Charting the Depression, Feb 2012

[First]

You too have no idea what you are talking about. You are spewing mindless unsourced unsubstantiated garbage with absolutely no basis in fact. The movement will continue to grow as more and more people see that the kind of crap you are spewing doesnt do anyone any good and is only used as an attempt to mask the truth and deflect from any actual debate of actual facts because you know you damn well cant win on the facts.

Is there any doubt this dude is psychologically disturbed? And why is it always Ron Paul supporters that illicit this quality? Perhaps there is a direct correlation with this and believing in conspiracy theories.

 

[manimal]

This reminds me of a projo thread. Just saying..

 

[Genx87]

lol, Paulbots are hilarious.

Do those charts take into account the increased usage of mobile products like cell phones and tablets over the last 3-4 years, which consume considerably less than the traditional laptop and desktop counterparts as they continually replace both these older models? Do those charts take into account new energy technologies like green bulbs or natural gas?

More importantly, when you wake up in the morning from your bunker and get your dose of crazy from the Internet, do you ever wonder what your life might have been like if you had attended and/or graduated college, actually attended your average social gathering (sometimes known as a "party") or perhaps even taken the leap into relationship and fucked a girl? Food for thought.

You are kidding right? We have become more energy efficient as a country over the past century yet somehow a drop in energy useage from these devices are only being realized since the beginning of the latest recession? Coincidence?

 

[momeNt]

Impregnating women and being in a relationship (more the latter than the former) tends to soften and offset the crazy (unless you're marrying like kind). Discussing divergent viewpoints with people, mostly in person, and considering them seriously has the same effect. Especially in a 9-5 workplace atmosphere. That's what happens when you immerse yourself in the real world.



lol, you conspiracy theory Paulbots truly are funny.

In actuality, I've never had a professor that worked for the Fed save for one.

You know there is a way to phrase that without having to contradict yourself...

What about your text books? Of the ones I remember, one was written by a governor for I believe the Dallas Fed. I checked the index once I had come upon Austrian economics, not a single mention of Mises, Hayek, Austrian. The entire industry is bought and paid for. This could be because it's just sooo damn right that nobody can risk letting anybody decide for themselves that a free market has any cure to issues the Fed is tasked with dealing with, or it could be because Fed employs thousands of economists and it is a self preservation technique.

The book was on banking and it barely mentioned gold, how fractional reserve banking started, it just dove right in to Keynesian principles on how our banking structure uses interest rates to correct market failures, etc.

According to my economics teacher they stopped teaching history of economic thought quite a long time ago, so clearly they find it unimportant or dangerous to discuss how even the thought progressed to get how economics is studied today. It was upon hearing this that I decided to research of my own into the history of economic though. I'm stuck in 1913 though still bashing the Fed!!!

 

[disappoint]

lol, Paulbots are hilarious.

Do those charts take into account the increased usage of mobile products like cell phones and tablets over the last 3-4 years, which consume considerably less than the traditional laptop and desktop counterparts as they continually replace both these older models? Do those charts take into account new energy technologies like green bulbs or natural gas?

More importantly, when you wake up in the morning from your bunker and get your dose of crazy from the Internet, do you ever wonder what your life might have been like if you had attended and/or graduated college, actually attended your average social gathering (sometimes known as a "party") or perhaps even taken the leap into relationship and fucked a girl? Food for thought.

Let me get this straight. The cure for crazy is sticking your penis into a vagina? And you call him crazy.

 

[momeNt]

Let me get this straight. The cure for crazy is sticking your penis into a vagina? And you call him crazy.

Try it sometime, virgin. I kid, I kid. Ad hominem is fun though I gotta admit.

 

[First]

You are kidding right? We have become more energy efficient as a country over the past century yet somehow a drop in energy useage from these devices are only being realized since the beginning of the latest recession? Coincidence?

Um, it's not much of a "coincidence", since recessions happen about once a decade, some longer than others, so there are bound to be countless trends that coincide with recessions. Since mobile tech has replaced traditional computer paradigms like desktops and laptops just in the last 5 years as a result of many trends (like the iPhone's introduction in 2007 and economies of scale), the obvious answer is "yes". Of course, I'm sure some of it is related to the recession, but that I never challenged that POV. Operative word being "some".

 

[Born2bwire]

I also have to wonder about taking into account the increased efficiencies in today's consumer products. For example, one large constant would be the consumption of energy by lighting fixtures. But the recent introduction of efficient alternatives for the home and the passage of legislation phasing out incandescant bulbs should make a reasonable impact in the power consumption. This chart only shows us being off by 1.5%, a combination of the introduction of more efficient products (and as others have said the increase in home power generation) could concievably account for this. As for why is this only a recent effect could be argued that some of this technology has only become recently prevalent but also because the recession itself drives the demand for more efficient goods, many of which are consumable in nature. Of course the other problem is that we do not have access to this data for review. Barron's does not give its historical data out for free from what I can see.

