Korean Blogger Arrested?

Paul Krugman ponders why Team Obama's economic plan falls short of providing enough stimulus to reduce unemployment to "natural" levels. His calculations suggest, within three years the Obama plan will push unemployment down to about 7.3% (from an estimated peak of 8.7%.... "natural full employment" is pegged at 4.3%).

My Comment on the matter:

Maybe Team Obama is considering a two-objective problem in which the objectives conflict with each other:

1) Minimize Unemployment
2) Minimize Inflation

Perhaps they have a trade-off curve that shows a break-point when unemployment is at 7.5% with diminishing returns on driving down unemployment as inflation goes through the roof.

Elaboration: As US dollars are flooded into the world market they loose their value. The Fed has already pumped out way more than the Treasury Department's $700 billion for the financial bailout, with little fan fare. Word is that inflation is a certainty and will likely be taking off while the uninformed TV pundits are still lamenting the deflationary economic collapse.

BTW, has you heard about the popular Korean blogger who was arrested after he posted a piece on Korea moving away from US Treasuries? Here's a Digg article on it for you to help promote.

The word is that the mad rush from US Treasury bonds is going to take place fairly soon; there is already movement away, in part because there is legitimate concern the US cannot pay off the bonds, as mentioned recently in an opinion piece published by the Washington Post [1].

I'm thinking about 1) Taking a loan, the interest of which will be inflated away (that's effectively the US plan for getting out of debt), 2) Buying assets now (stocking up on the basics like toilet paper while it's still cheap), and 3) Gold.

Update: What happened to the blogger Park Dae-Sung?

The 31-year-old Park, better known as his pen name "Minerva,'' was arrested early this year on charges of circulating false rumors in cyberspace but was exonerated in April. The prosecutors appealed the court decision, though.

MORE from the Korea Times, September 28, 2009.

Sources:

1. Washington Post, DEFAULT OPTION: We're Borrowing Like Mad. Can the U.S. Pay It Back? January 11, 2009.