What we saw was an over-stretched empire getting ready to snap. But we were also allowing ourselves to be lazy. Rather than deconstruct the capital structure of the world’s largest economy, we decided to sell the whole damned thing.
October 12th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 5 comments | ContinuedAll Posts Tagged With: "consumer prices"
We Expect No Recovery from the Economy
..how does it all work? We’re doing some serious thinking this week. What is it that actually causes a depression? A stock market collapse? Or too much debt?
September 29th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued
The Achilles’ Heel of the Entire World Financial System
The moral of this story is that you have to go all the way. If you want your baby to be invulnerable, put him all the way under the water…even the heels. Or, maybe there’s another point: that there’s always some place where you’re vulnerable.
August 24th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 4 comments | Continued
Economists Agreed the Stimulus Was Working and the Recession Was Coming to an End
We don’t know when the recession will end…but we’re dead sure that those 53 economists interviewed by Bloomberg…and those at the Fed too…don’t know either. Few of them seem to have any idea what is really going on.
August 17th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 2 comments | Continued
Things That Matter in the Economy are Going in the Wrong Direction
“Recovery doesn’t depend on investors. It depends on consumers who, after all, are 70 percent of the US economy. And this time consumers got really whacked. Until consumers start spending again, you can forget any recovery, V or U shaped.
July 15th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued
Everyone We Know Expects a Fairly Quick Up-move in Inflation
“It’s a very funny and troublesome situation,” said a fund manager in Boston last night. “The world’s central bankers are committed to a policy of monetary inflation…which they call ‘Quantitative Easing.’ And they believe that inflation targeting is the way they can tell if their policy is working.
May 19th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 1 comment | Continued
Disinformation in the Inflation Wars
If you think that rising demand causes inflation, the sensible thing to do is reduce demand. You do that by raising interest rates. The higher cost of money causes people to cut back borrowing and be more prudent. Aggregate demand in the economy falls, and, presumably, so do prices. But that is all catastrophically backwards. It is a text book cause of putting the cart before the horse…
July 17th, 2008 | Dan Denning | 7 comments | Continued
High oil Prices are Now Oozing into the Entire Economy
When the Fed began cutting rates last September, the price of oil shot up. High oil prices are now oozing into the entire economy…greasing up prices for everything from cucumbers to diapers. And the trends that held consumer prices down for so long are shoving them in the other direction.
June 3rd, 2008 | Bill Bonner | 3 comments | Continued
The Fed Continues to Bamboozle Consumers Into Thinking They Are Richer Than They Really Are
There’s also a hidden flimflam…an even more important one. Since ‘95, reports Martin Hutchinson, the U.S. money supply, as measured by ‘money of zero maturity,’ has gone up at about 8.8% per year. The average fellow, seeing that he has 8.8% more cash…
May 8th, 2008 | Bill Bonner | 2 comments | Continued