Category Archives: Economy

On Currency

What the states and local governments are missing is not labor or materials, but currency. Currency is a utility. Depriving states of a necessary supply by rationing the distribution and rewarding hoarders is like expecting people to work in the dark.
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Market perspective—“just let them die”

Investors in the stock market are idealists. They value figments of the imagination more than reality. So, quite naturally, they have little sympathy for real people.
However, it should be noted that those who dabble in the stock market are less lethal than, for example, George W. Bush, who sent the U.S. military to bomb the cradle of civilization into smithereens and killed millions to bring them the democracy that, according to the Republican playbook is short for “choose your own poison.”

Consumerism is a slander

U.S. enterprise was never about responding to the buyer’s desires or needs. All along, it has been focused on sellers and propagandists, the purveyors of mostly junk.

The market is not driven by demand. Can’t be for the simple reason that it is not possible to demand something that was not first produced and introduced.

So, how to account for this deception? Is it wishful thinking or the result of an economist’s subconscious impulse to generate a theory that does not expose his own dependence. Or, we could decide that this is just another example of projection and the confusion of cause and effect.

Why is so much of our public discourse determined by people who juat talk a lot? Why is it that people who do, do not bother to talk?

Deutschebank Debacle

So, why did Deutschebank keep lending to Donald John Trump even though his credit rating was dismal? Well, all the banks are in a pickle. The requirements of Dodd/Frank to keep records and make them available for periodic inspection, a response to the crash of 2008, combined with the requirements of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, have deprived banks of the only thing of really real value they had to peddle–SECRECY. After all, they paid out millions to ACORN for just one reason, to protect the confidentiality of their records.

Now, thanks to Donald John Trump, who has given Congress reason to want to see his accounts. the industry is reduced to relying on contractual confidentiality, as if they were lawyers. And the courts are not buying it.

Who knew Donald John Trump was going to open so many cans of worms? Law that were put on the books never to be enforced on anyone of significance are being brought out because there is an insignificant in the highest office in the land.

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Deutsche Bank’s Refusal to hand over Trump records

Whether contractual obligations trump legal obligations is likely a significant issue. As I understand it, before the advent of Dodd/Frank, financial institutions, despite being chartered by governmental entities, had no obligations to respond or be accountable to those agencies. Efforts to impose some accountability were first manifest in the Community Redevelopment Act, which sought to enable citizens to inspect local lending practices when a financial institutions sought to expand, merge or set up branches in new communities. ACORN tried to take advantage of the legislation and sued banks to get a look at their books. However, rather than being inspected, the financiers “settled” the complaints with payoffs so large that they eventually financed all ACORN operations. So, when Capitol Hill cut off grants, their funding was no longer an issue.
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