I would like to see an assault on inflationary expectations and the widespread view that inflation is inevitable.

This stupid philosophy led hundreds of millions worldwide to think that housing prices could ONLY go up and was an epistemological cause for this catastrophe. The notion of inflation and eternally rising prices is an extremely pernicious, avaricious approach to both life and the economy and to the extent that deflation can exterminate such folly, such benefits MUST be factored into any cost/benefit analysis of nominal price declines.

And Housing!!!

What was perhaps very interesting to me of Steve Keen's research is his talk of how debt turns from fuelling productive investments to speculative investments. I was speaking to someone the other day about the implications of deflation and they said that if anything, deflation is a good thing as it would boost the purchasing power of consumers. I had to inform them about just how much pain would be felt in the financial sector if oil, gold, other commodities plummeted in price as their highly leveraged speculation would blow up in their faces. Matt has spoken before about the high leverage in gold and we all saw what happened with oil last year. Right or wrong, someone tell me what you think.

For Japanese data. Look at nri co jp. and look for np200590.pdf. Quickly jump from chart to chart, to see if it is what you want.

I think the best source for historical data on JP government bonds is Merrill Lynch and GS, for their clients. Pretty hard to find, to my understanding. Maybe you could ask your local Fed branch. Since they are government bonds, maybe someone at the Fed has been tracking them for you for free.

Steve Keen is great. Highly recommended. I'll check out those videos. Also his Debtwatch blog is world class!

lkeiger spoke of Steve Keen and his theories. Very interesting and intelligent 3 part video on youtube from Steve Keen titled Steve Keen on debt and the economy. He has perhaps some of the most prescient views on debt and how it will impact the economy. If anyone knows where I can find historical rates for Japanese Government bonds please let me know, Thanks.

And this is just the very, very beginning of the premature deaths to come. Drill down into the proposed cuts; cutbacks in health care and public health are at the forefront of the programmes. Clearly millions will die prematurely worldwide over the next ten years.

With the financial and commodity markets re-leveraged and humming right along, Gov. Paterson from NY says the state has to make big budget cuts including over $1 billion in education and healthcare spending, otherwise the state will be broke before Christmas. Who needs the IMF to force austerity anyways when our state goverments are already beating them to the punch...

The issue is that the banks aren't lending, they are levering up. HYPERleverage has to be brought under control, especially in the commodities markets with their psychological implications AND we need to follow Britain's example by demanding PUBLIC seats on the boards of directors of these banks to make sure they lend to the REAL economy.

That was the Gordon Brown approach. But Obama is very closely tied to his Chicago masters. Remember his CHIEF accomplishment in the Senate was that he was CRITICAL in preserving the taxation rate of mammoth hedge fund manager salaries at no more than 15%, the capital gains rate.

THAT'S what he did during his Senate tenure. He singlehandedly preserved that massive and pathetic loophole for his derivatives buddies.