Poo… 2nd

So the Market watch headline reads as follows”"Friday focus rests on jobsJobless rate hits 26-yr. high”yet stocks are up- what the heck is the rational behind wall street? Is it being propped up in light of the upcoming G20 summit here this month???Any guesses as to what might come out of that meeting?

“U” Shaped Recession May make SenseIf the recent 2009 problem(s) with college professional job scarcity and its concurrent 85% spike in professional unemployment is explained away.See the rest of the article:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/02/06/national/a152330S41.DTL

What happens to real estate prices if the dollar crashes? What happened to real estate in countries like Argentina and Russia when their currencies crashed, did prices go up priced in their domestic currencies or did they stay the same? Also does high unemployment and weak consumer spending outweigh inflationary pressures caused by excessive government spending?

Can someone please articulate what trade-weighted means in the context of NR’s sentence :“The value of the dollar over time has to fall on a trade-weighted basis, but not necessarily relative to euro and yen.”

Words to live by:No one ever deleverages who is bailed out.There’s your work ethic ChiggyBoy.

As a provider you know as well as I that rising costs affect us all. It’s not about giving something away, it’s about protecting all of us from the disaster that looms too large.Why should we have to pay a private insurer (through the nose I may add) for the privilage of being denied if they deem our request for care too expensive? Why, on top of that, should workers be asked to shoulder the burden of paying for a health care insurance system (think Medicaid) that reimburses at low rates and tries to cover too many, yet we cannot also participate?Bottom line is this: Create a system that covers the basics for all; tax something no one is excluded from using so everyone pays something; and remove the threat of constant legal action for any mistake.You do that, you have made a fantastic leap from where we are today.BTW – if I don’t have to pay insurers $6000-$7000 a year in premiums to cover my family, I can afford to pay higher taxes to fund a system that I can also utilize.

Why should we pay a private insurer to deny care because it’s too expensive? Why should anyone pay for a government bureaucrat to deny a request for care because it’s too expensive (Obamacare)? Why should we pay for Medeicare when we get no benefit?To be honest, I don’t think we should pay for anything that is too expensive or for which we get no benefit. Three wrongs do not make a right.Don’t give me the argument that the government’s administrative costs are only 6% when the private insurers’ are close to 30% I can think, and I can add. If Medicare wastes 23% on fraud and abuse, you have to add that to their administrative costs. The bottom line is you’re “administrative costs” are going to be at 30% no matter what.Come to think of it, if there really is 23% fraud and abuse in Medicare (hey that’s the figure I hear from the lefties, don’t blame me), you can’t get that done unless the bureaucrats in Medicare are on the take.When I graduated from medical school in Canada every physician had the same medical malpractice insurance premium—-it was $12.00 per year. No, that is not a typo. So I’m all in favor of getting the attorneys out of the business of practicing medicine with 20-20 hindsight, as has been done in Canada. In Canada attorneys work for a fixed tariff based on the type/complexity of case they take on, not a percentage of the lottery.We need to tweak the system we have. But let’s start with just a few changes to minimize the unintended consequences. No more denials for pre-existing conditions in exchange for tort reform and liberalization of the use of Medical Savings Accounts.We already pay enough taxes to cover this.Health insurance should not be considered a right, it should remain a benefit you work or pay for.

The price of real estate is dependent on the carrying cost of the property (taxes, maintenance, mortgage), plus the income of the average buyer (income). As the dollar declines, maintenance will become more expensive as imports (light bulbs, plywood, sheetrock, copper) become more expensive in dollar terms. Jobs will be lost and income reduced by a sharp dollar decline in the short term, so spending will go down. This will increase taxes as spending decreases, and mortgage rates will go up as treasury rates increase. Income will go down, so the carrying capacity of the average buyer will go down, as the cost of owning property increases. This will force property prices down. This will make more homeowners underwater in their mortgages, increasing defaults. This will kick off a deflationary spiral in property values, until they reach a level where median house price is 2.5x median income, or 10x monthly rent.

Healthcare is already a right in the US. Show up in an emergency room, and you will get treatment, insurance or no. Unfortunately, the ER is the MOST EXPENSIVE place to get primary care. Providing basic primary care for all would reduce costs.

The world’s Central Bankers are starting to look like a bunch of old men at a Greek wedding who are all stumbling frantically in search of the restroom.These guys are holding meetings, debating currencies, buying bad assets, and wondering how they can please their political masters. Meanwhile, the massive liquidity that they have injected has blown a quadrillion-dollar bubble in the global derivatives trade. Talk about putting a nuclear bomb in the international financial system. But can these guys be responsible for this … heck NO!@ PeteCA on 2009-09-04 16:02:03With respect, I question your choice of the term “starting”.Ho hum

I guarantee you that if you don’t have to pay insurers $6k to $7k a ýear for coverage, you will pay at least that much in taxes to provide for the costs of the “free” coverage you will receive.

Reminds me of the old line about not having to outrun the bear, just the other guy. At some point they are going to turn on each other, barriers to trade and competitive devaluations are going to rule the day, and it will be the 1930′s all over again.

Again, you don’t have to outrun the bear, just the other guy. It’s just a matter of time before the pols and central bankers resort to their tried and true old ways and then it will be 1937 all over again.

Actually, if you figure in all the free care the ER docs provide, average ER charges per patient are a little cheaper than having your care at the family doc’s offc. Think about it: do you see fancy pictures and nice furniture at the ER or at your doc’s offc? This argument that ER care is the most expensive way to provide care is a total canard. But I wouldn’t expect you to know that. The media won’t challenge the popular politicians who have sold them this nonsense.

22 percent of claims for health insurance coverage or reimbursement are denied. That leads to social instability through consumer debt defaults and bankruptcies (over half due to medical costs) and an embedded, permanent underclass. And that’s the lucky insured part of the population! For the uninsured it is much, much worse.The system has failed. The state has to intervene (as it does in all civilised countries in the world) to ensure that medical care and public health costs are socialised for the social good and social stability.

@ Free Tibet and @The Alarmist:Thanks for your constructive comments on the preceding thread, guys. I’m sure you both appreciate that while I try to maintain an even keel most of the time, I’m all too human and every once in a while, I just relish blowing a gasket and going postal (no offense, you post office workers out there) on certain dunderheads who, as Medic so aptly put it, insist on “poking the skunk” (I’m a fairly big guy, and my oldest son refers to those who attempt to taunt me for sport as “poking the bear”). As a Southern lawyer and an American of Scottish heritage, I’m perfectly at ease with direct confrontation, verbal or otherwise, and I don’t and won’t tolerate passive-aggressive pantywaists who don’t have the good manners or good sense to be generally respectful in their personal disagreements of opinion with others (I would never suggest, for example, Alarmist, that you were in any way stupid for the trepidation you expressed about the President’s forthcoming talk to the nation’s schoolchildren, as it was conveyed with elegance and sincerity — I don’t happen to share your concerns or believe they are well-grounded in fact, but nonetheless, you are an obviously intelligent and caring person, and I can at least appreciate how you might feel conflicted about the matter).Anyway, goodnight to all, including my dear adversary, Pokemeister Chignos. I am taking my boy to Florida’s third largest freshwater spring tomorrow for some cooling off in the 10,000 gallons of clear H20 that pour from the aquifer each minute!SWK

Good grief SWK, surely you are not advocating an additional 20% income tax (plus whatever it costs to “supplement” your insurance) so that we can adopt the French health insurance model????Please tell me that 20% was a typo.

How many Americans will go BK once the government revalues the currency? That will be the result, inevitably, of continued federal government overspending and deficits. Guaranteeing health insurance for everyone will blow a budget hole so big as to guarantee a new revalued currency. Hey, if that’s what you average Joe/Janes want, bring ‘er on baby, I’m ready.

The US Constitution can be printed in less than three typed pages. I see no reason health care reform should take 1000 pages. Three simple rules:1. No pre-exhisting condition clauses. Let the insurance companies figure out how they are going to deal with this.2. Providers can NOT charge a self paying patient more than 10% above the average negotiated insurance plan. People can afford to pay what insurance companies pay, they just can not afford the inflated prices.3. Liability reform. Doctors have developed a pattern of defenssive medicine that is costing us tremendous amount of dollars.

Analyzing why people play golf is like exploring the intricacies of string theory – there are so many permutations lacking scientific observation that physicists or golfers can pretty darn well say anything they like and the explanation might stick. When it comes to whacking that little white ball, the possibilities are nearly endless: People play to relax, to be with friends, to get close to Mother Nature, to enhance business connections, to compete and excel. Gosh, I don’t know, the Zen explanation for why we play golf could even resemble the old saw about climbing a mountain: People golf because it’s there. Whatever the reason, it is the most frustrating, damnable game ever conceived – alternately elevating and depressing you within the span of mere minutes. I love golf. No, I hate it.Personally, the reason that golf draws me to its intricate web of psychological entrapment is epitomized by a simple six-inch trophy: a chartreuse ball resting on top of its ebony base, preening on a bookshelf in the family room at our desert home. Its inscription reads, “Hole in one, March 15th, 1990, 14th hole Desert Course, 155 yards.” Well and good, I suppose – the ace of my life – except it wasn’t. It was the ace of my wife. Above the inscription rests the name Sue – not Bill – Gross. It was a great shot but it wasn’t my shot, and I guess therein lies the explanation for why I continue to tee it up.Actually, two years ago I did tee it up in the sweltering 105° June heat of the Palm Springs desert. No one, of course, was crazy enough to be with me including my “ace” role model wife who was sipping a cool lemonade in the comfort of our air-conditioned home. Now, there is an “unwritten” rule in golf that in order to be official, a hole-in-one has to be witnessed, and that you have to play a full 18 holes. Otherwise, I suppose, you could stand on the tee with a bucket of balls and hit hundreds or thousands until one of the little guys went in – whatever. The fact is, on this particular day, I was playing only one ball, but I was alone, and – good God! – it went in! The trophy with ebony base and spanking white Titleist ball would read: “Hole in one, June 7th, 2007, 17th hole, Mountain Course, 139 yards.” Or was it? Does a falling tree make a sound in the middle of a forest if no one’s there? Is a hole-in-one a hole-in-one if no one else saw it? I say emphatically – yes! That damn ball went in and later that day Sue agreed with me (although she had a funny look in her eye – especially since she didn’t know a thing about the rules of golf). No one else though. No one else agrees with me. Not a soul. I suspect they’re jealous and, in fact, I’ve seen a few of them hitting buckets of balls at dusk from that very same tee when they think nobody’s looking. I’m watching, though, which brings up a funny question. If they sunk one, would theirs be a hole-in-one because I was a witness? Like I said – a damnable game.“Is a hole-in-one a hole-in-one” may not strike you as the most critical question of the hour, and I would readily agree. “Will we have a New Normal global economy (and investment market)?” would probably usurp it on even Tiger Woods’s top ten list. This “new” vs. “old” normal dichotomy was perhaps best contrasted by Barton Biggs, as I heard him on Bloomberg Radio in early 2009, when he said he was a “child of the bull market.” I thought that was a brilliant phrase, and Barton is a brilliant phrase-maker. He went on to say though, that his point was that for as long as he’s been in the business – and that’s a long time – it has paid to buy the dips, because markets, economies, profits, and assets always rebounded and went to higher levels. That is not only the way that he learned it, but that is the way, basically, that capitalism is supposed to work. Economies grow, profits grow, just like children do. I think that’s why he said he was a child of the bull market, not just because he had experienced it for so long, but also because economic growth and higher asset prices are almost invariably a natural evolution, much like the maturation of a person. That’s how people grow, and so I think Barton was saying that capitalism just grows that way too.Well, the surprise is that there’s been a significant break in that growth pattern, because of delevering, deglobalization, and reregulation. All of those three in combination, to us at PIMCO, means that if you are a child of the bull market, it’s time to grow up and become a chastened adult; it’s time to recognize that things have changed and that they will continue to change for the next – yes, the next 10 years and maybe even the next 20 years. We are heading into what we call the New Normal, which is a period of time in which economies grow very slowly as opposed to growing like weeds, the way children do; in which profits are relatively static; in which the government plays a significant role in terms of deficits and reregulation and control of the economy; in which the consumer stops shopping until he drops and begins, as they do in Japan (to be a little ghoulish), starts saving to the grave.This focus on the DDRs – delevering, deglobalization, and reregulation – may be conceptually understandable, but nevertheless still a little hard to get one’s arms around. Why would they necessarily lead to a new, slower growth normal? A little easier to grasp might be the following approach, which feeds off the same concept, but which extends it a little further by suggesting that DD and R lead to a number of broken business or economic models that may forever change the world we once knew and make even Barton Biggs a chastened adult. They are as follows:American-style capitalism and the making of paper instead of things. Inherent in the “great moderation” of the past 25 years was the acceptance of a sort of reverse mercantilism. America would consume, then print paper assets and debt in order to pay for it. Developing (and many developed) countries would make things, and accept America’s securities in return. This game is over, and unless developing countries (China, Brazil) step up and generate a consumer ethic of their own, the world will grow at a slower pace.Private vs. public-driven growth. The invisible hand of free enterprise is being replaced by the visible fist of government, a temporarily necessary, but (if permanent) damnable condition itself in terms of future growth and profits. The once successful “shadow banking system” is being regulated and delevered. Perhaps a fabled “110-pound weakling” may be an exaggeration of where our financial system is headed, but rest assured it will not be looking like Charles Atlas anytime soon. Prepare to have sand kicked in your face, if you believe you are a “child of the bull market!”Global economic leadership. It’s premature to award the 21st century to the Chinese as opposed to the United States, but if the last six months have been any example, China is sort of lookin’ like Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston in 1964 yelling, “Get up, you big ugly bear!” Not only has China spent three times the amount of money (relative to GDP) to revive its economy, but it has managed to grow at a “near normal” 8% pace vs. our “big R” recessionary numbers. Its equity market, while volatile and lightly regulated, has almost doubled in twelve months, making ours look like that ugly bear instead of a raging bull.United States housing and employment. Old normal housing models in the U.S. encouraged home ownership, eventually peaking at 69% of households as shown in Chart 1. Subsidized and tax-deductible mortgage interest rates as well as a “see no evil – speak no evil” regulatory response to government Agencies FNMA and FHLMC promoted a long-term housing boom and now a significant housing bust. Housing cannot lead us out of this big R recession no matter what the recent Case-Shiller home price numbers may suggest. The model has been broken if only because homeownership is declining, not rising, sinking to perhaps a New Normal level of 65% as opposed to 69% of American households.Similarly, the financialization of assets via the shadow banking system led to an American era of consumerism because debt was available, interest rates were low, and the livin’ became easy. Savings rates plunged from 10% to -1%, as many (if not most) assumed there was no reason to save – the second mortgage would pay for everything. Now things have perhaps irreversibly changed. Savings rates are headed up, consumer spending growth rates moving down. Get ready for the New Normal.I could go on, reintroducing the negatives of an aging boomer society not just in the U.S., but worldwide. Increased health care may be GDP positive, but it’s only a plus from a “broken window” point of view. Far better to have a younger, healthier society than to spend trillions fixing up an aging, increasingly overweight and diabetic one. Same thing goes for energy. Far easier and more profitable to pump oil out of the Yates Field in Texas or even Prudhoe Bay than to spend trillions on a new “green” society. Our world, and the world’s world, is changing significantly, leading to slower growth accompanied by a redefined public/private partnership.The investment implications of this New Normal evolution cannot easily be modeled econometrically, quantitatively, or statistically. The applicable word in New Normal is, of course, “new.” The successful investor during this transition will be one with common sense and importantly the powers of intuition, observation, and the willingness to accept uncertain outcomes. As of now, PIMCO observes that the highest probabilities favor the following strategic conclusions:Global policy rates will remain low for extended periods of time.The extent and duration of quantitative easing, term financing and fiscal stimulation efforts are keys to future investment returns across a multitude of asset categories, both domestically and globally.Investors should continue to anticipate and, if necessary, shake hands with government policies, utilizing leverage and/or guarantees to their benefit.Asia and Asian-connected economies (Australia, Brazil) will dominate future global growth.The dollar is vulnerable on a long-term basis.Like playing in an Open Championship, future golfers/investors need to play conservatively and avoid critical mistakes. An “even par” scorecard (plus some hard earned alpha) may be enough to hoist the trophy in a New Normal world. Holes-in-one? Maybe if you’re lucky. But make sure someone’s watching, and that their eyes are focused on the New Normal. As for golf, even Sue, my only supporter, has asked me to move my ball, on its own ebony base, away from her more authentic and perhaps the still solitary ace made by Gross family golfers. What a damnable condition.William H. GrossManaging Director

