guyy

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the giant sucking sound continued.

pan6467

Very good point .... SEE POST BELOW
-----Added 10/2/2009 at 02 : 50 : 25-----
???????sdrawkcab tuo gnimoc ereh epyt I gnihtyreve si yhW
-----Added 10/2/2009 at 03 : 02 : 54-----
hmmm must have been a bug. I work in the hood, the only people driving cars more than probably $10K are known drug dealers in the neighborhood. Even the Yuppies (if still called that) who own because taxes are low and housing was cheap, drive cheap cars because they know they will be stolen or ransacked.

So, I really would like to know how people in section 8 housing or wityh minimum wage jobs own houses worth $50K and drive $75K cars. Maybe we need to check welfare reform or enforce the laws.

I know my grandma lives in subsidized housing and rent is 1/3 of her income, plus interest from the bank, plus any property of value like a car or so on. If she shows a huge withdrawal (for her account) in a one years time they question her as to why. (She helped me at times during my addiction and helped me buy my pizza place) When she told them it was for a relative, they gave her credit for a certain amount but still charged her that year as though the rest was accruing interest. That was between 1994 and when she had given it all away to my mom, sister and I.

Yet, in the same elderly complex people would drive brand new Volvos and so on and pay very little, they would brag at card night on Mondays. Plus, some of the people on disability would be under 65 and have large screen tvs, very nice cars and so on.

Fraud is fraud no matter what class or level it comes from.
-----Added 10/2/2009 at 03 : 04 : 39-----
weird now posts are all screwy and out of order......

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

Tully Mars

You seem to go from "it's everywhere!" to "I'm not really saying it's everywhere" rather quickly.

Ever think maybe there's a less evil explanation? I don't have any experience working with people in large urban areas but I do in rural Oregon. There it's not all that uncommon for people to live in a POS single wide trailer worth about 8-10K and drive a 35-40K truck. Complete with lift kit, sound system and custom rims. Maybe, just maybe, not all people have the same priorities when it comes to housing and the vehicles they own.

__________________
I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo

Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

scout

You people crack me up. If a republican uses fear tactics to borrow and spend it's the fuckin' end of society as we know it but if a socialist uses those fear tactics packaged differently to pass a 1 trillion dollar borrow and spend bill it's heavenly bliss. What the fuck? I guarantee if this was happening 6 months ago 90% of the people in favor of this bill now would be shitting their pants over this massive spending bill. On that note I think if everyone looked at things objectively instead of through glasses shaded either red or blue we might actually come up with something that will help all Americans instead of this bullshit pass it fast and spend, spend, spend and spend some more as fast as we can. If this is the best we can do then we are in deep shit. Unfortunately both sides are clinging to their pet projects rather than doing what's best for America. The Republicans are clinging to those tax cuts and the Democrats are clinging to expanded government meanwhile the middle class gets pinched.

__________________
"The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it."
Thomas Jefferson

Baraka_Guru

If you looked at things objectively, you'd know Obama isn't a socialist; that the bill is just over $800 billion, not $1 trillion; that there is a lot of spending that will directly and indirectly help the middle class; and that many realize this is just one part of the overall solution, not "heavenly bliss."

And I think more people are after the Republicans (who aren't fascists, btw) about their history of war measures than they'd be after them about stimulus packages if they were still in power.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

ratbastid

Do us a favor and go to sleep for another eight years, k?

How can spending TRILLIONS to stabilize Iraq be right and spending BILLIONS to stabilize America be wrong? Am I taking crazy pills?

filtherton

dksuddeth

WTF are you talking about?

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

filtherton

You know, it's in the same alternate universe where we're all complaining about those mean republicans and their overspending, undertaxcutting stimulus plan.

scout

Little testy today are we? Was there a need to get personal?

__________________
"The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it."
Thomas Jefferson

dc_dux

scout: looking objectively, what would you come up with?

A proposal that has a greater likelihood of success than the current Senate bill:

with 60% spending/40% tax cuts...most of it targeted and allocated relatively quickly.

that has removed more than $100 billion in pork and projects deemed not to provide direct stimulus

a CBO estimate of potentially creating 3-4 million jobs in 18 months

and that has the support of both the business community (US Chamber of Commerce, National Assoc. of Manufacturing) and the labor community

How slowly should we proceed with job loss at 500,000/month?

My choice would be even more spending but Obama is committed to reaching across the aisle with the inclusion of that 40% in tax relief.

I dont know anyone who likes any of the options and most objective observers understand that they are no guarantees.
-----Added 10/2/2009 at 10 : 29 : 07-----
I'm waiting for a better proposal from the Republicans who voted NO.

