"Indeed, economies and markets no longer face liquidity problems, but rather credit and insolvency crises."
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2013 Recession is Coming, No Matter Your Fiscal Contortions
I’ve been saying it all year — LIVE IT UP IN 2012 — this is gonna be a great year compared to 2013! Here’s one take CBO warns of U.S. falling off ‘fiscal cliff’, but it doesn’t come anywhere near to a full discussion of the state of the U.S. economy.
IS ANYONE TRACKING HOW MUCH OF THE 2012 ECONOMY CAN BE TRACED DIRECTLY TO ADVANCE CONSTRUCTION STARTS FUNDED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT?
IS ANYONE TRACKING HOW MUCH OF THE 2012 ECONOMY CAN BE TRACED DIRECTLY TO MILITARY SPENDING AND INVESTMENT IN THE ENERGY INDUSTRY AND IN COORDINATION WITH THE ENERGY DEPARTMENT?
Tim Geithner: “We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to our long-term problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours.”
"When Obama proposed the [Buffet Rule] he declared it “could raise enough money” to “stabilize our debt and deficits for the next decade.” The Obama Treasury’s own numbers confirm that the tax would raise at most $5 billion a year—or less than 0.5% of the $1.2 trillion fiscal 2012 budget deficit and over the next decade a mere 0.1% of the $45.43 trillion the federal government will spend."
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The Obama Rule
He says taxation is about fairness, not growth or revenue.
Korea, Japan & Taiwan = True Cause of US-China Trade Imbalance
There are plenty of misguided reasons why media and politicians love calling China a “currency manipulator,” but Bloomberg makes a shrewd observation and points out that much of the trade imbalance (aka, China’s trade surplus) is the the result of Asia’s value-add bottleneck:
Processing exports (those with a high import content, facilitated by low import tariffs) now account for about half of China’s trade volumes but are responsible for the entirety of its surplus. Eighty percent of the value added for these components, however, is sourced elsewhere.
This relationship is captured in the swelling trade surpluses of South Korea, Japan and Taiwan with China. Together, they rose from $30 billion in 2000 to more than $200 billion in 2010. In other words, China’s trade surplus with the U.S. originates largely from this North Asian trio.
When U.S. President Barack Obama welcomed Lee Myung Bak, his counterpart from South Korea, to Washington last year, he commented approvingly that South Korea’s trade with the U.S. was in balance — “as it should be.” What Obama should have done was congratulate Lee by noting that South Korea, along with several others, has been able to avoid U.S. criticism by hiding its trade surpluses behind the Great Wall of China. Don’t Blame China’s Currency for US Trade Deficit
