Good telltale signs for bedbugs is fecal spotting on the bed and mattress from when the bugs take a dump after gorging on your delicious blood... Even if they aren't staying in your matress, you'll should still get signs.

http://www.bedbugcentral.com/bedbugs101/topic.cfm/how-do-i-know-i-have-bed-bugs

Having slept in my fair share of hotels in my life, spotting is the first thing I check for on entering a room.

ps. Have a good night sleep everyone!

>> ^Porksandwich:

They had a television show where the bed bugs were migrating through the wall around the electrical socket into a whole other apartment eating the other person up (who was allergic). They called out an exterminator for them, exterminator couldn't find them in the mattress of the person who called but found traces of them on the pillow cases and stuff heading to the wall. So they asked the adjoining apartment if they could examine their apartment and found their mattress to be heavily infested.
Have no idea if that was possible, true, or even a real show (could have been a fake reality show)...but it gave me the creeps thinking that I could be munched on and never find a real trace of them because they were coming from another bed.


Och aye, apparently they'll very often nest deep in the walls 15 or 20 feet from their meal (you), and just make the commute every night, no problem.

They had a television show where the bed bugs were migrating through the wall around the electrical socket into a whole other apartment eating the other person up (who was allergic). They called out an exterminator for them, exterminator couldn't find them in the mattress of the person who called but found traces of them on the pillow cases and stuff heading to the wall. So they asked the adjoining apartment if they could examine their apartment and found their mattress to be heavily infested.

Have no idea if that was possible, true, or even a real show (could have been a fake reality show)...but it gave me the creeps thinking that I could be munched on and never find a real trace of them because they were coming from another bed.

So glad I have a memory foam mattress.

>> ^pyloricvalve:

Thanks for the reply. There were things I really didn't understand about Krugman's Hangover Theory article, especially that very point that you quote. In fact I tried to ask in a post above about this but maybe you missed it. To me it seems only natural that there is no unemployment in the boom and there is some in the bust. Both are big reorganisations of labour, it is true. However, to start with the boom is much slower and longer so adaptation is easier. Also the booming industry can afford to pay slightly above average wages so will easily attract unemployed or 'loose' labour. As it is paying above average, there will be little resistance to people changing work to it. The boom is persistent enough that people will train and invest to enter the work created by it. The information for entering the boom industry is clear and the pay rise makes the work change smooth. I see no reason for unemployment.
The bust however is short and sudden. There is no other obvious work to return to. That information of what the worker should do is much less clear. The answer may involve taking a small pay cut or on giving up things in which people have invested time and money. Many people wait and resist doing this. They may well not know what to do or try to wait for opportunities to return. Thus there is plenty of reason for unemployment to be generated by the bust.
If I hire 100 people it can probably be done in a month or two. If I fire 100 people it may be a long time before they are all employed again. For me this difference seems so obvious I have a real trouble to understand Krugman's point. I know he's a very smart guy but I can't make head nor tail of his argument here. Can you explain it to me?


I'm trying to think how to connect what you're saying to the point Krugman's making (at least as I understand it).

At a minimum, he're Caplan making the same point in less space:

The Austrian theory also suffers from serious internal inconsistencies. If, as in the Austrian theory, initial consumption/investment preferences "re-assert themselves," why don't the consumption goods industries enjoy a huge boom during depressions? After all, if the prices of the capital goods factors are too high, are not the prices of the consumption goods factors too low? Wage workers in capital goods industries are unhappy when old time preferences re-assert themselves. But wage workers in consumer goods industries should be overjoyed. The Austrian theory predicts a decline in employment in some sectors, but an increase in others; thus, it does nothing to explain why unemployment is high during the "bust" and low during the "boom."

Krugman saying the same thing in more accessible language:

Here's the problem: As a matter of simple arithmetic, total spending in the economy is necessarily equal to total income (every sale is also a purchase, and vice versa). So if people decide to spend less on investment goods, doesn't that mean that they must be deciding to spend more on consumption goods—implying that an investment slump should always be accompanied by a corresponding consumption boom? And if so why should there be a rise in unemployment?

And as a bonus, here's Brad DeLong making a similar case.

My real handicap here is that I'm not familiar enough with the fine details of the Austrian theory to say with authority what they believe. So if I misrepresent their position, it's out of ignorance.

What I gather is that ultimately the Austrian theory of boom and bust is that central banks are messing with the "natural" balance of investment and consumption goods, with a boom happening when investment is being artificially stimulated (by low interest rates), and a bust happens when interest rates eventually go back up (due to inflation, or expectations thereof).

The response from people like Caplan and Krugman is to point out that since aggregate income has to equal aggregate expenditure (because everyone's income is someone else's expenditure, and vice versa), a fall in investment should mean a rise in consumption, and a rise in investment should mean a fall in consumption. Which means we should never see an overall boom or an overall bust, just periods of transition from a rise in consumer goods and a fall in investment, to a fall in consumer goods and a rise in investment. We should never see a situation where they both fall at the same time.

