dimelab dimelab: shrinking the gap between talk and action.

flee Topic in The Credit Debacle Catalog

flee opprobrium (1); fleeing U.S. assets (1).

PressThink Thu 2010-06-24 10:18 EDT

Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right: On the Actual Ideology of the American Press

That it's easy to describe the ideology of the press is a point on which the left, the right and the profession of journalism converge. I disagree. I think it's tricky. So tricky, I've had to invent my own language for discussing it...political journalists...are skeptical about changing society in any fundamental way...professional journalist...generate authority and respect...flee opprobrium...[by demonstrating] that they are not on anyone's ``team,'' or cheerleading for a known position. This puts a premium on stories that embarrass, disrupt, annoy or counter the preferred narrative...``True believer,'' a term of contempt...narcissistic reactions of both sides prove how mature and professional and detached he is...people with political sense in press treatment will usually be the moderates, mavericks and ``pragmatists,'' a word that in political journalism has almost no content beyond, ``opposite of true believer... ideologically flexible... not a purist.''...journalists try to win the argument not by having better arguments but by standing closer to a reality they get to define as more real than your reality...The Church of the Savvy...The Quest for Innocence...Regression to a Phony Mean...The View from Nowhere...He said, she said journalism...The sphere of deviance...

actual ideological; American press; clowns; jokers; left; PressThink; Right.

naked capitalism Thu 2009-10-15 17:12 EDT

Hyperinflation, national bankruptcy, dollar crash and other exaggerations

Marc Faber, Martin Wolf... George Soros' comments on dollar weakness: ``The dollar is a very weak currency except all the others.'' Right now, there is no alternative to the dollar. Some people are fleeing U.S. assets if they can. But the alternatives are limited and this limits how far the dollar will fall. And this is unfortunate because the monetary system now in place is in need of change. Without it, we are likely to see nationalistic policy responses to economic weakness, which will induce conflict.

dollar crash; exaggerated; Hyperinflation; naked capitalism; nationalized bankruptcy.

Asia Times Online Sun 2009-09-13 10:25 EDT

THE BEAR'S LAIR : Possible October surprises

The inflation that might be expected in the United States from unprecedented expansionary monetary policies has failed to appear, while huge budget deficits have yet to produce higher interest rates. Far from being signs of a new economic paradigm, this merely means new bubbles are forming...Commodities and gold therefore are the destination of this year's hot money and are forming the new bubble...a fair-sized bubble has developed in the T-bond market...however...a modest resurgence in US inflation or difficulty in a long dated T-bond auction could cause confidence to flee the Treasury bond market and yields to leap uncontrollably upwards...the long-term costs of excessively cheap money are beginning to be seen in the US economy itself. By allowing money to remain so cheap for so long, and by running incessant payments deficits, the United States has surrendered the advantage of its superior long-established capital base, narrowing its capital cost advantage over emerging markets and exporting that capital to countries with less profligate approaches. Huge budget deficits, themselves worsening the trade deficit, merely export yet more US capital to the surplus nations. That makes it inevitable that the years ahead, in which the United States will no longer enjoy a capital advantage over its lower-wage competitors, will see highly unpleasant declines in US living standards.

Asia Times Online; BEAR'S LAIR; Possible October surprises.