“In most quarters, there is a feeling we should move away from the dollar system. The question is do we do it in an orderly way, or a chaotic way,” Stiglitz said. “The size of the deficit and the size of the balance sheet of the Fed have just increased the anxiety and the desire that something be done.”andThe lack of coherent financial reform from the Obama Administration, and their ludicrous proposal to create a ‘super-regulator’ in the privately owned Federal Reserve, after a landslide victory in an election based on change and reform, is an outcome almost too bizarre to be believable. Unless, that is, you accept that Obama and those around him are either incredibly naive or corrupt. We suspect that as in all things it is some of both.By the way, in case you missed it, Charlie Rangel, in charge of Ways and Means and the major proponent of a new military draft, is being investigated as another tax cheat among the Democratic leadership.Do these people take us for imbeciles? Do they think that the world does not see their corruption, their greedy, devious nature when it is not masked by a captive media, and is not repelled by it?In 2005 we forecast this very outcome, that Wall Street and their cronies would push their schemes beyond all reason, like drunk drivers or addicts who cannot quit, until they create a cathartic, catastrophic event which will cause someone to finally take away their keys at the last.That time is approaching. No one can predict exactly when, but it is there. Make sure you are wearing your seat belts.”There is precious treasure and oil in the house of the wise, but a fool consumes all that he has and saves none.” Proverbs 21:20″Ho hum

The missing “e” is propping up Wall Street.

Yes, bubbles and crashes seem to occur in spite of what our govt leaders do to “permanently fix the problem”-remember dot.com bust, Enron, etc?How about this: the savings rate should equal (or be 1% less) whatever the banks charge to lend us money; they charge us 6%, then let us save at 6%, etc. Next, Reduce the ridculous consequences of unrestrained leverage by requiring ALL individuals and corporations to put at least 20% down on all purchases (includes financial instruments) and allow no more than 5:1 leverage factor. Add to that strict term limits, full transparency and accountability and capitalism with democracy may be able to survive into the next millenium.

Yes, I’ve grown tired of your scent, Skunky (while I’m sure you fancy yourself the HUMPER, the rest of us know otherwise!). I’ll say this for you, Chignos: you’re a stoat of a man! Found a great snapshot of you here, my friend: http://oyebilly.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/stoat.jpg.SWK

The unfunded liability of Medicare alone is enough to blow a hole in the Federal budget. Until Medicare becomes a more extreme version of ration care it will not be affordable. SWK’s 20% is about right if we want to continue the Medicare level such that it is actually paid for.Everything has to be put on a strict budget – just like a responsible household would do if it wants to stay solvent.There are so many things wrong with our country – the looming wreck is going to be awful – how can it possibly be otherwise.

Constitutions set out broad principles of power and authority, and thus can (and should) be relatively concise. Legislation is far more complicated, and has to authorize specific features in detail. The statutory authority is just the beginning of the complexity. Even more byzantine are the federal rules and regulations to implement statutes (see, e.g., the Code of Federal Regulations).SWK

ROME is burning folks. Can’t we keep our eye on the ball?

here we have it, Obama, Pelosi, Geithner Scumbag Co. stealing from private hard working people to fund public lazy officials.http://www.safehaven.com/showarticle.cfm?id=14404&pv=1&FORM=ZZNR3“Want to know where wages are rising? Think federal government workers. The gap between civilian and government workers was less than $13,000 nine years ago, but now is almost $30,000. Inflation has been 24%, but government wages are up 55%.”YES WE CAN RAISE TAX AND PAY PUBLIC WORKERS. YES WE CAN!!! YES WE CAN!!!

“Expect to see a big push for another large stimulus package next spring”to further stimulate government workers’ pay!!!!YES WE CAN RAISE TAX AND DO ANOTHER STIMULUS AND RAISE PAY FURTHER FOR GOVERNMENT WORKERS. YES WE CAN!!! YES WE CAN!!!

Look What’s Happening To Tax Receipts…http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-look-whats-happening-to-tax-receipts-2009-9

a brilliant commentary on gold over at ZeroHedge by one of their contributors:http://www.zerohedge.com/article/gold-and-systemic-crisis#comment-59879

People easily become distracted and focus on petty crap, which is one of the reasons at the heart of why Rome is burning in the first place. It doesn’t take too much skill to distract the public from the important issues. Sad.

BUT YES WE CAN!! YES WE CAN!!!! YES WE CAN RAISE GOV WORKERS PAY.and we dont care about bottomline, cuz YES WE CAN!! YES WE CAN!!!!

Can you say, UNSUSTAINABLE.

Good GoshAre you suggesting we put attorneys out of business in medical practice? LOL

YES!! WE CAN!!just arrest those tax evader. and raise tax on those who makes 125k above for couple and 75k above for single. raise the tax, TAX, TAX!!YES!! WE CAN!!

taken from somewhere on the netAnonymous said…Don’t believe one optimistic word from any public figure about the economy or humanity in general. They are all part of the problem. Its like a game of Monopoly. In America, the richest 1% now hold 1/2 OF ALL UNITED STATES WEALTH. Unlike ‘lesser’ estimates, this includes all stocks, bonds, cash, and material assets held by America’s richest 1%. Even that filthy pig Oprah acknowledged that it was at about 50% in 2006. Naturally, she put her own ‘humanitarian’ spin on it. Calling attention to her own ‘good will’. WHAT A DISGUSTING HYPOCRITE SLOB. THE RICHEST 1% HAVE LITERALLY MADE WORLD PROSPERITY ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE. Don’t fall for any of their ‘humanitarian’ CRAP. ITS A SHAM. THESE PEOPLE ARE CAUSING THE SAME PROBLEMS THEY PRETEND TO CARE ABOUT. Ask any professor of economics. Money does not grow on trees. The government can’t just print up more on a whim. At any given time, there is a relative limit to the wealth within ANY economy of ANY size. So when too much wealth accumulates at the top, the middle class slip further into debt and the lower class further into poverty. A similar rule applies worldwide. The world’s richest 1% now own over 40% of ALL WORLD WEALTH. This is EVEN AFTER you account for all of this ‘good will’ ‘humanitarian’ BS from celebrities and executives. ITS A SHAM. As they get richer and richer, less wealth is left circulating beneath them. This is the single greatest underlying cause for the current US recession. The middle class can no longer afford to sustain their share of the economy. Their wealth has been gradually transfered to the richest 1%. One way or another, we suffer because of their incredible greed. We are talking about TRILLIONS of dollars which have been transfered FROM US TO THEM. All over a period of about 27 years. Thats Reaganomics for you. The wealth does not ‘trickle down’ as we were told it would. It just accumulates at the top. Shrinking the middle class and expanding the lower class. Causing a domino effect of socio-economic problems. But the rich will never stop. They just keep getting richer. Leaving even less of the pie for the other 99% of us to share. At the same time, they throw back a few tax deductible crumbs and call themselves ‘humanitarians’. Cashing in on the PR and getting even richer the following year. IT CAN’T WORK THIS WAY. Their bogus efforts to make the world a better place can not possibly succeed. Any ‘humanitarian’ progress made in one area will be lost in another. EVERY SINGLE TIME. IT ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT WORK THIS WAY. This is going to end just like a game of Monopoly. The current US recession will drag on for years and lead into the worst US depression of all time. The richest 1% will live like royalty while the rest of us fight over jobs, food, and gasoline. So don’t fall for any of this PR CRAP from Hollywood, Pro Sports, and Wall Street PIGS. ITS A SHAM. Remember: They are filthy rich EVEN AFTER their tax deductible contributions. Greedy pigs. Now, we are headed for the worst economic and cultural crisis of all time. Crime, poverty, and suicide will skyrocket. SEND A “THANK YOU” NOTE TO YOUR FAVORITE MILLIONAIRE. ITS THEIR FAULT. I’m not discounting other factors like China, sub-prime, or gas prices. But all of those factors combined still pale in comparison to that HUGE transfer of wealth to the rich. Anyway, those other factors are all related and further aggrivated because of GREED. If it weren’t for the OBSCENE distribution of wealth within our country, there never would have been such a market for sub-prime to begin with. Which by the way, was another trick whipped up by greedy bankers and executives. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. The credit industry has been ENDORSED by people like Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGenerous, Dr Phil, and many other celebrities. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. Now, there are commercial ties between nearly every industry and every public figure. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. So don’t fall for their ‘good will’ BS. ITS A LIE. If you fall for it, then you’re a fool. If you see any real difference between the moral character of a celebrity, politician, attorney, or executive, then you’re a fool. No offense fellow citizens. But we have been mislead by nearly every public figure. WAKE UP PEOPLE. THEIR GOAL IS TO WIN THE GAME. The 1% club will always say or do whatever it takes to get as rich as possible. Without the slightest regard for anything or anyone but themselves. Reaganomics. Their idea. Loans from China. Their idea. NAFTA. Their idea. Outsourcing. Their idea. Sub-prime. Their idea. High energy prices. Their idea. Obscene health care charges. Their idea. The commercial lobbyist. Their idea. The multi-million dollar lawsuit. Their idea. The multi-million dollar endorsement deal. Their idea. $200 cell phone bills. Their idea. $200 basketball shoes. Their idea. $30 late fees. Their idea. $30 NSF fees. Their idea. $20 DVDs. Their idea. Subliminal advertising. Their idea. Brainwash plots on TV. Their idea. Vioxx, and Celebrex. Their idea. The MASSIVE campaign to turn every American into a brainwashed, credit card, pharmaceutical, love-sick, celebrity junkie. Their idea. All of the above shrink the middle class, concentrate the world’s wealth and resources, create a dominoe effect of socio-economic problems, and wreak havok on society. All of which have been CREATED AND ENDORSED by celebrities, athletes, executives, entrepreneurs, attorneys, and politicians. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. So don’t fall for any of their ‘good will’ ‘humanitarian’ BS. ITS A SHAM. NOTHING BUT TAX DEDUCTIBLE PR CRAP. In many cases, the ‘charitable’ contribution is almost entirely offset. Not to mention the opportunity to plug their name, image, product, and ‘good will’ all at once. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. These filthy pigs even have the nerve to throw a fit and spin up a misleading defense with regard to ‘federal tax revenue’. ITS A SHAM. THEY SCREWED UP THE EQUATION TO BEGIN WITH. If the middle and lower classes had a greater share of the pie, they could easily cover a greater share of the federal tax revenue. They are held down in many ways because of greed. Wages remain stagnant for millions because the executives, celebrities, athletes, attorneys, and entrepreneurs, are paid millions. They over-sell, over-charge, under-pay, outsource, cut jobs, and benefits to increase their bottom line. As their profits rise, so do the stock values. Which are owned primarily by the richest 5%. As more United States wealth rises to the top, the middle and lower classes inevitably suffer. This reduces the potential tax reveue drawn from those brackets. At the same time, it wreaks havok on middle and lower class communities and increases the need for financial aid. Not to mention the spike in crime because of it. There is a dominoe effect to consider. IT CAN’T WORK THIS WAY. But our leaders refuse to acknowledge this. Instead they come up with one trick after another to milk the system and screw the majority. These decisions are heavily influensed by the 1% club. Every year, billions of federal tax dollars are diverted behind the scenes back to the rich and their respective industries. Loans from China have been necessary to compensate in part, for the red ink and multi-trillion dollar transfer of wealth to the rich. At the same time, the feds have been pushing more financial burden onto the states who push them lower onto the cities. Again, the hardship is felt more by the majority and less by the 1% club. The rich prefer to live in exclusive areas or upper class communities. They get the best of everything. Reliable city services, new schools, freshly paved roads, upscale parks, ect. The middle and lower class communities get little or nothing without a local tax increase. Which, they usually can’t afford. So the red ink flows followed by service cuts and lay-offs. All because of the OBSCENE distribution of bottom line wealth in this country. So when people forgive the rich for their incredible greed and then praise them for paying a greater share of the FEDERAL income taxes, its like nails on a chalk board. I can not accept any theory that our economy would suffer in any way with a more reasonable distribution of wealth. Afterall, it was more reasonable 30 years ago. Before Reaganomics came along. Before GREED became such an epidemic. Before we had an army of over-paid executives, bankers, celebrities, athletes, attorneys, doctors, investors, entrepreneurs, developers, and sold-out politicians to kiss their asses. As a nation, we were in much better shape. Strong middle class, free and clear assets, lower crime rate, more widespread prosperity, stable job market, lower deficit, ect. Our economy as a whole was much more stable and prosperous for the majority. WITHOUT LOANS FROM CHINA. Now, we have a more obscene distribution of bottom line wealth than ever before. We have a sold-out government, crumbling infrastructure, energy crisis, home forclosure epidemic, 13 figure national deficit, and 12 figure annual shortfall. The cost of living is higher than ever before. Most people can’t even afford basic health care. ALL BECAUSE OF GREED. I really don’t blame the 2nd -5th percentiles in general. No economy could ever function without some reasonable scale of personal wealth and income. But it can’t be allowed to run wild like a mad dog. ALBERT EINSTEIN TRIED TO MAKE PEOPLE UNDERSTAND. UNBRIDLED CAPITALISM ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT WORK. TOP HEAVY ECONOMIES ALWAYS COLLAPSE. Bottom line: The richest 1% will soon tank the largest economy in the world. It will be like nothing we’ve ever seen before. The American dream will be shattered. and thats just the beginning. Greed will eventually tank every major economy in the world. Causing millions to suffer and die. Oprah, Angelina, Brad, Bono, and Bill are not part of the solution. They are part of the problem. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A MULTI-MILLIONAIRE HUMANITARIAN. EXTREME WEALTH MAKES WORLD PROSPERITY ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE. WITHOUT WORLD PROSPERITY, THERE WILL NEVER BE WORLD PEACE OR ANYTHING EVEN CLOSE. GREED KILLS. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL. Of course, the rich will throw a fit and call me a madman.. Of course, they will jump to small minded conclusions about ‘jealousy’, ‘envy’, or ‘socialism’. Of course, their ignorant fans will do the same. You have to expect that. But I speak the truth. If you don’t believe me, then copy this entry and run it by any professor of economics or socio-economics. Then tell a friend. Call the local radio station. Re-post this entry or put it in your own words. Be one of the first to predict the worst economic and cultural crisis of all time and explain its cause. WE ARE IN BIG TROUBLE.April 2, 2008 2:52 AM

25% for health care? fuggitaboutit

That strict budget ain’t gonna happen. No way to buy votes with a strict budget. Get used to it, the government is BK. Serves them right.

There will always be rich people. There will always be poor people. And there will always be greed. Sorry. Thats the way it is. Get over it.

Chignos, my dear, you are, as they say in these parts, a real piece of work. Your misguided attempts to best kilgores in any argument are highly entertaining, so if I may say so, thanks for the memories.

perhaps the most disturbing Marc Faber interview everhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNFqFXrt8nU

This is not the point. The point is that WE must put THEM in big trouble. Once and for all. Amen.

The unintended consequences of all this money printing are starting to be noticed. The Six Million Dollar Man says he’s only half the man he used to be. He was interviewed while buying a million dollar baby in a five and ten cent store.A man went to the doctor. The doctor asked him how he felt. The man said he felt like a million bucks. The doctor told him to get his affairs in order.

WRAPUP 1-US commodities rattled by China derivatives stance[blockquote]China, the world’s top importer of soybeans, has been an aggressive buyer of U.S. supplies, helping drive prices higher as stockpiles fell to the lowest level in over three decades.

One article quotes the latest newly jobless figures at 577,000…..another says it 210,000 but that’s good because it was “less than expected.” Expected by whom? The only thing I expect from all these news articles is continual confusion about what is really going on. These guys in the news have no idea what’s really going on. Cancel your subscription.

The seems to be nothing to the rumor that Obama has lockjaw. His jaw and associated anatomy are working just fine (although there is some supposition that this might not be the case for some parts of his head well above the jaw). Anyway, he is now jawboning elderly Americans to save money for their retirement.There are two classes of elder Americans–the senile elderly and the non-senile elderly. Some senile elderly might well be interested in a dollar account to save money for their future, but the non-senile elderly are much more likely to spend their money while they can still get something for it. I assume that Obama is addressing the non-senile elderly (but who really knows?).I have an idea that would really be good for elderly Americans and would certainly encourage them to save money for their yonder years.. Pass a law that any American citizen over 40 years could open up and auxillary gold account to his social security account. Any holder of a gold account could deposit up to ten thousand year-2010 taxfree dollars into his account in each year. The federal government would be required to buy gold at the current market price and put it into the account. The gold would be the property of the account holder and could not be used by the government for any other purpose. The government would also add gold to the account at 10 percent of the account balance as a “stimulus” to saving.Any account holder at age beyound fifty five or with a disablility could withdraw any amount at any time in gold certificates or in the any one of the ten most used currencies. Again, all money would be tax free at deposit, while in the account, and upon withdrawal.How about it, Obama? It’s “put-up or shut-up” time. Are you really capable of helping someone other than the super rich?Or are you just giving a warning to the elderly that their social security and other pension monies most likely won’t be there when they need it to survive?

Marc is invested in gold and his doomsday speeches is good business for him and his clients. He is also a textbook case of a capitalist fundamentalist who cannot see beyond the system. This is his strength and also his ultimate delusion (not to mention the future big trouble for his investors). He critiques the FED and the White House for “corrupting” capitalism. But they have “corrupted” the damn thing only because it was the only way to save it, or more correctly, to postpone its demise. It was supposed to have been over and done with by the 1940s and only thanks to Herr Hitler capitalism was given a postponement. The Soviet Union was very useful too. The Cold War required significant redistribution of wealth in the West to keep its workers loyal. Reagan and Thatcher put an end to that social contract and began shipping industrial jobs abroad. Real wages in the West began to fall, but someone had to buy what 200 million coolies and other wretched of the earth were producing for the expected super profits of Western investors. So the FED had found an elegant solution to this problem. If Western workers coul no longer buy things from their wages, we’ll lend them money to. In this way we’ll profit from both ends: from the surplus value produced by the coolies and other colored people and from loansharking our own work force. And to make them feel good about this we’ll create a housing buble. Thi si swhat Marc can’t get. He believes that capitalism is some kind of a perpertuum mobile that would deliver us happy and prosperous right on time for the second coming if only evil politicians don’t “corrupt” it. But Marc is smart enough to understand that when and if it comes to the machine gun and the farm he and his clients have no chances to hold to their gold against those without farms and bullion but with a plenty of machine guns or even only machetes. So in the final analysis it is the Fed and Obama who are better custodians of the capitalist system than its fundamentalist defender Faber.

Obama is a fake, an arrogant lightweight chain smokerwho can read a teleprompter and has a low baritone voice(because he still smokes—eeeeeeuuugag for the ladies………./”’

Your incessant, inane garbage makes this forum hard to read. Were you toilet trained at gunpoint or something? Whatever, please cease making the rest of us pay for your personal problems. Stop endlessly re-posting this mindlessness.

There will always be anonymous posters. Get over it.

Thanks but my observation is that “the con” has become THE way of life And state of play, where nobody has protection from this feral’ nobody; in Australia we are all victims – and the ruling theme is to lie and evade.A sad day when the Slicks rule in return for paying tribute to the Crown. How many times have we seen this?Ho hum

It’s no surprise that the intellectually lazy – and sad cowards who promote the sad lie that economic justice is simply not possible – are incapable of seeing the answer.

absolutely wrong again, Ned. me an’ the ghost of Smedley Butler are best friends. the real heroes are the ones who have grown bold and brave enough to reject war altogether.i’m already against the next war, and the one after that, and the one after that.difference between you and me is that eye nose how to stop war forever.

