13
Feb
2015
Potpourri
==> Mark Spitznagel doesn’t believe in “black swans” when it comes to market crashes.
==> Christopher Goins in the American Spectator talks to Mark Thornton about the Fed.
==> Remember that lady who lost her job when she tweeted about AIDS and Africa? Turns out she was being ironic. (At the time I thought it was absurd for her career to be ruined over a dumb joke, but she was being ironic with the joke, something I hadn’t realized.)
==> Nick Rowe (here and here) continues trying to illustrate the debt burden thing. In the comments, Kevin Donoghue illustrates that it is impossible to guide those who do not realize they are blind.
I don’t quite get why Mark thinks Q should be constant in the long run? Or, he seems to imply that at any rate.
Funny how the same ideas go round and round.
http://youtu.be/CRRWaEPRlb4
Yanis Varoufakis proposes a confederate structure for Europe, only he doesn’t call it that.
The comments in American Spectator were pretty accurate but, at the risk of being repetitive, it’s a bit much reading that a federally regulated, nongovernment organization with monopoly powers should be able to dictate the terms of its existence to the government.
I question the validity of the simple instructions that the fed does have: maximize employment and keep prices stable. Why shouldn’t that be the direct responsibility of elected officials? What kind of magic pixie dust is available to the Fed that let’s them do that? Since when should the Fed have the power to offset government fiscal policy with “monetary policy?”
Thanks for posting these, Bob. I especially enjoyed the Spitznagel piece.