What I see instead is a strategy to dig in their heals, gamble that the program fails and then use that failure as the campaign issue in 2010.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

dippin

1- you don't know what socialism is
2- It is not a scare tactic when the economy really is that bad. In terms of jobs lost so far, this recession is already as bad as any recession weve had since the great depression. And if february is anything like january, this will officially become the worst recession since the great depression.

dc_dux

Agreed.

Fear mongering with bogus charges of socialism is hardly a constructive proposal or solution.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

shakran

dc_dux

Is it just me who thinks those opposed to this bill are playing partisan politics...

ace suggesting that we're just in your average cyclical recession that the free market can "fix" if left alone, with which very few economists across the ideological spectrum agree.

marv suggesting that its a citizenship and prosperity bill for illegal immigrants.

scout playing the socialism card

...rather than offering viable solutions.

I dont think its "too heated" to raise such a question.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

dksuddeth

you've obviously mistaken me for someone who approved of bush and his spending

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

filtherton

Sorry, I know you're sensitive about vampires, it won't happen again.

aceventura3

You ignore history, I don't.

The US economy has been through 15 or 16 recessions or depressions give or take depending on a few factors. the US economy recovered from each without massive spending in each prior to 1929. The depression in 1929 was made worse by government incompetence and the New Deal by FDR (massive spending programs) did nothing to stimulate the economy. WWII was the stimulus that got the recovery going.

Also, your assumption that I am wrong about my position on government "stimulus" spending is based on a failure to look at the costs of government spending. You ignore the impact of deficit spending, inflation and taxation. In my analysis, I don't.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

Derwood

isn't it just a little dishonest to compare this recession to any of the previous ones?

roachboy

what analysis, ace? you don't offer anything even remotely like an analysis. you bite editorials from investor's business daily that resonate with your preconceptions. that's not research, and the results are not analysis.

and i can tell you that your claim to be attentive to history is ridiculous.

i've seen nothing from you that remotely approaches a demonstration of your claim that this is just a routine blip in the normal cycles of capitalism---it flies in the face of the empirical world---so is operates in a space between the counter-intuitive and the zany.

so put up or shut up, ace. show your research and maybe we can talk about that.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

dippin

You do know that the position that government stimulus did nothing against the great depression but WWII did is internally inconsistent, don't you?

Well, besides not being supported by evidence (the evidence that is there suggests that New Deal programs weren't as big as claimed, and did help), there is the fact that from an economic perspective WWII was nothing more than government stimulus.

Besides, government "stimulus" wasn't invented in 1929. The US did plenty of it beforehand. Just look at the history of American railroads. Heck, most of the early American corporations were public-private corporations created to build canals, railroads and so on.

aceventura3

No.

The Panic of 1893 is similar to this recession in some ways:

Panic of 1893 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think there are lessons that are to be learned. One lesson is

Looks like government wanted to bailout an industry the bailout failed and perhaps made things worse. There are other lessons as well.
-----Added 10/2/2009 at 12 : 43 : 24-----
I often share my conclusions with you folks. I don't have much interest in getting too detailed here because of the lack of serious discourse. I mostly like to do short "hit and run" type posts. If we ever wanted to seriously discuss an issue, I am game. What's your excuse?
-----Added 10/2/2009 at 12 : 50 : 11-----
Yes. I communicating in platitudes. But I think most get the point.

What are we talk'n here 90/10, 80/20, 99.999/.0001 private sector to government.

Rail transport in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I suppose some would give all the credit to government since the government passed legislation that allowed the industry to grow. I guess that's fair.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

dippin

Do you know how the US got out of the 1893 recession? I could point you to academic articles, but wikipedia has it right there: a gold rush. Unless you think a gold rush is coming soon, then we're in for a long depression. Besides, the point is not that only governments can fix recessions, but that only government action can speed up their recovery.

Oh, and I guess you didnt read the entries for the other recessions, huh?

And I would love to see you back your claims. Even conservatives like Ben Bernanke and Milton Friedman blame a failure to properly stimulate the economy as the cause of the great depression. Of course, they dont think very highly of expansionary fiscal policy (though Bernanke has changed his tune) but they think what transformed a recession into a depression was a monetary policy that wasnt expansive enough. Well, right now we are at 0% interest rate. There is nothing more that monetary policy can do. And we are still going downhill, fast.

There is no inherent value on constant government surpluses. In fact, they'd be a bad thing, taking money away from the economy. Governments should also save for a rainy day and spend when that rainy day gets here. Unfortunately, Bush didnt save anything. In fact, he went on the greatest debt expansion during an economic recovery in history, which in turn only fed the bubble. Now, however, is not the time to turn off the faucets. Instead, it is time to really spend (but spend smart) and hope that once the recovery gets going Obama and congress are smart enough to become fiscally conservative.

