Economists are trimming their growth forecasts

Heard this on the radio this morning as I’m dragging myself out of bed.

I heard it on the Bloomberg Business news station.

Bloomberg Radio is one of four stations I get on my suck ass radio. I get B.I.N. (the Black Information Network). I get a Spanish language station. I get a Chinese language station. What’s that, four? Oh, yeah, I get five. I get a station all about Trump and Trumpism…this last one I tune in mainly for the HATE. There’s plenty of hate to go around but sometimes you need a extra added boost of HATE. Like ghost hot sauce on a chili burger. You hear what I’m saying?

former spreader of righteous hate Rush Limbaugh

I listen to the Black Information Station quite a lot, actually. Even though hearing about Beyoncé’s fashion line or the Rapper Young Thug’s legal troubles are not subjects I really give a shit about. I am a Black-Minded kind of guy, however. Meaning, I’m on the bottom looking up and I know it. I like it that Black People have their own station. White People have the Trumpish Station of Hate….and most of the other stations, too. So it’s nice that Blacks get at least one station all to themselves….

Bloomberg Radio is the world’s only global 24-hour business radio station. I’m sure you know this. I know this because I just looked it up. Bloomberg Radio is all about the world of Business. Meaning Capitalism. Communist Ideology is not discussed on Bloomberg Radio. Socialism they figure is the same as Communism, although anybody with a brain knows it’s not.

The people on Bloomberg radio are either Bullish or Bearish.

Lately and for quite some time now nobody on Bloomberg Radio has been truly Bullish.

The experts interviewed on Bloomberg Radio espouse a reserved optimism…a kind of pretend Bullishness. Their upbeat pronouncements carry the tone of wish fulfillment…everybody is Bullish on being Bullish. Yet they sense something is not right. They sense, like a deer senses a lurking wolf, the approach of a threat to their survival.

They talk about the economy like a Cancer patient talks about remission. “Yes, I’m in remission. That’s good. That’s really good. Does that mean I’m cancer free? Well, yes, I’m in remission.” Meanwhile the hard part of their brain is saying, “ONE TO FIVE YEARS…AND KISS YOUR ASS GOODBYE.”

These Bloomberg Experts. They don’t know how far around the corner the next crash is. Only that it’s LOOMING…or maybe not?

They never use the word DEPRESSION.

Meanwhile the Economists are trimming their growth forecasts.

Saturday 27 May 2023

Another day of living on the edge.

The edge of hard times.

I’m thinking of the father of Economics.

Why am I thinking about the Father of Economics? Because I’m thinking about the looming hard times and one of the few things I know about the Economy with any confidence is who more or less invented what we know today as the study of Economics.

Adam Smith

This is Adam Smith’s mother. There are no decent portrayals of Adam Smith. But he looked just like his mother. Simply imagine Adam Smith’s mother dressed in men’s clothing of the 18th century and you have Adam Smith.

George Stigler attributes to Smith “the most important substantive proposition in all of economics”. It is that, under competition, owners of resources (for example labour, land, and capital) will use them most profitably, resulting in an equal rate of return in equilibrium for all uses, adjusted for apparent differences arising from such factors as training, trust, hardship, and unemployment.^[109]

wikipedia

Simply put, this means everybody out there is looking for the best deal they can get.

The other big notion he had was this:

 laissez faire (“to leave alone”) economics. This is the idea that government should leave the economy alone and not interfere with the “natural course” of free markets and free trade.

Some know-it-all

This means you don’t fuck with the Money Makers and their MONEY.

This is pretty much where we are today.

Even communist countries like China like this idea.

Back a few years. A hundred and fifty or more years up until even say fifty years ago we practiced a competing idea. The idea that maybe Government ought to have a hand in curbing the business world’s more rapacious instincts. We did it with welfare programs, regulations, etc…and in some countries, like Russia, we simply took over the reins of production.

This competing idea was proposed by another great thinker in the realm of Economics.

Karl Marx

This is what he really looked like

Marxian economics is a school of economic thought based on the work of 19th-century economist and philosopher Karl Marx. Marxian economics, or Marxist economics, focuses on the role of labor in the development of an economy and is critical of the classical approach to wages and productivity developed by Adam Smith.

investopedia.com

What this means, in simple terms, is Marx believed workers get screwed while the Entrepreneurs (money makers) do the screwing. Marx took the side of the workers…those of us getting screwed.

