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We Are Living In A State Of Keynesian "Bliss"
Submitted by Mark Jeftovic via Rebooting Capitalism blog,
John Maynard Keynes is the grandfather of all modern mainstream economic thought. Richard Nixon was famously attributed as saying, “We are all Keynesians now” whilst slamming shut the gold window and launching the era of global fiat money. (Nixon didn’t really say this, it was actually Milton Friedman)
The phrase came back in vogue in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis when neo-Keynesians like Paul Krugman called for, and got, massive government and Central Bank intervention into the global economy in order to “save it”.
Back in 1930, Keynes looked out into the future and saw that with the proper management of the economy, monetary policy and the like, the world could attain a type of utopian stasis:
Keynes, working in 1930, expected growth to come to an end within two to three generations, and the economy to plateau. He referred to this imaginary state of equilibrium as “bliss”.
– Nick Gogerty, “The Nature of Value”
In his essay “The Economic Possibilities of Our Grandchildren” Keyne’s imagined the big challenges of our days in the 21st century would be what to do with all that extra leisure time and how to achieve fulfillment since by now the quest for wealth and material gain would become more or less unfashionable or even obsolete.
“Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.”
Granted, Keynes did say this would happen if mankind avoided any calamitous wars and if there was no appreciable increase in population. Two more flawed base assumptions there could not have been.
But this hasn’t stopped the world’s conventional economists, not to mention the political and policy-making class (a.k.a The Overlords) from embracing the uniquely Keynesian notion that if you just know which macro-economic levers to pull, and how much and for how long, and when to do it; then you can get just the right amounts of: money quantity, money velocity, interest rates, nominal inflation, savings rates, capital expenditures, unemployment levels and consumer spending to make Everything Just Right All The Time without ever having so much as a downtick or a speed-wobble, ever again.
(In case you were interested, it looks something like this: K¢ = [B - U(C)]/U¢)
Converging on Bliss
The formula I linked above comes from a page examining “The Ramsey Exercise” after Frank P. P. Ramsey who published an article in 1928 which Keynes called “one of the most remarkable contributions to mathematical economics ever made”.
Ramsey endeavored to find the optimal rate of savings which would maximize social welfare.
He sought to find the allocation across generations which maximized social welfare — with “social welfare” defined as the sum of utilities of people in a society. From the social welfare-maximizing allocation, we will be able to determine an “optimal” rate (or rather, path) of saving.
Why is this important? Because politicians believe that there is such thing as an optimal rate of savings. While in the past there may have some rumination that it was too low (“myopic agents”), what really bothers Keynesians is if it gets too high, which is why you have things like artificially supressed interest rates – ZIRP without end, and even negative interest rates.
As I lamented in Cronyism in the 21st Century:
These policies are utterly backwards in that they posit what economic forces should do according to some model, instead of trying to understand what they actually do based on observed results.
So according to politicians, pundits and Krugmans, you tweak stuff just right, and you get this:
“Converging on bliss”
If you look at US GDP growth since 1930:
Source: http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/doug-short/economic-growth-in-the-us-since-1930
We do see the 5-year moving average coming down to 0. No growth, just like Keynes postulated in 1930. Combine this with Janet Yellen’s revelation that if poor people would just get with the program and accumulate more assets things would be grand and guess what?
We have arrived at Bliss. Doesn’t it feel great?
All Progress is Cybernetic
What anybody who actually examines the issue realizes is that all progress is cybernetic in nature. What this means is that all self-sustaining systems or processes (like an economy or an ecology) employ methodologies for self-regulation, and they rely heavily on evolution in one form or another.
Maxwell Maltz, in his groundbreaking (albeit largely uncredited) antecedent to which the entire modern self-help movement owes it’s existence, Psycho-Cybernetics, stressed that a big component of any system’s progress is that it relies primarily on feedback loops both positive and negative.
The process simply doesn’t work without both negative and positive consequences of past-actions to inform present decisions toward future goals (the original title of this post was “The Extinction of Consequences”)
Gogerty’s “The Nature of Value”, shows a chart of a cybernetic process:
The dots indicate dead ends – negative feedback “this doesn’t work” while the arrows indicate paths of “so far, so good”.