 

[First]

You know there is a way to phrase that without having to contradict yourself...

I didn't contradict myself, but continue.

What about your text books? Of the ones I remember, one was written by a governor for I believe the Dallas Fed. I checked the index once I had come upon Austrian economics, not a single mention of Mises, Hayek, Austrian. The entire industry is bought and paid for. This could be because it's just sooo damn right that nobody can risk letting anybody decide for themselves that a free market has any cure to issues the Fed is tasked with dealing with, or it could be because Fed employs thousands of economists and it is a self preservation technique.

I've read many economics textbooks from people not associated with the Fed whatsoever, many purely academics like Krugman. I'm not sure you realize the Fed makes up a fraction of the economists in the United States while also not being monolithic in their belief system because, unlike you and your fellow Paulbots, we're all well aware that divergent viewpoints are quite welcome as long as they come with the accompanying evidence. Mises, Hayek and Austrian economics are of course laughable in this regard.

The book was on banking and it barely mentioned gold, how fractional reserve banking started, it just dove right in to Keynesian principles on how our banking structure uses interest rates to correct market failures, etc.

I'm not sure what book you're referring to.

According to my economics teacher they stopped teaching history of economic thought quite a long time ago, so clearly they find it unimportant or dangerous to discuss how even the thought progressed to get how economics is studied today. It was upon hearing this that I decided to research of my own into the history of economic though. I'm stuck in 1913 though still bashing the Fed!!!

I'm not sure what economics teacher you talked to, but he is woefully misinformed. The history of economics is taught (to varying degrees of course) in every Econ curriculum from any halfway decent university in the U.S.

 

[sm625]

The evidence you have for this is non-existent, save for some obscure, unproveable theory no one particularly credible believes.

You want to actually try and debate me, with your loony tunes paulbot ad hominem comments? You can try, but you will fail every step of the way. The data I posted on oil consumption is from the IEA. So stick that in your unproveable conspiracy theory crack pipe and smoke it. This is real data about the real economy. Oil is in everything. It is the economy.

I hate to break it to you, but it's a simple mathematical certainty that people consume less energy if they use products that consume less energy.

No its not. Again read William Stanley Jevons work, and the work of hundreds of others who thought the same way until they actually studied the facts.

For example, my personal total electrical consumption has gone down since I replaced my desktop with a tablet and my laptop with a phone. I'm not going to consume any additional energy because the Jevons Paradox says I will.

Complete bunkem, complete bull. You WILL consume more energy because if you save $50 a year on energy you are just going to turn around and spend that money on something else. An external battery for your iphone for example. And guess what... it takes energy to make that item. Like I said 5 times already this is well documented with 150 years of research to back it up.. You are just making yourself look like a total fool spewing all this crap about loonies and paulbots and conspiracy theories when you are in fact completely wrong and completely missing the entire dynamic of energy consumption in a real economy.

I can tell you arent even considering the resources it takes to make an iphone or a tablet. The thousands of btus of heat and the thousands of joules required to manufacture each and every component that goes into one of those devices. If you actually think that building all those manufacturing facilities, and fueling them, and hiring all that labor (chinese labor I might add) is somehow more efficient than using a 5 year old notebook that pulls 30 watts from the wall, then you are even more uninformed that I thought. But feel free to throw out all these fancy terms like "loon" at me, because I've done the math. I bet I've done more math on this subject than you have in your entire life, and I know that the actual efficiency gains are microsopic, if there are any at all. It isnt a matter of saying "oh gee my notebook pulls an average of 35 watts and my ipad only uses 5 so I am saving 30 watts". This real world you love to blather about doesnt work that way. It actually costs energy to manufacture stuff. In most cases, it is only after the new product is obsolete that its energy savings make up for the energy cost of the capital. And by then you've already dumped it for the next latest thing and so the cycle of inefficiency grows rather than shrinks. That is why I say that believe it or not, that 5 year old notebook is about the overall most efficient thing you can be using if you actually were concerned about energy efficiency.

I didn't make any mess, loony toons.



Impregnating women and being in a relationship (more the latter than the former) tends to soften and offset the crazy (unless you're marrying like kind). That's what happens when you immerse yourself in the real world.



lol, you conspiracy theory Paulbots truly are funny.

Just more pathetic, baseless, groundless absurd nonsense that could have been written by a 12 year old.

 

[Genx87]

Um, it's not much of a "coincidence", since recessions happen about once a decade, some longer than others, so there are bound to be countless trends that coincide with recessions. Since mobile tech has replaced traditional computer paradigms like desktops and laptops just in the last 5 years as a result of many trends (like the iPhone's introduction in 2007 and economies of scale), the obvious answer is "yes". Of course, I'm sure some of it is related to the recession, but that I never challenged that POV. Operative word being "some".

