It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

First, it was the jobless recovery, where the economy was magically getting better due to the artificial increases in spending fueled by deficit currency devaluation and favoritist handout programs. Then it became the "job loss" recovery , when it became more obvious that the various handout programs and Kabuki Theater money printing and shuffling wasn't actually creating or even preserving any actual jobs. At some point, maybe, in the distant future, some astute historian can berate the current administrations and its other various socialist-leaning philosophical supporters with something akin to "it's all about the jobs, right, and those blithering morons just couldn't get the trivially simple concept into their empty fascist skulls". The American economy is not going to get "better" without jobs. On the upside, a healthy business and job environment does wonders to cure many economic ills; on the downside, every Democrat policy, thought, and...

I'm sure some people noticed; I've been on vacation for the last couple weeks, with spotty internet access. That, and the resurgence of playing a certain MMO has left me with less free time to allocate to blogging about the idiocies of the world. I have not, however, experienced a significant decline in opinions; and you can expect to see a few more posts shortly with possibly some travel observations and likely some political current events opinions. Just to be clear for my readers, though (since I'm getting enough followers to care about keeping people somewhat informed), this blog won't be a daily thing; if you want daily news recaps and commentary, there are several other excellent sources, some of which I myself follow ( LCR for political current events, CR for econ news, etc.). I'll keep posting sporadically, maybe a few times a week, on topics which interest me and/or philosophizing on how things should work in my idealized world. Hopefully that'll work...

For reference, this article paints a pretty clear picture about why I'll likely be leaving the [previously] Golden State in the next couple of years. I'm not sure what happens when a state fails, when the poverty-stricken, largely-illegal non-tax-paying masses overwhelm the legitimate legal residents, when the education system finally collapses under the weight of its own malaise and corruption, when the state finances finally collapse under the weight of decades of financial idiocy and irresponsibility, when the government cannot function any more... but I'm pretty sure I don't want to be living here when it happens. I think the best California can hope for at this point is a clean start, a purging of the entire broken horribly-failed experiment, a re-write of the state Constitution to include many more protections from the current state, actual enforcement of immigration laws, and a new competent government with minimal social unrest. On its current trajectory, thoug...

I've been giving this more thought recently, since pretty much nothing has been done to try to prevent future housing bubbles (indeed, the current administration/Congress has only done things to make the post-bubble recession worse). I've had thoughts on this previously, but these are my new, more fully-formed ideas, the up-to-date thoughts from my brain on this issue (until they get revised again). First, let's establish some guidelines. An affordable loan is one which is approximately no more than 4x your annual income, based on general loan guidelines. Second, we'll call a loan made to someone which brings their total outstanding loan balance for all existing loans at the time of the loan under 4x annual income a "qualified" loan. Third, for annual income, we're talking average of last 2 years reported gross income for tax purposes. Ok, so here's the thoughts: - No loan which is not "qualified" can be subsidized by the government, at all, ...

Today, the WSJ noted that in the aftermath of the Cash for Clunkers debacle, the auto industry is in turmoil, with sales declining precipitously after the artificially-created demand dried up, as would be expected from something which merely distorted the demand curve, rather than actually stimulating demand (like, for example, creating more jobs would). This is causing dealerships to struggle, distortions and inefficiencies rippling through the supply chains, and further economic damage. So to summarize, these are the entirely predictable results of this latest brain-dead handout scheme: - Waste billions in taxpayer dollars for no economic benefit - Create distortions in the auto manufacturing and supply by only giving handouts for buying certain types of cars, rewarding the manufacturers of those models disproportionally (with taxpayer dollars) - Compressing the demand curve, creating distortions in the industry which will lead to closed dealerships and suppliers, costing more jobs ...