What modern economic interventionism attempts to do is eliminate all the dots (and then make sure all the arrows are “equal”). Policy makers and political fixers hold a mechanistic view of the macro economy, implementing “fixes” and managing it because in their minds, it’s just an algorithm.
As Gogerty observes:
“[..]mechanical theories still have adherents, however, and can be dangerous if pursued aggressively using monetary or political force. The only economic systems today that are truly at or close to equilibrium are nearly dead economies. A cow that achieves equilibrium is called a steak, and the economy closest to achieving equilibrium today is North Korea circa 2013″.
The reality is that the economy is a complex adaptive system and thus inherently “unmanageable”. The system itself adapts so you will never come up with anything that achieves “perfect equilibrium”.
Any attempt to do so suppresses the built-in signaling mechanisms and thus all system participants begin to make choices based on “facts” which are increasingly and iteratively distorted by the overlaying policy attempts at eliminating negative feedback.
“Keynes and other economists ignored, dismissed, or seriously misunderstood growth, innovation, value, and adaptive economic processes. Economists mathematic models created the economy like a linear or probabilistic machine.” (ibid.)
And the centrally planned attempts at running the economy as if it were such a linear, probabilistic machine that could be steered shy of recessions or downturns has instead created an escalating sequence of severe dislocations.
- In 2008 had there been no bailouts and the insolvent banks were allowed to die, the economic malaise would have been cleared out within a year or so and a genuine economic recovery could have commenced. (As Stockman exhaustively detailed in The Great Deformation)
- In 2000 had the .COM bubble simply been allowed to burn itself out, with a not-so-bad recession, we would never have had The Housing Bubble in 2008 (which Krugman demanded)
This pattern of intervening to avoid recessions and economic downturns goes all the way back to Nixon’s existential crisis of 1971, perhaps even further – to 1913, when the Fed was created to ensure economic stability for all time.
Today the distortions are now so far advanced that all market signalling is for the most part, totally broken. The stock market reaches new highs on diminishing volume, it costs you money to save your money and there is no official inflation – despite the fact that everything either costs more or it comes in a smaller package for the same price (shrink-flation).
The global financial system is flashing bright red warning lights and yet complacency rules the day and the official policy and media pundit line is that the recovery (now in it’s 5th year) actually exists.
One of these days all of the market signalling mechanisms are going to snap back into functionality and most likely overshoot the mean in a non-linear, disorderly way.
When that happens, the best possible course of action is to not be in the path of one of the gigantic elastic forces snapping back into place at extremely high velocity. Stay out of debt, avoid counter-party risk, be diversified, and have a bug-out plan.
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Wearing a not-for-profit league's high-profit, massed-produced, polyester (aka micro-fiber) official clothing that is emblazoned with some trademarked-tribal logo while squinting at a two-inch screen to play mindless children's games on our smart phones while waiting in line behind 16 obese men for a lips-and-assholes pork, beef, turkey, and chicken frank and a caffeinated HFCS soda for the kid and a mind-numbing and poorly-crafted $10 beer and an order of deep-fried fat at a tax-payer funded professional sports venue that is hosting a violence game we never played with pharmaceutically-enhanced players we really don't know in order to fatten the wallets of other men that are already very, very, wealthy.
It's a Brave New World.
The millionaire and billionaire boom thanks you.
http://www.planbeconomics.com/2014/09/the-billionaire-and-millionaire-boom/
Honestly, as best as I can tell, bliss is:
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
No social welfare required as far as I can tell, and no not-for-profit exemptions, government regulations, presidential orders, foreign intervention, or economic modeling either.
But where is place for veteran of FSA?!
China is starting to miss
The debt in Japan's an abyss
The EU is flawed
The U.S.?...a fraud
We're living in Keynesian bliss
Did Keynes really insist that we should LEND money to IDIOTS and bail out the banksters when the inevitable happened? I must have been asleep that day during Economics class.
I think Keynes insisted that the inevitable would never happen.
I think Keynes went full retard in his work. In memorian people should go spit on his grave.
