America's Race to the Bottom

Discussion in 'Business & Economics' started by kmguru, Jan 25, 2010.

  1. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    There is a short section on private debt at the end, although they don't say much other than that deleveraging of private debt positions puts a drag on credit creation (obviously). They don't say much about how it figures into/correlates with dynamics of public debt, and state that they don't have wide and detailed enough data to do a general analysis.

    It's not an obligation to be paid via taxation, no, but it is certainly an obligation on the tax payers themselves. Who else owes all the money? Seems to me to have plenty to do with economic growth and trends in credit and spending - no?

    That is exactly a "governmental consequence." Moreover, bankruptcies associated with said defaults end up costing the government as well. You are correct that any given, individual default doesn't affect the government much, but a large-scale trend in private debt defaults, or just deleveraging, has big consequences on tax revenues.

    But, the issue here is not "governmental consequences." It is "impact on economic growth." The study in question does not deal with the question of government default or devaluation or any of that stuff: it asserts a negative correlation between high public debt loads and economic growth in subsequent years. And it seems to me that related trends in private debt may well have a lot to do with that. As it is, the study does not hypothesize any particular mechanism for how this correlation comes about (although they do say that bond market revolt is not required), so we're left to speculate. One possibility is that private debt trends tend to track government debt trends, and that private deleveraging tends to occur around the 90% of GDP threshold and so puts a drag on credit growth for some years afterwards.

    It would be interesting to know how trends in private debt do (or do not) enter into the correlation in question, but unfortunately such an analysis does not seem to be available to us.

    Right, they're only considering public debt. Well, they also say some stuff about external debt, but that doesn't seem to be relevant here.

    He's an "unemployment truther."

    My mistake: I should have said "a crank essay publicized by a goldbug website."

    I would suggest that starting your research process by searching for that kind of term is unlikely to get you to a balanced expert consensus, and instead is going to lead you mostly to crank blogs that already agree with you.

    It's easy to find any number of blogs and crank sites on the internet that agree with any position you care to name. That doesn't add up to serious support for those stances. You have to examine the various countervailing viewpoints and weigh their various merits if you want to arrive at a sensible, supportable perspective.

    Hogwash.

    Of course. But that doesn't mean that we can't identify predictions that lack statistical validity at the time. If you are trying to extrapolate recent trends into the future, it immediately raises the question of whether the trends in question have been quantified in a statistically valid way.

    Even a stopped clock is correct twice a day. Even if you happen to get the result correct, that won't retroactively imply that the reasoning leading you to that conclusion was correct. Doubly so when the conclusion is set at the outset, and the reasoning is just a hash.

    But the point is more that people have little reason to credit predictions that lack in rigor and statistical validity in the here-and-now. If your predictions were convincing in the here-and-now, the expectations channel would ensure that they became reality in short order. The fact that such does not happen is definitive evidence that the preponderance of economic actors in the world today do not share your outlook.

    I have never made any such claim. You seem to think that the fact that I dispute your pretensions of prophesy implies that I advocate a similar prophetic certainty, just with the outcome reversed. I do not. There is a fairly wide range of outcomes that are plausible over the medium and long terms. Your wild speculations fall outside the envelope of reasonable expectations, and you fail to provide coherent, valid reasoning in support of them (which is inevitable - a sober, valid analysis would result in predictions that are significantly less specific and extreme).

    I don't think I've ever called Paul A. Samuelson a crank or crackpot. Unless you can point to some post where I say that, you need to retract this accusation and apologize for its inaccuracy.

    I do not see any prediction from him asserting that a run on the dollar is going to occur in the next couple of years. He says "at some point." That point being, apparently, when Europe and Japan and others are no longer content to recycle trade surpluses into dollar holdings.

    Moreover, his characterization of the effects of such differ greatly from yours. He predicts "global financial crisis" and foreign holders of dollar assets getting wiped out, rather than "USA + Europe die off and China surges ahead."

    I'd feel that you have no real grasp on what I do and do not believe or forsee - that you are imagining me to be some kind of mirror-image of yourself, who makes very strong predictions, just in the opposite direction - and that you are simply being spiteful.

    The "serious black clouds" you cite there consist of "gdp growth about 1% lower than it would otherwise be, for about 20 years." They do not predict anything like the apocalypse that you invoke.

