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

[4est_4est_Gump]

Another middle class tax hike.

Obamacare has cut back the amount that we can put into our medical flex account.


AND THE PREMIUMS AND DEDUCTIBLES KEEP GOING UP!!!

This is what I said.

The Middle Class is losing spending power. Everything you brought up is deflection.

All you ever want to talk about is how Obama is CUTTING our taxes...



... when presented with a conflict to the wonders of Obama, you change the subject because you are the coward.

A_J's corollary #3, “The New Age Liberal maintains contradictory positions comfortably compartmentalized. (This is because the New Age Liberal is a creature that believes in consensus as a short-cut to an examination of the facts and a reasoned judgment about said facts. Corollary #2.)”

A_J's corollary #4, “When cornered by the truth, the New Age Liberal resorts to ad hominem attacks. Admitting wrong is tantamount to treason to the Consensus.”

 

[RobDownSouth]

Another middle class tax hike.

Obamacare has cut back the amount that we can put into our medical flex account.


AND THE PREMIUMS AND DEDUCTIBLES KEEP GOING UP!!!

You'll miss that taxpayer-subsidized OTC aspirin.

WE GET IT

 

[trysail]

Your politicians bought votes using your credit card. They gave away the store to the unions. Now they're getting ready to send you the bill.


___________________

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...ar-as-illinois-leads-decline-muni-credit.html



Pensions Weaken 4th Year as Illinois Leads Decline
By Michael McDonald
October 3, 2012

Funding for U.S. state retirement plans fell for a fourth straight year as insufficient contributions and inadequate investment gains overwhelmed cuts that more than 40 legislatures have made to benefits since 2007.

The median funding ratio was 71.7 percent for the year through June 2011, down from 74.3 percent the prior period, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Taxpayers in Illinois, the weakest of the group for the fourth straight year at 43.4 percent, are paying the price: the relative borrowing cost of the state and its localities is almost double the five-year average.

More than 30 states, including New Jersey and California, had less than 80 percent of assets needed to meet obligations to workers and retirees, the data show. That left them short of the threshold for sustainability of their plans.

“A lot of the states have done the easiest stuff first,” Christopher Mier, chief municipal strategist at Loop Capital Markets in Chicago, said regarding benefit cuts. “From there it gets progressively more difficult.”

The funding drop shows the challenge states face trying to recover from investment losses suffered during the recession that ended more than three years ago. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) sank 38.5 percent in 2008, the most since 1937.

Not Enough
Lawmakers have lifted retirement ages, forced workers to contribute more to plans and suspended cost-of-living increases. Yet more than 30 states still failed to deposit enough into their systems last year as they struggled to balance budgets, according to Mier.

“If they had been diligently making their contributions there wouldn’t have been this crisis,” said David Draine, a senior researcher in Washington at the Pew Center on the States. “It’s the states that came into the recession with poorly funded plans and a history of failing to make sufficient contributions that were already in a very vulnerable spot.”

Estimates of states’ combined pension deficit have ranged from $1 trillion to as much as $4 trillion as lawmakers and regulators debate the appropriate rate for discounting liabilities. The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has adopted new rules for next year that could swell the gaps.

Lower Rates
Funding levels are falling as lawmakers cave to pressure to lower assumed rates of return amid volatility in performance.

New York, which has consistently made its actuarially required payments, had less than 100 percent of the assets it needed in 2011 after lowering its rate to 7.5 percent from 8 percent, Bloomberg data show.

The board of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest public pension fund with $244 billion of assets, voted in March to cut its rate to 7.5 percent from 7.75 percent. The fund earned 1 percent in the year ended June 30, after gaining 21 percent the year before.

California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, last month signed the broadest rollback of public-employee pension benefits in the history of the most-populous state. The changes may save taxpayers as much as $55 billion over 30 years by requiring new employees to pay half the cost of benefits and work longer before retiring. The state’s funding ratio was 78.4 percent, down from 80.7 percent.

