What everyone seems to be saying is “We are all F****D!!!
Thanks to low wages, free trade and globalization. Geez I thought free trade and globalization was suppose to make us rich! All we got was more debt, no savings, asset inflation with no WAGE inflation.
And now they still want to continue with Free trade and Globalization with the fear mongering about protectionism. BS. I’ll take my chances. Why would I listen to the liars and cheats that got us here in the first place with their economic policies and theories!!!
Instead of spending trillions to give to the rogues that got us in this mess, nationalize the banks, execute all the Wall Street crooks starting with Madoff( YOU won’t have fraud for another 50 years on Wall Street then), let the gov’t buy up all the foreclosed houses, this will cost $600 billion as RE prices falling is the real problem and no jobs as well.
Also mandate as law that the lowest paid employee(S) in any Public Company that is traded on YM, ES, NQ, TF etc. will make a minimum of 10% of the highest paid employee. So if Sandy WEil made $ 1 Billion as CEO of Travellers/Citigroup in 1994/1995 then the lowest paid employees would all be making $100,000,000 each.
How would the shareholders like that??? The dumb shareholders don’t seem to understand that the last 25 years the CEO’s have been screwing thier minds…making them temporary rich with a temporary stock mkt boom and then burning the companies to the ground, but the CEO’s ran off with Billions.
At least with Batra’s plan on compensation, the financial mess would not have happened, the middle class would be there, houses would not be foreclosed because people would have real cash from decent wages, instead of the ATM they had on their house and credit cards. With more cash in your pocket, you do not need debt or very little of it and you can pay your debt from a decent wage. High wages and jobs = prosperity with a cap on exponential salaries. Stock and real estate booms and busts are shocks to the system that benefit very few.
If we don’t implement the changes above…..”We are F****d.”
TKOFeb 11, 2009 @ 9:57
Yes sir, Will Bello, That quote of Emanuel says it all. This snide artful dodger has managed to avoid any damage from the various scandals in which he has been a player so he remains at large. Hopefully, sooner rather than later, his mouth will land him in trouble again, and he will find himself under the bus and/or in custody.
will BelloFeb 10, 2009 @ 17:57
Listen very closely to what Obama says, his quote is ‘ it will save or create 4mil jobs” Clearly every word spoken is passed through a political filter first for when the time comes for re election his statement provides plenty of cover as how can one quantify how many jobs were saved.
I find the comment of his chief of staff , arguably the most partisan man in the country, extremely disturbing and at the same time revealing.
” Never let a good crisis go to waste”
gary leibowitzFeb 10, 2009 @ 16:43
TKO, point well taken. Yes it is a safety-net just like FDR’s was. Would you really have had FDR do away with the “nothiong to fear but fear itself” speech and tell people to hide under a rock? No government is in the practice of declaring disaster. The idea the this President, one month into his presidency is to blame is a bit biased. He is doing what all presicents do, appear calm and optimistic.
As for the market drop it has absolutely nothing to do with the speech’s. nothing. In fact they already telegraphed what to expect. The charts showed we were in a very critical junction where there was going to be a big move. In fact I would suggest you revisit this market in one weeks’s time. The charts look like we will have an explosive but short lived rally right her, or in one week at the latest.
Long term macro economy is not pretty. That will eventually translate to a much lower market. For now though we should see a dramatic rally, one that takes us higher then most would think. It will most likely be the last big rally for the next 3 years.
Turns out the guy is a chief economist, not a keynesian, thou 😉
Sorry if this is partly OT, Kurt.
TKOFeb 10, 2009 @ 14:07
Hey Gary, No rational soul is against extending a safety net to those of us who have fallen victim to the unintended consequences of an incorrect fiddling with economic law and a system wide failure of fiscal and fiduciary responsibility. At least have the honesty to call it an safety net and desist from even attempting to characterise this plan as a stimulus. Investors, risktakers, and producers have no confidence and credit and velocity have crashed to zero. A true stimulus package might have provided some spark or hope for a possible rapid turnaround in the Economy. At this juncture, investors have no faith in the President he is a short sale every time he appears, and no faith in the legislature especially after this latest boondoggle. Last chance for policymakers to quickly provide a fix now lies with the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. As I write this, the market is down 350 after the testimony of Geithner and Bernanke. A generally optimistic sort, I thought they sounded half convincing. The market thought otherwise. No sparks, no confidence, no stock rally—the market will reflect the underlying declining deflating economy. And perhaps a realization of future high inflation. Fertile ground for a pop in gold.
