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

[eyer]

...blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So what's your wife's username here?

 

[mercury14]

So what's your wife's username here?

You post homoerotic shit about me two days in a row and then want to know about my wife?

What's wrong with you?

 

[Byron In Exile]

But it's perfectly okay with you when AJ and Vette parrot the lie that Obamacare is a government takeover of 1/6th of the economy. You' never call them on that because you agree with them politically.

I never said that, nor endorsed that idea.

Stop being a lying loser, and maybe then we'll talk.

 

[eyer]

You post homoerotic shit about me two days in a row and then want to know about my wife?

What's wrong with you?

Quit whining, cuckold...

...you're either lying about your wife posting here on LIT or you're lying about your wife posting here on LIT.

Seems most married folk on the GB don't actually hold any reason to hide the fact...

...but I fully understand why Mrs. mercury1/4 wishes to remain anonymous.

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[mercury14]

It's not Obama who's responsible for those corporate profits Merc.

And if corporate profits were stagnant Republicans wouldn't blame Obama either? You can't have it both ways.

 

[mercury14]

Here's something that Obama is responsible for:

Taxmageddon/SIZE]

Anything called Amageddon or somethingmageddon is stupid hype.

Also, congress will act.

 

[Sean Renaud]

We already had this Megeddon. Obama's penis is too small and Republicans cock to enormous. We know exactly how this dance ends unless Americans seriously poll differently.

Obama: We should ask the rich to pay their fair share. The top 1% should not be worshipped as gods.
Republicans: They are the top 1% because they are gods. Worship them or know their wrath. We have an army.
Obama: We have a Sulk. . .fine. I'll be over here sucking my thumb like a little bitch encase you care.

We did this dance in 2010 and we know Obama owns several pairs of bitch shoes. Republicans still haven't given a reason why we should vote for the openly evil instead of the simply cowardly.

 

[RobDownSouth]

And if corporate profits were stagnant Republicans wouldn't blame Obama either? You can't have it both ways.

They know they can't have it both ways, but it still doesn't stop them from trying. They just hope we won't notice. Not unlike, say, the Romney campaign.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Corporate profits surging past expectations under Obama?

Nope, can't happen.

Yes, it can, for many of the reasons that have been discussed, I do have to note that with each day that Gallup shows Romney leading, the market goes up in proportion to HIS gains...



Since they're betting on the future.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/business/economy/reports-suggest-a-slowdown-in-growth.html

I would bet not so enthusiastically though...

I guess that's why the "speculators" are lowering the price of oil.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Let's give President Obama the credit due to him:

1) Since 2009, the wind industry has lost 10,000 jobs, even as the energy capacity of wind farms has almost doubled. By contrast, the oil and gas industry have created 75,000 jobs since Mr. Obama took office.


2) "A $500 million job-training program has so far helped fewer than 20,000 people find work, far short of its goal." The program was so bad that "the Labor Department's inspector general recommended last fall that the agency should return the $327 million that remained unspent." They didn't. And now, the department "remains far short of its goal of placing 80,000 workers into green jobs by 2013."


3) According to the Labor Department's own figures, the push for so-called "green jobs" has been an abysmal failure. "By the end of 2011, some 16,092 participants had found new work in a "green" field, according to the Labor Department - roughly one-fifth of its target."

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/wind-ener...has-lost-10000-jobs-under-obama#ixzz1sO6ClDoO

 

[RobDownSouth]

Statistics never lie, but lying AJ sure doesn't know shit about statistics....

Yes, it can, for many of the reasons that have been discussed, I do have to note that with each day that Gallup shows Romney leading, the market goes up in proportion to HIS gains...

How many data points do you have in your series, Mr. Correlation-implies-causation? One?

Using your methodology, the fact that each day here is a bit warmer than the previous has "proven" global warming!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The Gallup daily tracking poll now has two days under its belt, the length of the market's latest "winning" streak...

 

[RobDownSouth]

Let's give President Obama the credit due to him:

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/wind-ener...has-lost-10000-jobs-under-obama#ixzz1sO6ClDoO

Don't forget the price of cinnamon in Sri Lanka is plummetting....that's gotta be Obama's fault too, amiright? You throw stuff at him on a daily basis, something's gotta stick eventually!!

 

[RobDownSouth]

The Gallup daily tracking poll now has two days under its belt, the length of the market's latest "winning" streak...

