Thursday, November 2, 2017

On the American economy

This article by Joseph Stiglitz discusses the problems facing the American economy.  It is well worth a read.  The way the game is setup and is being played, it leads to tremendous amounts of wealth and power concentrated in the hands of a few and the trend is getting worse with time.  While the net worth of the richest folks is reaching new heights, so is the homeless population in many cities.

As has been said, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  A number of the symptoms that we see like astronomically rising prices of medical care and education are due to the abuse of such concentrated power.

A lot of the imbalances in the stocks and real-estate are due to monetary policy.  Instead of focusing on building good products, corporations are focused on making a quick buck and using cheap access to money to get bigger via various financial engineering schemes and drive their competitors out of business using pricing.  I have noticed this to be true in all areas of the economy -- automobiles, appliances, apparel, hospitality -- you name it.  It's the reason why an ex-stalwart like Kodak stops innovating in photography and instead floats a cryptocurrency of all things.

Here are some interesting charts from the WSJ since the financial crisis of 2008.

A few interesting stories: