Consumer Economy
Debt Diplomas
Universities have colluded with credit card companies to load students down with even MORE debt when they graduate.
January 1, 2009 | Read More
A Time Capsule Of Economic Stupidity
Take a look at this amazing video compilation of Peter Schiff way back in 2006 and 2007 playing John the Baptist about the coming economic crisis. And watch how all the business pundits put his head on a platter for it.
November 14, 2008 | Read More
The Consumer Comedown
After a housing crash, a speculation-fueled oil spike, and a credit crisis, the whole country is like a frat house after a three-day kegger. The beer’s gone. Someone smashed the furniture. Someone else drove his car through the front door. And the Dean is on his way over.
November 12, 2008 | Read More
Half of Nevada Underwater
About 20% of homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. In Nevada, one out of every two houses are “underwater.”
November 2, 2008 | Read More
“The Heartbeat of America”: The Fall of the Automotive Industry
There’s a reason the Chevrolet slogan evoking Detroit as America’s heart resonated so powerfully. The automotive industry is as American as rolling amber waves of grain. And now look how far it has fallen.
October 31, 2008 | Read More
Bubble-omics Reborn?
Yesterday, the Dow exploded for its sixth biggest percentage gain ever. Happy times are here again, right? Wrong. The Consumer Confidence Index plunged in October from an already dour, “put your money under your mattress and leave it there until the storm blows over” 61.4 in September to “bury your cash in coffee tins and start siphoning your neighbor’s gas” 38 (38!) in October.
October 29, 2008 | Read More
Any Fool Could Have Seen This Coming - Including This One (Part Three)
More on how my 1988 book The Captive American discussed the same economic foolishness we see today.
October 14, 2008 | Read More
Even the Rigged Unemployment Numbers Look Bad
The country lost almost 160,000 jobs last month (and over 2 million for the year), yet the “official” unemployment rate stayed at 6.1%. How can we be hemorrhaging jobs on the one hand, but maintaining the same rate of unemployment on the other? Because Washington statisticians cook the books, that how.
October 3, 2008 | Read More
Blaming Main Street
George Will finally says (and Andrew Sullivan agrees with) what a lot of people - especially politicians - have probably wanted to say since the housing bubble popped : the real villains aren’t mortgage brokers or bond sellers or investment bankers, but home buyers:
While I do not disagree that people living…
October 1, 2008 | Read More
Reason #42: China and the Myth of Free Trade
Did you know that an authoritarian communist country is now keeping our supposedly capitalist economy afloat? No? Well, it’s true. And it’s scary as hell.
Politicians from both parties remind me of cult members sometimes, the way they mouth the mantra of “free trade” and parrot the conventional wisdom that globalization and more trade with fewer barriers is always a good thing. They treat “free trade” like it’s a religion. But like most religions, the free trade faith has an awful lot of myth in it.
Globalization has its benefits, for some at least. It makes many of our largest corporations boatloads of…
August 29, 2008 | Read More
