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Post 20

Friday, July 4, 2014 - 12:59pmSanction this postReply
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Vera:

 

Our inflation can't erupt as wage inflation because of our record low utilization (high unemployment/high under-employment).  With wages suppressed by low utilization, it is difficult for price inflation to widely erupt.

 

Where our inflation is showing up is in grossly inflated stock prices.   It's all backwards, not tied to increased circulation of value.   Companies are 'valued' in units of $... for sitting on $.   Because there is no actual circulation of actual -value- involved.

 

Value proxies are not value; only in thriving economies with real circulation of value is there a proximate equivalence.   We don't have that in America these days.   We are flooded with value-proxies.  Massively flooded.   But they are static.

 

Here is an analogy:   imagine a loop of pipes.    On the left side are pumping stations in parallel.  These are value producing jobs.   Pumps are built at risk, but when built, they provide an opportunity for people to pull at pump handles and create high pressure water.     High pressure water is bled off at the exit of the pumps as taxes, but what is left can be used to fill overhead savings and credit tanks(repay past debt) or spend immediately.

 

Where is high pressure water in the loop spent?  At turbine stations on the right.   This is where high pressure water is exchanged for value.   Where does the value come from?   The turbines are actually connected to the pumps-- people create value, not high pressure water; the high pressure water is a value proxy(a modern economic convenience so that we don't have to carry our pump stations around and bolt them directly to other people's turbine stations.  That would be painful(and pure barter.)  A turbine is just a pump from the other direction; we must put value in at a pump... we extract value out at a turbine.   The intermediate medium is fungible value-proxy... high pressure water after tax bypass directly (current spending) or spending from our overhead savings or credit tanks.    Our overhead savings tank represents past pulls on the pump handle(deferred spending) and our overhead credit tanks represent future pulls on the pump handle(accelerated spending).    All private and government spending converges on the banks of turbines where value is extracted from value-proxy water.

 

The pump stations are our 'jobs.'   The turbine stations are 'businesses/vendors'.  They are mirror images of the same places, all built at risk by someone.

 

At the exit of the pump stations is a tax bypass; this goes to government.   At the exit of the turbine stations is another tax bypass; this is business tax, and it also goes to government.   What makes it past the turbine bypass is available to pay wages to ROI guarnateed wage earners (feeding the pumps on the left).   Some of the pumps on the left are the pumps being pulled by business owners whose ROI is not guaranteed.  They must pay their workers first.   To make payroll, they must either spend from their stream of net water after the turbine bypass, or from their personal credit tanks, or from water borrowed from a paralled system based on equity at risk.   If they manage that risk well, they earn net spendable water both for themselves and their equity at risk partners.  If not, they go out of business.

 

 

Money is not value; value is what is created at the pump/turbine stations.

 

Money is water in the pipes, not the effort put in at the pump stations nor taken out at the turbine stations.

 

You can see in this model that what drive circulation of -value- is, people pulling at pump handles.   Part of the output is bypassed to government(who spends it all at the turbine stations) and part of the turbine outlet is also bypassed to government(who spends all that at the turbine stations, too) and all of it is driven by the willingess of human beings to pull at pump stations, trusting that others arent gaming the system with fake water and or leaky pipes.

 

 

So what is the FED/central bank?   Not our FED, but a functioning central bank.    A legitimate central bank is like a boiler feedwater valve.   It lets 'new' water into the pipes when needed to enhance circulation of value.    It does so by way of the many credit tanks overhead.   It accepts promises to pull on the punps in the future, and hands out spendable water in the overhead credit tanks.    Folks repay the economic system by .. pulling on pump handles in the future and diverting part of the flow of water past their pump stations back into their finite overhead credit tanks.

 

A legitimate central bank does not directly participate in the circulation; it merely applies the top level discipline to make sure that credit is credit and debt is debt-- that promises to puill on the pump handles in the future are real promises.   Unlike the government gaming that has gone on for now a hundred years with our FED.   This used to be minor 'leakage' in the pipes.   Today, the giant sucking sound from government is doing all it can to game the water system.   The miracle is how much abuse the system has absorbed without collapsing.

