The Silent Depression (you're living in it)

This is an interesting take, and not wrong.  The Great Depression versus now (guess which is worse):

A Soros excuse for a Billionaire!

Remember the Public Enemy rap song Don't Believe The Hype from 1989? Don't worry if you don't the point is the title. Barrack Obama and his minions have been pushing this idea that the economy is half a breath away from complete, ruinous doom. Preposterous. What's getting closer to complete and ruinous doom is the capitalist free market system that created and built American prosperity.

With that backdrop in mind along comes the following hyperbole from the Moveon.org backing, Hungarian-born whack-job, George Soros. Keep in mind the man has written three books about the impending collapse of global capitalism.

-The Alchemy of Finance (1987)

-The Crisis of Global Capitalism (1998)

-The New Paradigm for Financial Markets (2008)

Do it long enough and maybe you'll get it right George. He's been predicting a collapse since Reagan. No matter that his socialist leaning philosophies have helped encourage that same disaster by trying to hamstring the free market via social engineering interferences. I sometimes get the feeling that Soros could be the ultimate Soviet sleeper cell. How any billionaire can fund, and back groups like Moveon.org is beyond any logic I can grasp.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of near-term resolution to the crisis.

Soros said the turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.

He said the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September marked a turning point in the functioning of the market system.

"We witnessed the collapse of the financial system," Soros said at a Columbia University dinner. "It was placed on life support, and it's still on life support. There's
no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom."

His comments echoed those made earlier at the same conference by Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman who is now a top adviser to President Barack Obama.Volcker said industrial production around the world was declining even more rapidly than in the United States, which is itself under severe strain.

"I don't remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world," Volcker said.

And here's the Soros-Volker tie-in: They are on the same page, they are working on the same agenda. These men are not strangers. Paul Volcker wrote the foreword of Soros' book The Alchemy of Finance (in the 2003 edition):

George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become 'open societies,' open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but—more important—tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior.

I don't care if this guy is a trillionaire - he simply can't be trusted to suggest what really is in the best interests of America. He built himself up in the capitalist system he seems intent on blowing up. Maybe I'm being too cynical and he really is a capitalist at heart - maybe he's just trying to sell more of those doomsday books he keeps writing. In any case, according to the Forbes list he's ranked 101st richest man in the world, and if being rich equals being smart (which it doesn't), there are at least 100 people out there smarter than Soros. And if they're all socialists too, then this is Bizarro World.

Worst economy since the Great Depression?

If anyone ever says to you that this is the worst economy since the Great Depression, please refer them to this post on Carpe Diem. It's a great blog if you are interested in economics.


This graph captures the main indicators of the early 80's recession versus today.

Just for way of comparison, in the Great Depression, unemployment peaked at 25%, inflation peaked at 10%, and the prime interest rate was cut from 6% to 4% in 1930.

The early 1980's were the worst economic period since the Great Depression - today doesn't even come close. There is no 'fierce urgency of now' for this ill-defined, hodge-podge of a rescue package, now passed into law. This economic siege mentality is a result of an extended period of decades of merely minor recessions and extended periods of growth.

Don't let the doomsayers fool you.