I hope and pray that some of it works. That said I’m a realist and frankly I don’t see this resolving any time soon. I think you can boil much of this down to one simple fact. JOBS. Private JOBS more to the pt. Like during the Great Depression though a tiny % maybe 5% of the pop. has most of the wealth here and around the planet. This super-wealthy plutocracy needs for nothing. They seem in no hurry to help out in righting the economy, quite to the contrary. I believe in what the old robber baron J.Paul Getty ,once said, ” Money is like manure, if you don’t spread it around nothing grows.” Henry Ford was another rich guy that understood that without a middle class he wasn’t going to be able to sell his cars and he raised the wages for his own workers against the popular prevailing theory of the time.
Vickie JohnstonFeb 10, 2009 @ 9:46
Sooner and later people are going to realize the Obama plan is not going to work, I give that 3 to 9 months, it will be different time frames for different people. Here is the real problem, even if his plan does work perfect, it is only going to put us back to square one, a recession. 4 million new jobs will put the 3.6 million that are out of work now back to work. By the time the plan is actually working how many more jobs will have been lost. I think of the movie with Indian Jones. When he is running and that giant rock is behind him rolling down at him on that downward ramp. There is no way to stop this thing. It will finally hit and break into millions of pieces. No time in history, have we ever been a whole world financial system wolven together like we are now. You can’t possibly look backwards for the answer. No one can predict all the outcome of the old tricks that worked in the global world we live in now, only that short of an absolute divine miracle the whole thing is coming down hard. Many people will not be able to handle the drastic change that is coming quickly. As that rock gains momentum coming down that ramp is will roll faster and faster at the whole world. There will be no way to stop it, all you can do is get out of it way. The fear will be rampant, gold will then soar.
Obama will keep trying to convince people the plan is going to kick in and the next part will do the trick, since it is a plan to unwind over the next several years. It is going to give some false hope of a recovery in the near term, when reality is we are going to be ten years or more before we even get close to where we were. That is if Jesus doesn’t come first, then all bets are off. By the way, I don’t believe even 50% of Obamas plan is going to work. I think it will only bring us down further. Obama is very arrogant and prideful on the outside. I think he is beginning to realize what he has got his self into. He is very fearful and knows all he can do is try to give false hope because he is the eternal optimist as he said himself last night.
gary leibowitzFeb 10, 2009 @ 9:07
The great republicans of the last 8 years created massive government spending, huge entitlement to the very rich, fire-side deregulations, faked the need for a war to get their agenda passed, used McCarthy tactics when anyone challeged them, created the worse rift among other nations in terms of trust, etc…
So where does this great united republican front want to take us? Tax cuts of course. I wonder which group of people get rewarded the most with these tax cuts? I find it amazing that the cold heartless republicans still play politics against a backdrop that is surely going to trump the last great depression.
Imagine the legacy of this administation if they showed they cut taxes disproportionately for the wealthy in the next great depression.
Anyone saying the FDR plan was wastfull and prolonged the depression is not centered on this planet. Watch your relatives and friends fall off the cliff during this debacle and see if your analytical, philosophical arguments mean anything. Times like this deserve compassion. I will not dare describe it as socialism since that word, right now, is synonymous to communism.
The only thing the Republicans are doing is what they have done for 8 years now. Stubborn insistance that their great scheme is going to create a utopia for the very rich and enough trickle down to satisfy the middle class. Looks to me like that faucet has closed down, not a drop.
I guess only when you yourself experience a dramatic disruption in your lifestyle do you really understand why governments are really there. Its no fault of the individual, so laziness or not having a “work ethic” doesn’t apply.
Nice theory that “survival of the fittest” should apply when the very same people spousing this are the ones on top. Wait till they fall way down. Watch the word “Socialism” take on a kinder meaning.
Kurt Hinz jrFeb 10, 2009 @ 12:54
Hi all.
Yesterday I stumbled upon an aticle on a website (I think it was the ‘americn ‘spectator’), which published a chart showing the correlation of government spending vs. unemployment.
A study found out, that the unemployment rate actually goes with, yes!, goes in tandem with gov.spending. At least for the last 50yrs or so…
I mean, even after reading so many ‘austrian’ authors I was surprised by the ovious message.
Can anyone around here confirm this??
Still laughing hard, Kurt.
SaiFeb 10, 2009 @ 1:19
I still believe that the problems due the excesses built over decades would not be resolved in months. Let the government do what it thinks. The capitalistic economy is truely based on greed and fear. Hard earned money of innocent and passive investors will be snatched away using the means of long/short/call/put or what ever vehicles that were created. I don’t know the real solution. Just watching the drama.
