hey!

Redd!

Hello again, Christy…

Salut! punaise…

hola, Biodun, welcome back Christy.

Yep:

I saw that big spew on MSNBC last night when Alison Stewart was sub’ing for Keith.

Hmmm…Goldberg is a master of ironicalisism.

/s

Hey all — take the spew warnings seriously in this post. Some days, you need a guffaw or two…

Wondered how long it would take you to weigh in on the Mountaineers situation.

“Schlock Doctrine” by Doughy Pantload

Oh yeah…..He’d make a great guest for Book Salon!!!!! ;>

Redd !

You rock beautiful! Am happily home following a week in the frozen wilds of WI – celebrating son’s graduation from nursing school – and sans any tubes connections. So good to have you home from vacation – an early Xmas present if ever there were one. ;~)

Who has the duct tape? I need to wrap it around my head to keep it from exploding.

Seriously though, I think this “left is really right” (or is it the other way around?) might be deliberate, in the sense of making words & labels meaningless, which, in turn has been an important part of the way they try to create their alternate reality.

We should have all the fun with this that it deserves, but we might also consider what part of their agenda this serves & how.

a hearty FU to Rich Rodriguez

RR and UMich couldn’t wait until after the bowls to announce this? I agree, this is pretty sleazy.

As to Jonah, I’m pulling for the whale. This book smacks of

I know you are, but what am I?

newspaperbrat — Good to be home. Congrats to your son — and to you — on the graduation. :)

Ohhh, I get it. I’m the fascist because I’m a liberal and I think the KKK are fascists but ironically they’re not because I’m a liberal and I think they are, so the KKK can’t be fascist because they’re not liberal and I am, so that’s ironic.

That Goldberg feller is fucking brilliant.

I love Jonah Goldberg’s Table of Contents (TOC, as we call it in publishing): It covers all the bases.

Bilbo — It gets worse. He’s not bothering to even coach the Fiesta Bowl. (No, I’m not kidding.)

After reading the book jacket flaps over at Sadly,No! now would you call that a major case of projection?

Jonah’s mom, Lucianne Goldberg, a literary agent of the Clinton-Lewinsky fame, probably negotiated the book deal for him.

Does that mean I’m banned from FDL Christy? ;-)

Jonah Goldberg decrying mediocrity in education (hint: It’s Mr Rogers fault). And this appeared before Dana “Lying Sack of Cute” Perino announced to the world that she thought the Cuban Missile Crisis and Bay of Pigs were the same.

katymine — All along, I’ve thought so many of the little leaks and blips were parodies or inside jokery sorts of things. Never in my wildest dreams could I have come up with that table of contents and thought it would get past the fact-checkers at a publishing house without some level of scrutiny or disclaimer.

John Cole is right that the most depressing thing will be watching people pull the “earnest support for a worthy tome” act on all the teevee talking head shows. Blergh. Ramesh on line 2, The Dough Boy needs to borrow the propaganda apron….

Twisted — It’s not your fault that your alma mater keeps poaching our coaches. (Bastards.)

My mind will remain blissfully unbesmirched by Mr. Goldberg’s ravings. I look forward to not reading this book.

OT. Mike Whitney has a new piece up at the Online Journal, entitled

The collapse of the modern day banking system.

Pretty scary stuff, with quotes from respected luminaries.

eCahn, if you’re around, I’d value your take on what Whitney is saying. I tend to ignore most economic doomsday proclamations, but I’m becoming less sure of myself every day.

Hey Christy, did you get my “vacation” email :-)

“Schlock Doctrine” by Doughy Pantload

LOL -thats a good one!

Never in my wildest dreams could I have come up with that table of contents and thought it would get past the fact-checkers at a publishing house without some level of scrutiny or disclaimer.

Well, now, it’s Doubleday, the glamour house, Jackie O’s old shop.

Amazing YouTube at the top, by the way. I hadn’t seen that before. I think I will use it in class next term!

I’ve decided the following is their strategy;

“if we are draft dodgers, challenge their military record”

“if we are traitors, challenge their patriotism”

“if we are liars, challenge their integrity”

“if we are breaking the law, call them criminals”

if we are leaving our nation ungaurded, challenge their resolve to protect the country”

and finally

“if we are fascists, call them the fascists”

what’s scary is that this strategy of theirs does in fact work

Hiya Christy, it’s great to have a laugh, especially after our righteous Dodd-induced victory yesterday.

Just got off the phone with Dianne Feinstein’s DeeCee office, as their email spam continues. Yesterday I got seven identical emails justifying DiFi’s shameful vote to confirm Judge Mukasey — identical! Today I’ve already received four identical emails about her kabuki amendment yesterday on the Senate floor regarding telecom immunity.

The charming telephone answerer at DiFi’s asked resentfully “Well, did you send the Senator seven emails about the Attorney General confirmation?” which pretty much confirms for me the Luddite nature of Capitol Hill — even if I did (which I didn’t) they have no technology to sort out identical email addresses using a merge program.

I explained I was using my personal daytime cell minutes to alert her to a problem at her office, and that if she was just going to insult me for possibly being a concerned citizen, I wouldn’t waste the office’s time again alerting them to something that might, just might, piss off Senator Feinstein’s subjects.

Jeebus.

Perris- Brilliant, nothing short.

perris — Sadly, they do appear to get away with it far too often.

The best comment over at Sadly,No! was asking how Goldberg dealt with how FDR the fascist fought the Hitler fascists.

Bingo, perris.

OT. Mike Whitney has a new piece up at the Online Journal, entitled

The collapse of the modern day banking system.

here ya go

In a speech yesterday at the National Press Club, GAO Comptroller General David Walker said:

If the federal government was a private corporation and the same report came out this morning, our stock would be dropping and some people would be talking about whether the company’s management directors needed a major shake-up.

I also got those in large numbers yesterday – today so far none. I always check the first sentence to see what the bs is going to be about and then I trash them. Can’t remember the last time she had anything worthwhile to say.

I love it when you talk mean, Christy.

BTW, truth to tell, I preferred the mechanics of the old site design. Would like at least to see more of the posts put up as in the old days last month, not just the top post. Same sort of thing happened when my favorite science bloggers joined scienceblog (66 total bloggers hosted! Sensory overload.). I now look just at the top posts per channel and miss too much. Also, I miss Trex here, but always go to his new treehouse every night.

What’s scary–to tie in with the state of education in our country today–is that this was a very well documented and discussed concept of political theory in the realm of fiction. This is, quite literally, Emmanuel Goldstein’s fictional political philosophy from Eric Blair’s classic 1984. Now, back when we were edjamacated by dirty hippies, we were taught that there were interesting similarities between this and Trotsky.

Now, you’ve got Bill Kristol spouting this bilge to an undereducated public and I’ve finally lost my incredulous response to the reality that people buy it, lock stock and barrel. What I learned as fiction is entering the world as fact and the MSM seems to happily participate. Bizzaro World, indeed. I remain amazed!

From amazon.com:

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

(Hardcover)
by Jonah Goldberg (Author)

Title doesn’t make any sense. How does one get from Mussolini to the politics of meaning? Also, don’t we know all the secrets of the American Left by now? Didn’t they all come out during the last century?

And this editorial copy for the book is rather startling:

Liberal Fascism offers a startling new perspective on the theories and practices that define fascist politics. Replacing conveniently manufactured myths with surprising and enlightening research, Jonah Goldberg reminds us that the original fascists were really on the left, and that liberals from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler’s National Socialism and Mussolini’s Fascism.

Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life.

My bold. Wonder to whom he’s comparing Nazis here. (And no, I won’t pay that editorial copywriter a measely 1 cent per word.)

(Mods: Please feel free to delete if you think I’m providing free publicity for the book. I don’t think I am–but then you never know.)

OT and fyi

Leahy talking about retro immunity now on the Senate floor.

Oil Falls More Than $1 as Turkish Troops Begin to Leave Iraq
By Mark Shenk

Dec. 18 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil fell, erasing a gain, as Turkish troops began to withdraw from Iraq and on speculation that warmer weather in the eastern U.S. will curb fuel use.

Turkey’s forces started to pull back after they penetrated 8 kilometers (5 miles) into Iraq’s majority-Kurdish north, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said. Prices rose more than $2 after the announcement that Turkish forces had entered the region. The National Weather Service forecast higher-than-normal temperatures in a six-to-10 day period in the Northeast U.S.

“The Turkish incursion doesn’t look like as much of a threat as when we first learned about it,” said Phil Flynn, a commodities trader for
Chicago-based Alaron Trading Corp.

Crude oil for January delivery fell $1.05, or 1.2 percent, to $89.58 a barrel at 12:48 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures touched $99.29 on Nov. 21, the highest since trading began in 1983. Prices are up 44 percent from a year ago.

The January contract expires today. The more-active February contract dropped $1.21, or 1.3 percent, to $89.84 a barrel.

Lunch-time drive by.

I just went over to Sadly, No, and took a look. I notice the publisher is Doubleday. DoubleThink, more like. Jesus H. Christ on a bike. Can someone pay me to pull dumbass garbage out of my arse?

From the other side:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/n…..E_ID=53028

WTF???

Digby on Rush’s theory that no American wants to see Hillary Clinton age in the White House:

Of course not. I don’t think aging women should even be allowed out in public, personally, much less should anyone have to look at their revolting faces on television. There is no reason that handsome, virile chick magnets like Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, John McCain should have their aesthetic environment polluted with such hideousness.

