REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

A thread for Democrats Only

POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Wednesday, November 20, 2024 08:17
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Sunday, August 5, 2018 7:14 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Why Presidents have less control over the economy than you think they do.

More at www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-29/what-economists-still-don-t
-get-about-2008-crisis

All of these papers have one thing in common — they use debt to predict recessions years in advance. That fits with the emerging post-crisis wisdom that problems in credit markets are the source of both financial crashes and the ensuing economic slowdowns.

Gennaioli and Shleifer explain these patterns by turning to their own preferred theory of human irrationality — the theory of extrapolative expectations. Basically, this theory holds that when asset prices rise — home values, stocks and so on — without a break, investors start to believe that this trend represents a new normal. They pile into the asset, pumping up the price even more, and seeming to confirm the idea that the trend will never end. But when the extrapolators’ money runs out, reality sets in and a crash ensues. Gennaioli, Shleifer, and their coauthors have been only one of several teams of researchers to investigate this idea and its implications in recent years.

When extrapolative expectations are combined with an inherently fragile financial system, a predictable cycle of booms and busts is the result. At some point during good economic times, irrational exuberance takes hold, pushing stock prices, house values, or both into the stratosphere. When they inevitably come down, banks collapse, taking the rest of the economy with them.

This story, if it became the standard model of the business cycle, would represent a true revolution in macroeconomics. It discards two pillars of recent macroeconomic thought — rational expectations, and shock-driven unpredictable recessions. It would represent a triumph for Minsky’s ideas, and for those outside the academy who have long urged macroeconomists to pay more attention to debt markets and human psychology. And if the code of booms and busts can finally be cracked, there may be ways for central banks, regulators or other policy makers to head off crises before they begin, instead of cleaning up afterward.

So far, Gennaioli and Shleifer’s story isn’t close to achieving dominance in macro. But of all the ideas being put forth in the field, this seems like the most interesting to watch.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, August 5, 2018 5:52 PM

THG


Trump says Don Jr. wanted dirt on Clinton from Russian lawyer

Donald Trump acknowledged Sunday that his oldest son was trying to dig up dirt on Hillary Clinton when he met a woman linked to the Kremlin in 2016 — an attempt to re-cast the Trump Tower meeting as an innocuous part of campaigning as the president gets energized about hitting the trail again this year.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/05/trump-donald-junior-clinton-
russia-764357

T

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Monday, August 6, 2018 6:21 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


For decades the right has tried to shout down any attempt to sand down some of the rough edges of capitalism, whether through health guarantees, income supports, or anything else, by yelling “socialism.” Sooner or later people were bound to say that if any attempt to make our system less harsh is socialism, well, they’re socialists.

The truth is that there are hardly any people in the U.S. who want the government to seize the means of production, or even the economy’s commanding heights. What they want is social democracy – the kinds of basic guarantees of health care, protection against poverty, etc., that almost every other advanced country provides. The GOP is opposed.

Denmark, where tax receipts are 46 percent of GDP compared with 26 percent in the U.S., is arguably the most social-democratic country in the world. According to conservative doctrine, the combination of high taxes and aid to “takers” must really destroy incentives both to create jobs and to take them in any case. So Denmark must suffer from mass unemployment, right? The GOP is wrong.


https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=kM3v

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=kM3O

Denmark runs a welfare state beyond the wildest dreams of U.S. progressives and still has a highly successful economy.

More at www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/opinion/notes-on-a-butter-republic.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, August 6, 2018 7:53 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Trump says Don Jr. wanted dirt on Clinton from Russian lawyer

Donald Trump acknowledged Sunday that his oldest son was trying to dig up dirt on Hillary Clinton when he met a woman linked to the Kremlin in 2016 — an attempt to re-cast the Trump Tower meeting as an innocuous part of campaigning as the president gets energized about hitting the trail again this year.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/05/trump-donald-junior-clinton-
russia-764357

T


Isn't that story over a year old now?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, August 6, 2018 7:58 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
For decades the right has tried to shout down any attempt to sand down some of the rough edges of capitalism, whether through health guarantees, income supports, or anything else, by yelling “socialism.” Sooner or later people were bound to say that if any attempt to make our system less harsh is socialism, well, they’re socialists.

The truth is that there are hardly any people in the U.S. who want the government to seize the means of production, or even the economy’s commanding heights. What they want is social democracy – the kinds of basic guarantees of health care, protection against poverty, etc., that almost every other advanced country provides. The GOP is opposed.

Denmark, where tax receipts are 46 percent of GDP compared with 26 percent in the U.S., is arguably the most social-democratic country in the world. According to conservative doctrine, the combination of high taxes and aid to “takers” must really destroy incentives both to create jobs and to take them in any case. So Denmark must suffer from mass unemployment, right? The GOP is wrong.

Denmark runs a welfare state beyond the wildest dreams of U.S. progressives and still has a highly successful economy.

More at www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/opinion/notes-on-a-butter-republic.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly



If I paid 46% of my income to taxes instead of what I currently do, I'd be homeless.

I'll pay 15% for Social Security and Medicare (Yes, you absolutely do count the half the company pays for you). I'll pay 10% on roughly 4k income Federal tax, so about 3% more. 5% on almost every dime to the state. About 10% of my income will pay my property taxes, and since I'm looking at spending about 80% of what I make this year another 7.5% is going to sales taxes.

Oh... silly me.

I'm already going to be paying 40.5% of my income to taxes this year.

And I make signifigantly less than the Federal Poverty level for a single person.

Sucks to be me, huh?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, August 6, 2018 8:59 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

If I paid 46% of my income to taxes instead of what I currently do, I'd be homeless.

I'll pay 15% for Social Security and Medicare (Yes, you absolutely do count the half the company pays for you). I'll pay 10% on roughly 4k income Federal tax, so about 3% more. 5% on almost every dime to the state. About 10% of my income will pay my property taxes, and since I'm looking at spending about 80% of what I make this year another 7.5% is going to sales taxes.

Oh... silly me.

I'm already going to be paying 40.5% of my income to taxes this year.

And I make signifigantly less than the Federal Poverty level for a single person.

Sucks to be me, huh?

Do Right, Be Right. :)
There is poverty in Denmark, but far less than in America. Unless you learned to speak Danish, you would be poor there, too, 6ixStringJack.
www.demos.org/blog/10/20/15/united-states-vs-denmark-17-charts

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, August 6, 2018 9:18 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

If I paid 46% of my income to taxes instead of what I currently do, I'd be homeless.

I'll pay 15% for Social Security and Medicare (Yes, you absolutely do count the half the company pays for you). I'll pay 10% on roughly 4k income Federal tax, so about 3% more. 5% on almost every dime to the state. About 10% of my income will pay my property taxes, and since I'm looking at spending about 80% of what I make this year another 7.5% is going to sales taxes.

Oh... silly me.

I'm already going to be paying 40.5% of my income to taxes this year.

And I make signifigantly less than the Federal Poverty level for a single person.

Sucks to be me, huh?

Do Right, Be Right. :)
There is poverty in Denmark, but far less than in America. Unless you learned to speak Danish, you would be poor there, too, 6ixStringJack.
www.demos.org/blog/10/20/15/united-states-vs-denmark-17-charts

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


I'm not poor.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, August 6, 2018 10:45 AM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Trump says Don Jr. wanted dirt on Clinton from Russian lawyer

Donald Trump acknowledged Sunday that his oldest son was trying to dig up dirt on Hillary Clinton when he met a woman linked to the Kremlin in 2016 — an attempt to re-cast the Trump Tower meeting as an innocuous part of campaigning as the president gets energized about hitting the trail again this year.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/05/trump-donald-junior-clinton-
russia-764357

T


Isn't that story over a year old now?

Do Right, Be Right. :)


Here you go dummy. How is it you could be in thread after thread giving opinions on whats going on with Trump and still be so clueless? We've been debating the collusion ( conspiracy ) of the Trump administration and the russians since before the election with you and others, and still you act or remain clueless about the facts.