Naaaah, I think it was just his followers going full-retard on interpreting his work (but I could be wrong).
Followers bending interpretations and cherry-picking ideas in order to justify their will?
Now where have we seen that happen before?
America and Europe have tried to counter this trend by opening up the borders to keep the population growing.
But I don't think Keynes meanth that a increase of population which doesn't add anything to the population would be good...
Or is it just on the demand side that population needs to grow?
HH: Here's a few you forgot:
Riding a 16+ valve 4 cylinder 1000 cc+ 10 000rpm+ sports motorcycle in a manner consistent with its design characteristics. (actually, with all those other characteristics even 600ccs is enough). So few people understand that it is possible to make a three hour trip and arrive at their destination feeling happy, excited, awake and refreshed! (errr, the cops waiting at the other end might have gotten a hint when I spoke to them but I'm not sure they understood ... )
Programming a 64-bit computer through a subtle combination of assembly language and structured language (anything that allows type definitions and passing of parameters should do) with access to memory maps and firmware guide. I understand you for missing this one because very few people in the world will get the opportunity to take this to the blissful-state level. (Hint: People with the right equipment and knowledge can forget Windows and simply build their own OS, never have to look at ads on the internet or worry about viruses or AV software and can copy and paste ANYTHING on their computer without any extra software. Not many people like that out there but I envy them.)
Taking an old rear-wheel drive car out bush and practising one's Dukes of Hazzard impersonations.
Building stuff: The World is my Lego Set!!!
Advanced mathematics - some people see a bunch of squiggles, others see an amazingly designed Jigsaw puzzle that fits together so perfectly.
And who could forget: watching puppy dogs play.
Silver getting another rectal exam tonight.
How low will it go? Maybe this is the beginning of the paper rejection. Probably not.
It's pretty clear based on the last few trading days that either unusually low PM prices are important to someone, or that someone is dumping out of desperation.
Unusual behavior even for manipulated PMs.
Come on guys, the Ukraine thing is fixed, so no worries there. Obama clearly has this ISIS thing under control, and the 3000 troops we are sending to Africa means the Ebola thing is well on its way to being under control. The US economy is fixed, which means the dollar will remain king for the foreseeable future, meaning there isn't really a need for gold and silver as a hedge.
Do I even need the sarc tag?
Nah, asset price deflation is about to kick in afterburners. The old notion of having hard money in hand so that one does not lose out when the banks puke is no longer operable. What to do, I do not know.
Zero debt and I still love my wife. I just want her to take it seriously.
===================
I paid for my daughter's wedding with slAg bars that got her more than twice the current price. I even bought a car with 1964 coin. It's a Cobra replica with 550 HP+100/-0 that scares me to death even with the six piston brakes.
I hate everything about being in a manufacturing business. The goomint leeches on all that I do and cornholes my employees for all that they do. My machines weigh 45,000-125,000 pounds so are not mobile. The concrete has to be about a meter thick for stability. I am screwed into the dirt here and will always be a tax cow as there is no way to dodge the white hating Goomint drones, so I just take it and be as honest as the IRS invents their law.
If I make out from busting my ass and the emploiyees do too, I pay double the nominal tax rates as do the hedgies that like to call themselves "Job Creators".
It is not worth it anymore.
I did pull all accounts from the bank that I have used for the past 45 years. I went to a local bank from what is now Bank of Montreal. I warned the people there that I had some care for prior to the crash. There is an ugly woman that was always very helpful and the sort that one trusts. I surely hope that she pulled out of the stock when I warned her at 60.00, prior to it going sub 4.00. That woman had no prospects for much of anything outside of what she saved by trusting the management. They stabbed her and got away with it.
Sorry to hear that but you're right, it isn't worth it. Remember to leave it as you found it.
Equities are as well. ES getting hit on the head with a hammer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc
I guess ignorance truly is bliss.
I've seen the ignorance in the voting public, feigned by the media pundits, and claimed by gulity politicians. I'm still waiting for the bliss.
Purthue you blithth.
-- Joseph Campbell
The 2008 bank bailout led to a 50% reduction in the purchasing power of the middle class. The next bailout will be much worse.
