[Lemmy]

andyandy wrote:

Hint: he's got something that Lemmy doesn't.

Leafs' season tickets? Italian sportscar? Religion? Moose-antlered eggnog glasses? Small penis? I give up...

[ShepherdsDog]

Quote:

Leafs' season tickets

Quote:

Small penis

I thought they went hand in hand(pun slightly intended)

[raydan]

Who cares, I'm sure Lemmy has plenty of things that person doesn't have.

[andyt]

Turns out I was wrong. But he did say this:

Quote:

In September 2006, he foresaw the end of the real estate bubble: "When supply increases, prices fall: that’s been the trend for 110 years, since 1890. But since 1997, real home prices have increased by about 90 percent. There is no economic fundamental—real income, migration, interest rates, demographics—that can explain this. It means there was a speculative bubble. And now that bubble is bursting." In the Spring 2006 issue of International Finance, he wrote an article titled "Why Central Banks Should Burst Bubbles"[11] in which he argued that central banks should take action against asset bubbles. When asked whether the real estate ride was over, he said, "Not only is it over, it’s going to be a nasty fall."[12]

[BartSimpson]

I agree with a lot of the naysayers on the US economy. Things cannot get better until we have a manufacturing base again and between the environmentalists and the unions there's not much reason for investors to set up factories in the USA. We need to take a critical look at our legal and regulatory environment if we're to be serious about the economy.

Otherwise I'm going to side with this guy:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html

Indicators that the Russian fellow may well be right about the breakup of the USA are sadly becoming more and more numerous these days.

Law enforcement in several states are now requiring Federal regulatory agencies to obtain warrants before forcibly entering any private properties in their jurisdictions. The US Dept. of Agriculture caused this particular problem by 'inspecting' the farms and ranches of politically active people as much as thirty times in one calendar month. Typical farms and ranches are inspected once in every five years or more.

California no longer allows local law enforcement to assist the US Dept. of Education's SWAT teams to invade the homes of people who are defaulting on their student loans...(you can't make this kind of sh*t up).

http://reason.com/blog/2011/06/08/dept- ... at-team-up

Arizona has launched its own investigation of the Federal Government's "Fast & Furious" program that deliberately sent thousands of weapons into Mexico and whose architect, Attorney General Eric Holder, is now refusing to answer questions to Congress.

A court in Georgia may well prohibit Obama from appearing on the ballot in that state unless he satisfies the court that he is Constitutionally allowed to be on the ballot. The state has the right to regulate its own elections (something the Supreme Court affirmed in the 2000 election) and the Federal courts have been rebuffed in their attempts to shut down this particular court proceeding.

On the opposite end of the political spectrum is the Occupy crowd that has been openly condemning the Federal government for various and myriad actions and inactions.

While none of these things on their own are terribly remarkable, it is the sum of these things that indicates that the Federal government is losing the effective authority to govern. Their credibility is hurting on all sides and when the one thing that left and right agree on is that the Fed has lost its mandate then there won't be a Federal government anymore.

And that may well prove the Russian guy to be right.

[andyt]

BartSimpson wrote:

I agree with a lot of the naysayers on the US economy. Things cannot get better until we have a manufacturing base again and between the environmentalists and the unions there's not much reason for investors to set up factories in the USA. We need to take a critical look at our legal and regulatory environment if we're to be serious about the economy.

So the corporations bear no responsibility for hollowing out the middle class? If you make all the people who had good manufacturing jobs work at Chinese level wages to bring back manufacturing to the US, how will they have the money to drive consumer demand? Hell, how will they eat at the much higher cost of living in the US vs China?

[BartSimpson]

andyt wrote:

So the corporations bear no responsibility for hollowing out the middle class? If you make all the people who had good manufacturing jobs work at Chinese level wages to bring back manufacturing to the US, how will they have the money to drive consumer demand? Hell, how will they eat at the much higher cost of living in the US vs China?

For such a smart guy you are terribly one-dimensional when it comes to this topic.

Let me run this past you one more time:

Corporations are proportional democracies in which the owners (or 'citizens') have a voice proportional to their stake in the corporation.

Insurance companies and pension funds tend to be the top tier investors on Wall Street and they demand increasing profits in order to satisfy claims and pension earnings projections and obligations.

One example is CalPERS:

Attachment:

File comment: CalPERS 2011 Top Ten Investments

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Here's an example of a public employee's pension fund that demands increased profitability from private corporations in order to meet the pension obligations it has to retired Union members.

The corporations have to listen to CalPERS because it has a proportional stake in the corporate democracy.

So they cut jobs in the US and move jobs overseas in order to increase profits at the expense of workers in the USA. The firms also get into the kind of financial shenanigans we saw in the past 20 years that also served to gin up near-magical rates of return.

At the end of the day the corporations are not being punished because they did what the middle class effectively told them to do via their insurance company and pension fund and mutual fund proxies. And to cause material harm to those corporations that you so ferevently hate will cause insurance policies and pension funds and mutual funds to become insolvent when they cannot meet their obligations to retirees.

What this comes down to, Andy, is that if you and your friends on the left ever got you way and had all of the corporations wiped out then tens of millions of the elderly would be penniless over night. And then you won't be able to provide government aid to them because the key source of government revenues - corporate payroll taxes - will no longer exist.

You may hate corporations, Andy, but I'd be deeply surprised if you're not dependent upon them in almost every aspect of your daily life from when you get up to when you go back to bed.

[andyt]

Yet you say yourself, it's the corps that gutted the middle class. You're not going to have much of an America with huge profitable corporations but everybody who isn't in corp top management poor because you want to turn the US into China. The corps themselves will collapse, because the US economy is driven by consumer demand. Kick the shit out of the consumer, no corp profits either.

