Interesting Economic Tidbits

Dollars & Sense posted some interesting links (many from the Financial Times, it would appear) on their blog including:

  • The double digit annualized GDP falls in Japan and Latvia.  Other parts of Asia don't look very healthy either.
  • The health and economic cost of the increasing obesity epidemic in Mexico (MY NOTE: spurred by all of our subsidies to corn production.)
  • Several analyses of the new financial stabilization plan announced yesterday.  D&S summarized with:
This is simply unbelievable: assets worth virtually nothing because
they consisted of much less than their hyper-excessive leverage
multiples are to be peddled to the very same sort of investors who have
just been burned by these things, simply because the leverage is now to
be put up by uncomplaining (not to mention increasingly skint)
taxpayers and foreign investors, and not the banks. And this in an
attempt to make a transition to a less-leveraged system! It's no
surprise that nobody seems to be buying it.

All together, the
proposals put forward today could amount to nearly $3 trillion. And
everyone except the administration seems to believe that won't be
nearly enough.

You should read the article yourself.

Leave a Reply