Rust Belt Raconteur

As Slate puts it, Buenos Aires is suffering through “the world’s most annoying economic crisis” — a shortage of coins that has let loose an onslaught of bizarre events.

Here’s my currency-related confession: I can’t stand pennies. For me, they have negative utility; the only thing I ever need coins for are vending machines, which don’t accept pennies, so they just waste space. Many groups and individuals, real and fictional, have taken up my cause and tried to banish the penny to no avail. So what do I do when I get them? If there’s no “leave a penny” tray or donation jar,     I just set them down in a neat pile on the nearest shelf or counter.

Enjoy, America.

Two articles at Reason note just how confused and outright delusional politicians and economic pundits have become in recent months.

WARNING: Angry rant ahead.

General Motors is now, apparently, bordering on insolvency. Somehow, this is not the fault of incompetent management and engineers that produce an inferior product, or past agreements with labor unions that lock in massive fringe benefit costs for current and past workers, or any number of other things that are part of what is left of the free market. No, there is an epic crisis that totally just started when the financial crisis hit and they need money. Apparently, the fact that we JUST LOANED THEM $25 BILLION doesn’t count, or matter, or something. The rationale for the $700 billion+ bailout was flimsy, though at least understandable (under its initial archetype, not the sheer socialism of buying up banks); if we expand this to the auto makers, then we start out down a very long road that will lead to every depressed firm and industry asking for a bailout. The trope about privatizing profits and socializing losses will become a complete reality. If companies are never held accountable for poor business decisions, YOU WILL GET MORE BAD DECISIONS. It’s called moral hazard. Look it up, Congresscritters. Further, you will have completely removed Schumpeterian “creative destruction” from the economic landscape. In the future, at this rate, you’ll have the 21st century equivalent of buggy and typewriter manufacturers not going out of business, but sucking at the taxpayer teat indefinitely. We are hastening the end. The national debt is now skyrocketing at a literally incalculable rate. Demographics-based entitlement programs will wipe us out like a tidal wave. And what do we do? Try to save every bad corporation with bailouts. In other words, THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU SHOULD DO. We need to let everything wash out now and get government out of owning businesses. For the love of God, don’t cut the Big Three a check. You’ll have to pay off everybody else too.

And finally there’s this, which … well, my head just exploded: