Politicians lie? Who would have guessed? - What I am reading 3/2/2015

Washington Post - Obama’s claim that Keystone XL oil ‘bypasses the U.S.’ earns Four Pinocchios - 

When Obama first started making the claim that the crude oil in the Keystone pipeline would bypass the United States, we wavered between Three and Four Pinocchios — and strongly suggested he take the time to review the State Department report.

Clearly, the report remains unread.

The president’s latest remarks pushes this assertion into the Four Pinocchios column. If he disagrees with the State Department’s findings, he should begin to make the case why it is wrong, rather than assert the opposite, without any factual basis. 

hard to get too upset about this since it is par for the course. 

The Register - C'mon! Greece isn't really bust and it can pay its debts:  Not that anyone will be willing to admit it -

For it was largely cleaned up in the two previous bailouts the government has had over that very same debt. In the first one, the private sector bondholders got shafted to the tune of 70 per cent of their holdings and told to take much longer dated paper for the remainder. In the second, most of the remaining debt went to the balance sheets of the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the other Eurozone governments: and maturities and interest rates were changed once again.

The important point is that debt has nothing at all to do with the total amount that is owed. Rather, the two important things are: when do you have to pay it back and what is the interest rate until you do? So, we can look at the total debt burden, note that it's 175 per cent of GDP (anything above 120 per cent is normally thought of as being impossible to pay back) and say: "Sure, they're being screwed by that burden." But the maturities on most of it are out at 30 and 40 years. They've had an interest holiday for most of a decade and rates are in the one and two per cent range anyway.

It's a little like that benefits chaser being told to pay a court fine at £1 a week for the next 172 years. Sure, the total debt is vast compared to their income. But the effect of the debt upon their income ain't

Obviously since this article agrees with me it must be correct.  Especially the part about Qunatitative Easing:

We've also had much the same in reverse these past six years. Monetary policy has been, in the eurozone, absurdly tight. For at least some countries that is. It was Milton Friedman (with Anna Schwartz, in Monetary History of the United States) who got it right about what the Fed had done in the Great Depression.

No, the Depression wasn't a result of the Crash of '29. Rather, it was a result of the Fed allowing the money supply to collapse following that. This is now the accepted wisdom, to the point that Ben Bernanke actually announced, in a speech, to the ghost of Friedman: “Milton, you were right. We got it wrong and we're not going to do so again.”
And thus all that quantitative easing and unconventional monetary policy that has been going on.

And the results bear it out too: the UK, US, the other places that have been doing QE have had a hard time of it, but it has been a bad recession, not a depression. Those places that have not had QE, ie the eurozone, have been shafted. 

 Just saying.

Yeah I know short one today, but I am trying to get back to daily postings.