Little Boots needs a neurological bilge pump.

It was very short and he spoke out against retroactive blanket immunity…promises to bring it back after the first of the year.

I’m not going thru the whole article, but here are some relevant thoughts.

1. There is no question but that this is a dangerous time for the economy & financial markets. The subprime mess (forget about the poor people who are losing their homes; they are not on the PTB [Powers That Be] radar screens) is and will continue to have a depressing influence on home prices that will reverberate around the whole economy. The collapse of the markets for the derivatives on the subprime loans is a serious negative for the financial system.

2. When I was working professionally, I was very data intensive in assessing such problems. I no longer have the resources to do that kind of work. Therefore anything I say must be regarded as far from definitive, but rather a more informed casual observation.

3. In general, the Fed is very powerful. When on top of a problem, as they are, belatedly, in this case, they can usually achieve the bailout objective. They are using both macroeconomic tools, i.e., lower interest rates, and micro tools, flooding financials with funds.

4. This is all at the cost of by now a perfect pattern of establishing moral hazards, meaning that the financials can knowingly do anything they want & be assured of being bailed out. If that doesn’t sink the system now, it will at some point in the future. Someone succintly put it that Greenspan was both arsonist & firefighter; ditto Bernanke.

4. You should know that Steve Roach is forever crying “Wolf.” This could be the time he’s right, but if so, it would be by accident.

Teddy — Two words for Limbaugh: Margaret Thatcher.

There’s been very little interest in Karl Rove’s book as well. Heh.

I just go this link from TPM…WTF?? This is about Iran/Nicaragua….next thing you know, it will be a threat to National Security, and W will attack Iran or something:

http://www.mysanantonio.com/ne…..7e041.html

I see your Margaret Thatcher and raise you Golda Mier.

Starbuck — Worldnetdaily? Why not just link up Pat Robertson and get it over with?

Whose book was it that we rated all the customer reviews: positive ones rated useless, negatives ones rated useful. Something to keep in mind for those who need a life.

Loved that one. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Iran will attack us from Nicaragua.

I can’t wait to see the reader comments at Amazon when this turkey drops. Not that I’m suggesting anyone goes over there and…..

No. Not at all.

And yes, by all means: Let’s bring fiction back into history.

I’d like to send this administration into history.

a depressing influence on home prices

Here in LA, I saw a flyer at a friend’s place last weekend: a real estate agent was announcing that a somewhat-similar house in the area had had its price cut by $115k, to ‘only’ $435k: a house more than 50 years old, and unless it’s had some remodelling, it’s a 3-bedroom/1-bath house.

I’m told that in the still-under-construction subdivision a couple of miles away (uphill) there are places that are starting at $300k, but I don’t know if those are real houses or townhouses.

The market is collapsing quite nicely now. Thank you so much, Mr Greenspan!

Thanks, eCAHN. I’ve read that the Fed’s tools may be less effective now because of their need to lower rates to fight recession/depression, even in the face of growing inflation. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

I like the image of the guys landing in the jungle by helicopter, dressed in suits and the locals wanting to know who the hell they are: We are from Iran.

LOL

Teddy — Two words for Limbaugh: Margaret Thatcher.

Teddy — Two words for Limbaugh: Rudy Gouliani.

Also: Jonah mistitled his book when he called it Liberal Fascism, instead of Fascist Liberalism or Fascist Liberals. Because you see, he really wants to focus on liberals and not on fascists.

We are from Iran.

Bring. Us. To. Your. Leader.

Push comes to shove, they’ll forget about inflation & go for underpinning real economic activity. The only “stagflation” of any important was the one decade from about 1973-1983. That time period involved 2 oil price shocks, a post-price controls bulge, and a hangover from Arthur Burns 1970s inflationary monetary policy. Nothing like those circumstances prevail now. Just one oil price jump.

PeteCO @ 58:

Note that I didn’t provide any links in my 41. That was deliberate.

Hmm, how long before he blames the Holocaust on liberals?

Two words for Rush Limbaugh: Rush Limbaugh

eCAHN @ 50:

Your point #4 (the first one…*g*) is quite remarkable and a little frightful.

Two words for Rush Limbaugh: Rush Limbaugh!

Ha!! Good one!
(I have never heard or watched RL)

Ooops. I broke up one point into two & didn’t correct my numbering. But guess the mistake didn’t get in the way of understanding. Yes, all the economic options are being eaten up little by little. Too much debt & too big deficits to use fiscal stimulus (though could go another round if really needed). Foreign indebtedness keeps ballooning. Moral hazards in the financial system. Still have monetary policy though, and we’re in the process of seeing if it will work.

In general, the U.S. economy has proven very rubust, much more robust than most thought, to these disturbances. Guessing it’s still true.

Limpballs is just the type who will eventually be found two wetsuits, someday.

OT/ FCC approved the ruling. The best gov’t Bush can buy.

I’m assuming your termn “robust” means bulletproof?

so that means whenever someone wants to steal, they’ll create a new fiasco, have it collapse, get the fed to “print more money and lower interest” which will pay for that theft

so who is actually paying, where are these “fixes” realized in the economoy?

John Swifty: Like minds, but yours had more emphasis!

eCAHN @ 74:

Given that at this point, US economy more or less fuels the world (it’s still the biggest, although China is catching up fast (maybe before 2015 or 2020 according to the newest assessment by the World Bank), do you think a worldwide recession is possible? And if yes, what would that mean?

All your media are belong to us.

OT. Not sure how many firepups have been following the Florida local government investment pool (LGIP) meltdown. With Florida jurisdictions pulling money out of the state pool willy-nilly, I have been wondering what they would do with all the cash. Apparently they’re not sure either. This situation is bound to have unintended consequences.

From the TC Palm:

Stuart commissioners seek proposals from private investment companies to oversee some $26 million

The city [Stuart, FL] is seeking investment managers with experience in managing funds in excess of $25 million. Interested firms must submit their proposals no later than 2:30 p.m. on Jan. 23.

If needed, city officials will request oral presentations from a short-list of candidates during the week of Feb. 25, with final staff recommendations to commissioners in early March.

OT What are they doing in the Senate now? Trying to resurrect Trent Lott to run for President? Check out this -Thanks to Muck: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..tsmemo.com

And look at Olympia Snowe trying not to laugh in the background!

Not sure what you’re asking. But I’ll define what I mean by robust & see if that answers your Q.

It’s the U.S. consumer who is fundamentally insatiable and keeps on spending no matter what. In the past it has taken really big events to reverse that, usually huge increases in interst rates, and often accompanied by other negatives, like increased energy costs. Smaller negatives can slow consumer spending, but rarely (never?) cause it to turn down. I’m guessing the nationwide decline in homw prices will be more gradual than many now fear, in part because the Fed will keep lowering interest rates.

This is where I am at a loss to prognositcate further. If I had all my working assets, i.e. databases of U.S. economic data, I’d be studying home prices locally, nationally, regionally, as well as all the other determinants of consumer spending. Not having those resources, I can only have an informed guess.

And robust does not mean bullet-proof, it just means it takes a big lot of negatives to make the economy turn down.

Elmore reporting in from the Minneapolis’s Airport after using THE bathroom…. while Christmas music is playing over the speaker system, the guy in the next stall is doing some foot tapping (not to the music) and in the next stall a guy pucking his guts out while some guy is yacking on a cell phone near the sinks. Is that not the epitome of holiday travel?

Richmond — Word is he’s retiring to work in conjunction with his son’s lobbying firm. So they are sucking up to him as a potential future campaign cash cow. SIGH

The US economy was really changed. We produce nothing but jet planes and are selling off corporations and assets to offshore interests, both real property and shares.

The fed can print money (or sell it cheap to banks) but consumers are not going to take more debt. What they have found is that they are drowning in debt.

What can banks do with all the foreclosures and no one to sell them to?

The retail sales for the holidays are going to demonstrate that the bottom has dropped out on consumer spending and more and more retailers are out of business. Circuit City just folded. Detroit is giving 0% finance to move products which will not be sustainable and no one is going after their junk anyway.

For now Europeans are coming to the USA to shop and supporting our retail side. How long can that go on?

No good jobs and so the banks can’t get blood from a stone. It’s gonna be a big slide of gathering speed to the bottom. A lot of banks are gonna fold. 1929 here we come.

rawstory got waxman telling AG to give up all on PLAME by jan 08/2008
link
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/….._1218.html

The interest and excitement generated from Sen. Dodd’s actions over the last couple of days amply demonstrates how we in the Democratic Party hunger and thirst for courage and leadership.

Christy: Geez, I completely forgot that. I wonder if others are looking at that path now too!

I think EU comes in a close second to U.S. economy by size and things seem to be OK there. Some subprime derivatives mess in some banks there, but doesn’t seem to be the magnitude as it is here.

China needs to divert their econommic growth to their own consumers so maybe if their exports slow down, that might be a prod for a meaningful change in policy there. (I’m not holding my breath.)

Last I looked, U.S. was about 1/4 of world economy, so it’s important but not the only factor.

Circuit City just folded

Good. They fired all of their employees who were at the top of their pay scale and hired others at minimum wage. Then they told the old, seasoned employees that they could apply for their old jobs at the new economy wages.
I feel sorry for the employees though. Time for this country to start making its own stuff and growing its own food. We are not helpless and we can act like adults.

