(10-01-2010, 05:22 AM)kandrathe Wrote: In 2000, I remember when I was pulling all my money out of the stock market that Google at $200/share is ludicrous.
Re: Google. Google is at $525. If you'd bought in 2000, at $200/share, you'd have made 10% a year - and that's buying at the top of the bubble, and selling after the worst crash since 1929. Not bad for "ludicrous."
Re: "Make work" worsening unemployment. This is nonsense because you're not at full employment. U3 is at 10%, and U6 is at 16%. The relatively small number of people who have been given "make work" jobs, as you characterize them, are irrelevant. If there were jobs available in the private sector, one of the 10 million or so unemployed would have filled them by now.
Re: Too good to be true. You seem very sure of your ability to pick out "too good to be true" from "economic growth". Google is a great example - is that too good to be true? Or just a company that did very well in a very hot market?
Re: The Iraq and Afghanistan wars... I think we can look to those who supported these crazy boondoggles on flimsy evidence as being responsible for that spending. If you're wondering what possible logic could convince the US to invade some hellhole halfway around the world, your old posts should all be archived somewhere.
Re: The Austrian business cycle. Austrian theory predicts a *sectoral* redistribution due to malinvestment (companies made too much investment in the wrong stuff, not enough in the right stuff). What we see instead is a *systemic* crisis - everyone loses, nobody wins. What people want is not different goods or services, but safe assets. Savings are flooding away from, not towards, capital goods, simultaneous with a *decrease* in consumer spending. What does that say? Well, it says that the Austrian story is wrong, and that what we need is something more like Minsky - herding causes bubbles, panic causes crisis, fear prevents recovery. And no, that is *not* what the Austrians said.
-Jester