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| TheRumpledOne 6,529 posts msg #93732 - Ignore TheRumpledOne |
6/11/2010 2:24:14 PM 4409 -- How to handle a Census Worker http://www.youtube.com/user/RP4409#p/u/14/AE6QGRBHQRo |
| johnpaulca 12,036 posts msg #93812 - Ignore johnpaulca |
6/14/2010 9:09:48 AM 06/11/10 Baltimore, Maryland – In the reign of Emperor Zhao, in 81 BC, 60 Confucian scholars were asked to consider the effect of government meddling in the economy. The Middle Kingdom was in a fix. Mongol raiders were pressing it from the East; the government was going broke. Taking the advice of Sang Hongyang, the feds of that era had put in place various state monopolies and price controls. The result? “People live in houses with badly-made beams and shoddy thatched roofs. They wear clothes of rough fabric and eat out of bowls made of dirt,” the sages explained. “We waste our time on vain efforts…and lack the essentials, food and clothing.” The scholars gave their advice in moral terms: “Above all, emphasize virtue and suppress get-rich-quick speculations.” Too bad they didn’t have The Financial Times or The New York Times to guide them! These journals offer a world without wickedness or moral lessons. Economy in a funk? Forget the real cause. Stimulate it! We can worry about the real problem “after the economy has recovered,” writes Paul Krugman in The New York Times. “Only those who believe the economy is a morality play,” would want to suffer the pain of a correction, adds Martin Wolf at the FT. Readers are urged to focus on the hilarity of the scene rather than on its gravity. It is as if a fat man were bending over. The further over he goes, the more his seams split. First to go was the subprime seam in the back…then the Greek seam on the side. But no one wants to say the obvious thing: that he should stand up straight and lose weight. Instead, the FTand the NYT want the government to buy him a larger pair of pants. You have read a number of unpopular views in our Daily Reckonings… That this was not a typical post-war recession; it is a Great Correction. Over-indebted American and British economies need to de-leverage. …That no recovery is possible, because the preceding model of debt-fueled consumption was unsustainable. …That ‘stimulus’ efforts were not only a waste of time and money, but also harmful; people who made bad bets should take their losses with dignity instead of trying to get others to pay. In the 10 million or so years since our ancestors have walked on two feet, many were the challenges that arose. We learned to hunt and gather…to build shelter…to clothe our bodies and to kill each other. We made tools and were able even to split atoms and remove body tattoos. We evolved into a practical, problem-solving race. But never could we solve the problem of an economic downturn. Why? Because the Confucian scholars were right. A properly functioning market economy gives people neither what they want nor what they expect, but what they deserve. In that sense it is ‘moral’ not mechanical. You can’t pull levers nor turn screws to stop a correction. Like old age, the best you can do is to endure it with good grace; the alternative is worse. Central planners don’t create wealth. They can only move it around, robbing Peter to pay Paul. This only ‘stimulates’ an economy if Paul uses the resources better than Peter. Don’t make us laugh. In most cases, Paul is the same clown who made the bad bets in the first place. In the present instance, instead of robbing Peter to pay Paul, the feds judged it prudent to borrow from Peter. But Peter is no dope. First, he turned his eyes on Greece. Then, he noticed all the other peripheral players in the Eurozone… Then, he put his wallet back in his pocket. It became obvious that the jig was up. As Nouriel Roubini put it, we reached the point where “austerity is not optional.” Stoicism went out of style in the economics profession 100 years ago. Activism paid. Stoicism did not. Since then, busybodies have advised presidents, headed central banks, run multi-national agencies, appeared on covers of TIME magazine, won the Legion d’Honneur and the Enron Prize…and run billion-dollar hedge funds. And now, after 18 months…and approximately $12 trillion worth of stimulus, bailouts and debt guarantees…we see the results of a live test. Have our modern economists done better than Sang Hongyang? The latest evidence came in last week, from the US. The biggest source of employment lately is the US government itself, which has hired hundreds of thousands of census takers. Obviously, if you could make people better off by having them count things, why not hire more of them and have them count the hairs on our heads? Employment in the private sector is still going down. One in ten Americans is officially unemployed…one is six is working at less than capacity. Twice as many people have been out of work for more than 27 weeks this year than the year before. Not surprisingly, real incomes are going down too. Meanwhile, one of every 8 houses is delinquent or in default on its mortgage. Statistically, 7.2 million of them will be foreclosed, most likely leading to another drop in housing prices…and a drop in household wealth. Prices are falling too. M3 fell at a 5% rate in May. Consumer prices, officially, are increasing at the slowest pace since 1966. Unofficially, adjusting for the real cost of housing, the actual cost of living is in outright deflation. In short, the ‘recovery’ is a flop. |
| TheRumpledOne 6,529 posts msg #93947 - Ignore TheRumpledOne |
6/17/2010 9:42:26 AM But look on the bright side... LOL!!! |
| crunkle 54 posts msg #93949 - Ignore crunkle |
