Talk about politics and the global/national economy to your heart’s content, as much as it takes to get it out of your system so the rest of the site can stick to real estate and housing.
For previous economic open threads, click here.
As of 09/07/2010, global economic comments that do not directly relate to Seattle-area real estate go only in threads designated for this specific subject.






By Blurtman @ 77:
if it would severly impact the economy- yes.
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By Blurtman @ 84:
GS hedged it’s hedges…
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 94:
huh?
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RE: pfft @ 103 – California forced utilities to sell of generation capacity and prevented them from entering into long term contracts.
California regulated consumer prices on electricity at very low levels, like China and some third world countries regulate the price of gasoline.
Those regulations drove up the price of energy, and cost the west coast billions of dollars.
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News on one of our favorite topics–student loan debt–this time in the context of bankruptcy.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/college/story/2012-02-08/student-debt-looming-economic-bomb/53010440/1
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 98:
man you couldn’t be more wrong. do you not have google?
http://occupywallst.org/about/
the tea party hurt the republican party more than it helped. they probably lost the Senate because of the tea party.
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 100:
it won’t hurt employment. studies show the rich don’t respond much to higher taxes. we raised taxes in the 90s on those people. how did that work out?
we lowered taxes on those people in the 2000s, how did that work out?
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RE: pfft @ 102 – I bet I can provide more sources that GS would have gone BK without the AIG bailout than you can provide supporting the opposite position.
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 4:
1. source.
2. we aren’t going over this again. power companies like enron caused the energy crisis in california. that’s been proven.
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By Blurtman @ 8:
GS had hedges on hedges. we all would be bankrupt if AIG went under.
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By pfft @ 106:
I noted above that they managed to get some Democrats elected by getting too conservative of a Republican on the ballot.
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By pfft @ 9:
You aren’t even familiar with the California energy legislation which lead to the crisis, but you somehow think you know what caused it! LOL
You swallowed the story told by the Democrats and Republicans which passed the legislation nearly unanimously.
What caused the crisis was too low of retail prices. Enron took advantage of that to some extent, but not 20+ billion. What solved the crises was raising retail prices. That was proven.
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By pfft @ 6:
Is there something there I’m supposed to look at which indicates OWS has accomplished anything? Or is it just that they created a website? I’ll give you that accomplishment–they have a website.
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By pfft @ 109:
Read this section (four paragraphs):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis#Effects_of_partial_deregulation
“involved the partial divestiture in March 1998 of electricity generation stations by the incumbent utilities,” In other words they had to sell off capacity.
“he utilities were then required to buy their electricity from the newly created day-ahead only market, the California Power Exchange” In other words, no long term contracts.
“When electricity wholesale prices exceeded retail prices, end user demand was unaffected, but the incumbent utility companies still had to purchase power, albeit at a loss. This allowed independent producers to manipulate prices in the electricity market by withholding electricity generation, ” In other words, the low prices allowed market manipulation to take place.
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By pfft @ 107:
You’re not listening. I don’t have a problem with raising taxes on people who earn more money. I’m talking about only lowering taxes on entities that employ people in their business.
So, if you make $2,000,000 a year as a CEO, higher taxes. As I’ve said before, that will only have minor indirect impact in that purchases will be less at Tiffany’s, and the pool boy will come by less frequently.
If you’re a company that makes $2,000,000 a year employing people in your business, lower taxes.
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RE: pfft @ 110 – RE: pfft @ 110 – Proof, please. And we all would not have been BK if AIG went under. If you really believe such fairy tales, you should lobby the the break-up of the much larger TBTF’s.
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 112:
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 13:
you said what do they stand for. I posted what they stand for.
maybe you should go to their General Assembly and speak to the group and ask what they stand for.
if they were a corporation you would defend them.
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 14:
NO!!!!!!!! they took capacity off.
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By Blurtman @ 16:
first of all we don’t know for sure so I could say to you prove they would lose $10 billion. secondly these contracts are usually cash settled so at the end of each day AIG would have to post billions in collateral so the loses would have been less than $10 billion.
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By pfft @ 117:
Are you being purposefully dense? But for the low retail prices, taking plants off line and all of the other things (routing power to appear it came from out of state, etc.) would not have been done, because it would not have accomplished anything.
