True. I should have made a note when I read this but a while back I read that a UN rep that is part of the Climate Change crowd said that the best system for dealing with Climate Change is Communism. Frightening...

Well, for some reason, like currencies, and for the same reason, the word "hope" has been devalued since, um, 2008.

I truly believe though that "socialists" are a dying breed. The more potent danger is now the "greens" and their global power elite, who clearly see an opportunity.

In the end, though, not really much difference between them. Whether "egalitarianism" or the new God Gaia and "sustainability", it always comes down to the initiation of force by a power elite against individuals, to attain their "exalted" goals.

Love it...but I'm afraid the toys in their arsenal are a little more serious than Toys Я Us...

Thanks beautiful. I felt something on my kilted ass.

I hope you are right Minor. We should be able to learn from history but the socialists see an opportunity...

you can edit it :)

They make NO effort at reducing spending. It is the oil that fuels their machine. And the machine I am referring to is the hideous life-consuming machine from The Princess Bride. The machine just sucked one year from each of our lives. And remember, please be honest. This is for posterity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbgyppGq...

And perhaps the R in Russian should have been turned around like it would be in the Cyrillic language, Я.

I believe that the US, and its economy, can and will survive, even this upcoming crisis. But not without another round of significant pain.

The damage has been going on for so long, that there must be and will be a massive readjustment (recession/depression), as is inevitable after any massive inflation.

Given other comments in this thread, I think that, unfortunately, it will only be in this light that, after the fact, 2008 will be considered a "mini-crisis".

And I believe that you are absolutely correct that rising interest rates will signal/trigger the end of this boom. The only other historical alternative would be to continue the expansion to the point of hyperinflation, and I don't think the US or almost any country is so ignorant of economic history to let things go that way.

kh has already listed, earlier, some of the steps we will have to take. As of now, of course, IMO there is absolutely no "political will" to effect any of those changes. But there will be.

On the positive side, I do believe that we have a advantage over earlier "corrections" of this scale: our advances in information technology should convey, in an enormously faster and more efficient way, the price signals that point to a recovery.

The huge political, not economic, question is: Will we be "allowed" to act on those signals, or will we lapse into another era of price controls, protectionism etc.?

My hope, and thanks to sites like this, that grow by the day, is that we will finally have learned, and reason and a free market correction will prevail and minimize the pain.

Damn it. I wish I had asked you before posting. You are right.

It just occurred to me...perhaps the last two letters of your title should be capitalized?

I'm surprised more financial pundits aren't talking about the disconnect between the numbers. Retail sales were supposed to be strong Q4 and Q1 because of the low unemployment and low gas prices. Retail sales were weak and no one seemed to make the connection between that and the unemployment numbers being manipulated along with the inflation numbers.

Wealth is being created but not that all that fast considering monetary and fiscal policies have been at full throttle for years. It's a stretch to say we recovered from anything when we didn't fix the underlying problems and know another crisis is coming.

typical. just repeat your statement without addressing the evidence. Where is the evidence we have recovered from that "mini"-crisis? There has been no increase in per capita income since the Recession. There would appear to be wealth creation-but when the Fed prints money out and hands it to banks at near 0% and does this for YEARS, has wealth been created?

kh: I agree 100% about 2008. There was nothing "mini" about that crisis. You can't of course list all of its ill effects in a single post, but don't forget the horrendous loss in home values, representing the life savings and retirement "nest egg" for millions, wiped out and still not recovered.

The so-called "official" unemployment figures are still being "cooked" to vastly understate the current unemployment rate. And even the official numbers show very little job growth, and if I recall last month's jobs report correctly, there were net losses in all age categories except the 55-69 year-olds. (Why are they actively seeking jobs? See paragraph 1). Without a significant net gain in that category, there would have been a net job loss. Is that type of growth something to be "proud" of?

And, just IMO, the most immoral thing about the unemployment survey is that it arbitrarily excludes people who are so discouraged that they've given up looking for work as "unemployed". On what moral or theoretical grounds is that justified?

One of my biggest arguments against the Affordable Care Act is that we can't afford the existing entitlement programs. Why add another???

Not only didn't we fix anything the situation was made worse by the leftist agenda. An argument could be made that a "mini crisis" became a full blown crisis as a result.

"Was that a mini-crisis?"
Yes, and we didn't fix anything, so another one is coming.

Exactly right. To hear about that strategy from the horse's mouth listen to this interview with Paul Craig Roberts, who headed Reagan's team:
http://itsourmoney.podbean.com/e/the-who...

No. Reagan had a strategy and consulted with leading capitalist economists. The "mini-crisis" as you put it, in 2008, plunged millions out of the middle class into the working class. We have not seen this many people out of work and not looking for work since the Great Depression. Was that a mini-crisis?

many other families are in bad financial shape because their wealth has been depleting due to inflation and businesses are cutting way back, uncertain of the future. Real per capita growth has been squeezed from the private sector and is inflated by the public sector. Mr. Laffer is a very smart man. In order to start your own business, it takes investment and lots of risk. New disruptive technology takes even more risk.

Wrong, and Wrong-er.

"It should be easy to eliminate the deficit."
It's true scope is not accurately reported to us, we continue to inflate by printing currency. You support senators, representatives and a President who would never agree to freezing nominal spending much less cuttin way back on social program spending, which takes money from producers and gives it to looters and moochers. There are bold moves which could cut the deficit substantially through growth. In order for that growth to happen and explode would involve cutting regs substantially, including recent banking laws, accounting rules and legislation on the floors of both houses now, weakening the patent system.

We could probably do that many times over. Find comments from both campaigns and see just how wrong his ideas are. Sounds like a job for the unbiased media. Oh yeah...

Hard to be consistent with Keynes, since he was inconsistent with himself (and reality). This is just plain old Inflationism, which had it's promoters long before Keynes, and many since, always to serve the Emperor, The King, The Prime Minister, The President...[fill-in-the-blank here]....

Not that I'm disagreeing with you at all. Dangerous indeed.

And it never ends well. It won't be pretty this time, either.

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