Helicopter Ben has just become Rocket Ben, according to the latest M0 figure from the Fed’s published data. [St. Louis Fed]
Btw, Ron Paul. [CNN]
Archive for the ‘Paper Money’ Category
Houston, we have a (monetary) problem
Friday, October 24th, 2008Helicopter Ben makes good on his name: M0 going through the roof
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008From the Fed’s own published data: [St. Louis Fed]
The Monetary Base, or M0, is the amount of physical (or, practically physical, i.e., deposits sitting in the central bank) currency in existence.
“But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press…” – Ben Bernanke, the Helicopter Speech
Websterflation
Monday, October 13th, 2008Right after that Websters post we ran across a real live Mr. John Webster and his economics blog. [New Financial Wisdom]
He’s posted a video on YouTube about inflation. It’s actually out of a Duck Tales episode, from the good old days before Pokemon and all that other crap which followed. [YouTube]
Oh Noes the National Debt
Monday, October 13th, 2008Congress gets to raise the debt ceiling whenever it wants, but the famous National Debt Clock on the Times Square has only a finite number of digits. [CNN]
We’re too tired of this shit to talk about it so let me spam some links:
- This top Internet landmark, thanks to Ed Hall:
- http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
- Official daily figures from the Treasury:
- http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np
- Ross Perot loves teh charts:
- http://perotcharts.com/
Paulson and Bernanke’s Alma Mater Too Big To Fail
Friday, October 10th, 2008
Your editors had to brave the depths of the Mather House Mail Room to obtain this smoking gun evidence… that the global elite who engineered this crisis are getting away scot-free with all their savings and more.
Depression Hits! Singapore in flames, sinking into the ocean.
Monday, October 6th, 2008On Bloomberg.com, it says that the Straits Times futures are down 90%:
The only place in the world where you can get M3 numbers
Monday, October 6th, 2008Actually two. We’ll probably keep updating this post as we run across any websites that publish their own estimates of M3 (since the Feds don’t anymore):
You can find the official “statistics” (not including M3) here: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/
House votes on bailout bill
Friday, October 3rd, 2008We started watching at around 12:30 and missed the morning debate. If Ron Paul spoke, we sadly missed it. We’re watching on c-span.org—this time it’s working. They’ve started voting right now!
Pelosi didn’t give the mad hatter speech this time.
65-23!
77-30!
93-36!
…somebody did a real evil laugh on the floor. We’re not sure who.
111-43…
…that same evil laugh. Twice more. Now a female evil laugh.
7:30 remaining and the vote is 121-57.
160-83 with 4 mins to go… and our c-span feed just died. The tubes of the Internet are getting clogged with all that new monies.
We’re back, 188-104 with 2 mins to go.
196-116 with one minute remaining…
People are clapping, it passed. We’re all doomed now kthxbai.
P.S. Gavel came down, 263-171.
Bailout, plus foreign policy bits
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008- Barack Obama, John McCain, and Joe Biden, along with the rest of the Senate except Ted Kennedy, were in town for the bailout vote this evening. The text of the Senate resolution, which was approved 74-25, can be found here.
- We don’t feel expert enough to opine at great length about the bailout at this moment; what we will report is that the biggest portion of the student population here at Harvard College, including the editorial staff of the Crimson, seems to be in favor. We note that this is totally expected.
- Various events in international politics are surely slipping past many people’s radars due to the current financial crisis:
- The Senate decided to take care of some other random business before the bailout vote (because figured that Barack and John Sidney couldn’t hightail it out of there before they cast their yea for that?), like passing some motion for the railroad safety bill (more random tidbit: Joe Biden didn’t vote on that motion) that got a boost from the recent L.A. train wreck, and the U.S.-India nuclear deal, which was ratified 86-13.
- Potentially, India is our new China. (but who are the new Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai?) Depending on how the bilateral relationship pans out over the years, this could end up as the-one-universally praised-accomplishment-by-an-otherwise-terrible-president, i.e., exactly how Nixon is remembered with regards to his China policy.
- On the other hand, North Korea was in the news again—Christopher Hill (who is now more famous in Korea than Coca Cola) is in Pyongyang trying to save the disarmament deal after the North Koreans started rebuilding their nuclear facilities.
The ghost of Strom Thurmond returns from beyond, filibusters Senate bill on financial bailout.
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008…and this time he doesn’t have to go pee.
We are doomed
Monday, September 29th, 2008
Some ads which Google thought would be appropriate alongside our posts about the Paulson FAILOUT Plan:
- Global Poverty
- Sustainable Development
- Global Poverty Solution
- Global Poverty Act
- Global Development
Paulson Failout, Post-Mortem
Monday, September 29th, 2008Current Drudge headline: “DOWN IN FLAMES.”
The Democrat and Republican leaders are busy blaming each other for the failure, but looks like it was the voting public who killed it—most congressmen who face tough reelection fights voted against. [FiveThirtyEight] We’ll see if the Dow’s 777-point drop plus a second round of government/media propaganda changes that.
It’s time for our dose of escapist fantasy: US to buy back national debt. [BBC]