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Welcome To The Third World, Part 4: Boomers Reap What They’ve Sown

by John Rubino on December 19, 2011

It was fun while it lasted. We Baby Boomers got to diss our elders when we were young and borrow without restraint through middle-age. Few generations have traveled such a smooth stretch of financial/psychological highway. But now that we’re…old…the world we created isn’t so congenial. Our savings are inadequate, jobs are scarce, and retirement, as [...]

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Welcome To The Third World, Part 2: Real Lives

by John Rubino on November 1, 2011

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal devoted an entire page to the differences between today’s economy and a typical recovery: Slow Recovery Feels Like Recession Americans are two years into a recovery that doesn’t feel much different to many of them from life during the most bruising recession in seven decades. Scenes of the long haul back [...]

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Both Sides Shoot The Messenger

by John Rubino on August 15, 2011

Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the U.S. confused the markets but not the pundits. From far-left to far-right, everyone with a stake in the existing order is shocked that a lowly rating agency would critique the emperor’s wardrobe. Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, for instance, views the downgrade as a crime: Michael Moore to Obama: ‘Show [...]

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Is This It? Or Can They Fool Us Again?

by John Rubino on August 9, 2011

A stressful weekend for the world’s bankers and politicians, followed by a sleepless Monday, and all with a single question rattling around in their heads: How can we fool them again? For decades now the financial/public sector complex has been able to clean up its recurring messes — from Long Term Capital Management to the [...]

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The Con Went Off Without A Hitch

by John Rubino on August 3, 2011

A comment thread on a recent DollarCollapse post reflects a debate that’s pretty widespread these days: eugene August 1, 2011 at 6:17 pm The thing that fascinated me the most was the media supported “sale” of Social Security/Medicare as an immediate problem that is destroying the country. While Social Security/Medicare are an issue that needs [...]

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Does the Deficit Deal Guarantee a Recession?

by John Rubino on August 1, 2011

As pretty much everyone knew they would, Congress and the president have stitched together a sad little “deficit reduction” plan that allows them to keep borrowing through the next election. But the details are less important than the timing, which coincides with what might be the start of a double dip recession. Consider this (slightly [...]

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Inflection Points And Ruined Vacations

by John Rubino on July 24, 2011

With the exception of a couple of memorable days in 1987, July is generally not a cruel month. Just the opposite; it’s when finance and government people take off, safe in the knowledge that nothing much will happen while they’re away from their desks. This July, though, has ruined a lot of vacations by hosting [...]

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Companies Are Buying Shares — But Insiders Aren’t

by John Rubino on July 1, 2011

The past year’s stock rally is a classic case of newly-created money bidding up asset prices. Now, thanks to the researchers at Trim Tabs, we know more about one of the ways this has been accomplished — and about why it might end. As Corporations Boost Share Buybacks, Insiders Stand Back U.S. companies are buying [...]

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Too Sad To Be Funny

by John Rubino on June 7, 2011

The following three stories would be funny if the picture they paint wasn’t so sad. First this: Second-Mortgage Misery Almost 40% of homeowners who took out second mortgages—extracting cash from their residences to cover everything from vacations to medical bills—are underwater on their loans, more than twice the rate of owners who didn’t take out [...]

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Redoing the Kitchen While the House Burns Down

by John Rubino on February 15, 2010

Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Frank is by far the most interesting part of that paper’s dull gray Op Ed page. Back in January he suggested that the world’s governments smack down those wing-nut gold bugs by selling all the gold in their central bank vaults — a plan that most gold bugs found hilarious, [...]

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