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RE: pfft @ 18 – I was asking what part indicates what they stand for? I’m not going to read an entire website. I read the page that you linked and it didn’t say squat. What link and I supposed to click?
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RE: pfft @ 19 – There’s a comment awaiting moderation, but the price restrictions came first. Without them none of the market manipulation stuff would have happened, because it wouldn’t have done anything.
You needed to have a shortage first, and the shortage was caused by too low of retail prices.
This is really basic economics. Economics 101.
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pfft, maybe this will make you understand.
In the 70s, as a result of the OPEC oil embargo, the government instituted price controls. Those price controls resulted in long gasoline lines and rationing. As a result, some people did things to get around the rationing and to profit from the shortage.
If you had been around back then, commenting on the situation, you’d be arguing that those getting around the rationing and profiting had cause the shortages! They didn’t. They were just reacting to the market conditions.
In both cases (California and 70s gas) the problem (blackout and lines) were caused by too low of retail prices. As a result of those too low of prices, bad things happened.
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Thank you for the link to Occupy Wall Street dot org.
The web site clearly sets out the how to of protest. It also states that this is a global movement. It may be nothing here in the United States, but in other parts of the world it has much greater impact.
This is kind of like those people who protested for a decade against the Iraq war. It was a much smaller group that kept up awareness about the war. We need much more awareness of the financial markets, and the damage they are doing.
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By David Losh @ 25:
LOL. The most inefficient and ineffective (if not counterproductive) protest of your lifetime and you’re going to use their site as a how to guide?
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OWS, contributing to putting people out of work.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/02/09/state/n065041S55.DTL
“Oakland has been rocked by Occupy protests that have cost the city more than $3 million and recently cut 105 jobs and $28 million from its budget.”
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 127 – I wonder how many folks the American Revolution put out out of work? Is that the new metric for what is right?
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By Blurtman @ 128:
The difference is the revolution had a chance of accomplishing something, and they had a plan.
If OWS developed a plan I’d cut them a little slack.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 126 –
You really are grasping at anything to make a mockery of one of our rights that most countries don’t embrace, it’s the right to assemble.
You are also not familiar with what the web site is saying. It goes back to the 1970s. It’s a how to peacefully protest web site. In this case the Occupy Wall Street also points out that this is a global protest.
Where have you ever seen that before? You haven’t, no one has, it’s something new.
The internet is a powerful tool. It’s currently being used to organize a global protest. It’s one of the good things we are exporting, rather than the financial scams we call an economy.
They win, you lose.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 129 –
This morning I posted a comment on http://www.occupywallstreet.com/ it was a very barren site.
This afternoon it sprouted into what you see now, interesting, huh?
When I don’t understand something I try to learn about it.
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RE: David Losh @ 31 – RE: David Losh @ 30 – What is it with you and pfft and posting links to websites? Is it that hard to post a link to a specific page?
It would be like if I did this:
Here’s a really interesting story on real estate.
https://www.google.com/
BTW, did love how the protest site wants you to log in through FB.
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By David Losh @ 130:
I do find it a bit ironic that one of the reasons they assemble is to attack the First Amendment (the Citizens’ United case).
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 133 –
Like I said, really grasping.
The first Amendment calls for us to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances”
PAC money is very much to the point of a corporation’s ability to skewe an election. Our fore fathers would be horrified by the size of corporations today.
You still haven’t looked at, or responded to $1.2 Quadrillion in derivatives. Corporations have out grown government.
In my opinion generational wealth are the new monarchies, but that is a personal view, and nothing to do with the Occupy Wall Street movement.
You are throwing out one red herring after another to divert attention from, or be dimissive of, a very powerful, and effective protest.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 32 –
Geez, you didn’t read my comment.
Yesterday morning http://www.occupywallstreet.com had nothing on the page. I posted a comment there, and in the afternoon the page had grown. If you look at it today it has grown again.
The post pfft made was to http://www.occupywallstreet.org I looked up the dot com to find out what happed to that domain name.
This is a growing protest movement. It’s not going away or petering out.
Seriously Kary, what point are you trying to make.
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You seriously think those two website homepages are some sort of a major accomplishment?
I guess I’ll have to admit, OWS has changed the world in a dramatic fashion. /sarcasm.
