the ever since adam
quest for the fully self closing 

market system model

has come far from its rough beginning

as the first deeply worked out

social system based on the principle

not of intention

but unintentional spontaneous self ordering

with a beneficient as if intened outcome

a system left to itself

capable of steering itself —-in the long run —

pretty damn close

to a path of perfect self optimization

in an attempt

to clarify this remarkable

one layer only

unsupervised perfectly freely arrived at

social order

the models got to the point of vanishing

from anything remotely actual

like the cheshire cat it left only a smile

on the faces of its panglosseriat

in the 70-80 period
did the project effectively die on the operating table ??

despite the need for preserving

its

imminent sanctaneousness

at the center of the ritual prayers and commandments

of the corporate voodoo doctors

Posted by pinky at 10:03 PM

we want to see how
the private profit motive

might be a barrier to progress

well firms guided by the p motive
might not even attempt certain enterprises

this is not market failure
its market system failure

take a producible good

what
if some stream of perpetual red ink

is the optimal org outcome

no the necessary outcome

as in fundemental reaserch

how will it get supplied

on private firm based markets??

Posted by pinky at 09:59 PM

lets start with the whole human capital gambit
he picked up at chicago

why not just admit this
is the ultimate pay off

in confusion

calling so many different things capital

leads to a geep hiring out himself

and collecting rent on himself

'scuse me rent and interest

on self …

investment another word with hydra like uses

at any rate
his model incorporates literally

an r and d sector

that produces

novel designs

out of a reservoir of … existing designs

by means of humans posessed

of specific durable skills

—-their skills capitalized no doubt

by means of rational

gain max calcs —-

the novel design needless to say
must pay their way plus

and this requires

the bar drop

on free universal reproduction

of the designs

incentives my children incentrives

as honest abe the railroad lawyer
once said

“we must add

the fires of interest

to the spark of creation “

or words equally high flown

so now we got the why fer of IP

BUT LETS DROP BACK HERE

needless to say these hu-caps
are the key to everything

grand progressive and uplifting

combine this with
uncle gary's

beckerville folly

and you get

the no development

without a culture of intensive hu cap cultivation

alibi for the left behind nations of the earth

add increasing returns to the size of this pool
of hu caps in the r and d sector

add back in

this hu-cap scale effect

to intellectual property rights

and you get

an Rx for trans nat corporations

as optimal barers of global civilization

on a categorical imperative basis

what a vision

market size (smith) is sublated

look out india and china and all black africa too
here comes your salvation

pan oceanic limited liability
unlimited ip monopoly inc

taking these new designs
to the ends of the earth

sowing seeds anywhere and everywhere

…optmal optimal all is optimal

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | February 14, 2008 at 11:44 AM

paine says…
formally its ho hum

suped up dixit stiglitz

ie imperfect comp

with its stable “rents “

voila
schumpeter has been formalized

but the fly in the ointment

an r and d outfit
ain't a resaurant

universal discovery
at the margin of production is free

reputation —-good eats —-
requires diffusion

slowed by potential market size

and household's frequency of shopping sampling what have you

but a design
can be grab by the competition

and replicated

fast

in a few only firm setting

too much detail…

point
romer's

r and d production function

might as well have

trans nat inc stamped at birth

on its underbelly

Posted by js paine at 09:48 PM

the whole debate escapes my grasp

the umpire state of the true liberals
can set any rules of play

so long as their handful of fixed

“natural” axioms

are not violated

this leads in practice to contradictions

liberal state theory

knows not of class interests

only special group interests

which brings us to altruism

the state enforcing our altruism ????
what a briar patch

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | February 14, 2008 at 09:19 AM

paine says…
b wild

“classical liberal pose”

let us be fair to em
before we chop off their heads

at one time some of em
actually believed their

18th century version of newspeak

okay that was maybe two and a half
centuries ago ….

