It's a official now. Japan in a recession.

[fskimospy]

You're just mad because two decades of your Keynesian ideas have run Japan's economy into the ground.

Lol no.

Keynesian economics was just put to the test throughout the developed world in case you didn't notice. The evidence speaks for itself, it was right.

Now are you going to respond by linking a bunch more charts you don't understand?

 

[Attic]

Japan has been wildly and irresponsibly pursuing inflation with their monetary policy leading up to this most recent recession. A triple dip recession is the result.

Solution:
More Inflation seeking measures....

Maybe they should try something that works and stop decimating their people by eroding wages and purchasing power in a manner that makes watching a dog chase his tail look intelligent and well thought out by comparison.

Investor class and the bureaucracy is doing fine, folks who work for a living are being sacrificed. Placating the investor class by shoveling the worker into an inferno of inflation is not a decent nor wise thing to do. Japan is not doing well pursuing what you seek Eskimo. They shouldn't have raised sales tax but they had to pay for all the gdamned deficit spending or they'll have to take the 10year closer to zero (another trap).

Japan is our future. They bumped up the printing presses when we stopped our QE, Japan is buying our treasuries with printed money now, as well as increasing purchases in their equity markets. This type of thinking is not working out well for the ones who are not so privileged to sit close to the easy money spout.

 

[Spungo]

Keynesian economics was just put to the test throughout the developed world in case you didn't notice.

I guess it depends on what your goal is. If destruction of the middle class is your goal, then yes Keynesian economics has been a stunning success. I've already posted dozens of links showing
-wealth inequality in the US is at an all time high
-the top 0.1% control as much wealth as the bottom 90%
-1/2 of the country earns less than $30,000 per year
-labor participation is at a 36 year low, but employment among Americans 55 and older has actually increased (because you can't retire on 0% interest rates)
-young Americans have never been more in debt than they are right now
-small business startups at 30 year lows
-home ownership of young people at all time lows
-mortgage applications are at 14 year lows
-wages have been declining for the past several years

Bush did so much "stimulus" that he doubled the national debt. He ran the economy into the ground. People got sick of Bush's Keynesian bullshit and democrats won by a landslide. As a hilarious irony, Obama then did exactly the same things Bush did. Coming as a shock to nobody, it had the same result of running the economy into the ground. People got sick of Obama's Keynesian bullshit and now the republicans won by a landslide. If the economy continues to "recover" like this, the republicans will probably win the next presidential election.

 

[glenn1]

You're just mad because two decades of your Keynesian ideas have run Japan's economy into the ground.

To save Japan's economy, he had to destroy it.

 

[Spungo]

To save Japan's economy, he had to destroy it.

 

[Kwatt]

... it was right.

I don't think I can consider as "right" until it is over. The recovery is in its ~5 year. Rates are still near zero. The ~4 trillion in emergency purchases need to be dealt with then we'll see.

.

 

[shady28]

Lol no.

Keynesian economics was just put to the test throughout the developed world in case you didn't notice. The evidence speaks for itself, it was right.

Now are you going to respond by linking a bunch more charts you don't understand?

Epic fail.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/16/david-cameron-third-eurozone-recession-g20-warning

"“The eurozone is teetering on the brink of a possible third recession, with high unemployment, falling growth and the real risk of falling prices too,”"


And on income distribution:

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-16545898

"And even the majority of America's richest households saw gains of barely above the overall average at 67%.

How does that make sense?

Because the CBO found most of the income gains over the past 30 years had gone to the top 1% of US households. Their incomes had almost quadrupled with rises of 275%."


Yes, the Keynesian policies of the last 30-40 years have really worked well haven't they. For the 1% that is.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

Gotta pay that gigantic debt somehow (even though they're monetizing 100% of it at this time)

Here's Kyle Bass talking about Japan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kFcDKBpdII#t=488

Kyle has been on the ball since 2010 with Japan. He and his hedge fund have been running the numbers on Japan since at least that far back. Furthermore his major claim to fame is calling the housing and credit bubble collapse where he bet against the market and raked in a cool 500 million for his hedge fund. Anyways here is the discussion he did in 2010 on Japan. Notice that his charts have the crisis Japan is facing today hitting around this period, between 2014 2016. Its a very interesting discussion in hindsight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWgtzwqWh60&feature=player_detailpage#t=2229

P.S. Kyle is a secular student of economics. In other words he has to be neutral because his job depends on not being behind the profit curve because of ideological basis. So in fact he has studied Keynes work in depth and as had mentioned in the past that Japan is hitting a "Keynesian end-point", i.e. no more room to maneuver as rates are already at 0 (The Keynesian Zero Bound which even Keynes cautioned against). Furthermore they (Japan) have exhausted and tapped out savers in their nation to prop up a money printing policy that has only bought them so much time. Yet they have not even begun to address a reduction to their horrendous debt to GDP ratio, etc and in fact any attempts to manage via taxation is like messing with old dynamite, monetary wise, that is sweating out nitroglycerine.

