It appears that the neo-Keynesians Krugman and Wolf are right about at least one thing. Cutting government spending while the private sector is de-leveraging is a hard way to go. What happens is that as the feds cut back it reduces income to the private sector, which is itself in cutback mode. This then causes tax revenues to fall – which increases the deficit…
July 28th, 2010 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | ContinuedAll Posts Tagged With: "spending"
Learning From A Communist
The communists learned their lessons. They proved that government spending does not make people rich. But now…what’s this…? The US and other countries are greatly increasing the percentage of GDP spent by the government.
April 29th, 2010 | Bill Bonner | 2 comments | Continued
The American Empire Depended on Trade…and the Dollar
We would name the period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of Lehman Bros – a period of only 19 years – as the peak of US power and wealth. Of course, Americans were dreaming during those years.
September 14th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 3 comments | Continued
Americans Have No Money to Spend Because They Already Spent It!
From Florida, comes news of the first drop in population in 60 years. “Unemployment is soaring,” reports USA Today. “Florida is second to California on foreclosures.”
Yes, dear reader, there is trouble in the sand states…
September 3rd, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 1 comment | Continued
Saving Money, Not Spending it, is the Key to Getting Wealthier
Saving money gives you capital. And it’s capital accumulation – in the form of factories, roads, ships, buildings, machines…and raw savings – that gives people the ability to produce more. It may take a man with a shovel a whole day to dig a decent grave.
July 13th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued
Spending Our Way to a Depression
What happens if spending doesn’t pick up? Because businesses have brought forward all their investment to today. Don’t forget, there are still forecasts for unemployment in Australia to rise above 7.5% – some have even forecast closer to 10%. Companies are laying off staff, and corporate and government borrowing must still be repaid…
June 23rd, 2009 | Kris Sayce | 17 comments | Continued
Public Works Done Right
John Maynard Keynes once argued that, in a depression, it would be worthwhile to pay workers to dig holes, and to pay other workers to fill them up. But, as Nathan Lewis points out, below, when short-term “stimulus” becomes the focus, the effect is more likely to be short-term welfare. Read on…
February 19th, 2009 | Nathan Lewis | 7 comments | Continued
What We Face Now Is a Depression
What happened to Thomas L. Friedman? Did he drop the hair dryer in the bathtub…and give himself a jolt? Suddenly, he’s saying something that is modest and sensible. But his brush with intelligence lasted only three paragraphs. Then, it’s back to the old simpleton Friedman…with a solution to every crisis…and a fix for every problem his last solution caused. But you can’t fix a depression. And what we face now is a depression…
February 3rd, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 3 comments | Continued
Wall Street Gets the Boot
Yesterday, President Obama, seeing Wall Street on the mat, walked over and gave it the boot. The $18 billion in bonuses, paid out on to Wall Street honchos last year, were “shameful,” said he. It was the “height of irresponsibility” to take so much capital out of the system when it was losing money, he pointed out. Of course, he’s right. It was certainly irresponsible. And the Wall Street crowd deserves the boot, no doubt about it. But it’s a shame no one mentioned it in 2006 or 2007 – not even Mr. Obama – when the bonuses and the irresponsibility were even higher…
February 2nd, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued
Dr Gono or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Inflation
The world’s financial authorities have a duty to maintain the integrity of the financial system…which means, maintaining the value of the currency. Those that lived through the ’70s have a horror of inflation. They feel they must fight against it…protect against it…and keep an eye out for it. Yet, in front of them is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression…
January 30th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 2 comments | Continued
Hangover Nation
Have you noticed? Bernie Madoff bears a striking resemblance to George Washington. And so goes the nation…from the man who couldn’t tell a lie, to the man who couldn’t tell the truth…
January 28th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 11 comments | Continued
A World of Financial Freeloaders
Protect yourselves against your constantly acting stupid by electing spendthrift, promise-them-everything morons to government office, who have allowed the Federal Reserve to create so much money and credit to accommodate government deficit-spending that that government has now spent you into debtor’s hell to support a government So Freaking Huge (SFH) that the total of government spending constitutes half – half! – of all spending in the freaking country!…
January 20th, 2009 | Mogambo Guru | 2 comments | Continued
The Lint Age
Both patricians and plebes are for bailouts. Both business and labor back stimulus programs. The taxpayers and the politicians who rule them are of one mind. Liberal, conservative, rich, poor, Republican, Democrat all speak with a single voice: ‘Screw the next generation!” The golden age is over, in other words. In the space of 40 years it passed from gold, to silver, to paper…and is now somewhere between plastic and navel lint…
January 19th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 3 comments | Continued
Replace Private Spending with Public Spending
The world’s markets have begun a major correction. The world’s governments – led by the United States – are determined to stop it. They want people to spend like there was no tomorrow. But people are acting like every day is tomorrow. Instead of spending, they are beginning to save…
January 9th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 7 comments | Continued
The Precious Metals Gang Gathers
The stock market has almost become a sideshow to the story playing out in the bond and precious metals markets. But that’s okay. The stock market is so divorced from reality at the moment that we believe it is failing to tell us anything really useful about what’s ahead in 2009. So what’s ahead in 2009? Let us turn to the world’s reserve currency and the last great bubble of the Bubble Epoch for answers…
January 7th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 5 comments | Continued
