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Even the tepid post-2008 recovery has not been what it was cracked up to be, especially with respect to the Wall Street presumption that the American consumer would once again function as the engine of GDP growth. It goes without saying, in fact, that the precarious plight of the Main Street consumer has been obfuscated by the manner in which the state's unprecedented fiscal and monetary medic...Read More

David Stockman and the cult of gloom … We think of spring as a time of cherry blossoms and renewed hope, as we slough off the depths of winter and ease into the warmer months. These bright days seem a strange time to encounter the by-now widely circulated warnings of impending doom by Ronald Reagan's budget director, and current gadfly, David Stockman. In a long essay in the New York Tim...Read More

BRICS Regimes Forge New World Bank, Call for Global Currency … The governments and dictatorships ruling over the so-called BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — agreed to set up a new world bank that analysts say could further marginalize the increasingly unstable U.S. dollar, possibly helping to eventually dethrone it as the global reserve currency....Read More

Economic Crisis Hits the Netherlands … The Netherlands, Berlin's most important ally in pushing for greater budgetary discipline in Europe, has fallen into an economic crisis itself. The once exemplary economy is suffering from huge debts and a burst real estate bubble, which has stalled growth and endangered jobs. – Der SpiegelDominant Social Theme: Northern Europe is doing really...Read More

Britain's debt mountain reaches £1.39TRILLION, equivalent to 90% of the entire economy, ONS reveals … Gross debt at the end of 2012 stood at £1.387trillion, up 7% on 2011 Vast sum is equivalent to 90% of GDP – up from38% a decade ago Figures used to compare UK to the rest of Europe Mounting debts reveal the devastating impact of the 2007 crash … Britain's debt...Read More

Obama administration pushes banks to make home loans to people with weaker credit … The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place. President Obam...Read More

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein and Neil Irwin of WonkBlog discuss central banking policy after the financial crisis and the opposing views about its role in the state of the economy. – The Washington PostDominant Social Theme: Nothing is wrong with what we have now.Free-Market Analysis: We must make a confession: We didn't read David Stockman's article in the New York Times unt...Read More

Even the tepid post-2008 recovery has not been what it was cracked up to be, especially with respect to the Wall Street presumption that the American consumer would once again function as the engine of GDP growth. It goes without saying, in fact, that the precarious plight of the Main Street consumer has been obfuscated by the manner in which the state's unprecedented fiscal and monetary medic...Read More

David Stockman and the cult of gloom … We think of spring as a time of cherry blossoms and renewed hope, as we slough off the depths of winter and ease into the warmer months. These bright days seem a strange time to encounter the by-now widely circulated warnings of impending doom by Ronald Reagan's budget director, and current gadfly, David Stockman. In a long essay in the New York Tim...Read More

BRICS Regimes Forge New World Bank, Call for Global Currency … The governments and dictatorships ruling over the so-called BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — agreed to set up a new world bank that analysts say could further marginalize the increasingly unstable U.S. dollar, possibly helping to eventually dethrone it as the global reserve currency....Read More

Economic Crisis Hits the Netherlands … The Netherlands, Berlin's most important ally in pushing for greater budgetary discipline in Europe, has fallen into an economic crisis itself. The once exemplary economy is suffering from huge debts and a burst real estate bubble, which has stalled growth and endangered jobs. – Der SpiegelDominant Social Theme: Northern Europe is doing really...Read More

Britain's debt mountain reaches £1.39TRILLION, equivalent to 90% of the entire economy, ONS reveals … Gross debt at the end of 2012 stood at £1.387trillion, up 7% on 2011 Vast sum is equivalent to 90% of GDP – up from38% a decade ago Figures used to compare UK to the rest of Europe Mounting debts reveal the devastating impact of the 2007 crash … Britain's debt...Read More

Obama administration pushes banks to make home loans to people with weaker credit … The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place. President Obam...Read More

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein and Neil Irwin of WonkBlog discuss central banking policy after the financial crisis and the opposing views about its role in the state of the economy. – The Washington PostDominant Social Theme: Nothing is wrong with what we have now.Free-Market Analysis: We must make a confession: We didn't read David Stockman's article in the New York Times unt...Read More

A compilation of allmy favorite images - some new ones and some from the past. It is really fun to watch on the big TV screen!Creating videos of their artwork is a service that I can provide my web clients, too.Visit my website to learn more: www.ridgewaystudio.com Enjoy!!!!Read More

Developing World: Euro Loses Attraction as Reserve Currency … Countries in the developing world are drastically reducing their euro holdings as economic instability in Europe leads them elsewhere to stock their currency reserves. Euro holdings are at their lowest level in a decade, according to the International Monetary Fund. When the euro was first launched on Jan. 1, 1999, there were hope...Read More

The Trillion-Dollar Bureaucrat … He may be the most important central banker in the world. But is China's Zhou Xiaochuan really in charge? The longest-serving leader of a central bank of a major world economy is not to be found in Europe, or North America, or Japan. It is a 65-year-old man named Zhou Xiaochuan who was recently reappointed to the job he has already held for a decade, name...Read More

A time of unqualified promises … In Japan, newly appointed Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda will on Cyprus bank Wednesday convene a two-day policy meeting, his first after assuming office and pledging to do – again those words – "whatever it takes" to end years of deflation. While Kuroda's supporters would probably stress that "whatever it takes" is...Read More

David Stockman's Delusions: The Gold Standard Is Still a Really, Really Terrible Idea … Barbarous relics are relics for a reason … Have we been living in some kind of economic hellscape the past 80 years? … Now, the past five years have been brutal. And the five before that weren't great, either. But it seems hard to argue that the U.S. economy peaked in any way back in 1...Read More