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VIDEOFive Things: Five Deflationary Forces to Watch Now
A person could go broke preparing for inflation this early.
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So, we learned this morning that the International Monetary Fund is now hitting up world governments for additional cash, saying it could run out of money in as little as six months. Six months!
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, commenting to reporters after a speech in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, said the IMF needs an urgent cash infusion if it is to continue bailing out troubled economies around the world.
Naturally, Strauss-Kahn then went on to justify the IMFs need to continue bailing out troubled economies around the world by unequivocally stating, according to the Wall Street Journal, that the world's advanced economies are "already in depression."
So let me see if I have this straight: the IMF, one of the organizations supposedly in charge of bailing out various world economies that have run out of cash is... wait for it... running out of cash?
OK. Just wanted to make sure I understood that.
2. Remember When?
Remember that weird day back in September when then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Representative John Boehner (R-OH) each made the Sunday morning news program rounds explaining the need for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, whose acronym, "TARP," could only be either a cruel joke or the result of pure, unadulterated idiocy?
"Much of this weird tension today stems directly from Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's rounds yesterday on the Sunday morning news shows. His behavior was jarringly disturbing and erratic. On "This Week" with George Stephanopolous, Paulson could barely answer a single question without glancing nervously over his shoulder like a man who had just escaped from a medical detention center hurriedly explaining his side of the story to a passing motorist.
And what was his side of the story? Well, that is the awful crux of it. There was no side; there was simply "The Abyss." We have "narrowly avoided it," according to some. We have "stared into it and stepped back," according to others. Some say we have "faced it." Still others, that we "came within hair of plunging into it." But no one anywhere will say with any definitive completeness what, exactly, "The Abyss" is.
Shortly after Paulson disintegrated into a sweaty, jabbering mess under the TV lights on "This Week,' Senator Dodd and Representative Boehner appeared.
"What is it will happen if we don't have this legislation?" Stephanopolous asked. It's a reasonable question. In fact, it's the only reasonable question.
The answer from Dodd and Boehner? Silence. Pressed, Boehner said, "You can't describe on Sunday morning how ugly this picture would look if we don't act."
"Why not?"
No answer."
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