What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

[Beco]

People talking about others being too stupid to bear, ought to have the education to state it correctly.

Hahaha!

 

[unregistered]

 

[bra_man69]

I'm sorry Jen...it must really suck that a liberal like me with my beliefs and level of education is doing so well when your conservative friends are finding it so difficult. I own my own company. There are several Litsters that have been given the tour. Ask them what is real and what isn't.

Ok what's real? Lol

 

[Dribble]

We know, we know.

You were offered the tour a couple years ago but you decided it was not in your best interest. It is easier to say that my world is all an illusion. Am I better than you? Sure...who isn't?

 

[NeverEndingMe]

Wingnuts have difficulty with reading comprehension.

and you have difficulty in finding a real job

 

[NeverEndingMe]

I gave up on wingnuts.

They become too stupid to bare this close to an election.

yes you are correct, obama wing nuts are stupid

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Vette's very own article says they're not - only that starting in 2022 new plants being built will have to cut their emissions.

Why do you say such stupid things?

And I gave you, from AP, the facts that new projects were being shut down.

Why?

Because they would be too expensive to operate. You never had a reply to that.

That's due to the cost of cutting emission.

You didn't win the day in that thread, but now you want to act like you did?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Wingnuts have difficulty with reading comprehension.

You're just about the worst example of what it takes to be a non-wingnut.

A regular lemming who likes what he hears and launches before examining the actual facts or maybe examining the thread where we easily pointed out the flaw to merc's grand argument.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Here's an economically frightening stat that we got from our financial advisor this week.

As the tail end of the baby boom, we're in the top 5% of retirement savings.

The average for our age group is only 40K.

That scares me on two levels, one who's going to help pay for those other geezers? and are we now targets of the wealth envy crowd...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

April 8, 2012
Government-Caused Depression?
By Frank Ryan, The American Thinker

During the Vietnam conflict, a common complaint of soldiers was that you could never tell who the enemy really was.

In this current economic recession, too, I am beginning to wonder who the enemy of our recovery really is.

The president, Congress, the Federal Reserve, and the regulators are all telling us why so many others are to blame. The big banks have done it to us! shouts one group. Wall Street did it, claims another. Homebuyers who bought homes they could not afford are the real culprit! claims another.

Perhaps those who have been charged with the responsibility for managing the fiscal and monetary policy of our nation should look inward for their responsibility in this continuing crisis.

For example, the major banking crisis in 2008 -- as seen with the Lehman Brothers disaster, the Bear Stearns crisis, the Wachovia Bank crisis, the National City bankruptcy, the Countrywide fiasco, and the virtual meltdown of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- caused Congress to become concerned about capital adequacy of banks and financial institutions.

Stress-testing banks came into vogue. The intent was to protect the economy from the "too big the fail" firms so that our economy would no longer be vulnerable to the bankruptcy of one institution. Stress-testing may have been a laudable objective in concept, but it was perhaps not so laudable in practice.

To implement a too-big-to-fail strategy in the middle of a recession likely made the recession more severe and prolonged. Investors became concerned about what the government would do next with banks, which in turn made it harder for banks to acquire the very capital that would be needed to eliminate the "too big to fail" concern in the first place.

By the same token, our government is considering BASEL 3 capital adequacy standards. Such capital standards make sense on the surface; however, in the middle of a recession, with stock prices already depressed for banks, the likelihood is that banks will increase their capital ratios by getting smaller rather than by raising equity. Reducing capacity to lend in a recession is problematic for our economy.

In reality, the most recently released stress tests have allowed many well-capitalized banks to buy shares of their own stock back because the shares are so "cheap." In other words, the financial sector is contracting in the middle of a recession!

In a similar vein, in a misguided effort to spur on the economy, the Federal Reserve has enacted Quantitative Easing 1, Quantitative Easing 2, and Operation Twist. The intent of all of these measures is to reduce long-term interest rates to spur on consumer spending and investment by business.

In reality, what has occurred is that we have set the stage for unrealistically low interest rates, which, when the interest rates reset, will make the investment or spending decision painful in retrospect.

Quantitative Easing is an identical concept to the teaser interest rates that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the federal government encouraged with banks and investment banks to entice homeowners into buying homes they could not afford. Have we not learned anything from the housing crisis?

