Sunday, August 26, 2012

The Big Bang


Click to enlarge.

This will not end well.

Big Bang

Extrapolation of the expansion of the Universe backwards in time using general relativity yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past. This singularity signals the breakdown of general relativity.

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart

9 comments:

Mr Slippery said...

A lot of smart people seem to think the trade deficit can grow to infinity. I am trying to remember where I saw the chart, but I think about 15% of all world central bank reserves are in dollars.

How many more dollars or treasury bonds does China need, or Saudi Arabia, or Germany, or Japan?

Stagflationary Mark said...

Mr Slippery,

A lot of smart people seem to think the trade deficit can grow to infinity.

Few want to talk about the elephant in the room, and those who do mostly seem to think the elephant is a gift, lol. Sigh.

Troy said...

I'm running a 2008 laptop, 2009 iPod Touch, and 2010 iPad so I'm edging into the market of expanding our trade deficit this year once Apple has the updates I've been waiting for.

Theoretically I think we should have 20% or whatever tariffs on Chinese-made stuff, but paying $600 more or whatever would be painful.

Better that though than losing $600 of wealth via exports if & when we ever square the trade deficits.

dearieme said...

The leftmost red dot seems to have been chosen especially to yield the graph you desire. Did you by any chance train in Climate Science?

Stagflationary Mark said...

Troy,

2002 PC here. I'll be stimulating the trade deficit by year's end. Sigh.

Stagflationary Mark said...

dearieme,

The leftmost red dot seems to have been chosen especially to yield the graph you desire. Did you by any chance train in Climate Science?

Hahaha! No. I freely admit that I did use some artistic license though (as is often the case in trend lines whether people admit it or not). I was tempted to use the date of my birth for the leftmost red dot but I thought I'd be pushing it, lol. ;)

Stagflationary Mark said...

In all seriousness, some might rightfully argue that adding a leftmost red data point in the early 1950s would make more sense. I'm sort of ignoring that entire era in my chart.

I also doubt *very* much that we were running a -14% trade deficit vs. wages in the 1930s (as the chart implies).

That said, it still makes me wonder if this can't all be traced back to The Great Depression's Big Bang though (like a chain of dominoes).

Great Depression - > World War II -> Nixon Shock -> Outsourcing -> Housing Bubble -> ?????

Stagflationary Mark said...

Oops, I meant +14% trade surplus in the 1930s (not deficit).

Stagflationary Mark said...

(A -14% trade deficit is the same of course, but it overcomplicates it.)