What is the post-FIRE economy?

[BiscayneSunrise]

Re: What is the post-FIRE economy?

Yes, it will be lackluster, but it will not be the same, because the govt’s part in it will be much bigger. All these discussions bouncing between inflation and deflation are missing yet another major –ation: regulation. We will regulate all the problems into submission. Right now we are printing money like there is no tomorrow, but the moment anything poses an inflationary threat, it will be regulated and price controlled.

but the energy price control and rationing will keep the energy market in the right place. So no inflation there either.

And no profit allowed either, I fear.

[medved]

Re: What is the post-FIRE economy?

And no profit allowed either, I fear.

Which is one of the reasons to invest in commodities rather than in related companies. The companies will be held by the balls while the commodities' prices will go up.

[petertribo]

Re: What is the post-FIRE economy?

When you read “1984” by George Orwell, you can consider it a parody, but I read it in a bad Samizdat copy in 1984 back in the former USSR.

I have highlighted the word Samizdat because it is my understaning that it was in part Samizdat that led to the fall of the Soviet Union.

I understand Samizdat to have been an underground press or communciation system. And, in a larger sense, the people's reaction to an oppressive government. (I realize these ideas may be tainted by being received through the Western press.)

I have been wondering for a long time if the INTERNET with its alternative media may not be a Wild Card in the current Disaster. As someone who over the years always sought out the alternative press, mostly through magazines and books, I find now an explosion of the alternative press. It would have taken months years ago to learn the things I do now almost instantaneously. (I do also realize that the INTERNET may be severely censored or taken over through taxes, user fees and conglomeration, like the MSM has been.)

If they fail to shut down the INTERNET, I think there is a real possibility of an Alternative Economy developing. The communication system will be there to do it. (By Alternative generally I mean small, local, not financed through the FIRE Crooks and hopefully competing with the businesses FIRE finances. An example, small, local restaurants against the Fast Food Mob.)

It seems to me they have made a number of miscalculations so far, as many Regimes do, so they may also have miscalculated about people's alternatives. I am reminded of Prohibition where there was massive civil disobedience and disrespect and resistance. Maybe we can do it again but this time over something more consequential than being able to get some booze.

****

I saw a movie a while back about the STASI. The review itself is very interesting showing a lot of commonality with American attitudes and actions:

BERLIN -- A new movie that has grabbed this country by the throat depicts the ways in which East Germany's Ministry for State Security, or Stasi, infiltrated and subverted the lives of ordinary people, long a touchy issue in the once-divided land.

In a peculiar coincidence, the release of the film has come just as former Stasi officers are waging an aggressive campaign to shed their image as brainwashing torturers who infiltrated every aspect of East German life.

The film ``Das Leben der Anderen" -- ``The Lives of Others" -- has triggered what some call the first debate in the reunified nation about the realities of the communist regime, a Soviet satellite state that came into being in 1949 and collapsed with the Berlin Wall four decades later.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/eur...bate_on_stasi/

Just like East Germany, we should just "move on" and not talk about the War Crimes, Torture, Assasinations, Illegal wars. The Massive Financial Crime Wave sort of pales by comparison. No one was really responsible for any of this, it just happened.

[don]

Re: What is the post-FIRE economy?

March 24, 2009, 9:19 am Geithner Expected to Seek New Powers for Treasury

When he goes before a Congressional panel Tuesday morning, Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, is expected to call for the Treasury Department to be granted greater powers to seize troubled financial institutions that aren’t banks.

“The United States government does not have the legal means today to manage the orderly restructuring of a large, complex nonbank financial institution that poses a threat to the stability of our financial system,” Mr. Geithner said in text of his opening statement, which was made available Tuesday morning on the Web site of the House Financial Services Committee.

This expanded authority would have given the government more options, and potentially more control, when it stepped in to save American International Group from collapse last fall, Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for the White House, said Tuesday morning before the hearing.

“If the Treasury had resolution authority on A.I.G. you wouldn’t have to put it into bankruptcy to change executive compensation, you could do that automatically,” Mr. Gibbs said on CNN.

“This isn’t anything crazy,” he added. “This is exactly what the Treasury Department needs to deal with things like A.I.G.”

Earlier this month, A.I.G. paid $165 million in bonuses to employees of the same unit that brought the company to the brink of failure and forced a government bailout that has cost $182 billion so far. The bonuses caused a public uproar over how the federal rescue of A.I.G. was being handled.