But it hasnt replaced them. So your theory has a shitload of holes in it. Have you replaced your desktop or laptop with an iPhone or Android device? How about a tablet if you own one? These devices right now are additive. Looking at the chart the only logical conclusion I can come to is our productivity is down. Not that mobile devices somehow cut our energy consumption by 2-5%. Those devices represent a small fraction of energy consumption anyways.

 

[sm625]

This chart suggests that the debt-financed recovery ended almost 2 years ago, and we've been treading water ever since. Not the kind of performance you would expect from an economy goosed withtwo years of trillion+ in deficit spending and a round of QE.

The index's performance over the last 6 months indicates outright recession.

 

[momeNt]

I didn't contradict myself, but continue.



I've read many economics textbooks from people not associated with the Fed whatsoever, many purely academics like Krugman. I'm not sure you realize the Fed makes up a fraction of the economists in the United States while also not being monolithic in their belief system because, unlike you and your fellow Paulbots, we're all well aware that divergent viewpoints are quite welcome as long as they come with the accompanying evidence. Mises, Hayek and Austrian economics are of course laughable in this regard.



I'm not sure what book you're referring to.



I'm not sure what economics teacher you talked to, but he is woefully misinformed. The history of economics is taught (to varying degrees of course) in every Econ curriculum from any halfway decent university in the U.S.

In actuality, I've never had a professor that worked for the Fed save for one.

You're subconscious wish to be entirely removed from my accusation of having federal reserve economists forced you to phrase the statement that way. "I only had one professor that worked for the Fed". That's a statement that is completely honest but offers no premise of attempting to deny (the use of the word never).

Checked the book title, economics of money banking and financial markets

Also, Krugman, and Mishkin the author of the book I'm referring to, come from the MIT school of economics. Basically a revolving door there between Fed and MIT, Krugman likes his column and likes to publish though.

Friedman in his later years in a letter to house banking investigator Robert Auerbach:

I cannot disagree with you that having something like 500 economists is extremely unhealthy. As you say, it is not conducive to independent, objective research. You and I know there has been censorship of the material published. Equally important, the location of the economists in the Federal Reserve has had a significant influence on the kind of research they do, biasing that research toward noncontroversial technical papers on method as opposed to substantive papers on policy and results.

Fed payroll, either fully employed, were employed, or contracted for research makes up more than half of the Journal of Monetary Economics. In academia and professional journals, it's a very large fraction.


As for history of economic thought, the span of economic schools of thought is generally restricted out of the few syllabi I've taken a look at. Nearly all will mention Marx and his ridiculous labor theory of value, but few mention the free market works of Mises and Hayek.

 

[First]

But it hasnt replaced them. So your theory has a shitload of holes in it. Have you replaced your desktop or laptop with an iPhone or Android device? How about a tablet if you own one? These devices right now are additive.

No, they're not just additive, they're replacements for huge swaths of the populace, and it's why PC sales have been down despite population increases. People have replaced their desktops with laptops, laptops with tablets and eventually their tablets with smartphones or some other unknown future hybrid. These all consume considerably less power than they used to with each new generation. And "replacement" should be properly defined; I personally haven't turned on and kept on my desktop computer now for more than 30 minutes at a time in years. I used to take my laptop home with me for work but now I've replaced it with a lower consumption iPad, and my iPhone replaces ALL the work I do on the road that I used to need a laptop to do.

Looking at the chart the only logical conclusion I can come to is our productivity is down. Not that mobile devices somehow cut our energy consumption by 2-5%. Those devices represent a small fraction of energy consumption anyways.

Read carefully, I didn't say mobile tech cut our energy consumption 2-5%. They contribute certainly. But let's look at home energy consumption. Is there a reason my energy bill has stayed the same or gone down, depending on the month, the last 15 years despite a huge increase in the number of appliances I use during that time?

 

[First]

You want to actually try and debate me, with your loony tunes paulbot ad hominem comments? You can try, but you will fail every step of the way. The data I posted on oil consumption is from the IEA. So stick that in your unproveable conspiracy theory crack pipe and smoke it. This is real data about the real economy. Oil is in everything. It is the economy.

Oil is not the economy, hate to break it to you. And the lack of oil consumption does not mean the economy is doing poorly. You are correlating two events and claiming causation. Again, this is where a college (hell, high school) education comes in handy.

No its not. Again read William Stanley Jevons work, and the work of hundreds of others who thought the same way until they actually studied the facts.

There is nothing provable about anythings in Jevons. Again, hate to break it to you, but it's true.

Complete bunkem, complete bull. You WILL consume more energy because if you save $50 a year on energy you are just going to turn around and spend that money on something else. An external battery for your iphone for example.