 

[bryanl]

Kyle has been on the ball since 2010 with Japan.

Except for Japanese hyperinflation.

Furthermore his major claim to fame is calling the housing and credit bubble collapse

He's so famous for them that I never heard of him until now.

P.S. Kyle is a secular student of economics.

Nobody else is?

Furthermore they (Japan) have exhausted and tapped out savers in their nation to prop up a money printing policy that has only bought them so much time.

Certainly the repeated tax hikes and efforts to strengthen their currency have had nothing to do with the anemic, stumbling, and short lived recoveries Japan has experienced over the past 25 years.

 

[bryanl]

Yes, the Keynesian policies of the last 30-40 years have really worked well haven't they. For the 1% that is.

Supply side economics, as has been advocated by the top 1%, has not been Keynesian in nature.

You cannot blame Keynesian policies for Europe's malaise since Europe has reacted to the depression with austerity, or at least grossly insufficient Keynesian stimulus, and as Europe enters another recession, Germany has proudly balanced its national budget, which too is against Keynesian theory for stimulus.

 

[fskimospy]

Kyle has been on the ball since 2010 with Japan. He and his hedge fund have been running the numbers on Japan since at least that far back. Furthermore his major claim to fame is calling the housing and credit bubble collapse where he bet against the market and raked in a cool 500 million for his hedge fund. Anyways here is the discussion he did in 2010 on Japan. Notice that his charts have the crisis Japan is facing today hitting around this period, between 2014 2016. Its a very interesting discussion in hindsight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWgtzwqWh60&feature=player_detailpage#t=2229

P.S. Kyle is a secular student of economics. In other words he has to be neutral because his job depends on not being behind the profit curve because of ideological basis. So in fact he has studied Keynes work in depth and as had mentioned in the past that Japan is hitting a "Keynesian end-point", i.e. no more room to maneuver as rates are already at 0 (The Keynesian Zero Bound which even Keynes cautioned against). Furthermore they (Japan) have exhausted and tapped out savers in their nation to prop up a money printing policy that has only bought them so much time. Yet they have not even begun to address a reduction to their horrendous debt to GDP ratio, etc and in fact any attempts to manage via taxation is like messing with old dynamite, monetary wise, that is sweating out nitroglycerine.

Yeah he's been so on the ball about Japan that he has been betting on massive Japanese inflation and a spike in bond prices for almost the last five years, which has caused him to lose a massive amount of money.

As Jon Stewart once said, if you invested with him on Japan you would have A MILLION DOLLARS. Provided you started with two or three million dollars.

But let me guess, his ruinously wrong predictions on Japan will be vindicated any day now. (Care to predict when?)

Edit: this guy is only the latest in a long string of people who fundamentally didn't understand the nature of government deficits in a liquidity trap. There's a reason they refer to the Japanese bond market as the widowmaker. Lots of other foolish people before this guy thought they were on the ball about Japan too. Oops.

 

[glenn1]

Edit: this guy is only the latest in a long string of people who fundamentally didn't understand the nature of government deficits in a liquidity trap. There's a reason they refer to the Japanese bond market as the widowmaker. Lots of other foolish people before this guy thought they were on the ball about Japan too. Oops.

Yeah congrats, you misdiagnosed the "problem" of malinvestment and subsequent capital reallocation as "deflation" and spent the equivalent of an entire year or two of GDP to maintain the overcapacity which is the root of the problem. Good job genius. Not that I expect anything less from someone who agrees with the "alien invasion stimulus" crackpot theories of Krugman and thinks Hugo Chavez just didn't go far enough.

 

[fskimospy]

Epic fail.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/16/david-cameron-third-eurozone-recession-g20-warning

"“The eurozone is teetering on the brink of a possible third recession, with high unemployment, falling growth and the real risk of falling prices too,”"

Wait, what? The Eurozone is proof in FAVOR of Keynesian economics, not against it.

Europe has been slashing budgets in the face of recession, not increasing them. They have faced terrible economic performance. It's an epic fail alright, for the opponents of Keynesian economics.

And on income distribution:

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-16545898

"And even the majority of America's richest households saw gains of barely above the overall average at 67%.

How does that make sense?

Because the CBO found most of the income gains over the past 30 years had gone to the top 1% of US households. Their incomes had almost quadrupled with rises of 275%."

Yes, the Keynesian policies of the last 30-40 years have really worked well haven't they. For the 1% that is.

The US has not been following Keynesian policies for the last 30-40 years.

Do you know what the terms you are using mean?

 

[fskimospy]

Yeah congrats, you misdiagnosed the "problem" of malinvestment and subsequent capital reallocation as "deflation" and spent the equivalent of an entire year or two of GDP to maintain the overcapacity which is the root of the problem. Good job genius. Not that I expect anything less from someone who agrees with the "alien invasion stimulus" crackpot theories of Krugman and thinks Hugo Chavez just didn't go far enough.

Ooh, a foray into Austrian economics! I'm excited to hear your thoughts. So you say that the problem is malinvestment, correct? Presumably you mean into the housing sector. With that in mind, surely you can identify where this malinvested capital turned to when it moved away from the housing sector. After all, if we were spending too much in the wrong places then we were spending too little in the right places. What places were those, specifically?

Just so you know before you write anything, you realize that this idea has been rejected by economists all across the ideological spectrum, including people such as Milton Friedman, right? The malinvestment/Austrian business cycle theory is not only empirically shown to be wrong, it is also based on illogical premises.

Crackpot theories, indeed. haha.

 

[fskimospy]

I guess it depends on what your goal is. If destruction of the middle class is your goal, then yes Keynesian economics has been a stunning success. I've already posted dozens of links showing
-wealth inequality in the US is at an all time high
-the top 0.1% control as much wealth as the bottom 90%
-1/2 of the country earns less than $30,000 per year
-labor participation is at a 36 year low, but employment among Americans 55 and older has actually increased (because you can't retire on 0% interest rates)
-young Americans have never been more in debt than they are right now
-small business startups at 30 year lows
-home ownership of young people at all time lows
-mortgage applications are at 14 year lows
-wages have been declining for the past several years

Bush did so much "stimulus" that he doubled the national debt. He ran the economy into the ground. People got sick of Bush's Keynesian bullshit and democrats won by a landslide. As a hilarious irony, Obama then did exactly the same things Bush did. Coming as a shock to nobody, it had the same result of running the economy into the ground. People got sick of Obama's Keynesian bullshit and now the republicans won by a landslide. If the economy continues to "recover" like this, the republicans will probably win the next presidential election.

Yet again you show you don't understand the terms under discussion. Bush's spending was pro-cyclical. This is explicitly ANTI-Keynesian. Hell, at one point you were even arguing that rich people want inflation.

You have made many of the same arguments in the past. When they blew up in your face you claimed you were willing and able to accept being proven wrong. You've shown no signs of this.

 

[glenn1]

Ooh, a foray into Austrian economics! I'm excited to hear your thoughts. So you say that the problem is malinvestment, correct? Presumably you mean into the housing sector. With that in mind, surely you can identify where this malinvested capital turned to when it moved away from the housing sector. After all, if we were spending too much in the wrong places then we were spending too little in the right places. What places were those, specifically?

Just so you know before you write anything, you realize that this idea has been rejected by economists all across the ideological spectrum, including people such as Milton Friedman, right? The malinvestment/Austrian business cycle theory is not only empirically shown to be wrong, it is also based on illogical premises.

Crackpot theories, indeed. haha.

Technology and productivity improvements have led to overcapacity for many sectors of the economy if current prices are maintained. Ya know the whole supply/demand thing? If because of things like automation, just-in-time manufacturing, and other innovations we can produce more output of consumer goods given the same inputs do you think their price will rise, fall, or stay the same (protip: fall is the correct answer, see computer prices for the last few decades). Given that dynamic how do you think your idiotic policy of further trying to stimulate already saturated demand in oversupplied goods is going to work? Are you so completely oblivious as to think it's somehow a good thing to run up deficits of 150% of GDP just to attempt to convince people to buy yet one more Amazon Kindle they don't need, or a 4th car, or upgrade their house from 3,500 sq/ft to 5,000?

And not only are your policy prescriptions wrong, the math doesn't work out even if they were. You're doing the equivalent of telling a college student to take out $500,000 in loans for an art history degree which will improve their earnings by $1,000/year. The "principal" you're investing in stimulus to fight your deflation boogeyman is never going to provide a positive return vs. just letting the deflation occur in the first place. You're spending dollars to get a return of pennies.

