The cause of our suffering: too much saving?

Today's post is published over at Simply Capitalism.

I hope you'll check it out.

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1000 times

xkcd does it again.

If you want to see what what a million looks like compared to a billion (and a trillion) look here.

(KJ--Thanks for the reminder of this webcomic)

What Constitutes Perpetual Debt?

"I place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt."

--Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)

Our national debt is now calculated to be 11 trillion dollars ($11,000,000,000,000.)

Are we there yet?

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Please ignore the Man behind the curtain

Great article today in WSJ:

"The Real AIG Outrage"

"President Obama joined yesterday in the clamor of outrage at AIG for paying some $165 million in contractually obligated employee bonuses" which is peanuts compared to the $173 billion "to fund the government's AIG "rescue." This federal takeover, never approved by AIG shareholders, uses the firm as a conduit to bail out other institutions...Since September 16, AIG has sent $120 billion in cash, collateral and other payouts to banks, municipal governments and other derivative counterparties around the world. This includes at least $20 billion to European banks.

The Beltway crowd has been selling the story that AIG failed because it operated in a shadowy unregulated world and cleverly exploited gaps among Washington overseers...Scott Polakoff, acting director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, told the Senate Banking Committee this month that, contrary to media myth, AIG's infamous Financial Products unit did not slip through the regulatory cracks. Mr. Polakoff said that the whole of AIG, including this unit, was regulated by his agency and by a "college" of global bureaucrats."

And from Fox/Business: "Amid AIG Furor, Dodd Tries to Undo Bonus Protections in the 'Dodd Amendment' Rules"

"Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) on Monday night floated the idea of taxing American International Group (AIG: 0.95, 0.1699, 21.78%) bonus recipients so the government could recoup some or all of the $450 million the company is paying to employees in its financial products unit...While the Senate was constructing the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. The provision, now called “the Dodd Amendment” by the Obama Administration provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009” -- which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are now seeking to tax."

Laissez-Failure---Not

"If you bound the arms and legs of gold-medal swimmer Michael Phelps, weighed him down with chains, threw him in a pool and he sank, you wouldn't call it a 'failure of swimming.' So, when markets have been weighted down by inept and excessive regulation, why call this a 'failure of capitalism'?"

George Mason University professor Peter Boettke, quoted by Eamonn Butler in "Believers in Free Markets are Fighting Back"