You mean bail-in.
Maynard was still high after Wilson gave him the job of dividing up the spoils of WW1 and creating the fertile ground for WW2. He was certifiably nuts and had the papers to prove it and krugman masterbates to his portrait every day.
Very interesting that silver broke down on Friday but not gold. Maybe due to geopolitical tensions. Maybe it had more to do with long liquidation than a few large players being positioned short looking to score big by pushing both through. I do think gold is a dead man walking, though.
It seems to me that the game the markets are playing is "let's all pretend the Fed can normalize interest rates." Which, in my opinion, has zero chance of happening, but until the Fed realizes it can't inflate the biggest asset bubble in history and then raise the interest rate pin that will pop it, that's the game du jour. And with all the hot money in the system, markets are trending so hard that if you miss a move or do something stupid like take profits, they don't let you back in. They aren't rewarding discipline. They're rewarding reckless chasing. With that said, the Euro, the dollar, the Yen, and the metals are in need of a pullback. It must come at some point, and when they do, all you can do is add or initiate new positions.
This isn't a predication per se, just what I'm thinking at the moment, but I think the EUR/USD is headed to the low 1.20s and probably sub 1.20. Which should put the dollar at $89+. SIlver is headed to $9, which should put gold anywhere from $850 to $1,000. Unless some game changing event comes along, I don't see why these trends won't continue. Geopolitical tensions definitely make shorting the metals more stressful than it should be, but any flare ups are shorting opportunities. Why? Because we're pretending the Fed can normalize interest rates.
As for equities, if it was normal market conditions and not a quad witching expiration, friday's price action is the type that usually leads to a pullback and sometimes a top. We'll have to see if there's continuation early this week to see whether it's real of just expiration friday nonsense. Being this far extended in a bull market as QE and share buybacks wind down as we head into the month where equities go to die, I would think at least being a little more cautious until the market proves it's okay still is a good idea. I'm personally not interested in the long side unless it bases out longer and looks like it wants to breakout again, or if it pulls back far enough into some kind of support like the 50-day. The Russel is sitting on its 200-day EMA and it has a triangle going of its own. If it loses the downside currently at 1120 and rising, maybe it pulls at least the NQ down with it. Something to keep an eye on.
Bonds are interesting because they broke a daily trendline and are bouncing back into the moving averages, so if they too are playing the "let's pretend the Fed can normalize interest rates" game then I would think they would rollover and continue going down. However, if stocks do indeed rollover, maybe they catch a bid and hold strong. Bonds closed the week strong while stocks did not. So I'm waiting to see what happens with them and will instead focus on the metals, the Euro, and the Yen on pullbacks. They seem to be the weaklings drifting from the herd.
I don't understand why the Fed isn't publicly shamed at every appearance they make. Announcing any intention at all of raising interest rates is like Superman announcing his intention to eat Kryptonite for breakfast from now on. First of all, say it isn't so, Superman. Second of all, no he isn't. Because that would be self-destructive and stupid. The villans have to force him to eat Kryptonite. Likewise, interest rates will go up when the bond market realizes they are holding the hot potato. The economy ran into a perfect storm of overregulated, oversized gov't, the globalization of the free market that stripped away our jobs, the demographic spending pattern of the baby boomers on the decline, a fractional reserve and shadow banking system that issues debt far in excess of the underlying growth to repay it, and a serial debt bubble machine called the Fed. Not to mention exploding gov't liabilities in future entitlements. It ain't gonna be fixed by a bunch of academics and a calculator. It requires massive extinguishing of debt from the system. Meaning, major losses for those who own debt. The overly optimistic can rearrange the data until it proves that debt doesn't matter until they are blue in the face. The only data points I need to see are the labor participation rate and the level of gov't debt. If there are structural reasons why people aren't working, which there is, and the level of debt keeps going up, which it is, it doesn't take a flux capacitor and a DeLorean time machine to see that those two paths meet in a town called Default. Japan is first.
