Triple Threat

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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Summing it Up

Much has been happening lately, but the news is hard to digest.  For now, I’d rather stay with the economic news and summarize what I think is going on.  This post is largely a repeat from last year, but it makes a jumping-off point.  I think that the context of the news is extremely important because without it all we have is a senseless jumble of events and not a coherent understanding.

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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Summertime Party! (For Now)

The US government ran a surplus in June!  Stocks are at all-time highs!  The party is starting in a big way in the normally lazy daze of summer.  Are you ready to join it?

Not so fast.  Barataria has been a source for positive economic news for at least a year now, but it’s always been tempered with caution.  Things are turning around, yes, but the headlines hide the work that still needs to be done to make this into something much bigger.   It’s up to all of us, really, to find a way to make it happen.

But we do have a party, at least as long as Ben Bernanke is buying.  He’s a fun guy, really.

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Economy Still Ahead at the Half

It’s halftime!  2013 is half over, and data for another quarter is in.  It’s time to check in on Barataria’s predictions for the year and see how things are going.

The mainstream press has already latched onto the story of a recovery that is slow but gaining strength, so this is hardly news anymore.  But exactly how and why it is strong remains important in many ways.  This is a restructuring more than a traditional recovery after a recession, so it takes a lot of time.  The foundation has to be laid before the new economy can be framed on top of it.  That foundation came through in 2012, but progress has to continue in key areas to make it possible for the jump to a new boomtime around 2017 or so.

Break out the expensive commercials and grill the burgers, we have a game!

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At the Break, Hometown Team Leads

How is that recovery going for you?  Overall, the first quarter of 2013 has been a decent one.  Nothing is moving very quickly, but we are seeing progress.  It’s time to check back on the predictions Barataria made for the year and see how we are doing.

Back at the start of the year, it seemed as if the recovery had something to prove.  2012 was not a bad year, but it was only the foundation of a recovery.  A little bit of faith that things were getting better certainly had  a lot to do with Obama winning re-election, among other things.  But 2013 is indeed shaping up to be the year the recovery starts to seem real.

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