Beautiful Central Command China

http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/

Will Waxman-Markey fix this?

Calculating Risk Chat

Dryfly: (in reply to Whiskey asking: For whom is this inflationary?)

Doesn't effing matter - inflation is a monetary event NOT a price event. Prices are just symptoms of TWO independent factors: [1] money supply & velocity and [2] actual supply/demand of the good.

Sheesh - you'd think people here would eventually get the memo.

Yagij: Calm down.

Remember that the under 35 crowd have never lived through a time of slow velocity of money supply. Credit boom is all they know, and all they know is a (relatively) stable currency that is the world's reserve paper of choice. They got the memo on supply/demand because they have seen it their entire lives (cool shoes, clothes, toys, BFs/GFs). They have never seen "Deflation" in most of their lives, and if they did, it wasn't the "Candy now costs 5 cents and I don't even have that to spend" kind of deflation. Yes or No?

Dryfly: Yes... plus they've never seen the back side of an innovation wave... we were on the up swing from mid-80s on [IT-telecomm-internet] and we are now well into the 'commoditization & consolidation' down side. Couple that with credit collapse and it is like nothing most of us have ever seen before [not this severe anyway - not since the 30s]. Will probably be 15-20 years before the cycle changes again. That's the typical cycle 40 years or so.

Yagij: Woo! Now if I can get you to talk to the 45-55 yo crowd who talk about how bad the 70s were and how it isn't as bad this time and we may start making progress in the "relearning" of America!

Dryfly: The 70s & 80s were worse - LOCALLY - in rust belt. Wasn't too bad in the SE US or West Coast. In that respect today is much harder than the 70s & 80s... its national if not international.

Comrade Kristina: I hear people in their 40's and 50's talking about deflation like it is a good thing. All they know is inflation is bad so the opposite must be good. I try to explain the opposite is much, much worse but they don't seem to get it. They will though, they will.

Dryfly: I see the exact opposite - young people saying deflation is good because they hope to buy houses cheap. They don't realize in a true deflation most people’s wages drop even faster making the cheap house 'expensive'. Few benefit from either deflation or inflation once all factors are evenly weighed. Even fewer realize this.

Hoover's ooover - Timer

Pursing the Eloi Languor

J. Storrs Hall says: It is the absolute genius of the post-industrial age that we have created a society in which a growing majority of people are doing useless, and in many cases counter-productive work (plus producing luxuries and entertainment), but where we all feel like we’re doing something necessary and important, and that we’re making a difference in the world.

Unlike a century ago, today for everyone who is working on technological progress, there is someone else who thinks that they are saving the planet by stopping them. Has the pace of technological change slowed? It certainly has for technologies that have to run the gauntlet all the way into consumers’ hands and make an obvious difference, because those are the easiest kinds to attack. It has also slowed in areas where scare stories are easy to generate, like nuclear power. In a world of delusional, self-important Eloi, it is much more advantageous to be a screaming coward than to be brave and productive.

There Is Always Soma, Delicious Soma

NeoNeocon says: As a young teenager of about twelve or thirteen, I read the novels Brave New World and 1984. I was absolutely terrified to the point of nightmares by the latter, but the former seemed more odd than frightening.

Yes, I could see that the society described in Brave New World was a dystopia. But compared to the far more horrific world Orwell’s imagination had created, Huxley’s vision seemed relatively pleasant, with the feelies and the soma and the sex. It was much lighter, and contained a certain amount of humor, an element notably absent from the exceedingly dark 1984

As I grew older, I came to understand that the two books described twin tyrannies, the yin and yang of dystopias (”Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice”). There was Huxley’s clamp of a science-controlled society on the human spirit, and then there was Orwell’s’ brutal stamp of the boot on the human face forever.

Freedom is what’s missing from either vision. Yes, if I was forced to choose, I’d choose Huxley’s world over Orwell’s. But both societies are nightmares. Obamaworld is not like that of 1984 (except for his habit of Orwellian Newspeak); it’s a kinder, gentler universe more like that of Brave New World, where people are ministered to for their own good, soft music plays in the background, and we’ve got sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Meanwhile, liberty is just as dead in that world as in the other.

Sheeple With Doubts

Gracias xkcd

Leading Indicator Action

Zero Hedge says: California lost more than Michael Jackson on Thursday. They also lost their credit rating as Fitch dropped them to A-minus and even that rating was immediately placed on negative credit watch. California faces a $24 billion-plus budget deficit for the fiscal year that begins Wednesday, rapidly declining sales tax revenues and an impotent legislature that can’t agree on solutions. Faced with the prospect of running out of cash, State Controller John Chiang said Wednesday the state will begin to issue IOUs for all general fund payments other than those categories protected by the state constitution, federal law and court decisions.