Because you're a moron let me spell it out for you. Trump admits to collusion, collusion, collusion...tick tock dummy
T





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Monday, August 6, 2018 3:27 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

And I make signifigantly less than the Federal Poverty level for a single person.

Sucks to be me, huh?

Do Right, Be Right. :)
a second quote:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I'm not poor.

Do Right, Be Right. :)
You are confusing me, 6ixStringJack. You say "I'm not poor" and you also say "And I make signifigantly less than the Federal Poverty level for a single person. Sucks to be me, huh?" Maybe the word "signifigantly" with two g's (your spelling, not mine) means something different than the alternative word significantly with one g?

6ixStringJack, it might be time to decide if you are a member of the political party for poor people or the political party for rich people. Or are you in the political party of independent people? I don't know the name of that party. I don't think it exists.

This is probably as good a place as any to say that the Democratic party is extremely different from the Republican party. I know it is to the advantage of Russia to claim both parties are equal failures, but I believe that is absolutely false. Russia wants indecision, gridlock or random chaos in American government. One party really is superior to the other. Decide one way or the other. And there is no third way.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, August 6, 2018 6:14 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

And I make signifigantly less than the Federal Poverty level for a single person.

Sucks to be me, huh?

Do Right, Be Right. :)
a second quote:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I'm not poor.

Do Right, Be Right. :)
You are confusing me, 6ixStringJack. You say "I'm not poor" and you also say "And I make signifigantly less than the Federal Poverty level for a single person. Sucks to be me, huh?" Maybe the word "signifigantly" with two g's (your spelling, not mine) means something different than the alternative word significantly with one g?

6ixStringJack, it might be time to decide if you are a member of the political party for poor people or the political party for rich people. Or are you in the political party of independent people? I don't know the name of that party. I don't think it exists.

This is probably as good a place as any to say that the Democratic party is extremely different from the Republican party. I know it is to the advantage of Russia to claim both parties are equal failures, but I believe that is absolutely false. Russia wants indecision, gridlock or random chaos in American government. One party really is superior to the other. Decide one way or the other. And there is no third way.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Both sides suck. Neither is superior to the other. I don't have to decide anything. And if you're going to play the Russian card and call all people who believe the truth that both sides suck Russians, I'm going to choose whatever side your not on every time.

Think about that when Trump gets re-elected in 2020.



And no. I'm not poor. Just because I'm currently making below the poverty level doesn't make me poor. I have no mortgage, I have zero debt, I've got an 822 credit score with easy access to 5 times my current yearly wages in credit, I've got over a year of wages that are in liquid funds and I'll bank at least 20% of my income this year even after paying for some major purchases that need paying.

Most Americans can't even put $400 together for an emergency, and most Americans make more money than me.

I'm not rich, but I'm certainly not poor.


There's a whole world of grey in the middle, Second. You need to stop looking at everything in only Black or White.


Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, August 6, 2018 6:56 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Oops! Thanos, you monster! You destroyed this comment!

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Monday, August 6, 2018 6:58 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Both sides suck. Neither is superior to the other. I don't have to decide anything. And if you're going to play the Russian card and call all people who believe the truth that both sides suck Russians, I'm going to choose whatever side your not on every time.

Think about that when Trump gets re-elected in 2020.

There's a whole world of grey in the middle, Second. You need to stop looking at everything in only Black or White.


Do Right, Be Right. :)
Did you see Avengers Infinity War? We need Thanos to create two Earths. In one, the Democrats rule America. In the other, the Republicans. Then Thanos compares results and destroys one or the other Earth.

The Republicans say there is no such thing as Global Warming. The Democrats say the opposite. Trump does what he can to increase CO2 by lower fuel mileage and raising coal mining employment. Thanos will have to run the experiment in real time on the two Earths to determine who is wronger, Democrats or Republicans. From the article "Domino-effect of climate events could push Earth into a ‘hothouse’ state":
Quote:
“I do hope we are wrong, but as scientists we have a responsibility to explore whether this is real. We need to know now. It’s so urgent. This is one of the most existential questions in science.”
www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/06/domino-effect-of-climate-e
vents-could-push-earth-into-a-hothouse-state

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, August 6, 2018 9:01 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Did you see Avengers Infinity War?


Nope. Not into Hollywood schlock, and I go out of my way not to support any of them. I'd say that's one of the reasons I'm not poor, but truth be told I could have watched it for quite a while on KODI for free and still I can't be bothered with it.

Quote:
We need Thanos to create two Earths. In one, the Democrats rule America. In the other, the Republicans. Then Thanos compares results and destroys one or the other Earth.


Thanos won't take any of my calls. Maybe you 1%'ers might have better luck reaching him.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, August 6, 2018 9:59 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Did you see Avengers Infinity War?


Nope. Not into Hollywood schlock, and I go out of my way not to support any of them. I'd say that's one of the reasons I'm not poor, but truth be told I could have watched it for quite a while on KODI for free and still I can't be bothered with it.

Quote:
We need Thanos to create two Earths. In one, the Democrats rule America. In the other, the Republicans. Then Thanos compares results and destroys one or the other Earth.


Thanos won't take any of my calls. Maybe you 1%'ers might have better luck reaching him.

Do Right, Be Right. :)
So, you don't care that Trump is working as hard as he can to burn the Earth, with him operating under the assumption that CO2 can't possibly do what scientists suspect it can. Do you care that Trump is also working to repeat the crash of 2008, which affected you? It was a great opportunity for me to buy stocks cheap, half price sale, but maybe it was bad for your job history, leaving years-long gaps in your employment.

Trump is assuming that none of the safeguards added to prevent another 2008 crash are necessary. He is working as fast as he can to remove all the safeties that might slowdown profitability. If there is another crash, Trump will do what Bush did, rescue the banks and rich with Federal money. 6ixStringJack doesn't need rescue. He can look after himself so I don't expect him to care about another crash.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, August 7, 2018 6:28 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


lol



Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Tuesday, August 7, 2018 7:29 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
lol



Do Right, Be Right. :)
You should laugh. The stock market drops, followed by you becoming unemployed. The rich appear to become poorer, too, but the smart ones have cash to buy the cheap stocks that crashed. The smart ones end up richer than before the crash, once the market recovers in a few years. And what about the unemployed and you? After years of not working, they are poorer and will stay poorer for life because of stock market crashes. The beauty of the system engineered by the GOP is that crashes are profit opportunities available only to the rich. And crashes keep wages low, which is also great news for the rich employers. It is a win-win for the rich and a lose-lose for you.
http://time.com/money/4947363/warren-buffett-stock-market-indicator/
www.marketwatch.com/story/warren-buffetts-growing-cash-pile-and-the-bi
g-read-in-for-investors-2018-08-06?mod=MW_story_top_stories

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, August 7, 2018 7:35 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
You should laugh.
No.
We should change the rules of the game that even make this possible,

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Tuesday, August 7, 2018 7:41 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
So, you don't care that Trump is working as hard as he can to burn the Earth, with him operating under the assumption that CO2 can't possibly do what scientists suspect it can.
Of course I care. But there is life after Trump, who will only be on office 4 or 8 years, while this problem has been going on for over 50 years under Dems and Repubs alike.

Quote:
Do you care that Trump is also working to repeat the crash of 2008, which affected you? It was a great opportunity for me to buy stocks cheap, half price sale, but maybe it was bad for your job history, leaving years-long gaps in your employment.
Not really. The ONLY TIMES in recent history, under both Dems and Repubs, when the elite's fraction of wealth actually went down was during crashes. I certainly posted enough of that for you to look at. The elite, under Dems and Repubs, have been using The Fed's cheap money ... money that only the elite have access to ... to rob everyone even further.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Tuesday, August 7, 2018 7:56 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
So, you don't care that Trump is working as hard as he can to burn the Earth, with him operating under the assumption that CO2 can't possibly do what scientists suspect it can.
Of course I care. But there is life after Trump, who will only be on office 4 or 8 years, while this problem has been going on for over 50 years under Dems and Repubs alike.
"Over 50 years under Dems and Repubs alike." Signym, do you remember old what's-his-name? I can't even recall. I know you forgot. Oh, it's Al Gore, the famous Democrat! I checked, he is alive. He talked about the greenhouse gas effect, global warming, blah-blah-blah and all the Republicans said it does not exist. Bush's brother, governor of Florida, made sure Gore did not get to act against global warming. As a fact, the entire GOP made sure Obama did not get to act against global warming. Trump increases coal burning and decreases vehicle fuel economy, so we know where Trump is on CO2. Signym, there are two sides on CO2. The Repubs are on one side, the Democrats on the other, but you flat out lied with your "Over 50 years under Dems and Repubs alike."

