DOOM: The truth will set you free...or kill you.

As most of you know, I consider the WaPo's Ezra Klein to be the equivalent of an organ grinder's monkey in a little red vest and a fez: not all that bright, a good target for mockery, and occasionally a hazard to passers-by. (Monkeys bite, you know, and they throw their own poop at people.)

Well, it was inevitable -- once you have a sufficient number of unemployed people, a class of "activists" will rise up and make a living exploiting advocating for this newly-minted victim-group.

If you want to feel better about our own economic plight, just look at the Eurozone. However bad our problems are, they're in more dire straits than we are (and have an even worse political class, if that's even possible).

Veronique de Rugy perform s a public service and presents a Venn diagram comparing Social Security to a classic Ponzi scheme. Veronique says: "You're welcome."

Obama and his "pivot to jobs": his leftist ideology trumps everything else. His record so far is crystal-clear on this. He is neither a leader nor a technocrat in the usual sense, but a Simon-pure ideologue who will not let the mundane fact of failure prevent him from chasing his leftist dreams. He doesn't consider the various failures of his Administration his failures, but rather the ineptitude of his staff or the intransigent blindness of the American people. In his mind, he is Moses, and he will lead us to the Promised Land -- whether we want to go there or not.

Who else is boned, you ask? Why, Australia! Australia is boned! Crikey!

You know how I'm always going on about how badly-served the world has been by the so-called "economic experts"? About my confusion as to why we're still listening to these idiots? Well, I'm not the only one.

Macroeconomic models have not fared well in recent years – the models didn’t predict the financial crisis and gave little guidance to policymakers, and I was anxious to hear the laureates discuss what macroeconomists need to do to fix them. So I found the lack of consensus on what caused the crisis distressing. If the very best economists in the profession cannot come to anything close to agreement about why the crisis happened almost four years after the recession began, how can we possibly address the problems?

Europe continues to torture Greece. It takes a lot to make me feel sorry for the Greeks, who basically lied, cheated, and connived their way into the Eurozone and then spent like drunken sailors once they were in. But I do feel sorry for them -- they are being denied the expedient of default not for their own sake, but so German and French banks won't collapse. Greece will default at some point or another. It's just pointless cruelty to keep drawing it out like this.

As if Eric Holder's DoJ doesn't have enough on its hands what with running guns to narco-cartels in Mexico and raiding American guitar-builders, they're also finding time to pressure lenders to loan more money to minorities. What's the worst that could happen?

WWPKD?

How a beloved children's story illustrates the concept that there's a sucker born every minute.

Annals of the boned: in California, cutting benefit payouts to new employees isn't going to solve the problem. The only way to start leveling the mountain is to cut the pensions of current retirees. This will end up in a huge court fight if someone tries it, of course, and being California, the pensioners will "win". But if the money can't be paid out, it won't be, no matter what the courts say.

[PERSONAL NOTE: Spare a thought (or a prayer, if you're inclined that way) for frequent commenter Vic, who will be in the hospital for awhile.]

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Come any closer and Ima cut you.

posted by Monty at 08:54 AM

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