The Island Weekly » economy

Gold Cadillac

Anne — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:52:35 +0000

Detroit is going down. The whole rescue package is just so hopeless. I remember when American cars were still attractive. Cadillacs were the family car, my dad’s one life-long fetish, bought used for second-hand glamor. That was until the oil crises hit, when he got sensible and we got a VW beetle and then later a Toyota.

My favorite car was a gold-colored 1966 Cadillac convertible with light seats. I loved the hugeness and sleekness and majesty of it and used to take my dolls and stuffed animals along for rides in the back seat, the wind blowing through my hair as my dad chauffeured us around. That’s about as good as it gets. Today? Forget it. Sinking fast.

Hunger

Anne — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:36:20 +0000

Helmut took out the trash a few days ago and said that a little old lady with a flashlight came round to the trash can and started poking through the trash he had just dumped. Man, this is Munich, one of the richest cities in one of the richest countries in the world. I was just reading the New York Times and found an article/ video about a community in Florida that was booming, with nearly everyone employed, until about six months to a year ago. Now the construction industry is in ruins. And people are hungry: One in four people is on food stamps, the soup kitchens are overflowing, people are are flocking to public pantries. And they have been foreclosed on and evicted from their homes. “People are very humble. They’ve never had to ask for help before.” It’s heartbreaking.

Arlo Guthrie: I’m changing my name to Chrysler

Anne — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 03:06:59 +0000

Some things just don’t change. Except the figures, of course. In this old song, just exchange “million” for “billion” or “trillion”. And, ok, ok, it’s all about jobs. Still, not a good move, this rescue.

I’m changing my name to Chrysler
I am headed for that great receiving line
So when they hand a million grand out
I’ll be standing with my hand out
And, sir, I’ll get mine!

Tom Paxton update: I’m changing my name to Fannie Mae

Corporate welfare bums

Anne — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:13:57 +0000

Naomi Klein (”The Shock Doctrine“) wrote an article in Rolling Stone saying the bailout on Wall Street was “borderline criminal”. In a recent interview on Democracy Now she says the G20 conference in Washington was an epic lost opportunity. G20 reaffirmed deregulation. Banks such as Citibank and Barkleys want to buy up Chinese and Indian banks, she says, so we have heavily subsidized “corporate welfare bums” preaching free trade. Hypocritical, indeed.

Why are Democrats so weak now that they have their big chance? (I wrote an exercise for Spotlight called Nightmare on Wall Street, to practice financial vocabulary.)

Financial crisis: reading

Anne — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 10:38:22 +0000

One of the many things on my to-do list is getting a better understanding of economics and how the financial system works. It can’t be totally incomprehensible, can it? Here’s a reading list of blogs:

The Big Money
Andrew Leonhard/ Salon’s How the World Works
Calculated Risk
The Big Picture
Portfolio’s Felix Salmon
Naked Capitalism
NPR’s Planet Money

Tips found on Slate

Japanese banking issues & winter fashion

Anne — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:09:49 +0000

Joan sent me this: “Following the problems in the financial sector in the US, uncertainty has now hit Japan. In the last 7 days the Origami Bank has folded, the Sumo Bank has gone belly up and the Bonsai Bank announced plans to cut some of its branches. Yesterday, it was announced that the Karaoke Bank is up for sale and will likely go for a song, while today’s shares in the Kamikaze Bank were suspended after they nose-dived. While Samurai Bank is soldiering on following sharp cuts, the Ninja Bank is reported to have taken a hit, but they remain in the black. Furthermore, 500 staff at Karate Bank got the chop and analysts report that there is something fishy going on at the Sushi Bank where it is feared that staff may get a raw deal.”

Hehehe. OK, so American finance has wasted the world economy. But we Americans are not all bad. Just look what existential joy we have brought upon the world:

Baseball was imported to Japan in 1872 and is one of the most popular sports there today. The man on the shirt (worn by Dude in The Big Lebowski) was Japanese baseball player Kaoru Betto, who played for the Osaka Tigers in the late 1940s. He is known as “The Gentleman of Baseball.” He played baseball wearing glasses. Now that is reason for hope, dear folks.

Stiglitz

Anne — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:09:30 +0000

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winning economist, is famous for his analysis of information asymmetry, a phenomenon which causes markets to be inefficient because the players have incomplete and therefor insufficient information to make the best choices. A completely deregulated free market is not a good thing, he says; markets can benefit from wise government intervention. He calls the recession we are now facing the worst since the Great Depression. His explanations are quite accessible even to the layperson, e.g. this article, Reversal of Fortune in Vanity Fair, and his interviews and lectures are worth watching/listening to (I’m including some videos below):

On the subprime mortgage crisis, 10 April 2008 (8:08)

On the fall of Lehman Brothers (6:18)

His other big topic, the true cost of the Iraq War, is almost diappearing behind the current crisis, but it will come back to haunt us. According to the book, Americans will spend decades treating the physical and psychological wounds of Iraq veterans, and when the economic consequences of the invasion are taken into account, the costs are staggering.

On the true costs of the Iraq War, 19 Sept. 2008 (1:05:53)