It's interesting to see that a side effect of the Fed's stage play called The Path of Tightening will cause the Yen to continue collapsing, which will further inflame their inflation issues and pressure their bond market to sell off which will cause rates to rise Kryptonite-style until debt servicing costs consume their budget and someone yells Checkmate. The dominoes are already falling. It will be interesting to see the central bankers scramble to plug holes in a sinking ship with the only material they have: other parts of the ship.
I do think it's possible after the metals bottom in the next leg down in of this bear market that they will resume their glory days when the sovereign debt bubbles burst and force the world into a new monetary system, but it's too far away to have any idea if the metals will benefit or not. History says yes. I don't fight history. But I don't fight charts either. That's something to be figured out down the road.
*I wrote this earlier today. It appears the strategy of causing some panic in the Asian session is working. Silver getting smoked. Gold has that far off look in his eyes like he can hear the bell tolling and he knows he's next.
We will see what the price of actually getting physical silver is if/when it hits $9. I agree that it is all a CONfidence game, trying to conjure an illusion that they can 'normalize' when the reality is they have stoked a derivatives game valued in the quadrillions that is predicated on the illusion of sovereign debt being 'high quality collateral'.
Bigger bubble than even stocks is the debt and dollar bubble.
Bottom line whether is is Abenomics or NIRP in EU or QE, there is so much paper claims on real wealth out there now, it is not going to last long that all these commodities will stay so subdued. At least in real terms. Maybe when the liquidations start en masse with margin calls temporarily there are fire sales, but in real terms scarcity/shortages will likely be on the horizon, spurred by the driving down of commodities into the ground by carry trades and other paper shenanigans, that by lowering prices reduces incentive to produce more so the pendulum will quickly swing towards shortages instead of this delusion of 'plenty'.
"A bubble is not pretend." People say "it's only paper" but look at those collateral calls circa 2008 ("screw the USA...we're elected by Wall Street!")
What is also not pretend is the "in fact recovery." (In this case recession.)
So interest rates have plunged...now metals and mining are heading south.
"And equities have a mind of their own." Clearly silver looks like a non-correlated asset in addition to treasuries. That is a major "commodity" in the production of solar panels.
We're only one meteor away from copper prices collapsing to a dime a pound. Talk about lowering the cost of wind generated electricity.
I witnessed the boom and bust of a pyramid in the 90s. It was a very dishonest, hurtful, destructive affair, but now the psychopaths behind it are in jail. This is the same thing on a much bigger scale, so big that it drives international relations. Let the paper chasers chase their paper, planting false flags and dropping bombs and putting "boots on the ground" to delay the collapse of their racket. Look at the incredible sales of physical, far outstripping global production. Big hands know how ponzi schemes end. Which side do you want to be on? The paper racket will burn, and the entire world will watch. As Martha Stewart would say, "It's a good thing."
I would not expect any jail to occur for any of them.
I expect far worse.
That's audacious, silver back to a nine handle. My dealer thought I was nuts when I put in my standing order for a monster box at 15. 'No way its going that low' he said.
I said price will slice thru 17 like a hot knife through butter/ yet this is happening faster than I expected.
Bottom at 13? Bottom at 9? All a gift. Thank you sir may I have another?
Bring back Kodak Corporation.
It is a gift. The only way one can get hurt is by over (if at all) leveraging, and having to rely on a certain level being 'the' bottom. Scaling in is the prudent way to go, not becoming one of those people who liquidates in panic as the charts show time after time. I myself got burnt in USLV a few years ago when silver was in the 30s. Now, if one has managed to avoid getting hit hard in this downturn that is totally contrived, putting on a more speculative hat and taking on risk when reward ratio is improving a ton, getting into things like USLV and JNUG is more intriguing, but still who is to say the metals don't indeed go below 1k and 10, even for the briefest of time? USLV is at zero when silver loses 1/3 from when bought in, and probably a lot earlier due to decay in those leveraged ETFs.
My dealer has pretty much stopped dropping his prices. I did what I had quit doing, ordered online, 19 an ounce delivered. He still has eagles, maples, PHMs at 23 an ounce, which is what they cost before silver shed a couple dollars the past few days. The online guys came down, so I ordered from silvertowne, despite my goal of doing cash and carry at a local store from now on
local gold dealer (small time) can't sell me gold, because he bought much higher, he might go to NYC to get spot priced gold for me next week,
how much should I buy here?? or should I be selling here??