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By David Losh @ 34:
The founding fathers would have been horrified by Congress and the President enacting a law restricting free speech prior to an election, and then having the Supreme Court hold that as being constitutional. They would have been relieved that decision only lasted less than 10 years.
Neither you nor pfft has made any demonstration as to how OWS has been in any way effective. Merely saying it is effective does not make it effective. You have to point to something they have done (besides create a webpage).
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 113:
you’re just too old to understand!
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 136 –
You aren’t reading the blog site, or the Twitter feeds.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 37 –
PACs advertize. Advertisement is different than free speach. Number one, the PAC is a blind trust. Actually I can’t even believe I’m buying into this tangent.
The Supreme Court recognized corporations as entities with individual rights. That’s something totally different from PACs using those rights to run political ad campaigns. It is however one of the points that should keep the focus of this protest movement on Wall Street, rather than government.
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By pfft @ 38:
If you want to claim that they have accomplished something, you need to say what it is. And then post a link to a specific webpage that indicates that is true.
Deflecting the attention to something else merely indicates I am right. OWS is a completely ineffective organization which has not only failed to accomplish anything, they’ve failed to even come up with an idea of how to accomplish what they want to accomplish.
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By David Losh @ 40:
Wrong. There is commercial speech, where say Macy’s advertises. That is given a lower level of protection. PACs are clearly political speech. Speech is not somehow given less protection because it’s in a TV commercial.
As to the second paragraph, that’s not totally different. That’s what Citizen’s United was about.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 141 –
Now you are discussing your own red herring? Speaking of red, it’s interesting you chose Macy’s as an example. That’s the company that uses the red star of China as a logo.
We have all been duped by the financial markets. It is a global concern for all citizens. It’s not contained in this country, but the financial systems we established here are the global problem.
Our government failed to regulate the financial markets. Those markets went global, and began moving cash to where ever it would make the most, with the least tax consequence. Our government reacted by continually lowering taxes, and giving away tax incentives.
Government all over the world are being held hostage by financial interests.
Greece is stuck because they need business. There is nothing the government can do other than play ball. Greece thought they were to be included in the European Community, but they were only used as another place to genereate interest income. Our form of financial engineering created consumer loans, mortgages, and encouraged the government to pay for infrastructure with other borrowed dollars.
Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Italy followed.
Our political system is for, and by the People. Any time a person, or entity threatens our way of life we have the duty to revolt. It’s our duty, and honor.
The 1% won’t be allowed to keep money from a global swindle. That is a fact of life. There are way more People than there are a 1%. You can talk, the conservative movement can talk, games can be played, but ultimately anarchy is coming out ahead.
Read the blogs, and the Twitter feeds. The Citizen United movement has a long ways to go to catch up. They are late to the game, and wasted a ton of time playing politics in an arena where politics are the enemy.
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By David Losh @ 143:
Huh? Citizen’s United is the Supreme Court case which allowed free speech by PACs.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 144 –
http://www.citizensunited.org/
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This is from President Obama’s weekly address:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/02/11/weekly-address-extending-payroll-tax-cut-middle-class
I remember one of the presidents (HWB???) had a hard time at a check out stand, because he hadn’t faced that reality. Does the current president think that students are making $50,000 a years?
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By David Losh @ 145:
Okay, why are you throwing that out there.
The issue is whether OWS has been at all effective. You can’t prove they are effective by claiming some other entity isn’t. What you have to do is show that they have a policy they want to implement and that they’ve made some progress in implementing it.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 147 –
This is your red herring, that you threw out, I just wanted you to see it.
The accomplishment of Occupy Wall Street, the same as all protest movements, is to increase awareness of an issue.
While most people are focussed on government bail outs, or what the govermnet will do to “fix” things, like the job market, Occupy Wall Street has continued to protest against the problem of the financial markets.
Today the protests are in Greece, and I expect those to go on for some time. Italy, France, and Spain also have protest movements similarly linked by sites like I showed you. France is by far the most militant of the European group, they are also the oldest, and most organized.
In the few next months we’ll see what the main event will be here in the United States, but the call, today, from the link of http://www.occupywallstreet.com is Chicago on May 1st. We’ll see because the movement is fluid.
By the way, telling anarchists to be more organized is off the point. A protest is to increase awareness of the problem.
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A lot of people have cancer. My prior sentence just made more people aware of that. I’ve accomplished something in the fight against cancer.
