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Post by kramer on Apr 28, 2010 19:56:48 GMT -6
What's causing all of this debt in these countries? Social programs and lavish union benefits?
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Post by kramer on Apr 25, 2010 22:19:41 GMT -6
corrupt US buys defaulted MBSs, maybe $Trillions The lying, corrupt government is scamming the public like an illusionist with misdirection that gets one to watch the wrong hand. Govt. buys $100sB more MBS. Who knows how much, $trillions? They are hiding in plain sight the fact that cash is exchanged for DEFAULTED MBS.... Then this HAS to show up on the monthly Federal budget, unlike when the Fed was doing the buying. This should show up every month in the Treasury Dept's monthly report and should be easily extrapolated to the annual deficit. Unless there's some way the Treasury Dept itself can keep this "off-balance-sheet." Don't you remember the article you posted (that I double posted) from the Huffington Post that said 8x as many bad loans are being kept off the books because Fannie isn't a 100% government agency? The article also said (I'm recalling from memory) that these loans might get moved to the Treasury (or the FED, I forgot which one) where they would still be kept off books. Kramer
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Post by kramer on Apr 24, 2010 13:19:40 GMT -6
Nope it isn't. In reality both parties are to blame.That's my point. The excerpt I quoted blamed Republicans which I took exception to because there was no mention of democrats or the other socialist tools of democrats such as the UN, the World Bank, or the IMF which all are pushing 'development' in other countries. Note that development doesn't work very well unless there are jobs that come with it where the workers can make things to sell to other countries. These countries are getting our jobs and that's why democrats have a big hand in globalization. But with Repubs, it's almost impossible to find one of those buggers who is opposed to it and the attendant off-shoring of American jobs that goes with it. The offshoring of jobs is part of a plan to reduce the global disparity in wealth. I've read about it in a few books and on various websites. And these movements are mostly from leftists. (note: I think it's a great thing to end world poverty but the way the left is going about it is to redistribute our jobs and wealth to the rest of the world. I'd rather see the other countries improve their economies without taking our jobs and wealth.) Regarding transferring our wealth, democrats are the ones pushing it right now with cap-and-trade. These socialist SOBs want us to pay other countries with huge tracks of forests tens of billions of dollars per year via carbon offsets. They also support the UNs plans to redistribute our technology and technological know-how to other countries. The end goal is to have all countries having similar GDPs and a global redistribution of wealth within and among nations. They were the ones eager for us to sign a climate treaty in Copenhagen which the leader of the EU said would give us global governance and global management of the world's resources. I'd say this is the de-facto definition of socialism. And they were the ones that wanted us to sign on to Kyoto which Cass Sunstein said America would probably have paid up to 80% of the costs and China would have most likely been the recipient of the majority of these funds. Coincidentally, it was Clinton and Gore that pushed Kyoto and this was after Clinton and the DNC got caught receiving illegal contributions from the communist Chinese Government. Clinton also gave China PNTR (permanent normalized trading relations) in Oct of '00. Not a bad investment for China....they get millions of our jobs, double digit economic growth, and they almost got us to pay them billions/year under Kyoto. This was all the doing of democrats. That said, both parties have almost identical views on globalization, free trade since both are owned by the same people today. Hard to argue against that. Both are hostile as hell to the working class and need to be gotten rid of. Absolutely.
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Post by kramer on Apr 23, 2010 22:23:39 GMT -6
I disagree with this statment: "Some Americans, especially the cosmo-conservatives in Manhattan and Washington, may fantasize that globalization will yield another “American century,” with Yankee know-how tossing institutional and ideological candy-bars to fetching senoritas in the Third World. But blue-collar workers in Detroit and construction men in Texas probably have a better grip on the realities of globalization as they watch their own jobs disappear before Asian competition and illegal immigrants. "
Globalization is happening because organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF are pushing it. The UN is in on it because it's helping to achieve their Millennium Development Goals and prominent democrats like it because it reduces world poverty.
Blaming Republicans for globalization is missing the bigger picture.
Kramer
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Post by kramer on Apr 11, 2010 17:35:36 GMT -6
I think they are getting ready to implement taxes via a VAR or from carbon as Volcker recently floated...
Kramer
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Post by kramer on Apr 9, 2010 17:34:09 GMT -6
As an electrical engineer, I think we should make the jump right to LED lights as these use about a quarter of the energy of a fluorescent while a fluorescent uses about a quarter of the energy of an incandescent bulb. That means LEDs use about 1/16 the power of an incandescent bulb.
What I don't like about this is the change being mandated by the government under the pretext of saving the world from global warming. The real reason they want us to conserve energy is so developing and third world countries can grow their economies with fossil fuels.