Oh, and you are reading wikipedia wrong. Most railroads were privately built, but were funded with municipal bonds and supported via added legislation. Most of the early railroad company were chartered by legislation, were partially owned by the municipal or state government that chartered it, and were exempted of taxes.

roachboy

you know, ace, this kind of dilletante nonsense doesn't help your case, either in particular or in general.

for a stodgy old, but comprehensive, account of 1893, have a look at this:

# Unemployment, Unrest, and Relief in the United States during the Depression of 1893-97
# Samuel Rezneck
# The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 61, No. 4 (Aug., 1953), pp. 324-345

if you have access to jstor, it's there. if you dont, email me and i can send you a copy. i'll save it, just in case.

basically, dippin's right.
the reason the gold rush was such a big deal had to do with the monetary system of the time, which was fundamentally different than it is now. as is most everything else.

the main parallel between then and now has to do with the difficulty the american state has in formulating coherent responses to depression.

but that's it.
there's no there there, ace.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

dc_dux

A bit off track (so to speak), but...

didnt the government use (dk would probably say abused) the power of eminent domain to the benefit of private railroads and their stockholders?

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

dippin

yes. just as with the limited liability provisions instituted in those charters.

powerclown

A fair bit, I would say. If one had a great big house with an olympic size pool, 5 car garage and 3k sq. ft guest house, I think it stands to reason that one could afford a $19k Saturn Vue and much more. And if it were a $19k Saturn Vue in said driveway, I would surmise the family as fiscally conservative republican. On the other hand, I think it would also stand to reason that if one had a $75k Jaguar XF and lived in a 2 bedroom apartment, this person would either be Sid Barrett rich and crazy, had a trust fund, engaged in money-making activities not entirely kosher, or lived paycheck to paycheck making $1000/month car payments and raising his family on Spam. Note this isn't a judgement upon their humanity.

I used to live next door to a guy who owned a (one) corner pizza joint. This was in a middle class neighborhood where most of the houses were one story built in the 50s, so most were around $150k. While everyone else in the neighboorhood drove mostly american and swedish midsize beaters, this guy drove a new Porsche 997 Carrera every year, his wife had a new Chevy Suburban Family Transportation Road Behemoth, they had a garage-full of Harley Davidson motorcycles, a 25' fishing boat that he parked on his front lawn (lowering property values imo), added an entire second story to his house (raising property values back up a little) and moved his wife's entire extended family from Mexico into his house. This is in Detroit, not Houston. Oh, the glorious smell of bbq'd chorizo. I was saddened when they moved away.

Point being: while his pizzas were good, they weren't that good.

ratbastid

I just went ahead and applied this to every word you wrote.

I really don't understand why, "Oh yeah, well I know a guy who..." is considered a reasoned argument around here.

powerclown

I guess the economy just has me a bit jumpy...I look back and episodes like the above return to memory and serve as reminders to save up even more and not live above my means.

roachboy

as touching as these quaint tales have been powerclown, how about we move on to things that might be actually relevant?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

ratbastid

Okay, well, I'd say that's an appropriate use of anecdotal evidence. To prod one's self into taking actions one wants to take--which is basically an emotional process anyway.

We get into serious trouble when we start painting the world the color our perceptions provide, though. You find yourself holding a hammer and surrounded by nails, and forget that the hammer AND the nails are a figment of your imagination. Not that, as human beings, we can avoid doing that to some extent, but sometimes we can wake up and notice we're doing it, you know?

dc_dux

The wing nuts are bringing out all the big guns to spread the word about Obama's dangerous economic stimulus package.

Limbaugh....it is a bill to socialize medicine and allow the government taking over your life!
FALSE!
That "new bureaucracy" that will take over your life, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, already exists. It was created by Bush.

Mike Huckabee (and Pat Robertson)...it is anti-religion!
FALSE!
The standard language in the bill simply blocks spending for on-campus buildings that are used primarily for religion (like a chapel, for example). This same language has been part of education spending bills for 46 years. It's just the law, and it's never been controversial.

March on, wing nuts! Keep throwing crap and see what sticks! Continue to be part of the problem rather than contribute to a solution!

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

shakran

The thing that scares the hell out of the right wingers right now is that, unlike Clinton, Obama doesn't seem to be one to fold to the pressure of the "conservative" (I will forever enclose that word in quotes, because they're anything but) way of doing business. If he succeeds, they're terrified that people will wake up and understand that the neo-con economic model of "give everything to the rich and things will be perfect!" is exactly that - a con.



