Arkady's Thoughts

Australian economist Steve Keen has a video on his website where he discusses the global debt crisis.  Charts, humor and all sorts of useful tidbits for those interested in the ongoing financial debacle.  Link here: Steve Keen's video . Keen's website although not updated on a regular basis is useful to enhance one's knowledge of how the global economy functions, Austrian economics and the ongoing problems that we as a nation have been experiencing for decades. 

A recent article by Michael Shedlock regarding inflation does the best job so far of breaking down the debate between the deflation and inflation camps.  Using charts and graphs and simple language Shedlock strikes at the core of argument and really makes a compelling case.  For those not interested in economics or get easily bored reading about monetary supply, credit and other thrilling material - PLEASE READ THIS POST.  Sorry, got ahead of myself.  Look, the material may be boring, but it is absolutely imperative you understand the inner working of the financial system and what this means to you and your family in the next several years.  Shedlock's site is generally a daily read and you can find the link on my blog roll (on the right side), he is of the Austrian economic school which immediately puts him on the same footing of every person who has correctly predicted the 2008 collapse and writes in simple to understand language. Given that credit cond...

In the coming up series under the label 'Depression 2.0' I will try to pool together sources that suggest we are heading down a path last traveled by Americans over 70 years ago.  While the reasoning behind the coming depression are complex the basic idea has been covered in many previous posts about the Federal Reserve and the credit expansion we have experienced in the past 20+ years.  Today we learn that Arizona's grocery stores may be soon experiencing a strike for the first time in decades.  United Food & Commercial Local 99 cannot seem to compromise on who should be responsible for health care costs and unfortunately Safeway stores and local union bosses cannot seem to reach a compromise. Safeway spokeswoman Cathy Kloos said it was a shame the union has put the parties on a collision course over health-care costs similar to or less than what many other workers already pay. The problem is rooted in the fact that minimum wage laws or the cost of living wage...

This piece is a must read because it so eloquently captures what so many of us try to desperately get across on a daily basis.  While the numbers cited may not be exact, they are close enough to get the message across, the idea that no government program has ever met projections and will invariably cause a domino effect of failures resulting in disaster.  Even this will likely prove to be an underestimation of the true long-term costs. No other Big Government program has ever stayed within an order of magnitude of the promises made when it was signed into law. Medicare originally cost about $3 billion, when it began in 1965, and was projected to cost about $12 billion by 1990, adjusted for inflation. The actual cost in 1990 was nearly ten times that figure, $107 billion. It was up to $440 billion by 2007. The architects of the program would have been run out of town on a rail, if these future costs had been known to the voters of 1965. Perfectly written and offers a stern ...