 

[fskimospy]

Technology and productivity improvements have led to overcapacity for many sectors of the economy if current prices are maintained. Ya know the whole supply/demand thing? If because of things like automation, just-in-time manufacturing, and other innovations we can produce more output of consumer goods given the same inputs do you think their price will rise, fall, or stay the same (protip: fall is the correct answer, see computer prices for the last few decades). Given that dynamic how do you think your idiotic policy of further trying to stimulate already saturated demand in oversupplied goods is going to work? Are you so completely oblivious as to think it's somehow a good thing to run up deficits of 150% of GDP just to attempt to convince people to buy yet one more Amazon Kindle they don't need, or a 4th car, or upgrade their house from 3,500 sq/ft to 5,000?

This is a lot of hand waving to avoid answering my question. Where did the spending go? This should be easy to answer if the issue was malinvestment.

And not only are your policy prescriptions wrong, the math doesn't work out even if they were. You're doing the equivalent of telling a college student to take out $500,000 in loans for an art history degree which will improve their earnings by $1,000/year. The "principal" you're investing in stimulus to fight your deflation boogeyman is never going to provide a positive return vs. just letting the deflation occur in the first place. You're spending dollars to get a return of pennies.

You realize what you're saying has been empirically shown to be false, correct?

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2013/wp1301.pdf

 

[glenn1]

This is a lot of hand waving to avoid answering my question. Where did the spending go? This should be easy to answer if the issue was malinvestment.

You made bankers rich shoveling "stimuls" money into their wallets and capitalizing investment assets to ridiculous extents, particularly things like U.S. Treasuries which are at 30-year bubble highs. Your policies have directly and predictably led to this:

Which in turn led to overcapacity in things like excess building for retail space. Or lingering oversupply of housing in Japan. And increasingly now inventories, such oversupply in steel. Or solar. Or natural gas. Or food. Or automobiles. Or general oversupply.

You realize what you're saying has been empirically shown to be false, correct?

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2013/wp1301.pdf

So tell me what Japan got in exchange for its huge Keynesian outlays. Some gold-plated infrastructure which doesn't get used? Keeping zombie banks alive for another 20 years? You completely and trivially wasted the wealth of generations to come on bullshit.

 

[fskimospy]

You made bankers rich shoveling "stimuls" money into their wallets and capitalizing investment assets to ridiculous extents, particularly things like U.S. Treasuries which are at 30-year bubble highs. Your policies have directly and predictably led to this:

Which in turn led to overcapacity in things like excess building for retail space. Or lingering oversupply of housing in Japan. And increasingly now inventories, such oversupply in steel. Or solar. Or natural gas. Or food. Or automobiles. Or general oversupply.

So tell me what Japan got in exchange for its huge Keynesian outlays. Some gold-plated infrastructure which doesn't get used? Keeping zombie banks alive for another 20 years? You completely and trivially wasted the wealth of generations to come on bullshit.

Nice try on moving the goalposts. When proven wrong, pivot to a different issue and continue ranting.

Never for a second consider why you were wrong.

 

[Spungo]

Yet again you show you don't understand the terms under discussion. Bush's spending was pro-cyclical. This is explicitly ANTI-Keynesian. Hell, at one point you were even arguing that rich people want inflation.

What planet do you live on? Bush came into office during the largest stock market crash in US history. The NASDAQ dropped by 70%. Millions of people went bankrupt. It was such a catastrophic event that the country has still not recovered from it.
NASDAQ drops 70% from 2000 to 2002. 2000 is the year when labor participation and median income hit all time highs.

Enter the Keynesian economists and their proposed ideas:

Bush and Greenspan did exactly what Krugman suggested. They stimulated the economy and inflated new credit bubbles. It was a complete disaster. Millions more people went bankrupt.

The same fool, Krugman, suggested the same fix for Obama's recession. So far, it has done exactly the same things as before. Real estate is absurdly expensive, young people live with their parents in record numbers because you can't buy a house for 200k when your job only pays $10/h, stocks are absurdly expensive, the S&P 500 pays less than a 2% dividend. We're entering the same secular decline as Japan because we've made the exact same mistakes as Japan.