A great overview. Kudos!
Gold's dead. " dead man walking"
Uh,really? Compared to what?
And will it stay dead. Never to rise? Or will it magically, some day get Alive! Again.????
This paper has the reality reversed. I think the central planners adopted the idiotic theories of Keynes to validate their goals; full well knowing that it was pure garbage. What idiot thinks a complex system such as an economy can be reduced to a simple formula? Thanks Peter Pan for ruining the worlds economies.
Keynes was right...from 1945-1973 in the USA.
But you can't have his theories without a gold standard. "What benefit am I granting when I make the value of the currency nil?" Ironically the dollar is surging yet Keynsian solutions seem proven to have failed as a result, yes,yes?
In other words...where is the recovery? "Where is Keynes' theory of labor?"
Keynes suggested government deficit spending counter-cyclically only, not as a permanent driver of economic growth. He understood that markets are prone to extremes and expected the government to act to dampen the swings of the market pendulum. By deficit spending during recessions the government provides purchasing power to the market to ensure longterm viable/necessary businesses do not get killed off during a recession for lack of demand. The businesses which exist purely because of malinvestment during the times euphoria preceding the recession will die off. During the times of market booms the government would retire the debt accumulated during the previous recession.
Most calling themselves Keynesians or post-Keynesians seem to have heard only a part of what he had to say, government deficit-spending as a driver of economic growth.
I forgot to add that Keynes bliss only applies to .01% of the population. Great work genius.
Silver getting slammed again but dealers hiking their premiums for anything under a monster box.
Sell,Valentine,SELL!!! Before the shit is worthless. Sell, I say,sell!
It sure seems like Keynesian Bliss at the 5 star hotels and restaurants. Time for another G20 meeting? Oh how about an EU summit on poverty in Africa? Don't forget to prepare my private jet for the Climate Change conference!
so buy gold or dump it?
Buy, but be prepared to wait a long time to sell. I have a lot of dry powder but I'm waiting to see how low it goes (and more importantly how premiums adjust to it) before burning some of it.
"Buy Aeroflot."
I mean seriously...the Russians should have round trips from Moscow to New York for 49 bucks US here.
"We'll figure out how to get that EU benefit check from there pal!"
I like how we all say " gold going up" or "gold's falling".
It's like watching the tide, and saying " look at that bridge go up and down"
Buy silver, beans and bullets first - then start adding gold. Price is not relevant - when you need to you will be able to trade any of these four things for as much fiat as you want.
I thought we were living in a state of denial
Another famous Keynes story: a critic pointed out that in the long run, his theories must lead to ruin and disaster.
Keynes replied: In the long run, we are all dead.
This wise crack is what passed for wisdom with Keynes. But he is right, he is dead, so are his cohorts, and his theories have resulted in ruin and disaster.
But if he knew this where did he get off saying we were headed toward Utopia? He must have assumed the world would get wise to him and pursue a more sensible course before the whole shit show blew sky high.
Keynes wrote for his audience. He couldn't care less about your welfare. His purpose was to serve oligarchy.
Not true. Keynes reply was in response to the claim that the market will correct itself in the long run and didn't need intervention from the well-meaning government and economists.
His complaint with relying solely on the self-correcting market was that the human cost was extremely high during recessions/depressions. He didn't see the government as replacing the market, only as supplementing it.
The Keynesian endgame is a foot-deep layer of FRNs in every room in the house, and nothing to buy with it.
There can be no economic system that is able to maintain equilibrium in a free society if it does not rely entirely on free market principles and the power of private property to motivate, and is expressly protected from predatory behavior by governments and oligarchies. That is as complicated as economics needs to be. The closer we get to this ideal, the better the result, even (especially) in a resource-constrained world.
In general, I find that utopian stases are overrated.
"Every real game must have a winner and a loser"
Me,2014
"make sure all the arrows are “equal”" Except for the one that represents everyone who works for a living. You have to make sure that one turns direction.