Thanks for sharing. Glad I’m staying home.

Well, maybe we can get some of the conservative thinktanks to stop buying bulk loads of books by the Doughy Pantload and Frau Coulter and start buying bulk loads of grain and electronic goods.

We gotta get the wingnuts to start carrying some of their weight.

-G

got it

And robust does not mean bullet-proof, it just means it takes a big lot of negatives to make the economy turn down.

that’s sort of what I meant but here’s the question;

with s&l bailed out, with enron bailed out, now with mortgages being bailed out

who pays this price?

how is it realized, it seems like there wasn’t an economic hit from enron, it seems like there wasn’t an economic hit from s&L

now if mortgages are bailed out and not only everyone keeps their houses but the lenders don’t loose their shirts, who takes the hit?

with all of this robustness (word?) it seems like there really isn’t that much wrong with this kind of theivery

as you said, it creates an economic morality that perpetuates these strategies of actually failing so they CAN be bailed out

so who takes the hit?

On the FCC Ban overturned (see Raw): Can Congress do anything about this? It is frankly, disgusting, and beyond problematic.

katymine @ 84:

I walk by that bathroom on Northern Crossing after clearing security, but I avoid going in there like the plague. It’s been a tourist attraction for a while. But wait till the Repug Convention next year, when all Repugs will have to walk by it.

eCAHN @ 90:

Thanks…

the guy in the next stall is doing some foot tapping (not to the music) and in the next stall a guy pucking his guts out while some guy is yacking on a cell phone near the sinks.

Sounds like the perfect place to have a sexual encounter.

That’s hot.

-G

Who takes the hit depends on how the bailout is constructed. In the case of S&Ls, it was the taxpayer (who bailed out the depositers) & stockholders of the S&Ls and owners/investors in failed developments. You’d have to go thru each one with specifics about how it worked to figure out winners/losers.

Economic growth, which depends on a reaonably structured economy & decent (or even not-so-decent) economic policy is what makes all these problems recede into the past, leaving only microeconomic scars.

The Rs have done their best to wreck the structure of the U.S. economy, but think they haven’t been at it long enough & hard enough to have a lasting impact. But if a D corporatist takes over …

How in the world does anyone take mommy’s boy Jonah Goldberg seriously? Goldberg seems to always be trying to prove that neo conism, and fascism are intelligent political and economic philosophies. Golberg almost makes Tucker Carlson’s crap digestable.

Economic growth, which depends on a reaonably structured economy & decent (or even not-so-decent) economic policy is what makes all these problems recede into the past, leaving only microeconomic scars.

in effect, economic growth takes the hit then, in that growth would have been greater

which means nobody actually sees the hit, it’s only assumptive and nobody knows the price they’ve paid, nor will they ever know

Perhaps there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Conservatives and Libertarians may be finally coming to the realization they may be stuck with the likes of Huckabee and/or McCain. Good news for Democrats?

not really, I think mccain is their only hope for a win, of all the gop candidates so far, we want him to be theirs least of all

A general point on the economy. I hope you all have discerned from my comments that it’s a real job to make informed opinions on the economy. And even then, forecasting is hazardous. Suspect grand prognostications, whether from professionals or amateurs.

The finest hour I ever participated in on Wall St. was after the 1987 stock market crash. We put on a conference call after the trading stopped that day, which was about 5:30. I talked abut the economic impact of the crash itself, how long that might take to show up, and what policymakers were likely to do in respose. The strategist talked about past crashes and how circumstances were similar & different. The sales force went out with the research call. We repeated it the following morning. Not only were we more or less right, we did ourselves and our clients a good service by countering panic with analytical input.

Everytime I think they just can’t top themselves, they do it, don’t they?

Unbelievable.

In the meantime, if you didn’t laugh, you’d cry.

-S

I gottta go and take a Jonah Goldberg.

See ya.

-G

eCAHN:

I’m so glad you’re here at FDL to explain all these things. When I found out who you were I couldn’t believe it…

Who you is?

I’m so glad you’re here at FDL to explain all these things.

Seconded. Thanks, eCAHN.

Economic growth can’t happen when you are paying out $12,000,000,000 per month for wars and cutting taxes at the same time. Printing money and selling pieces of the U.S to China and outsourcing will not facilitate growth. When was the last Republican “structured economy’ About the best that can be said of the Bush economy is that it is characterized by its utter looniness.

Odd thing about that Black Hole (misnamed) spewing anything is that nothing is supposed to be able to excape the gravitational pull (sucking?) of a black hole. Maybe it is not a hole after all, maybe it is something entirly different.

One of the things that amused me when I saw the first Hubbel Telescope pictures was how much they looked like the models of atoms we had in Chemistry. One must wonder at what looking out form a hydrogen atom would look like.

