Keynesian economics

This week we bring back Alasdair Macleod, publisher of Finance and economics.org, because, as he puts it "every horror that we discussed last time we spoke is coming about". Especially scary since our previous conversation with him was less than three weeks ago... Today's interview continues building on his excellent synopsis from last month that detailed the origins of the Eurozone crisis. The fundamental shortcomings warned of at the Euro's creation in 1997, combined with the excessive sovereign debts run up since then, have finally expressed themselves at a scale too large to be contained any longer. Today, Alasdair details in-depth the huge and serious challenges facing Greece and the major Eurozone countries, and the likely impacts of the fast-dwindling options left remaining.  He sees no happy ending to this story, no outcome in which serious pain and permanent behavior change can be avoided. And for those looking for shelter from the unfolding economic storm, he sees few options besides the precious metals (which he believes are severely under priced at the moment):

Forget Competing Theories … What Do the Facts Say about Quantitative Easing?

TedBits:  The Economic and Financial NO SPIN Zone
Global Macroeconomic Analysis Through the Austrian Lens
By Theodore (Ty) Andros

An underwater earthquake has occurred in Spain and is quite possibly occurring now in Italy.  Killer waves are now headed directly at the central banks and financial systems throughout the developed world and at Europe in Particular.  How long until they hit and do the financial equivalent of Japan’s recent tsunami?  Socialist bureaucrats and progressives on both sides of the Atlantic are locked in death struggles with Mother Nature.  THEY WILL LOSE.

Socialist public servants and banksters in Brussels and Washington are DESPERATELY trying to repeal the law of nature:  You MUST produce more than you consume or PERISH.  Economic systems which are predicated upon the consumption of wealth rather than the production of it are now on their deathbeds.  The obscenity of counting consumption as production, as does Keynesian economics, is exposed for its fundamental flaw -- it counts wealth consumption and destruction as wealth production.  How absurd. 

There is a good reason why we need not encourage Arianna Huffington to believe she is an important thinker of our time. I believe ridicule is a good way to inform her of that.

Let's put things back into perspective. Europe is lending money to Greece, which according to latest rumors will at least for the time being be in the form of the dreaded Escrow Account, which in turn means that the only recipients of bailout cash will be Greek creditors, whose claims will be senior to that of the government. In other words, it will be up to Greece, and specifically its own tax "collectors" to provide the actual funding needed to run the country as bailout or not bailout, Greek mandatory (forget discretionary) expenditures will not see one penny from Europe. As a reminder, the country is already €1 billion behind schedule in revenue collections which are down 7% Y/Y compared to an expectation of 9% rise. As a further reminder, the one defining characteristic of Greek tax collectors is that they are prone to striking. Virtually all the time. And that is assuming they even have the ink to print the required tax forms. Which last year they did not. So under what realistic assumptions are Greek tax collectors laboring in the current tax year? Why, nothing short of them having to be not 100%, but 200% more efficient. From Kathimerini: "Greece’s tax collectors were told over the weekend that they would have to do a much better job this year at gathering overdue taxes. How much better? Almost 200 percent." And this, unfortunately, is where the Greek bailout comes to a screeching halt, because while it is no secret that Greek "bailouts" do nothing for the country, but merely enforce ever more stringent austerity to mask the fact that all the cash is simply going from one banker pocket to another, it is the pandemic corruption embedded in generations of behavior that is at the root of all Greek evil. And there is no eradicating that. Now tomorrow, and not by 2020.

There had been some hopes for Greece following the Q3 GDP number which slowed the decline in the country's economy when it dropped by just 5%, following drops of 8% and 7.3% in Q1 and Q2. These may have to be doused following a report that Q4 GDP came in at a disappointing -7%. As Athensnews reports: "The country's economic slump is headed towards a record annual plunge close to 7 percent in 2011, the fourth consecutive year of a deepening recession.  After an official confirmation by the Hellenic Statistical Authority (Elstat) on Tuesday that GDP dropped 7 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2011, the economy has shrunk by an average of 6.8 percent.  The latest quarterly contraction followed a slight slowdown of the depression in the preceding quarter, with GDP shrinking 5 percent due to the customary seasonal surge of tourist revenues in the summer." The full year drop was a record 6.8%, compared to the expected 6% projected in the 2012 budget. No comment there.

In this very informative interview between The Browser and Peter Boettke, the professor of economics discusses the contributions made by the Austrian School, and explains the various nuances of the economic school by way of recent books by "Austrians." He also explains what we can learn from Mises and Hayek, and argues that economics is the sexiest subject.

Business school curricula today completely lacks the necessary knowledge to survive the deepening and widening global monetary & economic crisis. We offer a video and a few thoughts below regarding the type of knowledge that will help you prepare.

When it comes to the fabled President's Working Group on Capital Markets, also known as the Plunge Protection Team, the myths about the subject are certainly far greater than any underlying reality. To be sure, vast amounts of popular folkflore has been expounded into the public arena, with most of it being shot down simply due to it assuming conspiracy theories of such vast scale that the human mind is unable to grasp the complexity, and ultimately the inverse Gordian Knot makes an appearance with the claim that vast conspiracies are largely untenable simply because it is impossible to keep a secret from so many people for so long. Yet what if the secret is not a secret at all but is fully out in the open, and is only a matter of interpretation, and contextualizing? Why just 3 years ago it would appear preposterous to allege the capital markets are a ponzi and that the Fed does everything in its power to keep stocks higher. Well, what a difference three years make: now the Chairman himself in a Washington Post OpEd has admitted that the sole gauge of Fed success is the loftiness of the Russell 2000, neither unemployment nor inflation really matter now that the Fed's third mandate has been fully whipped out. Furthermore, Keynesian economics, and the entire top echelon of the educational system have also been accurately represented as a paradigm which merely perpetuates the status quo as the alternative is the realization that the whole system is a house of cards. As for the global capital markets being nothing short of a ponzi, we merely point you to the general direction of Europe, the ECB and the continent's banks, where the monetary interplay is nothing short of the world's biggest pyramid scheme. Yet the PPT, or whatever it is informally called, does not exist? Consider further that only recently did it become known that the former SecTres Hank Paulson himself was exposed as presenting material non-public information to a bevy of Goldman arb desk diaspora hedge funds, headed by with none other than the head of the President's Working Group on Capital Markets Asset Managers committee David Mindich. So, if contrary to all the evidence that there is some vast underlying pattern, if not a conspiracy per se, one were to take the leap of faith and take the next step, where would one end up? Well, most likely looking at the Exchange Stabilization Fund, or ESF, which Eric deCarbonnel has spent so much time trying to unmask. Is it possible that the ESF, located conveniently at the nexus between US monetary policy, foreign policy and last but not least, a promoter of the interests of the US military-industrial complex, is precisely the  organization that so many have been trying to expose for years? Watch and decide for yourself.

This is a look at the downside of boom and bust economics. It is Austrian creed that central banks create the boom-bust cycle. Keynesians and Monetarists take a different view, and generally rule out our Fed as being the "cause" of business cycles. This is the story of a fine local bank that got caught up in the boom-bust cycle without understanding it. The bank cratered and took down many good people with it. Keynes said "in the long term we'll all be dead." Some of these folks don't have that luxury. When will we learn?