I've read it before, that Keynes would not recognize the way his theory has turned out today.
He wouldn't believe that some of his postulations would be used for such evil, I'd wager.
Well Keynes advocated creating surpluses during the boom and using these surpluses to control the landing during a recession. What we had: We created a false boom by running up huge debts and now we are trying to control the crash by running even bigger debt and deficits. I don't see much of a connection between this and Keynes. If anything Keynes assumes from the start that you are running a tight shop.
Keynes has become just an empty word they throw in every now and then to the great ignorant unwashed to pretend they have a plan,and actually know what they are doing, when in reality they just make it up as they go along. Also, where does Kaynes say anything about bailing out overlevered TB2Fs at the expense of the taxpayer?
Close, but not quite. He advocated governments borrowing to spend during recessions and repaying the debts during the subsequent boom. Governments accumulating surpluses is frowned upon by economists, because that removes purchasing power from the economy. However, government repaying debt using surplus revenue during a boom doesn't remove any purchasing power from the economy, since the money returns right into the economy.
Both people and governments have lived beyond their means by taking on debt they cannot repay. Over the last several decades we have created entitlement societies built on the back of the industrial revolution, technological advantages, capital accumulated from the colonial era, and the domination of global finances. Promises were made on the assumption that the advantages we enjoyed would continue.
Ever greater prosperity and entitlements were to be sustained through debt financed consumption growth. In that eerie fantasy world, debt fueled consumption was to be the catalyst to bring about evermore growth. Now reality has begun to come into focus and it is becoming apparent that this is unsustainable. The entitlements and promises that have piled up have become overwhelming. More on why this system will fail in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/08/modern-monetary-theory-is-wrong-d...
Last one in the stewpot wins.
I'm pretty sure that people high on Heroin feel some form of bliss.
We are living in state of economic Herion induced bliss.
The detoxification is going to be rather rough.
Jackie DeAngelis is a junkie.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/40093189
She gets rated & paid by her employer to be a markets-up cheerleader, not a truth-speaker, so don't be too hard on her.
" it wasn't so bad. I deserved it. Please give him his job back"
Ray Rice's Wife
Keynesian bliss feels great as long as I can jog, go to college with young women, have food in my tummy and never have to think about working again. No complaints on Q99X2.
When Keynes spoke of mankind, I can't help feeling he had a surprisingly narrow view of what constituted "mankind"
One of best known proposals for avoiding massive paper currency storage when nominal interest rates are negative is Silvio Gesell’s proposal for stamped currency.
http://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/56754781054/silvio-gesells-plan-f...
Too many people, too little space and resources, there's an obvious "surplus population" issue going on at present, with the majority with either no purpose, or in a "job" that contributes literally nothing to the whole. Manufactured "jobs" which the world can do without and only exist due to imaginary constructs.
Eliminate those "jobs" and those people, and what is left is rather nice... but you're gonna have to kill off a whole lotta people to get there.
You are the ONLY person I have seen commenting anywhere who understands that the fundamental problem is grossly excessive human population. I salute you.
Ebola knows. He's a bad motherfucker. Don't mess with Ebola.
Well, when you start looking back to those "good old days", there were a few things going on there.
1) Much lower GINI
2) Post-ww2 was a bubble, but let's be honest the entire world was a shithole prior to it
3) HIGH taxes to support the equality (resulting in point 1)
4) DRASTICALLY FEWER PEOPLE.
Less people, more space, more resources to go around. Do you know WHY there's all that GMO shit and sawdust mixed in? Why cattle are forcefed crap and kept alive with meds? It's because as nice as "organic" sounds, it does not work for the whole. The "old ways" of doing shit do not yield enough to keep everyone from not starving to death. It's not a tech problem, it's a population problem.
Do you think everyone LOVES living on top of each other, crawling through each other's filth as they cram over-processed garbage into their food holes while working at bullshit jobs that contribute nothing of any meaning or value to society? Living in fear of ever-more draconian and idiotic governments grasping at ways to maintain their long-since devoid legitimacy to rule? You yourself might manage an escape from that hell, but you're either going to rich as all hell to get it or very very lucky. The last time there was a population crisis, it sparked the industrial revolution and the end of feudalism. Stupid pointless jobs were gone as labor had an upper hand in all aspects. Lots of dead people made the world a better place.