August 14-16, 2009Green Shoots or Scorched Earth?Bulletins From ClunkervilleBy MIKE WHITNEY”Is the economy really recovering or is it all just hype?”…….”Can you believe it? The Fed is drafting a gaggle of professional speculators just to keep all its balls in the air. What a joke. This isn’t a recovery; it’s a sit-com. “.http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney08142009.html.and this….Dear Dr. Science,Just exactly what is virgin olive oil?from Bill K. of San Bruno, CA..You are, of course, referring to Popeye’s female friend, Olive Oil. Little is known about the relationship that Popeye and Olive shared through 40 years of rescuing her from the chauvinistic, harassing grasps of Bluto, or Brutus as he was sometimes called. Science does not know what level of intimacy these two cartoon characters enjoyed and, frankly, this Scientist doesn’t care. The fact that you should be so interested in the private affairs of a pair of two dimensional drawings indicates you have taken a mighty small bite of what the world has to offer and have chewed that bit far too well. I recommend therapy and the sooner, the better…………………………………………….Gold Star Questionfrom Nathan H. of Loveland, ColoradoI heard that 3 out of 4 people make up 75 percent of the world’s population. What about the other 1 out of 4?……………………..that said….when people organize and start refusing to acceptthe blatant violations of environmental and individual integrity and liberty things mightchange. you have to think government employees,politicians, etc. do what they are told to do.it is their nature to perform in this way, likea soldier or a ball player.organize and tell them what to do. they will do it,especially well if what they are told actually makessense and is generally good! focus. tell them whatneeds to be done, explain to them what their properjob description looks like. they are public servants,remember..the fix.defaults and asset deflation. the world does notneed an american economy based on fictitious financial products and accountants cooking books.the world also doesn’t need a psychotic internationalpolice force feeding itself on slave labor. it doesn’t need an american population of self deluded,angry, arrogant and ignorant self important hungry, empty suited ghosts attempting to feed at their tables.if we need to lead the world, we first need to learnsomething about leadership, something we have notrealized. it comes from humility, insight and integrity. from compassion, actually from loveand the heart, but that isn’t enough. you alsohave to have vision which implies understandingof the natures of man, self, people in groups,relations to environments and ecologies, all the sciences that the universities are so inclined to profess.all that the business schools have no time for becauseit doesn’t make money. all that the political parties have disregarded in favor of total enslavement to the fiat pyramid scheme where the richest demand/extort free money to collect interest for being economically irrelevant and actually destructive.the stuff of leadership. we need that.i can’t help but think this D2 is just collapseof casino consciousness. good rid-dens, sweet.there is a limit to available time for sentientbeings in this life. the b.s. crowds out thereal work that need be done and we are inundatedwith b.s. because it serves its masters well.the fix. focus. evaluate and focus, then organizeand fix it. make it right. imbalance to balance.problem, people have focused their identities, socialinteractions, education, loyalties, dreams andwishes around…..money. whatever that means.so what is the fix?suffering, the only teacher for which man has anyrespect. it doesn’t look good as the criminal,fraudulent and bloated will engineer their escapefrom the lesson, or will they? mysterious ways andall. rather..what would be beneficent is if the qualities of thetalented and the good and those with integrityand insight were rewarded and their qualitieswere spread/shared among populations.then we wouldn’t be dubbed clunkerville borrowinghalf a million dollars to live in a shack and sendour kids to school while the stress of monthly payments destroys the shreds of your sanity andrelationships. the system has deteriorated tothe point that there is no more doing the right thing, there is only doing what is best for you.integrity is gone because the system does notthrive on it, it selects against it. in fact ithas been redefined with derogatory slant. and whathas this done to the families, relationships,education…perhaps this was just the way of theworld for a time, perhaps a long time.it is just business. life is a business.i think it was snooks eaglin ” love ain’tnothin’ but a business goin’ on “. sort ofa blues shuffle national anthem..ps. that said, all laws are fuzzy in realityregardless of how many times the word shall isemployed,( you really can’t codify future adaptation) still there is a difference betweenfuzzy and holographic and there appear no lawswhatever in the shadow lands of the casino for therich, armed and dangerously depraved. they wanteven that that is nailed down, and they want thenails!the fix is in exercising your right to free speech,freedom of assembly, etc.faith is good. faith that if you do the right thingas best you can see, that the stage will be set forsomeone else to do the right thing also, i know,these people have been termed suckers, you see?that’s what happened to integrity. now we mustpay one way or another. the words will be there.not to worry. we are dealing with a self inflictedcrisis in confidence dictated by employment dynamics for the sake of fiat currency aggrandizement. how bizarre.

Hey, what did Outer Beltway (and company)’s Brain Trust ever come up with? Anybody know what that group is up to these days? What they’re recommending, supporting, or opposed to?Hey also, does anybody know what ever happened to, or result of, Dr. Roubini’s facebook call to clawback-the-bonuses?

Those taxes that you are bitching about are the firewall between the snobbish and the poor.I agree that it would be good for such taxes to be reduced, as I’m looking for a good show to see how fast the actual non-producing rich can move their lazy butts.

You’re good!I was about to rail against this tripe, but there, thankfully, to preserve my words, was you to cap it most eloquently!Mostly, however, I had to gasp at the childish thought that growth can somehow happen by shear will: nature (read “natural resource’” has the word here, not “business,” not “government,” not some egotist).

The problem is of power distribution. Advocating that more power be concentrated to resolve issues of too-concentrated power is, well, you know, not going to get us there…

GO AWAY, YES, GO AWAY!

I couldn’t get past the first sentence. What a self-important boor.

Nice one, YTAI… SWK

YES!! WE CAN!!we will not go away. we will raise tax and raise gov workers pay. THE HOPE IS BACK YES!! WE CAN!!

Section 945A of the Corporations Act – who did this protect?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15061How to Reverse Financial Tyranny: “We Shall Prevail”Text presented to the American Monetary Institute 2009 Conferenceby Richard C. CookSeptember 4, 2009The world’s most important gathering of monetary reformers takes place each year in Chicago at the American Monetary Institute’s annual conference. This year’s event takes place September 24-27 at Roosevelt University . Chairing the conference is Stephen Zarlenga, AMI director and author of the landmark book “The Lost Science of Money.” For information and the list of speakers, including monetary economist Michael Hudson, see the AMI website at http://www.monetary.org/2009schedule.html. While personal matters will prevent me from appearing on-site, I have sent the following remarks. Segments of my six-part DVD, “Credit as a Public Utility,” will also be shown.It is not difficult to come up with methods to solve today’s economic crisis through monetary reform. Many of us are doing it. The key, as I have been writing for the past several years, is to treat credit as a public utility, not the private property of the world’s financial elite.If we truly adhered to this concept, we would be able to see that a debt-based monetary system, where money only comes into existence through bank lending, can succeed only in isolated circumstances when a growth bubble outpaces the ability of the public to pay interest charges for the privilege of having money to spend and thereby to survive.Whenever the growth bubble fails, as we have seen over the last three years, the system crashes, the financiers pick up assets for pennies on the dollar, and the cycle starts again. It seems haphazard and unpredictable, but we all know that the system was designed this way and that only the wealthy profit in the long run.The rich use governments, through which they control politicians, bureaucrats, and covert operatives, to protect and enhance their power. Democracy is subverted. Once the rich have their host country firmly under control, they branch out to the rest of the world. The key then becomes the use of financial power to control the world’s resources through trade and currency manipulation and the management of legal codes and institutional rulemaking.If social classes within the host country or foreign nations victimized by financial hegemony should happen to rebel, police and military forces are deployed to crush the rebellion. Educational systems and the mass media are employed to brainwash civilian populations by keeping them docile and compliant. A host of methods are employed, including false-flag terrorist events, to instill fear in the population and keep them beholden to the authorities for protection. Because the financial elite are parasites who kill their hosts, they must constantly ensnare new victims.The foregoing is a complete picture of the present world situation. The last two hundred years have been marked by the march toward world conquest by the money-masters through the Anglo-American military-financial-intelligence colossus, combined with their bought-and-sold allies from the privileged classes of subservient nations.The outcome was in some doubt during the 1970s in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. But beginning with the Reagan Doctrine in the 1980s, where a decision was made to gobble up the world one small country at a time, the march forward resumed. The 1990-91 Persian Gulf War, the carving up of Yugoslavia later in the 1990s, and the conquest of Iraq and Afghanistan most recently have brought the Western alliance to the borders of Russia . The attack now continues through the Caucasus region, even as Iran and Pakistan are being isolated.It may be controversial to say that Russia is the target. Why might this be so? It’s because the financial takeover by the West in the 1990s didn’t work. An independent Russia has made a comeback. They have a lot of nuclear weapons and know how to use them. The collapse of the Soviet Union, leaving the U.S. “the world’s only superpower,” created a far more perilous imbalance than most people are aware of. It’s an imbalance that has caused Western military planners—for instance with NATO—to dangerously overreach.The big question geopolitically is whether China can be induced to stand with the West. This was the objective of the effort beginning around 1971 under President Richard Nixon’s “Opening to China ” to incorporate China into the Western financial system. But today China increasingly seems to be standing alone, with the makings of a self-sufficient banking and industrial complex—and a stable currency—that is defying Western attempts at control.Will there be an “oriental surprise?” Will China reach a point where it makes an irreversible decision to side with Russia or stand against the West? No one knows. Henry Kissinger wrote in the Washington Post on August 19, 2009, that keeping China as a friend to the West is essential for the “New World Order.” And yes, he used those words—this is not a big secret. The winds of change are also blowing in Japan , where the pro-American ruling party has just been voted out.Personally, I find this struggle for world domination repugnant—the complete triumph of the rule of materialism and violence. As Rodney King said, “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?” Indeed, why can’t we see that life on earth, as Pope Benedict XVI recently pointed out in his encyclical Caritas In Veritate, is a gift from God to man, a gift that bestows on all of us the duty to treat each other fairly and with compassion?So, in the face of the current world horror, what chance do monetary reformers have to be heard?The answer, I believe, is that we are being heard. My mind goes back to 2003, only six years ago, when Stephen Zarlenga came to my office at the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington , D.C. , where I had booked him to give a presentation based on his book, The Lost Science of Money. Later I worked with Steve on his first draft of the American Monetary Act. The time came when Steve began to meet with Congressman Dennis Kucinich, briefing him and others in Washington on monetary ideas.So much has happened since then. So many more people have become aware of the evils of the debt-based monetary system. We have seen Congressman Ron Paul ignite a national storm of revulsion against the Federal Reserve System. There is now even hope that the American Monetary Act might be introduced on the floor of Congress.But it is also perfectly obvious that this is only a start. The start, however, has been made, though there’s a long way to go.We’ve had promising starts before. Back in the latter part of the 19th century, the American public were far more attuned to ideas of monetary reform than at any time since. There was then a Greenback Party that elected members of Congress and ran candidates for president. The Populist Party understood monetary issues and the importance of a flexible and expansive currency. Henry George became the leading author of the day with his reformist ideas based on the principle that the earth was a commons from which all have a right to benefit.But then, when the international bankers finally succeeded in taking over the country through the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the curtain fell. It wasn’t an iron curtain; it was a red velvet curtain, such as graced the windows of the rich financiers of the age who benefited. These financiers started two world wars to consolidate their dominion. They may yet start a third. The Reagan Doctrine may have made it inevitable.But I do not believe the warmongers will have the last say. Even if they bring down upon us another world catastrophe, those who believe in the better side of humanity will eventually win, because our cause is just and our ideas are based upon truth. Without monetary reform there can never be economic democracy. But with it perhaps the chief cause of war can be eliminated: the unjust distribution of wealth among people and nations, where some get far too much and many get nothing.I strongly support the American Monetary Act, the movement for a basic income guarantee, and proposals supporting citizens’ dividends such as those of the Social Credit movement or the ones already in place through programs like the Alaska Permanent Fund. Even if such measures are not immediately implemented, the effort to promote them serves the purpose of educating millions of people.Our present responsibility is getting the word out that there is indeed a far better way to do things and that real change is possible. That money and credit can empower people, not just enslave them. That debt is unnecessary when credit is viewed as a public utility. That technology when properly distributed can free people for higher intellectual and spiritual pursuits, not just eliminate jobs and force millions of people into bankruptcy and starvation. That, as Henry George and his successors have made clear, resources are for everyone, not just a few.I have come up with my own proposal for immediate relief that I call “The Cook Plan.” One of the worst myths of our time is that for government to spend money it can only collect that money ahead of time through taxes or by borrowing. “The Cook Plan,” instead, would have the government print and distribute vouchers in the amount of $1,000 a month to any adult resident who applied.The vouchers could be spent on necessities of life such as food, housing, clothing, transportation, or communication. They would then be deposited in a series of community savings banks and used to capitalize low-interest lending to individuals, students, small businesses, and family farms. The backing for the vouchers would be the new economic production they would engender at the grassroots level of every community.This measure alone would take a giant step toward bringing about a healthy U.S. and world economy at the level of “We the People,” rather than the fruitless and hypocritical attempt to create “recovery” through bank lending and government deficit spending. “The Cook Plan” has met a positive response from around the world during the several months since I proposed it.My views, while economically sound, have a spiritual basis. I believe in God, and I believe that man was created in the image of God. I believe that a world where we love our neighbor as ourselves and implement this love through social and economic policy is not just a dream, that it is the only practical way to live.I believe in the family of man and the responsibility of man to be a good steward of the earth and the environment. I believe financial tyranny has done its best to destroy these values. But I see an upsurge of desire and commitment among people for a new day, a truly democratic society, and a life on earth that is organized and conducted sanely, compassionately, and wisely.Those who attend such events as the American Monetary Institute’s 2009 conference understand all this. Together we will continue to work toward our ideals, no matter what disasters may intervene. It will take time and hard work, but we and those who come after us shall prevail.Richard C. Cook is a former federal analyst who worked for 21 years for the U.S. Treasury Department. His book “We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform” is now available. He is also author of a book on the space shuttle Challenger disaster. His website is http://www.richardccook.com.

Thank you. I had seen that article and I still don’t get it. What OTC derivatives? I’ve got some experience in these foreign markets and I don’t know how that works.I wonder if we are not talking about what I would call “trade finance”. That would be agreements between a buyer and his bank. And the relationships between the buyers’ banks and their “correspondent” international banks. If the threat of default is between a Chinese state bank acting on behalf of the importer and western correspondent banks acting as intermediates to exporters then selling to China will become as dangerous as selling to Nigeria. I can’t see the Chinese letting that happen. No way. They require the import of raw material. And lots of those obligations can be hedged in the futures market. But lik I said – margin. So, again. I don’t understand the structure.

