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Our Economies Run On Housing Bubbles
Our Economies Run On Housing Bubbles Rene Magritte Memory 1948We are witnessing the demise of the world’s two largest economic power blocks, the US and EU. Given deteriorating economic conditions on both sides of the Atlantic, which have been playing out for many years but were so far largely kept hidden from view by unprecedented […]
Not Nearly Enough Growth To Keep Growing
Not Nearly Enough Growth To Keep Growing Jackson Pollock Shooting Star 1947 It’s amusing to see how views start to converge, at the same time that it’s tiresome to see how long that takes. It’s a good thing that more and more people ‘discover’ how and why austerity, especially in Europe, is such a losing and […]
What is this ‘Crisis’ of Modernity?
What is this ‘Crisis’ of Modernity? Workmen next to the screws of the RMS Titanic at Belfast shipyard, 1911The people at Conflicts Forum, which is directed by former British diplomat and MI6 ‘ranking figure’ Alastair Crooke, sent me an unpublished article by Alastair and asked if the Automatic Earth would publish it. Since I like his […]
Heal the Planet for Profit
Heal the Planet for Profit Parisians duck down to evade German sniper fire following Nazi surrender of Paris, 1945If you ever wondered what the odds are of mankind surviving, let alone ‘defeating’, climate change, look no further than the essay the Guardian published this week, written by Michael Bloomberg and Mark Carney. It proves beyond a […]
Alastair Crooke: ‘End of Growth’ Sparks Wide Discontent
Alastair Crooke: ‘End of Growth’ Sparks Wide Discontent Notre Dame Gargoyle, Paris France, 19th century Former British diplomat and MI6 ‘ranking figure’ Alastair Crooke quotes my September 26 article “Why There is Trump” so extensively in this article for Consortium News that I thought I might as well post the whole thing here at the Automatic Earth too. […]
China Relies On Property Bubbles To Prop Up GDP
China Relies On Property Bubbles To Prop Up GDP Carl Mydans Sharecropper’s family in Mississippi County, Missouri 1936Lots of China again today. Most of it based on warnings, coming from the BIS, about the country’s financial shenanigans. I’m getting the feeling we have gotten so used to huge and often unprecedented numbers, viewed against the backdrop of […]
Negative Interest Rates and the War on Cash (1)
Negative Interest Rates and the War on Cash (1) Irving Underhill City Bank-Farmers Trust Building, William & Beaver streets, NYC 1931 It’s been a while, but Nicole Foss is back at the Automatic Earth -which makes me very happy-, and for good measure, she starts out with a very long article. So long in fact that […]
Brexit: The System Cannot Hold
Brexit: The System Cannot Hold Stephen Green 18×24 inches. 2016. Acrylic on canvas. MuseumofAwesomeArt.com Well, they did it. A majority of Britons made clear they’re so fed up with David Cameron and everything he says or does, including promoting the EU, that they voted against that EU. They detest Cameron much more than they like […]
The Balkanization of Europe
The Balkanization of Europe Danae Stratou, Ilargi, Yanis Varoufakis and Steve Keen Feb 16 2016When my mate Steve Keen took me to meet Yanis Varoufakis for dinner last week when we all happened to find ourselves in Athens together, I at least sort of regretted not having the time and space to talk to Yanis about […]
Are Asian Central Bankers Even Crazier Than Our Own?
Are Asian Central Bankers Even Crazier Than Our Own? That the world’s central bankers get a lot of things wrong, deliberately or not, and have done so for years now, is nothing new. But that they do things that result in the exact opposite of what they ostensibly aim for, and predictably so, perhaps is. […]
Where Deflation Comes From
Where Deflation Comes From Financial bubbles blown on the back of massive amounts of debt, of necessity lead to debt deflation (it’s just entropy, really). Fighting this is futile, and grossly costly to boot. The only sensible thing to do is to guide the process as best you can and try to minimize the damage, […]
Is This Debt’s Last Rattle?
Is This Debt’s Last Rattle? Crowd outside Wall Street Stock Exchange on BlackThursday Oct 24 1929 What we see happening today is why we called our news overview the “Debt Rattle” 8 years ago. The last gasps of a broken system ravished by the very much cancer-like progress of debt. Yes, it took longer than it […]
Square Holes and Currency Pegs
Square Holes and Currency Pegs When David Bowie died, everybody, in what they wrote and said, seemed to feel they owned him, and owned his death, even if they hadn’t thought about him, or listened to him, for years. In the same vein, though the Automatic Earth has been talking about deflation (for 8 years, […]
Why This Slump Has Legs
Why This Slump Has Legs We’ve only really been in two weeks of trading in the new year, things are looking pretty bad to say the least, so predictably the press are asking -and often answering- questions about when the slump will be over. Rebound, recovery, the usual terminology. When will we get back to […]
(Re-)Covering Oil and War
(Re-)Covering Oil and War The first thing that popped into our minds on Tuesday when WTI oil briefly broached $30 for its first $20 handle in many years, was that this should be triggering a Gawdawful amount of bets, $30 being such an obvious number. Which in turn would of necessity lead to a -brief- […]