The extremely low interest rates have encouraged investors to withhold funds from the investment markets because they understand that these rates are unrealistically low in light of inflation concerns.

Finally, at the height of the financial crisis in 2009, the FDIC required banks to post three years of prepayments of the FDIC insurance premiums. The prepayments amounted to $45 billion. The intent was to restore some solvency to the FDIC insurance fund, which had seen rapid withdrawals in 2008 and 2009.

Unfortunately, the impact of the $45-billion premium was to pull almost $450 billion of lending capacity from the banks at a time when the nation was already in crisis. The problem expands to $450 billion because of the capital requirements of banks with the Total Risk Based Capital calculation.

The intent of the FDIC was very sound. Unfortunately, bank stocks were selling at such depressed levels in 2008 and 2009 that most banks decided to get smaller rather than raise equity at depressed prices to meet the regulatory capital requirements.

In defense of the FDIC, they did try to increase the size of the fund during booming economic times, but large banks were able to successfully lobby that the fund was big enough already. In reality, the fund should have been allowed to continue to grow so that in stressful economic times, the fund would be large enough to weather the storm without special assessments during a crisis. This is a situation where the large banks, Congress, and the FDIC were all complicit.

For there to be a reasonable solution to the current economic malaise, government must recognize the timing, as well as the intent, of its decisions.

Increasing capital standards in good times would likely be absorbed by the economy and the banking industry with little adverse effect on consumers.

Allowing the FDIC to maintain the insurance fund as an insurance fund without intervention on the limits of the size of the fund would permit insurance to do what it's intended to do: insure. By reducing FDIC premiums in good times, banks actually reported above-normal earnings. In severe economic times, banks' earnings have been negatively affected by increasing premiums. Not the message that should be sent in the middle of a recession.

The Dodd-Frank Bill was intended to reduce our economy's risk to institutions that were too big to fail. Since the passage of this bill, the exact opposite is happened. The larger banks have become bigger and our risk greater.

It is essential that until the economy is more robust, the federal government, Congress, the president, and the regulators stop all efforts at increasing regulatory compliance burdens. Capital standards should be maintained at prudent levels until after the recession is over. At that time, it would be appropriate to consider recapitalizing banks with higher regulatory standards.

Once again, the very people tasked with assisting in controlling the economy are meddling, in a political way, in activities of which they have no understanding.

When will Congress understand that you cannot legislate economic principles? Congress and the president must be aware that the laws of supply and demand were never passed by any government, nor can those laws be repealed.

Interfere excessively with a free market, and be prepared for the unintended consequences.

Col. Frank Ryan, CPA is a retired Marine Reserve colonel. He taught economics as an adjunct faculty member at the college level, and he specializes in corporate restructuring and lectures on ethics for the state CPA societies. He has served on numerous boards of publicly traded and non-profit organizations.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

How can you measure the value of knowing that company books are sounder than they were before? Of no more overnight bankruptcies with the employees and retirees left holding the bag? No more disruption to entire sectors of the economy?
Michael Oxley 2002
Co-Author of Sarbanes-Oxley Law
(Jon Corzine, co-sponsor)

It will take the next economic crisis, as certainly it will come, to determine whether or not the provisions of this bill will actually provide this generation or the next generation of regulators with the tools necessary to minimize the effects of that crisis.
Chris Dodd
Co-Author Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act
Friend of Angelo

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

April 8, 2012
Someone in California Finally Shows Some Intelligence, but then Folds
Harlan Platt, The American Thinker

The budget crisis in California affects many aspects of life there. Students attending Santa Monica College suffer from a lack of class offerings. Consequently, some students are unable to graduate or complete certain programs.

Then somebody in California actually considered how to solve a problem rather than giving up or begging for state support which would not be forthcoming. The solution was simple. Offer additional sections of the class in short supply but rather than charge the approved $36 per credit hourly rate actually ask students to pay the full cost of the class, about $180 per credit. Naturally, all hell broke loose. After enduring student protests for nearly a week, the Chancellor of the California community college system forced officials at Santa Monica College to fold -- that is, they could not offer the extra sections. The unintended consequence of this weak action is that students not permitted to pay the extra amounts to take a required or necessary class will not get jobs or will not graduate. No doubt those protesting were not the ones who wanted to take the class. They were just the ones imposing unintended consequences on their peers.

