Problem with farms are... who is going to farm it? Telling us city slickers to plant potatoes and lettuce, would be like telling us to go to jail.
most farmable land does not grow potatoes or lettuce or anything else a human being can eat. It's all corn and beans, and not the kind of corn and beans you eat. And before you plant, you need to sell your soul to the devil, namely, Monsanto.
Most people don't notice but the current level of Fed earnings that are turned over to the Treasury ($85B in 2012) is equal to the Sequestration issue. It is greater than the revenue projected from the last tax increase. If you compare this Fed revenue to other sources of revenue you will see that it is about half the revenue raised from corporate income taxes...and yet it gets no mention. The problem with this revenue is that properly understood it is a transfer of income from the aggregate banking system to the Fed. To the extent that the Fed is earning more, the aggregate private banking system is swapping higher earning assets (Treasuries and RMBS) for lower earning assets (non interest bearing demand notes [a.k.a. 'Dollars'] invested as excess reserves at .25%. So, income that would be in aggregate bank operating earnings...contributing to bank's 'net interest margin' is now flowing to the Fed, which inturn, buy law, pays it to the Treasury. This is not good for banks. The reason there is no inflation is that this money does not enter the real economy in any way that drives increased collateral asset values and general prices. Properly understood inflation is driven by increased private credit formation in dynamic relationship with increasing leverage on collateral assets. In an inflation capital flows from liquid positions and financial asset investments into tangible assets as credit expands and leverage ratios are increased. This is caused by a fiscal context that encourages investment in assets. The present fiscal context in the U.S. threatens to confiscate future profits from investment and has presently raised taxes on investment. This repressive fiscal context discourages credit expansion at the same time the Fed is trying to drive credit expansion by creating base money. The Fed has discovered that increasing the supply of money and reducing the cost of money cannot drive private credit formation in a context of a repressive fiscal context that reduces profit and increases risk for asset investors. So, all the new money has no place to go...it moves into liquid holding spots, deposits that increase required reserves, and into excess reserves...and into government lending...but private credit formation that drives inflation (aggregate private credit expansion is the definition of 'velocity') is still in contraction ...though the rate of contraction is slowing and some parts of private business credit are showing signs of a bottom and possible expansion.
About time the Bird Brain politicians found the way to get some traction into the economy. QE is not the answer ! It's no good giving out so much new money which goes to just about everybody that doesn't need it. The rich can't eat any more, they already have the best real estate, cars etc. What about giving a lot to the poor who desperately need some ? I know the right wing meanies will produce the old argument that they don't deserve it, earn it etc. but they will spend it and inflation will take off reducing the value of the $17 Trillion debt. Institute Worgl type projects like getting water to the drought areas, high speed trains etc.
Humpy, I guess you didn't understand anything I wrote. Nobody really got the money..the Fed used the money to buy assets from the banks and lowerd the banks income. Money is credit and credit is dependent on the value of assets. If you take 'money' from the 'rich' you immediately devalue the assets on which money depends...so you immediately make the poor poorer, along with the rich, you actually make everyone poorer as soon as you talk seriously about taking the 'money.' When you discount the future value of possessible asset cash flows you reduce the present value of the assets and you contract the private supply of credit which, as money, makes everyone poorer. Good luck with your work projects...they will only build wealth if you create assets that have future income streams to pay the debt off that you used to build the assets. Do you think high speed trains will make a future cash flow...or will they need continued subsidies for ever?
well now Ed, we don't want to solve the world's problems by giving money to the poor, we just want to borrow a little to pay them off for the moment, until they become less of a problem and hopefully gainfully employed.
I understand good intentions; its just that intentions don't guarantee good results; sometimes you get quite the opposite. Just because you want to do good and help poor people, but then act in a way that appear positive on your superficial analysis, and that ends up making the situation much worse, doesn't absolve you for the responsibility of doing harm. Fools do bear the karmic cost. The world is full of shallow, obvious thinking, do gooders who reek tremendous harm but 'mean well.'
Yup. Without good intentions we would have no recovery. Come to think of it, with good intentions we would have no recovery. Perhaps they should change economics from the dismal science to the science of good intentions. Wait a minute, isn't there a saying about good intentions and a very warm place?
I hear ya, I don't like it anymore than you do but it's easier to plan out how the world should be when you are not struggling to make ends meet sometimes all the do gooders are trying to do is keep somebody from starving so they can live another day and adhere to proper economic planning