The China Bubble

I have maintained for some time that new world orders don’t occur overnight, and that even trends that may appear to be secular don’t necessarily work out if you extrapolate them into the future. Let me explain, in the 70’s everybody said Brazil was going to rule the world by the late 1980’s, they came up with all of the reasons for this, demographic, growth, the education and markets in place etc. then it just didn’t happen.

By the end of the 80’s when Brazil was meant to be the new world power they had been usurped, this time by Japan, now it was the turn of the Japanese to be ruling the world within the next 20 years, then far from taking over Japan imploded and they have struggled ever since.

Today we are told that it will instead be China who rule the world by 2020, and frankly, I don’t believe that this can happen without massive painful adjustment that would set them back years, and it also doesn’t accommodate for the fact that the USA views the …

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Dan Mitchell on Stimulus

Labour Department numbers show that the Obama Administrations $787 billion stimulus was a flop. Instead of holding the unemployment rate at 8 percent or below, the jobless rate soared to 10 percent. Now there is discussion of second so-called ‘stimulus’, which politicians are calling a jobs bill. However, making government bigger, this CF&P Foundation video explains, is a recipe for long-run stagnation and lower living standards, regardless of what the policy is named. www.freedomandprosperity.org

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The Great Depression of 1920? Yep, you never heard of it….

This video is a fascinating take on monetary and fiscal policy which is contrary to the increasingly popular Keynesian solutions being put forward today. It advances the virtues of Austrian Economics, which is viewed by many as being a fringe economical school which lacks practical application. Admittedly many of the Austrian ideals would be totally unpalatable to general society, but it is important for the sake of balance to consider the views of the counter movement and not to discount it without due regard or rigour.

Thomas E. Woods has presented us with the idea that doing nothing in a financial crisis is what is required to allow an economy to heal itself, a view shared by many modern day commentators such as Jim Rogers. There is a middle ground somewhere between the hypothesis of Krugman and Mises but for now the debate rages on.

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The Meltdown should have surprised no one

The 2009 Henry Hazlitt Memorial Lecture, presented by Peter Schiff. Recorded at the annual Austrian Scholars Conference, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 13 March 2009. Austrian economists tend to have some very conservative views, and while many of them are unpalatable there are many that are equally pragmatic, Keynesian economics are definitely the popular choice as of late, but the free marketers still have valid points and Peter Schiff has a way of describing the economy and the situation in a very simple manner. He shot to fame for being one of the first practitioners in the USA to say that they were in a bubble and how the fallout would begin and what to expect when it did, his vision was almost 20/20.

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The Geithner plan

Yahoo! Tech-Ticker team interview James Galbraith about the new plan brought out by the US Treasury. Galbraith (son of the world renowned John Kenneth Galbraith) has been one of the vocal proponents of a Keynesian response to the crisis.

in this second video Tim Geithner talks about how the actual play should (hopefully) work and also what he believes are the expected lead times surrounding the deal. His body language in this video reminds me – to a degree – of Nixon before Watergate broke, looking down, avoiding too much eye contact etc.

The videos below are from one of my favourite vloggers, Khan Academy, who make simple to understand financial videos

the second installation is below

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