It is surprising and unfortunate how the market model is often rejected as a solution to a resource shortage problem. I hope you will read the chapter in my book, Unintended Consequences: How to Improve of Government, our Businesses, and our Lives, on the impact of government decisions to not permit market rents or market prices to exist. If you are as old as I am you may remember the gasoline lines that all Americans suffered through because bureaucrats refused to allow the price of gasoline to go to its market clearing level. Better that we all suffer than permit the market to work.

 

[mercury14]

And I gave you, from AP, the facts that new projects were being shut down.

Why?

Because they would be too expensive to operate. You never had a reply to that.

That's due to the cost of cutting emission.

You didn't win the day in that thread, but now you want to act like you did?

You (I think it was you) pointed out that investors were going with natural gas power plants instead of coal ones. Nowhere did you show that even a single coal plant is being shut down.

But you're backpedaling in a hurry though, aren't ya? First you said that the EPA has been shutting down coal plants... Even though you couldn't name any. Then when you were held accountable for that statement, you changed your story to "new projects" being "shut down", even though what's going on is that new projects are switching to cheap natural gas power.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Gas high now?

War is coming to the Middle East:

April 8, 2012
War in the Middle East May Be Inevitable
By Neil Snyder, The American Thinker

Moshe Arens is one of the most knowledgeable people in Israel today. He understands Israel's predicament as well as anyone, and that includes Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Arens has served as Israel's minister of defense and minister of foreign affairs, so when he speaks, we should pay careful attention. On Tuesday, Arens explained the true meaning of Shaul Mofaz's March 27 victory over Tzipi Livni for leadership of the Kadima Party:

Of course Shaul Mofaz won, and Tzipi Livni lost. But there was much more to the Kadima primary race than that. It was the "two-state solution," at the forefront of Israeli political discourse for a number of years, that lost. It was the offer of more concessions to the Palestinians, whose most prominent advocate was former Kadima chairwoman, MK Tzipi Livni, that went down in defeat. The concession offers made by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and by then-Foreign Minister Livni to then-senior Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia were left in the dust in last week's Kadima primary. That was the verdict implicitly delivered by Kadima party members, a verdict that echoed the feelings of many Israelis.

According to Arens, the Israeli public's mood has changed dramatically as a result of the failure to achieve anything that even resembles peace despite repeated unilateral efforts by the Israeli government to win the cooperation of Palestinian leaders. To buttress his point, Arens discussed these failed attempts to move the peace process forward:

1. The Oslo Peace Accords: Arens calls them "an abject failure."

2. Ehud Barak's unilateral withdrawal from Southern Lebanon in 2000: it led to the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

3. Barak's attempt to buy off Yasser Arafat by offering him the Temple Mount and much more in Jerusalem: Arafat flatly rejected the offer and launched "an unprecedented wave of terror against Israeli civilians."

4. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral withdrawal from Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip: it was a "grave mistake" because it led to "Hamas taking control of the Gaza Strip and the subsequent rain of rockets on southern Israel."

5. The Arab Spring: it brought "Islamic fundamentalist rule to the Arab world" and "strengthened the skepticism of many Israelis regarding the presumed advantages of offering territorial concessions to our Arab neighbors."

Those are good reasons for the Israeli public's mood change. Since the Oslo Peace Process began in 1993 and movement toward a "two-state solution" got underway in earnest, Israel has made concession after concession, and in return they have received nothing but rejection and more terrorist activity. According to Arens:

The election that returned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to power three years ago was a clear indication of a growing disenchantment with the much-vaunted "peace process" among many Israelis. Livni's defeat in the Kadima primary gave a stamp of approval to this trend, which has contributed to the surprising stability of the Netanyahu government. The current Knesset may yet set an Israeli longevity record. The strength of the political parties claiming that concessions will pave the path to peace is steadily dwindling.

The Israeli public is finally waking up to reality....