6/17/2010 9:51:05 AM Years of Math 1950 - 2010 Last week I purchased a burger at Burger King for $1.58. The counter girl took my $ 2 and I was digging for my change when I pulled 8 cents from my pocket and gave it to her. She stood there, holding the nickel and 3 pennies, while looking at the screen on her register. I sensed her discomfort and tried to tell her to just give me two quarters , but she hailed the manager for help. While he tried to explain the transaction to her, she stood there and cried. Why do I tell you this? Because of the evolution in teaching math since the 1950s: 1. Teaching Math In 1950s A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit ? 2. Teaching Math In 1960s A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit? 3. Teaching Math In 1970s A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit? 4. Teaching Math In 1980s A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assign me nt: Underline the number 20. 5. Teaching Math In 1990s A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of $20.. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their ho me s? (There are no wrong answers, and if you feel like crying, it's ok. ) 6. Teaching Math In 2009 Un hachero vende una carretada de maderapara $100. El costo de la producciones es $80. Cuanto dinero ha hecho? 7. Teaching Math In 2010 Who cares, just steal the lumber from your rich neighbor's property. He won't have a gun to stop you, and the President says it's OK anyway because its a redistribution of wealth. |
| crunkle 54 posts msg #93950 - Ignore crunkle |
6/17/2010 9:55:56 AM Stunning science breakthrough ... Remember you saw it here first !! ... Discovery Announcement ~ The densest element in the known Universe has been found! PELOSIUM A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the densest element yet known to science. The new element has been named Pelosium. Pelosium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 311. These particles are held together by dark forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. The symbol of Pelosium is PU. Pelosium's mass actually increases over time, as morons randomly interact with various elements in the atmosphere and become assistant deputy neutrons within the Pelosium molecule, leading to the formation of isodopes. This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientist to believe that Pelosium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as Critical Morass. When catalyzed with money, Pelosium activates CNNadnauseum, an element that radiates orders of magnitude more energy, albeit as incoherent noise, since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons as Pelosium. |
| johnpaulca 12,036 posts msg #93952 - Ignore johnpaulca |
6/17/2010 10:16:51 AM LOL..... |
| TheRumpledOne 6,529 posts msg #93962 - Ignore TheRumpledOne |
6/17/2010 12:35:47 PM And so it goes.... You just spent $20,000,000 to move members and supporters of Hamas, a terrorist organization, to the United States ; housing, food, the whole enchilada. HB 1388 PASSED Whether you are an Obama fan, or not, EVERYONE IN THE U.S. needs to know.... Something happened...HB 1388 was passed, behind our backs. You may want to read about it... It wasn't mentioned on the news... just went by on the ticker tape at the bottom of the CNN screen. Obama funds $20M in tax payer dollars to immigrate Hamas Refugees to the USA . This is the news that didn't make the headlines. By executive order, President Barack Obama has ordered the expenditure of $20.3 million in "migration assistance" to the Palestinian refugees and "conflict victims" in Gaza . The "presidential determination", which allows hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with ties to Hamas to resettle in the United States , was signed and appears in the Federal Register. Few on Capitol Hill, or in the media, took note that the order provides a free ticket replete with housing and food allowances to individuals who have displayed their overwhelming support to the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the parliamentary election of January 2006. Now we learn that he is allowing thousands of Palestinian refuges to move to, and live in, the US at American taxpayer expense. These important, and insightful, issues are being "lost" in the blinding bail-outs and "stimulation" packages. Doubtful? To verify this for yourself: www.thefederalregister.com/d.p/2009-02-04-E9-2488 PLEASE PASS THIS ON... AMERICA NEEDS TO KNOW |
| petrolpeter 439 posts msg #93998 - Ignore petrolpeter |
6/18/2010 3:47:50 AM Also didn't Hillary Clinton give those rocket shooters 900 million last year? |
| TheRumpledOne 6,529 posts msg #94008 - Ignore TheRumpledOne |
6/18/2010 10:27:12 AM The party is over... http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/greenspan-we%27re-in-danger-of-being-the-next-greece!-505735.html?tickers=tlt,tip,tbt,udn,uup,^dji,^gspc&sec=topStories&pos=8&asset=&ccode= |
| zaelunas 3 posts msg #94021 - Ignore zaelunas |
6/18/2010 11:47:04 AM That article was utter rubbish. Firstly, Greenspan admits that the U.S. bears no default risk since all of it's debt is issued in it's own currency, unlike Greece. Secondly, Greenspan obfuscates this fact by claiming borrowing costs will soar, and yet the author admits, "Of course, market participants are aware of our towering deficit, and yet yields continue their long march lower, so that's kind of problematic to his world view." In other words, our situation is not remotely comparable to Greece, and never will be. A more relevant comparison would be Japan, who's debt is 230% of GDP and yet has the lowest borrowing costs in the world and has suffered deflation for the past 20 years. Obviously then, like Japan, the numbers we should be worried about is 21.1% real unemployment, not federal deficits or public debt. |
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