Wolf Richter

Inflation As Solution: Hosing The Middle Class

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The FOMC’s often and clearly stated policy of creating sufficient inflation has been effective: up 36% from January 2000. But there are victims: the middle class and ultimately the economy.

France Simmers In Its Own Juices, Germany Frets

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“We’re not doing this for the Greeks, but for us,” said Angela Merkel amidst a cacophony of doomsday scenarios. It’s all about propping up German banks and exporters. For the French, however, the European debt crisis doesn’t seem to exist.

Tokyo Tidbit: Pandemic Honesty At The Street Level

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A worker was sorting garbage at a garbage disposal facility, when he found a bag with 10,000-yen bills. He promptly took it to the police. When they got through counting, they had about ¥10,000,000 ($131,000) stacked in front of them. Alas, the honest worker won’t ever get any of it.

Obama to EU: Get Your S__t Together; Got An Election Next Year

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The White House is lobbying European governments to shut up and do something. No more disputes in public. No more disagreements over fundamental issues. The world is collapsing, and it’s time to act boldly. Hank Paulson’s extortion racket is back.

Cubilose Business: Poisonous Blood Nests Still A Delicacy in China

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All heck broke loose in China when Zhejiang’s Provincial Administration announced that 30,000 blood nests, the rarest and most expensive bird’s nest, contained high concentrations of sodium nitrite. They’d all been imported from Malaysia. And it opened the door to a huge scandal.

How Long Can Japan Play The Endgame?

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The Japanese quagmire has been getting deeper for years, but now the unique factors that supported its catastrophic indebtedness have reversed. And the endgame has started.

Country of the Setting Sun.

Cutting The Deficit: A Bipartisan Joke

by Wolf Richter •  • 6 Comments

President Obama’s proposal to cut the deficit by x trillion dollars is another punch line in the serial joke that our political machinery has been telling us for too long: that deficits will be “cut” in ten years, while the opposite (the jobs bill, for example) is needed immediately.

The scary graph of our gross national debt will look even scarier.

Tokyo Tidbit: Oldest Nation Sets New Record

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Today is a national holiday in Japan: “Respect for the Aged Day.” That’s why the Ministry of Health released a slew of age-related statistics. Most astounding: the huge number of centenarians. And just how healthy they still are.

Bailout Rebellion in Germany Heats Up

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Geithner gets smacked down, and Germany might be threatened by a populist movement to exit the E.U. For the first time ever, a clear majority of Germans no longer sees any benefits to being part of the Eurozone. And two-thirds reject aiding Greece and other heavily indebted countries.

Tokyo Tidbit: Still Doing That? But Not Only Japan

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Many Japanese don’t understand why it’s still being done when most of the world opposes it. Yet it’s still being done: Japanese whalers caught 195 whales under a “research” program. But other countries do it, too. Yup, even us.