But we do see a fall in both during the bust. Why?

Keynes's answer was that it happens because people are hoarding cash. Either people are themselves stuffing mattresses with it, or more likely, banks start sitting on reserves and refusing to lend out, either out of a fear of their own solvency (Great Depression), or because a deflationary cycle with high unemployment makes sitting on cash look like a good, safe investment for them (Great Depression, and now). Put simply, depressions are the result of an excess demand for money. And since money is an arbitrary thing, it doesn't have to be a scarce resource, we can always just make more...

Man, not really enjoying tfoot.

Back then, lots of people shared beds. Basically a "sleeping bed", like a flower bed, was a general area, not two mattresses, sheets and orthopedic pillows.

...and I don't even believe in the thing.

I dislike seeing perfectly decent opportunities for rational discourse be wasted by juevenile antics.

When they divorce, there won't be an inflated mattress.

@blankfist, I think my libertarian answers were actually better defenses of libertarianism.

And some of my answers were humorously echoed.

The Great Depression:

>> ^NetRunner:

The Great Depression was caused by government interference in the market, an no amount of historical or economic facts will ever convince me otherwise.
>> ^blankfist:

The great depression was prolonged by government. In fact, our recession has lasted longer already than the great depression. Thanks Bush and Obama.

Incidentally, you're citing Friedman the inflationist there, who said that the Great Depression was prolonged by government refusing to restore confidence to the markets by bailing out failing banks, and by trying in vain to hold to the gold standard when what it needed to do was print shitloads of money to counteract the drop in the money supply caused by people stuffing cash into their mattresses. Seriously, go look it up.

On Monopolies:

>> ^NetRunner:

Natural monopolies, where the cost of entering a sector of the market outweighs the expected return, are just part of market economics, and should be tolerated. Market leaders that become a de facto monopoly, but do not actually enjoy 100% market share (such as Microsoft Windows), are not monopolies, and also a natural result of the free market, so government must not interfere.

Government sponsored monopolies, like the USPS, are evil in ways the others are not because their existence is based on violent coercion, not natural market choice.
>> ^blankfist:
And monopolies? How about government monopolies on the postal system? Public utilities and railroads used to be public, but recent years have been privatized. Government runs monopolies on alcoholic and controlled substance distribution in a lot of states. And don't get me started on government granted monopolies.

On deregulation's benefits:
>> ^NetRunner:
Deregulation in Chile is a huge success story.
>> ^blankfist:

[A]ccording to wikipedia, today "Chile is ranked 3rd out of 29 countries in the Americas and has been a regional leader for over a decade. Chile's annual GDP growth was 3.2% in 2008 and has averaged 4.8% from 2004 to 2008." Not too shabby, though people like Neomi Klein may disagree.

Though technically that last was offered as a defense of violently implementing deregulation, even though you cited growth numbers from an era after they'd shifted from the Randian wet dream of Pinochet's rule to a more regulated and democratic system.

Oh, and on the aforementioned violent implementation of libertarianism:

>> ^NetRunner:

Only governments do those things! Wealthy businessmen would never go along with that, because they're all paragons of moral virtue. They'd never let a thing like considerable personal gain motivate them to call for these things in the first place...
>> ^blankfist:
The only group that tends to use violence to coerce people into doing what they want is government. Only a statist can conflate freedom with violence.

Lulz.

>> ^blankfist:

@NetRunner, what's stimulus money got to do with money supply? Are you serious? You must be trolling. For the benefit of others, I'll answer that question:
The Treasury Department borrows the money from the Federal Reserve. This money is printed new and is NOT already in circulation. So, once those trillions get circulated into the economy, what happens? It inflates the money supply. Presto!

Are you serious? You must be trolling. For the benefit of others, I'll correct you.

The Treasury Department borrows the money by selling Treasury bonds on the open market. Domestic investors and banks buy most of it, a big chunk of it is bought by other governments. Some might be purchased by the Fed using freshly printed money, but that's entirely based on what the Fed wants to do with the money supply, and has nothing to do with whether we did stimulus or not.

Not to mention, even if the Fed prints money and buys a treasury, there's no guarantee the buyer won't just hold the dollars as a reserve of some sort, and keep it out of circulation.

>> ^blankfist:
And you asked what happens to wages during inflation? Well, I don't know

An honest answer. Too bad you kept writing...

>> ^blankfist:
[L]et's look at history, shall we? There are plenty of examples in history (Rome, Germany, Yugoslavia), but let's look at Zimbabwe in the 2000s because it's really easy to google. According to wikipedia, Zimbabwe's "annual inflation was estimated at 6.5 quindecillion novemdecillion percent (6.5 x 10108%, the equivalent of 6 quinquatrigintillion 500 quattuortrigintillion percent, or 65 followed by 107 zeros – 650 million googol percent)."

Yes, inflation can happen. But looking at nominal price levels alone doesn't answer why inflation is bad.

