The most interesting unreported wars of the last 10 years

Second Congo War - A.K.A Africa's World War

Second Congo War at Wikipedia

Why : 3.8 million people died... Since 1996 6 to 7 million people have died in Congo. Seems like a big free-for-all grab for resources by the regional powers. A kind of preview of the new wars of multi-faction anarchy and bloodshed in the midst of plenty that Iraq is now an example of.

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The Second Chechen War

Second Chechen War At Wikipedia

Why: Russia goes head to head with entrenched Islamic fundamentalist separatists, fights with total disregard for Geneva Convention, and wins. This is the first war that I am aware of where the full brunt of advanced weaponry was brought to bare in unrestricted warfare.

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Why there will be no hyperinflation

I have been reading the inflation/deflation debate for some time now on various parts of the web. The inflationists insist that we will collapse like Wiemar. The deflationists insist that we will collapse like Japan. The memory of the 1970s inflation is strong in many an old gold curmudgeon, so the inflationists seem to be more prevalent. I will in this essay attempt to argue that hyperinflation will not happen if global commodity markets remain priced in dollars. The reason for this is that if inflation increases, the rest of the world will bid commodities up drastically, especially oil, and severely throttle U.S economic growth, leading to a more restrictive monetary policy. Hyperinflation always happens due to a foreign exchange crisis. The population, sensing a high level of inflation, rushes to change their earnings in for real goods or foreign currency. In the case of Wiemar, or Argentina, the rest of the world is largely unaffected. They see their currencies drastically...

What's Bernanke going to do during the housing crash?

A Recent NY Times article on the Japanese Housing Bubble got me thinking. Especially this quote: Japanese economists say the United States is not likely to suffer a decline that is as severe or long-lasting as Japan's, because they see a more skilled hand at the tiller of the American economy: the Federal Reserve. Japan's central bank, the Bank of Japan, failed to curb the stock and real estate bubbles until mid-1989, when it was too late and prices were sky-high, they said. Translation: It's different this time! Is it really? Let's listen to some words from Mr Bernanke : But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to...

Where Is The Hyperinflationary Tipping Point?

With all the money printing going on at the Fed, why is the Fed having trouble creating inflation in the economy? One of the reasons is that asset values are rapidly declining. This leads to a collapse in available sources of consumer credit. For instance, now that home values have fallen, home equity lines are not available. Existing lines are gradually being paid down or defaulted on. Fed liquidity programs such as TARP, which swaps cash for mortgage backed securities, is going into equities and not into new loans. It also seems to be about the only liquidity entering the system. The rest of the liquidity sits on the bank balance sheets, unable to find a home in an asset bubble. Bank lending needs an asset bubble to get into the economy because Banks are too conservative to lend like venture capitalists. They only really want to lend against assets, which are all falling in price due to the aftermath of the once great asset bubble. Since banks only want to lend against asset...

Economic Mischief - Contrarian Political And Economic Analysis

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