DOOM: If heartaches were nickels, I'd be the richest fool alive

Any time you read a story in the leftist press about the greedy, money-grubbing leeches of Wall Street, remember this piece. Wall Street is full of people with ethics, morals, and courage, and that was on full display in the days and weeks after 9/11/2001.

“Pass this bill!” Except there is no bill so far. Just a huge revolving gas-cloud of unfounded assertions, strawman arguments, magical thinking, nonsense, and political expediency. Obama should have just stayed on vacation.

The Greek endgame is very close now. The markets are going to open ugly this morning, and it's mostly because of the looming Greek default. I expect some dramatic developments this week.

Here's the real question confronting the Eurozone right now: Will Greece leave the union...or will Germany?

Santelli schools Tom Friedman. Sweet as candy.

How do we save the US economy? By implementing a consumption tax, silly! (Editorial comment: I hate an actual VAT, but I do think some sort of consumption-based tax is inevitable, given our slowing economic growth. Income taxes really only work when the GDP is growing quickly. And if we do go down the consumption-tax road, I want it in place of the current income-tax regime, not in addition to it.)

Why the “stimulus” failed. It failed because it was badly designed and badly implemented, and performed more as a service to Democratic constituents than for alleviation of overall hardship. It was a tool to expand the reach of government, little more.

Note to Democrats: employment is a side-effect of business growth. If you want to increase employment, you have to make it easier for businesses to operate and grow.

Perry is right about SS being a Ponzi scheme. People who argue in favor of SS aren’t arguing against Perry; they’re arguing against math. Money that can’t be paid out, won’t be. Period.

Yet even more “green” FAIL: Solyndra raided by the FBI. That’s what you turds get for embarassing His Majesty!

Union thuggery at its finest. But make nice with His Majesty and all is forgiven! Laws are for the peasants and tradesmen; His Majesty's minions may act as they please, for it pleases His Majesty to allow them to do so.

Teh Bernank speaks. The business world rolls their eyes and wonders when this boring doofus is going to leave.

Speaking of doofuses: I include this story only because you don’t often read the word “doofuses” in the financial press. Also: such language for a lady!

How do you convince business to begin investing again? Stop treating them like criminals. Stop using class-war rhetoric. Reduce taxes. It's not difficult, really. But President Obama will do none of these things. Why? Because it's not so much that he can't hide his anti-business agenda so much as he doesn't want to. Businesses are only important to him to the extent that they help him politically (Solyndra), and they cease to matter when they become an embarassment (Solyndra again) or a hindrance to his ideological goals (Gibson Guitar).

I am a musician of sorts and a guitar geek, and it’s not often that my musical passions intersect with my interest in economics and politics. Judging by the reaction to the raid on Gibson Guitar I’ve seen on the various guitar boards and forums, there is a heavy "Tea Party" vibe to the outrage. Few musicians lean conservative, but many are libertarian, and this event seems to have galvanized lots of them.

Older workers are displacing younger workers. I saw this coming -- the pressure on Boomers to work longer to prop up their retirement savings is preventing employment "churn" that opens doors for new workers coming in at the bottom. When a senior worker retires, it tends to have a ripple effect as other workers are promoted and move up: it opens positions at the bottom for new workers. But since the older workers are deferring retirement, those slots aren't opening up. And since older workers often make multiples of what a younger worker does (both in salary and benefits), corporations don't have a strong motivator to expand, lacking any genuine growth opportunities in their respective sectors.

So here's the irony: not only are young people being asked to fund a welfare state mainly directed at older people, they are also being prevented from entering the workforce by those very same elders!

UPDATE 1: Greek 1-year debt? 108% percent, baby! That's how investors in my old neighborhood say, "Just default already, you broke-ass motherf***ers!"

UPDATE 2: Walter Russell Meade, "Europe slips as Greece falls".

Creating a monetary union without a true federal government is looking more and more like the biggest European policy mistake since Britain and France let Hitler have the Sudetenland.

UPDATE 3: From the sidebar, there was an explosion at a French nuclear plant. It looks to be an accident and not a terrorist attack at present.

UPDATE 4: The rise of "private cities". I see this trend accelerating as the world continues urbanizing, particularly in the developing world.

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posted by Monty at 08:44 AM

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