    Frankly, I'm unsure why you think that the Debt Overhangs paper is so strongly behind your position, and so strongly contradictory to anything I've said. I've never said that high levels of debt are not problematic in the long run. Nor do the conclusions in that paper conform to your apocalyptic predictions. If I'd been saying "no amount of debt will ever cause any problem!" and you'd been saying "prolonged periods of high debt are correlated with a 1% reduction in growth for the following couple of decades," then this paper would be really decisive.

    But that is not the dispute at issue here. You are contending that high debt levels result in outright ruin in the short term, and I am saying that such is overblown and not supported by fact or reason. If anything, I'd say that the Debt Overhangs paper pretty decisively refutes your overblown, dramatic predictions about short-term disaster resulting from high debt.

    No, that does not follow.

    If you were content to stick to the same predictions that Samuelson actually made - that continuing these policies indefinitely will, eventually at some unspecified point, result in a run on the dollar, then you would have a point. But you have gone significantly farther than that, and such is where most of the crackpottery resides.

    Exactly. And it will be the coming and going of that date without the apocalypse you predict coming to pass, that highlights exactly how far off of the rails you went with that stuff.

    I note that Samuelson did not say anything about those factors, in any of the material you've provided.
     
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  3. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    There are plenty of "inflation truthers" to be found on the internet. It's going to take more than "many" of such to impress me.

    There are thousands of people on the internet you contend that 9/11 was an inside job. Is that supposed to make me think twice about labelling them crackpots?
     
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  5. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    In first place, I made my predictions ~7 years ago. The current growing federal debt to GDP ratio, 102%, and the shrinking middle class, in an economy that depends upon their buying were not used to make my prediction (but do give me reason to think the probably of my predictions being correct is increasing). Nor were the main basic of my predictions any statistical analysis of data.

    I used FACTS. Such as the very accurately known fraction of the baby boomers who would be switching from being greatest group of tax payers US has ever had to collectors of Social Security by October 2014 AND sellers of stocks, big houses, etc. that they had saved wealth in. The FACT that GWB had started the second recession in his time as POTUS, and he plus Congress started using a Keynesian solution (Trouble Assets Relief Program, TARP, printing press dollars Fund) which I correctly expected* would fail and only make the deficits grow. In general it was accepted by both part political parties and the FED that printing dollars until US recovered was correct policy. I.e. as Bill Clinton said: "You can´t balance the budget in a busted economy."

    Now with QE -infinity the FED admits they will continue until that until it fixes the economy, despite there being little reason to think it will after "twisting" and QE1 and QE2 did not. (As Einstein noted, doing the same thing over again and expecting different results is insanity.) Also not requiring statistical analysis was that both GWB´s two wars were "off budget" and rapidly growing useless costs, which could only increase with GWB´s tax reductions for the very rich. I.e. I used KNOWN FACTS, not statistical analysis to extrapolate from.

    BTW in my prior quote of Samuelson, he does also note that the baby boomers are behaving so as to make the same problem in the future that I fore saw in slightly different words. We both predicted with no statistical analysis the run on the dollar was coming within a few months of each other (me slightly first, I think.) using the then know FACTS. He said, speaking 7 years ago, long before they would begin retiring: "As baby-boomers now of age 50 to 60, just when they ought to have been saving mightily to support their retirement years, they were actually dis-saving mightily."

    I´ll also add that IMHO, the first slow phase of that run has already started. People with wealth in dollars are using them to buy assets with real enduring value (stocks, farm land, oil & ore deposits via companies owning them, gold & silver, etc. or in foreign currency, as I do.) but it is not a "run" to get out of dollars yet. Just why these assets are appreciating much faster than CPI etc. Hell, I even have >$200,000 in my two credit unions as it takes time to move dollars legally to Brazil without losses. (There is a $10K limit on cash taken out of US in pockets (mine and wife´s, for 20K each return from US to Brazil), unless willing to fill in forms, which US may share with Brazil.) If done by wire transfer, then the funds would be subject to a Brazilian tax on financial transfers of funds into Brazil. Also I like to keep cash available to buy stocks during dips. My stock account has slightly decreased as I have been selling on peaks, but still is ~6 times greater than my cash. My biggest single holding is ADR of largest Brazilian water and sewer company, paying both good dividends and appreciating (SBS) which I recommend several times in post at least 5 years ago. (That was a little self serving as I already had a large position in SBS.) It was up 585% from my average cost basis last time I looked. I will die holding it (and several others with big gains, so heirs get to "step up" the cost basis of it.) About 1/4 is in a TIP like fund. I listed all stocks held in post about a year ago.