Adding Stocks
While corporate plans have been cutting equities in favor of fixed-income, public funds have done the opposite. They’ve increased stocks to nearly 70 percent of portfolios on average over the last decade as they seek higher returns, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. State systems are also boosting stakes in alternatives such as hedge funds, Cliffwater LLC, an investment advisory firm with offices in New York and Los Angeles, said in a June report.

“They are essentially doubling down to earn their way out of this problem and it’s not working,” said Kimberlee Lisella, vice president of customized strategies at Cutwater Asset Management Corp. in Armonk, New York, which oversees $32 billion. “These strategies have had mediocre returns at best and the volatility has been off the charts.”

Illinois lawmakers in August failed to act on a cost- cutting pension overhaul, ending a one-day legislative session called by Democratic Governor Pat Quinn.

The Democratic-controlled legislature considered increasing employee contributions, passing some costs to local school districts, and forcing workers to choose between the current system and receiving free retirement health care. None won majority support.

Rating Cut
Standard & Poor’s in August cut Illinois’s rating one step to A, sixth-highest, citing “weak pension funding levels and lack of action on reform measures.” New Jersey had its grade dropped by the three major credit raters last year, in part because of its unfunded retirement liability.

Investors demand about 1.5 percentage points of extra yield to own 10-year general-obligation bonds from Illinois issuers rather than AAA securities, compared with a five-year average of 0.88 percentage point, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

California, at A-, is the only state whose grade is lower from S&P.

“We all look like idiots,” Representative Daniel Biss, an Evanston, Illinois, Democrat, said in a speech in August as the House failed to advance a bill that would have eliminated the legislature’s own pension plan, one of five the state manages. “Not the governor, not the other side, not our side -- we all look like idiots.”

Court Challenge
Rhode Island, with an unfunded ratio of about 62 percent, passed one of the most ambitious retirement-system overhauls last year, as the Democratic-controlled legislature defied union opposition. Yet the law, which suspended cost-of-living increases and raised retirement ages, is among the handful being challenged by employees and retirees in court.

Lawmakers “were reckless in the way that they failed to fund the plans, and now they’re being equally reckless in the way they’re going to fix them,” said Steven Kreisberg, director of collective bargaining for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Washington. “This is an example of politicians at their worst.”



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...ar-as-illinois-leads-decline-muni-credit.html

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Bernake's interest rates are no good for people saving either...

 

[RobDownSouth]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/304424_476443725710831_1214196038_n.jpg

 

[phrodeau]

You're a coward, afraid of looking at his own hypocrisy. You decry government healthcare subsidies while also attacking Obama for scaling one of them back.

You can't have it both ways, hypocrite. Are you in favor of government healthcare subsidies or not. It's more than a fair question no matter how bad you want to "fuck it".

Declaration of Hypocrisy and Cowardice.

An Interwebz win!

I knew AJ was a hypocrite and coward ten years ago.

Should I put it in my sig line or something?

 

[RobDownSouth]

I knew AJ was a hypocrite and coward ten years ago.

Should I put it in my sig line or something?

Not until next Wednesday. October 10th (10/10) is national AJ hypocrisy day. That's the day we celebrate AJ scoring the first perfect 10 out of 10 points on the Lit General Board hypocrisy scale.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Yeah, you "know" it about everyone who thinks differently than the Democratic consensus of the day...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Who Democrats really are (images of their leader):

This speech, pricelessly captured on video, shows a man who has no intention whatsoever in leading a "post-racial" America. This is a man who has every intention of dividing by race, and twisting the facts or eliminating them altogether as he goes along.

The really shocking thing here is that only now, confronted with video tape, will some people begin to understand the actual presidential performance of the man they elected four years ago.

This is a President with two faces. The one on display when, figuratively speaking, he thinks no one is looking. The other the man who sits today in the White House -- trying to convince his fellow citizens he really isn't the man his critics accuse him of being.
That would be the first man.