 

Government also has an overhead credit tank.   It is today endlessly big.  As big as they want to make it.   Government is not bound by the value-value transactions at the pump/turbine stations.   They can literally manufacture water, put it into their credit tank, and spend it at the turbine stations.   But you can see in this model, the value consumed is not balanced by value created at the pump stations -- but the total value consumed is limited by the total value created at the pump stations.   So this extra money 'sloshes' through the turbines, running only downhill.    It runs downhill easily.  Government vastly overpays for the same value-- there were no additional pulls on any pump handles , now or in the future, associated with this funny water, endemically raising prices at the turbine stations, which results in a tax on those pulling on the pump handles, who over time, complain about 'working harder and realizing less... but not knowing why.'    This doesn't result in higher wages at the pump stations, only higher prices at the turbine stations over time, because there are two classes of buyers; government buyers and those who pull on pump handles to create value, both competing for the same pool of value.   This is an endemic  hidden tax.   From the time of JFK's America,  endemic government caused inflation is at 0.49/0.06 = about a factor of 8.17

 

In economies with an abundance of pump pullers and not enough pump stations(jobs),  the rates at the pump stations are suppressed.   They are like leaky pumps.    When you pull on them, you don't get as much high pressure water in return as you once did in vibrant economies with a demand for pump pullers.   

 

In economies with increasingly demandful tax bypasses on the outlet of both the pumps and turbine banks, there are not quite as many taking risk and building new pump and turbine stations.  According to a Paul Krugman, the solution to this is to make the tax bypass valves open up even more.

 

Government has a theory that if it carts tankcars full of water and just lets it all run downhill, this will 'prime the pumps' and circulation will start again.  The trouble is none of these folks with this model have ever primed a pump; priming a pump is not sufficient, it is also necessary to pump the pump.  Their model of the economies is that of a series of siphons, not pumps.   But siphons only run downhill; they don't circulate water.

 

Water runs downhill; it requires effort to create value.   It requires a willingness to pull on pump handles(with either ROI at risk or ROI guaranteed as discounted wages.)   To have pump and turbine stations requires a willingness to take on risk.   And when risk takers look at the system of pipes and bypasses and specially funded overhead credit tanks, and realize that proximity to the waterfall of easy water is preferable to actually taking on risk and building pump and turbine stations and creating actual value, then that is where human beings are going to congregate and wait... wait for the next tankcar full of valueless water, far from the pump stations, but spendable at the turbine stations.

 

In the old days, the water in the pipes was 'nearly incompressible.'   This meant that 'water' was an effective value proxy.   But you can see the element of 'time' in the value of 'water' when government is introudcing an equivalent stream of meaningless 'water' into the system.   Water is no longer water.

 

The parallel equities at risk loop, otoh, is by design a 'compressible value proxy' marketplace.   It is where folks can exchange 'nearly incompressible' water for 'compressible equity.'   The incompressible water stays in the original loop; it is an exchange between folks.    The 'value' of the compressible equity value proxy is designed to go up or down, based on the 'value' of the pump/turbine station building entities in the primary loop.   All those entities 'at risk' will sometimes lose value and sometimes gain value.  

 

So now comes all this funny government water just poured into the system, not backed by any circulation demand, and what happens?   The water 'pools' in some entities close to the waterfall of falling water, and they are 'valued' in units of valueless water... 0 = 0.   Without circulation of actual value (jobs) this is just 0 = 0.

 

Try and spend it.  Sure, on what?  In what rigged game?   Few want to prepay their own ransom.

 

This model, I think, explains why the last half decade of federal 'stimulus' has been a massive going nowhere fail.

 

regards,

Fred 



Post 21

Friday, July 4, 2014 - 2:25pmSanction this postReply
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Steve,

fully agreed on the micro-management – an error compounded by those in power who believe they are actually suited to direct on any and all such issues. I’ve noticed that here in Germany, too: the number of ministers that have had three or four different resorts is astounding. Our current minister of defence was the former minister for family affairs! One might argue that it’s the same Sandkasten in another Kindergarden, but so easily interchangeable?

At least from a personal point of view it would be refreshing if parties and their politicians would again show a little profile – even if I wouldn’t agree with lots of it, at least it would show some personality and not an empty suit that can be filled by any ‘fill-in-the-blank’.

 

Fred,

to use your analogy of turbines and pumps: if the FED were the boiler it would never be able to let out more water at the pumps than the turbines can push through – pressure would fall and the pumps would stop pumping water, or pressure would rise and explode the boiler. You can’t spend more than you produce and producing more than you can spend invalidates your production. Of course these days that’s exactly what you can, and according to our ‘new business gurus’ should, do: spend more than you have in order to produce more - produce more than can be consumed and force the market to pay for it anyway. Only politicians would think such a model a valid procedure to govern any form of economy.

As for the inevitable collapse: those turbines, pumps and boilers are gasping on their last breath – but you’re right: it’s amazing what kind of reserves have been wasted and how many producers still manage to keep it going. How come nobody understands that 0=0 and so many creators keep prepping this nonsensical system?? Time for a strike ;)



Post 22

Saturday, July 5, 2014 - 5:17amSanction this postReply
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Vera:

 

Yes-- the difference between a properly functioning boiler feedwater valve and a leaky one is akin to the difference between a properly functioning central bank and a leaky one.   The feedwater valve lets extra water into the circulating system(and/or a checkvalve lets it out).

 

And in the case of our masters of the economic universe, they think it is the -water- that provides the energy to drive the system.   The water is just a medium.   It is a required medium in non-barter economies, but it is not the energy -- the value and the energy/drive to create and exchange that value -- that drives the system.       It is like we have economic tinkerers crawling over a stalled system, flooding it with water, not realizing that there is a source of heat and energy elsewhere in the system that actually drives the system.   They observe, 'when the system is healthy and functioning, water flows through the system, therefore, if we just pour water into the system, it will drive itself again.'

 

They literally use analogies like 'prime the pump' when they talk about their economic policy, and yet their policies are actually 'priming a siphon.'   Their 'priming' can only help water run downhill.

 

 

It takes energy -- the human exertion of effort, including the intelligent management of risk -- to create and circulate value; to create jobs, and income, and wealth, and profits, and prosperity.  And that human energy is naturally best fostered in the face of -gradient-.    A postive, or at least neutral, source of gradient is dirt simple 2D surface growth(now reaching its end.)   A negative source of gradient is war and natural disaster.   A lack of all gradient is ... stasis.  Death.   Humans need to want to climb hills in order to exert the energy needed to drive vibrant economies.  As well, the universe and its laws have rigged things so that standing still is losing ground.

 

Prosperity cannot be achieved nor maintained by printing zeros on bonds.   And, that is the sum and substance of our national economic policy-- coupled with fire extinguishing 'redistributive' theories, such as, bypassing the outlets of the most efficient pumps and routing their outlet to the outlet of less efficient pumps, which serves to encourage humans not to pull harder, but to wait for someone to show up with subsidy.   And that analogy isn't about legitimate Hayek safety net welfare, but the unsightly massive subsidies that fortune 500 firms seek in the halls of Congress, like IBM, GM and GE.  A giant national incentive killing 'free-for-some' fostered by the select  pervasive inbred fraternal relationships between Prospect Street(the dining club street at Princeton, a metaphor), K-Street(in DC), and Wall Street.

 

Where do the 'prime the pump' economic theories come from?   From politicos who can't balance their own checkbook, with deep experience in playing HS football while pursuing English degrees on their way to their carcass carving banker careers(Paulson), or from some other twit with deep background in Asian Studies(Geithner)...or from other hacks desperate to justify a national policy of printing free money and handing it out to their crony fraternity brothers; it is no deeper than carcass carvers desperate to carve carcass, period, and those close to the printing presses seeing an opportunity to glom onto a tsunami of easy water running only downhill draining the last embers of value out of a dead system.

 

regards,

Fred



Post 23

Saturday, July 5, 2014 - 7:42amSanction this postReply
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Vera:

 

I think my analogy might have lost something in translation; no boiler.  The source of value is human effort at the pump stations.  That is the impetus that drives circulation and enables spending-- both literally(you need to create value in order to consume value)and on a rational accounting basis(you need to earn to spend.)   Focusing on spending only is like focusing on consuming only...a downhill only focus.

 

In addition to the closed loop (current income/current spending) there are overhead storage tanks: savings and credit.  "Water" that is currently in a storage tank is not flowing through pumps or turbines.

 

Start at the pump:   we create/exert effort/pull at the pump handle doing our job. Yes, we do that because we want to consume, but more importantly, we have to do that if we want to consume.

 

If we are wage workers and are lucky enough to land a job, we get a guaranteed(by others)rate of return of spendable water out of the pump for every pull of the pump handle.   If we are ROI at risk(the self employed or business owners)we only get net return after meeting payroll and paying costs and realizing reward for having built pump and turbine stations.   When we win at that, we get reward and there are pump and turbine stations.  When we lose at that, we lay folks off and get rid of pump and turbine stations.   But it is not 'water' that builds pump and turbine stations; it is human effort and creativity-- value.

 

At the exit of our pumps is our flow of water.  Some of it is immediately bypassed as taxes.   What is left, we can do five things with:

.

1] Spend it immediately.  This is flow to the turbine stations.

2] Pump it into our savings tank.  This is deferred spending.

3] Pump it into our credit tank.  This is repayment of past accelerated spending.

4] Exchange it with a third party, putting it into their savings tank, in exchange for compressible equity/risk/reward.  

5] Simply give it to someone else, place it in their savings tank.

 

When we spend at the turbines, we can spend from 1], 2], or 3]

 

So water can be flowing, or water can be static, but keep your eye on the -value- not the water.   Value is what we create at the pump stations.   Value is what we extract at the turbine stations.   Water is the medium we use so that we don't need to carry around our value producing pump stations and bolt them up with others value delivering turbine stations.

 

THere is a tax bypass manifold at the exit of all the pump stations, as well as a tax bypass manifold at the exit of all the turbines.   What flow makes it past the tax bypass at the exit of the turbines is freshly available to recyle at the inlet of the pump stations -- to buy value creation.    This is flow at risk, because the tax bypass is not the only drain.  Businesses also need to divert flow to other turbines in order to provide value.   What is left after all that, if anything, then gets taxed, and then, if there is any net, is available to do the following:

 

1] Continue to purchase value at the pump stations; pay for labor.

2] Realize a return on effort for having pulled on a pump handle as a business owner.  Put some of the net flow into the business owners overhead savings tank or credit tank.

 

 

But notice, at least in this model:

 

1] there is no circulation unless someone is pulling at pump handles.

2] there are no pump stations unless someone builds pump stations at risk

3] there are no pump station at risk unless someone runs uphill and takes on risk.

4] folks do not run uphill and take on risk unless there is a fair shot at success and reward.

5] policies that inhibit taking on risk -- such as, implementing a national policy of 'free for some based on access to the tax bypass' -- kill the engines that ultimately drive the entire system-- including what value is available to those forever opening up the tax bypass valves.    The picture you should have, if standing at a pump, or thinking of building a punp station at risk, is the gorwing burden of a system at the end of those now multiple tax bypasses and leaky governent pipes.

 

 

The FED is not the boiler(as in source of energy to drive the system); the FED is the (boiler) feedwater valve.  It just lets water into or out of the system.   The boiler/source of energy in this model are human beings pulling at pump handles, either at risk or ROI guaranteed by those taking risk, at pump stations built at risk, as wages.

 

Our FED is a leaky valve, and it has been bypassed directly into the governments current spending pipe(because the government ahs no concept of a savings tank except for a few local school district capital accounts.  Government spends every bit of water it gets its hands on from whatever source, without the limitation of value creation, other than on those who it taxes, one way or the other.)

 

So no real 'boiler' in this model; my use of the phrase 'boiler feedwater valve' was unfortunate.  I should have just said 'feedwater valve.'     Homes with circulating system radiators have these feedwater valves, as well as check valves.  They let water into/out of the system as needed to maintain circulation, but the source of the value is elsewhere-- in the oil furnace, for example.