I’m sorry, but if you don’t at least offer a solution, you haven’t accomplished squat.
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 149:
yet you refuse to acknowledge they have positions when I post a list of what they want…
nobody is this obtuse. you say you disagree with them yet you don’t know what they stand for.
I repeat again. as soon as OWS is incorporated you’ll defend them…
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By pfft @ 50:
Post a link to where you did that. The reason I haven’t acknowledged that is because you haven’t done that. I’ve asked repeatedly. I’m sorry if I somehow missed it, but if I did, post a link to that post, or if it is in this thread, give a post number.
Oh, and btw, making wealth distribution more equal doesn’t count. I want to see how they propose to do that, not that they want to.
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 151:
gosh you really don’t pay attention. they want higher taxes on the rich.
why are you making this so hard? I can give many accomplishments. renewed focus on inequality. In NY Cuomo was going to let the millionaires tax expire but OWS helped bring that issue to light. all of the sudden the President is giving OWS-sounding speeches. Even Republicans are sounding like OWS. OWS is bringing attention to fracking and to the militarization of police forces. the list goes on and on. if you want a long set of demands and protestors to run for office you’re missing the point.
you’re still to old and corporate to understand.
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I can’t believe you can’t figure out what OWS is about. I posted this link and you even discussed it. the only conclusion I can come to is you don’t want to understand….
http://occupywallst.org/about/
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RE: pfft @ 152 –
Then you’re to young to understand.
New York City General Assembly is a problem of confused complaints without solutions.
Occupy Wall Street allowed them to speak for them. It’s what causes a lot of the confusion that the public has. It’s called red baiting. The term socialist gets thrown around, but ultimately the conservative movement falls back on Cold War tactics of labeling people communists.
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By pfft @ 52:
So this organization which started in 2011 has accomplished getting President Obama to ask for something he has been asking for since 2009? Wow, I had no idea how incredibly effective OWS has been. /sarc
Also, you really don’t pay attention! I’ve said they need to ask for things which are not counter-productive. Things which cost jobs. So if they want to ask for higher taxes, fine, but then need to finesse that in a way that doesn’t put people out of work.
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By pfft @ 53:
I haven’t asked what they’re about. I’ve asked what they’ve accomplished. Apparently you don’t want to understand. I’m claiming they haven’t accomplished a thing, and you have failed to refute that.
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By pfft @ 52:
We now have one accomplishment posted here. A tax extension at a lower level which was initially opposed because of concerns it would cost jobs in NY. At least that is an accomplishment. Whether it’s good or bad is debatable.
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Pictures of the Obama Recovery for pfffffffft.
http://market-ticker.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?singlepost=2867309
I know, I know- millions, maybe billions, of jobs saved.
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RE: Scotsman @ 158 – Looks like Obama inherited a chocolate sandwich.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 157 –
If you are looking for a daily list of accomplishments I’d suggest you subscribe to some of these sites.
http://occupyseattle.org/
Today it was shutting down the Port of Seattle. It took about a month.
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RE: Scotsman @ 158 –
Do you look at these graphs before you put the links in your comment?
These graphs are showing a recovery.
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RE: David Losh @ 60 – Shutting down the port is not an accomplishment. It just puts people out of work, increases expenses to governments already struggling to provide services, and does little harm to any large entity.
It’s like the tax issue in NY. What they may have accomplished is fewer jobs.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 162 –
An accomplishment is realizing a goal. This is something that they set out to do, and accomplished that. It’s an odd issue, and one I was never aware of until they brought it up, but yes the truckers have been getting short changed.
Did you know that about the truckers? Did you even think about Port services? Because while I was growing up truckers were getting pretty well paid. Costs go up, the price of gas goes up. Did you ever think about these small business owners?
I never did, It was never on my radar, but it is now. That’s one little thing in a global effort.
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RE: David Losh @ 63 – I think it’s a real stretch to give OWS credit for the trucker issue. I didn’t even know that’s what you were talking about when you said shut down the port. I thought it was one of their protests. The Teamsters have more to do with than than OWS.
But accomplishment isn’t merely realizing a goal if the goal is pointless. If that was the case, they’ve achieved their goal of being unemployed for months by spending time in public parks. Not an accomplishment.