Kramer
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Post by kramer on Apr 9, 2010 17:20:08 GMT -6
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Post by kramer on Apr 9, 2010 17:16:19 GMT -6
From the BBC: Some researchers say that men can have 'women's brains' and that women can think more like men. Find out more about 'brain sex' differences by taking the Sex ID test, a series of visual challenges and questions used by psychologists in the BBC One television series Secrets of the Sexes: Get a brain sex profile and find out if you think like a man or a woman. See if you can gaze into someone's eyes and know what they're thinking. Find out why scientists are interested in the length of your fingers. See how your results relate to theories about brain sex. www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/add_user.shtmlKramer
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Post by kramer on Apr 9, 2010 17:13:00 GMT -6
Dude, democrats are also proponents of free trade because they see it as a way to reduce poverty in the third world. Yeah I know, the Democrats even started a Civil War to defend their Free Trade too. It's hard to break with tradition, even for a negro. If you disagree with what I said, just say so. I've got enough links to back up my claims if I have to. Kramer
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Post by kramer on Apr 8, 2010 22:49:49 GMT -6
The big money gives about equally to both sides - hedging their bets. Yes, I agree.
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Post by kramer on Apr 8, 2010 7:29:55 GMT -6
The Republican Party may be led by free-trade/open-border Libertarian neocon fucktards, but don't forget that the Democratic Party is the Party of slavery, the Party that invented every single parliamentary lawyer trick not-in-the-book (like the fillibuster). Dude, democrats are also proponents of free trade because they see it as a way to reduce poverty in the third world.
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Post by kramer on Apr 2, 2010 17:53:12 GMT -6
Here is what I see happening if we give amnesty.
- Democrats will probably be assured power for the next 100 years. I base this on the fact that exit polls on all of the Presidential elections since Reagan gave amnesty showed the democratic candidate getting the majority hispanic/latino vote.
- This will be a huge carrot for people still living in the 'South' to come here illegally.
- The companies currently employing illegals will have their costs increased by these people becoming citizens. I gotta believe these companies will look for more illegal workers once the new waves of illegals get here. This of course depends on whether the government implements tough laws with teeth that do a good job of stopping the hiring of illegals. My gut says they won't.
- It's going to add a huge cost to our health care system.
- The last I heard, there were calls to allow in the extended family members of these illegals. This could result in a 2 to 5x the amount of people we give amnesty to as well as cement democrats in power forever. On top of this, our health care costs will skyrocket while our wait times and quality of coverage declines in perfect inverse correlation.
- Millions of Americans are going to be competing with these workers who will work for minimum wage meaning a lowering of wages for legal American workers (for the ones that get jobs).
- The border still won't get protected.
It's insanity to give them amnesty when we've shipped off easily 10 million jobs over the last 10 years AND when we have close to 20% unemployment and when our debt is over $101 Trillion dollars and when the government is trying to reduce our carbon output (and hence our economic output) and when environmentalists in power want us to send hundreds of billions of dollars/year to the 'South' so they can grow modern economies and build things to sell to us (after they get more of our jobs using infrastructure that they want us to pay the building costs for).
Seriously, if I was to write up a plan to destroy America without making it look deliberate, I would write up a plan to do what's been done so far. I don't see a single damn good thing from America from what's happened so far and what's been discussed for the future.
Kramer
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Post by kramer on Apr 2, 2010 17:35:42 GMT -6
Dobbs change of heart pretty much coincides with his association with the GOP in terms of guests and his political ambitions. His radio show is pretty much Fox lite. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Well, he did get his house shot at a while ago. Maybe his "change of heart" is more a concern about his life?
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Post by kramer on Apr 2, 2010 17:27:00 GMT -6
What am I missing here? Saving more of the fruits of our labor from going to uncle sam is a good thing. Eliminating this tax deduction will result in a windfall of revenue for the government.
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Post by kramer on Mar 21, 2010 18:05:02 GMT -6
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Post by kramer on Mar 14, 2010 22:26:55 GMT -6
I hope this hasn't been posted already... From the Huffington Post:
[/quote][/size] Unbelievable. The clusterfuck is even worse than imagined AND it's been kept from us. And this makes me wonder if we were lied to when we were told that the CRA mortgages had very low default rates. Kramer
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Post by kramer on Mar 14, 2010 22:15:44 GMT -6
That's an excellent video. It is. I hope it leads to more transparency within the Fed.
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Post by kramer on Mar 14, 2010 18:49:44 GMT -6
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Post by kramer on Mar 4, 2010 22:30:44 GMT -6
From the WashingtonPost:
Here's my take on this move... It's being closed because the number of jobs transferred out of America must be staggering.
And how about the part where the Obama admin says the closing will save $2 million. Well, how's that going to save $2 million when they aren't laying off those 16 economists? And the massive spending by the government dwarfs this $2 million dollar savings.