and the pose started with self deluding

monsters of pecksniffian morality

like gladstone and summner

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | February 14, 2008 at 09:23 AM

paine says…
lee

” Romer describes this with regard to innovations “

beware the hoover institutes annointed ones

romer is a bumper car ideologian
his bones making model

a copt formalism

relabeled and assumed into

washington consensus friendly crapola

i'm prepared to go into specifics here

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | February 14, 2008 at 09:29 AM

paine says…
there's a lesson in this

romer cat

science can advance thru
pompous stinkers

as well as lambkin nerds

and ivory cellar mephistos

takes all kinds

even

decent critters like our host mark T

“in what context can we imagine a citizen without a community?”

righto even crusoe had his legacy

humans are social constructions tarzan may have been constructed by “apes”
but he was never the less

socially constructed

and errr regretably

civilizationally reconstructed

Posted by js paine at 09:47 PM

billy goes profound

“This ends up with workers basically screwing each other”

the pure associated producer market model
is indeed subject to all the usual market failures

if the real producers capture all their own rents

the result is indeed fare better

but pareto prefered results are possible

and this must be co ordinated by a plan

before the producers

become too vested in their rent streams

Posted by js paine at 09:41 PM

” Sooner or later Americans have to start to actually save”

economic literacy
doesn't translate

automatically into

fronteer insight

your line here proves it

all americans of the job class
need is to see to it

they get paid

in steady proportion to what they produce

the state's job ???

sky high employment thru rapid job creation
and a balanced trade dollar

and here's the relevent bit

the credit system allocates adequate funds for
productive investment

after all the rest is
dangerous lot price fluff

shylocked durables

and

equities or picasso paintings

there's no net savings by
the household sector necessary

if uncle mans the credit system properly

he can give industry any fresh funds

it needs

that requires an economy wide

industrial policy …of course

something we only had for the years 40-45

don

” America has plenty of demand.

In fact, it has excess demand.”

surely you mean household spending…right ??

u forget the trade gap

that sends some of that household demand overseas

and then there's
the investment side of total spending/demand

good old plant and equipment
excess demand there ??

ie firms aggregate real self exspansion rate

is it full throttle ???

…

the roosevelt social contract

we'll pay according to your productivity

the reagan social contract
we won't pay you according to your productivity

but we will loan you and your gubmint

the difference

…
don

“Yet, the only solutions being proposed involve ways to keep up U.S. borrowing'

don a rescue or buy out is
a stock of debt ownership move

not per se
a net flow of new credit into the production system

or really the assets other then money

from liquidating out of a debt security

don't confuse the two

and debt service relief is about
reducing payments on existing arms

maybe there's a few more moving parts here
then you seem to account for

Posted by js paine at 09:34 PM

“They are also needed to overcome widening inequality, and thereby keep America in one piece “

i think you got the man by his soul there

a brutishly class cloven national society
can be harmonized into

one big joyous human chorus

der booby zockzer reich

“By my calculation, a tiny annual wealth tax of one-tenth of 1 percent on all net worth exceeding $5 million — a tax that would affect only 50,000 households, or fewer than one-tenth of 1 percent of the nation's taxpayers — would yield an additional $100 billion.”

go go bobby
follow the yellow brick road

“The accumulated national debt will be in shouting distance of the $10 trillion mark”

this fact floating around in dumbos head
is anchored to a sky hook

the high water mark of gdp to national debt
came …in the raging 40's

a fact rarely discussed

why ??

mayhaps because
of its all to evident implications

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | February 14, 2008 at 09:01 AM

paine says…
rusty

“A “wealth tax” would be a compliance nightmare “

aimed at 50k households ???

bring it on baby

rusty
think of the raids man

you account types
eliot ness work

issued side arms
ninja outfits

chopper drops at midnite
on to

daddy warbucks mansion estate

plaster the headlines with the dead beats
the tales might create

a little progressive lessoning

for rage radio

Posted by js paine at 09:30 PM

anne i like your add in of self destruction
to plain old other guy destruction

i've often felt
the mass appeal of fascism

is inherently about

a buried desire for self destructive

the nazi project in the 20's
was as jg put it

the nationalization of the working class

implicit

by taking it on one last big finish

a crusade to total doomtown

also doing business as
the alamo complex

miltons satan on day three of the war in heaven

Posted by js paine at 09:27 PM

i may have discovered
a new law of development

from clear verbal formulation to clear formalization

lets call it
the 45 year plus/minus law

examples robinson chamberlain 32
dixit stiglitz 78

schumpeter 42
romer 87

big push guy
one of us

jewish genius in the shadows

type guy

name runs together with

dozens more

also 42

murphy et al 89

bark
the behave yourself crowd

to me are doing for internalization

what the historical school did for the state

and gosh

the romantics

did for externalities

“assuming individual rationality and greed,
leading to some sort of equilibrium “

