TEACHING AMERICANS TO HATE THEIR COUNTRY: THE PLAYBOOK OF THE LEFT !

[LordBeaverbrook]

Originally Posted by joe bloe

"Trends that can not continue will not continue." Herbert Stein

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Stein

Yeah, they said that about computer memory and processors with regard to Moore's Law and apparently were wrong about what could not continue.

"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." Mark Twain

My point is that we have had national debt and deficits for almost the entirety of 237 years so that is a trend that apparently can continue. Other countries have had lots more debt and deficits than we have and been stable (Japan and Italy for two) so that is possible. I'm concerned that by focusing solely on reducing the debt and deficit we may be prescribing a "cure" that is worse than the disease. If not, why not. No one can say, they just parrot the line that we must balance the budget and get rid of our deficits.

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by austxjr

Oh, and I just noticed that the liberal rag, WSJ, and that crazy commie Rupert Murdo ch put out more libtard propaganda again:
Obama spending binge never happened



Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.



That should get a shitstorm going again LOL

I certainly have no interest in starting another "shitstorm" -- Lord knows there are enough of those around here already! But Rex Nutting didn't exactly take a careful look at what actually happened before writing that piece. It's simply B.S.

Someone actually started a thread on that very article lsat year:

http://www.eccie.net/showthread.php?t=455840

My responses were offered in post nos. 10, 14, and 20.

Also note that Glenn Kessler, the guy who writes The Washington Post "fact-checker" column was similarly unimpressed with Nutting's "anaysis," and he's not exactly a conservative:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...h6nU_blog.html

You will see that Kessler rated Carney's defense of the article three "pinocchios." Not exactly a very impressive piece of work on Mr. Nutting's part.

Originally Posted by austxjr

The Brits too had a housing bubble and had grown their economy on gimmicky financial services. I was in London when the first bank there, Northern Rock, suffered a bank run. It has since been bought out by Virgin and the brand retired, but I'd have to disagree that voters here or there have completely brought it on themselves. Ultimately, voters are the ones who are responsible, but some corporations, particularly in the financial sector, through their short sightedness, lobbying, political donations, focus mainly on quarterly profits and poor management of risk have foisted this on us as well. I honestly don't think that the voters could really have been educated enough to fully understand how dangerous our position was and in many ways still is.

No doubt that voters cannot reasonably have been expected to understand the precariousness of the financial situation, but I don't think that's what the author was referring to. Rather, I think his point was that they respond to politicians' promises of ever-expanding levels of welfare and entitlement benefits.

Perhaps that's not quite the case in Britain, but in the U.S. voters have been promised growing levels of benefits accompanied by assurances that only taxpayers in the top one or two percentage points of the income distribution will pay for all the additional spending. Every numerate individual knows that can't be sustained over the long term without serious risk of destabilizing the monetary system or reducing prospects for robust future economic growth.

If middle class American voters begin to feel that they might be called upon to taste the joy of helping to pay for our rapidly growing burden of government spending, they might begin to view things a little differently.

[joe bloe]

Originally Posted by austxjr

Yeah, they said that about computer memory and processors with regard to Moore's Law and apparently were wrong about what could not continue.

"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." Mark Twain

My point is that we have had national debt and deficits for almost the entirety of 237 years so that is a trend that apparently can continue. Other countries have had lots more debt and deficits than we have and been stable (Japan and Italy for two) so that is possible. I'm concerned that by focusing solely on reducing the debt and deficit we may be prescribing a "cure" that is worse than the disease. If not, why not. No one can say, they just parrot the line that we must balance the budget and get rid of our deficits.

The increase in debt is exponential. Yes we have added to the debt year after year for over over two hundred years. That doesn't mean we can continue to add to it for another two hundred years. It took two hundred years to accumulate the first trillion dollars in debt; now we do that every year. The snowball is at the bottom of the hill.

I'm not not sure Moore's law is an example of a trend that can not continue. I hope it does. Ray Kurzweil thinks it will. He predicts that by 2045 the sum total of scientific knowledge will increase a billion fold, based on the assumption that Moore's Law is accurate.

