Archive for July 14th, 2010

How To Waste Time And Money

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Change the guidelines for Alzheimer’s disease, more testing, more profits for testing companies and doctors, so you can then tell people the results: “You might be on the path to Alzheimer’s” sooner!!!

This is nothing more and nothing less than a total waste of time and money, because a) no one knows what causes Alzheimer’s and b) regardless of when the disease is diagnosed, there is no cure and no effective treatment.

Full disclosure: Gorilla’s Dad had Alzheimer’s disease.

Now, the Alzheimer’s Association could ask for more government and private money to be spent on finding a cause and finding a cure. They could encourage the government to fund drug research and thereby reduce the cost of patent monopolies.

Instead, they get into bed with the medical industrial complex and produce nonsense guidelines that will keep American medical costs the highest in the world, while doing absolutely nothing about outcomes.

Gorilla says: “Incurable diseases need advocates who are not addicted to Big Pharma!”

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Getting It Totally Wrong, Fed Style

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

From Calculated Risk, here are the Fed’s economic projections for this year, made in April 2010, only two months ago:

Real GDP: 3.2-3.7% (actually GDP in first half is 3% and will be less in second half, now that stimulus is pretty much over)

Unemployment: 9.1-9.5% (average of first six months: 9.7%)

PCE: 1.2-1.5% (actually 0.7% and prices appear to be dropping)

To sum up: the Fed’s been wrong consistently on growth, unemployment and inflation.

Oh, and retail sales have fallen the past two months.

Hey, but that doesn’t mean the Fed won’t do anything (cue crickets chirping), or wait a minute, so long as inflation remains a non-existent threat and non-existent credibility remains the Fed’s only objective, yes it does.

Gorilla says: “Fighting inflation? Fighting unemployment? It’s time to fight the Fed before it screws us any further!”

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Deflation, Spanish Style

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Spain’s local government units are gradually going bust, thanks to the property boom collapse and the austerity measures recently announced in Madrid.

And Spain apparently can’t really pay off its bonds and reduce budget deficits by 2012. Unemployment’s above 20%, and Spanish banks need fresh capital to the tune of 50-90 billion Euros. The outlook is for years, if not decades, of crippling deflation, social unrest and mass unemployment.

Haircuts for bondholders on the order of 30% (and you just know the haircuts actually being contemplated are far larger) would reduce Spain’s GDP by 40% and Eurozone GDP by 15%.

The stress tests currently being performed do not take into account the possibility of defaults, so the true picture of Euroland insolvency has yet to be painted.

Gorilla says: “Time for Spain to take a siesta from the Euro!”

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No Surprise There

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Apparently not on the verge of success, BP’s delayed the testing on its new cap in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ex-Admiral Fifth Rate, until yesterday as gung ho as could be that the cap would stop the oil flow for good, now says “We decided that the process may benefit from additional analysis”.

Oh, and still no word on the negotiations between BP and the US government should the relief wells not work as advertised.

No one in the press seems to want to bother asking a difficult question or two. It’s very reminiscent of the non-discussion about unemployment.

Gorilla says: “Analyze all you like, but a bit of truth would not hurt!”

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Only 15 Million To Go!

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

The White House rightly makes the point that without stimulus, the unemployment situation would be ever more dire…

But the stimulus was woefully inadequate (should have been at least 3 times larger), and only about $300 billion/year when the bullshit was stripped out.

And there’s been nothing at all done to address the fact that the employment situation is terrible and will remain so for years to come.

The number of people currently looking for work is 14-17 million; currently there are a little over 3 million jobs available.

The time to propose a serious jobs program is now.

9.5% unemployment should be totally unacceptable in America, but our leaders seem incapable of addressing the issue.

Gorilla says: “Don’t pat yourself on the back, start hiring!”

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