TAE Feature | Page 2

One Inch Below The Surface (America, You're Being Punked)

TUESDAY, JANUARY 08, 2013 9:42 PM

Artwork: Ilargi for The Automatic Earth

We've sort of run out of ways to describe the skewed perceptions and/or skewed realities of the politico-financial world we inhabit. Metaphors like Bizarro World, Kabuki theater and Theater of the Absurd have come and long gone and are now used only by those who missed out first time around.

But that doesn't mean it's all become less weird; if anything, one gets the feeling the media in general are becoming more complacent if not complicit painting a picture for the general public that's at best make believe and in all other cases border on Orwell. There's a veneer an inch thick (and getting thicker fast) that makes things look sort of normal, just check the economy, and below that there's an increasingly nasty brew boiling and a-festering.

Depending on where one would like to start counting, we were entertained for 6 to 12 months by a B-movie pos [More...]

The Second UK Dash for Gas - A Faustian Bargain

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2012 7:33 PM

The UK is set to embark on its second dash for gas. The first, beginning in the early 1990s, occurred when gas was first permitted to be used for power generation. Prior to that it had been considered a premium fuel too valuable to be used in this [More...]

Impotence, Leverage and Central Banking

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2012 9:11 PM

Some of our readers have been wondering why we spend so much time covering the situation in Europe. The relevance of the European situation is not perhaps immediately obvious to those geographically far removed, with a temptation to ascribe the pr [More...]

Is it time to write off Europe for the next decade?

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 07, 2012 4:28 AM

The EU is a morally bankrupt blind behemoth that, in a doomed attempt to survive, destroys everything around it just to keep itself standing. In that, it is hardly different from several incarnations of the 20th century politburos in Russia and Ch [More...]

How to Rendition An Inconvenient Economist

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2012 1:39 AM

I’ve said this before, but just in case: I have very little appreciation and/or patience for the field of economics and its practitioners. Labeling it "the dismal science" does it far too much honor in my view, since it's not a science at all. No [More...]

Sandy : Lessons From The Wake Of The Storm

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2012 1:46 PM

Superstorm Sandy has been a devastating experience for many, and will continue to be so for a long time to come. Much of the damage will take weeks or months to repair, and some may take years. A myriad long battles with insurance companies are a [More...]