Central Perk: 05/01/2014

sâmbătă, 31 mai 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Wine Country Conference II Videos: Stephanie Pomboy "Confessions of Ben Bernanke", Mebane Faber “Global Stock Valuations”

Posted: 31 May 2014 10:25 AM PDT

A second set of Wine Country Conference Speaker Presentation videos is now available.

This set features Stephanie Pomboy on the "Confessions of Ben Bernanke", Mebane Faber on "Global Stock Valuations", and panel a discussion with John Hussman, Mebane Faber, Stephanie Pomboy. The final set will be out next week.

This Year's Charity

As with last year, Wine Country Conference II was for charity. This year's cause was Autism. Many of the speakers donated all or part of their expense honorarium to the cause. I did as well, losing money, to put this event on.

Once again, John Hussman and the Hussman Foundation was amazingly generous. The foundation will match donations dollar for dollar, up to $50,000!

If you enjoy the videos (or even if you don't) please Make a Donation to the Autism Society.

Stephanie Pomboy "Confessions of Ben Bernanke"

Mebane Faber "Global Stock Valuations"

John Hussman, Mebane Faber, Stephanie Pomboy Panel Discussion

Here is a link to the first set of videos: Wine Country Conference II Videos: Introduction and Hussman on "A Very Mean Reversion"

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Reducing Carbon Pollution in Our Power Plants

Featured

Weekly Address: Reducing Carbon Pollution in Our Power Plants

In this week's address, President Obama discussed new actions by the Environmental Protection Agency to cut dangerous carbon pollution, a plan that builds on the efforts already taken by many states, cities and companies. These new commonsense guidelines to reduce carbon pollution from power plants were created with feedback from businesses, and state and local governments, and they would build a clean energy economy while reducing carbon pollution.

The President discussed this new plan from the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where he visited children whose asthma is aggravated by air pollution. As a parent, the President said he is dedicated to make sure our planet is cleaner and safer for future generations.

Click here to watch this week's Weekly Address.

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Balancing the Budget and the Trade Deficit is Easy: Return to Gold Standard

Posted: 30 May 2014 10:47 AM PDT

The Daily Ticker's Lauren Lyster conducted an interesting interview today with British Member of Parliament Kwasi Kwarteng on gold and balancing the budget.

To play the video, click on the preceding link.

Kwarteng is author of War and Gold, a Five-Hundred-Year History of Empires, Adventures, and Debt.

Kwarteng notes the historic stability under gold standards, specifically citing the 2008 financial crisis and national debt level as problems related to the Fed and printing paper money.

"The credit crunch, the credit bubble that preceded it, and the huge amounts of debt and deficits that we have are related to paper money," says Kwarteng.

Laruen asked "After the Fed has printed trillions of dollars, just to look at the past several years of expanding the money supply, how do you put the genie back in the bottle?"

"If the Chinese unilaterally declared that the renminbi would be pegged to gold it would essentially recreate the gold standard," responds Kwarteng.

Yet, Kwarteng admits that China's export policy likely precludes that from happening.

Missing the Boat on Trade

My one disagreement in an otherwise excellent discussion is that Kwarteng misses the boat on trade in a major way. He maintains that the UK cannot go back to the gold standard because of trade deficits. His take is governments need to balance budgets and increase exports first.

He has that point backwards. Trade deficits will not fix themselves. Competitive, beggar-thy-neighbor tactics would prevent that. And if the UK and US balanced their budgets, the pound and dollar would soar, and exports would drop.

In contrast, a return to the gold standard will not only fix deficit spending, but it will cure trade deficits in a flash.

That's what I mean by "easy". Certainly, the current political environment and the ensuing short-term pain would be anything but "easy".

The trade issue is extremely important. For a recap, please see Hugo Salinas Price and Michael Pettis on the Trade Imbalance Dilemma; Gold's Honest Discipline Revisited.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Seth's Blog : "But I might get rejected"

"But I might get rejected"

Indeed, you might.

You might get your hopes up only to find them dashed.

You might decide on where you want to go, and then not get there.

You might fall in love with a vision of the future and then discover it doesn't happen.

How much would that hurt? How much would it hurt to have those hopes, those decisions and that love turn out to be all for nothing?

Of course, it's not for nothing. In fact, those hopes, those decisions and that love is the foundation for a path worth pursuing. It's what makes us better.

This post was inspired by my new seminar. Sure, the odds are against you, but I think that's a lousy reason to avoid exploring something. "Will I get in?" is not nearly as good a question as, "Is it worth trying?"

Don't apply (to this or to anything else) just because you can, but yes, apply to something that matters to you, something worth dreaming about.

You might get rejected. So what?

Leap.

[I want to make an essential distinction here:

There's a huge difference between the internal cost of being rejected (you feel bad, you feel like a failure, you feel like a fraud), and the external cost.

The external cost might be the time you wasted working on something that didn't work. It might be that you offended someone by asking the wrong way, or by spamming, or by being selfish. And it might be that you wasted an opportunity by going for the longshot or the shortcut when you would have been better off settling in and succeeding in the long run.

This post is about the internal cost. It's so easy to talk ourselves into failure before it even shows up.]