Even though Arafat died in 2004, the Palestinians are following his playbook to the letter. They are simply biding their time, taking what Israel gives them, offering nothing in return, and waiting for the day when "the Arab nations ... join us for the final blow against Israel[,]" just as Arafat said. But the Middle East situation is more complicated than that:

An increasingly belligerent Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles to deliver them despite assurances to the contrary, is attempting to establish hegemony over the Middle East and North Africa, and has declared that it intends to "wipe Israel off the map."
China is siding with Iran and attempting to increase its influence in the Middle East.
Unrest in Syria is rapidly developing into a full-blown civil war despite former Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan's efforts to bring an end to the fighting, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may not survive, and Islamists are positioning themselves to take control.
Russia is flexing its muscles in the Middle East, siding with Iran and Syria, and challenging Western powers, most notably the United States.
President Obama is perceived as weak in the Middle East, thus emboldening Islamists throughout the region and Russia and China.
Egypt is poised to elect an Islamist president, and Egypt's parliament has declared that Israel is Egypt's "number one enemy."
Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is leading his nation down an Islamist path and trying to re-establish the Ottoman Empire. In the process, he is turning against Israel and winning accolades from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

These facts help to explain why there is growing skepticism among Israeli citizens about the prospects for peace in the Middle East, and they cause bleak reality to come into crystal-clear focus.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

You (I think it was you) pointed out that investors were going with natural gas power plants instead of coal ones. Nowhere did you show that even a single coal plant is being shut down.

But you're backpedaling in a hurry though, aren't ya? First you said that the EPA has been shutting down coal plants... Even though you couldn't name any. Then when you were held accountable for that statement, you changed your story to "new projects" being "shut down", even though what's going on is that new projects are switching to cheap natural gas power.

No, the AP pointed that out; I included it so that you would nit run in claiming I did not read the whole article as per usual.

The fact is that the article stated that new plants were not going to be built because the emission standards made it too expensive to operate the plants, something Obama crowed about as a Senator.

I also submitted that the next focus on de-developing the US would be the attack on natural gas as yet another fossil fuel...

I never "changed" my story.

 

[mercury14]

Hey AJ, are you in the market or not? You've been bitching about it since 2008, predicting doom, destruction, and poverty.

So did you miss one of the biggest market run-ups in history? Or are you a lying hypocrite who's actually secretly betting his life's savings on the market while running his mouth about what a fool anyone is who invests?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Hey AJ, are you in the market or not? You've been bitching about it since 2008, predicting doom, destruction, and poverty.

So did you miss one of the biggest market run-ups in history? Or are you a lying hypocrite who's actually secretly betting his life's savings on the market while running his mouth about what a fool anyone is who invests?

What part of diversified portfolio is so fucking mysterious to you two savants?

 

[Beco]

how do you read war into that?

 

[mercury14]

No, the AP pointed that out; I included it so that you would nit run in claiming I did not read the whole article as per usual.

The fact is that the article stated that new plants were not going to be built because the emission standards made it too expensive to operate the plants, something Obama crowed about as a Senator.

I also submitted that the next focus on de-developing the US would be the attack on natural gas as yet another fossil fuel...

I never "changed" my story.

You've changed your story in this very thread.

In another thread, merc was trying to pretend tat the EPA wasn't shutting down coal plants.

And I gave you, from AP, the facts that new projects were being shut down.

First it was the EPA shutting down coal plants. Then you changed your story to private investors changing future plans based on their own internal decisions. Those are two very different things.

 

[mercury14]

What part of diversified portfolio is so fucking mysterious to you two savants?

Does your diversified portfolio include stocks or mutual funds?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

how do you read war into that?

Easy. The religion of Peace is never going to stop using Israel as the explanation for its own lethargic economic failure. Israel realizes now that war is coming to it, and if war is coming, then a first strike may be necessary.

As a Capitalist nation in a sea of Socialist/Oligarchical/Mafiosity (If I may be allowed to use the word that way) it is a constant stick in the eye of the rulers and a possible glimmer of hope for the ruled which must be quashed, therefore, Israel must go.

It's also the real reason why our Left hates it with a burning white-hot passion and wants to see it gone.

All that freaking oil money and the people of the other countries are still starving...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Does your diversified portfolio include stocks or mutual funds?

Why does it matter so much to you two fucking clowns?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

You've changed your story in this very thread.

First it was the EPA shutting down coal plants. Then you changed your story to private investors changing future plans based on their own internal decisions. Those are two very different things.

Go get the quotes, all of them, without editing and make your case or shut the fuck up since it was your story that actually evolved, from it's an outright lie to outright parsing of everything we said or posted to prove to yourself that you were only slightly wrong and therefore pretty much right...

 

[Beco]

With points of view like this, war is coming....

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/...another-a-whore-for-aipac-during-live-debate/