Do you not remember my article here?
Remember, the unemployment rate in 1930 was 8.7%, a rate we've already exceeded. Just because we haven't hit the 1932 levels yet only means that we aren't 4 years into the New Depression yet.

Granted, things might not get that bad, but we don't know for certain yet. What we do know is that we are tracking the Great Depression very closely so far.

which means as long as the posts are well done, well cited, credible, based in statistical and economy reality, anything econ, labor, trade related is of interest.

Yesterday I tried to drum up some awareness that the "executive compensation" bill was an absolute hollow gesture (and still GOP corporate reps. are trying to kill even that!) and it really was surprising how little attention I could get to that topic. I mean just two months ago they were all about to lynch AIG executives. Now it's a yawn?

Sigh, so yeah, policy is assuredly appropriate here (although space the posts out, don't want a flood in a few days for ex. so other people's stuff is seen and read).

the biggest thing on EP is the promotion/demotion system to keep high quality content to the front page. but in terms of ratings and so on, it's used as a feedback to let people know we read their comment and we like it or whatever, but it's not like DK ...which can be used "as a weapon".
Be assured, you'll get readers.

I guess I"m the "policy/legislative" blogger on EP, some are more pure economics analysts, some finance and I have numerous posts on policy change, great ideas as I dig into them on here.

I'll have to get back to you but overall getting the focus on sound, good policy (we're not so partisan though, we're officially an "all things econ" site) is so needed!

Yesterday I watch "beer" and claims we don't need any financial regulatory reform because oopsy, our regulators "just missed it" and the actual regulatory laws, structures "aren't really a problem".

So, we have an out of sight, out of mind situation going on ...

While I am not as well versed in these issues, I have always been interested in seeing how gold, the main asset class that the US government does not want to see higher, acts during these volatile economic times. I do find it interesting that the volatility of the Gold Price
has declined so much this year. I guess it is just difficult to predict the short term movements and relationships of gold and currencies.

but I think it should be an independent diary on its own, because limiting cross-border capital flows strikes at the very heart of the economic neo-liberalism that has been the reigning economic paradigm for the past three decades. There is also this important in Johnson's article: The US has historically pushed the view that all capital controls are bad and should be abolished – in fact, this was a major international policy initiative of the Clinton administration, led in this regard by Messrs. Summers and Geithner (who both came up through the international side of Treasury).

Ian Walsh has some interesting things to say about US-China economic relations on his blog this past week:

The China Syndrome: what the current talks with China tell us about America’s situation

. . . . Both America and China did a stimulus.  China’s stimulus is already working.  It had 7.1% GDP growth.  The US is still mired in recession.

Why?  Two main reasons.

   * China did its stimulus right.  It wasn’t 40% bullshit tax cuts with almost no stimulative effect.
   * China, as a creditor rather than debtor nation with huge savings, can credibly be expected to continue its stimulus, while the US can’t.  

. . . . Americans also want the Chinese to move to greater domestic demand,, to open up the Chinese market to US investment (because American companies desperately want to be able to invest in a country with real growth prospects, rather than the US) and to start buying more US goods.  This requires letting the Chinese currency appreciate against the US dollars and is needed long run for American health.  But in the shorter term it leads to a fiscal crisis.  If America doesn’t want to increase taxes to pay for its own spending, how can China buy less treasuries and US assets and thus allow the Yuan to appreciate?  And why should they, when right now in exchange for money the Chinese can afford to lose and crappy consumer goods, the US is exporting its industrial base to China?  An industrial base is worth any price.  Americans, with their unwillingness to tax themselves, aren’t willing to pay for the American industrial base.  The Chinese are.

Why can’t we get a good healthcare bill?

Because the US is a debtor nation, and China isn’t willing to pay for Americans to have healthcare.  

 Walsh concludes that

. . . one side of the relationship is getting a lot more out of it than the other one and every year the Chinese need America less, and America needs China more.

And in a comment, Walsh writes;

Americans are going to find that the rest of the world is not willing to lend to them forever, just until they’ve extracted as much value as they can get and until the Chinese economy hits internal demand ignition.

At that point, the US gets to experience what the Russians did in the 90’s, but won’t handle it nearly as well.

I wrote a post, have a say on say on pay, which did get reasonable reads on EP, ...but the reality is the House Finance Services committee passed a "do nothing" bill which enables corporations, board of directors to completely ignore shareholders on their opinion of executive pay.

and even then, believe this or not, they are saying this very empty bill will not pass the Senate.

So...of course we had all sorts of outrage earlier over AIG bonuses....

but few are talking about real structural reforms on either executive compensation or corporate governance.

So....to drum up some public awareness, I decided to cross post some of this over at the big orange.

So....guess what? I didn't even get a "tip jar" hit and people didn't even address the topic at hand and the few comments talk about progressive personal tax structure!

So, HuffPo also had a couple of posts on this...and there too, only a few comments!

Meanwhile, all day long we've had nothing but what beer so and so is drinking and is hat PC or not? Oops, it's "foreign" beer and blah, blah...

and then I turn to CNBC to hear how we don't need any regulatory reforms, we have plenty and they just "missed this one".

AAARGGGHH!!! So, it's like we cannot get the public focus to even understand these issues, never mind adopt them is what I got out of today.

I mean how are we going to get the much needed policy reforms if first, you cannot even get anything out of a Democratic laden committee or people to even care...
never mind the GOP corporate bogus wall to try to kill any attempt to break up the financial oligarchy or at least makes these glorified feudal lords act more in the interests of the state.

In addition, this is TARP funds and some of these, Citigroup are being estimated to never repay this money...which means taxpayers just paid these bonuses, assuredly. BoA is still a possible as well.

From HuffPo:

Citigroup - $5.33 billion
BoA - $3.3 billion

oh yeah, that's pay based on performance....right o!

It's a fact based site, with both feet in economic theory and analysis. That's the difference.

I just put up a post on the Yuan peg to the dollar affecting the trade deficit. This is, in fact, a major "conservative" issue...it is the paleo-conservatives esp. who have jumped on the China peg to the dollar.....

I'm pointing to some facts, studies that show they are right...again, from some recent, very good analysis from those cats who are real economists and what their recent findings are.

Econ is a science. It's a soft science quite often but it is a science.

it's not a trivial post, in fact it's a dynamite analysis, firstly because it's extracting data indirectly and secondly...because you rarely see anyone correlating unemployment stats to the trade deficit.

Blinder, yeah, this is what I mean why we have to be able to read the mathematics, be critical readers of Academic research/papers/studies and take each one on it's own merits.

Some of the assumptions, flaws, mistakes are so glaringly obvious, but you can only see them by reading the actual paper.

This is especially true of think tank "studies" and of course those "studies" go flying onto Congressional Staffers desks and then, of course, those staffers don't have time to read them, they simply take those "conclusions" as fact, when the paper itself is so flawed you scream how in God's name did this person get awarded a PhD????

At least that's what I say to myself.