POLITICS ANYONE?

[rffrydr]

As much as I'd like to believe I'm above this kind of red-baiting the fact remains there's an elephant in the room: we have now clearly surpassed inflation adjusted expenditures on the Vietnam war:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,460007,00.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/business/17leonhardt.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/business/17leonhardt-responses.html

This doesn't seem to talked about much in the economic press, let alone the washington press--maybe since the funding is a "homeland emergency."

The conventional economic story goes this spending set us off on madcap inflationary, productivity destroying, binge spending generational trauma. Now...nothing. Is China the secret of our success? Technology of warfare? A demogrpahic thing? Same path and just don't know it? The story this time seems to be how little noise that elephant makes--or, maybe that was the story last time....adjusted for hindsight.
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[rffrydr]

...And let's not forget "assignee liability."

Congress no friend to Bernanke:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aYfHHWXlrBOY&refer=home
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[HenryTo]

From the looks of the following:

1) The success (pricing at the top range and trading at 20% over that price throughout much of the day) of the Blackstone IPO,

2) The performance of the S&P 500 over the last six months, not to mention the performance U.S. large caps and the MSCI EAFE,

3) Meteoric rise of the Shanghai and Shenzhen Exchanges - and the fact that Chinese stocks have so far not corrected,

4) The tremendous rise of the XOI and the OSX over the last few months,

5) GM now over $35,

I would have to say "next to none." The only weakness has been in the healthcare-related indices, such as the Morgan Stanley Health Care Products Index, the MS Health Care Payor Index, and the AMEX Pharmaceutical Index. However, the MS Health Care Provider Index has been strong since November of last year and is still trading at near its all-time highs.

[rffrydr]

After registering barely a blip last Fall the Democratic resurgence is starting to show its effect: 1 Tax Private Equity 2. Tax Capital Gains 3. Sanction China 4. Tax Big Oil. 5. Fuel Economy requirements 6. Healthcare?

Apart from the merits of these and other propostions how much really has been discounted?
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[rffrydr]

They're back. Greens to turn red at G8 summit:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/5cae83e8-11cb-11dc-b963-000b5df10621.html

Globalization, between Greens, National Champions, Big Oil, SouthAmerican Socialism, Cartellism, Trade Protectionism, Carbonization and Chinese militarism is on the defensive.
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[rffrydr]

Out of the mouths of babes:

http://www.leadershipnow.com/leadershop/9781416532477excerpt.html
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[rffrydr]

The front pages may be moving off the back pages of the business press soon:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraqbombs19apr19,0,6346987.story?coll=la-home-world
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[rffrydr]

Executive Pay has legs:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/business/yourmoney/08pay.html
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[rffrydr]

Private equity crosses a line in buying supermarket. They've earned a new name in the public sphere: "locusts."

Wealth disparity underlying:

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2007/gb20070301_732571.htm?campaign_id=eu_Mar7&link_position=link22
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[rffrydr]

Bush's message to Wall Street:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=172896881&play=1
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[rffrydr]

* President George W. Bush’s approval rating is at an all-time low of 30% following his State of the Union speech this week, a Newsweek poll found. The poll also finds that 58% of respondents said they ``personally wish’’ Bush’s presidency was over at this time. A staggering 71% -- said they felt the president wouldn’t have enough support during the next two years to implement his policies.
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[rffrydr]

Bobbing back up?

Jan 19th 2007
From Economist.com
Concerns about inflation are rising again

Reuters


PERHAPS it is time to feel uneasy. Though not very powerful now in much of the world, inflation is an uncomfortable force that may be getting stronger. Last week, the Bank of England startled markets by raising interest rates unexpectedly. This week, it became clear why. The Bank's governors had been given a sneak peek at the latest consumer-inflation figures for the country, which are a full percentage point higher than the Bank's 2% target. If you include mortgage-interest payments, the cost of living is substantially higher.

This is a bit surprising considering that energy costs, which had been putting a great deal of pressure on the cost of living, have started to decline. New figures from the International Energy Agency indicate that in 2006, oil consumption in the 30 member nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) fell by 0.6%, the first drop in more than 20 years. After peaking in July at nearly $80, the price of a barrel of oil has declined precipitously; on Thursday January 18th, it briefly dropped below $50 in intraday trading.