So what about today's world? It's so WONDERFUL that the sick and weak and frail are pumped full of drugs to keep them alive and even pass on those defective traits. Into a world that is pushing the limits of what is possible population-wise. There will come a tipping point where literally the only way to continue will be to construct megacities so as every scrap of arable land can be fully utilized with the most advanced GMO crap there is. Every spec of food processed and jacked full of chemicals to keep it from spoiling and being wasted. That's your future right there, that's the only POSSIBLE future given humanity. Look to Idiocracy for parody and literally every scifi techist future film to see that world. Cus that's what's coming if population continues to rise unchecked... hell, at these levels it's probably already on the way. I'm not saying "cap it to under 500m" like the fucking stones... but at least keep that shit under a billion please?
This is the kind of crazy that gets posted only at The Atlantic and Zerohedge. It's pretty amazing. Kiss your kids on their foreheads tonight when you tuck them in. lol
lao, for shit and giggles ...the matrix movie had humans held in tanks fed thru iv tubes while dreaming they were living life awake in the created matrix, I think google is working on it right now, then billions could be alive in tanks of fluids dreaming of eating steaks and icecream and thinking it is real..the future is wonderful as long as the programs keep the ether life interesting, how long do you live before the plug is pulled? ..look around as people concentrate on iphones and ignore the car about to hit them, we may just create the matrix world and the drain on resourses become very manigable, few calories needed just laying there, while thinking we are living a real exsistance..however, I feel we are headed for something like somolia today, and good game programs will be the least of our worries..but it is a vision of a future where our energy and food needs are not ever going to be a problem.
Malthus stated this in 18th century. The liberals understand this well. As the states take control of healthcare, they will resolve the problem. Best analysis I have seen puts ideal human population between 1.2 - 2.4 billion people (i.e. somewhere between China and China plus India). Ag nutrients are starting to peak, so problem will be addressed by 2020. War is the answer, but the powers are trying to determine how one can protect the core.
And to you and your collective communist Stalin wannabe buddy, let me say that the needs of the many or the few NEVER EVER outweigh the needs of the ONE. Both of you are like every other murderous prick that has slaughtered millions to shape society the way they thought it should be. When u start culling, come to my house first....you arrogant POS.
It is dumbass, simpleton fools like u running this place that have gotten us where we are today. U and your simple fixes for big messes that don't involve u losing anything.
Just as a point of fact, there are thousands, no millions, of untouched acres of land. The problem is the system of ease and convenience the whole world has been told to chase. Life should be about living and not working. Work and resources are for life and not the other way around. My God, you are such an idiot! And the fact that others on this sight do not chastise u for it, goes to show the degradation of the thought process today.
If people were just living and enjoying life, we wouldn't need 75% of the bullshit we clamor for today. We wouldn't be the controlled, manipulate punks we are. Don't go preaching that NWO population control crap here until you first do away with the all the bs out there that everyone is chasing before u talk about getting rid of people. Problem isn't too many people, the problem is too many greedy people in love with money and have made it their god. "Having food and rainment let us therewith be content.". We are so far past that we don't even think about food and rainment unless it is to decide what you're in the mood for or what doesn't make your butt look as big as it is. We have become the fatasses from Walle, and you r just bitching because u r afraid you might have to share or won't get all u want when you want it. In the pursuit of your happiness, try learning to be happy by loving your neighbor or meeting the real needs of others.....and not just your gluttonous self.
bshir, up arrow for you...however the sociopaths have other agendas they need you to comply with..good luck.
Yes, we need more anti-human sentiment. The ditch on the side of the road to utopia should be filled with neighbors.
The drawing of the Mayan sacrificial altar is wrong. First off, it is sideways, and secondly, Yellen is not a virgin.
Odd, given that nuvo-Keynsians insist that we need both growth and inflation of the money supply.
I guess, "bliss" requires that all central and crony banks be eliminated.