Wednesday, June 18, 2014

A Bonfire Of Counterintuitive Consequences

by JASmius

I had no idea that Donald Trump was such a hardcore fantasist:

As Sunni militants reportedly took control of Iraq's largest oil refinery Wednesday, business titan Donald Trump, founder and CEO of Trump Corp., urged the U.S. government to take control of Iraq's oil Wednesday on "America's Forum" on Newsmax TV. 

"I've been predicting for a long time that somebody, most likely the bad guys, are going to get the oil," he told J.D. Hayworth and John Bachman in an exclusive interview. 

"And if you look at this morning, they [the Sunni militia] veered off course, and instead of going into Baghdad initially — they'll get that later, don't worry about it — they decided to do the smart thing."

That was to go after Iraq's oil. "So now they have the oil, and they have lots of land, and they have lots of support, and they have lots of money, and they have our equipment, and we're a very stupidly run country."



President "No War For Oil," President "Climate Change" going re-invading Iraq to take back its oil supply from ISIS?  If reality were that malleable, I wouldn't have to be looking for a job, now would I?

No, Barack Obama gifted those 2.5 million barrels of crude a day to his new Islamic terrorist allies.  Or, if you prefer, he thought he was giving it to the Iraqi people by withdrawing all U.S. military personnel from Iraq, and then, "Oopsie!"

Regardless, like Darth Vader vis-a-vie Lando Calrissian....



....The Donald should learn to discern when it's time to stop pushing.

Kind of like Barack Obama's Federal Reserve, whose maximum overdrive printing presses are producing some....novel economic results:

Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, isn't too impressed with the Federal Reserve's tapering of its bond purchases, which the Fed will likely agree to continue in its policy meeting Wednesday.

Faber focuses more on the fact that Fed policy overall remains extremely accommodative, with short-term interest rates near zero and the central bank's balance sheet at $4.3 trillion.

"It's a catastrophe," he told CNBC. "What the Fed has done is to lift asset prices, and the cost of living. In the meantime, the cost of living increases are higher than the wage increases. The typical American household income is going down in real terms." 

Consumer prices rose 2.1% in the year through May, while compensation for civilian workers increased 1.8% in the twelve months ended March 31st.

Faber says Fed policy is worsening income inequality. "The Fed is boosting asset prices. It leads to less affordability, people can't buy their homes anymore in the lower income group," he said.

"The more they print, the more inequality there is, the weaker the economy will become." [emphases added]

So, burgeoning inflation, rising income inequality, AND a deeper economic depression.  Sounds fundamentally transformative to me.

Could a subsequent deflation be thrown on that pile of "unintended" consequences?  Yes!...it!...can!:

The Federal Reserve's continuation of a highly accommodative monetary policy, even as it tapers its quantitative easing, spells trouble for the economy and financial markets, says James Grant, editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer.... 

"The interventions are like lies — you do one and you need another one. You can't just lie once. You can't just intervene once. You must keep intervening to negate or counteract or mollify the effect of earlier interventions," Grant argued....

But inflation of asset values — stocks continue to hover near record highs — will ultimately lead to "financial turmoil," Grant warned. And that in turn could create the risk of deflation again.

"Deflation is a monetary event such that prices collapse, not because productivity is higher but because everyone has to sell. And that is part and parcel of a financial accident," he said. "The Fed is going to give us a financial accident." [emphasis added]

Sun Tzu's first rule of war is, "Know your enemy".  I never, ever want to hear ever again the assertion that Barack Hussein Obama doesn't understand energy policy or economics.  It is impossible not to know the basics and intricacies of free market capitalism in order to sabotage the U.S. economy so broadly, comprehensively, and effectively, and keep that sabotage robustly and stubbornly in place even as the economy crumbles around him.

Or, if you prefer, he's "too stupid" to "learn from his mistakes".

But I have to ask, gentles: Can anyone possibly be that Peter Griffin-esque?



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