Entries Tagged 'Economics and Investing' ↓

They’re closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back to your hometown (“My Hometown”)

Part 2 “The End of the American Empire?” (Click here for Part 1)

What does the de-leveraging of the middle-class credit bubble mean?

It means we’re caught between a rock and a hard place. Middle-class Americans aren’t paying down debt because we’ve all caught a sudden case of conservative financial management. We’re paying down debt because the credit card companies and banks are turning the screws on us if we don’t. Many people as well as small businesses are going underwater and/or bankrupt.

Larger companies have cut jobs and inventories; sold bonds to rich investors; and hung onto their cash because they know there are no new buyers for their products. The US dollar is about as low as it can go to encourage sales of American made goods abroad. Americans themselves can’t afford those goods. Increasingly, the middle class is going broke.

A secondary change that’s happening in America is a shift of income from the States to the Federal Government. The new financial reform bill is necessitating the hiring of thousands of federal civil servants. Meanwhile state and local-level civil servants are being laid off, furloughed, payed in IOUs, and vilified as “special interests.”
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Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted
(“The Promised Land”)

Part 1 “What cased the financial crisis?”

I’m an optimistic person. I see a lot of things in life to love. And I also know that sometimes you have to face unpleasant realities. The more I read about the financial situation today, the more I see a  situation that can’t be fixed unless there’s a major change.

People blame various things for the financial crises:

• Banks
• Subprime Mortgages
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
• Investment Banks
• Insurance Companies
• Derivatives
• The Shadow (private) Banking System
• The Global Conspiracy of The Rich
• The World Bank
• Sovereign Debt
• National Deficits
• Republicans
• Democrats
• Ignorance
• Greed
• Corruption

Pick your favorite one!
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Yes, a face can launch a ship, but it’s words that cause wars.

Example 1: Nature means two mutually exclusive things

A conflict between PETA and Park Service rangers can be traced back to a 19th century British philosopher, John Stuart Mill. Mill wrote a book called On Nature. In it Mill noted that we use the word “Nature” to mean two mutually exclusive things: (1) everything except “man” and (2) everything including man (i.e., we too have a human “nature” so we’re a part of Nature).

The confusion begins, said Mill, when people using the word switch back and forth between meanings of the word “Nature.” The conflict starts when people use the same word, “Nature,” to mean two mutually exclusive things.
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