I've been working on a much more homesteading-themed post, but in the mean time, chew on these articles from Sunday's New York Times:
The End of the Financial World as We Know It (Part I)
How to Repair a Broken Financial World (Part II)
Holy crap--I may not agree with every proposed remedy, but I'd like to kiss the authors for nailing the blazing stupidity of the bailout efforts and the fundamentally skewed incentives of a regulatory system that seems hell-bent on preventing the natural consequences of its own actions. I mean, really, how trustworthy as an economic bellweather is a stock market that pretty much ignores manufacturing figures like the ones circulating on Friday?
Do we need much more proof that Wall Street is no longer functioning as a market?
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5 comments:
Both of those articles are pretty interesting. I wish we would get back into the business of making things, rather than the business of creating false wealth.
Hallelujah, brother. It's a pretty sad state of affairs, isn't it?
That was an interesting article. In my view there have been lots of bad government actions that have provided incentives for lots of bad private sector actions. Madness all around.
My understanding is that actual manufacturing output has, in general, been going up in the US. However employment in that sector has been going down because of steady large productivity improvements. It is easier to automate manufacturing then say the medical or law profession. I just did a quick search. Not the best reference but it is what I could find fast: http://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/forbes_nabe_usmanufacturing_3-26-042.pdf
I did not read much of this. See section II B and in particular chart 6.
I have been listening to podcasts at mises.org for some time and I am coming to the conclusion that getting the government completely out of the money business is the only way to go. Get rid of the Fed, move to free banking which would probably lead back to gold backed currency. However, I despair of getting there politically.
I also recommend CATO's 26th Annual Monetary Conference: Lessons from the Subprime Crisis available at: http://cato.org/podcasts/
I got an iPod not for music but for listening to Podcasts when I am doing things that do not take my full attention. I am also trying to spend less time in front of the computer. I do enough of that for work.
I totally agree with you that Wall Street is not functioning as a market. There is absolutely no trust anymore for the common man. Who can compete against the computers!
Amazing articles, thanks so much for sharing its summary. Glad that I am able to run over on this post.
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