A Christmas Dire Economic Post!
Well, I was in the holiday mood, if only for a moment.
This is a really interesting web site. It has a lot of wonderful pictures, cartoon and good number of scary economic graphs. Did I mention the good writing? You might hit the link and explore further.
James Pilant
So, how about you? I teach business law and every year I try to explain the value of prenuptial agreements. It’s a wasted effort. You can look out over the students and see that everyone of them is going to fall in love forever. It’s depressing. No one, it seems, expects to be left at the alter, but it happens.
Thus, wedding insurance exists. You could argue that I am mistaken and since this kind of insurance exists, people do have a genuine and intelligent skepticism about their relationships. It would be great if that were true, but the fact is, wedding insurance is more aimed at the mundane, illness and weather among other things. So, maybe you are planning nuptials and would like to consider the idea of wedding insurance.
Maybe you are absolutely, positively, completely sure you won’t get jilted but you could get the flu.
James Pilant
From CBS Money Watch –
A handful of insurance companies offer wedding insurance policies, including Traveler’s, Aon, and Fireman’s Fund. The Fireman’s wedding insurance policy, offered through the National Alliance of Special Event Planners, includes the “change of heart” coverage. A few caveats on that coverage for the jilted: the policy must be purchased by someone other than the bride and groom, and it must have been purchased at least four months before the planned wedding date. (Each of the three sites linked above have online calculators that will quickly spit out an estimated premium cost based on the particular level of coverage you want.)
Rortybomb has it right here. The Federal Reserve is rushing into to save the banks from their forclosure fiasco. I have blogged on this. I was expecting Congress to rush to the banks’ aid but apparently the Federal Reserve is going to beat them to it.
The banks, the forclosure industry, they never seem to lack for friends in all the right places. Have you noticed that? Where are the homeonwners’ friends? Where are our friends? Is the only value in this society cold hard cash?
Read this. It’s good writing.
James Pilant
via Rortybomb
Mark Thoma is a friend on Facebook. I am a regular visitor to his web site. I found this video on You Tube in which he expresses his thoughts on blogging and some other subjects. I think you will be impressed. I was.
James Pilant
Professor Thoma believes that the recent Republican election victories may well put an end to any government economic intervention. He argures tha the Obama administration’s bank bailout was badly done and called into question the government’s ability or intelligence to act economically.
Here is Thoma’s summation from the end of the article. Here he calls for intervention on the part of the government as a legitimate and vital choice.
I share that belief.
James Pilant
From The Fiscal Times –
Capitalism is the best system yet discovered for promoting economic growth, but it is also a system that creates large booms and busts along the way. The ability of governments to smooth economic shocks with monetary policy, fiscal policy, automatic stabilizers and social insurance is one of the great innovations of the last 100 years. While we have been far from perfect in the use of these tools, they have done far more good than harm, and it’s scary to contemplate a world where those protections have been substantially eroded away.
People should not be left to fend for themselves when they are hit by large negative economic shocks they had no hand in creating, and let’s hope that somehow, despite the emerging trend toward a more hands-off approach and pressures from rising national debt levels, that outcome can be avoided.
Philip Brookes has two new posts and I’m reblogging the second one. I suggest you visit the web site and read both. Today, he is writing about marketing and the challenges it presents in South Asia. I recommend the author and his web site.
James Pilant
via Get Aktiv
The past thirty years have taken us a great distance away from the social ideal represented by Rawls’s Theory of Justice. The acceleration of inequalities of income and wealth in the US economy is flatly unjust, by Rawls’s standards. The increasing — and now by Supreme Court decision, almost unconstrained — ability of corporations to exert influence within political affairs has severely undermined the fundamental political equality of all citizens. And the extreme forms of inequality of opportunity and outcome that exist in our society — and the widening of these gaps in recent decades — violate the basic principles of justice, requiring the full and fair equality of political lives of all citizens. This suggests that Rawls’s theory provides the basis for a very sweeping critique of existing economic and political institutions. In effect, the liberal theorist offers radical criticism of the existing order.
This post takes John Rawls, quotes his writing in the context of what he considers a just society and then compares that with our current situation. The author is not pleased. Many of the objections that Rawls would have made according to this author are the same or similar objections that I would make myself.
In this 2009 posting, The Hannibal Blog, discusses (approvingly) Rawls’ concept of the “veil of ignorance.” It’s a good discussion.
James Pilant
Yesterday, I called attention to a post from Grand Strategy: The View from Oregon about a comparsion between the writings of John Rawls and Aristotle. Today in Chasing Fat Tails, I find further discussions on the importance of Rawls.
James Pilant
United Arab Emirates – An Abu Dhabi luxury hotel that boasted an $11 million Christmas tree decorated with gold and gems admitted Sunday it may have taken the holiday spirit a bit too far.
A statement from the Emirates Palace hotel said it regretted “attempts to overload” the Christmas tree tradition by adorning it with premium bling including gold, rubies, diamonds and other precious stones from a hotel jeweler.
They celebrate Christmas in Abu Dhabi? with an 11 million dollar tree? with real jewels and diamonds?
Thorsten Veblen used to write about conspicuous consumption. It’s a pity he missed this one. I think conspicuous is a weak work in this case.
I think I’ll go with narcissistic aggressive ostentation.
It’s like an insult to all the other middle class trees.
There is supposed to be some kind of symbolism here. I could hypothesize here abut what that symbolism could be but really all that’s going on is a massive case of kitsch.
James Pilant
P.S. If you want to stay there, they have a million dollar package that enables you to stay for a week.
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