What you say may be true, that pension plans are in part responsible for corp actions. But the average person who is part of that pension plan is not going to know what the ramifications are of the plan demanding ever more profits. Hence you need a govt that does know to regulate that. And a good govt pension plan system that can be regulated to invest in what's best for the country overall, instead of all these private plans in a race to the bottom. Would take visionary leaders to bring that in tho.

You may love corporations, but it doesn't take away from the fact the corporations as currently constituted are what's destroying the American middle class, and the political process as well.

[BartSimpson]

andyt wrote:

Yet you say yourself, it's the corps that gutted the middle class. You're not going to have much of an America with huge profitable corporations but everybody who isn't in corp top management poor because you want to turn the US into China. The corps themselves will collapse, because the US economy is driven by consumer demand. Kick the shit out of the consumer, no corp profits either.

Have you ever seen any of those experiments where a researcher has three or four kids around a table and he puts a piece of candy on the table and then tells the kids that if no one touches that piece of candy for an hour then each kid will get a whole BOX of candy...and then one of the kids snags the single piece anyway even though he'd have been better off waiting? Adults are just little kids in big bodies who will seek out their immediate gratification even though it may cause them ruin eventually.

Most of your fellow citizens would sell your future if it meant they got a better return on investments and they'd justify it by saying their kid needs braces or etc. so the fact that you and your kid are homeless is sadm, but not their problem.

That's the larger dynamic at play here is the anonymity of the market.

andyt wrote:

What you say may be true, that pension plans are in part responsible for corp actions. But the average person who is part of that pension plan is not going to know what the ramifications are of the plan demanding ever more profits. Hence you need a govt that does know to regulate that.

Except the government was complicit in what happened, wasn't it? Therefore more government will not solve the problem, will it?

andyt wrote:

And a good govt pension plan system that can be regulated to invest in what's best for the country overall, instead of all these private plans in a race to the bottom.

You're referring to socially responsible investment funds.

Here's how they did last month:

Attachment:

File comment: SRI

SRI fund performance.JPG [ 24.58 KiB | Viewed 85 times ]

If you like negative returns then these funds are a great place to lose your money. But if you're a pension fund manager with thousands of retirees depending on you to keep them out of poverty you'll choose better places to put your money.

andyt wrote:

Would take visionary leaders to bring that in tho.

Visionary leaders tend to end up as dictators or failures. I'll take pragmatism and realism in bad times, such as these, and save the fantasies for times when we can afford them.

andyt wrote:

You may love corporations, but it doesn't take away from the fact the corporations as currently constituted are what's destroying the American middle class, and the political process as well.

Right. And unions and Byzantine government regulations have helped so much and what we really need are MORE unions and a MORE intrusive and overbearing government.

It never fails to amaze me that leftists like yourself will never hesitate to rail at the government when it intrudes on you in your home but then you think it's a hot idea to have that same government commit the same abuses on other people in their businesses.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Quote:

It never fails to amaze me that leftists like yourself will never hesitate to rail at the government when it intrudes on you in your home but then you think it's a hot idea to have that same government commit the same abuses on other people in their businesses.

In all fairness, I can only screw so many people at one time in my home.

[Bruce_E_T]

BartSimpson wrote:

You may hate corporations, Andy, but I'd be deeply surprised if you're not dependent upon them in almost every aspect of your daily life from when you get up to when you go back to bed.

I think if you toss in smaller, privately owned businesses like retailers, food processors, manufacturers, even Corner stores the influence would be overwhelming. That is why there are so few pure Leftists around and why it is not popular in the political arena.

One thing that does really bother me about what is going on:

Quote:

At the end of the day the corporations are not being punished because they did what the middle class effectively told them to do via their insurance company and pension fund and mutual fund proxies. And to cause material harm to those corporations that you so fervently hate will cause insurance policies and pension funds and mutual funds to become insolvent when they cannot meet their obligations to retirees.

This obligation to Pension Funds and "obligations to retirees" looks like an Albatross that is choking the advancement of the rest of society. These contracts and agreements were established years ago in an economic environment much different than that of today. By today's standards they look rather extravagant but we seem to be stuck with them anyway. This was certainly a factor in the GM bankruptcy as well as numerous plant closings.

[BartSimpson]

Bruce_E_T wrote:

This obligation to Pension Funds and "obligations to retirees" looks like an Albatross that is choking the advancement of the rest of society. These contracts and agreements were established years ago in an economic environment much different than that of today. By today's standards they look rather extravagant but we seem to be stuck with them anyway. This was certainly a factor in the GM bankruptcy as well as numerous plant closings.

BINGO!!!!!

That is exactly right! This is part of why we're seeing politicians in the USA (both Democrat and Republican) starting to call for an end to the public employee pension systems with their stated benefit guarantees.

Private firms and the general taxpayers have no such pensions these days and they have to get by with what they get from their savings and their 401(k) programs and if that's good enough for everyone else then it's good enough for government workers, too.

The greeter at Wal Mart who's barely getting by on $1,000 a month should not be made to pay higher taxes so the University Chancellor, retired legislator, or 25 year union member state worker can take in six digit pension payouts every year.

[martin14]

PublicAnimalNo9 wrote:

Quote:

It never fails to amaze me that leftists like yourself will never hesitate to rail at the government when it intrudes on you in your home but then you think it's a hot idea to have that same government commit the same abuses on other people in their businesses.

In all fairness, I can only screw so many people at one time in my home.

Buy a bigger house, or get a bigger dick.