Sunday, November 11, 2012

Zen Riffs on Fiscal Cliffs


And Rubaiyats for Policy Oafs.

Whitney Tilson says: ‘I Love the Fiscal Cliff’ ...

and Warren Mosler responds with a haiku.

"A bit of equal time for the Democrats,

as they join forces with the Republicans 
to hike unemployment and lower GDP,
with all forecasters in agreement."


["But I do thinks markets and the economy have already discounted at least most of it ... ."]


Yet Warren may be being both too kind, and unfailingly optimistic.  How on earth do you accurately discount the impact of rising unemployment & lower GDP? Those metrics signal rank uncertainty, not just [definable] risk.

We could easily have 3 factors in a perfect storm:

USA - fiscal cliff (paradigm cliff)
eurozone - fragmented ideology cliff (contained by the eurobozone layer? so far)
China - political cliff (just waiting on the next Honey Bo Bo stuffing Swiss bank accounts).

(Throw in India? A massive cow just sitting in the road, blocking traffic in both directions?)

Seems like it's anyone's game to throw. It all depends on who's throwing whom under what, where.  Truly, never have so few tried to throw so many, for so little.

Maybe an Omar Khayyám political party is appropriate? Might be attractive to many. :)

Here's a modern Rubaiyat for politics.
'A Whining electorate, some Policy Oafs, and "ow!" - did anyone get the license plate of that truck?'

[Orthodox economists will someday discuss this as a chicken & egg dilemma. Did we collectively sit ourselves in the road, or did some Innocent Frauds throw us under the truck they owned? Is there any operational difference?  Given an entirely unpredictable survival path, is orthodoxy entirely academic by definition? Always a leverage late and a paradigm short?]

1 comment:

googleheim said...

Crisis in Syria is about Qatar vying for a pipeline from Qatar to Turkey instead of one from Iran/Iraq.

Both pipelines would have to travel through Syria.

Arab spring is about feeding Europe more gas to unseat the Russian monopoly of supply.

So Germany uses Greece as a scapegoat as well as Austerity as the method to dehyrate the liquidity out of all surrounding economies in North Africa and Turkey.

This is all Geopolitical "back door" MMT used by the powers that be.

The austerity is intentional for creative destruction both here and there.

The fiscal cliff is just another muse and smoke screen. Why should anyone care about Syria given the fiscal cliff ?

Why is Qatar spending 8 billion in Syria on rebels ?

Sunni pipeline or Shiite pipeline ?

That is the question ...