But the we have to get back to the planet where we live and ask why are we still at war in Iraq. Everyday that we gloss over the fact that inaction is costing people their lives everyday. If we know that, and we do, taht blood is not just on the pschopaths in the White House’s hands, it is on ours as well.

We have to go on with life, but we need to remember in all we do that a man or woman who was willing to set on a wall and give their life to protect us is going to be wasted for nothing. Maybe for the vanity of a man. Such a loss. Such a tragedy.

Yes, I was thinking about just your point as I typed.

However, there is a rate of growth that would make inflation heat up. It’s higher than many think, but still a limit. It would be much more intelligent, however, to try for smoother growth, instead of making it so herky jerky, and deal with inflation if/when it becomes a problem.

Environmental reasons are a non-economic consideration for holding U.S. growth below its potential. I’m thinking of carbon intensity, and gobbling up open spaces, as two examples. But we’d still be better off with smoother grow & dealing with those subjects separately & intelligently, instead of hoping for a housing crash before all the open land is gone.

You may be right. Have you read this from today’s Arianna?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..77165.html

I nominate “honing one’s craft” for “Top Ten Phrases that Sound Dirty but Aren’t”!

Stop spending money on the war and raise taxes steeply. Close corporate welfare. Put money into education. Put a lid on the banks.

You’re welcome Bilbo & Biodun. Kinda fun to get back in the saddle. *curtsying*

When did they fold?
Nothing on that around here, and I’ve been looking (even Google doesn’t have that yet).

Yes, they fired their highest paid (most experienced, probably also best quality) salespeople. And their sales promtply dropped.

Full disclosure: the few times I’ve been in one, I had the feeling that if you didn’t look like you were able and willing to drop four or more figures between the dollar sign and the decimal point (on what looked to me like second-line merchandise), they weren’t interested in your business. Which is why I’ve only gone in a few times.

Odd thing about that Black Hole (misnamed) spewing anything is that nothing is supposed to be able to excape the gravitational pull (sucking?) of a black hole. Maybe it is not a hole after all, maybe it is something entirly different.

The stuff doesn’t actually spew out of the black hole itself, but out of the disk of matter around it. Basically, the intense gravity of the black hole accelerates matter and energy, and while most of it falls in, some is on the right trajectory that it flies off having gained a huge amount of energy.

I’m sorry. If George Bush tells us (as he did the other day) that our economy is strong, something’s wrong. The Republican idea of a robust economy is pushing us ever closer, perhaps unfortunately, to protectionism.

Frankly, I am impressed the doughy one can even put two words together. Three words must of been quite the strain on brain between his legs.

Nafta, Cafta, WTO, and Globalization have done a number on us.

I wonder if the folks who are facing foreclosure are edging toward panic?

Or so the current theory goes. I certainly was not trying to give a scientific statement because it all just conjecture. Good question would be if there is a band of debris right outside the hole that for some reason does not fall in with everything else, and the gravitational pull is so strong what force spews the debris out.

It is all conjecture, speculation at best. We can see it only with assistance and from this side. Kind of like looking at a two dimentional figure and trying to speculate what the third dimention would look like.

Thanks for the furter explanation. Knowledge is never a hinderance even if it is knowledge of best informed speculation. But then the war, I have seen that. Soldiers dying, I have seen that. It is horrible when neccessary, criminal when it is not.

Radiation spews I can do nothing about but wonder. There is little enough I can do about the war except everyday write and tell everyone that I encounter that it must end, now. I have been doing that since it became clear that there would be a war, August 2002.

The over building of the exburbs, the destruction of the small retailer and the village center, the lack of rail infrastructure, the high cost of fuel, the destruction of the family farm, the destruction of rust belt jobs don’t bode well for getting this economy going.

It was one huge credit bubble where banks flooded the economy with credit to stimulate buying which sent the money offshore to corporate sub contractors! Only a few retail jobs have been created and many in the construction industry building the wrong type of housing and huge malls which will end up deserted. Without good jobs the economy is crumbling since the consumers don’t have the income to support the buying they must do and the are now cuaght in the credit spiral.

The Fed pushing money at banks is not working and will not work with THIS labor force, or job infrastructure. Restricting loans to good credit customers is not the problem. The econony was driven to a low wage offshore production one which cannot sustain the buying required to keep the ponzi going. No savings, no earnings and in hock to the eyeballs. No place to go.

The global market is a reality. It is not if we ahve trade aliances, but how they are structured. The Market works here and it will sort its self out over time globally.

Your concern is best placed in working to support people who beleive in the market rather than Corporate Welfare Fascists. Bill Clinton pushed through Nafta knowing it was imperfect, but knowing that it could be fixed later.

WE all live under the illusion that we can always fix it later. Bill’s Bridge to the 21st Century was regretably dismantled and sold off. THe trade aliances are a good first step, take up the flag and fix them.

Wow! someone who I can agree with. We got sucked into letting someone else do things for us taht we needed to do ourselves. Farming the land as small farmers is environemtally best. Local businesses and town squares lets us know who we are dealing with and reduces the need for fuel use.

The way we live makes not sense. A house full of people who do not talk to each other, each with their own TV, Ipod, phone, and all the reat of the array of technology that isolates us. We were meant to be in groups. We need people.

Sorry, I disgree. The view here is that we are moving away from Globalization and toward tariff wars. Of course I recognize many, including myself, are under the impression that economics is a very soft science.

So soft taht you need very large snow shoes to navigate it. Is is a social science and relies heavily on models that are not real world. Prior to about 1974 it all seemed to work because the American Economy was a mostly closed system. Wheh the people we had been stealing from started to demand to be paid for their resources the models started to fail. Odd that we are hearing the word stagflation again by Greenspan.

Economic is very fluid and the principle applies that as soon as you know where the economy is, it has changed. So one does need to use the scientific method to figure out what the past was and try to figure what is next. It is – to paraphrase – the worst thing to figure out the economy with expect all the rest.

I am not eCahn but do know about this stuff. Back in 2005 I commented on FDL that the derivatives scam in the international financial market is heading for a free fall that is going to make 1929 look like a cake walk.

Whitney is right in that there is very little real asset backed underpinning to financial wealth. This is a problem when real asset backing for financial claim to wealth is questioned as it is now. The world financial market until recently has not questioned the credit ratings granted by investment bankers to tradable financial derivative packages that were bought by many countries’ central banks. As these countries see the devaluation of their US$ holdings, their assets, they are beginning to do the asking that they probably should have done five years ago.

Today these other countries face a dilemma in that they cannot sell off their US$ holdings without depleting their asset base but they are attempting to rid their US$ asset base as quietly as possible. China, for instance, is lending in Africa in US$ terms. India has just refused a World Bank deal in US$, opting instead for its own currency that is rising faster than any other currency bar the UK sterling and the Euro.

The simple fact of the matter is that the US cannot run trade and budget deficits without paying a price and that price is a recession. The Fed’s response to date is to hide its head in the sand and wish the problem would go away. It won’t. Its policies are inflationary, reducing overseas demand to to buy Treasury bonds and makes it ever more unsustainable to carry on such deficits.

Look on the bright side. The recession that has already set in, will put a brake on this consumption driven economic system. It’s all very well pointing the finger at China and India that the US spoiler delegation to Bali did but these countries are using a heck of a lot of their noxious emissions to feed the consumption demands from the USA, EU, Australia et al. A fall in demand from the west can be green.

It will bring a lot more pain. That, however, is an issue that you must use your vaunted democratic system to address. To date, your representatives have chosen to bail out the bankers and financiers who are the culpable perpetrators of this fiasco, aided and abetted by the Fed Reserve. It is up to you to change that just as you chiselled away corporate grab for immunity against illegal activities albeit for a short time.

OT John Pilger in the Guardian

How in the fuck did this guy make it out of college? My profs would have shit all over this.

Oh right – momma.

I could quible or state it differently, but you are right on the general concept. We ahve taken 30 years to figure out we have to play nice in the rest of the world, now maybe we can figure out how our markets fit in the rest of the world. We have lived for too long in Disneyland and reality is knocking at the door.

The stock market has gone to financial capitlism rather than roduction capitalism. Derivatives are little more that the fiscal version of turning lead to gold, and the carying trade is an anti-gravity machine. In the real world they do not work. Great ammounts of money have been “made” but you can not run an economy on making money from money, something of value has to be produced for real growth. Derivatives are just gambling and the stock market has become a large casino without the booze and good food.

The result is a dollar based upon not much. We are detroying our military in dead end wars and our economy is a paper tiger. Two of the three things that propped up our extravance are now in danger, and the last consumption based upon credit is threatened with the subprime mess.

We are coming up on hard times. It depends a lot on if we can get a leader with the vision and ability to get people to follow that vision of a New American Economy that is based upon a lot of old valid economic ideas.

Good to hear that others see this. If we can just agree on a general plan to get our resources to work for us again.

eCahnomics – I agree with all you say . My comment is not to counter you but to highlight some other factual essentials that need to enter this fray.

No doubt the the US economy has enormous potential to recover from this but the implications for other countries are dire. China and India can look into their own consumption bases but both, China particularly, will have to adjust their production to suit internal consumption demand. India has not invested in manufacturing, nevertheless, an introversion towards the demands of its own peoples would be welcome and perhaps less deforestation and dispossession of its aboriginal (adivasi) peoples.

I still maintain that it’s hubris to use these countries to justify 4% of humanity being responsible for 25% of carbon emissions today. I am using these figures from a previous FDL post by Dr KJ Murphy.

I am also sceptical about carbon trading because it’s so open to scams from the word go. Who polices? Who Enforces? How do we account for deforestation with natural disasters like bushfires? Sure you can replant or the bush regenerates but a sapling is not as effective a carbon sink as a grown tree. The only way to reverse or halt global warming is to reduce emissions of noxious gases, including CO2.

Believe me, in Australia we are experiencing global warming as summers get hotter and drier, bushfires more frequent, greater restrictions and prices for water usage and warmer seas than 20 years ago.

I understand why you would ‘quibble’. i would too but it was me trying to put the big picture in simple words.

I am an Aussie who has spent more than four years in the USA as a Federal Australian Public Servant (APS), seconded to the UN and a number of years in Geneva seconded to the OECD, both in executive research officer positions. I have now retired from the APS, on medical grounds but really to work for a Labour victory to oust that misbegotten bigot Howard and it was a sweet victory of sorts. I still work for issues that concern me and do my damndest best to keep the bastards honest.

You talk about Disneyland and I wrote about a consumption driven economic system. My comment was really a shorthand way to say that consumption power needs to be generated other than by credit. All economies have been driven by consumption from time immemorial but the ability to consume needs to be generated by real assets, including skills that can utilise those assets. If you cannot generate the wealth to fuel consumption and resort to gambling casinos to make money out of nothing, you got problems.

I am an economist and think Laffer was a con who never produced any empirical evidence to validate his idiotic hypothesis.

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We are on the same page. I am just a working guy who loves learning and his country (USA), or what his country used to be and still can be.

PS I have a “trickle up” theory that working people need to force themselves to save a minimum of 2% each year and invest that when the savings get to sums that allow investing. THe people are then more than consumers they ar also savers and can “loan” their money to companies that are compliant with policies to the investor’s liking. Then the money would tricle up to the wealthy trhough consumption and investment. It would create a more balanced income distibution and I gues a more responsible and responsive business culture. See http://savingbysaving.blogspot.com/

Just a thought.

I see your Margaret Thatcher and raise you Golda Mier.

Wasn’t Catherine the Great supposed to have been quite beautiful?

What about Indira Gandhi of India?
Or Corey Aquino of The Phillipines(sp)?
Certainly Ms. Peron wasn’t bad looking.

What’s all this worry about a politician’s looks anyway? If they’re sending you off off die in an illegal war, does it really matter what they look like? Does it really matter if someone would like to have a beer with Dubya?

Forget the superficialities and move on to what effects these people might have on the nation and individual’s lives.

Not only were we more or less right, we did ourselves and our clients a good service by countering panic with analytical input.

Cool! Competence, it’s the new ‘black’.

Whitney is right in that there is very little real asset backed underpinning to financial wealth. This is a problem when real asset backing for financial claim to wealth is questioned as it is now. The world financial market until recently has not questioned the credit ratings granted by investment bankers to tradable financial derivative packages that were bought by many countries’ central banks. As these countries see the devaluation of their US$ holdings, their assets, they are beginning to do the asking that they probably should have done five years ago.

Too much cash, too little assets.
Foreigners own our debts (and we’re spending the cash on war) and so can’t buy goods & services.
We spend eternally for oil.
The Rich take all our nation’s profits.

This is terribly unbalanced and dysfunctional.

We need to pay down some debt, sending cash overseas.
We need to export more to those who would then have cash.
We need other sources of energy than oil.
With that we could ease the drain oil costs put on our economy.
We need to build infrastructure instead of letting the Rich get richer.
What do the Rich do with all that wealth? They invest.
What do they invest in? Is it foreign companies?
Where do those foreign companies sell their goods?

Fix a couple of problems and a lot of economic power in the world could free up and begin to really chug faster.

I suggest that we increase taxation on the Rich to pay for the war, to pay down some debt and to cut back on the huge wealth disparity.

Corporations would benefit tremendously from lower taxes. That could really boost their profitability for a sustained period of growth.

Shifting taxation towards individuals should also encourage more reinvestment which again would boost corporate productivity and profits.

If we can just agree on a general plan to get our resources to work for us again.

Maybe we need a Sec. of Def. who has a Libertarian tendency to cut spending then we would have some cash to pay down debt.

Of course, we’re going to have health care reform and there’s no telling whether that will be a big cost or a savings over time.

We need to invest in new energy sources. Perhaps a competition between car companies and university student groups and other researchers to produce new auto energy systems.

Ending the wars will save money big time.

Better tax policy (as I wrote above).

There are a handful of very important economy transforming policies. Many can be agreed upon regardless of party or ideology.