On a Dreary Morning in May of 1920 Seven Men Carrying Winchesters and pistols boarded the Norfolk and Western's No. 29 at Bluefield, West Virginia, bound for the little mining town of Matewan on the Kentucky border.
- Robert Shogan

It was the only time in American history that government airplanes intentionally bombed its own citizens. It was the largest armed insurrection fought on American soil since the Civil War.
And it has been almost totally forgotten outside of the lore of the United Mine Workers of America.

Even if the $700 Billion Wall Street Bailout, together with the $Trillion or more pumped by the Federal Reserve into Wall Street banks and their counterparties, succeed spectacularly in rescuing the economy from financial meltdown, even if they succeed in generating +GDP and economic recovery for years to come -- in short, even if they succeed beyond just about anyone's wildest expectations -- they will almost certainly still work harm on the average American household.

The political bailout of Wall Street will do harm because it is the biggest single example of "trickle down" economics in our nation's history, a particularly toxic "trickle" because the inflation it creates will affect prices long before the cash wends its way from fatcat corporate cronies to average consumers. This is the problem of "first/early receivers" vs. "late/non-receivers" of new money or credit. How it applies to the Wall Street Bailouts I will explain below.

Petit Julien welcomes you to the first gathering at the Populist Pub.   As an introduction, let me refer to this comment I made the other night. You can scroll up and down in that thread to get more context.

One of the things I like most about Naked Capitalism is the daily links that Yves provides. They are wide ranging, only sometimes graphical or analytical, but always apropros to the bigger picture.

So I was thinking if there is a way of doing something similar here at EP. Provide links to other reports, essays, analyses without paraphrasing and just invite general discussion or further original blog posts.

Earlier this week the Census Bureau reported a nasty decline in March retail sales. The report was jarring precisely because private sources of data -- same store sales, mall traffic, car sales -- all had indicated firmness.

And look at what this abrupt decline has wrought: Prof. James Hamilton at econbrowser calls March's poor retail sales "a particularly discouraging development". Prof. Krugman says that "things are still getting worse."

Now let's consider this little nugget: here is the March monthly and early April weekly update from Shoppertrak:

This morning the BLS reported that consumer inflation fell 0.1% (seasonally adjusted) in March, (rising 0.2% NSA) meaning that year-over-year prices have fallen -0.4% into deflation. YoY consumer deflation is only surpassed by 1949 (and ever so slightly in 1954-55) in the post-Depression era. This graph, comparing CPI with PPI for finished goods and comodities (update: showing today's CPI) shows that after a brief pause, deflationary pressures deepened - ever so slightly - in March: