[QUOTE=Fusion_power;323370] Why is it not possible for government leaders to do their job? Why do we have huge deficits?[/QUOTE]

It is hard for government leaders to do their job when there are very well-funded campaigns devoted to telling the world that their job cannot be done. In any case, what their job is includes a strong component of providing for people who have difficulty providing for themselves, and, during a nasty recession, that encompasses a lot of people and you have to run a large deficit to do the provision.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;323659][b]Friday Humor:[/b]

Mostly for laughs, ZH offers Hedge fund "guru" Byron Wien's [url=http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-02/byron-wiens-2013-predictions-unveiled]2013 predictions[/url].

Der Wiener almost had me believing he could possibly be serious in these until I got to the bit about the "mild recession that began [in Europe] in 2012." Nice one, Lord Byron, you irrepressible card, you. :)[/QUOTE]Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

Mint the Coin. This is the Krugman solution to the debt ceiling.

So what is "the coin"? While printing money is the domain of the Federal Reserve, the U.S. treasury dept has the authority to mint coins. Most of those coins are limited by specific authorization acts of the U.S. congress which specify the face value and maximum number to be minted. But there is one significant exception. Congress authorized the treasury to mint platinum coins of any denomination. The intent was to authorize the production of commemorative and collectible coins, but the specific authorization does not limit the denomination of coin that can be minted. Therefore the somewhat oddball suggestion has been made for Treasury to mint a $1 Trillion coin that would then be presented to the federal reserve to redeem an equivalent amount of fed held debt. The Fed would have to accept the coin because it is legal tender duly minted by Treasury. The result would be that treasury is now holding the debt which has been paid off and the federal reserve would have $1 Trillion of borrowing authority with which to fund government operations. Sounds like a nifty trick doesn't it?

Can anyone else spot the flaws with this "solution"?

DarJones

one caveat I could see is that if the coin actually contained as much platinum as it's value suggest, it would weigh about 734 million pounds according to a precious metal calculator I found online.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;324758]No takers on the "glaring fubar" question? (Or was it too blatantly obvious?)
[/QUOTE]

Too blatantly obvious. In fact there are so many things wrong with that statement I don't know where to start.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;324975]
o And speaking of fubarificity,[/QUOTE]fubarifity or fubaricity, but surely not fubarificity.

Cheesehead, that is downright sesquipedalian.

Has anyone noticed the slippage of the Yen vs the Dollar recently? Japan is deliberately weakening the yen in hopes of stimulating exports which should boost their economy. The net effect is to make imported goods such as oil more expensive. This is a risky move on Japan's part, but if successful would bring them out of the economic doldrums of the past 25 or so years.

DarJones

[QUOTE=ewmayer;325073]The funny thing about the recent plunge of the JPY is that just a month ago ZeroHedge pundit Bruce Krasting [url=http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-12-17/and]penned a post describing the following destructive addiction[/url] to which he has seen innumerable friends succumb over the past few decades:


It will be interesting to see where the JPY is at EOY.
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[b]Friday Humor, late Thursday edition: UK Shoppers Have a Beef With Tesco Supermarkets[/b]

[url=http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-16/tesco-s-u-k-revival-suffers-blow-as-horse-dna-found-in-burgers.html]Tesco’s U.K. Revival Hit as Horse DNA Found in Burgers[/url]

The funny thing is, the horse meat was probably the healthiest part of the whole "pink slime in a tube" concoction - no chance of catching vCJD (akak Mad Cow disease) from horse meat, and it's probably leaner than cow meat, to boot. (Or perhaps "to hoof" is more appropriate in the present context).

The wording of the above snip inspires me to a bit of [url=http://www.squidoo.com/mister-ed-merchandise]Mr. Ed[/url]-themed musical doggerel
[i]
The source of the horse, of course, of course,
'Cause no one eats meat from a horse, of course
That is, of course, unless the horse
Is the famous (and tasteful) Mister Ed ...[/i]

------------------------------

Edit: On a more serious note, Mish mentions several safety issues with horsemeat [url=http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-extra-value-horse-burger.html]here[/url], related not to the meat per se but to the fact that horses are not generally raised as food animals as are cows.[/QUOTE]The authorities stressed that there were no human health issues involved.

It's a matter of honesty in labelling and of obeying audit-trail regulations. If the products had been labelled as containing a mixture of beef and horse meat, the sources of each of which had been properly documented, the burgers would have been perfectly legal to be on sale.

[QUOTE=xilman;325098]The authorities stressed that there were no human health issues involved.

It's a matter of honesty in labelling and of obeying audit-trail regulations. If the products had been labelled as containing a mixture of beef and horse meat, the sources of each of which had been properly documented, the burgers would have been perfectly legal to be on sale.[/QUOTE]My problem with things like this is how can I trust them at all? We had a big pet food scandal a few of years back where a manufactures put a waste product from china in pet food to make the nitrogen readings higher thus falsely indicate higher protein content. The end result was a bunch of pets dying from kidney damage.

Man: Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?
Woman: hmmm....
Man: How about for one dollar?
Woman: Just what do you think I am?
Man: We're past that; now we're negotiating price.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;325242]Odds on either Rajoy or Timmay making a weepy confession on Oprah's show in years to come?[/QUOTE]

Wouldn't it be cool if Oprah could cut the bullshit, and asked some serious questions?

She's worth $2.7 billion according to Forbes.

FFC, I respect Bill Gates more than her....

[QUOTE=ewmayer;325258]Those 2 bits are highly correlated - she'd be worth a lot less (in $ terms) if she ever cut the bullshit and asked some serious questions.[/QUOTE]

Just how much does one need to be worth to condenser yourselves to have won?

Separate question: if you never need, why don't you ask important questions?