    * See my post made before TARP was passed by Congress called: Paulson´s plan -do it or not?" at: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread...-or-not-quot&p=2025940&viewfull=1#post2025940
    Here is first part:
    Quadraphonics will again probably object to my calling what was done a "Ponzi Scheme" but that is exactly what it was: People were persuaded to invest in big house they could not afford by Ponzi sellers telling them they would get big returns. (Paid by some postulated "greater fool" buying their house at still higher price - Even citing the now often quoted statement by Bernanke that home prices never go down.) I.e. Ponzi Plans do make money for the first investors, but will fail as they run out of new investors. Maddoff´s Ponzi ran for many years and did make many, who got out in time, rich. The US government even defines chain letters telling you to add your name at bottom of list and send a dollar to all on the list as a Ponzi Scheme - this was just like the "buy big house and get rich when selling it" was. In fact the real estate Ponzi has been repeated many times (often with property in Florida) in boom - bust cycles. The bust comes when not enough "greater fools" can be found.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 19, 2012
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  7. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    That is why they are invalid at the outset. The only valid way to extrapolate future trends is via statistical analysis of available data.

    All of the FACTS in question are statistics and statistical predictions.

    Every single one of the KNOWN FACTS that you shout about is exactly a statistical prediction.

    You don't seem to know what "statistical analysis" even is. Any time you are hazarding predictions about future trends in macroeconomics, you are necessarily engaged in statistical analysis. Macroeconomics is a statistical phenomenon, addressing the aggregate behavior of large systems with billions of participants. Every single macroeconomic indicator is a statistic, by necessity. The unemployment rate is a statistic. GDP is a statistic. Demographic trends are statistics.

    I don't care about "IMHO." If your assertions of FACTS are accurate, you should be able to support them with statistics. That you are determined to reject such at the outset amounts to an admission that you insist on inhabiting some fact-free playground for your personal gratification. It does not impress anybody else.

    That is the kind of personal information that you would be well advised never to publicize on the internet, generally. And again, you should not inject irrelevant, unrequested personal information into your responses to me if you are going to complain about the discussions getting too personal. If you don't want the discussion to be about you personally, then don't go and make it such. Although, it seems that what you want is to have a discussion about you personally, but without anybody saying anything unflattering about you. Again: childish.

    Calling me out by name, in the third person, as if your whole post was not addressed directly to me in the first place, is a fairly definitive instance of baiting. Especially when you're doing it to draw my attention to your continued abuse of the term "Ponzi scheme" despite repeated corrections. How about you give all the vapid chest-beating a rest, and try to engage in good faith? For a second I'd thought we were getting somewhere substantive with the Debt Overhangs stuff, but you've just gone back off the rails again.

    That is not a Ponzi scheme. There is no fraud involved in what you describe - the buyers really did get exactly the assets that they payed for. None of the sellers embezzled their money. What you are describing is nothing more or less than an investment bubble. The fact that buyers deluded themselves about their ability to pay and the future value of their investments is just that.

    It seems that you see "Ponzi Schemes" everywhere you look. I'm not sure why you are so infatuated with that term. It isn't even particularly scary coming from you any more, now that you've robbed it of all meaning through serial abuse. The take-away here is that you don't seem able to grasp what a Ponzi Scheme is - and is not - and don't seem to particularly care.

    Where? The chain letter scam is a Pyramid Scheme, not a Ponzi Scheme. The two are similar, but a Ponzi Scheme is distinguished by the element of fraudulent investment. Perhaps you are simply confusing these two similar, but distinct, types of scams - it would explain a lot of your errors. A Ponzi Scheme is a specific type of pyramid scheme with the additional elements of fraud and embezzlement.

    BTW, I have less objection to referring to investment bubbles as Pyramid Schemes. The problem is that there is no central organizing "schemer" in an investment bubble - it's an emergent phenomenon, not a conscious plan by any specific actor you can locate anywhere. Calling something a "scheme" or "scam" implies that some nefarious party somewhere dreamt it up and implemented it to enrich themselves. That isn't how investment bubbles work.
     
