When I talk about money all you see is the struggle
September 16th, 2011 | Published in Uncategorized
Consider these as you reflect on this week's anniversary of [9/13](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupac_Shakur#September_1996_shooting_and_death):
- A little knowledge (about politics) is [a dangerous thing](http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/falsely-overinformed.html).
- The European Central Bank was in the running to win [Upper Class Twit of the Year](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSqkdcT25ss) as a collective, but this week Jürgen Stark gets the prize [as an individual](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/09/us-ecb-stark-idUSTRE7883DF20110909).
- Fiscal stimulus [vigilante watch](http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-koo-on-obamas-jobs-plan-2011-9): "The insistence that fiscal consolidation is necessary in the longer term . . . is both lacking in decency and irresponsible."
- More on why you [can't fix the economy just with monetary policy](http://kantooseconomics.com/2011/09/12/mein-unbehagen-mit-quasi-monetarismus-my-discomfort-with-quasi-monetarism/#English%20version), and you instead need debt relief for households and deficit spending by the state. See also [JW Mason](http://slackwire.blogspot.com/2011/09/are-recessions-all-about-money-quasi.html) for a techier rendition of similar points. I hope to weave this into some longer writing about the liberal vs. left vs. right debate in macroeconomics, for which today's "capital strike" post was a down payment.
- OMG, grocery stores are [subliminally manipulating](http://www.fastcompany.com/1779611/priming-whole-foods-derren-brown) our desires! [Same as it ever was](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/books/review/Greif-t.html).
- The Great American Jobs Machine is now a [broken-down hooptie](http://lanekenworthy.net/2011/09/13/the-late-american-jobs-machine/).
- Student loan debt default rates are [getting ridiculous](http://www.quickanded.com/2011/09/student-loan-default-problem-even-worse-than-it-seems.html).
- Interracial marriage: unthinkable when my father was a kid, controversial when I was a kid, [taken for granted now](http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2011/09/12/graphiti-interracial-marriage/). Yes, homophobes, [it gets worse](http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-november-15-2010/it-gets-worse-psa).
- It's unclear to me how much my audience overlaps with the group of people who already know that Sam McPheeters is awesome. [This](http://www.vice.com/read/messiah-hunt-v18n9) is his latest but start with [this](http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n1/htdocs/the-troublemakers-515.php) or [this](http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n11/htdocs/the-dessert-psycho-223.php).