A ridiculous proposal with no chance of coming to fruition. Your concept of the basic goodness of man is pie-in-the sky. Giving everybody $1K/mo for basic necessities rewards lazy behavior, discourages working for a living. Your idea of God is that he created this world and now is just sitting back watching man manage it? I don’t believe that, I believe God has this world well within His controlling hand. If you cannot see what His purposes are, that just confirms that you are not God.

To which country or state does this at apply? Australia?SWK

Who are you talking to, 11;44? Richard C Cook, the author of the piece? ? (the cluephone rings) Um, He ain’t here, Binky. But – good news – you CAN enlighten him as to what God thinks and doesn’t at his own link, found above, if you like. At the same time you can alert him to WHY the proposal he’s wasting his time and energies on is ridiculous – you know, giving him the logic and sound reasoning you surely have behind your argument – and you can also directly disabuse him of the silly notion of humanity’s goodness and notify him of the zero chance for the Monetary Reform Act to be legislated by popular demand. I bet He’d really appreciate hearing the groundbreaking earthshaking way you have found to KNOW what, well, any rational person will readily admit is IMPOSSIBLE for you to know.Let us know what he replies to you?

@YES!! WE CAN!!Go ahead and continue with your mocking mental masturbatory chanting instead of engaging in constructive dialogue with those with whom you think you disagree. You are succeeding only in manifesting to the world your own blind ignorance and intolerance in the process. You’re certainly not convincing anyone but those who already agree with your pathetically close-minded and myopic ideas about politics and the economy.The reality is that despite all of the outlandish slubbering coming from the increasingly desperate, roinous, and neotenous minority that is the far right, this country has shifted to the left and will continue in that direction for years and years to come. You might as well get used to it.SWK

k,here is the thing. when you hit “reply tothis comment” the dialog box is below.then the page refreshes and the dialog boxappears again but it is the dialog box at the bottomof the page. you need to scroll back up the threadto find the box you really want. and don’tforget to copy (save) your comment should thepost mysteriously disappear! happens enough.

So let me see if I’ve got this straight. I should not be allowed to believe that God is in control of what is happening in this world……because you are His Mother?

kilgore, you are a sick man. actually what “@YES!! WE CAN!!” posted can be considered right. your post is copying your own words “succeeding only in manifesting to the world your own blind ignorance and intolerance in the process” The reality is probably not too far from what “@YES!! WE CAN!!”

Senior Prom as in big event one eagerly looks forward to, Guest. Something wrong with that??ANYWAY, Right now I’m reading THIS page at AMI website – and woohoo what a read!!HEY KILGORES AND BLINDMAN: if you can find time, i’d LOVE to hear what you 2 especially think about this article AND the comments there. I’m not finished reading them all, but so far it’s one gem of a page!http://moneyreform.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/why-states-going-into-the-banking-business-would-be-a-distraction-not-a-solution-to-their-fiscal-problem-by-jamie-walton-ami-researcher/

Hey? Has anybody here read Zarlenga’s “The Lost Science of Money”?

Now look at them yo-yos….thats the way you do itYou play the guitar on the mtvThat aint workin…….thats the way you do itMoney for nothin and chicks for freeNow that aint workin……thats the way you do itLemme tell ya them guys aint dumbMaybe get a blister on your little fingerMaybe get a blister on your thumbWe gotta install microwave ovensCustom kitchen deliveriesWe gotta move these refrigeratorsWe gotta move these colour tvsSee the little faggot with the earring and the makeupYeah buddy thats his own hairThat little faggot got his own jet airplaneThat little faggot hes a millionaireWe gotta install microwave ovesnsCustom kitchens deliveriesWe gotta move these refrigeratorsWe gotta move these colour tvsI shoulda learned to play the guitarI shoulda learned to play them drumsLook at that mama, she got it stickin in the cameraMan we could have some funAnd hes up there, whats that? hawaiian noises?Bangin on the bongoes like a chimpanzeeThat aint workin….thats the way you do itGet your money for nothin get your chicks for freeWe gotta install microwave ovensCustom kitchen deliveriesWe gotta move these refrigeratorsWe gotta move these colour tvs, lordNow that aint workin……thats the way you do itYou play the guitar on the mtvThat aint workin……..thats the way you do itMoney for nothin and your chicks for freeMoney for nothin and chicks for free(this analyst’s ethic is why we’re in Dire Straits)

Can’t you go back to the farm, the moon, Jupiter, or wherever it is you came from?

This blog has seriously deteriorated.

These are your words, not mine, Ned: “There will always be rich people. There will always be poor people. And there will always be greed. Sorry. Thats the way it is. Get over it.”That’s cowardspeak, Ned. Fatalism is a self-fulfilling prophesy, Ned. Every single time, Ned. Your words encourage an irrational idea, Ned – and just when people desperately need to think rationally. It’s a sad shame you felt the compunction to follow up that post with your advice to others to fail to let the extreme richpoor wealthgap matter to them. It should matter to them as their first prioroity – because, in case you hadn’t noticed, your, and their, society is being shaken to pieces by the extreme extremes of wealth maldistributed beyond belief and all sense right round this weary, worried world.The Chinese have a saying, Ned: The man who says it can’t be done should get out of the way of the man doing it.

No, I can’t. My wings are still in pristine condition, but I blew all my travelmoney on whiskey and poker and had to hock my eyegoggles. And God knows I can’t fly without my eyegoggles; they’re prescription.Next question?

Bingo. Every unnecessary suffering we have in this weary, worried world traces back to one crucial, fundamental mistake in human thinking:Everyone still believes in having the chance to get money for no work.I am the only person on this board who proposes to stop paying people for things that are not work.

SWK, I don’t think that the US is moving leftwards. But at any rate, thanks for pounding MR/MRS CAPS. Hmm, could this be our old “friend” STOCKS GOING GREEN?

Two questions:From where do you pick your data? What data you use that is not provided also without adjustment?Sometimes 2 versions are available (sa and not adjusted)Do you know the specific procedure to seasonality adjustment in each case? That is, the detailed math procedure ?I know X-12-ARIMA developed to the US Census Bureau is used on several official data but I do not know the updating frequency you complain about. Another possibility would be to use local linear regression but I think we need to know the official procedure even if some more appropriate method should be used.

I suppose so, morbid. Don’t know about airline hedges specifically.

And you’re just the person to tell us all what is and is not work, right?It doesn’t sound like you know how to love.

I lived in facist Spain and would tell you this is very different. Would tell you also that the difference doesn’t have to do with cronyism.

The Chinese saying is great. I know what your saying. Grab our balls and kill the bastards. Right. How would you start to kill the bastards? Start with well placed IEDs and then take the wealth of the rich and distribute it to the poor? I’m just a Joe on the street. How or where would you start to change the mess?

Thanks. I’ve been trying to at least copy my stuff so I can re-post if I lose it without actually having to re-create it from scratch, but I guess I’m an old dog and never seem to learn this new trick… SWK

It is hilarious how people are objecting to Obama’s school speech. Also, the whole debate about healthcare is stupendous. It is being asserted that Obama is a socialist because of that 700-800 Billion dollar plan forthe next whatever amount of years. I just don’t see where is capitalism when Trillions are thrown in bank bail-outs? Who is crying socialism then?Unfortunately, I have no respect for the Republican party, it has lost its soul. The only few republicans that I sincerely respect are the ones that are liberterians, such as Senator Ron Paul. They are consistent. Besides, literally trillions and trillions of dollars are on the hook for the banks and Obama is a “socialist” ‘because’ of a 700-billion dollar healthcare plan for the next 10 or so many years? Healthcare bing a matter of life for many people…It is just ludicrous. Creation of wealth is being tampered with on an unprecedened basis, allocation of capital being consigned to bussinesses which were imprudet and have failed, and there is an uproar because of a healthcare plan which is peanuts in comparison over such a long period of time, which can actually help a few people?How can it be socialism when there is a “minor” redistribution of wealth, when it isn’t socialism when there is a major, a 23.7 trillion dollar humongous, distortion in te “creation of wealth”.

w,i don’t know what the point is other than life? but…( side note )..complexity swings into simplicity and thepoint may become evident for those witheyes open and prepared to comprehendits appearance. simplicity is underratedand sometimes less is more. comprehensionis fundamental and sometimes the detailsjust overwhelm the processor and render itinept. personal problem.? the times? thetime of man?i think people really just want lessthan the global economy requires they demandand it seems that system is striving toreward those with insatiable appetite?or people want less of what is available tothem and more of what is unavailable? eitherway there is dissatisfaction and starving in thebelly of the whale, as in it is common for a,say, 400 lb. person to die of malnutrition. itis a question of quality.so for the global system to propagate itself. growth phase / death phasein ecology they occur simultaneously but fordifferent organisms. or culturally… “organic growth”? separation, decanting of economies eachwith its own realm of dominance yet connectedlogically yet unpredictably through energy discharges or transfers.?.technology. the structural refinement of theinorganic or organic in service of the designer..of a new life form or new environment?and occupation of new environments by technologyand designers intents appearing chaotic to onerealm as energy, value, resources seems todisappear into thin air, space.perhaps related totechno logic occupation by the orbiting satellitesof the planet and the burgeoning virtual “world”.perhaps the next “real estate” bubble as wassuggested above (pjb)? the real estatevirtual credit bailout supplying finance tooccupy the orbit space thereby completing adecanting phase of internationally agreeddomains of influence?these types.the virtual space financiers?.to your statement and question, yes. you said it..we are being spoon fed feces. obviously not forour health, maturation or enlightenment. theconstitution is permissive in that it allows for that and it allows for resistance to it, theindividual intellect being empowered through its own natural integrity and capacities liberated, yetsocially responsible. we, us.the “fascism” complaint stems from the predjudiceagainst the “we the people” in favor of a systemof finance that remains nameless, is not a person,has no community affiliation and obviously hasunstated global and international agendas andambitions that it seeks to finance either onsome books, off some books, on some backs andruthless as required. and hush hush….in conclusion ( for now ) i don’t know howwe fix the broken heart of man besides moresuffering.ps. i think mog’s link is interesting. ami.their agenda seems to address the “fascist”finance complaint directly. we need to getover this idea that killing people is a formof diplomacy or we need to call ourselvesby a a name other than homo sapien, maybehomo zombius.pss. when the well runs dry then the level ofattention and interest in matters will increaseand we will be astonished at the simplicityand clarity, hopefully favorably. moments oftruth. there are people who study this. i thinkthey are disaster psychologists or like that.?some conclude it actually brings out the best inindividuals, but the worst in “authorities”.hmmm? consciousness rules……

Ah, Mark, but hope springs eternal in the hearts of the liberal-progressives!Actually, I think “hard left” might just tilt this country back from “hard right, just shy of fascism” to “moderate conservatism,” which would be fine by me.SWK

>Unfortunately, I have no respect for the Republican party, it has lost its souI think you’ve hit the nail on the head, Guest. The real “RINOs” (Republicans In Name Only) are actually the ones who’ve come into power in the GOP over the last 30 years and whose dregs continue to drag the party down. I know some folks here will find this astounding, but I have been a Republican twice and a Democrat twice in nearly 35 years of being eligible to vote. I have voted for third party candidates for president in no less than three presidential elections because, frankly, BOTH of the major parties are too beholden to industry interests, too entranced by the lust for political power, and all too willing to abandon principles and the public interest for the sake of expedience and cheap notoriety.SWK

Ned, you most definitely do NOT know what I am saying – you’re nowhere in the same universe with what I say. And now I’m through talking to you because you’re just being disingenuous and you have no right whatsoever to try to make it appear I would ever be for killing the rich or anybody else.

Of course this recession will be W-shaped. That’s the middle initial of the guy who was in charge when all of this started.

Good one. Actually, I think there were plenty of others to share the blame, but W remains a worthy target or wrath.SWK

numbers to do just what with?

P.S. If you’re still not happy with this blog, then send me a check for $25 and I’ll see to it that you are $25 poorer- yes, I guarantee it! That’s REAL performance that you can believe in!NOTE: Subsequent payments might be required in order to alleve you of your obvious discomfort. But, and I guarantee this, at some point (when you can no longer afford an internet connection), you WILL no longer suffer from these horrible troubling problems! All these others posting here are just posers, offering NO solutions- ha!

See what I mean.

Maybe if she’s a cute chick they’ll let her into the conference.

While sitting here doing the math,The economy’s taking a bath.Be that as it may we have SWK,To help us to target our wrath.

The validity of your thinking is right up there with those who criticized Obama for having a middle name common to Islamic peoples.

The CIA is a tool, a tool of fundamentalist forces, ones that are no different than that which they purport to eliminate. I think that Michael Baigent has it right:Racing Toward Armageddon

If you are striving to make it impossible for you to have power over anyone else, I have agree with you: that’s a good idea.

