Maybe This Guy Should Head the Treasury

Author predicts collapse of American and world economy due to debt and overspending...30 years ago! via Instapundit.com

What Holmes is Listening To

Miley.

While reading these stories:

White House puts on glamour for President of failed state.

While in economic news:

Dow crashes 376 points.

Jobless claims rise most in 3 months.

"And the Jay-Z song was on..."

On this St. Patrick's Day

Let us recall the "magical" underpinnings of the "Irish Miracle."

We Are Screwed (cont.)

Screwed.

via Instapundit.com

AP: Good News!

Things are not as bad as we expected them to be!

There is a lesson here for everyone(besides the open bias/cheerleading by the Associated Press) and that is: Pessimism will always mean you are pleasantly surprised.

Update: AP adds most ridiculous economic headline of the year: "Productivity gains may hurt job seekers." Productivity gains are the only thing that raises our standard of living in real terms.

Update II. AP: Actually it's still really bad and it's too difficult to hide now

A Contrast in Approaches

The AP on the economy today.

The economy sank at a pace of just 1 percent in the second quarter of the year, a new government report shows. It was a better-than-expected showing that provided the strongest signal yet that the longest recession since World War II is finally winding down.

VS.

Bloomberg

The first 12 months of the U.S. recession saw the economy shrink more than twice as much as previously estimated, reflecting even bigger declines in consumer spending and housing, revised figures showed.

It's Worse Than We Thought

Unemployment.

But of course the Obama administration will say that the numbers sans Recovery Act monies would have been X% worse than the current numbers. Of course, if the projections are always as accurate as this, I wonder how well they will do selling cars, running health care, running the financial industry, predicting global warming/cost of cap and trade, etc.?

Crisis of Confidence

It seems we are in the midst of a crisis of confidence on a number of fronts.
No one seems to trust the institution of marriage any more.
Or the economy.
Or trusts us to win the war on terror.
No one trusts the government.
And rather than building up confidence in our institutions and our way of life, our President runs around like Chicken Little.

What has happened to the world in the past several years that Iraq is now the lone bright spot?

Perhaps laughter is the best antidote we have to the glum news.

The f word

Fascism.

[D]uring the great economic crisis of the 1930s, fascism was widely regarded as a possible solution, indeed as the only acceptable solution to a spasm that had shaken the entire First World, and beyond. It was hailed as a “third way” between two failed systems (communism and capitalism), retaining the best of each. Private property was preserved, as the role of the state was expanded. This was necessary because the Great Depression was defined as a crisis “of the system,” not just a glitch “in the system.” And so Mussolini created the “Corporate State,” in which, in theory at least, the big national enterprises were entrusted to state ownership (or substantial state ownership) and of course state management. Some of the big “Corporations” lasted a very long time; indeed some have only very recently been privatized, and the state still holds important chunks–so-called “golden shares”–in some of them.

Obama and the infrastructure

Howard Husock urges the president to think big.

Financed by New York State, the Erie Canal, for instance, facilitated trade from the docks of Manhattan to the emerging West, in the process helping make New York the world’s financial capital. After the Civil War, land grants gave the Union and Central Pacific railroad companies an incentive to build and expand—knowing that their tracks were making the once-worthless adjoining land valuable to the homesteaders, builders, and ranchers who soon followed. The interstate highway system had a similar impact a century later—this time through direct federal financing—and sparked the suburban building boom. Even during the Great Depression, spending on big projects opened new economic frontiers. Thanks to Robert Moses, New York garnered the lion’s share of the New Deal’s Public Works Administration funding to help build the engineering miracle of its time: the Triborough Bridge, which put thousands to work and linked the Bronx and Queens to Manhattan, opening new neighborhoods for construction and improving the flow of goods.

Husock points out that state and local officials plan to spend their federal funds on small-ticket "shovel ready" projects such as upgrading sewage plants and fixing traffic lights while bigger projects languish in the planning process thanks to environmental activists, NIMBY-ists and assorted other roadblocks. He approvingly points to China.

Consider the Robert Moses-like vision motivating the soon-to-be-built Hong Kong-Zhuhai bridge, which will link Hong Kong’s Lantau Island (site of the city’s ultra-modern airport) with the Chinese mainland. The bridge will provide a direct highway link to exporters from as far away as Vietnam. Notably, though government will provide some support, the bridge will be a private, toll-financed project undertaken by the legendary Sir Gordon Wu, whose Hopewell Holdings has built such projects all over South China. By such efforts are economies energized.

Unless something drastically changes in the way we do business, I don't foresee this happening here. Also, do we really want to hold up China, land of the Three Gorges Dam as an ideal? Don't get me wrong--I love the infrastructure. I want more and bigger and better infrastructure. I just wonder if we can ever get past the paralysis. Even in our current economic climate.

Credit still available for certain worthy ventures

Like boob jobs.

We Are Screwed: Part I of a 1000 Part Series

I know the WSJ isn't known for its optimism, but this sounds both bad and spot on.

Via Instapundit.com

I always use my gift cards

Though I can't say the same about various gym memberships I've owned.

The financial-services research firm TowerGroup estimates that of the $80 billion spent on gift cards in 2006, roughly $8 billion will never be redeemed — “a bigger impact on consumers,” Tower notes, “than the combined total of both debit- and credit-card fraud.” A survey by Marketing Workshop Inc. found that only 30 percent of recipients use a gift card within a month of receiving it, while Consumer Reports estimates that 19 percent of the people who received a gift card in 2005 never used it.

Considering that two-thirds of all holiday shoppers in 2006 planned to give someone else a gift card, you most likely received one yourself in recent weeks. Perhaps you are among the exceptional minority, and you have already spent it, or soon will. But the odds say that it has instead wound up in your sock drawer.

This is a national scandal. One of the few joys of January is taking advantage of post-holiday sales with gift cards. I fondly remember one year when I raked in a complete set of dishes and a fur-trimmed coat for free. Other gift card bonanzas: A Cuisinart and an eleven-piece set of pots and pans.

Via Alex Tabarrok.