“greed “

looking only to oneself
is not limited

to greed is it

equilibrium
is only a debris clearing assumption

the formal system
of anything

needs to simplify

of course
it is precisely there

in the simpling down assumptions

the magicians tricks

behind the illusion

of certainty

can enter

from stage right or left

ps
my 45 years law

implies

all economics is neoclassical….

in the long run

———-

confirmation of a fan

————————-

Welcome back, paine!

Posted by: Dani Rodrik | February 14, 2008 at 01:27 PM

Posted by js paine at 09:00 PM

“Expanding the EITC is a good idea in any case,
so none of that really matters”

right on mark
borrow from the rich

and funnel it back

to the bottom third of the job class

my system

half a trillion's worth

this plus a mandated

galloping

min wage floor

indexed to median lab productivity

and boom

now for my next trick

the amazing re appearing production base
aka the dollar dive

rf

if its not a moral motive
and we need to escape productionism and growthism

what in hell are you suggesting motivate us

ya ya

save the earth for our great great grand children

hey maybe they'll like
three fingered hands

dickensian london skies

and mile after mile

of post industrial marl

“OK, then wouldn't we expect the national savings rate to have increased? The data shows however that the national savings rate has declined over time”

pgl

we're borrowing the rich mans overage from
him

that nets out the savings of the aggregate

and you are a pro at this ???

t'is the age of
massive shylocking

read reich point three

Currency depreciation is clearly

the number one inequalty creator.

groucho
you got it right but upside down

the tilt goes from too high north

to too low south

movements among north cuurrencies
ie dollar down vis a vis euro

is just for trans nat fun and games

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | February 13, 2008 at 09:26 AM

paine says…
“We are in the process of sacrificing a generation of blue collar workers on the altar of globalization, and now we find that comparative advantage doesn't work in the short run.”

right on rusty

as to reich and his work of nations line

that was a bum detour
he still pushes

beyond the comp for loss bit

he still expects us to de industrialize

and make it up with school built skills

the post industrial

amerikan symbol worker

mass employment sector

with 30 million

bobby reich and stevey speilberg and ed witten jobs

the hope of generation zebra

…
bob writes

“The whole point of the republicans class war against the non-affluent is to keep from increasing the wages of the bottom 2/3rds.”

yup
at least domestically speaking

bw

if “real” hourly labor
value added is growing

at a fair clip

and it is

has and will

the basis for a rising median wage

is already present

if the system
paid out like it did prior to the 70's

class train wreck …

we'd be in another better place entirely

err

job class wise

…
“I keep pressing people to think outside the box of conventional economic theory”

are you to be only a cheer leader
or a player too

to me morality plays no part

the increase in a wage earner's wage rate
oughta at least keep up

with her own increased productivity

…
oh my an ought for an is

forgive me pastor hume

rf
i've visited your site several times

and found it rewarding

i guess i'm stuck
on the “outside the box “bit

u don't provide any specifics
it helps me to know

where you're headed ..outside

as to my own agit prop activity
long since over

not yet restarted

besides my posts at the site hiding under my name at the bottom

not economics

btw i realize all too well
my thinking is still in a box

i guess i'll just have to keep trying

to punch my way out

ps

this is a format

its hardly poetry and its not verse

its bumped
to slow speed readers

give em time
to get pissed

or better yet skip

the god damn contrived bugs

all together

Wages are a function of marginal productivity, not average productivity”

so i take it you feel marginal outputs
are growing slower then average ?????