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This might create more jobs in this country. If you read far enough down, Apple might not be able to export iPads from China!
http://behindthewall.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/15/10416453-is-apple-over-a-chinese-ibarrel
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 164 –
Take another look today http://occupywallstreet.com/
That’s less than a week later.
You’ve obviously never been involved in a movement. You don’t see the mechanics of it, so you dismiss it until something else happens. Then you say “oh my Goodness, how could this Happen?”
It’s like Health Care Reform. You don’t understand how millions of people worked for decades to get some legislation, any legislation, in place to stop private insurance from murdering people for profit.
You don’t understand that the world is a brutal vicious place that demands strong reaction in order to advance causes. You’ve always played it safe so you never experience the other side of risk.
Some people do sacrifice time, money, and their lives to causes.
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By Scotsman @ 158:
millions of jobs saved and millions added the last 20+ moths. karl is a joke.
Factories Churning Out More Goods Buoy U.S. Growth: Economy
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-15/production-at-u-s-factories-climbs-on-demand-for-automobiles-machinery.html
who said that manufacturing would make a comeback? oh that was me!
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 57:
you forgot the other 4 things I listed.
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 62:
no it means they don’t have to cut programs like school funding. higher taxes on the rich doesn’t impact jobs because they have a lot of disposable income. studies show that countries with a higher progressive tax rate do better.
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By David Losh @ 66:
amen brother.
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“The fact that we’re here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. Leadership means ‘The buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.”
–Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.
Senate Floor Speech
2006
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RE: Scotsman @ 171 –
I was just reading about the Real Estate market in Spain which collapsed in 2008. The Real Estate market is still strong in South America, and China?
There is also the report today that GM had the highest profits since it’s record in 1997, while they are also cutting the pension programs.
GM, record profits, cuts pension plan. Who’s going to pick up that slack? Now multiply that with the millions of Americans who lost billions of dollars in this last economic collapse of the past decade.
Pay attention, because all that economic prosperity from 1998 to today is as false as today’s economic recovery. Tending to our budget is very short sighted, and will only benefit about 1%? of our population?
If the deficit is a problem then all of those very wealthy, really smart, innovative, tax deferred, tax break, government subsidized, and protected, corporations should be having a conference to figure out what to do. They won’t because they would prefer you pay for it.
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By David Losh @ 66:
So you think Obamacare, which calls for more insurance, somehow prevents that?
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By pfft @ 68:
No. I read them and didn’t agree they were an OWS accomplishment. In fact as to Obama, OWS sounds like him and his anti-business rhetoric from 2009.
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By pfft @ 69:
Do better on what scale? What country with a more progressive tax rate has more jobs or produces more goods than the US?
Jobs tend to go to countries with lower tax rates. That’s why manufacturing jobs have been moving out of the US. But go ahead and pretend things are somehow better with higher tax rates.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 175 –
and it just gets better. You presented another straw man that is exactly on point. I’ll address that later.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 73 –
We never got ObamaCare, we got the Tea Party, Republican gift to the Health Insurance Industry. It is however now a part of the public debate.
We need single payer, extension of VA, and Public Health options. It’s one step at a time.
The one step at a time is the part you ignore. It’s a movement.
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RE: David Losh @ 76 – Good luck with that.
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By David Losh @ 77:
Wow, what planet are you from? You think the Tea Party wanted Obamacare?
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 179 –
I’m guessing this one- the unicorns are just out of the frame, to the left, on land:
http://www.popartuk.com/g/l/lgwiz01433+dolphin-universe-planets-waves-and-moonlight-poster.jpg
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“Geithner: Why, no, our new budget does nothing to address America’s long-term fiscal crisis”
They know it’s going to die, but they do nothing.
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/02/16/geithner-why-no-our-new-budget-does-nothing-to-address-americas-long-term-fiscal-crisis/
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 179 –
How quickly we forget that Obamacare was a ten page piece of legislation Obama wanted passed before the summer break. Over the summer the Tea party formed, and Republicans came back with a counter proposal which is what we got.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 75 –
It’s also financial products tax laws that attract business. What do you think generates more profit, manufacuring flat screens, or financing them?
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By Scotsman @ 171:
we weren’t in a liquidity trap back then. now if we didn’t deficit spend we’d be adding to our short-term and long-term debt.