Who said anything about saving money. I was talking about trends in tech. I've paid roughly the same amount for cell phones for years; how much I save on an iPhone has no direct effect on my purchases.

And guess what... it takes energy to make that item. Like I said 5 times already this is well documented with 150 years of research to back it up.. You are just making yourself look like a total fool spewing all this crap about loonies and paulbots and conspiracy theories when you are in fact completely wrong and completely missing the entire dynamic of energy consumption in a real economy.

I can tell you arent even considering the resources it takes to make an iphone or a tablet. The thousands of btus of heat and the thousands of joules required to manufacture each and every component that goes into one of those devices. If you actually think that building all those manufacturing facilities, and fueling them, and hiring all that labor (chinese labor I might add) is somehow more efficient than using a 5 year old notebook that pulls 30 watts from the wall, then you are even more uninformed that I thought. But feel free to throw out all these fancy terms like "loon" at me, because I've done the math. I bet I've done more math on this subject than you have in your entire life, and I know that the actual efficiency gains are microsopic, if there are any at all. It isnt a matter of saying "oh gee my notebook pulls an average of 35 watts and my ipad only uses 5 so I am saving 30 watts". This real world you love to blather about doesnt work that way. It actually costs energy to manufacture stuff. In most cases, it is only after the new product is obsolete that its energy savings make up for the energy cost of the capital. And by then you've already dumped it for the next latest thing and so the cycle of inefficiency grows rather than shrinks. That is why I say that believe it or not, that 5 year old notebook is about the overall most efficient thing you can be using if you actually were concerned about energy efficiency.

I can't even tell if you're serious with a post like this. You just claimed my iPhone requires all that energy to be made; the same iPhone produced by Foxconn in mainland China, yet your OP listed a chart measuring U.S. energy consumption. Not only do you contradict yourself, but you unknowingly cite a possible explanation for reduced U.S. energy consumption; outsourcing via foreign trade.

 

[First]

You're subconscious wish to be entirely removed from my accusation of having federal reserve economists forced you to phrase the statement that way. "I only had one professor that worked for the Fed". That's a statement that is completely honest but offers no premise of attempting to deny (the use of the word never).

Nitpicking diction is a waste of time.

Checked the book title, economics of money banking and financial markets.

Also, Krugman, and Mishkin the author of the book I'm referring to, come from the MIT school of economics. Basically a revolving door there between Fed and MIT, Krugman likes his column and likes to publish though.

Seriously, the best you can come up with is MIT=Fed? Come on, I expected better.

Friedman in his later years in a letter to house banking investigator Robert Auerbach:

Fed payroll, either fully employed, were employed, or contracted for research makes up more than half of the Journal of Monetary Economics. In academia and professional journals, it's a very large fraction.

I find it odd you citing Milton Friedman, who eventually admitted the modern U.S. economy would be best served keeping the Fed (in his opinion, in a limited role).

In any case, there are huge swaths of economists that aren't associated with the Fed (save for nonsensical accusations such as your MIT statement), both at home and abroad, all of whom are perfectly capable of presenting an Austrian paper to be peer-reviewed. Odd that few (any?) have.

As for history of economic thought, the span of economic schools of thought is generally restricted out of the few syllabi I've taken a look at. Nearly all will mention Marx and his ridiculous labor theory of value, but few mention the free market works of Mises and Hayek.

Marx is more credible than Mises (who isn't taken seriously at all). Hayek is taught, he really is.

 

[momeNt]

Nitpicking diction is a waste of time.



Seriously, the best you can come up with is MIT=Fed? Come on, I expected better.



I find it odd you citing Milton Friedman, who eventually admitted the modern U.S. economy would be best served keeping the Fed (in his opinion, in a limited role).

In any case, there are huge swaths of economists that aren't associated with the Fed (save for nonsensical accusations such as your MIT statement), both at home and abroad, all of whom are perfectly capable of presenting an Austrian paper to be peer-reviewed. Odd that few (any?) have.



Marx is more credible than Mises (who isn't taken seriously at all). Hayek is taught, he really is.

You'll do everything you can do minimize the enormous role the Federal Reserve has in maintaining the economic establishment won't you?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/07/priceless-how-the-federal_n_278805.html

Also you shouldn't take such large liberties with how Friedman envisioned a computer program growing the money supply to = supporting the fed EVEN in a limited role.

I've always been in favor of abolishing the Federal Reserve and substituting a machine program that would keep the quantity of money going up at a steady rate.

That's NOT the federal reserve or the economic establishment we currently have today. He advocates a set it and forget approach to economics not having hoards of economists on research payroll (Fed budget for research is nearly half billion).

 

[ElFenix]

outsourcing via foreign trade.

offshoring.

 

[Carmen813]

Since appliances continue to become more energy efficient I find this to be, well, misleading. Hell, my 7970 is more "powerful" and consumes less energy than my old Crossfire setup.