long run eh ??? thirty years now

as to balloooooons at the top

value added surely needs to be carved up intra firm
and that is indeed often circular

always in part assumptive

and unrelentingly obscure

my puzzle seems to arise precisely here :

1979-1984

after several decades of tracking
with productivity

bottom half wage rates

start to drop behind ….noticeably

all this after

volcker-reagan's

new morning in amerika

…
“I find it depressing that the best liberal policy that the best establishment liberal can come up to deal with what is by now an extremely serious and entrenched income inequality problem is the EITC”

couldn't agree more

…
btw is that you laff

behind the big tent longo

” don't think there is much theoretical justification for thinking that the distribution of income is technologically determined. The Production Function is two big lies rolled into one. Actual production processes are managed, not maximized, and the distribution of income is tied to the distribution of risk and residual.”

reminds me of the rainy days
when my older sister and i

played grown up

by wearing mom and pops duds

…
“if someone should notice that rents play a role in wage determination, then, by all means, turn up the volume on the more-education, higher-skill sermon and drown them out”

you could use a dose of abba lerner

rents are partly perspective partly time frame
much of it disolves as one pulls back to wider time frames

and yet as one pulls back from firm to sector to economy

it gets bigger and bigger

but that aside looking at any actual market economy
and its myriad structural rent traps

these rent trappers
have a thousand an one ways

to catch retain and extract

surplus value (marshall sense )

on its way to consumers

in the final form of a lower relative price

…
“Increasing income inequality is directly related to increasing income instability and risk”

“related to “

as in co related to …right ??

not for heaven's sake
related to

as in

caused by btw to me

most “marshall type rents “

going to people for their services

are worth seperating out

from rents trumbling forth

in the form of

profit wind falls

market specs and scams

land zoning change

population shifts

resource market price flux

famines

droughts

alienated patent rights

royalty and license fees

and the rest

of the hoo haa haah

that passes for precautionary

stand by

just in case needed

incentives

…

calmo

“They are also needed to overcome widening inequality, and thereby keep America in one piece “

i think you got the man by his soul there

a brutishly class cloven national society
can be harmonized into

one big joyous human chorus

…
“free trade” (outsourcing manufacturing to china and service jobs to india), pegged currencies, and corporatist domination of American democracy has replaced our constitution as the basic governing principles of this nation”

exactly

…
well maybe not our original constitution

but surely our bill of rights

and the spirit

of our declaration of independence

dale you know where my class stand is

and its from here among the white working gobs of amerika
i say

any plan must tie into A JOB

wage rate min max

lowered premium hour ceilings

free public daycare

the ww's will buy into

bigger longer

more widely universally applied

unemployment comp plans

yup

anything that preserves the job ethic

now the lynch pin becomes
job creation max

and that we can get to
with supply side mark up trading (MAP)

and full throttle effective

demand management thru fiscal budget

tax and borrow optimization

and of course a balance trade dollar

high but measured immigration

and a massive rebuild

of our production platform

as to pro union laws

—-and i write this as a union man
all the way from my bald pate

to the dermatophytes in both my big toe nails ——

we the workers of the job class
oughta fight our way

to those goals we determine for ourselves

and make it happen

right there at the job site

like wage stiffs
did in the 30's-40's

like black folks

in the 50's -60's

etc etc

no job site class struggle
will ever be really won

by act of congress

Posted by js paine at 08:28 PM

bravo
drop outs

this and busting the wedlock up

are the prolecats taking their lives

into their own hands

libs go goo goo some where else

wanna help
set up free universal voluntary

pre school age 6 months to 5

“This upward trend in secondary education increased worker productivity and fueled American economic growth (Goldin and Katz 2003). “

horse shit circular causation

“America is increasing. America is becoming a polarised society. Proportionately more American youth are going to college and graduating than ever before. At the same time, proportionately more are failing to complete high school. “

horse shit

college is remedial high school
the average college degree

for a job class backgrounded

raw thing

is very little more then

a hollow spence signal

it tells employers this poke

is likely to be

easy

disciplined

compliant

tolerent of minny and mickey rules

and ready

for

the lowest paying

white collar corporate gauntlet

at 15
raws oughta be ready for the job world

and needing

a forty hour per week mcjob

or paying public service gigs

in day care centers forest pruning

street policing

or for all it matters

if it works well with testosterone levels

a hitch at camp gwot

what they don't need

are 3 more years

of 30 hours per week

class room detention

jobs teach skills not schools …period

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | February 13, 2008 at 08:49 AM