Syria announced during United Nations climate talks on Tuesday that it would sign the Paris agreement on climate change. The move, which comes on the heels of Nicaragua signing the accord last month, will leave the United States as the only country that has rejected the global pact.
www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/climate/syria-joins-paris-agreement.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, August 8, 2018 6:40 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


The GOP is dismantling the regulatory system for banks and markets. That would be a bad move. Paul Romer, Economist:

Did you get a chance to look at this looting paper? This is a couple of crises ago. In effect, what [economist George Akerlof and I] showed is that seemingly small weaknesses in your regulatory system can open up enormous risks, and enormous opportunities for private profit. So what it tells you is that under-regulating or mis-regulating is much more dangerous than people generally accept. So I think most economists think of this as kind of, “We’re on the top of a smooth hill. Even if you’ve got it kind of, sort of, right in terms of regulation, you’re fine. A little deviation one side or the other, it won’t really matter.” We were trying to say, “No. It’s like a cliff. You go a little bit over the cliff, in terms of what you allow with your regulatory system, you’re gonna get really terrible outcomes.”

Everybody disliked that paper. After the financial crisis, some people, including Larry Summers, told me they now saw that the looting story captured the reality in a way that they hadn’t recognized before. This is what worries me, people are kind of heading back to the pre-crisis worldview. Regulation is never perfect. You can always kind of complain about imperfections. But I think the kind of weakening, at the behest of the industry, that we’re going through right now should be generating a lot more academic concern than it is generating at the moment. There’s a complacency that’s setting back in. There’s a tolerance now for, oh, maybe let’s err a little bit on the side of under-regulating. You know, how much harm could it cause?

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/america-10-years-after-th
e-financial-crisis.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, August 8, 2018 8:58 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


SECOND I'm reading the article that you linked, and like the OTHER article that you linked ("The Browning of America") I'm asking myself ...What the fuck is the author ON???

He paints an America, both before and after, that lives only in his imagination. I'll be more specific when I'm done, but this article is going to be tough going, because his premise is already fucked up.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Wednesday, August 8, 2018 9:11 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I'm reading thru your link but fail to see how it is related to the comment by Romer. It's just sort of a picture of America, "before and after" but doesn't have anything specific about regulatory weakness in it. Did you possibly post the wrong link? If so, can you please post the correct link?

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Wednesday, August 8, 2018 9:59 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I'm reading thru your link but fail to see how it is related to the comment by Romer. It's just sort of a picture of America, "before and after" but doesn't have anything specific about regulatory weakness in it. Did you possibly post the wrong link? If so, can you please post the correct link?

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
It is the right link because it is linking the crash of 2008 to loosening of regulations on lenders. The lenders were withholding information about how bad the loans actually were that they were making, then profitably reselling to other financial institutions, thus screwing the buyers and everyone who was hurt by the resulting crash when the truth became known.

By the way, Paul Romer was talking about the "looting" paper which he wrote with economist George Akerlof. George got the Nobel Prize in Economics for pointing out the mechanisms that governments can use to stop Capitalists from "looting" the economy. He is the author of a landmark study on the role of asymmetric information in the market for "lemon" used cars. His research broke with established economic theory in illustrating how markets malfunction when buyers and sellers — as seen in used car markets — operate under different information. The work has had far-reaching applications in such diverse areas as health insurance, financial markets and employment contracts. There is more, Signym, but you won't be able to figure it out. You are not just pretending to be stupid in order to get me to waste my time explaining it to you.

www.berkeley.edu/news/features/2001/nobel/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, August 8, 2018 5:06 PM

THG



Omarosa may have secretly taped White House conversations:

Former Trump staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman might have secretly recorded private conversations in the White House out of fear for special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, The New York Daily News reported Friday

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/369689-omarosa-may-have-sec
retly-taped-white-house-conversations-report

T

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Wednesday, August 8, 2018 6:48 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by THG:

Omarosa may have secretly taped White House conversations:

Former Trump staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman might have secretly recorded private conversations in the White House out of fear for special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, The New York Daily News reported Friday

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/369689-omarosa-may-have-sec
retly-taped-white-house-conversations-report

T


"May have", huh?

Probably shouldn't report on it unless you know for a fact.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Wednesday, August 8, 2018 7:00 PM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:

Omarosa may have secretly taped White House conversations:

Former Trump staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman might have secretly recorded private conversations in the White House out of fear for special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, The New York Daily News reported Friday

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/369689-omarosa-may-have-sec
retly-taped-white-house-conversations-report

T


Quote:

"May have", huh?

Probably shouldn't report on it unless you know for a fact.



Hey dummy. Read or follow the link. The Hill is the one who wrote the story. And since they are not a fake news outlet it's worth mentioning here.

T

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Wednesday, August 8, 2018 7:57 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:

Omarosa may have secretly taped White House conversations:

Former Trump staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman might have secretly recorded private conversations in the White House out of fear for special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, The New York Daily News reported Friday

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/369689-omarosa-may-have-sec
retly-taped-white-house-conversations-report

T


Quote:

"May have", huh?

Probably shouldn't report on it unless you know for a fact.



Hey dummy. Read or follow the link. The Hill is the one who wrote the story. And since they are not a fake news outlet it's worth mentioning here.

T


I didn't say it was fake news. I said it was "no news".

How irresponsible is it to say that something "may be true" rather than wait to see if it is true just to sell a few papers or subscriptions?




lol...

"Dummy" again? Why don't you pick up a thesaurus, son? Surely you can come up with a better insult than that.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Thursday, August 9, 2018 6:23 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
Signym, you started with the Democrats are as bad as the Republicans. I don't believe that is true.
Well, then you're religious about your politics because (for you) it's a matter of belief and not fact.

Quote:
Politics is entertainment for the masses and Democrats are the equivalent of documentary makers, while Republicans make the equivalent of Hollywood's summer movies.
Wrong. BOTH Dems and Repubs engage together in creating a Punch-and-Judy show for the masses. But while they're performing .... whatever it is that they're performing ... the oligarchs (the REAL persons in power) get to decide where manufacturing goes, what our tax rates will be, what monetary policy the central banks will follow and whether "austerity" will be visited on the populace, how much our pockets will be picked by TPTB, and where we will go to war. The Dems have not slowed down this process one jot.
Signym, that was from page one, Monday, October 9, 2017. A book has been written since then:
Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall
www.amazon.com/Tailspin-Americas-Fifty-Year-Fall-Fighting/dp/152473163
3/

Excellent books and scholarly treatises have been written about the likeliest suspects: the growth of income inequality, the polarization and paralysis of American democracy, the dominance of political money, or the recklessness that precipitated the financial crash of 2008–9 and the ensuing failure to hold anyone accountable. The story of America’s breakdown is about all of that, and more. And there is a theme that threads through and ties together all of these subplots: The most talented, driven Americans chased the American dream—and won it for themselves. Then, in a way unprecedented in history, they were able to consolidate their winnings, outsmart and co-opt the government that might have reined them in, and pull up the ladder so more could not share in their success or challenge their primacy.

By continuing to get better at what they do, by knocking away the guardrails limiting their winnings, by aggressively engineering changes in the political landscape, and by dint of the often unanticipated consequences of the breakthroughs they pulled off in legal rights, financial engineering, digital technology, political strategy, and so many other areas, they created a nation of moats that protected them from accountability and from the damage their triumphs caused in the larger community. Most of the time, our elected and appointed representatives were no match for these overachievers. As a result of their savvy, their drive, and their resources, America all but abandoned its most ambitious and proudest ideal: the never perfect, always debated, and perpetually sought-after balance between the energizing inequality of achievement in a competitive economy and the liberating, community-binding equality of power promised by democracy. In a battle that began a half century ago, the achievers won.

