A friend just sent me a link to this excerpt of Michael Lewis’s new book, The Big Short. It’s the chapter about  Michael Burry, a California recluse who emersed himself in mortgage bond prospectuses, figured out that it was an historic bubble, and then convinced Goldman and other TBTF banks to write his value fund [...]

Watch for Tim and Ben as the bartenders.

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Hit tip to Kevin Duffy.
Lyrics (from econstories.tv):

We’ve been going back and forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No… it’s the animal spirits
[Keynes Sings:]
John Maynard Keynes, [...]

So Barbara Boxer and Russ Feingold are against Bernanke… good for them, but it doesn’t make any difference which egghead reads the February and July speeches to Congress when the very existence of a central bank is the problem.
Here’s what should be done with the Fed:

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See also: Greenspan was framed! Blame bankers’ moral hazard, not [...]

From Chart of the Day:

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What was that about credit being the lifeblood of the economy? Well, the 2000s saw the greatest bubble ever, and all it got us was richer bankers. Robert Prechter often says that the depression started with the bursting of the dot-com bubble and deflation of social mood from the euphoria of [...]

Video link from Lewrockwell.com
Here’s an excerpt from The Law, by Frederic Bastiat, a French classical liberal (today we would say libertarian) economist:
A Fatal Tendency of Mankind
Self-preservation and self-development are common aspirations among all people. And if everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social [...]

From nymag.com comes this diary of a female 24-year-old New Yorker making the best of her 18 months of unemployment insurance:
DAY ONE
Noon: Finally wake up and realize that it’s only noon. Automatically type into SeamlessWeb to order the usual brunch. It’s just too rainy to leave the apartment. Since getting laid off (okay it’s been [...]

Graphite here. Mike has asked me to join up as a guest blogger, and since I’ve always loved the spirited mix of finance, politics, and righteous anger of The Sovereign Speculator, I’m happy to come aboard.
If you needed another sign that this deflationary crash is just getting started, take a look at this blog post [...]

(thanks again to zerohedge for finding this video)
I remember when I first discovered a speech by Ron Paul back in boom-time 2005, and was shocked that a Congressman was so eloquently warning of the dangers of fractional reserve lending, the Federal Reserve system, and welfare/warfare deficit spending. It was the first time that I could [...]

This is why I love America:
 

 
Thanks to Mish for sharing the link.

Mises Foundation founder Lew Rockwell interviewed blogger Mike “Mish” Shedlock on his podcast series:
Link here.
Topics include bailouts, ’stimulus’ plans, the benefits of deflation, and Mish’s campaigns to end bailouts and abolish the Fed.
Mish is really pushing hard politically. I’m 100% behind him, but I worry a bit about how the gangsters might respond to him [...]