patrick.net

I thought you guys wanted to talk about housing and the economy. All I hear is Trump/Clinton. You do know low interest rates discourage banks from lending, right?

>you do know low interest rates discourage banks from lending, right?

money doesn't make any interest sitting in the vault . . .

anyhoo

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=85eK

is YOY % growth of national debt, not counting intra-government holdings

November 9th...

Gary Anderson says

I thought you guys wanted to talk about housing and the economy.

DATE: December 12, 1991
TO: Distribution
FR: Lawrence H. Summers
Subject: GEP

'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Least Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:

1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.

2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.

3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate[sic] cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate[sic] cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is 200 per thousand. Also, much of the concern over industrial atmosphere discharge is about visibility impairing particulates. These discharges may have very little direct health impact. Clearly trade in goods that embody aesthetic pollution concerns could be welfare enhancing. While production is mobile the consumption of pretty air is a non-tradable.

The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization.

— Lawrence Summers, [6][7]

Summers, Blurtman, is someone i have written against. He essentially wants two things, both bad:

1. He wants to ban cash:
http://www.talkmarkets.com/content/global-markets/larry-summers-100-dollar-bill-ban-and-westfalia-lost?post=86090&uid=4798

2. He. like Krugman, want deficit spending, but mainly to restock the scarcity of bonds:

http://www.talkmarkets.com/content/us-markets/larry-summers-cannot-save-the-fed-and-misspoke-about-fed-capabilities?post=75263&uid=4798

In interpreting anything he says, it must be filtered by the truth that he is banks first, everyone else last.

3 links to your blog in one thread?
Do you know Logan?

junkmail says

3 links to your blog in one thread?

Do you know Logan?

Lol, Junk. I have a lot to say. If you don't want to click on them I am cool with that. I post them because writing the issues over again would wear me out. :)

I would like to add though, that clearly tantrumming is odd for Greenspan to engage in. After all, he is the one who set up and allowed structured finance, under his watch at the Fed. He didn't want the banks to go down like the S&L's. But he should know that the counterparties are short on bonds, which is why, IMO, he does tantrums. He wants people to fear a bond bubble, and sell their bonds.

So, his investors will buy those bonds in the dip in price. JMO, of course, but I think I am correct on this.

So, I guess you guys will never understand what a tantrum really is. Shame. It is such a fake game the wealthy play to get you to let loose of your bonds.