The result is a new, divided America. On one side are the protected few—the winners—who don’t need government for much and even have a stake in sabotaging the government’s responsibility to all of its citizens. For them, the new, broken America works fine, at least in the short term. On the other side are the unprotected many, who rely on government, as they always have, to protect and preserve their way of life and maybe even improve it. That divide is the essence of America’s tailspin. The protected overmatched, overran, and paralyzed the government.

Signym was that too abstract? It didn't point the accusing finger at the GOP. The blame is placed vaguely on "government" in order to not offend Republican book purchasers. Here is a solid example of how government works in practice when the Republicans are in charge:
https://goo.gl/2D21kZ

Under Obama, the for-profit college DeVry University agreed to pay $100 million to settle a lawsuit with the Federal Trade Commission and another lawsuit with the Education Department. Under Trump, the Education Department hired one of DeVry’s former deans. His new job? Head of what’s left of the investigative unit. Betsy DeVos, Trump’s secretary of education, practically dismantled the unit in her department charged with investigating fraud at for-profit colleges. The dozen or so lawyers and investigators who were looking at the predatory practices of some of these colleges were marginalized, reassigned or given more clerical tasks. The unit was left with only three employees, and the reorganization effectively killed investigations of the for-profit colleges suspected of misleading students about prospects for employment and salaries after graduation while burdening them with enormous debt.

The dismantling of oversight of for-profit colleges illustrates the main point of “Tailspin,” the book by Steven Brill. It is what Republicans naturally do in the White House.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, August 9, 2018 6:46 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:

Omarosa may have secretly taped White House conversations:

Former Trump staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman might have secretly recorded private conversations in the White House out of fear for special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, The New York Daily News reported Friday

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/369689-omarosa-may-have-sec
retly-taped-white-house-conversations-report

T


Quote:

"May have", huh?

Probably shouldn't report on it unless you know for a fact.



Hey dummy. Read or follow the link. The Hill is the one who wrote the story. And since they are not a fake news outlet it's worth mentioning here.

T


I didn't say it was fake news. I said it was "no news".

How irresponsible is it to say that something "may be true" rather than wait to see if it is true just to sell a few papers or subscriptions?




lol...

"Dummy" again? Why don't you pick up a thesaurus, son? Surely you can come up with a better insult than that.

Do Right, Be Right. :)
Trump pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Joe said that if Trump asked, he would return the favor. It hasn’t happened yet, but it is news:

Sacha Baron Cohen tricked disgraced former sheriff Joe Arpaio into saying he'd take a blow job from President Trump.



The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, August 9, 2018 11:03 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


SECOND, with all due respect, I have to point out that not only do you put words in MY mouth, you put words in the mouths of authors who (a) clearly don't mean what YOU say they mean and (b) aren't even here to defend themselves. Specifically ....
Quote:
It didn't point the accusing finger at the GOP. The blame is placed vaguely on "government" in order to not offend Republican book purchasers.
Even just the little snippet that you quoted* ...

Quote:
... the growth of income inequality, the polarization and paralysis of American democracy, the dominance of political money, or the recklessness that precipitated the financial crash of 2008–9 and the ensuing failure to hold anyone accountable.
That part about "failure to hold anyone accountable"? That happened specifically under OBAMA, son. IF the author hadn't intended to blame Democrats SPECIFICALLY for their part in this cluster-fuck, he would have left that part out.

*BTW, it would be extremely helpful if you indicated where you're quoting someone else, and where you're writing for yourself. You DO know how to use the quotation function, right?

Now, let's go back to my contention AND the data behind it
Quote:
BOTH Dems and Repubs engage together in creating a Punch-and-Judy show for the masses. But while they're performing .... whatever it is that they're performing ... the oligarchs (the REAL persons in power) get to decide where manufacturing goes, what our tax rates will be, what monetary policy the central banks will follow and whether "austerity" will be visited on the populace, how much our pockets will be picked by TPTB, and where we will go to war. The Dems have not slowed down this process one jot.


Let me repeat that: The Dems have not slowed down this process one jot.

You can point to small "DEM" examples like Obama busting small for-profit colleges, but what happened to the BANKS?

Something similar happened under Reagan it was called the Savings & Loan Crisis. And during the Savings & Loan debacle of 1985-1995 (Reagan) there were
Quote:
over 30,000 criminal referrals ... over 1,000 felony convictions in cases designated as “major” by the Department of Justice .... [with] a list of ... the 100 worst fraud schemes. They involved roughly 300 savings and loans and 600 individuals, and virtually all of those people were prosecuted. We had a 90 percent conviction rate, which is the greatest success against elite white-collar crime (in terms of prosecution) in history.
https://billmoyers.com/2013/09/17/hundreds-of-wall-street-execs-went-t
o-prison-during-the-last-fraud-fueled-bank-crisis/

Now, what happened to the banks under OBAMA? He continued the process, begun under GWB, of disgorging TRILLIONS of dollars into bank coffers to make them whole. But no arrests were made of high-level Wall Street bankers, even though they were selling financial products that even THEY knew were full of shit.(= fraud) The only prosecution that I recall was of Angelo Mozilo, at Countrywide, a nonbank lender. Instead, Obama engineered a $25 billion settlement with the banks - less than a slap on the wrist considering the trillions of dollars that the government disgorged - which our [then] fearless leader Kamala Harris signed on to. After that, I never voted for Kamala again.

Lanny Breuer, the person under Obama responsible for prosecuting bankers for fraud, not only refused to prosecute the architects of the 2008 debacle, he also refused to prosecute HSBC for money-laundering in an unrelated case. (Very similar to refusing to prosecute Hillary).
Quote:
In response to the DOJ's excuse-making that these criminal cases are too hard to win, numerous experts - Senators, top Hill staffers, former DOJ prosecutors - emphasized the key point: Obama officials never even tried. ... Jeff Connaughton, wrote a book in 2011 - "The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins" - devoted to alerting the nation that the Obama DOJ refused even to try to find criminal culprits on Wall Street. In the book, this career-Democratic-aide-turned-whistleblower details how the levers of Washington power are used to shield and protect high-level Wall Street executives, many of whom have close ties to the leaders of both parties. ... In the documentary "Inside Job", the economist Nouriel Roubini, when asked why there have been no such investigations, replied: "Because then you'd find the culprits."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/23/untouchables-wal
l-street-prosecutions-obama

Also, let me point out something about the ACA .... it is a huge government gift to big pharma.

So, about that wealth inequality ... I see that Obama did as much to promote it as Bush; he just used different means to accomplish the same end. Bush - and other Republicans - tend to use tax cuts, while Democrats tend to "gift" financials and other large institutions with government money. NEITHER ONE has slowed down the steady march to a bifurcated society.

So, once again, without looking at trivial examples and without using distorted reasoning, LET US LOOK AT THE RESULTS ...

http://economistsview.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b33869e201a5115729b5970
c-500wi (Please follow this link. It is a good graph from the St Louis FRED, which has apparently withdrawn all of its data from public view)



You will see that inequality goes up in a sawtooth fashion. One of the first big "teeth" began roughly 1981. (REAGAN)
The NEXT big "tooth" up began roughly 1992 (CLINTON)
The NEXT big "tooth" up after than began approximately 2013 (OBAMA)

We have yet to discuss the role of The Fed in all of this.

Please stop wasting your time, my time, and everyone else's time with your constant whacking off to the tune of "Republicans! Republicans!" and start looking at the real world once in a while, m'kay??


-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Friday, August 10, 2018 7:05 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, with all due respect, I have to point out that . . .

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy
You'll like this better since it blames Hillary and oligopolistic firms. "America is an oligarchy" - Signym:

The Democrats first step is to tell a clear and accurate story of what has gone wrong in the country economically, something they utterly failed to do in 2016. With Barack Obama still president, Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton, felt compelled to tell voters that they should feel good about the economic progress of the previous eight years, even though, as they knew, wages had barely budged.

