Doesn't that rule out everyone?
I think we need to shift from a model of restricted economy to general economy, along the lines proposed by Georges Bataille in the Accursed Share... An extremely fascinating book, btw.
I certainly don't want to be beamed up to Godland after I die.
definitely makes the top 10
what does the market run on?
13) Markets must be created.
14) The logic of this process is not always rational from a Homo economicus point of view.
...Cover was not a dreamer. he understood that the "social side" or diffusion... was integral to the innovation... From the start, Cover worked on the social side -- not merely locating needs, but organizing existing customers and creating anticipated ones. He incited and created needs to which his innovation responded. this was as much a part of his scientific work of identifying new materials, shaping new connections and conducting different tests....
In other words, for inventions to make it to the world, inventors like Clover have to make the whole package of people and things work together.... Cover was not so much inventing a "thing", or a series of things, as he was assembling alliances -- or rather, a series of alliances -- that were simultaneously social and technological.
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.): Have you reached any conclusions about the Fed expanding its balance sheet by over a trillion dollars since last September?
Federal Reserve Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman: We have not reached any conclusions.
Grayson: Do you know who received that money?
Coleman: For, the, we’re, we’re in the process right now of doing our review, and, um…
Grayson: Right, but you’re the Inspector General. My question to you specifically is do you know who received that one trillion dollars plus that the Fed extended and put on its balance sheets since last September? Do you know the identity of the recipients?
Coleman: I do not know. We have not looked at that specific area at this particular point on those reviews…
Grayson: Well, I have a copy of the Inspector General Act here in front of me, and it says among other things that it’s your responsibility to conduct and supervise audits and investigations related to the programs and operations of your agency. So I’m asking you if your agency has, in fact, according to Bloomberg, extended $9 trillion in credit—which by the way works to $30,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country. I’d like to know, if you’re not responsible for investigating that, who is?
Coleman: We actually, we have responsibility for the Federal Reserve’s programs and operations, to conduct audits and investigations in that area. Um, in terms of who’s responsible for investigating—would you mind repeating the question one more time?…
Grayson: So are you telling me that nobody at the Federal Reserve is keeping track on a regular basis of the losses that it incurs on what is now a $2 trillion portfolio?
Coleman: I don’t know if—you’re mentioning that there’s losses. I’m just saying that we’re not, until we actually look at the program and have the information, we are not in the position to say whether there are losses or to respond in any other way…
Markets require signification, hence the universal solvent, money, and people, the participants: bodies, and words. Markets are between. What is the market? The market is not a collection of exchanges, trades and transactions; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by exchange. Ahem.
Also, this post is generating quite a lot of comment.
A further question: If there are deficits, there must be surpluses. Where are the surpluses?
A good point. People make markets and markets make people -- they are mutually constitutive. So do free markets = free speech?
Budget deficits are different to trade deficits. Governments borrow money by issuing bonds. The surplus is with the savers who want to lend it money, which they do by purchasing the government's bonds. A trade deficit exists where a country imports more than it exports, and is matched by surpluses in its trading partners (kinda -- obviously, it gets complicated when everyone is trading with everyone else). A trade deficit results in a current account deficit (because the imported goods have to be paid for). A basic principle of macro states that a country can only run a current account deficit (that is, a trade deficit), if it imports capital from abroad (known as a capital account surplus, i.e. net capital inflows).