It’s Clearly Different

Posted on 28 November 2012 by Erik Hare | 13 Comments

Consumer confidence, as measured by a survey plugged into a magic formula, is at the highest level in nearly five years. Housing prices have risen for the sixth straight month. All is attributed to improvements in employment, something rarely noted in the media over the summer but felt by people all across the US.

The long answer is that everyone who watches this never believed that employment was improving much. Employment growth leading the overall economy hasn’t been the way recessions have run since the end of WWII. That alone tells us that this time is different. What makes it different is important because it highlights what Barataria readers have been clued into since 2007 and urgently since 2008 – that this is at the very least a different kind of economic event.

Call it what you will, but there can be little doubt that different times call for different measures.

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Paralysis

Posted on 19 October 2012 by Erik Hare | 9 Comments

“It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”
– Franklin Delano Roosevelt

One of the key features of the time we live in is paralysis. Uncertainty creates risk aversion, since risk is much more difficult to calculate. After a few years living like this and people start to live day to day. It eventually becomes “survival mode” when tomorrow becomes very difficult to imagine. The result is nothing – and that often comes even when one person is calling the shots, let alone a system based on consensus among many.

The evidence is all around us that something unusual is happening. Change is coming faster and in ways that are not often talked about adequately. The economy is not simply recovering the way it has after any other post-war recession. What should we do? FDR had it right – try something and see if it works. If that goes against every instinct you have right now, you’re not alone. But let’s see if we can convince you that there are, in fact, some things that point to very different actions than we’re all used to.

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A New Beginning

Posted on 30 July 2012 by Erik Hare | 23 Comments

Barataria stands as a blog with a purpose. Most of the time, that purpose is to tell the stories lost in the jargon of economics and finance that have come to define our recent lives far more than most people are comfortable with.

If we can’t grab what is happening around us and make it our own, how can we call ourselves a free and democratic society? Barataria does what it can to offer a different way of looking at what is happening and relate it in story form, free of unexplained jargon. Hopefully, this will help to make a more real and useful politics.

After a few months of big events and heavy articles, it’s time to summarize the Baratarian view on the big economic picture in one polemic and invite your comments.

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