You're doing the equivalent of telling a college student to take out $500,000 in loans for an art history degree which will improve their earnings by $1,000/year. The "principal" you're investing in stimulus to fight your deflation boogeyman is never going to provide a positive return vs. just letting the deflation occur in the first place

What's ironic is that the Keynesians are the direct cause of future deflation. Suppose an average guy with an average job and no debt can get a mortgage to buy a $200,000 house. What happens if that person is the same age with the same job but starts with $100,000 in student debt? He can no longer buy a $200,000 house. Now multiply this by millions of young people. What does that do to the price of housing. Should housing prices go up or down? Down. Would you expect that person to buy a more expensive car or a less expensive car? Less expensive. Being loadded up with debt causes deflation. How do we fight this deflation? Let's add more debt! Durrr!!

But let me guess, his ruinously wrong predictions on Japan will be vindicated any day now. (Care to predict when?)

He was already proven right. I posted a graph showing the Japanese yen collapse by 33% in 2 years. How much more does the yen need to drop before you'll admit Kyle was right?

Forget the forum arguments. Don't worry about me or Glenn or anyone else. If you truly believe Kyle is wrong about Japan, I urge you to buy Japanese government bonds priced in yen. Kyle's bet is to borrow in yen and buy things in other currencies like euros or US dollars. This is called a yen carry trade and it's very common because it's universally agreed that the yen is doomed to fail. If you want to bet against kyle, you would convert your US dollars or euros to yen and use it to buy Japanese government bonds.

 

[glenn1]

Nice try on moving the goalposts. When proven wrong, pivot to a different issue and continue ranting.

Never for a second consider why you were wrong.

You are the most clueless person I ever met. Enjoy having the worlds' governments ignore you.

 

[Bitek]

Epic fail.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/16/david-cameron-third-eurozone-recession-g20-warning

"“The eurozone is teetering on the brink of a possible third recession, with high unemployment, falling growth and the real risk of falling prices too,”"


And on income distribution:

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-16545898

"And even the majority of America's richest households saw gains of barely above the overall average at 67%.

How does that make sense?

Because the CBO found most of the income gains over the past 30 years had gone to the top 1% of US households. Their incomes had almost quadrupled with rises of 275%."


Yes, the Keynesian policies of the last 30-40 years have really worked well haven't they. For the 1% that is.

As others have pointed out, this information is laughably wrong and completely backwards.

Japan for decades have not delt with their problem of deflation. Abe started off using Keynesian policies (such as they were) to start to force inflation expectations and spur growth.

Then he enacted a sales tax INCREASE. Why? Well, because...um..worries about debt.

They have to create expectations of inflation to break the deflationary trap they are in. This also serves as a "shadow" high % rate, as the value of debt increases over time (rather than decrease by inflation)

As Europe is proving, contractionary policies are contractionary. Japan focused on the wrong problem and caused a recession. Europe is focused on debt and wrongheaded Austrian economics and is suffering tremedously for it.

The US responded to 2008 with some measure of stimulus and our econ is recovering far better than the other large developed nations. The US is gdp growth is outpacing the EU in every year of the recovery. Germany is stagnating, and they are the "success" story of the EU.

Iceland dumped the EU and its policies and has seen growth far above its peers (Ireland has mostly stayed in recession)


Where is the Austerity/Austrian success story? I see a lot of moralizing, strawmen, doomsaying and namecalling from the Austerians like glenn/spungo, but where are the concrete policy recommendations and proof that they work? Nowhere.

Germany has been wrong, continues to be wrong and the numbers prove it. We are in year 6 of the recovery, when is it finally going to take off for the EU? The US is booming, 3.5% and 4.6% in the last quarters, jobs are growing and debt is falling.

Complaining that the US/Obama hasn't also immediately fixed the longterm structural issues of inequality and wage growth that has been a problem since the 70s is a bit much. The Austerians sure as shit don't have the answers.

 

[fskimospy]

What planet do you live on? Bush came into office during the largest stock market crash in US history. The NASDAQ dropped by 70%. Millions of people went bankrupt. It was such a catastrophic event that the country has still not recovered from it.

Enter the Keynesian economists and their proposed ideas:

Bush and Greenspan did exactly what Krugman suggested. They stimulated the economy and inflated new credit bubbles. It was a complete disaster. Millions more people went bankrupt.

You realize that Krugman was being sarcastic, right?

The same fool, Krugman, suggested the same fix for Obama's recession. So far, it has done exactly the same things as before. Real estate is absurdly expensive, young people live with their parents in record numbers because you can't buy a house for 200k when your job only pays $10/h, stocks are absurdly expensive, the S&P 500 pays less than a 2% dividend. We're entering the same secular decline as Japan because we've made the exact same mistakes as Japan.