>> ^blankfist:
But that's fine, right? Because they just increased the wages and everyone went back to happy Krugman land and ate marshmallows and played with bunnies. Oh no, that didn't happen at all, did it? No. In the end the Zimbabwean Dollar was destroyed, and the people were forced to adopt foreign currencies.

Well here's the thing, have you actually looked at what's happened to the wage level in Zimbabwe? Is the problem that wages never increased at all, and that inflation meant no one had any purchasing power at all?

Or was it something a little more esoteric like a collapse of market confidence that really buggered them?

>> ^blankfist:
It's not as easy to fix as "putting upward pressure on wages". In fact, the people who are first impacted are the people on the bottom, because ALL (and I mean absolutely ALL) inflation enriches the government first, the big businesses with government contracts second, the rich third, and ultimately it's the poor and retired who suffer through the adjustment phase.

Again, you're hamstrung by not actually understanding the underlying economic principles. If the main issue with inflation was really this confiscatory debasement you're talking about, then that would in large part be fixed by greater wage flexibility.

>> ^blankfist:
And what of the people with savings? Are you so willing to write them off with a big dildo shoved up their asses, because they're not currently "earning" a wage? What of those people who saved and saved because that's what society told them was prudent for their retirement? What does your precious Krugman messiah say of the grandmothers and grandfathers who see their savings diminish while their social security payments play catch up with the current cost of living changes?

The answer there is that inflation screws people with large amounts of liquid money (the rich), and helps people with debt (the not-so-rich), while making holding assets look more promising than holding cash in any form. People who saved for retirement by stuffing $100 bills into their mattress get screwed. People who put their money in a savings account may get screwed if the bank doesn't offer them competitive interest rates. People who invested in a mix of stocks and bonds will see those stocks go up in nominal value, while the bonds will likely become worthless (depends on the exact terms though).

People who rely on Social Security will be fine, so long as a) wages as a whole go up with inflation, and b) conservative morons don't come in and cut the COLA below inflation for no reason. It's part of why anyone who wants to privatize Social Security is pretty much a fuckwad.

In the end, the negative effects of stable but high (~10% or so) inflation wouldn't be so bad. There's basically no downside to inflation around 2-4%. And by the way, we're sitting somewhere around 1% right now, with not even the remotest hint of hyperinflation.

The only way for us to really trigger hyperinflation right now is if conservatives follow through on threats to make the US go into default on its debt. But that won't be hyperinflation because of the Fed printing money, it'll be because conservatives will have trashed our nation's credit rating because they're stupid.

*isdupe
>> ^jonny:

dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Gary-s-Mattress-Commercial

This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by chicchorea.

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by jonny. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

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>> ^nock:

Inflation gets a bad rap, the Fed's job is to maintain yearly inflation of about 1-2%. Deflation is really bad because it means that my money is more valuable sitting in my pocket/under mattress/etc today than it will be tomorrow. So why would I buy a large item (car, house, etc) if my ability to purchase increases the more I hold onto my money? In essence, the economy stops because consumers earn more by spending less and companies must lower prices, which leads to layoffs which leads to decreased earnings which leads to less spending which leads to lower prices which leads to layoffs which...


The same logic could be applied for the purchase of technology; why buy today, when something awesome will come out in 6 months. In reality, people do not operate like that. Most people buy object A for X dollars in whenever X dollars is achieved.

Like I said in my comment before, when you start to swing money supply extreme in either direction, that is where the danger starts. Mild deflation or inflation is nothing to troubling. The real problem is there is no objective mathematical principle in which the fed operates the money supply. Minor inflation is smart when considering a continual rise in the population, but there is no standard metric that they follow for this because they ALSO try and heat and cool markets, something they shouldn't be in the business of doing.

Saying inflation is bad or good isn't really viable. Inflation is good for some, bad for others. Deflation is the same bed, good for some, bad for others. Most notably, it is bad for big business. It is in big business's best interest to have cheap money they can spend before it inflates to fill their coffers. Deflation places its power to individuals financing slower endeavors. What is "better" is a matter of taste of lifestyle, one that I don't think the government has any business regulating per say. And I say that in spite of the fact that, most likely, the decisions people would make would tend us towards a lifestyle that I don't enjoy as much (living in perpetual debt...house, car, cards, chrismas!!)...but so be it.

In short, debt as a source of wealth favors those that save money for others. Savings as a source of wealth favors those that save their own wealth for themselves and those they chose to share it with. Both work, but for whom and to what degree sways largely, and in our case, largely on the decisions unelected quzi-public servants make...unacceptable.

Inflation gets a bad rap, the Fed's job is to maintain yearly inflation of about 1-2%. Deflation is really bad because it means that my money is more valuable sitting in my pocket/under mattress/etc today than it will be tomorrow. So why would I buy a large item (car, house, etc) if my ability to purchase increases the more I hold onto my money? In essence, the economy stops because consumers earn more by spending less and companies must lower prices, which leads to layoffs which leads to decreased earnings which leads to less spending which leads to lower prices which leads to layoffs which...