The man on the tape who sees America , as the Daily Caller points out, as a "racist, zero-sum society, in which the white majority profits by exploiting black America."
On the very eve of the first presidential debate, the Obama campaign now has a serious new problem.

Jeffrey Lord, The American Spectator


Remember how we were told we were racists for making this case?

Eric Holder called us cowards for not wanting to have an "honest" dialog about race?

We can see who it is who really does not want open honest dialog...

Phrodo,
merc,
Throb,
Dick,
.
.
.,

 

[RobDownSouth]

Who Democrats really are (images of their leader):
Jeffrey Lord, The American Spectator
Remember how we were told we were racists for making this case?
Eric Holder called us cowards for not wanting to have an "honest" dialog about race?
We can see who it is who really does not want open honest dialog...
Phrodo,
merc,
Throb,
.
.
.,

Straw man and ad hominem!


WE GET IT

 

[kbate]

Bernake's interest rates are no good for people saving either...

Not true. I received a mailing from my bank yesterday offering me a "High Yield Savings Account", with a minimum balance of $1000 I can get 0.2% annual interest.

The good news about the interest rate is that I refinanced my mortgage at 3%, dropping from a 30 year to a 15 year note - which will allow me to save $75000 in 15 years in total interest with only $80 a month added to the payment.

The bad news is that not everyone has $3500 available for closing on a refinance or the credit rating to interest a bank.

 

[richard_daily]

Bernake's interest rates are no good for people saving either...

I thought that you were 100% invested in gold, and 100% invested in the stock market?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The bad news is that too many minorities don't have a home to refinance to enjoy the same windfall as you white people.


We need a program to reverse the racism*...



Are you saying those, like the elderly, who are on fixed incomes are not victims?

 

[RobDownSouth]

The bad news is that too many minorities don't have a home to refinance to enjoy the same windfall as you white people.
We need a program to reverse the racism...
Are you saying those, like the elderly, who are on fixed incomes are not victims?

Deflection AND Ascription!

WE GET IT

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I thought that you were 100% invested in gold, and 100% invested in the stock market?

That's because you are so fucking stupid and full of hate.

Are you pissed because I did not put you on the list?

 

[richard_daily]

That's because you are so fucking stupid and full of hate.

Are you pissed because I did not put you on the list?

I'm not the one that spends every waking hour wading through blogs of bullshit and hate, and then re-posting them on here and then running away when the content is dis-proven.

That would be you.

None of the rest of what you said makes any sense, much like everything else that you post on here.

Did you forget to take your meds again?

 

[mercury14]

This is what I said.

The Middle Class is losing spending power. Everything you brought up is deflection.

All you ever want to talk about is how Obama is CUTTING our taxes...

And now you want us to have government healthcare subsidies to increase the spending power of the middle class.

 

[JohnnySavage]

Deflection AND Ascription!

WE GET IT

As a Washingtonian, I find your AV offensive.

Reported.

 

[RobDownSouth]

As a Washingtonian, I find your AV offensive.

Reported.

We shall feast on the bloated carcass of Gio Gonzalez.
Be afraid.

 

[trysail]

Would somebody please explain how to visualize or conceptualize a trillion.



A million, I can do. It's 20 × a full stadium.

A billion, I can do. It's 20,000 full stadiums. I can comprehend that.


But 20,000,000 full stadiums ? Un, unh. No can do.

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[Sean Renaud]

Here ya go:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U1sCLfCJT6Q/Tg0uE4uOI3I/AAAAAAAAAnQ/gHBHUWegXCA/s1600/trillion_.gif

This is two years of military spending.​

But we don't actually care because you know, it all works out in the end. Can we just raise some taxes and then discuss something important for a change?

 

[koalabear]

Here ya go:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U1sCLfCJT6Q/Tg0uE4uOI3I/AAAAAAAAAnQ/gHBHUWegXCA/s1600/trillion_.gif

Job creation, look at the number of tow-motor drivers that will be needed.

 

[unregistered]