Once again, the economic news is “unexpected” bad. Official inflation is supposedly 3.2% annualized while real GDP is supposedly 1.3% annualized. I suspect actual inflation is higher, which would mean that actual growth was correspondingly lower, but even if we take these figures at face value, they still do not support the Keynesian account of the crisis.
Archive for July, 2011
Stagflation
Sunday, July 31st, 2011The debt limit charade
Sunday, July 31st, 2011US politicians are engaged in passionate debate and confrontation over the debt limit and spending. The question is whether to “cut” two trillion over the next ten years, which is to say, about two hundred billion dollars a year, which is to say, whether, after ten years, spending will be five or six trillion dollars a year more than it is now, or whether it will be five or six trillion dollars a year more than it is now, assuming that the US government still exists in ten years.
How well run is Oslo?
Thursday, July 28th, 2011According to the bloggers who speak for our ruling elite (such as Matthew Yglesias) Norway is wonderfully well run. But according to the terrorist Breivik, it is run much like Chicago, where the ruling party’s political mobilization of the disproportionately criminal underclass has produced a criminal party. (more…)
Rational terrorism
Tuesday, July 26th, 2011A lot of people, myself included, have suggested that Breivik’s terrorism was unlikely to be effective, but he has information we did not. (more…)
A preliminary review of the works of Anders Behring Breivik
Monday, July 25th, 2011Shortly before killing a bunch of people, mainly the children of the elite, Breivik published two works:
Shot the organ grinder
Sunday, July 24th, 2011
Anders Behring Breivik shot the organ grinder instead of the monkey, the puppeteer, not the puppet.
Anthropogenic CO2
Friday, July 22nd, 2011A replication of part of Clive Best’s analysis.
The theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming assumes a number of points without evidence, assumptions that might well be true, but which they have made no attempt to test.
One is that warming would be a bad thing, another is that the world is very sensitive to quite small CO2 greenhouse effect, supposedly because the CO2 greenhouse effect will be enormously amplified by the H2O green house effect.
And another is that human burning of coal and oil can have a significant effect on atmospheric CO2. (more…)
The curious solvency of Japan
Monday, July 18th, 2011By any objective measure, Japan is more broke than Italy. Indeed, nearly all the advanced countries are as broke as each other, but some of them are in trouble, and some of them are not. Japan can borrow money at low interest. Italy cannot.
Looking at past financial crises, there is no objective level of solvency at which a country goes down the tubes. They get along fine until they do not. Even when it is obvious that a country is trouble, people continue to lend it money on the assumption that an even bigger idiot will lend it more money with which to repay the first idiot. And they are always right, until they are wrong.
Obama’s connections
Saturday, July 16th, 2011If you read blogs like this, you probably already know that Obama’s family and friends on both the black and white sides were communists and terrorists for three generations.
“Don’t call my bluff” says Obama
Friday, July 15th, 2011“Don’t call my bluff” says President Obama, thereby implicitly admitting he is bluffing. (more…)