A.I.G., an insurance conglomerate, has said the bonus agreements were contracts drawn up before the government bailout that couldn’t be broken.

In his opening statement, Mr. Geithner calls for the Treasury Department to have the kind of tools for winding down nonbanks, such as A.I.G., that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has to seize failed banks.

A change in the Treasury Department’s authority would need to be approved by Congress.

Mr. Geithner has recently faced sharp criticism from some lawmakers. But the markets surged Monday after he disclosed more details of a plan to deal with toxic financial assets. That vote of confidence may aid him as he seeks support for new powers.

Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, is also scheduled to testify at Tuesday’s hearing on A.I.G.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...CZ0&refer=home
http://www.reuters.com/article/priva...32649820090324

;)

[occdude]

Re: What is the post-FIRE economy?

Many a true word is spoken in jest. The line between parody and reality is not set in stone.

Perception of reality depends on personal experience and historical perspective. My personal experience is full of real examples you would consider “a bad joke”. When you read “1984” by George Orwell, you can consider it a parody, but I read it in a bad Samizdat copy in 1984 back in the former USSR. It did not feel like a parody to me. No more than a theory feels like a parody of the reality.

My view of the recent history (say, the last 200 years) was first formed by marxist brainwashing. Then, I made some effort to recover from it, and I am still in the process.

When I try to guess what will post-FIRE economy look like, I always come to the same conclusion: no purely “macroeconomical” analysis gives us a chance to guess it right. The coming change will be highly political. We will have a very different political system pretending nothing has changed. Just like pretending post-FED and post-FDR USA is the same as before them.

In short (and I am serious), regulation will play a major role post-FIRE. The gov’t will have much more (and constantly growing) regulating power. Some people are really happy and excited about it. I am not.

I'm not excited about regulation or government power, I know ultimately it will fail as it always does. I look at the government as being a bunch of incompetent boobs that have a hard time finding their rear ends without a step by step guide. The whole point is, if your give the government more power to regulate, it doesn't matter because they wont be able to efficiently enforce it (thank god) and they move in such a slow, innefficient manner its like dodging an oil tanker if your in a speed boat.

The more capricious the government gets, the more resentful the populace gets until the thing that supports Leviathan actual works to dismantle it.

The truth is no body can get you to do anything you dont want to do. They can come up with regulations at the speed of light, but if you don't have near total enforcement capability by a willing public in overwhelming numbers then it's doomed to fail eventually and if you do have that much support by the public then its not exactly authoritarian.

I dont believe it's in the nature of human beings to have a foot placed on their neck by a jackboot government official. I think they tolerate it to a point but, when the rulers over step their bounds that foot is thrown off. People need to have a little faith in their own collective self interest which is best served by liberty. Liberty isn't necessarily nice and gentle in fact in a society with freedom you have alot of disparity due to different people being allowed different outcomes according to their actions and fates.

Americans have a tradition of liberty. I believe if liberty gets trampled too much, you'll see serious successionist movements. The country will split up. You can't put down a tradition of liberty so easily no matter how much government force is employed take a look at Iraq and our attempt at gentrification for an example of total government control "American style".

Short term (next decade or so) you'll see the governments attempt at control, price control etc. until someone realizes were American capitalists again. As long as there isn't a war we'll be ok. The following decade to that will be much better.


PS: no insult meant but if I new your were Russian, I would have given you an allowance for a dry sense of humor. I know many Russians and we talk all the time and I feel like throwing myself off a bridge after we talk, so I get it.

[petertribo]

Re: What is the post-FIRE economy?

March 24, 2009, 9:19 am Geithner Expected to Seek New Powers for Treasury

A change in the Treasury Department’s authority would need to be approved by Congress.

That should be a Thread by itself. They are moving very fast. The story on it I read really puts extreme powers on the table.

I would imagine seizing ailing Hedge Funds of the rich and then just pumping $$$ into them to bail out the Influential. Just that for starters. And then, of course, seizing the funds of anyone opposing your policies. Looks like fellows like Keiser, Rogers and Bonner were smart to get outa Dodge.

[don]

Re: What is the post-FIRE economy?

That should be a Thread by itself. They are moving very fast. The story on it I read really puts extreme powers on the table.

I would imagine seizing ailing Hedge Funds of the rich and then just pumping $$$ into them to bail out the Influential. Just that for starters. And then, of course, seizing the funds of anyone opposing your policies. Looks like fellows like Keiser, Rogers and Bonner were smart to get outa Dodge.

We have seen the future...today.