All in Economics
“You have this huge imbalance of supply and demand which is causing the prices to skyrocket,” Sundaram told CNBC Make It. The question is, is this inflation? Austrians would say no. These price increases are the normal process of a market clearing when supply, for whatever reason, isn’t satisfying all of the demand. Consumers who can and most desire the product will pay more for the limited supply.
Victor Shvets believes computing power has caught up and “technology could soon create an environment where state planning might be able to deliver acceptable economic results while simultaneously suppressing societal and individual freedoms.”
Mark Twain and Will Rogers are both credited with “Buy land, they're not making it anymore.” Both men have passed. But, has their land wisdom left us as well? Ms. Kamin writes, presumably with a straight face, “real estate investing in the metaverse still is highly speculative.”
If Bitcoin is our lifeboat, indeed, as Ms. Demirors emphasizes, “Not owning Bitcoin is now irresponsible.”
Mari’s piece chronicles the trials and tribulations of millennials (who are now the largest generation) simply trying to buy a home. In some cases, the offers are made long distance on the basis of images from their computer screens. Nationwide home prices have soared nearly 25 percent. But, where the jobs are, in medium-size metropolitan areas such as Boise, Phoenix, Austin, and Salt Lake City, prices have soared 46 percent; 36 percent; 35 percent; and 33 percent, respectively.
Gas prices increased considerably during the last few months of the Trump regime and have continued during Biden’s term. Why? That annoying economics thing, supply and demand. Americans are driving more since the pandemic has abated, like, for instance, to work. Vehicle miles driven has nearly doubled from a low of just over 160 billion miles in April 2020 to 290 billion in July of this year.
While the U.S. press harps on inequality, there is no mention of Marx’s 5th plank, i.e. The Federal Reserve. “The creation of money out of thin air, or legal counterfeiting, by central banks,” wrote Frank Hollenbeck for mises.org. creates “undesirable and unjustified source of income inequalities.” He continued, “It should be no surprise the growing gap in income inequalities has coincided with the adoption of fiat currencies worldwide.”
The who or they known as Satoshi published a white paper and Bitcoin was born, opening the floodgates to a Hayekian competitive currencypalooza. Let the best government, bank, or crypto developer win.
the federal government makes the simple process of disposing of government properties into a kafkaesque nightmare. “The federal government has long owned more real estate than it knows what to do with — buildings that sit empty and sites that are underdeveloped — but it must jump through hoops before it can sell its holdings,”
“Bankruptcy fulfills the crucially important social function of preserving the available stock of capital. And it plays this role in all conceivable scenarios: when it results from fraud, when it results from insolvency, and when it results from illiquidity.”
We all want to be right, thus, we’re willfully blind about the accuracy of what we know and learn. “When you’re highly confident, your brain becomes more receptive to information that confirms your original view,” Zweig explains, “while the processing of other data that could disprove it is ‘abolished,’ a recent neuroscience study found.”
The US economy has become hyper financialized, says Pal. If the S&P 500 goes down, employees are laid off. And, we all know that one of the Fed’s mandates is maximizing employment. “It's like nothing will last long because the Fed will not allow it to.”
A Charmin spokeswoman, when confronted by reporters at WBUR about shrinking the size of their toilet sheet squares, pulled an explanation out of her you-know-what, suggesting it was the result of "innovations" allowing “consumers to, basically, wipe their butts more efficiently.”
Of course, the singing “Crypto revolutionary” believes climate change is a government conspiracy to control us. It seems funny that a “peace & liberty advocate” would assume that government force provides the only answer to climate change, if there is such a thing.
South African labor needs to employ more capital, but they can't because mining companies are afraid to provide the capital. These same companies need to open new mines as well, along with providing sustaining capital investments in the existing mines. But, why would they, they're not sure who's going to own the mines?
This generation of skilled labor was neutered long ago when parents insisted their kids go to college so they can get office jobs. At the same time, in population centers, neighborhood associations band together to stop any new development in their backyards. Especially any proposal for affordable homes.
Since when does forecasting a couple rate bumps two years from now be considered hawkish to the point of making the dollar pop and gold flop?
The government’s COVID mandate calling for lenders to cease and desist if borrowers didn’t pay expanded the market for this bit of accounting trickery. The market, forgetting that real estate sometimes falls in value, “viewed them as a relatively safe bet.”
My friend echoed those comments, talking about how cool the scene was. Playboy had a booth, there were ladies walking about dressed only in paint. To someone who has attended plenty of stodgy gold and natural resource conferences, not to mention Austrian economics confabs, the Miami happening sounds like a Grateful Dead concert by comparison.
Supply chain breaks and increased demand are not inflation. A more clear-eyed view is from Peter Boockver, who wisely looks at price inflation, first in services, and then in goods. In an interview with Real Vision’s Ed Harrison, Boockvar said, “When it comes to services, take out energy, so call it core services, over the last 20 years, it's averaged an annual gain of 2.7%.”