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 74:
oh don’t forget that OWS helped get rid of debit card fees. They also helped with bank transfer day.
if you don’t think that OWS didn’t unmask the militarization of police forces I don’t really know what to tell you.
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 75:
uh jobs are moving back to the US. read the paper…
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By Scotsman @ 81:
it doesn’t do anything for our long-term fiscal “crisis” because it’s a 2012 budget, not a long-term budget.
doesn’t it let the bush tax cuts expire though? that does help our long-term deficits.
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By pfft @ 85:
Wow. Using your criteria for determining what OWS has accomplished, they’ve made the sun rise in the east for the past 9 months.
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RE: pfft @ 86 – This is a discussion of economics at the margin. It’s over your head.
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By David Losh @ 182:
This is a complete fabrication of reality. Obamacare passed with very little support (votes) from Republicans in Congress. Changes were made to get some minor amount of votes from Republicans and Democratic holdouts, but to claim that the bill is somehow a Republican scheme is really twisting reality. Republicans have been trying to repeal it almost since it was enacted.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 190 –
Absolutely they want to repeal it, they never wanted it. Public health, or single payer health insurance would shut down a major source of revenue for millions of companies that have a free pass to do any kind of business they choose.
Private health Insurance kills millions of people while these companies make obscene profits. The Republicans came back from summer break with enough pork to kill Health Care Reform. They never thought it would move forward, but they didn’t have the votes to stop it. They did get the Tea party out of the whole deal. How’s that working?
What Obama said is he wanted the same Health Insurance Congress enjoys to be available to the public. We didn’t get anything near that.
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By David Losh @ 91:
President Obama was extremely hands off in the negotiations regarding changes to the bill. The reason he didn’t get what he wanted is he didn’t try to get what he wanted.
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This could potentially be big news for the economy–probably negative.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/article/global-bank-hub-ready-to-implement-iran/2121420/
It will speed up the impact of sanctions on Iran, possibly resulting in higher oil prices. Maybe faster will be better in the long run, but it’s risky.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 192 –
Not the case at all, Obama made his push before the summer break. The summer break gave us the Tea Party antics, and bolstered the Republican Party.
Obama was smart to stay out of the way. The Republicans got what they wanted, and we got a Health Care Reform. Health care reform will change dramatically by public demand. Don’t worry we will get it right, but we needed the first step which many Presidents have wanted, and none achieved.
But this discussion isn’t about health care, it’s about how a movement progresses. It’s incremental steps, and you will be amazed at what Occupy Wall Street is bringing us.
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By David Losh @ 194:
Again, even accepting that as true, how does it possibly get you to Republicans wanting Obamacare?
Are you also trying to claim that it’s the Tea Party behind the recent rule on contraceptive coverage for employees of Catholic hospitals? Using the same non-logic, that would appear to be the case.
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RE: David Losh @ 191 – RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 195 –
I said was: “Absolutely they want to repeal it, they never wanted it. Public health, or single payer health insurance would shut down a major source of revenue for millions of companies that have a free pass to do any kind of business they choose.”
Republicans threw in every stone they could to derail progress of Health Care Reform.
You are trying to make arguments in this thread that have nothing to do with the discussion of protest movements.
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 190:
the individual mandate was endorsed by many many republicans years ago.
The Tortuous History of Conservatives and the Individual Mandate
http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/02/07/the-tortuous-conservative-history-of-the-individual-mandate/
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 89:
enlighten me oh corporate one.
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Scotsman – So do you think there are people on the forum still who believe that we cannot inflate our way out of the crisis?
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By pfft @ 98:
I’m talking about the types of things that will be major factors in deciding where new jobs are created or jobs relocated. Tax rates are one of those things. Wages are one of those things. Quality of work force is one of those things. Transportation systems is one of those things. A country (or state) can lose on one or even two of those things, but if you’re losing on all of them, you’re in trouble.
But by on the margin what I mean is focusing on things we need to do to win more of those decisions. We could cut the minimum wage to get more jobs here, but somehow that doesn’t sit well with anyone, and for good reason. So one quick alternative is cutting taxes. That is done frequently to get jobs to an area, because governments realize that what they lose in taxes from the corporation they: (1) Won’t get if the jobs are not located there; and (2) Will largely be made up in taxes from the new employees. More to the point I’m trying to make, they realize that those employees with jobs are far better off than if they don’t have them.
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