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For every million electric cars on the road, you need the rough equivalent of a Three Gorges to power them. On the east coast, some of this can be taken up by running the coal-powered parts of the grid 24/7. On the west coast, you either need to build similar plants or start flooding the state...

It is highly likely that a primary reason the post-war debt was manageable is that the US had the only significant industrial base left on the planet. This allowed it to be an export machine of extraordinary power into the mid-60s. If you look at other "real" countries that survived through...

You guess wrong. If you actually want a discussion, I'm happy to oblige. If you just want to rant and name-call and generally keep acting like a disagreeable ass, you'll need a different dance partner. Cheers.

It's not "the next 2 years", it's "yet another 2 years". How many times have we heard this same "commitment" over the past 30 years? I hope it happens, but am in the "I'll believe it when I see it" camp until there is actual evidence... Now I'm a partisan? The guy who is dubious on Obama's...

Goolsby isn't "economic chief", he's the "staff director" of yet another economic advisory panel. Same kind of for-show appointment as the Volker one.

FDIC is part of the problem - it allows depositors to avoid thinking much about healthy vs sick bank by using taxpayer money as a backstop for all banks, equally. This is a de facto punishment of sanely-run banks. And that's *bad*. If FDIC isn't eliminated entirely, it should be reduced...

That's the bill for all the subsidies Americans have been enjoying for the past 30-40 years. What's to complain about?

Saving old billions and spending new trillions does not sound like any definition of fiscal restraint with which I am currently familiar.

Canada is a significant part of the global economy. If the global economy collapses, by definition Canada's economy will collapse as well. So is that really the question you are trying to ask?

And some will come in here and put you on ignore. What else is there to do with someone who insists 10 bar old data isn't...old? Cheers, mate.

1990. Dem-Congress tried to shrink the deficit by raising taxes (and spending), Bush the Elder vetoed, three day shutdown but it landed on a weekend so impact not so widespread.

I can't believe I'm going to (kind of) defend the old guy, but Senior Bush I think deserves at least a little credit. Or if you prefer, a bit less blame. :) Of the four, he was the only one who actually showed some backbone in slowing down gov't spending. He lost the battle, in the end, but he...

Not sure "wants to" is the right phrase. The first step in this already happened 25 years ago, when Reagan increased payroll taxes to fund the Social Security "lock box". And what does the "lock box" contain? Treasuries. The Ponzi scheme has been operative for quite some time now - what we...

In 1983 Reagan offered a sweet deal - increase payroll taxes in exchange for a Social Security "trust fund" to hold the excess revenues. That "trust fund" is nothing more than a stack of Treasury bills, notes and bonds. In short, it was a Ponzi scheme that enabled massive federal deficits, and...

The funniest part is reading the same aliases bitching in one thread about the over-leveraged financial system, while bitching in another thread about not having 100:1 leverage for their trades.

Could the timing of this have been any better?

100% agree. Also agree that it is a very strange bet for Mr. Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction to make. That it expires long after he will be dead is also...curious.

I was under the impression that market participants valued positive financial results, not moral victories scored in debating contests. That a guy who bills himself as protecting against crashes experiences such drawdowns is clear evidence he doesn't know what the hell he's doing. IMO, etc.

The "classic" double top is for assets that can actually be traded. VIX-the-index has no direct tradable equivalent. That said, the current level of volatility is not maintainable and will collapse soon enough. Until next time...

In times of crisis, all correlations go to 1.