Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Musings of One Wondering What Dolley Madison Would Think about Bubble Gum Ice Cream

For a number of months we have been discussing at dinner and other occasions the recession and its causes. Here is our take:

What causes a recession? Answer: people stop buying things. In other words, demand goes down (it never vanishes completely).

What causes demand to decrease? (1) people lose their jobs; (2) people get maxed out on their credit (think of the mortgage meltdown) and are unable to buy what they would like to buy; (3) everybody has everything they want (theoretically possible but highly unlikely).

So what is the cure? Beats us. Except we know you have to have more demand to get out of a recession. But the theorists in the Potomac Pantheon are happily trying to make more credit available for people who are not at the moment interested in borrowing anyway (I recall a TV spot in which a small business owner answered a question by saying, "why would I hire more people if I can't sell what I have?").

Incidentally, "stimulus" was known during the Great Depression as "pump priming." That didn't work either. All efforts should be directed at increasing demand, possibly by cutting taxes, investigating ways of helping people reduce their personal debt, etc.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

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Monday, September 6, 2010

Musing of One Wondering What Captain Nemo Would Have Seen Had He Piloted the Nautilus Through the Bermuda Triangle

The other day we watched a news broadcast about a report submitted by the US government to the United Nations. In effect, the report apparently acknowledged that the United States discriminates against practically everyone in the world. As the litany went on, a rhetorical question occurred to us -- if all of these groups are being discriminated against, who's doing the discriminating? The answer eventually occurred to us -- it's the straight white male under 40 who is the only group not mentioned as far as we could see. Then another thought occurred to us -- that there are not enough of them to do all that discriminating so someone else must be involved. Perhaps an additonal answer is that some groups which are being discriminated against are simultaneously discriminating against other groups. My goodness, we certainly can get confused. It also occurred to us to wonder -- whence came the divine wisdom which enables some in government to determine whether discrimination exists and, if so, whether it's good, bad or indifferent?