Into that vacuum stepped Donald Trump, who had a simpler story: Average Americans were suffering from long-term downward mobility because elites and Washington had abandoned them to the depredations of immigrants and China, and he would put things right. The particulars were wrong, and dishonest, but the overall portrait of generational decline hit home for much of the country.

In 2019 and 2020, the burden of defending the status quo will be reversed. That will give Democrats an opportunity to finally take the lead on telling the story of the deeper trends that actually explain the past two decades of wage stagnation. The most important part of that story is the concentration of corporate power. With more and more industries controlled by fewer and fewer big firms, corporate managers face little pressure to raise wages, since many workers, especially in rural America, have nowhere else to go. Combine that with the continuing decline of unions, the erosion of the real value of the minimum wage, and the spread of employment contracts with anti-worker provisions—like mandatory arbitration and noncompete clauses—and you have an economy in which workers have little or no bargaining power. A growing chorus of economists now thinks that this phenomenon—more than trade, and certainly more than immigration—is the best explanation for why real wages aren’t rising even after nine years of economic expansion, near-record-low unemployment, and record corporate profits.

But most Americans don’t know any of this, because their leaders haven’t bothered to tell them. They may have seen firsthand the number of potential employers in their hometown shrink because of corporate mergers, or they may have been turned down for a raise even though their company is making huge profits. They may have tried to expand their small business, only to be blocked by market barriers erected by larger corporations. But most folks perceive such setbacks as private tragedies. They don’t know that millions of fellow citizens are suffering them, too. Nor do they understand that their plight is not some inevitable result of “the market.” Rather, it is the consequence of choices made in Washington—especially the decision, beginning in the Reagan administration, to abandon tough antitrust enforcement and instead green-light wave after wave of corporate mergers and anticompetitive practices to the point where a handful of oligopolistic firms have enormous power not only over markets but also, through their lobbying and campaign cash, over the machinery of government itself. Finally, they don’t know that these conditions can be changed—that, in fact, the American economy produced broad-based prosperity for much of the twentieth century with strict rules that made markets more competitive.

The advantage of centering policy debate around this narrative is that it’s both true and new. It counters the GOP’s scapegoating of immigrants and foreigners, and it allows Democrats to transcend their tired role as advocates of increased welfare spending.

More at https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/july-august-2018/winning-is-not
-enough/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, August 10, 2018 9:02 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, with all due respect, I have to point out that . . .

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy
You'll like this better since it blames Hillary and oligopolistic firms. "America is an oligarchy" - Signym:

The Democrats first step is to tell a clear and accurate story of what has gone wrong in the country economically, something they utterly failed to do in 2016. With Barack Obama still president, Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton, felt compelled to tell voters that they should feel good about the economic progress of the previous eight years, even though, as they knew, wages had barely budged.

Into that vacuum stepped Donald Trump, who had a simpler story: Average Americans were suffering from long-term downward mobility because elites and Washington had abandoned them to the depredations of immigrants and China, and he would put things right. The particulars were wrong, and dishonest, but the overall portrait of generational decline hit home for much of the country.

In 2019 and 2020, the burden of defending the status quo will be reversed. That will give Democrats an opportunity to finally take the lead on telling the story of the deeper trends that actually explain the past two decades of wage stagnation. The most important part of that story is the concentration of corporate power. With more and more industries controlled by fewer and fewer big firms, corporate managers face little pressure to raise wages, since many workers, especially in rural America, have nowhere else to go. Combine that with the continuing decline of unions, the erosion of the real value of the minimum wage, and the spread of employment contracts with anti-worker provisions—like mandatory arbitration and noncompete clauses—and you have an economy in which workers have little or no bargaining power. A growing chorus of economists now thinks that this phenomenon—more than trade, and certainly more than immigration—is the best explanation for why real wages aren’t rising even after nine years of economic expansion, near-record-low unemployment, and record corporate profits.

But most Americans don’t know any of this, because their leaders haven’t bothered to tell them. They may have seen firsthand the number of potential employers in their hometown shrink because of corporate mergers, or they may have been turned down for a raise even though their company is making huge profits. They may have tried to expand their small business, only to be blocked by market barriers erected by larger corporations. But most folks perceive such setbacks as private tragedies. They don’t know that millions of fellow citizens are suffering them, too. Nor do they understand that their plight is not some inevitable result of “the market.” Rather, it is the consequence of choices made in Washington—especially the decision, beginning in the Reagan administration, to abandon tough antitrust enforcement and instead green-light wave after wave of corporate mergers and anticompetitive practices to the point where a handful of oligopolistic firms have enormous power not only over markets but also, through their lobbying and campaign cash, over the machinery of government itself. Finally, they don’t know that these conditions can be changed—that, in fact, the American economy produced broad-based prosperity for much of the twentieth century with strict rules that made markets more competitive.

The advantage of centering policy debate around this narrative is that it’s both true and new. It counters the GOP’s scapegoating of immigrants and foreigners, and it allows Democrats to transcend their tired role as advocates of increased welfare spending.

More at https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/july-august-2018/winning-is-not
-enough/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


I actually like your take on this much better than the guy who wrote the article you quoted.

I'm not sure if you artfully removed the things that Mr. Glastris says in his article that you know would get opposition here, or if you removed what you actually didn't agree with.

I particularly love the first paragraph here, which is something that I've been saying for a very long time, and you'll probably notice is something that I'm continuing to say now, two years into the Trump Administration:

Quote:
The Democrats first step is to tell a clear and accurate story of what has gone wrong in the country economically, something they utterly failed to do in 2016. With Barack Obama still president, Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton, felt compelled to tell voters that they should feel good about the economic progress of the previous eight years, even though, as they knew, wages had barely budged.


Unfortunately, Mr. Glastris knows that Identity Politics is the Democrat's bread and butter in 2018, and says that it would be a mistake not to continue to use them to manipulate their target base. It seems that his strategy is a long term one and we just need to wait until whites are the minority before we can truly MAGA.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, August 10, 2018 10:07 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Into that vacuum stepped Donald Trump, who had a simpler story: Average Americans were suffering from long-term downward mobility because elites and Washington had abandoned them to the depredations of immigrants and China, and he would put things right. The particulars were wrong, and dishonest ...
I really appreciate how SECOND's favorite articles make breathless leaps into unsubstantiated declarations! (not)

SECOND, please follow this link. I can't just copy the "image location" here (because it isn't just an image, it's an interactive chart), but this is the FRED's chart of "all employees manufacturing" 1940-2017. The chart also shows the recessions as gray vertical bars.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP

Now, if you look at THE DATA you will see that the biggest jump in manufacturing occurs April 1939 to Jan 1944, which makes sense because that was the war effort. It drops significantly (by about 3 million jobs) in the short recession after peace was declared in 1945, but continues to rise in uneven sawtooth fashion (slower rises and quick drops during each recession) until it reaches an absolute peak in Aug 1979. After that, it drops during the recession of 1981 but plateaus and holds more-or-less steady until ...

If you look at the chart carefully, you'll see that EVERY SINGLE drop in manufacturing employment occurred DURING a RECESSION, but immediately popped back up again (sometimes to a higher value and sometimes to a lower one) as soon as the recession was over, with two exceptions. The first occurred in towards the end of 1990, which was kind of a gentle "sag" in the chart, not too significant, with a loss of about a half-million jobs (out of about 17.5 million). The next one, which was VERY significant, occurred late 2000 to late 2007, with a loss of about 3.5 million jobs. The was a third loss of about 2.5 million jobs beginning late 2007 (The beginning of the Great Recession) but like most other job losses, this one appears to show some recovery as soon as the recession is technically over, even tho it also results in a net loss of 1 million jobs. (Overall, a net loss of about 7 million jobs from peak-to-present.)

So there are some general trends one can see, but one of the BIG ones was the permanent loss of manufacturing jobs beginning in late 2000, which began during a recession but never recovered after the recession was over ... a structural change, as opposed to a financial one.

Any thoughts as to what happened in late 2001-early 2002, when manufacturing should have been recovering?