They don't realize that this has already happened.

aceventura3

As it relates to our current economic condition my point is that government spending did not trigger the recovery from the 1893 depression. In the case of the gold rush, that was a trigger. When you look at most economic recoveries we can point to some kind of "trigger" that is not government spending. If you give government the credit for the "gold rush", I can see how we differ on this point.
-----Added 11/2/2009 at 11 : 15 : 09-----
I think the biggest impact the government can have in stimulating economic growth is through sound monetary policy, low/fair tax policy, reasonable regulation and basically staying out of the way of innovation. The recovery from the 1893 depression had nothing to do with government spending.

OBama's plan today is basically; blame Bush, spend a trillion dollars, and "hope" everything works out. They even admit they don't know when and if their plan will work, they just know they have to do something.
-----Added 11/2/2009 at 11 : 20 : 21-----
Read what I posted. One of my questions was related to what the mix was: 80/20, 90/10, etc. I acknowledged government had involvement. I even stated that it may be fair to conclude that government was responsible due to legislation passed. However, legislation is not spending.

Why do you continually set up straw-men arguments?

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

dippin

The fact that you insist on focusing solely on 1893, the fact that you somehow fail to understand the point of how that recession was ended by a gold rush, and the fact that you think my point has anything to do with government intervention ending that recession all point to the fruitlessness of continuing this discussion with you.

Because if you think that a recession that was cut short by an exogenous event provides the example of how to act, then we have nothing to do except pray for a big giant comet made of diamonds to fall out of the sky.

There is a reason why every responsible conservative economist supports fiscal stimulus, even if they disagree about the make up of the fiscal stimulus. They might support fiscal stimulus mostly through tax cuts, but even they support these tax coming from deficit spending.

roachboy

deus ex machina is not an unreasonable expectation for folk who believe that markets are guided by an "invisible hand"---the distance between adam-smith metaphysics and a god is pretty small. so personally, i think ace referenced 1893 mostly because it is a reassuring parable concerning the past, which is reassuring in the way most such are, in that by the time the story was written, the outcomes were already in place.

contingency is scary. the present is scary. chances have to be taken without any assurance that elements x y or z will produce the desired outcomes.

most of what i read from ace is conditioned by an aversion to the present, and this not at the level of not supporting obama, but more at the level of not being able to cope with the fact of contingency, or open-endedness. it's a central appeal of most metaphysics, this emptying out of the present, replacing it with a transcendent frame that contains it yadda yadda yadda.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

aceventura3

"solely"???

No. What we need is the next "big thing" or the next combination of "little things" to spark consumer spending. Consumer spending was up last month.

Retail Sales Rose 1% in January - WSJ.com

Business inventories dropped in December, meaning adjustments are filtering through the system.

Bloomberg.com: News

Auto manufacturers are saying they are seeing sales stabalize.

Ford, GM executives see auto sales stabilizing - Los Angeles Times

But, who am I to point these little tidbits of information out. Our President sees things getting a lot worse, and if not for spending close to a trillion dollars, the world as we know it will come to an end and we will forever be in a shrinking economy.

A tax cut is very different than spending in my view. Tax cuts have a demonstrated record of having a positive affect on economic growth.

Also, to be clear my position is not that the government should not spend money. In some cases there is a need for money to be spent by the government. The problem I have is with the pretense that the "stimulus bill" is mostly designed to spur economic growth, that is simply not true. The bill is mostly a spending bill. Obama's goal is to "save or create 4 million jobs", and to do it he wants to spend $800 billion. Doing the math that is $200,000 per job. If I had $800 billion could could promise a lot more than 4 million jobs. If you got a 10% annual return on $800 billion you could create 1.6 million jobs paying $50,000 per year on that 10% return alone. then if you actually have those people do something productive you could apply that Keynesian multiplier your favorite economist love so much.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

Baraka_Guru

But on an annual basis, these sales are down nearly 10% compared to January 2008. And we should mention that much of this 1% increase is due to the New Year's deep discounting we've seen as a result of the recession and the weak holiday sales. And this is after a 3% drop in December. I'd like to see the retail sector's profit reports.

BBC NEWS | Business | US retail sales unexpectedly rise
U.S. retail sales revive - International Herald Tribune
Discounting Contributes To Unexpected Increase In January Retail Sales

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

aceventura3

[/QUOTE]

Thanks. I was feeling good all day, planning on avoiding any negative news. Are you working in the Obama administration?

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

Baraka_Guru

No, they wouldn't have me because I'm a socialist.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot