jon
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Falling oil prices are not deflationary because with a limited tank size, you won't put off your purchase of gas waiting for the price to fall. The few cents you would save aren't worth the hassle. Failing electronics prices are to a greater exte…
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If everyone becomes self-sufficient the economy will disappear. If everyone is self-sufficient that becomes a problem. If someone is self-sufficient then it doesn't matter to them whether there is an economy or not, except that house prices a…
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I think your fishing analogy is too confining. The economy is only limited by our own ingenuity. So besides fish there are all kinds of innovative ways to increase food production. That's why Malthus's theory didn't mesh up with the data. Many peopl…
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What region does that cover? I think it makes more sense to compare it to monthly sales rather than inventory. For KC, Sep sales were 1872. So foreclosures are 32% of that.
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There is some relevant points here: http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/31/news/ec ... /index.htm Specifically, the bottom 40% of Americans by income had, in the aggregate, an effective tax rate that's negative: their households received more mon…
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Consider how many died during much of European history due to the feudal system - a system that redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich - from causes ranging from illness to malnourishment to wars. The main difference between this exam…
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Jon, what's wrong with a little bit of wealth distribution? Don't you think society would be better off with lower income inequality? Isn't it up to government to make that happen? I would have thought that the tens of millions of people that…
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No thanks, I'm saving up my meds for Election Night. With the now nationalized banking industry, and soon health care industry, measures like the proposal from the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Rangel, to eliminate mortga…
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It lets you put the social areas like the living room and kitchen upstairs where there is more view and light. The den and kids' rooms get stuck downstairs.
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Broad home- and stock-ownership in the United States and overseas is a good thing. But limits need to be set. Oh great, he wants us to have to get the government's permission before we buy a house or stocks. Diversifying away your ownershi…
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So given this, how did they drive home prices up? I don't understand your focus on prior to 2004. The composite CSI is now back to 2004 levels, which is when things started to get crazy at the FMs. At that time the private sector had provided…
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Given that the CRA was enacted in 1977 and the current bubble occurred much later, I would guess it had little or no effect on prices. From http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... tBody;col1 From the inception of Fannie Mae's CRA init…
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Even though a particular loan is not issued through a bank that is subject to CRA, it still was affected. With the CRA bringing in unqualified buyers to the market, it drives up comps and so the other lenders are lending more money for houses than t…
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These quants and traders are doing resource allocation at a larger scale. They are creating value and are taking a share of that value for themselves in reward. In theory yes, but they seem to be doing more damage than good. The problem is th…
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jon, if it causes more harm to the US (more terrorism, beheadings, whatever), are you still okay with it? The point I was replying to was "We've destroyed our moral high ground via torture." According to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/1839966…
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You might not like it, I know I don't, but we look really bad as a nation because of this. We did it a total of three times to Al Qaeda members. http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/200 ... only-.html If all three prevented just one behe…
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"If true, these people are fighting for their jobs. How can you fault them?" Their jobs are not in any kind of danger unless their salary demands get out of line. They are going after more union power by preventing Boeing from shifting to other a…
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I agree that caps would cause the number of companies competing to grow. At first that sounds good, but it is a very risky thing for the country because other countries are also moving towards very large corporations, and small American companies w…
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"Also, I wouldn't be against exempting stock options, or other performance based pay from this rule. It seems fair to give the CEO additional pay on the condition that the company does well." Problem is that options encourage the high-risk, d…
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Interesting article here on the history of how lending standards were dropped: http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/31/news/mn-42807 Minorities' Home Ownership Booms Under Clinton but Still Lags Whites' By Ronald Brownstein May 31, 1999 in …
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I agree with you to a point, however with the exception of the above words about Fannie/Freddie, he did nothing to try and stop this from happening. Rather he continued playing his "our economy is strong" fiddle for the last few years. He tri…
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This guy seems to be saying that the cause of the problem is also the cure for the problem. No, he's saying that's not cause, but is part of the cure. The cause seems to be the failure of the Senate Banking committee in 2005 to put a stop …
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Instapundit has some good comments on this: http://www.pajamasmedia.com/instapundit ... 024641.php "The majority of left-wing blogs are absolutely loving the financial crisis. It's the rapture of the marxists.""
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Billing the taxpayers for sleeping in her own bed and eating in her own dining room... sounds a bit like pork, or maybe even fraud. Also sounds a lot like "same politics, different name." http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?d ... 24&cpage=1…
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Probably fraud. Or death in the family, or loss of job.
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If I was a voter interested in deciding which of two candidates was more likely to produce change, I would look for evidence of disgruntled dirty cops, a handful of angry employees with exaggerated claims, and angry Senate leaders. If one campaign d…
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Regarding the NAFTA memo thing, I just came across an article in the latest issue of https://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/21220/ where they interview Austan Goolsbee, Obama's economics advisor. They mention his discussion with the Canadian offi…
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BTW tarzanchuck, it was Hillary, not Obama. That link didn't work for me. This is what I recall: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/us/po ... html?fta=y Update: OK, I removed the extra "url" and read that link. It seems to be a unamed so…
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#6 is set by congress, the president just signs off on it. So, no that is not the presidents job. This is exactly the type of thing I mean when I say people misunderstand what the presidents job is. According to the constitution yes, but the …
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1) Sign laws. 2) Assign Justices. 3) Serve as chief diplomat. 4) Declare war. 5) Figurative role to rally the spirit of the American people. I probably missed a few, but I think that suffices Not for me it doesn't. 6) Budget and adm…