Has Facebook Peaked?

If Hollywood has gone and made a movie about Facebook, then Facebook has probably peaked. 

  

“One of us, one of us, one of us . . .”

Looking at the numbers, it would seem that FB has definitely peaked: On July 22 of 2010, it got its 500 millionth user—but now three months later, it’s at 543 million. 

  

The inference is easy to make: From the halcyon days of consistently charting 25 million new users per month, Facebook is now going up by about 14 million new users per month. 

  

Still: 14 million users a month? The implications are staggering. 

  

FB doesn’t release numbers of users who’ve quit—rather cagily, they say that, on any given day, half of all users log on to Facebook. 

  

But none of that really matters: Who has registered, and now is inactive, who registered and is on every day, who registered and is sporadic, who registered and now wants their Facebook account shut down and disappeared—all of that is trivial and unimportant, compared to the central and obvious fact that they all registered on Facebook.  

  

This means? It means that one corporation has managed to get the basic personal information of roughly ten percent of the world. 

  

That’s epochal. No wonder the fuckers in Hollywood made a movie about the people behind the Facebook program. So let’s not get too cavalier and condescending, when discussing this remarkable achievement. 

  

Read more »

I’m Down

GL, Self-Portrait

  

Read more »

Signs Hyperinflation Is Arriving

This post is gonna be short and sweet—and scary: 
  
Back in late August, I argued that hyperinflation would be triggered by a run on Treasury bonds. I described how such a run might happen, and argued that if Treasuries were no longer considered safe, then commodities would become the store of value. 

  

See, how come I don’t look as cool
when I make my predictions?

Such a run on commodities, I further argued, would inevitably lead to price increases and a rise in the Consumer Price Index, which would initially be interpreted by the Federal Reserve, the Federal government, as well as the commentariat, as a good thing: A sign that “the economy is recovering”, a sign that “normalcy” was returning. 

  

I argued that—far from being “a sign of recovery”—rising CPI would be the sign that things were about to get ugly. 

  

I concluded that, like the stagflation of ‘79, inflation would rise to the double digits relatively quickly. However, unlike in 1980, when Paul Volcker raised interest rates severely in order to halt inflation, in today’s weakened macro-economic environment, that remedy is simply not available to Ben Bernanke. 
  
Therefore, I predicted that inflation would spiral out of control, and turn into hyperinflation of the U.S. dollar. 
  
A lot of people claimed I was on drugs when I wrote this. 
  
Now? Not so much. 

  

Read more »

Links To Look At

This is an experiment I’ll be trying out over the next few days: Daily links to interesting/unusual/informative stories or bits of information on the web. I’ll link to between a half-dozen and a dozen. I’ll try to post this by 7 am EST. 

  

To my new readers and kind fans, please comment as to whether you like them or not—both the idea, and the specific links. Thank you. GL

  

• British Airways chairman says, “We must stop kowtowing to American security overkill”. Surprised it took this long. 

  

• Slate.com on Treasury bonds yields going negative, and investors betting on inflation. If Slate is talking about this, then the U.S. mainstream is (slowly) realizing inflation is on its way. 

  

• The Hobbit film production stays in New Zealand—after the Kiwis gave Warner Bros. a sweetener in the form of incentives. The foolish Australian actors’ union—which is the parent of the NZ actors’ union—was behind the brouhaha; scuttlebutt is so as to get part of “The Hobbit” filmed in Australia. The production will spend US $530 million in NZ. 

  

• Lenders take over Stuyvesant town in Manhattan. The four-year, $5.4 billion agony is over—for now. 

  

• Michael Lewis gives an excellent explanation of the TBTF banks’ shell game regarding their prop-trading desks. The banks—contrary to statements—aren’t selling their prop desks: They’re disguising them. 

  

• Fascinating and in-depth cultural précis on China’s Communist Party today, and what they are aiming for. From the always illuminating London Review of Books. 

  

• Glenn Greenwald on NY Times and mainstream American media’s efforts to discredit WikiLeaks new document release by smearing their spokesman, Julian Assange. Greenwald has been all over this—and he’s absolutely right: The messenger is not the message. 

  

• Calculated Risk confirming that Ben Bernanke will use an incrementalist approach to QE2. It’ll be “a couple of hundred billion at a time”. 

“Our God Is Money”: Economics Isn’t a Dismal Science—It’s an Ersatz Religion

“Are you an Austrian?” I was asked recently, in the polite tones reserved for asking if I were, say, Jewish or Muslim or Christian. 
  

An object of veneration.

I’d been asked the question while discussing macro-economic policy in the United States— 
  
—actually, “discussing” doesn’t quite capture what I’d been doing:
  
I’d been lambasting the Neo-Keynesian drivel of spend!-spend!-spend!, which I deplore—“They’re like drunk sailors with the national credit-card—trawling for good blow and cheap whores in a Tijuana back alley!”—
  
—while at the same time ridiculing the Monetarists’ obsession with money supply—“Money-supply fetishists are just like foot fetishists—only twice as creepy, and only half as reasonable!”—
  
—all the while insisting that in this Global Depression, savings had to be the priority—austerity the only policy prescription that made any kind of sense. 
  
“Are you an Austrian?” came the question. 
  
“I'm an agnostic,” I answered flippantly—but then instantly realized that my answer went to the heart of the problem with economics. 
  

It’s no great insight to say that economics—the so-called “dismal science”—has had a dismal track-record in terms of predicting macro-economic events over the last forty-odd years. 
  
And as for the last couple of years? Sheesh—a monkey throwing darts would have done a better job of predicting how the macro-economic picture would play out. 

Read more »

I’m Late—Sorry!

Dear Readers, 

Please forgive me: A personal emergency kept me from posting today, Monday 10/25. 

  

I'll post tomorrow, Tuesday 10/26, at noon EST—promise. 
  
The name of the post will be: 

  

“Our God Is Money”: Economics Isn’t A Dismal Science—It’s An Ersatz Religion
  
Until then, all the best, 


GL

Chile’s Triumph, America’s Exhaustion

In Chile, the collective mood is one of hard-earned triumph, after the successful rescue of the 33 miners.

  

The leader of the trapped Chilean miners, Luis Urzúa,
seconds after emerging from their two-month ordeal.

There was of course joy and jubilation when the miners were pulled out after their two-month ordeal underground. I wasn’t watching the news at the time, but I knew the precise moment when the first miner was pulled out alive: Passing cars started loudly honking their horns—Tat–tat–ta-ta-tat!! Tat–tat–ta-ta-tat!! Tat–tat–ta-ta-tat!! 

  

But in the nearly two weeks since the rescue, there has been a collective afterglow in Chile: Everyone feels happy. Everyone feels confident. Everyone feels as if any and every problem—no matter how big—can be taken in hand, and solved successfully. 

  

There is none of that feeling in the United States.

Read more »