paine says…
jay hawk

“federal officials can blackmail state's that attempt to give their students quality educations, centered around critical thinking skills, teaching them to be financially competent(among many necessary skills not taught in U.S. public schools”
” can blackmail states… “

but don't have to

voucher the whole biz
and remove the school draft at age 14

that oughta shake

the pointy headed hillarycrats

of middle ed

talk about horse shyt. paine, calm down

always calm mr t

just provoking your bastion
to sally forth

to meet me

on the plains of abraham

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | February 13, 2008 at 11:37 AM

paine says…
monk

absolutely agreed till this cliff like juncture

“The requirements for highschool/college diplomas
are a low cost way

to weed out the people

that weren't able

to complete those tasks in the job pool”

low cost ???

to who
the employer for sure

as spence points out

in the ur paper on signals

but society as a whole ???

might we not find a cheaper
more productive way

as you suggest

“.. most jobs out there

don't require that much knowledge anyway “

lets just find out who's a good employee
thru job performance itself

started the earlier the better

why a gauntlet without intrinsic value
when the buggars can learn by doing

what the real world will pay them to do

“want better bub
get a skill “

Posted by js paine at 08:24 PM

i promise to do the job
the whole job

and nothing but the job

so help me marx

Posted by pinky at 03:07 PM

you may notice
the epical green brown struggle

is not my gig

i'll toss in a free candy man tip

now and again



but my main frame

such as it is

don't work those problems much

why ??

well i guess it goes back to the woodstock tree hug days

i liked playing chain saw sammy
in the enchanted forest back then

why ???

i don't know….tooo much rustic splendor
all about me

in my raw first years in new hampshire i guess

oddly i've always thought we ought to live in orbit
in vast tumbling structures

depart

look on

but for all time to come

besides fending off

stray asteroids and such

let the planet's living scum layer

go where mother N and doc chaos send it

but i have no cherishment for anything now on it
not since the dinos checked out

at least not above microbe scale

well…except trees

i like trees

trees of all sorts

yes that means

i was a fraud even back then

in the lsd days



rip starting a chain saw

choking it up to full throated

blue smoking glory

just for

the stage effects only ….

what an ass hole

Posted by pinky at 02:21 PM

“What we are witnessing is a social tsunami of epic dimension reaching its critical mass, ready to arrive at the shore and sweep away whatever oppposes it, starting with the Clinton “machine.”

god i sure hope so
the polboards at the center of national jackassery

need and deserve a brutal rip tiding

bing bang gore drowning

to me the clintons stand for two generations
of total donkeycrat failure

to think lbj ( 64-65 )

