by bonalibro

An Open Letter to John Mauldin

Debt, Growth, and the Austerity Debate | Outside the Box Investment Newsletter | Mauldin Economics. Two weeks ago I wrote about the current debate over the 2010 paper by Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart (hereinafter referred to as RR) on the correlation between debt and GDP growth. I said that the most important part of their work, which is the construction of an enormous database on debt and financial crises over the last few hundred years, was to be found in their book This Time Is Different and Read more [...]
by bonalibro

Peter Wood and the Bowdoin College Flapdoodle

http://live.wsj.com/video/opinion-liberal-academics-gone-wild/A1C40FDF-1C8B-4905-9B7E-5FCC9CA0CF50.html?mod=WSJ_article_outbrain&obref=obnetwork#!A1C40FDF-1C8B-4905-9B7E-5FCC9CA0CF50 Peter Wood is president of a conservative organization that exists for the sole purpose of challenging anything in Academia it regards as anti-big business. It was founded pursuant to Lewis Powell's letter to the Chamber of Commerce, and its mission is to make trouble for colleges that harbor faculty members who Read more [...]
by bonalibro

Heart of Darkness – WTF?

I just finished rereading Heart of Darkness, as I've been thinking about writing something along the same plot line, that does more to develop one of the themes in Banana Republican Blues. What impressed me about Conrad's book was how much one would need to know about conditions in colonial Africa -- particularly in Congo, where presumably the book is set -- and how much the reader would have to infer about the character of Kurtz. The conscience of the book must be found in reading between Read more [...]
by bonalibro

Foe

J. M. Coetzee's novella, Foe, was suggested to me by an editor at Harper Collins, for reasons I still do not understand, as a model for my own novel, Banana Republican Blues. I just finished reading it for that reason. What I found interesting about it is that it offers a useful reflection on the problem of autobiography in fiction. What was Defoe supposed to make of heroine, Susan Barton's story of a man who spent fifteen years on an island moving a 100,000 stones to form terraces on a hillside? Read more [...]
by bonalibro

Updating Reaganomics – NYTimes.com

Updating Reaganomics - NYTimes.com. Just as a broken clock can be right once a day, so a broken policy can be right once in a century. Reagan may or may not have been correct in his approach to the economy, but updating Reaganism in the way that Ramesh Ponnuru proposes is definitely not the way to go. It is not a reformation of Reaganism, but an extension of it far beyond anything Reagan would have dared to propose. Reagan's term began at the tail end of a long bear market, which had witnessed Read more [...]
by bonalibro

Obama Wins for whom? | Michael Hudson

  Obama Wins for whom? | Michael Hudson. Does Dr. Hudson honestly wish to suggest the the Koch brothers et al, and Citizen's United were a set up to get the President re-elected? And that people were persuaded to pour billions of dollars into Republican coffers to scare the plebes into voting for the lesser evil, as if that were the desired result all along. So that they could get the Democrats to do what they have wanted done since Social Security existed? That's a little too far-fetched Read more [...]
by bonalibro

The Real Referendum – NYTimes.com

The real problem is the tax cuts the rich have enjoyed for many years, and the resultant Ponzi scheme known as deficit finance. To cover the deficit in current account we borrowed the Social Security Trust Fund. The money has been spent. The trust fund is full of IOUs that someone will have to repay, and as everyone knows, that will mean significantly higher taxes or a default on the debt. If there should be a debt default that would mean a significant haircut for private bondholders. But replenishing Read more [...]
by bonalibro

Audacity, not Character in High Finance

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/07/opinion/brooks-why-democrats-lead.html?_r=1&hp You want to get to the root of it, Brooks? It comes from a famous letter sent by Lewis Powell to Eugene Sydnor of the Chamber of Commerce. http://www.webcitation.org/64jAmJkKB Entitled "Attack on the Free Enterprise System," it details a massive left wing conspiracy to destroy the United States free enterprise system and calls for a virtual war on all elements of the left, communists, socialists, hippies, college Read more [...]
by bonalibro

Romney’s Disappointment – NYTimes.com

Poor Mitt, I share Romney's disappointment, but compared with his predecessor, Obama has done a much better job of stimulating economic output. Under the GOP's plan, output fell in 2001 from 104.5 to 101, then rose to 103.5 by 2004, just enough to get the boy president re-elected, then rolled downhill and fell off the cliff until 2009 when when it hit 96.5. Obama stepped up with the Democratic stimulus package that brought it back to 102.5. Then, the Republican Congress blocked his every initiative Read more [...]
by bonalibro

Party of Strivers – NYTimes.com

When I was in high school, there was a boy in my class who considered me either a rival or a dunce, I still don't know which, but I was one of the strivers, whereas he had already arrived. He enjoyed putting me down whenever the occasion arose. At one point I made a rather dumb remark that he never let me live down.  It is one that reminds me of Republicans, since that party's "renaissance" in the 1980s. To paraphrase it, they think because they did some serious reading once upon a time that Read more [...]