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Friday, August 10, 2018 11:17 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

So there are some general trends one can see, but one of the BIG ones was the permanent loss of manufacturing jobs beginning in late 2000, which began during a recession but never recovered after the recession was over ... a structural change, as opposed to a financial one.

Any thoughts as to what happened in late 2001-early 2002, when manufacturing should have been recovering?

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy
Many have complained about the decline of the manufacturing sector in the United States. As this graph shows, how recently this decline started depends on what you look at. If you look at the number of people employed in that sector, the decline started only a decade ago. If you look at the share of manufacturing in total employment, the steady decline has been ongoing for decades.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=ws8

For a nice overview of the evolution of employment in the manufacturing sector, see this article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jecper/v28y2014i1p3-26.html
Quote:
Abstract
The development of the US manufacturing sector over the last half-century displays two striking and somewhat contradictory features: 1) the growth of real output in the US manufacturing sector, measured by real value added, has equaled or exceeded that of total GDP, keeping the manufacturing share of the economy constant in price-adjusted terms; and 2) there is a long-standing decline in the share of total employment attributable to manufacturing. The persistence of these trends seems inconsistent with stories of a recent or sudden crisis in the US manufacturing sector. After all, as recently as 2010, the United States had the world's largest manufacturing sector measured by its valued-added, and while it has now been surpassed by China, the United States remains a very large manufacturer. On the other hand, there are some potential causes for concern. First, though manufacturing's output share of GDP has remained stable over 50 years, and manufacturing retains a reputation as a sector of rapid productivity improvements, this is largely due to the spectacular performance of one subsector of manufacturing: computers and electronics. Second, recently there has been a large drop in the absolute level of manufacturing employment that many find alarming. Third, the US manufacturing sector runs an enormous trade deficit, equaling $460 billion in 2012, which is also very concentrated in trade with Asia. Finally, we consider the future evolution of the manufacturing sector and its importance for the US economy. Many of the largest US corporations continue to shift their production facilities overseas. It is important to understand why the United States is not perceived to be an attractive base for their production.
If you dig into that paper, they tell you the obvious:
Quote:
Even though Edwards and Lawrence (2013) argue that trade does not explain the post-2000 drop in manufacturing employment, they do show that the trade deficit does have a large jobs component, and its elimination would raise manufacturing employment by about 25 percent. During the boom years, Americans were relatively indifferent to the consequences of large trade deficits, but in the future, the United States cannot afford ongoing trade deficits of 3 percent and more of its GDP. Because of the domination of manufacturing in tradables, much of any adjustment will have to be concentrated in that sector. We now turn to a discussion of the future of US manufacturing and policies that would assist in reducing manufacturing trade deficits.
Reducing the trade deficit to zero would increase manufacturing employment by, maybe, 25%. Since manufacturing employment is around 13 million, call it 4 million more jobs. What that will cost in higher prices for the manufactured goods, the paper does not say, but all 333 million Americans will be paying to employ an extra 4 million.

If the Federal Government is going to have a manufacturing employment policy for the first time in history, then it needs to place a price tag on its policy, not just do a Trump-thing and claim that tariffs will pay for everything and Trump doesn’t need to know what it costs. The cost is why it has never been done before Trump. Nobody wants to pay.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, August 10, 2018 1:23 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I'm not sure if you artfully removed the things that Mr. Glastris says in his article that you know would get opposition here, or if you removed what you actually didn't agree with.
I'm cutting 'n' pasting. Probably none of the good ideas will come to pass, but these do explain why things go wrong:

Nowhere is distrust of government more of a dilemma for Democrats than in their abiding crusade to achieve universal health care. The political challenge of any such plan is to convince voters, the vast majority of whom already have insurance, either through their employers or Medicare, to accept some risk of disruption so that other people can have it too. Clinton and Obama both pushed universal health care legislation in their first two years in office, and both efforts caused the Democrats to be crushed in the next midterms. Americans hate disruption.

Democrats are again gearing up to another futile fight for universal health care. This time, many are rallying around a single-payer system in which all Americans, including the 150 million who now have private insurance, would be covered under a government plan. Whether you agree with single-payer or not, it is the most disruptive way to achieve universal coverage short of full nationalization. It’s almost the perfect example of a policy you don’t push in a low-trust-in-government environment unless you don’t mind losing the next election. To the extent that Democrats might want to risk disrupting the health care system, (and pissing off millions of voters) they should instead address the rapidly rising cost of private insurance. That is the biggest emergency in health care right now, and it’s the one that directly affects the lives of the great majority of voters.

That doesn’t mean Democrats can’t advance the cause of universal coverage. But they would be wise, for instance, to champion a “Medicare buy-in” option for people between fifty-five and sixty-five years old, or go even further with what journalist Steven Waldman calls a “universal public option”: give every individual who lacks health insurance the choice (and subsidies if they need it) to buy into Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA. The beauty of these ideas is twofold. First, they build on existing government programs that voters already know and (mostly) trust. Second, they empower individuals, not the government, to make the choice with their own money.

That second feature, not coincidentally, ought to be a guiding principle of other big new ideas Democrats want to push. Obviously to me, the GOP will be opposed to all this. That's why all will fail.

More at https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/july-august-2018/winning-is-not
-enough/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, August 10, 2018 1:29 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Reducing the trade deficit to zero would increase manufacturing employment by, maybe, 25%. Since manufacturing employment is around 13 million, call it 4 million more jobs.
A significant number of jobs!

Quote:
What that will cost in higher prices for the manufactured goods, the paper does not say, but all 333 million Americans will be paying to employ an extra 4 million.
As opposed to paying unemployment and other government benefits.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Friday, August 10, 2018 3:07 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Reducing the trade deficit to zero would increase manufacturing employment by, maybe, 25%. Since manufacturing employment is around 13 million, call it 4 million more jobs.
A significant number of jobs!

Quote:
What that will cost in higher prices for the manufactured goods, the paper does not say, but all 333 million Americans will be paying to employ an extra 4 million.
As opposed to paying unemployment and other government benefits.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy
Paul Krugman warned to not get carried away with over-estimating the cost of a Trumpian trade war. He wasn't willing to risk his reputation by giving a dollar value. The closest he would go is a formula:
Quote:
Real income loss = 0.5*tariff rate*reduction in imports

This formula suggests only moderate costs even from a major trade war. Suppose that worldwide tariff were to rise to 40 percent, and world trade were to fall by 15 percent of world GDP, a 50% reduction. Even so, world real income would fall only 3 percent.
www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/opinion/supply-chains-and-trade-war-very-wo
nkish.html

When he plugged numbers in, the result was 3% loss of real income.

When I plug numbers in for America, 3% of $21 trillion US GDP is $630 billion. If we end up at a full-out trade war, that is a lot of money per year for creating 4 million extra manufacturing jobs. But it's only $158,000 per job per year. Is it a bargain? Depends on if it is your job.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, August 10, 2018 3:38 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


"3% loss of real income" doesn't equal loss from total GDP.

You're comparing apples to blue. If you want to calculated the cost of the extra jobs, I suggest you calculate 3% of total US income.

THUGGER admits it's not about RUSSIA !!! and is, in fact, a witch hunt. "Trump better be innocent of any wrong doing, anywhere, anytime."

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Friday, August 10, 2018 3:54 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
"3% loss of real income" doesn't equal loss from total GDP.

You're comparing apples to blue. If you want to calculated the cost of the extra jobs, I suggest you calculate 3% of total US income.

THUGGER admits it's not about RUSSIA !!! and is, in fact, a witch hunt. "Trump better be innocent of any wrong doing, anywhere, anytime."
Personal income was $17 trillion in 2017. www.statista.com/statistics/216756/us-personal-income/

Corporate profits for the first quarter of 2018 were $2 trillion. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/corporate-profits

Seems to me that $21 trillion is a little on the low side for an estimate of real income for, say, 2019. The trade war, once it starts, doesn't end exactly on Dec 31, 2018.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, August 10, 2018 4:16 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


If you can find where Krugman got his figures then you'll know what his '3% of real income' meant. And not to harp, but 'profits' aren't 'income' either. Though what businesses consider 'income' is subject to interpretation. "The real issue is what goes into that income number. ...About the best you can do is try to compare apples to apples — from one quarter to the next, or one company to another. But even that takes a bit of digging." nbcnews 'Income' for families and individuals is much easier to determine, since we have fewer categories for exclusion.

