Every Saturday I receive an economics lesson from John Mauldin from his free newsletter "Thoughts From the Front Line". Mauldin's one of the economist/investors I find to be more understandable than most.
I prefer Mauldin's weekly analysis mostly because he's into history, and he deals a great deal with spending and debt analysis. Last week in his offering, Supercycle of Debt, I felt the thoughts he expressed deserved a lot of attention, so, I forwarded it to Andrea Widburg at American Thinker saying I would like to see AT take some time and publish commentaries dealing with this issue. She very graciously asked me to do an essay on it for their perusal. I wrote this piece, This is Our Seldon Crisis!, which appeared at American Thinker on Tuesday, Our Economy is Facing a 'Seldon Crisis'.
So many others remind me of the Oracle of Delphi mumbling cryptic answers to specific questions. It was believed they were getting their answers from the gods, such as Apollo, answers that "could determine the course of everything from when a farmer planted his seedlings, to when an empire declared war."
Unfortunately, as I said, the Oracle's answer were always cryptic, and "arguments over the correct interpretation of an oracle were common". Of course the oracle was always happy to give another prophecy if more gold was provided.
Do you see the pattern?
The world worships at the feet of these economic babblers, who are often wrong. They spew out cryptic claptrap economists argue about and no one understands, including them. But, they're paid well, just like the Oracle at Delphi.
I think the ridiculous ideas and solutions offered by these econ-nitwits, is in effect acknowledging they don't have a clue, and worse yet, they have no idea how to fix any of this. But they don't dare say it in fear of offending their cabal of economic Oracle worshipers, so they just babble out any logical fallacy that works to look like they have something to say that's worth listening to. Krugman is an excellent example in my view.
* Reconstruction of the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi
The fact of the matter is those who are handling the world's economics have no idea what they're doing, and this piece he published a year ago, Pension Sandpile, dealing with pensions demonstrates the economically disastrous "cascade" effect that's already in motion.
John Mauldin is into books dealing with historical cycles, and so am I. I've found the patterns of life keep repeating over and over again, but I also find these books are almost as cryptic as tarot card reading. They need to be read, they have good history, they give insights you won't get elsewhere, but unfortunately most have poor coherence through connectives, and correspondingly are hard to understand, i.e. cryptic.
Truthfully, all that stuff is so complicated and so interconnected to so many scenarios, I don't know if anyone could make them more understandable. The fact is, this kind of historical analysis needs a classroom setting, but that's not going to happen with the corruption of education that's occurred in America.
This week he offers more insights regarding the debt crisis America, and the world, is facing, in Debt Catharsis. And we're running out of time!
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He discusses those who claim to offer some solutions. Solutions with some stuff that's useful, and a lot of solutions I think are insane because each and every one of the solutions being presented raise taxes and even add a VAT tax. That's the same mentality Hoover and FDR ascribed to that brought about the Great Depression. Not a one of them does the five things, and actually six things, that absolutely need to be done:
- Cut spending. Massively. Period!!!!!
- Pass legislation that creates a hard debt ceiling that requires three quarters of each chamber of Congress to overturn, on each and any occasion that situation may occur, and then automatically return to the previous debt ceiling.
- Cut the size of the federal government by 80%.
- Reduce the regulatory authority of the federal bureaucracy.
- Sell off the 150 trillion dollars in assets held by the federal government.
I've said in the past my grandfather who was a coal miner and a farmer was also one of the world's great economists. He said if you spend more than you make, you go broke. That's foundational, that's unavoidable.
As I've said, I'm impressed with John Mauldin, but perhaps John Mauldin should talk more often to the coal miner's grandson rather than the editors of economics publications? Just a thought.
* Reconstruction of the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, Albert Tournaire, 1894, Wikimedia Commons; with The Oracle, Biacca Camillo Miola, 1880, J. Paul Getty Museum
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