was the lone last ranger

of the new deal…

since then
its all been

pious mince meat

and identity dances

Posted by js paine at 08:32 PM

the best de facto carbon tax today
is $100 per b crude

only the rents don't get collected

by the various states

thru wind fall profit taxes

on resources

standards for sure
but they're too slow acting

standards are for production after all

and don't we have

a bad flow to stock ratio

imagine certain fuel standards

increasing in increments

over the next two decades

fine but …
the lag in full effect

new vs existing cars etc

the higher price of fuel is necessary
why not a tax

plus

a virtual ie

card based ration book

for x gallons tax free per license per month

might be best

rations are loved when fair
and the ration price need not be fixed

but float with the non tax component

of the per gallon pump charge

…
i think standards and taxes

plus full rebating in cash

of the average

household tax gets sold best

as a package deal

because
you can say about

the higher standards

we 'll require the auto makers

to build cars more fuel efficient

as a way to ease

the burden of the tax

paine says…

“Color me naive or an idealist if you will “

i'll color you

anal passive agressive petty ridiculous

unimaginative

and rightfully

subject to an internet

per word posted pigou tax

not ads valoreum

cause in use by you

they're worth near zero

but as a source of meme traffic bottle neck

and you love it so

like a road hog
in the fast lane

value
nice summary

of part to whole market failures

and shared sacrifice

but as to
transparentcy vs sanctum sanctorum

produced

hocus pocus policy

as in

the elite must do some things

behind our backs …for our own good

hmmm

maybe gutless corporation pruned pols
unwilling to lay it out

are the problem

fdr sold many things
to the un-degreed un-wise majority

because they trusted him

and he'd earned that trust

Posted by js paine at 08:18 PM

lovely post doc t

20 have 85 of net worth
let us hammer this home

when we talk tax burden shares

and this ….40% effectively zero

when we talk safety net

yup
actual households bounce around among

income quintiles

from year to year

and

over the life cycle wealth arc patterns

would be optimal

still its obvious
if absolute or relative consumption

may be a relief guide

if you're

for lowering household

inequality and attendent levels of household

financial insecurity

by our noble fed transfer system

its household wealth that remains

the proper target

for progressive tax extraction

not income or consumption either

—-as much as a luxury tax would be great sport—-

Posted by js paine at 08:17 PM

mark
i agree

paul is exemplary on health system economics

and obama well

the cobra hasn't exactly come out of the basket yet

but ….

i might point out
mandate demogogics

oughta have a certain youth appeal

after all as cohorts they are expected

to pay in more

then they will draw out

wider coverage also can mean

more health dollars in the pipe line

given a supply as inelastic

as my 60 year old desk lilly

tendons ….

…
pk

mind set

chivalry rhymes with hillary

…
hay nit sez

“We all remember how bitter
he was after the 1992 election

when he was passed over

in favor of his rivals Laura Tison

and Robert Reich.”

are u being ironic here ???

mark has it right

paul is just being paul

the people's republic of paul speaks

when at full charge
the krug-horns can hook dem as well as rep

the ic-ster

“This is capitalist social property relations “

social property relations
as opposed to what other sort

btw
is it capitalism or the deepening mediation of social activity by markets the source of the anomie alienation and serialization

if not cerialization of contempo geepery

ic
god love you

but i see your

avatar's head in a basket

…
kharris

ic wants us to de unionize go to the sun belt lose our next job to a chicano
get thirtsty and move back to michigan

after all we left the south

and ended up in detroit

because of the WWII war boom

why not move again …twice back and forth

like a shuttle cock

btw
is there a part whole

type waste mechanism

busily at work where ??

interlocational migrational rationality

intertemporal migrational irrationality

bullbust nice citation

tp's summary
bares repeating

“Policy must also chart a stable long-term course, which implies the need to reconsider the paradigm of the past 25 years. That means ending trade deficits that drain spending and jobs, and restoring the link between wages and productivity. That way, wage income, not debt and asset price inflation, can again provide the engine of demand growth. “

even from a union mouth piece
this blows

solid rally notes

for we the jobbled masses

“over-consumption countries”,

groucho read the bully bust citation

since the reagan recovery of the mid 80's
wagelings have had to borrow

back what they earned and used to be paid

besides the hideous lot bubble scam
that has victims where you may see culprits

look higher for your “we “

and look corporate too

as to the debt service share of household spending
we are in new territory

if i'm not mistaken

and it acts like a tax on consumption spending

these higher debt loads among the weebles
have lessons to teach our hi fi masters

short run

are they sustainable or

do they lead to signifigantly higher defaults

if non sustainable
will the hi fis have created

a much expanded “walk away ” sub culture

ahh
yet another blow ..

ohh for the good ole days
of calvinistic hegemony in amerika

“cost of travel and how we transport goods is soon going to change our lifestyles”

indeed this will effect
relative prices based on fuel expended

to get product mobilized and built and to final market

how much this will force movement
of production closer to end markets ???

involves lots of different
cost elasticities of location

but as a start
today … what share of end market price

is total fuel charge related

transportation costs

pretty small

i for sure don't know exactly
but isn't it the place to start

if dire results from fuel scarcity

are your expectation

are you suggesting the transport costs
wil re isolate regional economies ????

may be a fairy tale
as billyb job might say

…
“Fairly rookie stuff I think”

where as herr mcnoodle here …

“What's your take on the peak oil debate?”

only the big time oilers know for sure

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | February 12, 2008 at 11:14 AM

says…
cassandra :

“The problem is they'll do everything they can to bail this one out, which is actually a mistake. By doing so they'll set us up for the next one.