Here's why we can't continue adding to the debt:

If you start with 1 penny and double your money every day how much will you have in 30 days?

Answer:

It depends on whether you count the first day in the 30 days.
If you have one cent and on the "first day" you have 2 cents, and as day 1 is equal to 21 then your value on day 30 is equal to 230 cents ($10,737,418.24)

This exponential function can be represented by the equation: f(x) = 0.01(2x) where x = the day number. If you plug in 30 for x, you get f(x) = 0.01×230 = 10,737,418.24

Here's a slower method of finding the answer:
Day 0 .01
Day 1 .02
Day 2 .04
Day 3 .08
Day 4 .16
Day 5 .32
Day 6 .64
Day 7 1.28
Day 8 2.56
Day 9 5.12
Day 10 10.24
Day 11 20.48
Day 12 40.96
Day 13 81.92
Day 14 163.84

Day 15 327.68
Day 16 655.36
Day 17 1,310.72
Day 18 2,621.44
Day 19 5,242.88
Day 20 10,485.76
Day 21 20,971.52
Day 22 41,943.04
Day 23 83,886.08
Day 24 167,772.16
Day 25 335,544.32
Day 26 671,088.64
Day 27 1,342,177.28
Day 28 2,684,354.56
Day 29 5,368,709.12
Day 30 10,737,418.24

[LordBeaverbrook]

Here, for example, is excellent advice from the deservedly respected (and thoroughly pro-market) economic columnist Martin Wolf, offered last week in the Financial Times: “The federal government is not on the verge of bankruptcy. If anything, the tightening has been too much and too fast. The fiscal position is also not the most urgent economic challenge. It is far more important to promote recovery. The challenges in the longer term are to raise revenue while curbing the cost of health. Meanwhile, people, just calm down.”

[joe bloe]

Originally Posted by austxjr

Here, for example, is excellent advice from the deservedly respected (and thoroughly pro-market) economic columnist Martin Wolf, offered last week in the Financial Times: “The federal government is not on the verge of bankruptcy. If anything, the tightening has been too much and too fast. The fiscal position is also not the most urgent economic challenge. It is far more important to promote recovery. The challenges in the longer term are to raise revenue while curbing the cost of health. Meanwhile, people, just calm down.”

What "fiscal tightening" is he talking about? Is this year's budget going to be less than last year's? No of course not. We haven't cut anything. The fiscal cliff negotiations resulted in forty dollars of tax increases for every dollar in so called cuts.

We are not curbing the cost of healthcare. Obamacare is a disaster. It's not going to slow the increase in debt; it's going accelerate it. The initial phony cost estimates for Obamacare were under one trillion dollars for the first ten years; now the estimate has been revised to 2.6 trillion. That's not an honest mistake; that's fraud.

America is broke because of out of control entitlement spending. If we don't make real substantial cuts in entitlement spending we're screwed.

If you search around you can always find an econonmist that will say just about anything. I'm sure there were Greek economists that said there was nothing to worry about five years ago.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/...de_648413.html

[CuteOldGuy]

Martin Wolf is the consummate insider. This is from his Wiki page:

Wolf was joint winner of the Wincott Foundation senior prize for excellence in financial journalism in both 1989 and 1997. He won the RTZ David Watt memorial prize in 1994. In 2000. Wolf was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire). He was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by the University of Nottingham in 2006, and was made Doctor of Science (Economics) of University of London, honoris causa, by the London School of Economics in the same year.