This has been showing up in inflation figures recently. According to numbers released in December, OECD countries experienced average consumer price inflation of just 1.7% in the year to October 2006. But the November figures show a substantial uptick, to 2.1%. And in America this week, new data indicated unexpectedly high producer prices, which have fairly well squashed any hopes of an interest-rate cut in the near future. Though American consumer-price inflation fell in 2006, core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy costs and is closely watched by the Fed, was up compared with 2005. Some now think that America will have to raise rates in the second half of the year to fight off resurgent price pressure.

Others argue that the leaps forward are more a result of statistical flukes than real threats. But this argument is hard to sustain. The more that those volatile, “non-representative” figures are excluded from a price index, the less the index reflects the real experiences of consumers—a criticism frequently levelled at the use of core inflation as an indicator.

The most worrying possibility was raised by Mervyn King, the head of the Bank of England, last year: that China, India, and other rapidly growing Asian nations may have been behind the low inflation experienced by much of the world in the past decade or so. The arrival of this huge pool of labour into global markets resulted in lower prices for consumer goods ranging from clothes to television sets. This has increased real disposable incomes for Western consumers while holding back inflationary pressures in these categories. At the same time, outsourcing has limited inflation even in previously non-tradeable sectors, such as help-desk support.

But if import prices stop falling, Mr King warned, inflationary pressures may creep back up. And for various reasons, that channel for checking inflation is looking weaker. Protectionist pressures are growing in Europe and America, threatening to limit imports. America, in particular, is leaning hard on China to allow its currency to float more freely, making its exports more costly for American consumers. Though China’s government has been extremely reluctant to be seen to give in to American influence, it may want to do so for its own reasons. The massive purchases of American dollars required to keep its currency artificially weak have left its central bank with a huge inventory of dollar-denominated securities, and its currency market operations increase the inflationary pressures in its already overheating economy.

There is one central bank not haunted by fears of inflation, however. The Bank of Japan would welcome a brisk increase in its rate of consumer-price inflation, which until the middle of last year hovered between nothing, and a tenth of one percent. Yet even there, the central bank is preparing to lift interest rates (to a whopping 0.5%), though it refrained from doing so this week. Toshihiko Fukui, the bank's governor, is concerned about a surge in capital spending, caused in part by rising property prices. Memories of the speculative property bubble in Japanese that preceded its disastrous decade of stagnation are still fresh. He is also hoping to slow a brisk carry trade in the yen, as investors borrow at ultra-low Japanese rates and sink their borrowings into higher yielding assets in other developed countries, where interest rates are much higher.
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[rffrydr]

Mistake SYMPTOM for CAUSE. Oldest trick in the book.

Are you listening Eucharist Kid?

[nodoodahs]

I stand by the time-honored definition of "inflation" as an "increase in the money supply."



The natural course of events as a spontaneous system of trade evolves is lower prices in absolute terms. It has only been "inflation" in terms of money supply that has fooled us, conditioned us, to expect higher nominal prices and to mislabel those higher prices as "inflation" when, in fact, "inflation" caused those higher prices.
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I haven’t seen a beatin’ like that since somebody stuck a banana in my pants and turned a monkey loose.

[rffrydr]

That is an interesting "twist"--DeGaulle demanding payment in gold on lack of confidence in our imperial ambitions--which were his!. Long-term commodity charts show a new plateau for hard assets after our break. Maybe there is no irony here--just that the french knew, really knew.

So, would you defy the 9.99 angle-grinder down at your local pick-and-save and say we are in an inflationary boom?

Where are the effects? Babyboomers have tried to make a life free of "consequences." Are there any consequences?
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[nodoodahs]

At the time Vietnam started, we were ... oh wait, the French started Vietnam ... OK, at the time the U.S. got into taking over where French imperialism failed ... all right, regroup ...

The U.S. still had nominal gold-backed currency. Of course, those darn French started to call our "bluff" on that, funny, since they were in Vietnam before us.

Anywho, we now have fiat currency and are used to rampant inflation. We've even hedonically adjusted it away!


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I haven’t seen a beatin’ like that since somebody stuck a banana in my pants and turned a monkey loose.