  8. The Marquis Only want the best for Nigel Valued Senior Member

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    What the USA needs to to do is to stop imagining it is, in any way, representative of the western world.

    What everyone else needs to do is to stop thinking that it is.
     
  9. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Not always true even in economics if FACTS are well established. When this is the case, you have no reason to complain that I did not do "statistical analysis." I.e. One can change the defining range for "baby boomers" but then how many are in that defined age range and living is not "statistical analysis" - it is "nose counting," which will have some error and done by US government every 10 years.

    Likewise, I don´t need to do any statistical analysis to know what fraction will reach age 65 as insurance companies collect this data and the probability of living from age X to age Y, broken down by sex and even race if you like, is available with search of the internet - no need for me to do any statistical analysis. I only needed + OR - 10 % accuracy to use this type of information in 2005 to determine for late 2014, that then an economically significant fraction of the living baby boomers, the largest ever group of high income tax payers, would no longer be paying taxes, but begin collecting Social Security. To select 2014 as the year by which the run on the dollar would occur - I need not do any statistical analysis.

    My estimates of when an "economically significant fraction of the baby boomers" would first occur only sets the year. The month was set by fact that October has been, more than any other month, when big down turns in stocks have happened. The day in October, 31, was chosen just because it is Halloween, a scary time.

    Certainly all future predictions do use / are based on / prior events but when the statistical analysis of theses events leads to strong expectations that they will reoccur very nearly the same, we call those beliefs, FACTS. For example, I can predict that water will boil near 100 C and a little higher temperature after I add some salt to it without "statistical analysis." Likewise I believe the life insurance companies have very accurate (much better than the + or - 10% I wanted) ideas what fraction of large groups (many millions) of Americans at age X will survive to age Y. etc. I don´t need to do any statistics - just accept their results.

    Remember I was predicting 7+ years into the future - If I even got the year correct, I would be OK with that. To have the run start in October of that year certainly would be mainly luck. That is why the prediction says "on or before Halloween 2014."
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 20, 2012
  10. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    The caption below is wrong. US leads the world in prison populations because the schools, locally funded, in poor neighborhoods are terrible.

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    Local funding, instead of federal, a unique US system, is a "penny wise dollar foolish" policy as cost per prisoner is greater than average Ivy League college tuition!*
    Not only that, but many potentially, socially-productive, tax-paying people are sitting in prison cells because, ill-educated, they can only earn well via crime.

    700 / 100,000 = 0.7% of US population is in jail. 0.007 x 330E6 US population = 2.31 E6 prisoners. Thus, the direct cost per prisoner is: 52E9 / 2.31 E6 = $22,511 annually but that only includes their cost once in prison, not the cost of the cops and courts required to catch and proscute this much larger than need be group of prisoners, which is at least twice larger. Also bigger is the damage their crimes did to the society, part of which all pay in insurance costs.

    I probably should have posted this in my thread: "How DUMB can US voters be?" which I started in a failed effort to keep GWB from getting a second term. He got it and used it to make depression in US inevitable. - Triggered by run on the dollar on or before Halloween 2014, I predicted long ago, while GWB was still POTUS.

    *More than 5 times greater when all costs of ill-eduction are included. Again, I ask: How DUMB can US voters be?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 16, 2012
  11. The Marquis Only want the best for Nigel Valued Senior Member

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    Indeed. Why do you vote for anyone currently presented as an option at all?
     
  12. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Student loan debt is more than twice all other consumer* debt and 1.6 times greater than all credit card debt! Plus they owe a share of the US´s $16 trillion debt.

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    For many, who were to be the US´s future, and scheduled to pay your Social Security, suicide is only way out of student debt:
    SUMMARY: Now, for most late teenagers, borrowing large sum of money to become over educated for the "Big Mac" job you probably will get, if any, is foolish. IMHO, a better plan is to just learn Mandarin and go to China, where there is a growing economy, a labor shortage, the living is cheap, and salaries are increasing in purchasing power by double digits annually. The state pays 2/3 of your medical costs, and there is no real estate tax, in most locations. Many economic institutions now estimate that the Chinese economy will be greater than that of the US in about a decade AND they are not assuming, as I do, that the US dollar will have collapsed and the US will be in deep, long-lasting depression in less than a decade. They only assume that the GDP of China will continue to grow 3 to 5 times (averaging 4 times ) faster than that of the US, as it has been during the past decade.