Comments on this entry are closed.
What everyone seems to be saying is “We are all F****D!!!
Thanks to low wages, free trade and globalization. Geez I thought free trade and globalization was suppose to make us rich! All we got was more debt, no savings, asset inflation with no WAGE inflation.
And now they still want to continue with Free trade and Globalization with the fear mongering about protectionism. BS. I’ll take my chances. Why would I listen to the liars and cheats that got us here in the first place with their economic policies and theories!!!
Instead of spending trillions to give to the rogues that got us in this mess, nationalize the banks, execute all the Wall Street crooks starting with Madoff( YOU won’t have fraud for another 50 years on Wall Street then), let the gov’t buy up all the foreclosed houses, this will cost $600 billion as RE prices falling is the real problem and no jobs as well.
Also mandate as law that the lowest paid employee(S) in any Public Company that is traded on YM, ES, NQ, TF etc. will make a minimum of 10% of the highest paid employee. So if Sandy WEil made $ 1 Billion as CEO of Travellers/Citigroup in 1994/1995 then the lowest paid employees would all be making $100,000,000 each.
How would the shareholders like that??? The dumb shareholders don’t seem to understand that the last 25 years the CEO’s have been screwing thier minds…making them temporary rich with a temporary stock mkt boom and then burning the companies to the ground, but the CEO’s ran off with Billions.
At least with Batra’s plan on compensation, the financial mess would not have happened, the middle class would be there, houses would not be foreclosed because people would have real cash from decent wages, instead of the ATM they had on their house and credit cards. With more cash in your pocket, you do not need debt or very little of it and you can pay your debt from a decent wage. High wages and jobs = prosperity with a cap on exponential salaries. Stock and real estate booms and busts are shocks to the system that benefit very few.
If we don’t implement the changes above…..”We are F****d.”
Yes sir, Will Bello, That quote of Emanuel says it all. This snide artful dodger has managed to avoid any damage from the various scandals in which he has been a player so he remains at large. Hopefully, sooner rather than later, his mouth will land him in trouble again, and he will find himself under the bus and/or in custody.
Listen very closely to what Obama says, his quote is ‘ it will save or create 4mil jobs” Clearly every word spoken is passed through a political filter first for when the time comes for re election his statement provides plenty of cover as how can one quantify how many jobs were saved.
I find the comment of his chief of staff , arguably the most partisan man in the country, extremely disturbing and at the same time revealing.
” Never let a good crisis go to waste”
TKO, point well taken. Yes it is a safety-net just like FDR’s was. Would you really have had FDR do away with the “nothiong to fear but fear itself” speech and tell people to hide under a rock? No government is in the practice of declaring disaster. The idea the this President, one month into his presidency is to blame is a bit biased. He is doing what all presicents do, appear calm and optimistic.
As for the market drop it has absolutely nothing to do with the speech’s. nothing. In fact they already telegraphed what to expect. The charts showed we were in a very critical junction where there was going to be a big move. In fact I would suggest you revisit this market in one weeks’s time. The charts look like we will have an explosive but short lived rally right her, or in one week at the latest.
Long term macro economy is not pretty. That will eventually translate to a much lower market. For now though we should see a dramatic rally, one that takes us higher then most would think. It will most likely be the last big rally for the next 3 years.
OK, I found the links to my earlier comment:
Brian Wesbury @ American Spectator
Article:
Brian Wesbury @ First Trust
Article: (pdf)
Turns out the guy is a chief economist, not a keynesian, thou 😉
Sorry if this is partly OT, Kurt.
Hey Gary, No rational soul is against extending a safety net to those of us who have fallen victim to the unintended consequences of an incorrect fiddling with economic law and a system wide failure of fiscal and fiduciary responsibility. At least have the honesty to call it an safety net and desist from even attempting to characterise this plan as a stimulus. Investors, risktakers, and producers have no confidence and credit and velocity have crashed to zero. A true stimulus package might have provided some spark or hope for a possible rapid turnaround in the Economy. At this juncture, investors have no faith in the President he is a short sale every time he appears, and no faith in the legislature especially after this latest boondoggle. Last chance for policymakers to quickly provide a fix now lies with the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. As I write this, the market is down 350 after the testimony of Geithner and Bernanke. A generally optimistic sort, I thought they sounded half convincing. The market thought otherwise. No sparks, no confidence, no stock rally—the market will reflect the underlying declining deflating economy. And perhaps a realization of future high inflation. Fertile ground for a pop in gold.
