Business Cycles

Sleep tight; a few weeks ago the federal government announced it will implement a new cell-phone warning system.

Housing prices hitting 2002 levels, unemployment still at 9 percent, private-sector job growth flat, and retail sales still struggling: these are headlines that few expected three years ago. The stimulus was a gigantic, wasteful, destructive flop.

Japan’s economy has not been stagnant; it has in fact been growing in real terms.

With unlimited quantities of fiat money, the day seems to have arrived when anything is possible. But this is an illusion.

Narrated by Paul Strikwerda.

Like many economic events, the key lies not in what is immediately apparent — explosively large banks — but in those causes and conditions that are veiled. Politicians, pundits, and the population of the Icelandic nation have had a difficult time explaining how such a large financial sector could develop in the first place.

A true expansion of wealth cannot  generate a general increase in prices.

The growth momentum of price indexes shows visible strengthening. Prepare for more. 

Higher food prices set off the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and the mass protests in countries like Algeria, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, and Iran. People in these countries buy more unprocessed foods and spend a much higher percentage of their income on food, so they have been severely impoverished by Bernanke's QE2.

If Bernanke has to choose between saving rich bankers or the dollar, I am confident he will choose the former. We have good reason to expect rising prices and no dramatic efforts to reverse course.