    Steve should have moved to China instead of pull the trigger. Well trained architects are in great demand there as most of the world´s new construction is in China.

    * Mortgage debts are not included, but car loans, "lay-away plans" for appliances, etc. not put on credit cards, are plus the credit card debt.

    ** That average includes many with wealthy parents who graduate with zero debt, as my children did from Cornell or Duke, with a night school MBA from U. of Georgia, which she mainly paid for as was then well paid by Delta Airlines. (And not much later she was placed in charge of managing their four billion dollar "defined benefit" retirement fund, whose excess profits went straight to the bottom line. - The only "profit center" many years when the planes were losing money.)
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 21, 2012
  13. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    you can't say keynsian economic failed when its tenats have never been followed correctly.
     
  14. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    The US leads the world in prison populations because (a) the criminal punishments in the US are more severe (b) the severity of punishments does not significantly deter crime, and does more to harden the criminal mind rather than to rehabilitate it (c) criminal minds are born out of a complex of psychological causes that are rooted in a loss of self-respect (d) schools, and education in general, is not an adequate tool to cure the loss of self-respect that leads to criminal thinking.

    The cost of prisons is proportional to the lengths of sentences imposed, the number of probations and paroles denied, and the lack of programs and policies that effectively deal with the psychological causes of loss of respect. Aggravating this is a prison-industrial complex that feeds on the huge budgets allocated for prisons and jails, and the low budgets given to help indigent defendants prepare their defenses and appeals, and the indifference to the abuses in prisons and jails that harden prisoners and serve as breeding grounds for recidivism. As hard as it is for some people to support funding college loans and grants, imagine how much they would resist a federally funded program to address the psychological causes of crime. Federal programs to help elevate the social and economic development of criminals, potential criminals, and the people within their spheres of influence who are susceptible to adopting criminal thinking, would not appear to to be very popular among voters, particularly in those districts where self esteem tends to be higher. Investing in human beings tends to fall behind the list of priorities in voters' minds, particularly when there are so many frivolous issues constantly occupying center stage.

    Here you are distinguishing property crimes, and violent crimes motivated by property crimes, from all others. You are also assuming that all of these people are not only guilty, but that they deserve incarceration, the unusually lengthy sentences imposed in the US (as opposed to many other developed countries), denial of parole and probation, and the barriers to legal defenses and appeals. You are also assuming that there is not a prison industrial complex that profits by keeping them locked up, and an absence of support systems in the free world to help rehabilitate them upon their release, much less a proactive means of addressing the psychological causes of loss of self esteem that underlies criminal thinking.

    And of course the psychological and physical harm done to victims which can be debilitating and severe in economic impact. Most prisoners are not allowed to earn a wage in prison, so their dependents are thrown into poverty. Throughout all of this maelstrom of loss and damage is the spreading decimation of individual self esteem. Even jailers become infected, and perpetrate horrors onto their wards. Legislators, cops, prosecutors, judges and juries (i.e., the public at large) become hardened to the fact of false convictions, excessive punishments, and inadequate defenses, and slam defendants all that much harder, with ever more severe sentences and denial of probation and parole.

    Here, there is a decline in empathy among voters for people who evidently need help, more help, different kinds of help, and concentrated and determined forms of help, to seriously address the loss of self esteem that becomes the gateway to criminal thinking. Dumb, yes, but also indifferent, and often downright mean, is probably a pretty good characterization. To test this, imagine a proposal at election time to cut all punishments in half, across the board. Imagine the recoil of righteous indignation that would generate. And imagine how such a proposal would get no air time over rants about abortion, Benghazi or even Obama's birthplace. It would simply be summarily dismissed, even more than the better known issues of the day.

    This is why voters and public opinion can't be relied upon to solve real problems. This is why we need good leadership at all levels of government. Compare some of the great leaders at the federal level with some of the sorry choices running at state and local levels and I think you'll find the main source of failed public policy.
     
