Some debt limit trivia

Thanks to this interminable and absurd government shut down and the possible debt ceiling breach, I have learned more about the functioning of government finances that I ever thought I would.

One of the interesting bits of trivia is that although I have been reporting that the current debt ceiling set on May 19, 2013 is $16.7 trillion, it turns out that the figure is more precise than that. The actual figure, believe it or not, is specified down to the last cent: $16,699,421,095,673.60 (Table III-C). [Read more…]

Millennials are pretty much like every other generation

The so-called millennial generation in the US is the focus of much media attention, much of it negative, decrying them as whiny, praise-seeking, self-absorbed, slaves to social network technology, and having a sense of entitlement. But a new survey finds that as they progress towards adulthood, they display many of the same characteristics as the generations that came before. [Read more…]

Is this any way to run the world’s largest economy?

What the hell is going on in Congress?

I have been (kind of) following the posturing that has been going on over the efforts to pass a continuing resolution bill by October 1. The normal budgetary process of passing the 12 appropriation bills to fund the government for the next fiscal year has long since broken down. In its place we now have the practice of passing continuing resolutions at the last minute that essentially says that we continue doing what was done the previous year. The idea of the budget being also a planning document that determines the priorities for the coming year has gone out the window and we seem to have entered a Groundhog Day world where each year repeats the previous one, at least in budgetary terms. In fact, we should really consider this the new normal, since the chances of Congress ever getting its act together enough to do its most basic function, pass a budget, seem increasingly remote. [Read more…]

Can you guess who said this?

Can you guess who said the following?

The concept of success leads me to consider so-called meritocracies and their implications. We have been taught that meritocratic institutions and societies are fair. Putting aside the reality that no system, including our own, is really entirely meritocratic, meritocracies may be fairer and more efficient than some alternatives. But fair in an absolute sense? Think about it. A meritocracy is a system in which the people who are the luckiest in their health and genetic endowment; luckiest in terms of family support, encouragement, and, probably, income; luckiest in their educational and career opportunities; and luckiest in so many other ways difficult to enumerate–these are the folks who reap the largest rewards. The only way for even a putative meritocracy to hope to pass ethical muster, to be considered fair, is if those who are the luckiest in all of those respects also have the greatest responsibility to work hard, to contribute to the betterment of the world, and to share their luck with others. As the Gospel of Luke says (and I am sure my rabbi will forgive me for quoting the New Testament in a good cause): “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” [My emphasis-MS]

[Read more…]

The greedy Walton family

The children of Sam Walton, founder of the Walmart empire, are among the richest people in the world. Walmart is notorious for paying its workers poorly and treating them badly. As this article from Bloomberg shows, they use every trick in the book to prevent paying taxes so that they keep as much of their money as possible. What seems like generous gifts to charity are in fact tax dodges. [Read more…]

More on how the stock market works against ordinary investors

I wrote earlier about how the stock market is rigged against small investors. Matt Taibbi provides another example. As a result of a wrongful termination suit by a former Thomson Reuters employee named Mark Rosenblum who became a whistleblower, a document has been released that shows how key economic data that is influential in predicting how the stock market would move was released early to a few special institutions that were willing to pay for the privilege. [Read more…]

Why ordinary investors always lose out in the stock market

I do not directly invest in the stock market. I do not have the knowledge to do so nor sufficient interest to invest the time to study how it works to make the kinds of informed decisions that are required. Of course, my retirement money is invested by others on my behalf but that goes on automatically without any involvement on my part. I have no idea what is going on. [Read more…]

The ‘End Game Memo’

Greg Palast is an investigative journalist. In an article in Vice, he says that a source has given him a secret memo whose “content was so explosive, so sick and plain evil, I just couldn’t believe it.” The document that he calls the ‘End Game Memo’ reveals how top US treasury officials secretly colluded with the heads of major banks to implement the deregulations that led to the financial collapse. Once again, this was something that was suspected but it makes a difference to have it actually spelled out. [Read more…]