Print Money and Be Damned!

Japan was the world’s most admired economy in the ’80s. Then it was the world’s most despised economy in the ’90s. By 1995, economists pointed their fingers and laughed – the world’s most admired businessman had lost his left shoe.

But now, much of the world is barefoot. The US inflation rate has been going down since the early ’80s and was cut in half since last year. It now hovers barely above zero. Surely Japan – where prices have been falling for two decades – has something to tell us. As we pointed out last week, the Nipponese have been in decline for the last 20 years – with lower stock prices, falling real estate prices, and a falling GDP. Even the population has been sliding for the last five years

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Fed Vows to Maintain Public Financial Health

Extend and pretend…

That’s the government’s way of handling the crisis. Extend credit and cash to those who don’t deserve it. Then, pretend that everything is okay…

But the problems don’t go away. They just get stretched into the future…

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How Will Census Workers Affect the Jobs Report?

It was a ping-pong day for the currencies, back and forth over the net… The net being the “level of the dayâ€�… For instance, the Aussie dollar (AUD) played over the 91-cent net all day, and the euro played over the 1.2820 level all day.

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The Invaluable Work of Economic Scientists

Wolf, Stiglitz, Krugman – we love these guys!

They pushed the world’s governments to undertake huge “stimulus� programs. Of course, the stimulus programs didn’t work. They couldn’t work. All they could do was to disguise the facts and delay the necessary adjustments.

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Signs of an Evil Economy

I am standing on the corner of the street, doing my duty to “give back� to society, in this case by yelling at morons passing by in the cars, “We’re freaking doomed, you moron! Your own stupid government has destroyed you by letting the foul, fetid, festering Federal Reserve create too much money that they stupidly, stupidly, stupidly did as part of the stupid neo-Keynesian econometric theoretical lunacy that has mesmerized them, so that a shiny computer in front of a neo-Keynesian econometric economist is like a shiny toy in front of a monkey, and which has mesmerized the Fed and the government for similar reasons, and with similar results, in that the toy is now broken, the monkey cut its hand on the broken toy, the cut is infected, and there is a good chance that the monkey will die a horrible, painful death! Hahaha! How do you like them apples? Horrible, painful death! We’re freaking doomed, including you and your hotshot car with the radio turned up real loud, trying to drown me out! And stop honking at me! I have rights, you moron!�

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The War on Small Business

Today, we revisit a recurring theme: the assault on enterprise. It was the subject of our symposium in Vancouver in July. In this episode, we look at a particularly vulnerable segment of the economy: small businesses.

To help set the stage, let’s look at some important stats from the Small Business Administration (SBA). Small businesses:

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Why Stock Market Rallies Aren’t Worth the Hype

First, the good news: Stocks staged a mammoth rally yesterday. The Dow managed a 2.5% run, while the broader S&P 500 scooted ahead 3%.

What a wondrous achievement this must have seemed like…to anyone who spent the previous month on the golf course, far away from their computer screen.

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Gold Speculation During the Great Correction

Yesterday was a good day for stock market investors. Prices went up. The Dow rose 254 points, leaving us uncertain about its near-term intentions.

Of course, we’re always uncertain. But sometimes we’re more uncertain than others. What seems certain to us is that stocks are a bad bet.

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The Truth in Obama Oval Office Decor

Given the wide assortment of issues facing the nation — debt, deficit, war, and bloated government — it’s actually no surprise the media is aflutter over President Obama’s Oval Office makeover.

As charming and comfy as it may be, it’s still holding court to some of Washington”s biggest problems.

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