A Culture of Fear - Jonathan M. Finegold Catalan Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, Soviet foreign spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov warned the United States, "We have done the most terrible thing to you that we could possibly have done. We have deprived you of an enemy." For nearly half a century, the elusive threat posed by the Soviet Union formed the basis of American foreign and domestic policy. Much of the United States' political and economic development was in fact a product of the government's exploitation of a supposed Soviet menace. The United States has a long history of exploiting fear for the purpose of legitimizing its growth. As Gerasimov suggested, the fall of the Soviet Union left the US government without a justification for its existence. Unfortunately, this situation did not last long. While support of American imperialism, otherwise termed "counterterrorism," has recently waned, the government is now reinforcing its legitimacy by once again intervening on behalf of the common man against the capitalist system.
Policy pointers Stock Mkt Economy "A growing economy consists of prices falling, not rising." The stock market does not work the way most people think. A commonly held belief — on Main Street as well as on Wall Street — is that a stock-market boom is the reflection of a progressing economy: as the economy improves, companies make more money, and their stock value rises in accordance with the increase in their intrinsic value. A stock-market bust, on the other hand, is held to result from a drop in consumer and business confidence and spending — due to inflation, rising oil prices, high interest rates, etc., or for no reason at all — that leads to declining business profits and rising unemployment. This understanding of bull and bear markets, while held by academics, investment professionals, and individual investors alike, is technically correct if viewed superficially but is substantially misconceived because it is based on faulty finance and economic theory. The Fundamental Source of All Rising Prices Forced Investing
EconProph | I'm Jim Luke. This is my economics notebook. I teach college principles of economics, along with the occasional Economic History, Comparative Econ Systems, and Econ Geography. The posts here are mostly examples/stories for my students, notes t Rampant Unemployment = The Death Of The Middle Class - HiddenMysteries 40 Facts That Prove The Working Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Without an abundance of good jobs, the middle class in the United States is going to shrivel up and die. Right now, rampant unemployment is absolutely killing communities all over America. There simply are not nearly enough "good jobs" to go around anymore, and even many in the mainstream media are referring to this as a "long-term structural problem" with the economy. So the rich don't really have that much use for the working class in America anymore. So the fact that we are facing rampant unemployment that never seems to go away should not be a surprise to anyone. Well, guess what? Things are going to get a whole lot worse. More job cuts are coming. It is also being projected that state and local governments across the U.S. will slash nearly half a million more jobs by the end of next year. Needless to say, things don't look good. Most people that still have jobs are desperately trying to hold on to them.
FBI: If We Told You, You Might Sue Often when the government tries to suppress information about its surveillance programs, it cites national-security concerns. But not always. In 2008, a few years after the Bush administration's warrantless-wiretapping program was revealed for the first time by the New York Times, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act. That act authorizes the government to engage in dragnet surveillance of Americans' international communications without meaningful oversight. As we've explained before (including in our lawsuit challenging the statute), the FISA Amendments Act is unconstitutional. In 2009, we also filed a Freedom of Information Act request to learn more about the government's interpretation and implementation of the FISA Amendments Act. Two weeks ago, as part of our FOIA lawsuit over those documents, the government gave us several declarations attempting to justify the redaction of the documents. There you have it.
The global debt clock Wealth of Nations Introduction Chapter 1. Of the Division of Stock Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Chapter 5. Introduction Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Part 1. PART 2. CHAPTER 4. CHAPTER 5. CHAPTER VI Of Treaties of Commerce CHAPTER VII Of Colonies PART 1 Of the Motives for establishing new Colonies PART 2 Causes of Prosperity of New Colonies PART 3 Of the Advantages which Europe has derived from the Discovery of America, and from that of a Passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope CHAPTER VIII Conclusion of the Mercantile System CHAPTER IX Of the Agricultural Systems, or of those Systems of Political Economy which represent the Produce of Land as either the sole or the principal Source of the Revenue and Wealth every Country
Bright Lights, Rich Cities Fly into a city on a clear night and you’ll enjoy a jeweled panorama below. Starkly lit skyscrapers, yellow glows from the windows of scattered homes, and roads pulsing white and red as cars speed over highways and crawl along residential streets. All of this electricity usage tends to indicate that a city has money to spend. And, indeed, in a new study, economists have shown that satellite measurements of an area’s lights reveal how economically developed it is. Judging the economic status of a country like the United States is relatively easy: the relevant numbers are carefully reported and widely available, allowing anyone to easily calculate measures of economic development such as the gross domestic product (GDP). Measuring GDP isn’t as easy for countries with poor financial reporting, such as many African nations, or biased reporting, as many claim China has. This proof-of-concept model can be applied to many scenarios for which GDP is unknown or underreported.
Dunning–Kruger effect Cognitive bias about one's own skill The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. Some researchers also include the opposite effect for high performers: their tendency to underestimate their skills. In popular culture, the Dunning–Kruger effect is often misunderstood as a claim about general overconfidence of people with low intelligence instead of specific overconfidence of people unskilled at a particular task. The Dunning–Kruger effect is usually measured by comparing self-assessment with objective performance. There are disagreements about what causes the Dunning–Kruger effect. There are disagreements about the Dunning–Kruger effect's magnitude and practical consequences. Definition[edit] The Dunning–Kruger effect is defined as the tendency of people with low ability in a specific area to give overly positive assessments of this ability. David Dunning Explanations[edit] [edit] Statistical[edit]
Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money - Politics Americans have a really distorted view of how wealth is distributed in this country. This chart is from a paper called "Building a Better America One Wealth Quintile at a Time" by Dan Ariely and Michael I. Norton. The top row shows the actual distribution of wealth in America. Below that, the "Estimated" rows show how different groups think wealth is distributed. Matt Yglesias explains what's interesting here: What’s interesting here is the extent to which the public vastly overestimates the prosperity of lower-income Americans. Indeed.
America's Economic Myths "The Olympian gods" Nicolas-André Monsiau (1754–1837) Mainstream economists and so-called experts have filled the minds of most Americans with many economic myths that are constantly reinforced by the media and repeated on the streets. These myths are erroneous at best, sometimes based on half truths. Inflation and Energy Myths Inflation — or, rather, the general rise in prices[1] —and the increase in energy prices are issues that have always created numerous economic myths.The following are some of the most common ones. Myth # 1: "Dependence on Foreign Oil" This myth basically suggests that the problem with oil prices is due to America's "dependence" on foreign oil. The high price of oil has nothing to do with its origin; the price of oil is determined in international markets. Importing a product does not mean you "depend" on it. Most, if not all, of the higher price of oil can be explained by the expansion of the money supply or the debasement of the dollar. False. Consumption Myths Note
Gold & Inflation As the story goes, someone asked an economist how his wife was doing, and the economist answered "compared to what?" Joking aside, this is one of the most important questions one can ask when dealing with many economic problems. In recent times, with gold reaching all-time highs, we have seen people question the valuation of assets in dollars. The way the dollar yardstick is being shrunk is by increasing the stock of money, which means that there are more dollars in circulation. Why would governments want to decrease the value of our money? First, creating more dollars is an easy way to pay for government expenditures. Second, we all know that scarce, desirable goods are more expensive than abundant ones. Unfortunately for us, this process of devaluation can be done until money is completely worthless. Usually, cheap goods are a good thing. But wouldn't more money make us richer? You see, if you were thrown in the middle of the desert, a pile of money wouldn't do you any good.