THUGGER admits it's not about RUSSIA !!! and is, in fact, a witch hunt. "Trump better be innocent of any wrong doing, anywhere, anytime."

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Friday, August 10, 2018 4:18 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Paul Krugman warned to not get carried away with over-estimating the cost of a Trumpian trade war. He wasn't willing to risk his reputation by giving a dollar value. The closest he would go is a formula ...
Based on? Dartboard guess?

Quote:
But it's only $158,000 per job per year.
Whereas it costs $71,000 per year to incarcerate someone; approximately $60,000 for four years of "free" tuition (board and supplies extra!) at a state university; and about $650 billion (per year) or about 2% of real GDP per year in various Federal "welfare" programs (SNAP "food stamps", CHIP, EITC, SSI etc).

*****

Aside from "jobs", re-instating manufacturing at home would have a beneficial effect on our national economic and financial security. It would eliminate our dependence on other nations including potential competitors/ enemies for "goods", improve our balance of trade, and bolster the value of the dollar which- right now - is resting on nothing but hot air.

It would reduce crime and drug dependence at home, and provide people with a well-founded sense of security and meaning. (That is why I'm always talking about MEANINGFUL jobs ... not McJobs.)

We do not "need" to be "competing" in the international labor market nor do we "need" to be adopting automation ... THOSE efforts are all for the benefit of the corporation. We need to be asking ourselves ... Is our economy run for the benefit of the people? Or are people run for the benefit of the wealthy? It is a CHOICE, not an inevitability.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Friday, August 10, 2018 4:32 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
If you can find where Krugman got his figures then you'll know what his '3% of real income' meant. And not to harp, but 'profits' aren't 'income' either. Though what businesses consider 'income' is subject to interpretation. "The real issue is what goes into that income number. ...About the best you can do is try to compare apples to apples — from one quarter to the next, or one company to another. But even that takes a bit of digging." nbcnews 'Income' for families and individuals is much easier to determine, since we have fewer categories for exclusion.

THUGGER admits it's not about RUSSIA !!! and is, in fact, a witch hunt. "Trump better be innocent of any wrong doing, anywhere, anytime."
Krugman used GDP, not "real income" in June and he explained it with a diagram at www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/opinion/thinking-about-a-trade-war-very-won
kish.html
Quote:
I’ve always ended up being really sorry when I let my political feelings override what my economic analysis says. And simple trade models, while they do say that trade wars are bad, don’t say that they’re catastrophic.

To do this right, we should use one of those computable general equilibrium models I mentioned above. These suggest substantial but not huge losses – 2 or 3 percent of GDP. What I’d like to do is offer a bit of intuition about why those losses aren’t bigger, then explain why a trade war would nonetheless be highly disruptive.

To do this, I’ll exploit a dirty little secret of trade theory: while ultimately stories about trade have to be general equilibrium, that is, they must make sure that you’ve kept track of all markets simultaneously, trade policy analysis using partial equilibrium – ordinary supply and demand – usually gets you more or less the right answer.
Not that the following will change anybody's mind, from the same place:
Quote:
The U.S. currently exports about 12 percent of GDP. Not all of that is domestic value added, because some components are imported. But there’s still a lot of the economy, maybe 9 or 10 percent, engaged in production for foreign markets. And if we have the kind of trade war I’ve been envisaging, something like 70 percent of that part of the economy – say, 9 or 10 million workers – will have to start doing something else. And there would be a multiplier effect on many communities now built around export industries, which would lose service jobs too.
. . .
O.K., there’s no certainty that any of this will happen. In fact, I still find it hard to believe that we’re really going to go down this path. But I also don’t have any plausible stories about what’s going to make Trump stop, or induce other big players to give in to his demands.


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, August 11, 2018 7:19 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


It’s a good thing America's foreign debts are in domestic dollars, not foreign currency.

Here’s the script: start with a country that, for whatever reason, became a favorite of foreign lenders, and experienced a large inflow of foreign capital over a number of years. Crucially, the debt thus incurred is denominated in foreign currency, not domestic (which is why the U.S., also a recipient of large inflows in the past, isn’t similarly vulnerable – we borrow in dollars.)

At some point, however, the party comes to an end. It doesn’t matter much what causes a “sudden stop” in foreign lending: it could be domestic events, like appointing your son-in-law to oversee economic policy, it could be a rise in U.S. interest rates, it could be a crisis in another country investors see as being similar to you.

Whatever the shock, the crucial thing is that foreign debt has made your economy vulnerable to a death spiral. Loss of confidence causes your currency to drop; this makes it harder to repay debts in foreign currency; this hurts the real economy and further reduces confidence, leading to a further decline in your currency; and so on in The Loop of Doom.

The result is that foreign debt explodes as a share of GDP. Indonesia came into the 90s financial crisis with foreign debt less than 60 percent of GDP, roughly comparable to Turkey early this year. By 1998 a plunging rupiah had sent that debt to almost 170 percent of GDP.

How does such a crisis end? If there is no effective policy response, what happens is that the currency drops and debt measured in domestic currency balloons until everyone who can go bankrupt, does. At that point the weak currency fuels an export boom, and the economy starts a recovery built around huge trade surpluses. (This may come as a surprise to Donald Trump, who appears to be levying punitive tariffs on Turkey as punishment for its weak currency.)

Is there any way to short-circuit this Doom Loop? Yes, but it’s tricky. http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/MINICRIS.htm You need a government that is both flexible and responsible, not to mention technically competent enough to implement special measures and honest enough to carry out that implementation without massive corruption.

That, unfortunately, doesn’t sound like Erdogan’s Turkey. Of course, it doesn’t sound like Trump’s America, either. So it’s a good thing our debts are in dollars.

More at www.nytimes.com/2018/08/11/opinion/partying-like-its-1998.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, August 11, 2018 8:26 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:

At some point, however, the party comes to an end. It doesn’t matter much what causes a “sudden stop” in foreign lending: it could be domestic events, like appointing your son-in-law to oversee economic policy


Yep. That or quantitative easing. Doesn't matter which.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Saturday, August 11, 2018 9:23 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:

At some point, however, the party comes to an end. It doesn’t matter much what causes a “sudden stop” in foreign lending: it could be domestic events, like appointing your son-in-law to oversee economic policy


Yep. That or quantitative easing. Doesn't matter which.

Do Right, Be Right. :)
6ixStringJack, policy recommendations for future crises ought to flow from our best analytical shot, not from ideological preconceptions. But who among Trump voters/defenders can really do actual economic analysis rather than lazily depend on their own GOP approved brand of highly imaginative preconceptions?

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, August 11, 2018 10:08 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
It’s a good thing America's foreign debts are in domestic dollars, not foreign currency.

Here’s the script: start with a country that, for whatever reason, became a favorite of foreign lenders, and experienced a large inflow of foreign capital over a number of years. Crucially, the debt thus incurred is denominated in foreign currency, not domestic (which is why the U.S., also a recipient of large inflows in the past, isn’t similarly vulnerable – we borrow in dollars.)

At some point, however, the party comes to an end. It doesn’t matter much what causes a “sudden stop” in foreign lending: it could be domestic events, like appointing your son-in-law to oversee economic policy, it could be a rise in U.S. interest rates, it could be a crisis in another country investors see as being similar to you.

Whatever the shock, the crucial thing is that foreign debt has made your economy vulnerable to a death spiral. Loss of confidence causes your currency to drop; this makes it harder to repay debts in foreign currency; this hurts the real economy and further reduces confidence, leading to a further decline in your currency; and so on in The Loop of Doom.
So, how does this not apply to the US dollar???

The mind just boggles on your rock-solid (but erroneous) assumption that the USA will always be a welcome currency and debt. You imagine that other nations would have to sell their currencies in order to buy dollars to repay their debts; a future in which foreign nations unload Treasuries and refuse dollars just doesn't compute with you. But there is one thing that has always held true: All "universal" currencies come to an end sooner or later.

