The Grasshopper and the Ants - an Economic Lesson

Everything I needed to know about how an economy works came from watching this video as a kid:

"The world owes me a livin" chirps the grasshopper. He goes about consuming and leisure even as the ants produce and save. Then he discovers that he has been living deeper and deeper in debt and must find a marketable skill to make his own living.

What in the world does this video have to do with current affairs? It turns out, QUITE A BIT! The average American, and the US government itself, has been doing much more spending than saving (source). Now it's nearly the economic winter for the US dollar and Keynesian economists are convinced that the Fed's artificially low interest rates are here to stay.  But what happens when interest rates rise and productive countries no longer want to exchange their raw materials and manufactured goods for US fiat currency?

Black Friday and the National Debt

On Black Friday this year, Americans bought 9% more stuff from other countries with fiat currency backed by nothing! The U.S. national debt has reached $51,700 per citizen... but try telling that to these eager shoppers!

Twinkie's Unemployed

The recession just got real for enriched wheat flour, sugar, corn syrup, niacin, water, high fructose corn syrup, vegetable and/or animal shortening – containing one or more of partially hydrogenated soybean, cottonseed and canola oil, and beef fat, dextrose, whole eggs, modified corn starch, cellulose gum, whey, leavenings (sodium acid pyrophosphate, baking soda, monocalcium phosphate), salt, cornstarch, corn flour, corn syrup, solids, mono and diglycerides, soy lecithin, polysorbate 60, dextrin, calcium caseinate, sodium stearoyl lactylate, wheat gluten, calcium sulphate, natural and artificial flavors, caramel color, yellow #5, and red #40) (source).

Halloween Candy and Social Security

How is Halloween candy different from Social Security? Halloween is a pyramid scheme that actually works because many more people are paying into it than drawing from it.

Two Party System Drones On

If you oppose drone strikes, that is to say the unmanned aerial military assaults of residential and business areas around the globe as the U.S. government sees fit, you cannot vote for Obomney 2012.

 

On issues like drone warfare, corporate cronyism, inflationary monetary policy via the Fed, the surveillance state, NDAA and PATRIOT, the drug war, and criminalizing whistle blowers, there is no debate between Obama and Romney.

The corporate duopoly works extremely hard to scare voters into "defensive voting." Rather than voting for a third party candidate or God forbid attempting to run as one, most Americans are corralled into electing the "least worst." Most informed progressives will cast a disillusioned vote for Obama and most principled conservatives will cast a disillusioned vote for Romney. Neither school of thought really gets what they want while Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms get exactly what they paid for.

Aint Nobody Got Time for That - Autotune Dance Remix

While Danny Ledonne has always liked Autotune remixes, this is the first one that made him get up and dance!

Quantitative Easing Forever

With the Federal Reserve pledging to buy $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities per month for the indefinite future and a pledge to keep short-term interest rates near zero into 2015 (source), the film may as well be called:

"Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke evidently thinks that driving up the stock market will quicken the animal spirits of the affluent 20 percent who own 93 percent of equities, and this “wealth effect” will spur economic activity, eventually benefiting others. So, the interest rates Barack Obama favors are a form of the trickle-down economics he execrates." - George F. Will (source)