Ideas for Change Archive

Federal Reserve's Great Recovery Rewind is reducing reserves banks hold as protection against runs.

Just when you have figured out what you’re going to write about at the start of day, along comes major morning news that sweeps your plans away. Today, the news changed more quickly than I could write the introduction to this article. I had to rewrite it and the headline several times after I published the article!

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MN Gordon: The Backstory on Our California Exodus

Posted September 5, 2022 By David Haggith
Katelynn & Jordan Hewlett, AP, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Along the 32nd parallel, in San Diego, where the western march of America’s manifest destiny collides with the Pacific Ocean, the sunsets are always perfect. The view from the coast here is due west.  It is also south of the Channel Islands.  The setting is completely unobstructed. Reds, yellows, oranges, purples, and pinks radiate out […]

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Farmer in despair over Great Depression in 1932.

You cannot grow a turnip in a pile of dollar bills unless you let them rot first. Depending on the road the Fed takes, that could become the dollar’s highest value and the best the Fed can do to reduce food shortages. Whether the dollar decays depends, in good part, on whether the Fed chooses […]

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The following is a comment I found on Zero Hedge. It says almost exactly what I would do with the stock market as the kind of REAL corrective action that needs to happen to fix the flaws in our economy, some of which I wrote about in my book Downtime.

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US in Longterm Economic Decline

Posted August 11, 2020 By David Haggith

Measured by the common man (or common girl), we’re on the road to ruin. The US has been in decline for decades, but you can’t see that by looking at stocks. You can’t tell it from those who lie about the economy to make their living, but look at longterm real numbers, and you see […]

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You Could Get Mad as Hell and Just Not Take This Anymore!

Posted July 17, 2020 By David Haggith
Daily economic news to keep you "mad as hell"

It’s time to show you’re Fed up! Get mad as hell! Don’t take this any more! Scorch the earth with your rage! Yell from the rooftops! Stick your head out the window and scream! Fight the economic injustice that serves the rich! Kick political asses, and kick them hard! Don’t just whine, do something about […]

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Will a 2016 US recession be the next big one?

Public criticism of big businesses getting a bailout from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is working as effectively as boycotts to prevent abuse that appears designed into the program by lobbyists. Presented as a way to save employees of small businesses, devastated by state and federal coronavirus lockdowns, the program doled out loans to only 19% of […]

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Plane made of burning dollar bills symbolizes price inflation and the Fed moving to digital currency

Boeing is a prime example of bailouts going bonkers. It flew to the government’s fuel pumps fast like a jet plane to beg the government for relief on the basis that the airline industry was disproportionately hit by something no one could see coming.

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It’s not hard to figure out how to end the rinse-and-repeat cycles of financial destruction that I described in “The Bailout Bonanza is Back! (Pt 2: Hedge Hogs Demand More!).” It’s just hard to do politically because the people who are getting bailed out run the system.

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Zombie economists bring on US 2016 recession. (Photo by Charlie Llewellin (Flickr: Occupy Austin) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Dems will process you like a Cuisinart. Demonizing Democrats and reviling Republicans is as easy as shooting fish in a gun barrel. Democrats are so addicted to process, they can’t get anything done because they spend twenty years arguing about what to do, rather than doing it. That’s why they have caucuses, instead of primaries. […]

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I spend much time criticizing the outlandish economic foolishness I see throughout the global economy and especially in the US economy (because the US economy is the one I am familiar with as a direct participant). Those who criticize need to be able to offer solutions. I have real, sustainable economic recovery ideas, but I […]

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One Big Tip for Huge Economic Growth

Posted April 3, 2019 By David Haggith

The Fed’s surprise pivot away from any interest rate increases this year has boosted prices of stocks, high yield bonds and other risky assets in spite of nagging investor concerns about slowing global economic growth….. The quandary for the Fed is that easy monetary policy seems more effective in spurring asset values than it does in boosting […]

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