A Growing Concern
With the impending "fiscal cliff" upon us, there seems to be fresh worry and general gnashing of teeth over the economy again. At times like this, I think it is especially good to step back and look at the bigger picture. Keep in mind that artificial deadlines are just that, and long-term trends don't change overnight. The [...]
The debate is heating up over the transport of coal from mines in Wyoming and Colorado to west coast ports, where the coal will be shipped to Asian markets. Combining the vast appetite for coal in Asia with the vast stores of underground carbon in the US will accelerate the already rapid rise in atmospheric [...]
No, I didn't spell the title wrong - not Keynes. If you haven't heard of Steve Keen, that's not too much of a surprise because I hadn't either, although I regularly visit sites in the economics blogosphere. Steve has an important message, but it's unlikely you will hear much about it any time soon because it is just [...]
The nature of inequality is a topic that is getting a lot of attention these days. It's worth taking a careful look at how inequality arises in our economy. In fact, inequality is built into capitalism and it perpetuates itself, steadily increasing, even in the absence of greed. Inequality naturally arises whenever future wealth is contingent upon the wealth you [...]
Cover photo from the Economist about a year ago -- now all too true. As we watch the ongoing train wreck in the European Union, we can't help wondering where it will all end up. I search in vain on the internet for a discussion about the logical conclusion to this catastrophe, but few venture to put [...]
It is becoming clear that the Europeans will not get it together to save the Euro and avoid a major debt crisis. I guess we can hope that the next major crisis intervention meeting will produce results that prop things up for more than two days, but I'm not holding my breath. The European approach [...]
It's time for some perspective on all the talk about too much debt and the need to balance budgets that seems to have gripped our political discourse recently. Debt was not always the pariah that it has become, and for good reason. Most of us often need some way to time-shift our spending and earning, which is [...]
The politics of pain that is the fashion these days offers an unprecedented opportunity to advance a power-down agenda that will become a necessity in the years ahead. The defining characteristics of the Great Recession, and the Great Depression of the 1930's, are very high unemployment rates while interest rates remain very low. High unemployment [...]
It's not every day that someone is willing to stick their neck out and tell you exactly when all the malaise and despair of the modern era started, but that's pretty much what John Michael Greer did in a recent essay. The date he picked for America's pinnacle moment, 1974, coincides with the Arab oil embargo, oil price [...]
As the recovery - or lack thereof - continues, it is becoming more clear that there is an important shift in economic power away from Europe and America and toward the emerging Asian economies. There has always been concern that the Chinese sleeping giant would awake and overtake us, but I doubt that anyone anticipated the entire [...]
Squash Practice 