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Economics and Investing:

KAF sent this from Newsweek: Making Sense of Stimulus Spending; How accurate is Obama's claim of 150,000 jobs "saved or created"?

Thanks to Douglas S. for sending the link to a lengthy speech by Dimitri Orlov: Definancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation. It is was a good and well-intentioned speech, overall, but there were elements that showed that Orlov still has a bit of residual Soviet Era collectivism that he needs to work out of his psyche. Oh, and by the way, I'm not giving up my well-provisioned bunker in an undisclosed location. (The Memsahib still jokes about doing a needlepoint that reads "Bunker, Sweet Bunker.")

From HPD: Why I Expect Serious Stagflation

Items from The Economatrix:

Fiat ("Fix It Again Tim) Money In Death Throes "He is also mistaken when he assumes that Bernanke & Co. still has one more chance. The chance they just blew was the last. We are witnessing the closing of the regime of irredeemable currency and irredeemable debt. We may not know how long its death throes will take, but there will be no other chance... ...Once the government makes the currency irredeemable, it puts itself in the position to curtail the rights and freedoms of the people as it sees fit. Constitutional government is effectively overthrown. Once the government usurps the public purse, its power becomes uncontrollable. Budget debate in Parliament or in Congress becomes an annual farce. Nothing stands in the way of unscrupulous politicians to undermine constitutional government."

How Much of Bank Earnings are Real? Two key quotes: "The best award for accounting abuse, however, goes to Goldman Sachs. By switching to calendar year from a fiscal year ending November, suddenly the credit losses of $780 million disappeared from both 2008 report and Q1 2009 report, nowhere to be seen in the future. Of course, this has driven the stock price way up, a perfect timing to dump more shares to the public as far as there are suckers out there." and, "I indicated how banks have used CDS to book fake earnings, now they have found another way to use CDS, even better than the accounting trick of negative basis trading. The unwinding of CDS contracts related to AIG led to huge gains for the major banks for Q1.... Most [of] these “profits” are actually coming from AIG, or our bailout money given by government to AIG, now being funneled through and then recorded as “earnings” by major banks during the unwinding process of CDS wild bets between AIG and major banks in past years. This is really a special time for capitalism; public taxpayer’s money suddenly becoming private earnings for banks. It is again time to pay more bonuses out to bankers for such a great creativity."

Schoon: Death Watch A couple of quotes: "We live in extraordinary times. Poised between the past and the future, never has the present been so uncertain. But, when certainty comes, it will be in the form of a scythe and ducking will be the only option." and, "No matter how respectable their appearance, the greatest enemies of society and freedom today are central banking and centralized government—the twin towers of monetary Mordor."

From John Galt in Fla.: The Four Horsemen of the Bond Market Apocalypse

JR Nyquist: Holding It Together "Today’s economic troubles are part of a larger unraveling. We do not hear much talk – in newspapers or TV – about this unraveling. People are still trying to be optimistic. ... What else can they do? They dare not admit that nuclear proliferation is ongoing, that war is inevitable. They dare not admit that time is running out, that our enemy is at the gates."

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