We have been over all of these data points before.

You were explicitly shown why you were full of shit.

You claimed you were open to being proven wrong.

You are showing that's not the case.

What's ironic is that the Keynesians are the direct cause of future deflation. Suppose an average guy with an average job and no debt can get a mortgage to buy a $200,000 house. What happens if that person is the same age with the same job but starts with $100,000 in student debt? He can no longer buy a $200,000 house. Now multiply this by millions of young people. What does that do to the price of housing. Should housing prices go up or down? Down. Would you expect that person to buy a more expensive car or a less expensive car? Less expensive. Being loadded up with debt causes deflation. How do we fight this deflation? Let's add more debt! Durrr!!

This is not only breathtakingly wrong, but it appears to be based on no coherent economic model that I am aware of as well as having the virtue of being nonsensical. (inflation in certain asset prices causes others to be lower which equals deflation what)

He was already proven right. I posted a graph showing the Japanese yen collapse by 33% in 2 years. How much more does the yen need to drop before you'll admit Kyle was right?

Now you're just lying.

Kyle Bass predicted higher bond prices for Japan and soaring inflation. He did this years ago. It has not happened. He was unequivocally wrong. (or at least none of his predictions have come true yet) After being wrong before, now he's trying to explain away his wrongness, just like you are.

Forget the forum arguments. Don't worry about me or Glenn or anyone else. If you truly believe Kyle is wrong about Japan, I urge you to buy Japanese government bonds priced in yen. Kyle's bet is to borrow in yen and buy things in other currencies like euros or US dollars. This is called a yen carry trade and it's very common because it's universally agreed that the yen is doomed to fail. If you want to bet against kyle, you would convert your US dollars or euros to yen and use it to buy Japanese government bonds.

You realize this isn't even necessary, right? Kyle Bass already bet against Japan and lost millions. The thing you're asking for literally already happened, and I won.

BTW I don't invest in individual stocks, bonds, or anything else.

 

[glenn1]

As others have pointed out, this information is laughably wrong and completely backwards.

Japan for decades have not delt with their problem of deflation. Abe started off using Keynesian policies (such as they were) to start to force inflation expectations and spur growth.

Then he enacted a sales tax INCREASE. Why? Well, because...um..worries about debt.

They have to create expectations of inflation to break the deflationary trap they are in. This also serves as a "shadow" high % rate, as the value of debt increases over time (rather than decrease by inflation)

As Europe is proving, contractionary policies are contractionary. Japan focused on the wrong problem and caused a recession. Europe is focused on debt and wrongheaded Austrian economics and is suffering tremedously for it.

The US responded to 2008 with some measure of stimulus and our econ is recovering far better than the other large developed nations. The US is gdp growth is outpacing the EU in every year of the recovery. Germany is stagnating, and they are the "success" story of the EU.

Iceland dumped the EU and its policies and has seen growth far above its peers (Ireland has mostly stayed in recession)


Where is the Austerity/Austrian success story? I see a lot of moralizing, strawmen, doomsaying and namecalling from the Austerians like glenn/spungo, but where are the concrete policy recommendations and proof that they work? Nowhere.

Germany has been wrong, continues to be wrong and the numbers prove it. We are in year 6 of the recovery, when is it finally going to take off for the EU? The US is booming, 3.5% and 4.6% in the last quarters, jobs are growing and debt is falling.

Complaining that the US/Obama hasn't also immediately fixed the longterm structural issues of inequality and wage growth that has been a problem since the 70s is a bit much. The Austerians sure as shit don't have the answers.

Congrats on spending trillions to maintain our debt service at current levels, ensuring our great-grandchildren will get to enjoy high taxes in perpetuity to pay off the government debt used to encourage the purchase of cheap disposable Chinese plastic consumer products. Congrats on pushing trillions through the bankers of the federal reserve system and making them rich in order to prop up the values of such magnificent assets.

 

[fskimospy]

Congrats on spending trillions to maintain our debt service at current levels, ensuring our great-grandchildren will get to enjoy high taxes in perpetuity to pay off the government debt used to encourage the purchase of cheap disposable Chinese plastic consumer products. Congrats on pushing trillions through the bankers of the federal reserve system and making them rich in order to prop up the values of such magnificent assets.

This is all just emotional ranting. If you want the US to be able to repay its debts you should be FOR additional spending during the crisis. When the fiscal multiplier is above 1 cutting spending makes your debt situation worse, not better.