"The Catastrophist View"

"The Catastrophist View": an argument for deep pessimism about the U.S. economy. Focuses on housing, derivatives, consumers, and the dollar.

There is, of course, another side, a side that for now I choose to believe, but there's food for thought here.

Comments

[JorgXMcKie]

I didn't have time (yet) to read all of it, but actually, I blame Bush. His tax cuts have obviously driven the nation into a giant ditch from which we can never return. We'll just have to adapt to being poor, poor, poor. And the dollar is worthless, and global warming will cause the return of the Inland Sea and it's all Bush's fault. If you just look at the data I link to you'll see that every time we've had a Republican president we have returned to a pre-Industrial Dark Age of a few rich fatcats and billions of starving imporverished workers. Only the occasional election of a Democrat to the presidency (during which periods Happy Days Truly Are Here Again [please pay no attention to the data from 1933-1941 or 1977-80 when noticing the Happy Days phenomenon]) has saved us from permanent impoverishment, and then only becuase they raised taxes on rich people (i.e. anyone making more than what I think makes you rich -- currently $50,000). /cactus off

[david foster]

I just skimmed the article, but it doesn't look like he mentioned the fact that cheaper dollar=more exports.

Also, his when he says: "Given that we as Americans don’t manufacture that much anymore, " he is taking as a given something that should have been researched. A recent study puts US share of world manufacturing output at 25%, over twice that of China. Even if there are measurement issues with the study, US manufacturing is far from trivial.
http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_photoncourier_archive.html#8398186398533995155