- So much for the fashionistas’ new inflation - we shall have to make do with the old one (Christopher Fildes, Telegraph): “Blink and you miss it. How scared we were all meant to be of deflation. Central bankers pledged themselves to beat it back. The fashionistas at the Financial Times told us that deflation was the new inflation. Now it has gone out of vogue before it could even come in. A pity: I was rather looking forward to it. The alarm was set off, late last year, by Ben Bernanke, just recruited to the US Federal Reserve Board, who was trying to reassure us. Fear not, so he told us, the Fed had a weapon for keeping deflation at bay. This was a printing press, which at the touch of a button could run off as many dollar bills as anyone could want.”
- Fear Creeps Into US Recovery (Agence France-Presse): “Fear is creeping into the celebrations over an upswing in the US economy. Recovery signs are abundant, from surging consumer spending to rising factory output and most economists forecast a gradual economic pickup in the second half of 2003 and in 2004. Investors, glimpsing better times ahead, sent Wall Street’s blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average up 90.76 points, or 0.97 percent, to 9,412.45 on Monday, the highest finish in more than a year. But in the shadows, higher oil prices, the still-large portions of industry lying idle, unemployment and rising market interest rates are leading some analysts to squeeze the champagne cork back into the bottle.”
- Privately Owned Generator Supports Ontario During Blackout (Newswire, Canada): “CREC’s staff has been running the Misema generating station at full capacity all day in order to stabilize the gird, and will have staff working around-the-clock to provide Ontario with electricity over the next few days. Misema generating station was completed in April 2003 as part of the deregulation of Ontario’s power market. Misema is a 3 MW run-of-river waterpower plant near Englehart, Ontario, which was built with private investment. Misema is privately owned and operated by CREC and sells its electricity to Hydro One.” (thanks Catallarchy)
- Consumer Bankruptcies Hit Record 1.61 Million (NYPost): “Bankruptcy filings by U.S. consumers soared to a record 1.61 million in the year that ended June 30, as unemployment touched a nine-year high, court records show.” (thanks www.prudentbear.com)
- Power to the People (Buter Shaffer, LRC): “That the public utility industries in all their forms – e.g., electric power, telephones, gas and oil pipelines, railroads – have long been heavily regulated by government (usually at the behest of industry members themselves who favored their status as state-conferred ‘monopolies’) seems to escape the defenders of the regulatory state.”
Posted by Mises.org News