 

regards,

Fred



Post 24

Saturday, July 5, 2014 - 9:30amSanction this postReply
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Fred,

I have to admit I got lost half way through the technical details of your system, so it's quite likely I missed some points in translation ... however what stuck with me is that the state is trying to sit in the middle (like the boiler) trying to create pressure both ways: more water from the turbines and more handlers at the pumps, thinking if they just keep pushing both, water will flow ... however it's just overheating the system blowing it apart - either by too much water from the turbines or by too many handle pushers at the pumps sucking it dry - and the boiler in the middle trying desperately to keep up with both ends with no clue what's really going on. But as long as it keeps puffing there's progress - right :D

The other points of where exactly the money ends up or who is entitled to spend it are side-effects - the main issue being that politicians believe they can control production of values and consumption of values independently and freely however their whims blow. Guess what: only creators and consumers can do that :P Never thought I'd see such nonsense in my lifetime ... but here it is. Could have stayed in Romania for that ... at least they were up front about it, not cloaking it in barely understandable pseudo-economic fake-science, arguing I'm too stupid to understand it as it's 'high finance'.

 

PS: the lowering of the interest rate by the EZB to heighten inflation to encourage spending did squat for the proposed goal - on the contrary: consumers and companies got so disconcerted by this move they hid their money away because they were afraid what this stupid state would do next with it ... you can't scare someone into being productive - to spend money they don't want to spend ... but I'm sure it's just my inferior economic understanding (along with that of those chickens who did not go along with the plan) that ruined such a well-intentioned measure that would have benefited the whole of the EU ;)



Post 25

Sunday, July 6, 2014 - 8:20amSanction this postReply
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Vera:

 

PS: the lowering of the interest rate by the EZB to heighten inflation to encourage spending did squat for the proposed goal - on the contrary: consumers and companies got so disconcerted by this move they hid their money away because they were afraid what this stupid state would do next with it ... you can't scare someone into being productive - to spend money they don't want to spend ... but I'm sure it's just my inferior economic understanding (along with that of those chickens who did not go along with the plan) that ruined such a well-intentioned measure that would have benefited the whole of the EU ;)

 

"You're inferior economic understanding?"  Ha!   Your analysis above is hardly inferior.  You've correctly identified exactly the problem.   It is loss of faith in the economic game.

 

The condition you are describing is a characteristic of what the Masters of the Economic Universe call a 'liquidity trap.'    It is a condition when something they like to refer to as 'the economy' fails to respond to the carrot of low interest rates in their remote stick-and-carrot prodding of those who take risk and make things and fight and die in wars.   Political charlatans like Paul Krugman go to great self-serving lengths to explain why their magic isn't working.   They create their own models to explain their failure-- models that even Krugman must refer to as 'Topsey-Turvey Economics' because they imply the absurdity of aggregate/on the whole demand and supply curves which both statically respond to price increases with an increases in quantity demanded.  (This means, that on a static basis -- without the influence of dynamic effects such as tax increases or increases in interest rates or inflation, the static shape of the curves themselves have the same sign slope.)

 

What does that -mean-?

 

The most fundamental analytical concept of economics are 'supply and demand curves.'  They generalize the common sense of the following suppositions.   Individually, in general, we tend to buy less of something as consumers at a higher price in the market as it is, and as suppliers, in general, we are willing to provide more of something at a higher price in the market as it is.

 

There are certain fringe commodities, over a narrow range of prices, where this is not the case:  'the Cadillac effect' or toilet paper made out of $100 bills, or toilet seats made out of Gold, where local demand is based purely on the price paid for the commodity as a kind of value, the value being, a head up the ass ostentatious demonstration of consumption, but Krugman's Nov 2011 model claimed that behaviour for -aggregate- demand.    He did so by hand-wavingly mixing dynamic analysis (a shift in the curves up or down because of dynamic events, like tax increases or response to inflation) with static analysis(the basic shape of the curves themselves, statically.)  

