Akkam’s Razor

What would you say if I told you the White House had a half-billion to spend in wallking around money at the start of this (just completed) campaign season, and was free to spend it without disclosure or Congressional oversight?

Popularity: 12% [?]

How Do You Handle a Hungry Man? (Harpers.org)

Over the past eight years, Weldon has spent about $80,000 of campaign treasury funds—donated money that congressional ethics rules say should be used for “bona fide campaign or political purposes”—on restaurant meals. His dining choices range from high-end establishments like The Monocle, a Capitol Hill restaurant popular with lawmakers and lobbyists, to the humble Cracker Barrel. During the same period Weldon also dropped about $30,000 on hotels.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Note, this is not conspiracy, it’s political evolution - ideology moves where the money and influence is, which means business and the hyperwealthy.  Read this:

The American political system, since at least 1968, has been operating like a ratchet, and both parties — Republicans and Democrats — play crucial, mutually reinforcing roles in its operation.

The electoral ratchet permits movement only in the rightward direction. The Republican role is fairly clear; the Republicans apply the torque that rotates the thing rightward.

This is a nascent thought which has been perculating in my head…basically, we’ve been dependent (in this country) on growth as a job engine.  By making more and more stuff, and selling it to more and more people, we continued making more and more jobs.  But the problem with "economies of scale", that is ramping up and basing your economy on volume is that you inevitably get "diminishing returns" on your investment, that is, it gets more and more expensive to increase each unit of production.

Gold is currently trading WELL above $500 per ounce.  While not historically high, the real value (adjusted) of gold has doubled in the last four-years.  Steve Forbes has previous commented that gold above ~$300-400 is an indicator that the Federal Reserve is not doing enough as far as interest rate hikes.  The Fed, however, is signaling that the most recent increase is the end of its measured progression of increases.  That’s especially curious, and is likely a signal by the Fed to motivate investors and “create” some momentum.  

This cannot turn out well.  Via Economist View (emphasis mine):

I want to question one thing in these remarks. There are considerable lags between the time a policy is put into place and the time the policy takes effect, e.g. as long as a year and a half before the peak impact of the policy is felt on GDP and the effects of policy shocks can persit for as long as three years. Recessions can occur much faster than this and the idea that the Fed can always respond in time to catch any downward movement in activity fails to recognize the length of these lags and the uncertainty we have about them (see Jim Hamilton at econbrowser for more on this). I find the attitude that ‘The economy doesn’t typically move so rapidly that it would get away from us,” surprising from a Fed official.

Read this from BOPNEWS about the beating the US consumer has gotten.

Car Sales are down (October was the weakest on record since mid-1998): What portion of US industry is directly or indirectly involved in the production and sale of new cars?  Wages aren’t keeping up with inflation (If inflation is 3.8% annually and your getting 2% raises annually, you are not outpacing inflation).  Consumer debt (credit cards and loans) has soared, now eclipsing the total output of the US (as measured by GDP) some 35% over 4 years ($2.6 trillion dollars put into the economy is additional consumer debt, to the tune of $7200 additional per household, faster than any time in the past 15-years.)