American writer Tracy Kidder points out: "In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange." We ignore ominous warning signs at our own peril. But ignore them we will,…
The BRICS are making their move to shove aside the U.S. dollar (although their own troubles might interfere). The dollar dump is particularly timely in light of recent recognition that U.S. credit verges on junk status, and rates lower than…
Here’s an interesting story, if only to me. I submitted the piece below as a guest commentary (i.e., op-ed piece) to the morning daily in this benighted town.
The editors found it absurd, as expected. Actually, the editor who responded wrote, “there are many facts and statements in your article that appear to be wildly exaggerated” (exaggerated facts?), and asked for evidence to support a few of the statements. So I provided him a handful of links from the mainstream media, at which point he ran away. No great surprise there, I suppose. If you’re addicted to economic growth, as required by newspapers, the truth is damned inconvenient.
Even though it seems we’ve seen the end of $4 gas, the economy is not quite out of the woods. Demand destruction and a severely constricting economy have driven down the price of oil and its distillates. But the resulting economic bounce has resembled a dead cat tossed off a skyscraper.