The Proletariat

Marx figured most countries would sooner or later develop free market capitalism. Adam Smith style. Meaning, Money Makers divide the Pie, while Working Stiffs get the crumbs. Sooner or later, the Factory Workers (he called them the Proletariat) would realize they’re getting screwed. Living like rats while the Entrepreneurs roll by in limo’s. This disparity get’s wider and wider. Finally the workers rise up and seize the reigns of production. Meaning they invent Communism.

Workers of the world, unite!

This was his prediction.

It kind of happened here and there. In Russia. And here in Cuba and Nicaragua. It was supposed to be a wave that swept the entire world. It took hold in mainly poor countries.

In Russia it came and went.

It’s still around in China. But in name only.

Does this mean Karl Marx was wrong while Adam Smith got it right?

Capitalism suffers periodic market upheavals while Communism is prey to dictators and stagnation

Communism had a early shot, failed miserably, and proved Marx wrong.

Capitalism suffers down turns about ever twenty years. And crashes every fifty or so years. This means we’re set for the mild recession the Bloomberg news keeps dancing around. But with global warming and wars and starvation–these crashes will only get worse.

Until…Marx gets it right again.

So all he needs to do is hang in his grave a while longer.

He’ll be a hero before you know it.

This pretty much covers everything I know about economics in a nut’s shell. If you reading this because you hope to learn something, I suggest you do a deep dive into WEALTH OF NATIONS by Adam Smith and DAS CAPITOL by Karl Marx. Toss in the works of John Maynard Keynes, the hero of the Left, and Milton Friedman, the hero of the right.

Maybe you think personality effects a world view. Keynes was British prep school trained. A member of the Bloomsbury Group…infamous Liberals. He Indulged in homosexual affairs with his preppy pals before playing it straight and marrying a Russian Ballerina. Friedman was five feet tall with a chip on his shoulder. Enough said…

I’m a free market guy.

Me, I’m all for free markets. Against taxing hustlers to support deadbeats. I like making money the easy way. Through weasel deals and selling worthless shit. I like giving fair deals but when that’s not possible I’ll trade morality for a sack of cash.

I did it that way for close to forty years.

I made a shit load of money selling replacement windows. Before that I mostly scammed people with worthless shit…gigs too numerous to list.

Nowadays I’m a Proletariat.

What happened, I got old.

My Window Company owner went insane.

The business hit the skids. I’m still driving the company car. But the deals dried up. I found myself without a source of income. I could’ve hustled myself another sales gig. But I can’t seem to muster to energy for it anymore.

I lost my scammer’s mojo.

So I clipped myself a side hustle.

A internet portal gig. I’m not selling worthless shit anymore. I’m giving away some good booze.

This is the Computer Age idea of a factory worker.

No benefits. No safety net. A straight salary down loaded into your bank account. You bust your ass or you don’t. They don’t seem to care. They care that you show up and cover your ass with photographs. Make sure you work the portal properly. You are a cog in a money generating wheel. Nothing more.

This gig pays me 25 bucks an hour before taxes. About what they pay workers at In-An-Out Burger. Except I think the burger flippers get benefits. Well…good for them.

I’m now a low level wage earner. A member of the Proletariat.

Actually, I could be a lumpenproletariat.

Marx came up with this term to describe the class of good-for-nothings.

Generally unemployable people who make no positive contribution to an economy. Sometimes described as the bottom layer of a capitalist society. May include criminal and mentally unstable people. Some activists consider them “most radical” because they are “most exploited,” but they are un-organizable and more likely to act as paid agents than to have any progressive role in class struggle.

The Communist Party USA 

Criminals, Artist, Pornographers, Drug dealers, future Abortionists, Whores, Underground Bloggers…all those at the very bottom who basically sponge off the grid…and that certainly includes NOMADS. A group I will soon be joining.

Wait a minute!

I’m not exactly un-organizable.

“Workers of the World Unite!”

Does that sound like me?

I guess I am un-organizable. I don’t really give a shit. The world’s going to hell and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. Best to look out for number one. And your dog…and maybe the cat.

This doesn’t mean I believe in the Zombie Apocalypse.

That’s Science Fiction.

A gruesome fairy tale.

Or is it?