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Economics and commerce, all built from scratch.

Resiliency vs Interdependence

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Long ago, most Americans lived as Laura Ingalls Wilder chronicled in the “Little House” series.  Pa Ingalls and family were out in the wilderness, living with the rhythm of the land and putting away what they could to survive long winters and perhaps beyond.  The family’s net worth was what they had around them.

That life has been replaced with interdependence based on a dollar value assigned to absolutely everything.  We all get by with any extra scratch, should there be some, not stored up to get through the winter but properly invested in convertible assets.  This means everyone is subject to  the “free market”, which determines the value of all assets including experience, talent, and work.

That interdependence has changed our world to one with much less hard work or struggles against nature, and yet to many it has become as hostile as any winter on the Great Plains.
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Triple Threat

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What’s the right thing to do to help the economy?  Clearly, Congress has no idea, making bizzy with games designed to impress their constituents.  Major economists don’t agree, either, with at least three different views on what is going on and the appropriate remedies. How can it be so chaotic and disorganized?

It’s always been Barataria’s creed that if you complain about how things are you have to stick your neck out and offer a better solution.  Our answer has always been that there is a totally new economy forming around us as we work through the Managed Depression, and that there is a dire need for public and private leadership to help us create that new world dynamically.  That’s a bit too hard to define , but we can offer is a different way of looking at the situation we’re in.  It doesn’t directly point to courses of action, but it suggests things that should be tried.

Here is a description of the Triple Threat to the US Economy – Business Cycles, Globalism, and Demographics – and how they are working together to make this a once in a lifetime change.

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Bernanke in Charge

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Another Federal Reserve policy meeting, another restatement of the QE3, another big rise on Wall Street.  The breakdown on the Fed’s continuing to buy $85 a month in treasury bills was predictable, if generally wrong and leaving just about everyone to speculate on why, regardless of how plainly the case was made.  Make no mistake about it, though – Ben is still in charge and things are going pretty well in many ways, at least until the showdown on the budget and debt ceiling.

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Poverty Persists

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How good are things getting?  It depends a lot on where you are in the economy.  At the top end life is definitely improving – but at the bottom end it’s just endless misery. That’s the only conclusion that can be reached after two reports released this week.

The first was an analysis by the Associated Press that showed that underemployment is much worse for those at the low end of the economic scale, which in technical terms is hardly surprising.  But what they found is that 20% of those at jobs worth $20k per year don’t have enough hours, versus 7.2% of those who would normally qualify for jobs over $150k.  The second piece release was by the Census Bureau showing that 15% of Americans, 46.5M people, are stuck in poverty as they have been for 4 years.

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5 years After Lehman

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Five years ago, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and it looked for a while like everything was going to collapse.  No one knew exactly what was next as the financial system was imploding all around us.

Today, we’re still struggling to regain what we lost in the aftermath of this panic, although there is some reason to hope that we’re beginning to turn the corner.  What has happened in the wake of it all?  It’s worth taking stock and seeing where we stand.

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