The Ever Spending Story

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The Ever Spending Story
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Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

(Via The Daily Show.)

Jon Stewart’s displays usual genius.  The best comedy is based on truth.  We have to get serious about our economy.

Most Americans Don’t Blame Obama for Economy

Most Americans Don’t Blame Obama for Economy, Poll Finds – washingtonpost.com:

“The number of Americans who believe that the nation is headed in the right direction has roughly tripled since Barack Obama’s election, and the public overwhelmingly blames the excesses of the financial industry, rather than the new president, for turmoil in the economy, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.”

Poll Results

(Via The Washington Post.)

It looks like the public is still in a realistic mood. Still, Obama’s plan needs to start having some effects soon or the public will turn on him.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized

The Crisis of Credit Visualized on Vimeo:


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

The Short and Simple Story of the Credit Crisis.

Crisisofcredit.com

The goal of giving form to a complex situation like the credit crisis is to quickly supply the essence of the situation to those unfamiliar and uninitiated. This project was completed as part of my thesis work in the Media Design Program, a graduate studio at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

For more on my broader thesis work exploring the use of new media to make sense of a increasingly complex world, visit jonathanjarvis.com.

Support the project and buy a T-Shirt! cafepress.com/crisisofcredit

© Copyright 2009 Jonathan Jarvis

(Via Vimeo.)

Credit crisis in short animated film. Lays it all out quite nicely.

The Forgetful Man

Wasting Away in Hooverville:

“Shlaes’s actual critique of the New Deal [in The Forgotten Man] is not easy to pin down. Defining what she believes depends on whether you are reading the book itself or her incessant stream of spin-off journalism. In one article she adopted the classic right-wing line taken up by Andrew Mellon, Hoover’s treasury secretary: ‘Mellon–unlike the Roosevelt administration–understood that American growth would return if you left the economy alone to right itself.’ This is the conclusion that most excites Shlaes’s conservative admirers. And in keeping with this argument, Shlaes, a committed supply-sider, scolds Roosevelt for raising taxes on the rich, which discouraged them from taking risks. She fails to explain how the economy managed to recover after the outbreak of World War II, which saw even higher taxes on the rich, or in the postwar period, when they remained high. [emphasis mine]

Moreover, the classic right-wing critique fails to explain how the economy recovered at all. In one of his columns touting Shlaes, George Will observed that ‘the war, not the New Deal, defeated the Depression.’ Why, though, did the war defeat the Depression? Because it entailed a massive expansion of government spending. The Republicans who have been endlessly making the anti-stimulus case seem not to realize that, if you believe that the war ended the Depression, then you are a Keynesian.

(Via The New Republic.)

Once again ideology is revealed as soft-think. Conservative ideology in this case can’t handle even the simple facts. If facts are about reality, I’d be all too happy to forget conservatism.

And You’re Done

While I think Jim Cramer shouldn’t be the only face of the problem, I do think this total roasting is completely on the money. I’m reminded of the Crossfire roasting he did years ago. When will they learn? Here it is in unedited glory.

Krugman Goes Medieval

A Dark Age of macroeconomics (wonkish) – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com:

“There’s no ambiguity in either case: both Fama and Cochrane are asserting that desired savings are automatically converted into investment spending, and that any government borrowing must come at the expense of investment period.
What’s so mind-boggling about this is that it commits one of the most basic fallacies in economics interpreting an accounting identity as a behavioral relationship…
S + T = I + G

After a change in desired savings or investment something happens to make the accounting identity hold. And if interest rates are fixed, what happens is that GDP changes to make S and I equal.
That’s actually the point of one of the ways multiplier analysis is often presented to freshmen.”

(Via NY Times Blogs.)

Ouch. Fama and Cochrane made a freshman mistake. That’s why political ideology is soft-think.

Getting Value for Our Money (or Not)

Bush overpaid banks in bailout, watchdog says – Yahoo! News:

“Overall, the panel and the analysts it retained to conduct the valuation study found that the Treasury used taxpayers’ money to pay $62.5 billion more than the value of assets in the 10 transactions it examined. By extrapolating to the more than 300 institutions that received money, the panel concluded that the government in effect paid $78 billion more than the actual value of the assets at the time.
‘Treasury chose to offer ‘one size fits all’ pricing in order to encourage all institutions to participate, and in so doing disregarded apparent differences in their financial condition,’ the report states. ‘A consequence is that Treasury effectively offered weaker participants greater subsidies than it offered to stronger participants.'”

(Via Yahoo! News.)

This was inevitable. Try to ram a plan that radically changed from day to day to fix a complex problem years in the making is going to make for “large” results. Depending on what Geitner puts out, we’ll see how good or bad in comparison. Personally and I don’t say this often, I’m with Newt Gingrich on this whole thing.

Will the Stimulus Work?

Will the Stimulus Work? | The FactCheck Wire:

“In the meantime, if you want to keep up with the experts and their (sometimes quite technical) arguments for and against the stimulus plan, we suggest Krugman and former Clinton Treasury official Brad DeLong on the pro side and Becker and George Mason’s Tyler Cowen on the con side. The Atlantic’s new Atlantic Business page helpfully breaks down the experts’ arguments for the layperson.”

(Via FactCheck Wire.)

Check out both sides before arriving at an opinion.

Stimulate the Economy

Obama stimulus plan faces changes in Senate – Yahoo! News:

“WASHINGTON – A top Republican called for more mortgage relief and additional tax cuts in President Barack Obama’s massive economic stimulus package as Democrats conceded privately they will drop items that have drawn bipartisan criticism.”

(Via Yahoo! News.)

Finally, some sense from the Congress. I’ve been suspicious of them since the TARP fiasco. Whatever happened to good governance? Apparently, once you are in power, it fades into the background. I’ve seen tortured logic trying to justify “pork” projects that don’t stimulate the economy. These projects are to vary degrees laudable and worthy of legislation all on their own, but let’s get real here. Tax cuts and government spending that creates jobs is what is needed. Condoms are not stimulative in the proper sense!