#Robert Rubin

Public pensions all around the country like to play a clever little game that allows them to drastically understate the current value of their future liabilities and therefore pretend that their ponzi schemes are something other than insolvent frauds.  Of course, we're talking about the

Via Global Macro Monitor, This one is going to hurt.   Stanley Fischer is one, if not, our favorite economist. As Larry Summers points out in his recent piece in the Washington Post, The Fed and the international monetary system will be weaker for his departure from official responsibility.

Authored by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, Entropy never sleeps. It works remorselessly to transform things of value into useless, dissipated waste and heat. Complexity stokes it especially as the law of diminishing returns multiplies the wheels of futility spinning down to zero. Hence, the

The U.S. has recorded a trade deficit in every year since 1975. This is not surprising — America spends more than it saves. So, it must run a trade deficit, and this deficit is financed by means of a virtually unlimited U.S. line of credit with the rest of the world. Economies that save more than