This week I attended a webinar sponsored by a major investment firm.  One of the company’s chief advisors, with 33 years of experience, gave his thoughts on where the world economy is right now and what might happen in 2012. I am certainly not an economist.  And not all economists are in agreement as to [...]

Until someone with some clout stands up and admits that our real problem is too much debt, and until we introduce policy to eliminate debt instead of simply refinancing it, it’s hard to imagine the global economy or our local housing market getting better any time soon.

The simple reality is that if We the People of the US want Medicare, in even a reformed and more efficient manner, we must find a way to pay for it. It will not be cheap. Raising income taxes on the “rich” is not enough. You have to go back and raise income taxes on the middle class, too. Oh, wait, that will be a drag on the economy and consumer spending. And in any event it will not be enough.

Today’s Keynesian economists have convinced boobus Americanus that the Great Depression was caused by the Federal Reserve being too tight with monetary policy and the Hoover administration not providing enough fiscal stimulus. Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama used this line of reasoning to ram through an $850 billion pork-laden stimulus package, as well as the purchase of $1.2 trillion of toxic mortgages by the Federal Reserve.

The only trouble is that this storyline is a complete sham.

The desire of every country is to somehow grow its way out of the current mess. And indeed that is the time-honored way for a country to heal itself. But let’s look at yet another equation to show why that might not be possible this time. It is yet another case of people wanting to believe six impossible things before breakfast.