DOOM: Breaking up is hard to do

PSA: This is the last DOOM of the week. Have a happy Thanksgiving and try to forget about the DOOM while you're spending the holiday with friends and family. DOOM will resume as usual next Monday.

The SSDI disaster. Just another reason among the multitudes as to why Social Security as a program is doomed.

GDP revised down to 2%. The productivity falloff in the past decade has been one of the great under-appreciated trends in modern economics, I think.

The CME’s reputation has been tarnished by this MF Global business, but there is also a lot of investor confusion and misunderstandings about just how regulated (and risky) the futures market really is. When investing in futures (or really any derivative), follow the same basic advice as you would when gambling: don’t bet what you can’t afford to lose.

Mark Steyn on the failure of the Super Committee:

Those who can do. Those who can’t form a supercommittee. Those who can’t produce a majority vote in a supercommittee sequester. Those who can’t even sequester are telling the world something profound about American inertia.

Three scenarios where Uncle Sugar bails out the EU. No money? No problem! We’ll just print more!

And now for the next wheel falling off the Eurozone train...Belgium! (Who has been without a government for more than a year now, by the way.).

More terrifying chart-fu.

Back off, man, I’m a scientist. (Always go to the classics for tasty quotes, that's my opinion.)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel: “We must re-establish the primacy of politics over the market.” This in a nutshell is everything that is wrong with the sovereign governments of both Europe and the United States (and China, and Russia, and...well, you get my point). The “market” is not a thing to be managed, or a process to be controlled. The market is just an aspect of the natural world, working on the creatures who move through it. Merkel’s comment reflects the combination of arrogance and ignorance that is at the root of so many of our economic problems.

UPDATE 1: Chinese manufacturing at a 32-month low. The signs of a Chinese economic downturn are multiplying rapidly.

posted by Monty at 08:35 AM

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