Greetings from an old Margate friend !
I hope and pray that some of it works. That said I’m a realist and frankly I don’t see this resolving any time soon. I think you can boil much of this down to one simple fact. JOBS. Private JOBS more to the pt. Like during the Great Depression though a tiny % maybe 5% of the pop. has most of the wealth here and around the planet. This super-wealthy plutocracy needs for nothing. They seem in no hurry to help out in righting the economy, quite to the contrary. I believe in what the old robber baron J.Paul Getty ,once said, ” Money is like manure, if you don’t spread it around nothing grows.” Henry Ford was another rich guy that understood that without a middle class he wasn’t going to be able to sell his cars and he raised the wages for his own workers against the popular prevailing theory of the time.
Sooner and later people are going to realize the Obama plan is not going to work, I give that 3 to 9 months, it will be different time frames for different people. Here is the real problem, even if his plan does work perfect, it is only going to put us back to square one, a recession. 4 million new jobs will put the 3.6 million that are out of work now back to work. By the time the plan is actually working how many more jobs will have been lost. I think of the movie with Indian Jones. When he is running and that giant rock is behind him rolling down at him on that downward ramp. There is no way to stop this thing. It will finally hit and break into millions of pieces. No time in history, have we ever been a whole world financial system wolven together like we are now. You can’t possibly look backwards for the answer. No one can predict all the outcome of the old tricks that worked in the global world we live in now, only that short of an absolute divine miracle the whole thing is coming down hard. Many people will not be able to handle the drastic change that is coming quickly. As that rock gains momentum coming down that ramp is will roll faster and faster at the whole world. There will be no way to stop it, all you can do is get out of it way. The fear will be rampant, gold will then soar.
Obama will keep trying to convince people the plan is going to kick in and the next part will do the trick, since it is a plan to unwind over the next several years. It is going to give some false hope of a recovery in the near term, when reality is we are going to be ten years or more before we even get close to where we were. That is if Jesus doesn’t come first, then all bets are off. By the way, I don’t believe even 50% of Obamas plan is going to work. I think it will only bring us down further. Obama is very arrogant and prideful on the outside. I think he is beginning to realize what he has got his self into. He is very fearful and knows all he can do is try to give false hope because he is the eternal optimist as he said himself last night.
The great republicans of the last 8 years created massive government spending, huge entitlement to the very rich, fire-side deregulations, faked the need for a war to get their agenda passed, used McCarthy tactics when anyone challeged them, created the worse rift among other nations in terms of trust, etc…
So where does this great united republican front want to take us? Tax cuts of course. I wonder which group of people get rewarded the most with these tax cuts? I find it amazing that the cold heartless republicans still play politics against a backdrop that is surely going to trump the last great depression.
Imagine the legacy of this administation if they showed they cut taxes disproportionately for the wealthy in the next great depression.
Anyone saying the FDR plan was wastfull and prolonged the depression is not centered on this planet. Watch your relatives and friends fall off the cliff during this debacle and see if your analytical, philosophical arguments mean anything. Times like this deserve compassion. I will not dare describe it as socialism since that word, right now, is synonymous to communism.
The only thing the Republicans are doing is what they have done for 8 years now. Stubborn insistance that their great scheme is going to create a utopia for the very rich and enough trickle down to satisfy the middle class. Looks to me like that faucet has closed down, not a drop.
I guess only when you yourself experience a dramatic disruption in your lifestyle do you really understand why governments are really there. Its no fault of the individual, so laziness or not having a “work ethic” doesn’t apply.
Nice theory that “survival of the fittest” should apply when the very same people spousing this are the ones on top. Wait till they fall way down. Watch the word “Socialism” take on a kinder meaning.
Hi all.
Yesterday I stumbled upon an aticle on a website (I think it was the ‘americn ‘spectator’), which published a chart showing the correlation of government spending vs. unemployment.
A study found out, that the unemployment rate actually goes with, yes!, goes in tandem with gov.spending. At least for the last 50yrs or so…
I mean, even after reading so many ‘austrian’ authors I was surprised by the ovious message.
Can anyone around here confirm this??
Still laughing hard, Kurt.
I still believe that the problems due the excesses built over decades would not be resolved in months. Let the government do what it thinks. The capitalistic economy is truely based on greed and fear. Hard earned money of innocent and passive investors will be snatched away using the means of long/short/call/put or what ever vehicles that were created. I don’t know the real solution. Just watching the drama.