Wolf is a regular participant in the annual Bilderberg meetings of politicians and bankers. He is visiting fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, a Special Professor at the University of Nottingham and an honorary fellow of the Oxford Institute for Economic Policy. He has been a forum fellow at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos since 1999.[5] Wolf has been named in the top 100 lists of global thinkers by Prospect [6] and by Foreign Policy magazine. [7]

Wolf is regarded as "staggeringly well connected" within elite financial circles.[1] His friends include leading financiers such as Mohamed A. El-Erian; politicians such as Manmohan Singh, Timothy Geithner and Ed Balls; many leading economists; central bankers such as Mervyn King: according to Wolf, he knows all significant central bankers.[1] Despite Wolf's close connections with the powerful, he is trusted for his independence and is known to criticise initiatives promoted by his friends when he considers it to be in the public's interests.[1] Wolf is widely regarded as one of the most influential economics journalists in the world. Lawrence H. Summers has called him "the world's preeminent financial journalist"[8] Mohamed A. El-Erian, CEO of the world's largest bond investor, said Wolf is "by far, the most influential economic columnist out there".[1] Paul Krugman wrote of him that "Wolf doesn't even have a PhD. And that matters not at all; what he has is a keen sense of observation, a level head, and an open mind."[9] Prospect magazine described him as "the Anglosphere's most influential finance journalist" [6], while economist Kenneth Rogoff has said, "He really is the premier financial and economics writer in the world".[1]

He's a banker's economist. An elitist, statist extraordinaire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Wolf

[joe bloe]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

Martin Wolf is the consummate insider. This is from his Wiki page:

Wolf was joint winner of the Wincott Foundation senior prize for excellence in financial journalism in both 1989 and 1997. He won the RTZ David Watt memorial prize in 1994. In 2000. Wolf was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire). He was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by the University of Nottingham in 2006, and was made Doctor of Science (Economics) of University of London, honoris causa, by the London School of Economics in the same year.

Wolf is a regular participant in the annual Bilderberg meetings of politicians and bankers. He is visiting fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, a Special Professor at the University of Nottingham and an honorary fellow of the Oxford Institute for Economic Policy. He has been a forum fellow at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos since 1999.[5] Wolf has been named in the top 100 lists of global thinkers by Prospect [6] and by Foreign Policy magazine. [7]

Wolf is regarded as "staggeringly well connected" within elite financial circles.[1] His friends include leading financiers such as Mohamed A. El-Erian; politicians such as Manmohan Singh, Timothy Geithner and Ed Balls; many leading economists; central bankers such as Mervyn King: according to Wolf, he knows all significant central bankers.[1] Despite Wolf's close connections with the powerful, he is trusted for his independence and is known to criticise initiatives promoted by his friends when he considers it to be in the public's interests.[1] Wolf is widely regarded as one of the most influential economics journalists in the world. Lawrence H. Summers has called him "the world's preeminent financial journalist"[8] Mohamed A. El-Erian, CEO of the world's largest bond investor, said Wolf is "by far, the most influential economic columnist out there".[1] Paul Krugman wrote of him that "Wolf doesn't even have a PhD. And that matters not at all; what he has is a keen sense of observation, a level head, and an open mind."[9] Prospect magazine described him as "the Anglosphere's most influential finance journalist" [6], while economist Kenneth Rogoff has said, "He really is the premier financial and economics writer in the world".[1]

He's a banker's economist. An elitist, statist extraordinaire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Wolf

So Paul Krugman has given his seal of approval to Wolf. That settles it; he must be clueless. When are we going to stop taking advice from English economists? FDR's favorite economist was John Maynard Keynes; he was English too. The Great Depression might have ended much sooner except for Keynes' screwball theories.

[acp5762]

Originally Posted by WTF

God made me say that!

Prove it, lol.

[Whirlaway]

Compounding interest is both the best and most evil invention of mankind !

For the frugal and smart it is a blessing; for the dumb and spendthrift it is pure evil.

[joe bloe]

Originally Posted by Whirlaway

Compounding interest is both the best and most evil invention of mankind !

For the frugal and smart it is a blessing; for the dumb and spendthrift it is pure evil.

Exactly right. If someone saves and invests for retirement his whole life, the last few years before he retires, his principal is growing really fast because of compound interest. That's why you have to start saving early and let time work for you. America has done the opposite of a what a wise frugal investor does. We've been borrowing year after year and paying interest on top of interest so that now the debt has exploded. We've got a nightmare instead of a happy ending.

[Randy4Candy]

Well, golly gee-whiz there Trendaway. Since everything's so goddam perfect here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Teawipes, why do you have anything to say?