The Buyback BoondoggleCompanies spend lavishly on share repurchases, slowing innovation and job creationAs the unemployment rate hovers near 10%, the economic debate is focused on how the government should aid recovery. (More stimulus spending? Tax cuts?) But it’s business’ task to get the economy back on track—by investing in innovation and job creation. And if the recent past is any guide, corporations may stall the recovery by investing instead in something else: stock buybacks.America urgently needs a debate on stock buybacks. There is no sound economic rationale for these investments. Justified by the notion of maximizing shareholder value, they do nothing for the economy—and a lot for CEOs receiving stock-based compensation.The amount of money spent on buybacks is staggering. From 1997 through last year, 438 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index spent $2.4 trillion on them. In 2007, as profits soared, the average buyback bill for each was about $1.2 billion—a record amount. And faced with a dramatic drop in their combined net income in 2008, these companies trimmed buyback spending, but not proportionately: The buyback-to-profit ratio, which was already unprecedented in 2007, more than tripled in 2008, from 0.90 to 2.80.CASH DRAINUnfortunately, buybacks are rampant in industries where investment in innovation is crucial—energy, technology, and pharmaceuticals. ExxonMobil (XOM), America’s No. 1 repurchaser, spent $144 billion to buy back shares from 2000 through 2008—and almost $8 billion in first quarter 2009, the equivalent of 173% of its net quarterly income.And five high-tech leaders—Microsoft (MSFT), IBM (IBM), Cisco Systems (CSCO), Intel, (INTC) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)—are in the Top 10 of repurchasers, each having spent more on buybacks than on research and development from 2000 through 2008. (While spending $73 billion to buy its own stock, IBM increased its offshore employment by 133,000, reducing U.S. jobs by 36,000.) Pfizer (PFE), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Amgen (AMGN), and Merck (MRK) have been big repurchasers, too, even as they have argued against regulating U.S. drug prices on the grounds that profits are needed to fund research. From 2000 through 2008, Amgen’s repurchases cost the equivalent of 116% of its net income.The downturn has slowed buyback activity. But consider this: Some companies that fell into financial distress were previously among the largest repurchasers. If bailed-out General Motors (GM) had banked the $20.4 billion distributed to shareholders as buybacks from 1986 through 2002 (with a 2.5% aftertax annual return), it would have had $35 billion in 2009 to stave off bankruptcy and respond to global competition.And the bailed-out banks? Eight of the biggest spent a total of $182 billion on buybacks from 2000 to 2007. That reduced their ability to cover their bets on derivatives, exacerbating the crisis they created in the first place.The experience of this decade suggests that when profitability returns, buybacks will again be a top priority for corporations—at the expense of initiatives that could help spur a solid recovery.Executives claim stock repurchases are financial investments that signal confidence in the company’s stock price. Yet companies never sell the bought-back shares at higher prices to cash in on these investments. (To do so would be to signal to the market that the share prices had peaked.) It is the executives themselves who frequently benefit from price boosts generated by repurchases—by selling their personal shares after exercising stock options.One way to prevent this is to ban buybacks by big corporations using them solely to manipulate their share prices. Such a ban would not apply to repurchases by small companies or to coordinated, transparent efforts to buy back shares to prevent a market collapse. What would be eliminated would be buybacks that help top executives reap outsized pay rewards.If we want to encourage innovation and job creation, we need to question the value of stock buybacks—as well as, eventually, the mantra of “maximizing shareholder value” that justifies them.All of America’s stakeholders—consumers, workers, retirees—should demand that their elected representatives scrutinize how corporations at the heart of the U.S. economy are choosing to allocate the nation’s resources.http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_34/b4144096907029.htm

I had to make sure you would get what I meant.

Companies are retrenching, as they don’t have any clear direction to go. There’s a major paradigm shift going on; apparently the author doesn’t see this, sad.And it won’t get any more clearer, not unless that it is, instability can be classified as clear.

“Less Bad” Is Indeed BetterSaw that headline this morning…. jsut like green shoots… all buzz words. BAD is BAD. over 30 million people unemployed is BAD40 million on Food stamps is BAD50 million with no Health is BAD2 trillion annual deficit is BAD13 Trillion total Deficit is BADThe Econeomy is BAD, period!And there are no fixes that are working, period!And the BADDEST of it all is there are NO JOBS and there are no NEW JOBS being created…LESS BAD is not Better, period! BAD is BAD!

To improve the blog, people should post using their “unique names”, including you, dear Guest. We do not know who is Guest.

Happy Labor Day, everyone! I find it ironic that Labor Day is a day of No Labor. SWK

I’m not astounded at all. Unlike others, it’s obvious that your intelligence isn’t limited by ideology or empty-headed partisan blather.

Like you, SWK, I tend to vote for the candidate or the situation as I see fit. Over the past 44 years, I admit to voting much more often for Democrats. This last time I did not, and my wife was shocked that I would cast a vote for McCain, expecially after the ghastly experience of the past 8 years.But, I was not really voting for Mccain. I was voting for divided government, for a multitude of reasons. It was obvious that the Dems would control Congress, and when the same party controls both ends of Pensylvania Avenue, watch out.Not that I believe either party works for the people anymore. They simply counterbalance one another to prevent even more mischeif.Independent Contractor

Once again you fail to make a crucial distinction, my leetle rutabaga. Knowing that it is impossible for anything and anybody to be separate from God – whose self-proclaimed name is Existence Eternally Existing – does not equate with thinking a person is God. (Not that you’re going to understand any of this. Adult infants like yourself never do.)

Listen to your self-harming puny idiot self. You’re afraid to grow up and become the Global Emperor of your own life. You despise me because I am unafraid. You don’t actually give a shit about others having power over you. You’re happy to be relieved of all responsibility. Go crouch down and lick the hands that feed you, you mindless, spineless coward.

actually, 08:18 is by definition a troll.thanks for the article exposing one of the truly obnoxious number of legal thefts, 07:47

I don’t know if this interests anyone but it seems to be big so I am posting part of it here…FBI Whistleblower: Hastert, Burton, Blunt, Other Members of Congress ‘Bribed, Blackmailed’http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-friedman/fbi-whistleblower-hastert_b_277704.html

Breaking Down the Under-Oath Disclosures of the Formerly-Gagged Sibel Edmonds…It has now been over a week since the video tape and transcript from the remarkable 8/8/09 deposition of former FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds was publicly released. Previously, the Bush Administration invoked the so-called “state secrets privilege” in order to gag Edmonds, in attempting to keep such information from becoming public.The under-oath, detailed allegations include bribery, blackmail, espionage and infiltration of the U.S. government of, and by current and former members of the U.S. Congress, …

Someone posting lyrics, whether as blindman or Guest, is still someone posting lyrics. And screeds by YES WE CAN are still screeds.

Hi PeterYes, its shifted in America too.Now its 3.5% down loans to an undeserving group like as low as 600 credit ratings, during -15% home price declines per year….its called FHA and WSJ predicts a slam dunk big bail out for the shifted subprime FHA entity soon, at a theater near you too.

Thank you John.

Calling for something and having it actually happen are two different things. So far as I know, our government has been calling for more jobs and it has not happened, just less fewer jobs (there, that’s the way to look at it, less fewer jobs, a slower second derivative of job loss). Replacing a currency is no mean feat. If it will happen, it will probably take years and years and years.

Positively Titillating !I hope BF does go on Rachel Maddow’s show or HBO Real Sex with this one.

Thank you kilgores. The same to you and yours. When I think of the struggles of organized labor to obtain a measure of dignity for the American worker,to gain a fair share of the properity they produce, to work in safe conditions and of all the other benefits trade unionism wrested from our financial system, I am saddened. All of the prosperity I enjoyed while growing up in a working class family, is a result of collective bargaining instead of begging. The education, housing and medical care I received is a result of the same. I lived a middle class life style, educated four kids and ultimately retired after working two jobs for thirty years. I was able to do so because of the labor movement in America and I am very grateful for it.Now, the American worker is being asked to compete head to head, with a Chinese or Bangladeshi worker in the name of globalization. In return, we get to buy things at Walmart for very reasonable prices. When we do so, we are feeding on ourselves. We have to change the game. We need some wholesome nationalist protectionism with regard to labor. We need to recover some of our manufacturing base so it includes more than armaments and agricultural products. The status quo is not sustainable environmentally, economically or socially.I hope you enjoy your day.

On the other hand – jacking off the mocking mental masturbators of the blog is pleasing to them and encourages them to continue what it is that you so disdain.ps. love the alliteration

Bravo!Independent Cntractor.

Most Americans have no respect for the unconstitutional way the Rip-off-publicans and the Demon-cats have been buying votes. Ron Paul’s ideas are superb. Just one thing to understand: just because the banksters have ripped off $23T it still isn’t ok for Obama to waste another $800B on health care. Both are unconstitutional. Both programs steal from one group of Americans to give to another group. Neither is worse than the other. Both are immoral.

Tomorrow morning will be the BIG TEST in gold.We should see the IMF and Central Banks slap it back down, but then what.Will it stay down $10-50/oz for the next few days as it has in the past? Or will it jump back with a vengeance?

Northwest Mutual just loaded up $400 million in gold.

Draw me that picture.

WB:Economic cannibalism is, indeed, a terrible thing. It tastes good for a while, until you realize just what you’re eating…SWK

I fully expect to see some kind of attempt by the Central Banks to attack gold. But to tell you the truth – at this stage it’s futile.First of all, look at my argument above. I don’t need to sell this story – it sells itself. Japan has GOT to move to diversify, and that’s what the new gov’t has promised there. The Middle East kingdoms have GOT to move to stabilize their currencies against something other than the dollar, and for them a gold standard makes sense both practically and for religious reasons. China cannot sit around too long here, or they will take the brunt of losses as US assets (read bonds) get dumped.For quite a long time the diversification out of the US dollar was just a “small trickle” of activity. I think we have now reached the point where this broadens to a “steady stream” of activity. It’s not a collapse yet, but the pace of activity will pick up.PeteCA

“religious reasons”yup, money based on usury and speculation is “harram”if im right, even Christian considers usury as illegal, not sure about excessive speculation??money should be backed/peg by something stable, or at least scarce in nature not printed papers…

Well, it’s “morning,” and gold is currently at $1,008/oz USD.

Cook is a good guy. He understands that the US imperialism has destroyed the American people. He just doesn’t want to acknowledge that the American people have been willing accomplices and beneficiaries of their imperialism. So now when the Titanic hit the ground they NATURALLY and INEVITABLY drift towards FASCISM rather than SOCIALISM.

And one would want to acknowledge the/this connection?

Denninger’s latest “Labor day musings” is a must read/see (great video) :http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1415-Labor-Day-Musings-Part-II.html“We can either have a bad economy now, or a potential collapse of our society later…”

Somehow, this guy reminds me of the American politico-financial elite.

So, who is paying you to post this? Are they taking applications? I would like to try it, but only for pay.

Is there anything in our country that is not broke and has the stench of greedy profits attached to it?California’s Real Death Panels: Insurers Deny 21% of ClaimsWed Sep 2, 2009 3:41pmPacifiCare’s Denials 40%, Cigna’s 33% in First Half of 2009OAKLAND, Calif., Sept. 2 /PRNewswire/ — More than one of every five requestsfor medical claims for insured patients, even when recommended by a patient’sphysician, are rejected by California’s largest private insurers, amounting tovery real death panels in practice daily in the nation’s biggest state,according to data released today by the California Nurses Association/NationalNurses Organizing Committee.http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS202570+02-Sep-2009+PRN20090902?

How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?8 pages of krugman… guess he was not one of them…http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html?_r=1&

Bernanke’s mega-put is just one further step along a path that was established long ago, back in 1913 when the Federal Reserve was founded.Over the past century, we have moved away from a system where bank shareholders and senior executives paid dearly for bad management–and toward a system where fired bank bosses make off with fortunes or launch brilliant political careers. No one is on the financial hook, other than the taxpayer.http://www.tnr.com/article/economy/the-next-financial-crisis?page=0,2

Americans are infantile. It’s systemic.

think

I think HL Menken got paid for posting this, but am not sure you can get paid for yours.

Chignos -You recently invited me to pray and told me that if I were fortunate, god would reveal himself to me. As a product of a Catholic upbringing, I would ask if you do not see the similarities in what you deem our educational system to be and those of the organized religions. (BTW – it has not escaped me that you are a product of a Canadian educational system, thus your opinion is not based on your own experiences in a U.S. classroom – but I digress….)If you are right, then they both want the same thing – a “flock” that follow without questions. And you know what kinds of flocks sheppards lead don’t you? That would be sheep…..

No, lipstick on a pig is when you decide to “fix it” and pay a bunch of incompetent government bureaucrats to do the same job as the risk managers, only it ends up costing you 25% more in income taxes.The public option=Socialized Medicine=Lipstick on a pig.

Why? What is the point of posting lyrics on economics blogs? It’s kind of like on-line graffiti.

