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Who: Kimball Corson. Text and Photos not disclaimed or that are obviously not mine are copyright (c) Kimball Corson 2004-2016
Port: Lake Pleasant, AZ
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An Economic Lament

01 August 2016 | Pago Pago, American Samoa
Kimball Corson
We are irretrievably lost. Millions of words pour forth daily on matters economic, without good understanding or any consensus or any sensible prescription. We are awash in misinformation, affirmative disinformation and economic ignorance. All economics has been politicized. We cannot even agree on the causes of the 2007 financial crisis. See the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report of the Financial Inquiry Commission, as an example.

Conservative economic disinformation is the current order of the day. Good economic analysis has been garbled, waylaid and dispersed by economic disinformation and truly bad judgments propagated by bogus think tanks, many funded by the Koch brothers and their followers. We are reeling under the oppressive load of propaganda which many have now come to believe is true.

Those who might knowledgeably speak out against the current state of affairs are too often themselves bought off -- into silence or worse, to become themselves promulgators of misinformation and disinformation as consultants. The deck is stacked in every direction. Bogus consultancies and corporate research grants have corrupted the academy through and through on economic matters. Business schools and economics departments are bought off, especially at the top universities. They are of no help. Neither is the Fed, which is too busy serving and being controlled by Wall Street and its attending interests. Few others who know anything are left.

The effect - implicitly understood by many - is a mindset of doom and gloom. That there is no real hope, no good prospect. Being stalled out and stalemated - like our aggregate economy itself - is the forecast. The output gap is huge but conservative thinking is because we never had it, it can't be a real loss. Misunderstanding abounds. Our congressmen are self-serving clowns and ignoramuses, but they have a lock on the nation's fiscal policy which is also stalled out and stalemated. Monetary policy has been sucked dry by Wall Street and it too is stalled out and grasping.

Because of this ideological presence and intellectual void, there is no longer any real economic truth to be understood. One man's opinion is as good as another's. Experts abound without real expertise and they have fouled everyone's nest. We are adrift in a large sea in a rudderless ship and with no prospect. I am disinclined to write much more on economics, feeling there are too few of us who care about truth. We are whistling in the wind aboard that ship.

Nothing short of a revolution in thinking will change things, I believe. And I see no prospect of that. Not even those friends on Facebook who comment on my economic posts can agree and they are, with exceptions the brighter, less ideological side of the public. What prospect can there be for the public, with declining educational standards, rising economic illiteracy and a corrupt academy? The outlook really is, as the bears put it, doom and gloom, but not from the prospect of a collapsed economy, except for the bottom half of Americans, but from our public economic ignorance.
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Vessel Name: Altaira
Vessel Make/Model: A Fair Weather Mariner 39 is a fast (PHRF 132), heavily ballasted (43%), high-aspect (6:1), stiff, comfortable, offshore performance cruiser by Bob Perry that goes to wind well (30 deg w/ good headway) and is also good up and down the Beaufort scale.
Hailing Port: Lake Pleasant, AZ
Crew: Kimball Corson. Text and Photos not disclaimed or that are obviously not mine are copyright (c) Kimball Corson 2004-2016
About:
Kimball Corson: I am a 75 year old solo sailor, by choice. However, I did take on a personable, but high maintenance female kitten, now a full grown cat, named KiKiPoo when she is sweet, or KatKatPo after she has just killed something like a bird or bat. [...]
Extra:
Although I was a lawyer and practiced law with good success for thirty years, creating significant new law, I never really believed in the law, the politics of law or in the over reaching self-interest of most lawyers I met. Too much exposure to Nietzsche and other good and seriously thoughtful [...]
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Profile

Who: Kimball Corson. Text and Photos not disclaimed or that are obviously not mine are copyright (c) Kimball Corson 2004-2016
Port: Lake Pleasant, AZ