles, but attempts to define the
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Alfred Palmer Conversion. Beverage containers to aviation oxygen cylinders 1942 • When What Comes Down Doesn’t Go Up (Economist) • When Will Apple Stop Screwing the US Economy? (Zatlin) • America’s Trailer Parks: Residents Are Poor, Owners Are Getting Rich (Guardian) • China Gets Backed Into A Corner By The ‘Impossible Trinity’ (MarketWatch) • China’s Long Bull Run (Barron’s) • Share Trading Frenzy Grows As China’s Economy Slows (SMH) • China’s Factory Activity Shows Continued Contraction (CNBC) • 100 Days
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Jack Delano Near Shawboro, North Carolina, Florida migrants on way to Cranberry, NJ 1940 With US GDP growth ‘officially’ back where it belongs, in the Arctic zone close to freezing on the surface but much worse in real life, for reasons both Albert Edwards and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (not exactly a pair of Siamese twins) remarked this week; that is, excluding the “biggest inventory build in history, the economy contracted sharply”, it’s time for everyone to at long last change the
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