 

His conclusions are 100% dependent on the slope of those curves having the same sign (similar response, up-up or down-down) by both aggregate/(the sum of all in 'the economy') suppliers and aggregate consumers to price in the market as it is (statically.)  

 

Please note:  this is -not- the same thing as consumer behaviour in the face of fear of future price increases/inflation.   That is dynamic analysis -- a spiraling out of control shift in the curves, not the shape of the curves.  His claim his Nov 2011 paper is that the static sense of the curves is the same in response to market price as it is.  (Maybe different magnitude of slopes, but still, the same sign slopesl they both either go 'up up' or 'down down' in respone to prices going up or down, not "up-down" and "down-up" like normal supply and demand curves.)

 

As a politico, he says all that with an almost straight face(the figure in his Nov 2011 paper is labeled "Topsey Turvey Economics")because he knows, as a politico, that 99+% of the world is not going to read his paper or understand what he did or even, notice that the slopes of those curves in his analysis both have the same sign slope.  He is politically safe in abusing both economics and math to make a political point because politically, nobody understand what the Hell he just did.   And, the look om his face when he was cruising the hustings beating people over the head with his nonsense said it all; he knew it was a sham, but in his mind it is politics uber alles.

 

So why did he go to all that trouble?

 

For exactly the reason you point out; the -real- cause of the failure of 'the economy' (sorry, pet peave of mine:  it's 'the economies' not 'the economy') to respond to interest rates is a collapse of faith in the economic system, precisely because of the remote fatfingering and carrot-and-stick gyrations of the Masters of the Economic Universe, like Paul Krugman whispering his politico sweet nothings into the ears of the monopolists with guns.

 

And so, his abuse of mathematics political pony show is self serving deflection from the fact that he and his are the perps.  The crisis of 2008 was that of our Masters of the Economic Unverse clinging to their gig.  And so they successfully muddied the water: "Er...capitalism did it!  It wasn't our remote fatfingering of the economy!   What we need to save us from capitalism is -more- fatfingering of the economy!"

 

Do you know what the essence of Paul Krugman's Nobel Prize was awarded for?   He made the following brilliant observation in a paper:  "More than one nation can manufacture automobiles."

 

Did you also know that after totally duffing the Rwanda fiasco(Kofi was the UN head of Peacekeeping Forces at the UN), Kofi Annan was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?

 

And, what did Obama win the Nobel Peace Prize for in 2008?  Showing up?

 

Doesn't it make you wonder-- what is the -purpose- of this global political charade?

 

regards,

Fred



Post 26

Sunday, July 6, 2014 - 8:33amSanction this postReply
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Vera:

 

Here is link to 5 min presentation that shows pump/turbine model of economies.   Picture might be better.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KlNcf0xm3w

 

Not shown is where the FED fits in.   It is would be a leaky feedwater valve letting 'new' water into the system via the credit tanks, and these days, mostly the government credit tanks.

 



Post 27

Sunday, July 6, 2014 - 9:35amSanction this postReply
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"More than one nation can manufacture automobiles."

seriously??

"More than one politician can manufacture 'fertilizer'."   where's my Nobel prize :P

 

"United we Stand" you forgot the other half "Together we Fall" ;)

 

Thanx for the link - pictures help :)

I'll go buy more gold coins - or that little piece of island in the Acores while my 'value-proxy' is still worth sth ;)



Post 28

Monday, July 7, 2014 - 6:31amSanction this postReply
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Vera:

 

What's the solution? More demos or more sense (according to whom)? The latter making it elitist again since sense seems to be a dying attribute ...

 

In the face of that, I'd say the solution is for an all powerful, massive ship of state to attempt do less;  better to be wrong about doing a little than wrong about doing a lot.

 

The Ivy League weasels in the Georgetown Bistros can make their little deals over the painting of the double yellow lines down the middle of the road.   OK, just a little unrealistic.  And by little I mean alot.   But JFK's $100B, population and inflation adjusted to maybe $1450B today, isn't enough deal making?  We got to let the weasels run the game all the way up to $4000B/yr?