Trying to prevent the economy from resetting is just going to make it even worse.”

are u suggesting financial asset values
—-whatever in hell that circularity might mean——

need to correct deeply ???

and until the asset values drops
back into a sustainable alignment

with the values churned out

by the globe's production economy

we will experience

these job killing spasms

and each spasm will be bigger then the last ??

Posted by: | Link to comment | February 12, 2008 at 11:19 AM

paine says…
“Finger to finger combat against decaying and decadent authority figures who have no respect for us… “

calmo and his vicaros ride again

yeeeehaaaaaw

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | February 12, 2008 at 11:23 AM

paine says…
“Is there a single month in the last three or four years or so that Roubini wasn't predicting a “severe short-term” meltdown of one type or another”

ya the stopped clock is right twice a day

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | February 12, 2008 at 11:25 AM

paine says…
bruce wild one

“I do think this recession (and the last one, and probably the next one) call for significant restructuring of the American economy away from no-saving, high-consumption certainly, and away from cheap-imported-gasoline suburban/exurban paradise-is-a-parking-lot”

i read you

and get geared up

after an unfortunate open
about how in the end

households must change

belt tighten

they've lived too large

for their wage streams

and they'll need to put

stream and dream back in harness together ….

you roar on
to point out

not the old tale

of how “we”

got up there

teetering atop house debt mountain

thru these hi fi institutions (your purview eh ??)

and their loyal dog fed

taking us up there on

the royal jelly credit finicular

but rather a newer tale
meanwhile

the pricks were shiting

on chicken little's head

and most of the rest of us

not just directly

thru our sky hooked house lots

but thru our local gubs investings and

borrowings as well

—-talk about geetin em at both ends ——-

by throwing good in ahead of bad

and bad on top of good

all along

calling risk its own reward

and themselves now running for cover

under uncle's right arm

indeed

“If, as the decline in housing prices continues, local community leaders are brought to understand that the Big Banks have screwed local communities, by selling them worthless securities and, by raising the cost of selling revenue bonds to finance the various projects local business leaders love, add in Bank of America doubling people's credit card interest rates, then it is torches and pitchforks time”

mcnoodle
not a con ??

not a lib ???

a what then ???

a lonely honest
non self scaming

man of hard logic

sound models

and cop….i….ous raw data

behold fellow rookies
his reassuring thump

as he paces
the quarter deck above us

ever vigilant

walking back and forth

over the oaken boards

of rude empiricks

eagle eye to the glass

…
billy

playing underbrush cutter

for no-no roubini

is a thankless task

and sir brude of webb

has a mind to regard

but

“The vast majority have no choice. The accident of birth determines when they start working, when they save, when they retire, when they spend”

rings in my ears like a silver bell

“everyone will just default
on their existing mortgage

and move one house to the left, “

ya but now credit busted
they'll be renting the house to the left

not owning it

Posted by js paine at 08:10 PM

the best tax relief
would be a reduction to zero

of

the household mortgage debt service stream

on main home



make it

double zero no interest

no payments on balance owed 

how a tax credit equal to interest

on house lot value

net back

in cash to those with mortgages below lot value

and tax obs below credit value

Posted by pinky at 03:58 PM

“Why don't you think investors
are demanding

a higher real rate of return”

priceless personification
of the credit market

deeply consider

the irony and folly of this query

real return riskless return
“demanding ” nope

yes you can see markets demanding

higher risk premia

  higher inflation adjustments 

but only because of opportunities
to escape risk and or dollar inflation

t bonds stocks land and ….gold and swiss francs

you “demand”
a higher return in one market

because you're able to get it in another

if over all demand for real returns rose

it would be an effect not cause

the effect of

eat it now mania

Posted by js paine at 12:34 PM