And there are ALREADY several nations which are not only de-dollarizing but are also moving off the SWIFT, and that includes China, which has built an entire alternate financial structure with the goal of replacing the dollar, at least in their non-USA transactions.

The fact that the USA is awash in debt isn't necessarily a big standout from other nations, since the Central-Bank-debt model has been the basis for western financial arrangements for decades, if not centuries.

*****
EDITED TO ADD ...

The question is: what would make US dollars, or US Treasuries, unacceptable for world trade or world investment?

The two need to be considered separately, because although they're related, they're controlled in different ways and serve different functions. I THINK that the fundamental attraction to US Treasuries is that they are a USD-denominated investment. In other words, the fundamental driver is the US dollar as a trade and reserve currency. HOWEVER, Treasuries themselves also have a "value" outside of the fact they can serve as a convenient repository for excess USD: having to do with interest rates etc.

*****
So, what are the "legs" that hold up the value of the American dollar and the American Treasury, and how do they compare to other nations?

AMERICAN TREASURIES
It is no secret that all governments sell their bonds (debts/ promises to pay) into foreign markets, and that foreign buyers buy these bonds to diversify their holdings. Foreign banks and foreign investors also hold many foreign currencies If we were to look at "which nation owes who what?" we should examine "foreign" holdings of each nation to see where their currencies and debt instruments are located. Well, this is a new area for me, but I did a "quick" scan of Japanese Bonds and British Gilts. Although the Japanese government is famously awash in debt, approximately 90% (of roughly $10 trillion as USD) of government bonds are held within Japan. So Japan owes foreigners roughly a trillion dollars-worth of yen. https://asia.nikkei.com/Markets/Capital-Markets/Foreigners-holding-nea
rly-10-of-Japanese-government-bonds

And although Britain is widely considered to be "the banking capital of the world", I estimate (from the bar chart) that less than 30% of $2 trillion (USD) British gilts are foreign-owned. So Britain owes the world somewhat less than a trillion dollars-worth of sterling. https://financialtribune.com/articles/world-economy/36030/brexit-2-tri
llion-gilts-market

By contrast, the American government owes roughly $20 trillion; of which roughly 40% is owned by foreign nations (The three largest holders are China, Japan, "Caribbean banking centers) https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS22331.pdf so the USA owes the world roughly $8 trillion-dollars worth of debt.

UNITED STATES DOLLAR

The reason for the popularity of our Treasuries is because the USD is the world's exchange and reserve currency. I think this says it best ...

Quote:
The U.S. dollar is the most common currency for international reserves, for good reason. First, because of the size of our economy, there are plenty of dollar-denominated securities available. The market for United States Treasury securities is liquid and deep. “Liquid” means that the securities can be sold quickly. “Deep” means that a substantial amount can be bought or sold without affecting the price too much. These are desirable features of a foreign reserve currency. If Ruritania were to hold an obscure currency, such as the the Pa’anga of the Kingdom of Tonga, it might not find willing buyers on short notice. Even if it did, there is no way that Ruritania could quickly sell billions of Pa’anga without pushing the foreign exchange rate disastrously low. Thus Ruritania needs to own currencies of large countries, which are traded in large amounts on a daily basis.

The dollar fits the need pretty well. The Euro plays second fiddle, with Japanese Yen and British pounds sterling just barely in the band. A number of other currencies are used in small amounts.

An additional requirement for a good reserve currency is that assets denominated in that currency are unlikely to lose value to a great extent. Here’s the tricky point. If defaults or credit downgrades were widely expected to reduce the price of U.S. Treasury securities, then other countries would prefer to hold their reserves in some other asset.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billconerly/2013/10/25/future-of-the-doll
ar-as-world-reserve-currency/#76a78362e065

The ONE THING that has propelled the dollar into reserve status is the USD as the PETRODOLLAR. Since 1973 until recently, oil sellers have universally agreed to accept only US dollars for oil; thus, you could ALWAYS get something of value for the dollar, even if it wasn't from the USA directly! However, China is working mightily hard to replace the petrodollar with the gold-backed petroyuan, at least for its own oil purchases, and since China is the largest oil importer it has considerable say in what happens in the oil market.

Well, I have to stop this on-the-fly research and analysis for now. There still needs to be an accounting of the derivatives market and the BIS.



-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Saturday, August 11, 2018 2:33 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:

At some point, however, the party comes to an end. It doesn’t matter much what causes a “sudden stop” in foreign lending: it could be domestic events, like appointing your son-in-law to oversee economic policy


Yep. That or quantitative easing. Doesn't matter which.

Do Right, Be Right. :)
6ixStringJack, policy recommendations for future crises ought to flow from our best analytical shot, not from ideological preconceptions. But who among Trump voters/defenders can really do actual economic analysis rather than lazily depend on their own GOP approved brand of highly imaginative preconceptions?

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


And who among Democrats could do the same?

You should probably notice a pattern here, Second. I rarely disagree with your take on the GOP. My only issue with you is that you're foolish enough to believe the Democrats are somehow any better.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, August 12, 2018 5:51 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

And who among Democrats could do the same?

You should probably notice a pattern here, Second. I rarely disagree with your take on the GOP. My only issue with you is that you're foolish enough to believe the Democrats are somehow any better.

Do Right, Be Right. :)
It is not about better. Which is better? Chocolate or Vanilla? It is about personal preference. Your choice is either a chocolate cone or a vanilla ice cream cone or the very rare cone that got dropped on the floor and they give it to you for free because it tastes like grit or dirt.

In America there is only two political flavors, call them R and D. I checked on how many third party office-holders (neither R or D) are in America, today. It is 24. Out of 100,000 elected positions. Your choice, should you decide to make one, is really either R or D. And I am sure R is very different from D. What is your preference? Or would you rather neither vote nor eat an ice cream cone at this time?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_party_officeholders_in_the_United_
States

Personally, my preference to avoid the GOP is like dogs ought to avoid chocolate.
https://xkcd.com/1706/


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, August 12, 2018 5:57 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billconerly/2013/10/25/future-of-the-doll
ar-as-world-reserve-currency/#76a78362e065

The ONE THING that has propelled the dollar into reserve status is the USD as the PETRODOLLAR. Since 1973 until recently, oil sellers have universally agreed to accept only US dollars for oil; thus, you could ALWAYS get something of value for the dollar, even if it wasn't from the USA directly! However, China is working mightily hard to replace the petrodollar with the gold-backed petroyuan, at least for its own oil purchases, and since China is the largest oil importer it has considerable say in what happens in the oil market.

Well, I have to stop this on-the-fly research and analysis for now. There still needs to be an accounting of the derivatives market and the BIS.

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy
I am from Texas and we ain't taking any petroyuan for our natural gas or crude. China will pay in U.S. dollars or else we are not selling to them. Obviously the day will come when Texas reservoirs run dry, but until then no petroyuan, only dollars.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, August 12, 2018 6:39 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billconerly/2013/10/25/future-of-the-doll
ar-as-world-reserve-currency/#76a78362e065

The ONE THING that has propelled the dollar into reserve status is the USD as the PETRODOLLAR. Since 1973 until recently, oil sellers have universally agreed to accept only US dollars for oil; thus, you could ALWAYS get something of value for the dollar, even if it wasn't from the USA directly! However, China is working mightily hard to replace the petrodollar with the gold-backed petroyuan, at least for its own oil purchases, and since China is the largest oil importer it has considerable say in what happens in the oil market.

Well, I have to stop this on-the-fly research and analysis for now. There still needs to be an accounting of the derivatives market and the BIS.

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy
I am from Texas and we ain't taking any petroyuan for our natural gas or crude. China will pay in U.S. dollars or else we are not selling to them. Obviously the day will come when Texas reservoirs run dry, but until then no petroyuan, only dollars.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


lol... You sure you took an economics class before you went into business?

The upside about your requirements is that I'm sure if you asked for Billions in US Dollars for flood relief in Houston when that time comes they'll just go ahead and send you a few Trillion.

I'm sure China will be more than happy to accommodate you as well, since they'll be using USD as toilet paper.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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