MARK MCHUGH: According to Wikipedia,
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) affects one percent of the
population and has little to do with looking at yourself in the mirror.
It has a lot to do with unrealistic fantasies of success, power
and intelligence. Some NPD sufferers become cult leaders or mass
murderers, the rest become economists and policy-makers. Despite
having a highly elevated sense of self-worth, narcissists have fragile
self-esteem and handle criticism unpredictably, so let’s keep this to
ourselves….
Velocity of money is
the frequency with which a unit of money is spent on new goods and
services. It is a far better indicator of economic activity than GDP,
consumer prices, the stock market, or sales of men’s underwear (which
Greenspan was fond of ogling). In a healthy economy, the same dollar is
collected as payment and subsequently spent many times over. In a
depression, the velocity of money goes catatonic. Velocity of money is
calculated by simply dividing GDP by a given money supply. This VoM
chart using monetary base should end any discussion of what ”this” is
and whether or not anybody should be using the word “recovery” with a
straight face:
In just four short years, our
“enlightened” policy-makers have slowed money velocity to depths never
seen in the Great Depression. Hard to believe, but the guy who
made a career out of Monday-morning quarterbacking the Great Depression
has already proven himself a bigger idiot than all of his predecessors
(and in less than half the time!!).