Had you attended college, you might have learned in Statistics 101 that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

....but you didn't, so you didn't.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Yeah, and during the Bush years, you managed to find some of the good he did...




I'm sure you did...




Daily...

Several million unemployed only wish that things were as "bad" as they were under Bush...

That's Romney's hole card.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Had you attended college, you might have learned in Statistics 101 that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

....but you didn't, so you didn't.

No less nebulous than the improvements that you can point to under Obama.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Of course, if you had went to college, you would not claim that Arizona starts with a consonant...

 

[RobDownSouth]

Yeah, and during the Bush years, you managed to find some of the good he did...
I'm sure you did...
Daily...

One big difference between us, Chief. We used facts to present our position. You make stuff up (TWO data points? Reeeeally?) and pray to Skyfather that nobody notices.

No less nebulous than the improvements that you can point to under Obama.

How's that Dow 6,999 prediction of yours holding up, Chief?
Seen any hyper-inflation that you've predicted?

Seriously, isn't about time for one of your patented name changes so you can disavow your previously held positions?

Jeet Kune D'OH!

 

[RobDownSouth]

Of course, if you had went to college, you would not claim that Arizona starts with a consonant...

...says the man who pronounces "Negro" with two "G"s.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Oh, you just cannot help yourself, can you.

If you cannot defend your party's economics, then go for cries of "RACIST!"

No wonder that such a weak, laughable Republican candidate is in a virtual tie with the smartest guy in the world...



He "saved" us!

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."
President Obama, June 2008

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Everyone can see that you latched onto the TIC comment, an ironic joke on the people who are touting the gains in the DOW as a sign of the Lazarus economy while not discussing that even the beloved, "FAIR and BALANCED" Times that prints all the news fit to print is saying the REAL Numbers, you know, FACTS indicate the economy is slowing down, despite all of ya'lls celebrations of last month on the record recovery and the assured reelection of Il Bama...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Great article; it should sound familiar even on this side of the Atlantic...

Future economic historians will puzzle over how European leaders turned a small liquidity problem in tiny Greece into a continent-wide risk of collapse in two short years. The E.U. could have let Greece default. It would have been ugly for some banks, which would have had to be wound down or recapitalized, but such tough medicine would have created healthy incentives for the future and fostered predictability rather than uncertainty.

Instead, Greece was bailed out, and a climate of political uncertainty has prevailed ever since. Which banks are most exposed? Will there be another bailout for Greece, and then another, or will it finally default? Will there be a bailout for the next country in line, or not? Will private bondholders be forced to bear losses, or not? It’s hardly surprising that in this atmosphere of utter uncertainty, investors began to confuse Greece’s problems with those of countries, such as Italy and Spain, that are not insolvent but merely illiquid.

Instead of confronting the problems and cutting its losses, Europe has continued to play a game of double or nothing. Just before Christmas 2011, the ECB lent €489 billion for three years to European banks at a 1 percent interest rate and in February handed over another €530 billion. The ECB is now grossly leveraged. It wouldn’t take very big losses on loans to stressed banks and governments for the central bank’s capital base to be wiped out, and in need of a bailout itself. The ECB’s loans might have saved Europe from a credit crunch in the short term, but it was also an attempt to get banks to start lending to governments again. As the optimistic French President Nicolas Sarkozy put it in December, “Italian banks will be able to borrow at 1 percent, while the Italian state is borrowing at 6 to 7 percent. It doesn’t take a financial specialist to see that the Italian state will be able to ask Italian banks to finance part of the government debt at a much lower rate.”

There you have the euro zone solution to the problem of banks lending too much to governments: get the banks to lend even more. If the financial institutions prove too reluctant, the ECB will just lend them more money, guaranteed by taxpayers and printing presses, so that they loosen up the purse strings.

The only reasonable long-term solution to this mess is market discipline. If lenders know they have to bear their own losses should loans go bad, they will be more cautious with their money. The crisis economies of Southern Europe need to reduce expenses by increasing the retirement age, increase growth by liberalizing product and labor markets while reducing wages and prices to competitive levels. They also should change a worst-of-both-worlds system of very high taxes (Italy is the 170th worst out of 183 countries on total corporate tax rates, according to the World Bank) and lax collection.

http://reason.com/archives/2012/04/17/financial-crisis-ii

Alas, everything is simply, "too big to fail," so they know it's simply business as usual...

