And my 4-year old daughter wants a pony.
Two of the most important financial regulators in the country have a message for Congress: We need more money.
And my 4-year old daughter wants a pony.
Two of the most important financial regulators in the country have a message for Congress: We need more money.
11 comments:
Our Cherokee friend was head of the CFPB.
According to "Keynesian" theory, hiring more bureaucrats stimulates the economy, so increasing the budget of the CFPB will surely help get our economy going again. Maybe they will also go after all those evil capitalist bankers etc. I'm sure that more regulations will also increase the confidence of the markets and grow the economy even more. /SARC OFF
My son is utterly convinced that we are driving toward the cliff and that moves like this are to be applauded because they will only bring the inevitable day of reckoning closer. I think that there's still time to stop but someone has to throw the train into reverse (and Obama is surely not the man).
K
K,
Why would your son applaud the day of reckoning? Does he think his parents and sibling(s) will enjoy living through an economic collapse?
Seriously, though, this situation might just plod on for another few decades. For now, our major creditors (China, Middle East oil countries) use American consumption to grow or maintain their own economies. The Arabs have nothing but oil, and the Chinese still have a long way to go. Per the Doctoroff article in WSJ, the average middle class Chinese spends only around $15k to fit out an apartment. They only consume if they can derive status benefit from having other people see them consume.
They only consume if they can derive status benefit from having other people see them consume.
Prestige spending. Let them buy "face".
I heard Chinese antiquities are in demand again. Maybe I should see a few scrolls I bought in the seventies.
He thinks that it is inevitable anyway and that once all the deadwood is cleared out the economy can be re-founded on a sound basis and rapid growth will then ensue. Our whole economic strategy has been to kick the problems down the road on the theory that in the long run we are all dead. But you really can't put these things (e.g. fixing social security, removing large segments of the workforce from productive labor, etc.) forever and the longer you wait the harder they are to fix.
K
K,
I think he's overly optimistic about the re-founding part. The Depression didn't end quickly, and without the WWII industrial kick (plus the fact that war damage knocked out most of America's competitor economies for years), it's hard to know how long recovery would have taken. There could even be bloody political revolution. I just wouldn't be so sanguine about all of this.
But in case he's right, where would he advise putting savings?
OT, but what do J and his Israeli commenters make of Israel's relatively poor PISA scores? The blogger Anatoly Karlin has been writing about PISA scores. He didn't focus on Israel at all, but I noticed the numbers in the supporting data.
http://akarlin.com/2012/05/22/germany-gets-bad-news-from-pisa/
Israel is a heterogeneous country with a large Oriental (Middle Eastern) population. People thinks we are an European country and should have a PISA of Finland, but we are not.
My son advises precious metals, esp. silver which he thinks is undervalued vs. gold. He thinks Bernanke is fighting the last war (depression) and that instead of a deflationary depression he will end up triggering an inflationary one.
K
"The Arabs have nothing but oil.."
They have pistachios, and dates.
J says that anti-Arab sentiments are not welcome on this blog!
Anon.
At the moment I dont feel threatened by the Arabs. On the contrary, I design restaurants for them and they are paying. May Allah make rain more petrodollars on them!
There does appear to be an asinine strain of economists who believe that the US should get many more times into debt than it already has to pull itself out recession. Dr Ben apparently lives in fear of triggering a depression if he ever turns of the spigot.
Ivan
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