I think the Catholic church has a lot to answer for, just like the public schools. By the way, I went 1-college in the US, Med School in Canada. Learning to think for yourself starts with knowing you are free from condemnation and guilt, despite your mistakes.The forgiveness of sins Christ provides by his sacrificial death on the cross is the source of this freedom, therefore is the source of all freedom. That’s the part George Bush didn’t understand about radical Muslims. They don’t want freedom/democracy, they want a caliphate. They want to be led. Christians (notice I didn’t say Catholics) don’t want to be led.The public school system has had a devil of a time figuring out what they could substitute as a coherent philosopy of life since the Supreme Court ordered the Bible out of the classroom. Mostly what I have seen from “educators” is confusion and argument loosely termed “secular humanism.” It’s a kind of I’m OK you’re OK psychobabble nonsense that assumes man is basically good, and that if you know the good you’ll do the good, etc., etc.Now, everyone recognizes what a pathetic expensive failure public education has become. When our teenagers are shooting each other it’s harder to believe somethng has not gone terribly wrong.Politicians like Obama want to exploit whatever demagoguery might be available, hence his latest foray into the public school system. Never mind that his policies are bankrupt and his philosophy totally discredited. He’s the President, and furthermore he’s our first African American President. So….no matter what he says about our heritage, we need to just take it for the gospel truth…..and by the way isn’t he handsome with that baritone voice? Don’t even think about mentioning that he’s underweight and he only has that voice because he still oversmokes cigarettes. You’ll be deemed a racist.I don’t know about others, but I’m getting about as tired of hearing black demagogues use the “R” word as blacks are of hearing KKK sympathizers use the “N” word.If you decide to think for yourself (divorce from the sheeple), you better understand where that freedom of thought comes from, otherwise you’ll likely fall victim to the latest demagoguery.I didn’t suggest that you become a follower of any organized group. All I said was that I think it could benefit you to pray, in the privacy of your closet, in any way you see fit, that God would reveal Himself to you.I am glad and thankful to be in Jesus’ fold.

I am happy for you.I’m good too. Let’s leave it at that and perhaps we can continue a civilized discourse.

One thing wrong is that he is saying that adults, by definition, believe the ends justify the means.

New Thread

you are an idiot chignospeople like you give schools bad name. I don’t think that youhave the intellect to make to a med school you are a liar.So shut the f up and move some where else.

You missed the point and added 0.

We have enough “smart” people, what we need are “wise” people, sigh. They, as much as their hearts were in it, failed to address the fundamentals of growth (at least I never saw this as their starting point, which it should have been [which left me out of the equation, which I saw as doomed to fail without this foundational consideration]).

I agree on principle. But, and I think that I’d heard, of all people, George Will state that someone once stated that social programs were necessary for capitalism to work. Capitalism’s very goal is to concentrate power; this is in violation of natural laws and cannot persist in any significant imbalance: and we know what happens when there are big imbalances; needless to say it’s not in the best interest of the power-holders to realize when they’ve concentrated too much power.As much as I agree with the fundamentals that Ron eschews, they cannot overcome the existing built-in imbalances. Why? Because power doesn’t cede anything without a fight, and power has ALL the fight (best that those without power can do is to remove themselves from the system, which is what I advocate). If you don’t follow what I’m saying here, then perhaps this example:You give me ALL of your money and I enact laws that protect me keeping that money for, say, 200 years. Yes, I’ll be dead by then, but my offspring will continue to profit by this arrangement. After that 200 years then the laws get leveled (say by someone like Paul). What would things look like? Same as they are now. Those in power would be employing their protectors (refer to current US military budget), their praetorian guards.

I say that we should just continue to allow the wealthy to further concentrate their power until the backlash comes that wipes them all out. Yeah, great plan Oh compassionate one, follower of “Christ!”

Me too, although not necessarily speaking for all “Guests.” But… sometimes it’s best to not egg such morons on. Sorry

Really good analysis, beautifully written! Thanks.

While U missed the comment, I certainly condemn it. Immaturity, disrespect and childishness are the kindest words I can use to describe those comments; yet, I hope this “guest” realizes his mistep and seeks help.

STILL NO JOBS!Rest at:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hiring-plans-drop-to-record-low-manpower-2009-09-08Job outlook hits worst-ever levelEmployers’ hiring plans at lowest point in Manpower survey’sSAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Employers’ hiring plans for the upcoming fourth quarter dropped to their lowest level in the history of Manpower’s Employment Outlook Survey, which started in 1962.A net -3% of employers said they’ll hire in the fourth quarter, down from -2% in the third quarter, on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the Milwaukee-based firm’s survey of more than 28,000 employers. Before this year, the survey’s previous low point was a net 1% hiring outlook for the third quarter of 1982.

The Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants, visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central bank has become a career liability for members of the profession, an investigation by the Huffington Post has found.This dominance helps explain how, even after the Fed failed to foresee the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, the central bank has largely escaped criticism from academic economists. In the Fed’s thrall, the economists missed it, too.”The Fed has a lock on the economics world,” says Joshua Rosner, a Wall Street analyst who correctly called the meltdown. “There is no room for other views, which I guess is why economists got it so wrong.”One critical way the Fed exerts control on academic economists is through its relationships with the field’s gatekeepers. For instance, at the Journal of Monetary Economics, a must-publish venue for rising economists, more than half of the editorial board members are currently on the Fed payroll — and the rest have been in the past.The Fed failed to see the housing bubble as it happened, insisting that the rise in housing prices was normal. In 2004, after “flipping” had become a term cops and janitors were using to describe the way to get rich in real estate, then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said that “a national severe price distortion [is] most unlikely.” A year later, current Chairman Ben Bernanke said that the boom “largely reflect strong economic fundamentals.”The Fed also failed to sufficiently regulate major financial institutions, with Greenspan — and the dominant economists — believing that the banks would regulate themselves in their own self-interest.Despite all this, Bernanke has been nominated for a second term by President Obama.In the field of economics, the chairman remains a much-heralded figure, lauded for reaction to a crisis generated, in the first place, by the Fed itself. Congress is even considering legislation to greatly expand the powers of the Fed to systemically regulate the financial industry.Paul Krugman, in Sunday’s New York Times magazine, did his own autopsy of economics, asking “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?” Krugman concludes that “[e]conomics, as a field, got in trouble because economists were seduced by the vision of a perfect, frictionless market system.”So who seduced them?The Fed did it.Three Decades of DominationThe Fed has been dominating the profession for about three decades. “For the economics profession that came out of the [second world] war, the Federal Reserve was not a very important place as far as they were concerned, and their views on monetary policy were not framed by a working relationship with the Federal Reserve. So I would date it to maybe the mid-1970s,” says University of Texas economics professor — and Fed critic — James Galbraith. “The generation that I grew up under, which included both Milton Friedman on the right and Jim Tobin on the left, were independent of the Fed. They sent students to the Fed and they influenced the Fed, but there wasn’t a culture of consulting, and it wasn’t the same vast network of professional economists working there.”But by 1993, when former Fed Chairman Greenspan provided the House banking committee with a breakdown of the number of economists on contract or employed by the Fed, he reported that 189 worked for the board itself and another 171 for the various regional banks. Adding in statisticians, support staff and “officers” — who are generally also economists — the total number came to 730. And then there were the contracts. Over a three-year period ending in October 1994, the Fed awarded 305 contracts to 209 professors worth a total of $3 million.Just how dominant is the Fed today?The Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors employs 220 PhD economists and a host of researchers and support staff, according to a Fed spokeswoman. The 12 regional banks employ scores more. (HuffPost placed calls to them but was unable to get exact numbers.) The Fed also doles out millions of dollars in contracts to economists for consulting assignments, papers, presentations, workshops, and that plum gig known as a “visiting scholarship.” A Fed spokeswoman says that exact figures for the number of economists contracted with weren’t available. But, she says, the Federal Reserve spent $389.2 million in 2008 on “monetary and economic policy,” money spent on analysis, research, data gathering, and studies on market structure; $433 million is budgeted for 2009.That’s a lot of money for a relatively small number of economists. According to the American Economic Association, a total of only 487 economists list “monetary policy, central banking, and the supply of money and credit,” as either their primary or secondary specialty; 310 list “money and interest rates”; and 244 list “macroeconomic policy formation [and] aspects of public finance and general policy.” The National Association of Business Economists tells HuffPost that 611 of its roughly 2,400 members are part of their “Financial Roundtable,” the closest way they can approximate a focus on monetary policy and central banking.Robert Auerbach, a former investigator with the House banking committee, spent years looking into the workings of the Fed and published much of what he found in the 2008 book, “Deceptionand Abuse at the Fed”. A chapter in that book, excerpted here, provided the impetus for this investigation.Auerbach found that in 1992, roughly 968 members of the AEA designated “domestic monetary and financial theory and institutions” as their primary field, and 717 designated it as their secondary field. Combining his numbers with the current ones from the AEA and NABE, it’s fair to conclude that there are something like 1,000 to 1,500 monetary economists working across the country. Add up the 220 economist jobs at the Board of Governors along with regional bank hires and contracted economists, and the Fed employs or contracts with easily 500 economists at any given time. Add in those who have previously worked for the Fed — or who hope to one day soon — and you’ve accounted for a very significant majority of the field.Auerbach concludes that the “problems associated with the Fed’s employing or contracting with large numbers of economists” arise “when these economists testify as witnesses at legislative hearings or as experts at judicial proceedings, and when they publish their research and views on Fed policies, including in Fed publications.”Gatekeepers On The PayrollThe Fed keeps many of the influential editors of prominent academic journals on its payroll. It is common for a journal editor to review submissions dealing with Fed policy while also taking the bank’s money. A HuffPost review of seven top journals found that 84 of the 190 editorial board members were affiliated with the Federal Reserve in one way or another.”Try to publish an article critical of the Fed with an editor who works for the Fed,” says Galbraith. And the journals, in turn, determine which economists get tenure and what ideas are considered respectable.The pharmaceutical industry has similarly worked to control key medical journals, but that involves several companies. In the field of economics, it’s just the Fed.Being on the Fed payroll isn’t just about the money, either. A relationship with the Fed carries prestige; invitations to Fed conferences and offers of visiting scholarships with the bank signal a rising star or an economist who has arrived.Affiliations with the Fed have become the oxygen of academic life for monetary economists. “It’s very important, if you are tenure track and don’t have tenure, to show that you are valued by the Federal Reserve,” says Jane D’Arista, a Fed critic and an economist with the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Robert King, editor in chief of the Journal of Monetary Economics and a visiting scholar at the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank, dismisses the notion that his journal was influenced by its Fed connections. “I think that the suggestion is a silly one, based on my own experience at least,” he wrote in an e-mail. (His full response is at the bottom.)Galbraith, a Fed critic, has seen the Fed’s influence on academia first hand. He and co-authors Olivier Giovannoni and Ann Russo found that in the year before a presidential election, there is a significantly tighter monetary policy coming from the Fed if a Democrat is in office and a significantly looser policy if a Republican is in office. The effects are both statistically significant, allowing for controls, and economically important.They submitted a paper with their findings to the Review of Economics and Statistics in 2008, but the paper was rejected. “The editor assigned to it turned out to be a fellow at the Fed and that was after I requested that it not be assigned to someone affiliated with the Fed,” Galbraith says.Publishing in top journals is, like in any discipline, the key to getting tenure. Indeed, pursuing tenure ironically requires a kind of fealty to the dominant economic ideology that is the precise opposite of the purpose of tenure, which is to protect academics who present oppositional perspectives.And while most academic disciplines and top-tier journals are controlled by some defining paradigm, in an academic field like poetry, that situation can do no harm other than to, perhaps, a forest of trees. Economics, unfortunately, collides with reality — as it did with the Fed’s incorrect reading of the housing bubble and failure to regulate financial institutions. Neither was a matter of incompetence, but both resulted from the Fed’s unchallenged assumptions about the way the market worked.Even the late Milton Friedman, whose monetary economic theories heavily influenced Greenspan, was concerned about the stifled nature of the debate. Friedman, in a 1993 letter to Auerbach that the author quotes in his book, argued that the Fed practice was harming objectivity: “I cannot disagree with you that having something like 500 economists is extremely unhealthy. As you say, it is not conducive to independent, objective research. You and I know there has been censorship of the material published. Equally important, the location of the economists in the Federal Reserve has had a significant influence on the kind of research they do, biasing that research toward noncontroversial technical papers on method as opposed to substantive papers on policy and results,” Friedman wrote.Greenspan told Congress in October 2008 that he was in a state of “shocked disbelief” and that the “whole intellectual edifice” had “collapsed.” House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) followed up: “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working.”"Absolutely, precisely,” Greenspan replied. “You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”But, if the intellectual edifice has collapsed, the intellectual infrastructure remains in place. The same economists who provided Greenspan his “very considerable evidence” are still running the journals and still analyzing the world using the same models that were incapable of seeing the credit boom and the coming collapse.Rosner, the Wall Street analyst who foresaw the crash, says that the Fed’s ideological dominance of the journals hampered his attempt to warn his colleagues about what was to come. Rosner wrote a strikingly prescient paper in 2001 arguing that relaxed lending standards and other factors would lead to a boom in housing prices over the next several years, but that the growth would be highly susceptible to an economic disruption because it was fundamentally unsound.He expanded on those ideas over the next few years, connecting the dots and concluding that the coming housing collapse would wreak havoc on the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) and mortgage backed securities (MBS) markets, which would have a ripple effect on the rest of the economy. That, of course, is exactly what happened and it took the Fed and the economics field completely by surprise.”What you’re doing is, actually, in order to get published, having to whittle down or narrow what might otherwise be oppositional or expansionary views,” says Rosner. “The only way you can actually get in a journal is by subscribing to the views of one of the journals.”When Rosner was casting his paper on CDOs and MBSs about, he knew he needed an academic economist to co-author the paper for a journal to consider it. Seven economists turned him down.”You don’t believe that markets are efficient?” he says they asked, telling him the paper was “outside the bounds” of what could be published. “I would say ‘Markets are efficient when there’s equal access to information, but that doesn’t exist,’” he recalls.The CDO and MBS markets froze because, as the housing market crashed, buyers didn’t trust that they had reliable information about them — precisely the case Rosner had been making.He eventually found a co-author, Joseph Mason, an associate Professor of Finance at Drexel University LeBow College of Business, a senior fellow at the Wharton School, and a visiting scholar at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. But the pair could only land their papers with the conservative Hudson Institute. In February 2007, they published a paper called “How Resilient Are Mortgage Backed Securities to Collateralized Debt Obligation Market Disruptions?” and in May posted another, “How Misapplied Bond Ratings Cause Mortgage Backed Securities and Collateralized Debt Obligation Market Disruptions.”Together, the two papers offer a better analysis of what led to the crash than the economic journals have managed to put together – and they were published by a non-PhD before the crisis.Not As Simple As A Pay-OffEconomist Rob Johnson serves on the UN Commission of Experts on Finance and International Monetary Reform and was a top economist on the Senate banking committee under both a Democratic and Republican chairman. He says that the consulting gigs shouldn’t be looked at “like it’s a payoff, like money. I think it’s more being one of, part of, a club — being respected, invited to the conferences, have a hearing with the chairman, having all the prestige dimensions, as much as a paycheck.”The Fed’s hiring of so many economists can be looked at in several ways, Johnson says, because the institution does, of course, need talented analysts. “You can look at it from a telescope, either direction. One, you can say well they’re reaching out, they’ve got a big budget and what they’re doing, I’d say, is canvassing as broad a range of talent,” he says. “You might call that the ‘healthy hypothesis.’”The other hypothesis, he says, “is that they’re essentially using taxpayer money to wrap their arms around everybody that’s a critic and therefore muffle or silence the debate. And I would say that probably both dimensions are operative, in reality.”To get a mainstream take, HuffPost called monetary economists at random from the list as members of the AEA. “I think there is a pretty good number of professors of economics who want a very limited use of monetary policy and I don’t think that that necessarily has a negative impact on their careers,” said Ahmed Ehsan, reached at the economics department at James Madison University. “It’s quite possible that if they have some new ideas, that might be attractive to the Federal Reserve.”Ehsan, reflecting on his own career and those of his students, allowed that there is, in fact, something to what the Fed critics are saying. “I don’t think [the Fed has too much influence], but then my area is monetary economics and I know my own professors, who were really well known when I was at Michigan State, my adviser, he ended up at the St. Louis Fed,” he recalls. “He did lots of work. He was a product of the time…so there is some evidence, but it’s not an overwhelming thing.”There’s definitely prestige in spending a few years at the Fed that can give a boost to an academic career, he added. “It’s one of the better career moves for lots of undergraduate students. It’s very competitive.”Press officers for the Federal Reserve’s board of governors provided some background information for this article, but declined to make anyone available to comment on its substance.The Fed’s Intolerance For DissentWhen dissent has arisen, the Fed has dealt with it like any other institution that cherishes homogeneity.Take the case of Alan Blinder. Though he’s squarely within the mainstream and considered one of the great economic minds of his generation, he lasted a mere year and a half as vice chairman of the Fed, leaving in January 1996.Rob Johnson, who watched the Blinder ordeal, says Blinder made the mistake of behaving as if the Fed was a place where competing ideas and assumptions were debated. “Sociologically, what was happening was the Fed staff was really afraid of Blinder. At some level, as an applied empirical economist, Alan Blinder is really brilliant,” says Johnson.In closed-door meetings, Blinder did what so few do: challenged assumptions. “The Fed staff would come out and their ritual is: Greenspan has kind of told them what to conclude and they produce studies in which they conclude this. And Blinder treated it more like an open academic debate when he first got there and he’d come out and say, ‘Well, that’s not true. If you change this assumption and change this assumption and use this kind of assumption you get a completely different result.’ And it just created a stir inside–it was sort of like the whole pipeline of Greenspan-arriving-at-decisions wasdisrupted.”It didn’t sit well with Greenspan or his staff. “A lot of senior staff…were pissed off about Blinder — how should we say? — not playing by the customs that they were accustomed to,” Johnson says.And celebrity is no shield against Fed excommunication. Paul Krugman, in fact, has gotten rough treatment. “I’ve been blackballed from the Fed summer conference at Jackson Hole, which I used to be a regular at, ever since I criticized him,” Krugman said of Greenspan in a 2007 interview with Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! “Nobody really wants to cross him.”An invitation to the annual conference, or some other blessing from the Fed, is a signal to the economic profession that you’re a certified member of the club. Even Krugman seems a bit burned by the slight. “And two years ago,” he said in 2007, “the conference was devoted to a field, new economic geography, that I invented, and I wasn’t invited.”Three years after the conference, Krugman won a Nobel Prize in 2008 for his work in economic geography.One Journal, In DetailThe Huffington Post reviewed the mastheads of the American Journal of Economics, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Economic Literature, the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, the Journal of Political Economy and the Journal of Monetary Economics.HuffPost interns Googled around looking for resumes and otherwise searched for Fed connections for the 190 people on those mastheads. Of the 84 that were affiliated with the Federal Reserve at one point in their careers, 21 were on the Fed payroll even as they served as gatekeepers at prominent journals.At the Journal of Monetary Economics, every single member of the editorial board is or has been affiliated with the Fed and 14 of the 26 board members are presently on the Fed payroll.After the top editor, King, comes senior associate editor Marianne Baxter, who has written papers for the Chicago and Minneapolis banks and was a visiting scholar at the Minneapolis bank in ’84, ’85, at the Richmond bank in ’97, and at the board itself in ’87. She was an advisor to the president of the New York bank from ’02-’05. Tim Geithner, now the Treasury Secretary, became president of the New York bank in ’03.The senior associate editors: Janice C Eberly was a Fed visiting-scholar at Philadelphia (’94), Minneapolis (’97) and the board (’97). Martin Eichenbaum has written several papers for the Fed and is a consultant to the Chicago and Atlanta banks. Sergio Rebelo has written for and was previously a consultant to the board. Stephen Williamson has written for the Cleveland, Minneapolis and Richmond banks, he worked in the Minneapolis bank’s research department from ’85-’87, he’s on the editorial board of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, is the co-organizer of the ’09 St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank annual economic policy conference and the co-organizer of the same bank’s ’08 conference on Money, Credit, and Policy, and has been a visiting scholar at the Richmond bank ever since ’98.And then there are the associate editors. Klaus Adam is a visiting scholar at the San Francisco bank. Yongsung Chang is a research associate at the Cleveland bank and has been working with the Fed in one position or another since ’01. Mario Crucini was a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in ’08 and has been a senior fellow at the Dallas bank since that year. Huberto Ennis is a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, a position he’s held since ’00. Jonathan Heathcote is a senior economist at the Minneapolis bank and has been a visiting scholar three times dating back to ’01.Ricardo Lagos is a visiting scholar at the New York bank, a former senior economist for the Minneapolis bank and a visiting scholar at that bank and Cleveland’s. In fact, he was a visiting scholar at both the Cleveland and New York banks in ’07 and ’08. Edward Nelson was the assistant vice president of the St Louis bank from ’03-’09.Esteban Rossi-Hansberg was a visiting scholar at the Philadelphia bank from ’05-’09 and similarly served at the Richmond, Minneapolis and New York banks.Pierre-Daniel Sarte is a senior economist at the Richmond bank, a position he’s held since ’96. Frank Schorfheide has been a visiting scholar at the Philadelphia bank since ’03 and at the New York bank since ’07. He’s done four such stints at the Atlanta bank and scholared for the board in ’03. Alexander Wolman has been a senior economist at the Richmond bank since 1989.Here is the complete response from King, the journal’s editor in chief: “I think that the suggestion is a silly one, based on my own experience at least. In a 1988 article for AEI later republished in the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Review, Marvin Goodfriend (then at FRB Richmond and now at Carnegie Mellon) and I argued that it was very important for the Fed to separate monetary policy decisions (setting of interest rates) and banking policy decisions (loans to banks, via the discount window and otherwise). We argued further that there was little positive case for the Fed to be involved in the latter: broadbased liquidity could always be provided by the former. We also argued that moral hazard was a cost of banking intervention.”Ben Bernanke understands this distinction well: he and other members of the FOMC have read my perspective and sometimes use exactly this distinction between monetary and banking policies. In difficult times, Bernanke and his fellow FOMC members have chosen to involve the Fed in major financial market interventions, well beyond the traditional banking area, a position that attracts plenty of criticism and support. JME and other economics major journals would certainly publish exciting articles that fell between these two distinct perspectives: no intervention and extensive intervention. An upcoming Carnegie-Rochester conference, with its proceeding published in JME, will host a debate on ‘The Future of Central Banking’.”You may use only the entire quotation above or no quotation at all.”Auerbach, shown King’s e-mail, says it’s just this simple: “If you’re on the Fed payroll there’s a conflict of interest.”Elyse Goldberg, Julian Hattem, Jeff Muskus and Jenna Staul contributed to this report

You are a dip, MOG.

TO: CLUELESSRe: “Trade-weighted” referenceHere’s the way I interpret the meaning. Professor Roubini approaches his analysis of the present U.S. condition from the perspective international macroeconomics generally and more specifically in the context of an analysis of financial crises in emerging markets over the past two decades. In Chapter 2 of his book Bailouts or Bail-ins, Responding to Financial Crises in Emerging Economies, co-authored by Brad Setser and described by Lawrence Summers as “a useful tool for those confronting these crises”, Prof Roubini lists the following Sources of Vulnerability “common to most recent crises, though every crisis has its own specific causes”:“- large macroeconomic imbalances, such as current account, fiscal deficits or both, that led to the accumulation of large stocks of public and foreign liabilities- financing these deficits in ways – with short-term debt, foreign-currency debt, and with debt other than equity – that made countries vulnerable to liquidity runs and increased the risk of a fall in the exchange rate leading to a debt crisis because of the depreciation’s ‘balance sheet’ effect- doubts about the credibility of a country’s commitment to take the steps necessary to assure its long-term creditworthiness- fixed or semi-fixed exchange rates, which increased both the risk of a large current account imbalance and the risk that borrowers would underestimate currency risk and rely too heavily on foreign-currency debt- poor banking regulation, implicit and/or explicit governmental guarantees, and other microeconomic distortions which can lead to excessive investment and overreliance on dangerous forms of borrowing- political shocks-whether from elections, weakening governments, scandals, or political violence-that increase policy uncertainty and make investors trigger-happy- external shocks-commodity price shocks that deteriorate a country’s terms of trade, interest rate changes in the world’s major financial centers and sudden changes in the willingness of domestic and international investors to invest in risky assets…”The U.S. has a large macroeconomic imbalance – the deficit in current account resulting from large net imports – generated not the “good way” (productive investment in the traded sector), but in the bad way (excessive speculative investment in the non-traded sector, a decline in private savings and large fiscal deficits). In order for that current account imbalance to be corrected, a readjustment of the exchange rate relative to its trading partners is required, making imports from those countries more expensive for U.S. purchasers and making exports of U.S. goods cheaper for those partners. As an example, according to the BEA and US Int. Trade Commission respectively, the U.S. current account deficit in 2008 totaled $578 billion, and the 2008 merchandise trade deficit with China was $278 billion.It is not necessarily the case that these adjustments will occur in an orderly fashion. In the interim, Prof. Roubini implies that the U.S. economy may be walking a bit of a tightrope, inasmuch as it possesses many of the attributes of emerging market economies which have suffered severe currency crises.WDM223

You actually make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this topic to be really something which I think I would never understand. It seems too complicated and very broad for me. I’m looking forward for your next post, I’ll try to get the hang of it!