Times are tough on Main Street. Still, cheap money flows to the top 1%, wherever they live. For example, the fall season for the art market has been solid. Foreign buyers can’t get enough unique pieces for their collections. The auction house Sotheby’s had its best night ever on Nov. 14, racking up $375 million in contemporary art sales.
While not to the level of contemporary sales, the impressionist market had sales of $244.5 million at Christie’s and $203 million at Sotheby’s.... (more)
The cultural elite routinely disdain reality TV as voyeuristic garbage being churned out for the unwashed masses. But this unwashed woman is a fan of a new subgenre of the category that has become a sensation: reality capitalism. That’s not what the subgenre calls itself, of course, but that’s what it amounts to.
A flood of reality shows now demonstrate the daily operation of capitalism through humor, personal interaction, down-to-earth explanations, and likeable people. The shows... (more)
I love these shows, I call them "Recession TV" because they all involve people selling all their stuff. I guarantee no one would watch any of these shows (despite their merits) if we were experiencing an economic boom. - Chris
Under a little-known loophole in current law, the U.S. Treasury could solve the annual budget crisis by minting two one-trillion-dollar platinum coins for deposit at the Federal Reserve.
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Residents in one Queens neighborhood are crying foul after they were written up for failing to clean up the city’s own mess. It is yet another new complication in life after Superstorm Sandy.
Rosanne and Joe Cavaliere are still trying to clean up from the hurricane.
They have branches through their roof, busted front windows, and, to add insult to injury, they recently received a citation notice from the city.
... (more)
SPRINGFIELD, MASS., December 5, 2012—Merriam-Webster Inc., America's leading dictionary publisher, has announced the Top Ten Words of the Year. Based on the volume of user lookups at Merriam-Webster.com, this list sheds light on topics and ideas that sparked the nation's interest in 2012.
Two words, socialism and capitalism, share the top spot due to discussion and debate around the presidential election. Socialism saw its largest lookup spikes during coverage of healthcare but al... (more)
A Holiday Special from http://econstories.tv
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CREDITS:
Executive Produced and Directed by John Papola
Produced by Lisa Versaci and Debra Davis
Written by John Papola, Adam Albright-Hanna and Jason Rink... (more)
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner made news last week by proposing to transfer the Congressional prerogative to raise the debt ceiling to the President. The change would essentially do away with the meaningless debt ceiling debates that have become ritual kabuki in Washington over the past few generations. Most Republicans have dismissed the proposal as a blatant executive power grab that will significantly weaken both the Congress and the minority party. While this is certainly true, Congress... (more)
When financial markets in the United States crash, so does the U.S. economy. Just remember what happened back in 2008. The financial markets crashed, the credit markets froze up, and suddenly the economy went into cardiac arrest. Well, there are very few things that could cause the financial markets to crash harder or farther than a derivatives panic. Sadly, most Americans don't even understand what derivatives are. Unlike stocks and bonds, a derivative is not an investment in anything real... (more)
Continuing our series of posts concerning the Republican Study Committee report on the problems of the copyright system and how to fix them (which it quickly retracted under industry pressure), today we're going to explore the second "myth" that author Derek Khanna helped debunk: that "copyright is free market capitalism at work." We've already cove... (more)
Few have an understanding of economics quite like Robert Reich. One would have to sift through the furthest regions of stupidity to find a consistent stream of falsehoods to match his publishing record. Recently, the public policy professor has unleashed a tirade of economic sophisms that, like a majority of modern day economic reasoning, appear to be correct on the first glance but are dreadfully wrong with each returning inspection.
In carrying on with his unrelenting soak-the-r... (more)
"Producing laws is not an easier problem than producing cars or food," says David Friedman, author, philosopher, and professor at Santa Clara University. "So if the government's incompetent to produce cars or food, why do you expect it to do a good job producing the legal system within which you are then going to produce the cars and the food?"
Winter is upon us, and that means digging out of our closets a whole variety of different kinds of shoes. There are insulated hiking boots, trail shoes, specialized hunting boots, waterproof shoes, and more.
Ah, the wonderful varieties provided for us by the marketplace!
Thank goodness government never did to shoes what it has done to education and health care. If it had, prices would be going up, instead of down, and we'd probably have only a handful of models for ... (more)
The unemployment rate for 19-24 year olds hasn't moved much since 2008, and the reality of the tight job market has fully dawned on the young people I've spoken with about this. They know that odds are against them and that it takes extra effort to make a go of it following college graduation. They are also aware that this represents a dramatic change from every decade since the end of World War II.
I recall that no one in my college graduating class worried about jobs. They wonde... (more)
Despite the breathless post-election "think pieces" that have drawn sweeping and deeply considered conclusions about the political drift of the country, at its core President Obama's re-election is easy to understand. He essentially promised millions of middle and working class voters that if he were to be re-elected, they would receive benefits paid for by the rich. You don't need to read a Time Magazine cover story to untangle this political strategy. Now that he has been given a seco... (more)
Two news items stress the necessity of hoarding and of doing it now.
A Nov. 5 headline on NBC Connecticut announced “N.Y. Man Charged in Gas Hoarding Case” and addressed an incident from the flood zone. “According to investigators, Yunus Latif… collected money from his neighbors, bought gas at a Valero station almost 80 miles away… and planned to bring it back to his neighborhood, where they had no power and gas.” In short, people were taking care of their own needs with their own... (more)