What a fucking lie.
These SOBs are purposely going to get rid of this office because it gives outsourcing data which must look really bad. And then lie about the reason why. How stupid do they think we are. More importantly, they are incredibly stupid if they can't see how stupid this reasoning is.
Sorry for the f-bomb... Things like this bug me.
Kramer
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Post by kramer on Feb 8, 2010 19:44:23 GMT -6
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Post by kramer on Feb 7, 2010 8:28:15 GMT -6
You can see that the current boom in housing prices started in 1997 That's exactly what I've been saying for over 4 years. That graph is very telling. Whatever happened in 1996-98 had a huge impact on home prices, and started the divergence of home prices from income. I saw this today in the OCRegister that might explain what happened in '97: Kramer
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Post by kramer on Feb 4, 2010 10:43:51 GMT -6
I think it means $101 trillion is the projected amount of money the programs will cost in the future. But I'm not completely sure. Well, I think you're right, this report includes the unfunded liabilities which includes the future social program costs. This is totally unacceptable. Kramer
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Post by kramer on Feb 4, 2010 9:59:07 GMT -6
On page 137 of the "Fiscal Year 2008 Financial Report of the United States Government", it says (if I'm reading it correctly) we were $101 trillion dollars in debt in 2008. www.gao.gov/financial/fy2008/08frusg.pdfI really hope I'm reading this information incorrectly. But I don't think I am. Kramer
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Post by kramer on Feb 3, 2010 20:47:39 GMT -6
On a somewhat related note, my son gashed his head last summer and I brought him to an emergency room at a local hospital. While there, I called our ins company and told them what was going on. Anyway, while there, he was seen by two doctors and one nurse. The first doctor just asked him a few questions and looked at his gash. The second one actually stapled it up. Long story short, a few months later, we got a bill for over $800 dollars while the hospital billed our ins. company almost 2 thousand dollars. The whole time we were there wasn't more than 3 hours (including sitting in the waiting room). Looking back, I wish I would have paid cash or brought him to one of those small medical centers where they can treat these things.
I wanted to dispute this cost with the hospital but I doubt I'd get anywhere.
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Post by kramer on Jan 28, 2010 23:00:04 GMT -6
This graph says it all to me: You can see that the current boom in housing prices started in 1997, 2 years after Clinton liberalized the CRA, 3 years after ACORN started getting federal funding, and 2 years after HUD's Henry Cisneros increased the GSE's requirements to serve low- and moderate-income families to 42 percent of their mortgages. In 2000, Andrew Cuomo increased the GSE requirement to 50%. Bush later bumped it up to 56% by 2007. I don't see how people cannot put part of the blame for this on government given the fact that the Federal Reserve in '92 came out with a paper titled "closing the gap: A guide to equal opportunity lending" that listed ways banks could lower their lending standards so that people with bad credit could buy homes. And of course, the GSE had low income housing goals that couldn't be met without loose standards and subprime loans. And I think that trying to prop up housing prices isn't the right thing to do. For one, I think it's going to prolong this economic mess. I also don't like the idea of lowering mortgage payments and loans UNLESS all people who have mortgages can get their payments or mortgages lowered. Kramer
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Post by kramer on Jan 28, 2010 22:30:07 GMT -6
Not to be judgmental, but Geithner gives me the impression of a shyster.
Kramer
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Post by kramer on Jan 27, 2010 16:44:19 GMT -6
Remember Dan Quayle? Picking a stupid/undesirable person as VP candidate is considered life insurance by Repub Prez candidates. McCain went too far. I remember Dan Quayle, I don't recall him relying on a teleprompter like this current president does.
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Post by kramer on Jan 27, 2010 16:41:18 GMT -6
I have yet to fathom the liberal obsession with Palin given that the Democrats have their own gallery of blithering idiots, freaks and asshats that are the equal of anything the GOP has if not worse. Chalk one up to mindless partisanship I guess. I agree with you but still, that was kind of funny...
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Post by kramer on Jan 21, 2010 13:37:41 GMT -6
That's good news.
What they ought to do is work on smaller parts of reform needed such as passing a law that forbids insurance companies from dropping people. They could also make it so that any health insurance company can operate in any state it wants to. I think this would open up competition and result in lower prices and/or better service.
There's a lot that can be done without letting the government run it.
Kramer
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Post by kramer on Jan 19, 2010 16:36:39 GMT -6
Good article. So, when Joe Lieberman wrote in 2004 that "We have seen this global outsourcing phenomena in the manufacturing sector where 2.7 million jobs have disappeared since 2000," that means we really lost 10.8 million in those 4 years. lieberman.senate.gov/assets/pdf/off_shoring.pdfIt's no wonder the economy sucks. I don't see any president (republican or democrat) fixing it. Kramer
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