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]

First Solar Corporation was indeed first at something: It was the first solar company to lose more than $15 billion of market value. FSLR's stock plummeted from $140 per share a year ago, and $170 a few weeks before that, to under $21 per share early this week before rebounding modestly on Tuesday. In fact, $15 billion substantially understates the peak-to-trough drop in the company's value, as the stock traded above $250 per share for most of 2008, briefly peaking over $300. As of Tuesday, the company's value was just under $2 billion; at its all-time high stock price, that number was over $25 billion.

In a press release on Tuesday morning, the company announced that a massive decline in its business, especially its European business, will cause it to record about $300 million in restructuring charges while firing 2,000 employees, about 30 percent of its total work force. This is due primarily to Germany's recently cutting its solar subsidies, following a similar move in Spain.

According to the company's Chairman, Mike Ahearn: "After a thorough analysis, it is clear the European market has deteriorated to the extent that our operations there are no longer economically sustainable, and maintaining those operations is not in the best long-term interest of our stakeholders."

...

There are physical limits to improvements in solar technology so that Moore's Law, which has described improvements in computer technology (or more specifically transistor density) over recent decades, does not apply despite the use of silicon in both. Gains in solar efficiency, both in how well panels work and how much it costs to make them, are limited by laws of physics, at least with all current solar technology. In other words, most of the gains in the price of solar electricity generation have already been achieved, and the industry still cannot compete without subsidies.

Most Americans probably know that "renewable" energy sources receive handouts of taxpayer money. These are true subsidies, not the common tax deductions used by oil companies, along with many other companies, which the left terms "subsidies." But do we understand the scale of these numbers and how fast they have been growing?

According to the Institute for Energy Research, subsidies for renewable energy (related to electricity generation) jumped 186 percent during the three year period from FY 2007 (1) to FY 2010. Wind was the dollar leader in terms of picking taxpayers' pockets, going from $476 million in 2007 to $5 billion in 2010, making it the largest energy subsidy recipient. (Nuclear power came in second, at half the level of wind, and coal came in third, at less than one quarter the level of wind.) Solar, in fourth place in absolute dollar subsidies, made a very large percentage jump as well, going from $179 million to $1.1 billion over that same time frame.

The above data only include federal subsidies, however. Solar power receives state and local subsidies, including from utilities which pass those costs along to ratepayers, far more than other sources of power. In fact, there is a whole database of "State Incentives for Renewable and Efficiency," where you can find your particular state's waste of money on the solar swindle.

What really demands examination, however, is the subsidy per amount of electricity produced, and by that measure solar is the undisputed champion. Consider the top four recipients of subsidy dollars: wind, nuclear, coal, and solar: Coal's subsidy equates to 64 cents per megawatt hour and nuclear comes in at just over $3. Wind subsidies cost a shocking $56 per megawatt hour. But even that is a tremendous bargain when compared to solar which -- and again this is only the federal subsidies -- costs taxpayers $775 per megawatt hour. (What wind lacks in apparent costs, it makes up for in slaughter of birds, showing the true hypocrisy of so-called "environmentalists.")

A 2010 study by the Commonwealth Foundation of electricity costs in Pennsylvania showed that in 2009, electricity generated by wind cost 150 percent of the average electricity cost in the state while solar-generated electricity cost an incredible 706 percent of the average. Furthermore, while natural gas and oil prices declined from the prior two years, solar and wind power costs jumped 65 percent and 92 percent, respectively.

Another IER analysis determined that states which require a certain percentage of their electricity production to come from renewable sources have electricity prices "nearly 40 percent higher than states that do not have similar mandates."

Natural gas is more difficult to export than oil or coal because it has to be compressed or liquefied before it is shipped. But at a 13-year low price of $2 per million BTUs, the cost is so low that more international trade in natural gas will become economical, putting even more pressure on solar and wind power and highlighting the absurdity of subsidies, even without travesties like Solyndra. (2)

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/04/18/a-dark-day-for-solar-power

This represents Capital simply thrown away to achieve ideological goals over sound economic goals and yet another one of the reasons why the economy did not take off under the leadership of the LEft-wing of the Democratic Party.

1. 2007 - Nancy gets control of the purse.
2. Which is why we will now see a war on natural gas because it contains a carbon atom.