Economics and Investing:

Reader DEK sent this: Zoellick Warns Stimulus ‘Sugar High’ Won’t Stem Unemployment

Long known as a propaganda outlet, Pravda occasionally gets a few things right: American capitalism gone with a whimper.(This piece was mentioned by more than a dozen SurvivalBlog readers.)

Items from The Economatrix:

GDP Drops For Second Consecutive Quarter

Troubled Bank Loans Hit Record High

BofA Lead Director Resigns; More Pressure on CEO

Jefferson County, Alabama, Out of Money in Two Weeks After Tax Repealed

Financial Markets And Economic Crash, The Next Leg Down Will Be Worse “Make no mistake – we are selling off our future and the future of our children to prevent the bondholders of U.S. financial corporations from taking losses. We are using public funds to protect the bondholders of some of the most mismanaged companies in the history of capitalism, instead of allowing them to take losses that should have been their own. All our policy makers have done to date has been to squander public funds to protect the full interests of corporate bondholders. Even Bear Stearns bondholders can expect to get 100% of their money back, thanks to the generosity of Bernanke, Geithner and other bureaucrats eager to hand out the money of ordinary Americans.”

Bottoming Consumer Prices And Commodities “It is utterly preposterous to assume that Mr. and Mrs. America dug in the couch and found that kind of money [Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 increased $2.4T from March to May 09] and decided to invest it. It is even more preposterous considering the environment that the real economy is dealing with at this time. Job losses have been staggering and persistent, it is demonstrably difficult for the unemployed to find work, and house prices are still falling like an elephant dropped from the Empire State Building. How else do we know this increase didn’t come from the real economy? Let’s look at past behavior. When the government handed out $168 billion in stimulus checks – essentially ‘free money’ – did the public invest it in the stock market? No. The public paid bills, or saved it – much to the consternation of the government. So where did this dramatic bear market rally come from? In my opinion, it came from large institutional investors – many of the same people who had their coffers stuffed with TARP money over the past 6 months and the same folks who were essentially given a free pass a while back when the rules for mark to market accounting were relaxed. So what we have here is largely an inflationary rally. … But it isn’t just the stock market. It is the commodities markets as well, and this is where it gets bad for consumers. We are about to witness a wave of inflation, a magnitude of which has never before been seen in America.”

Still Working, But Making Do With Less