 

 

Over half of JFK's budget was for defense.   Well no kidding, that is the primary function of an outward looking federal/national government, and historically was always the case until FDR and LBJ and Nixon and Reagan and Clinton(tried) and Bush and Obama suddenly turned inward over the course of the last downwardly spiralling 50 years of federal failure; we already have multiple overlapping layers of internal, inwardly looking layers of government.   State, county, municipal-- all three overlap.   The dirt inside the nation is well covered.  What is going on in DC, did our elites forget the mission? 

 

 

Tell us what you can about Agenda 2010 in Germany; it is a well kept secret in the US.   Merkel doubled down on it.  There had to be a reason for that.  Germany has largely maintained it manufacturing base throuhgout all that 'austerity.'    (I think part of this goes back to your 'confidence in the economic game' observation.)

 

Estonia and even Sweden have moved in that direction;  another secret here.

 

"Austerity" in the US these days is when Congress merely talks about trimming $40B over ten years while spending $4000B/yr.

 

regards,

Fred



Post 29

Monday, July 7, 2014 - 7:01amSanction this postReply
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My explanation for 'federal stimulus' 

 



Post 30

Monday, July 7, 2014 - 9:32amSanction this postReply
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Sorry Fred - I have very little idea what Agenda 2010 or even the new Agenda 2020 are all about ... on the surface they make all this noise about full employment, growing economy, lowering debt, environmental protection ... everyone and everything will be better off and the state is gonna pay for it ... the only real result I could see is that German economy and employment is currently indeed prospering, which may or may not have many factors, some positive, some negative ... let me pick only two examples:

 

Germany is in the enviable position to stop making more debts - has been for about 5 years actually, but you cannot have a growing economy and leave the poor unfortunates behind - so that promise of 0,- debt has been postponed for a few years to drag along HartzIV, and the next 'solid, promised, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-cry' date will be 2015 ... however initial reviews of the 2015 budget show a lot of discrepancies: EU payments not counted, Euro bonds on the horizon, employment rates skewed, pension age lowered in spite of overaging, export overblown to difficult markets, social programs on the horizon (our infamous Ms. Nahles and her pension and minimum wage plans), but not budgeted for yet ... so we are actually in a position to rejoice compared to many other nations (inside and outside of EU), however we are also missing out on a lot of chances to use this short time of prosperity to make real changes ... we just keep milking the system while the milking is good

 

The second example is environment: after the Fukushima scare our Mama Merkel shooed all her chicks under her wing, protecting them from bad nuclear reactors by shutting them all down, ramping up huge offshore windpark programs, promising electricity prices will not rise ... the nuclear reactors have been replaced by gas and coal reactors (some of the oldest brown coal reactors were reactivated!), the windparks are consuming diesel to keep them standing still, as there are no landlines to transport electricity to the south were it's actually needed - we even pay our neighboring states to take the electricity off our hands so the network does not blow up ... and her new second in command Mr. Super-Gabriel is already crunching the numbers how to sell it to the consumer, that a light-bulb will not keep burning at the same price - sorry folks.

 

Both examples show the same thing: it's not the Agenda 2010 or the Agenda 2020 that made Germany successful (that success only happened during that time period), it is the government who is incompetent in handling such successes, wasting the resources they could invest in much better projects, making positive changes for a better economy, a better world - but as always that depends on the eye of the beholder.

 

As already stated on many other posts, I'm not a very political person, as I think politics per se is 'not-worth-being-mentioned' and economy should in my opinion be simple enough that a producer, a creator, can understand where his production ends up. Both are not the case - both are hiding behind high-flying nonsense and I've given up understanding the contradictions in the next big program of the century. So no further details available from me ... however if you check Wiki or Reuters for Agenda 2010 and Agenda 2020 you'll find much more detailed information in English on those topics - again: some true, some 'not-so-true' ... and if your German is good enough try reading www.Handelsblatt.com - most of their articles are not too far from the mainstream, but the comments and video-analysis (Handelsblatt in 99 Sekunden) usually put it in perspective very well - even for a disinterested person who does not have a university degree in politics or economics to understand what nonsense they're talking about.



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