  15. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Do you have some support for this POV that fundamentally criminal activity stems from lack of self esteem? I, without any proof, have just the opposite POV. I think most crooks think highly of them selves (until they are caught) and that the "Joes," who do and honest day´s work for low pay at a "big Mac" job, are dumb saps.
    Exactly my point. Too many voters are ill educated, in not-rich neighborhood´s low quality schools and cannot think for themselves, but unconsciously "sell their vote" to those spending the most on TV etc. (6 Billion dollars in the recent election so the politicians are of this view too.) Thus this is not likely to change especially as the wealthy who control elections with their TV ads (and thus Congress) like large numbers of poorly educated* (cheap workers, maids, yard men etc.) who most importantly will vote as the TV tells them to. The US gets the best government money can buy - best for the wealthy, their corportaions, and their lobbists, but not for the country. I.e. these wealthy controllers of the US think we have "good leaders" and we do from their POV.

    * Many of the very rich, don´t send their kids to even the good schools in their neighborhood, but use private schools so don´t support my idea of federal funding to make all school as good as Scandinavian schools, etc.
     
  16. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    10 minutes ago, Alison Williams, was speaking on Bloomberg TV´s "taking stock" program. She is their lead banking "expert" and a former officer of UBS. She said; that the number of US banks has decreased every year since 1985 but the number of branches has increased as has the banking industry´s deposits. In last few years the FED´s Operation Twist has flatten the normal yield curve and this is stressing banks as they lend long (get higher rates of intesest) and borrow short (pay lower interest on deposits) but cannot make as much on the flatter difference as they once did.

    I conclude that the "too big to fail" banks at end of 2008 are bigger today and probably pressed harder as 30 year mortgage rates are historically low. - Will broke US need to bail them out again? It seems that way. Lending long with short term demand deposits money has always seemed to be a big risk to me, especially in "hard times" when many may need to take out their deposits.
     
  17. kmguru Staff Member

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    Thanks to all of you

    I am glad, my post (OP) here is still getting replies.

    I am doing something in reply to my post. But the time is not there yet. May be another 3 to 6 months. Then I can publish those items....thank you again
     
  18. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    More of why budget problem is insolubable:
     
  19. kmguru Staff Member

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    People who are in the KNOW, know that and hence trying to find other ways to generate more high tech products for sell to the world. If that does not work, we can do WARS as before in human history...nothing else is there except God throwing manna from heaven...
     
  20. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    US is not trying very intelligently.

    Quote below is from Representative E Darrell, (Republican of CA)´s Email to me today*:

    " ... I led the debate on the House floor in support of an important and bipartisan jobs bill that was successfully passed out of the House. For years, foreign students have come to the United States seeking the benefits of the first-class, world-class higher-education systems we offer. They receive the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) skills they need to revolutionize industries and transform economies. A 2011 Kauffman Foundation study found that almost one in four American high-technology firms founded between 1995 and 2005 have had at least one immigrant founder. These are the same companies that have created not only thousands of jobs in America; but, also jobs in California.

    Yet our broken visa system has exported those skills and jobs out of the United States allowing other nations to benefit from the education these students received here. ... The number of foreign students that received degrees in STEM fields at an American university or college between 1990 and 2009 increased by 63%. Despite this growth, the number of visas given to these students over that same time period increased by only 1.6%.
    We can no longer afford to export these innovators and entrepreneurs out of the United States to create prosperity and capital for our competitors. ..."

    ----------------
    * When Congress was starting to consider adoption of the "Paulson´s Plan" - First of the bail outs still while GWB was POTUS, I explained why it would fail and told what would work. I posted both reasons why in the link below** in about 15 forums and then reported myself. - I got the expected 3-day ban, which I used to send it to most of the Congress Reps. To do that takes considerable effort as their Email filters only let Emails from their districks get thru. I won´t tell how I did got around that, but Rep. Darrell still tells me how good a job he is doing and asks for my vote! (as do a few others). BTW, If you do live in his district, I recommend you support him. He does seem to be honest and intelligent and we need more of that rare combination in DC.

    ** http://www.sciforums.com/showthread...-or-not-quot&p=2025940&viewfull=1#post2025940
     
  21. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    Don't cut spending, cut evil.

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    With a joke and a smile.
     
  22. kmguru Staff Member

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  23. kmguru Staff Member

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