informAaron

I’ll boycott your face

i.e. steal it

Your Tax Dollars

thank you john murtha

The Hurt Locker

Are you still watching?

warning: i puked

My name is Bruno.

I like you.

Green Team!

Don’t Worry

Everything will be fine

Is this the end of America? Considering the amount of money we’re pumping into the markets, Terence Corcoran asks a good question.

Helicopter Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve is dropping trillions of fresh paper dollars on the world economy, the President of the United States is cracking jokes on late night comedy shows, his energy minister is threatening a trade war over carbon emissions, his treasury secretary is dithering over a banking reform program amid rising concerns over his competence and a monumentally dysfunctional U.S. Congress is launching another public jihad against corporations and bankers.

As an aghast world — from China to Chicago and Chihuahua — watches, the circus-like U.S. political system seems to be declining into near chaos. Through it all, stock and financial markets are paralyzed. The more the policy regime does, the worse the outlook gets. The multi-ringed spectacle raises a disturbing question in many minds: Is this the end of America?

Probably not, if only because there are good reasons for optimism…

He goes on to laud our past, wondrous experiences with capitalism, only to give stark warning against the fundamental changes currently under way. Well, he got me curious: how has the value of the dollar changed in my lifetime? With a little help from Measuring Worth and MS Excel, this is what I came up with:

We can ignore the highest outlier, the relative share of the GDP, because it’s “expressed in current market prices, which is GDP not corrected for inflation”. Still, inflation is increasing by all other measures. In fact, Bernanke seems to think it’s not climbing fast enough.

In comments Wednesday to explain the Fed’s new policy of buying $300-billion in U.S. treasury bills, Mr. Bernanke noted that the Fed is now more worried about inflation being too low than about it getting too high in the future.

Now, I’m clearly no economist, but I do read references to the dollar’s exchange rate into euros pretty often. However, I’m getting the same unexpected result from those numbers: that we’re doing OK.

I know I only have one reader, so help me out here. Common sense tells me you can’t double the amount of currency this rapidly without having an inverse effect on the value. The only conclusion I can reach is one I’m too familiar with already: I suck at money.

Sources: National Post, St. Louis Fed, Exchange-Rates.org and Measuring Worth.

America can haz sovereignty?

Reporting on the six Swift meatpacking plant raids, Jerry Kammer of the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that 23 percent of the plants’ workforce were illegal immigrants. Since the raids, Swift’s employees and their surrounding communities have felt the impact and Jerry’s spot on with with the analysis.

All facilities resumed production on the same day as the raids. All returned to full production within five months. This is an indication that the plants could operate at full capacity without the presence of illegal workers…

There is good evidence that after the raids the number of native-born workers increased significantly. Swift also has recruited a large number of refugees who are legal immigrants…

At the four facilities for which we were able to obtain information, wages and bonuses rose on average 8 percent with the departure of illegal immigrants…

So if everything’s better without them, why would so many industries rely so heavily on them?

Workers at these facilities have seen a steady decline in their standard of living. Government data show that the average wages of meatpackers in 2007 were 45 percent lower than in 1980, adjusted for inflation.

Gotcha.

Source: Center for Immigration Studies

Just be glad you’re not British

[Loan Applicant]: Could you repeat the exact question again?

[Account Manager]: Is she a member of any political party?

Source: Spectator