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

[4est_4est_Gump]

I am mastering Uncle Joe-speak so my minions will know what to do while the press has been deluded/manipulated.

Isn't the press part of the conspiracy?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

But what about largepox?



Buncha size-icists!!!!

I see a niche market for mediapox innoculation!

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Isn't the press part of the conspiracy?

In their minds, yes, but they too can be subverted.

I see a niche market for mediapox innoculation!

There's a Yankee dollar to be made there.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

...
There's a Yankee dollar to be made there.

Let's hope the redcoats at Fox have not patented it yet...

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Let's hope the redcoats at Fox have not patented it yet...

Not a chance. They don't see forward well enough.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

They lookin' back!
They lookin' back!
Too many people lookin' back!

 

[Beco]

They lookin' back!
They lookin' back!
Too many people lookin' back!

"Looking back is a bad habit"-- John Wayne

 

[patrick1]

As I stated before, the real anarchist is an antisocial loon.



The only thing loonier is thinking there can be a Left-wing of the Libertarian Polity...

That, at best, would be Mises calling Hayek a Socialist and Rothbard calling Mises a Socialist.

Thank goodness you're a thinking person who respects other people's beliefs, whatever they may be.

Patrick

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Thank goodness you're a thinking person who respects other people's beliefs, whatever they may be.

Patrick

I respect your beliefs, but I deny you your label.

As I said, during my transitional phase, I have held similar beliefs as did Mises as he journeyed intellectually from Socialism to Libertarianism.

I'm sorry that accepting is not part of respecting. You are a bit confused, but there is still time for more reading and study if you wish to call yourself Libertarian instead of Liberal (the stolen nomenclature).

If you wish to claim Left-wing Libertarianism, then you had best come up with a definition of it that can convince me that such a creature exists instead of displaying offense when none is really intended; an eye-opening is the target.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

"Looking back is a bad habit"-- John Wayne

You never know when the women are sneaking up on you, of course, if your back is to the sun, you might get blinded by the light and taken by the low spark of high heel voice...

 

[patrick1]

I respect your beliefs, but I deny you your label.

That's an odd idea. You respect my beliefs, but deny that it's ok for me to express them in the way I choose? Really?

There you go. You're a libertarian who denies someone the notion of calling themselves what they will? That fits with libertarianism, in your eyes, does it?

Here's a wikipedia effort at defining the area I'm in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism

It's not totally satisfactory, but then, nothing is.

I do understand the difference between libertariansim and liberalism thanks, I've read the books.

Patrick

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Social Justice is legalized plunder therefore not part of Libertarianism.

Wiki can say whatever it wants. If you want respect then earn it. Talk to me, tell you how you arrive at your position.

I will tell you this, Social Justice is always about treating a group fairly. Libertarianism is for treating individuals as blindly as justice does. If you believe in groups, therefore, you are not Libertarian. As for treating people fairly...

If you ask your government to treat someone "fairly," the only way it can ever accomplish that task is to treat someone "unfairly."
A_J, the Stupid

... and that is almost always economically and Libertarianism is synonymous with Capitalism (Life, Liberty, Property).

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Obama Campaign Backers and Bundlers Rewarded With Green Grants and Loans
Nov 12, 2011 1:30 PM EST
Where did green-energy money go? Straight to campaign donors. Read more about Peter Schwiezer and his book Throw Them All Out in the new Newsweek on sale Monday.

When President-elect Obama came to Washington in late 2008, he was outspoken about the need for an economic stimulus to revive a struggling economy. He wanted billions of dollars spent on “shovel-ready projects” to build roads; billions more for developing alternative-energy projects; and additional billions for expanding broadband Internet access and creating a “smart grid” for energy consumption. After he was sworn in as president, he proclaimed that taxpayer money would assuredly not be doled out to political friends. “Decisions about how Recovery Act dollars are spent will be based on the merits,” he said, referring to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. “Let me repeat that: decisions about how recovery money will be spent will be based on the merits. They will not be made as a way of doing favors for lobbyists.”

Really?

It would take an entire book to analyze every single grant and government-backed loan doled out since Barack Obama became president. But an examination of grants and guaranteed loans offered by just one stimulus program run by the Department of Energy, for alternative-energy projects, is stunning. The so-called 1705 Loan Guarantee Program and the 1603 Grant Program channeled billions of dollars to all sorts of energy companies. The grants were earmarked for alternative-fuel and green-power projects, so it would not be a surprise to learn that those industries were led by liberals. Furthermore, these were highly competitive grant and loan programs—not usually a hallmark of cronyism. Often fewer than 10 percent of applicants were deemed worthy.

Nevertheless, a large proportion of the winners were companies with Obama-campaign connections. Indeed, at least 10 members of Obama’s finance committee and more than a dozen of his campaign bundlers were big winners in getting your money. At the same time, several politicians who supported Obama managed to strike gold by launching alternative-energy companies and obtaining grants. How much did they get? According to the Department of Energy’s own numbers ... a lot. In the 1705 government-backed-loan program, for example, $16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted as of Sept. 15 went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party. The grant and guaranteed-loan recipients were early backers of Obama before he ran for president, people who continued to give to his campaigns and exclusively to the Democratic Party in the years leading up to 2008. Their political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy. It brought them returns many times over.

These government grants and loan guarantees not only provided access to taxpayer capital. They also served as a seal of approval from the federal government. Taxpayer money creates what investors call a “halo effect,” in which a young, unprofitable company is suddenly seen to have a glowing future. The plan is simple. Invest some money, secure taxpayer grants and loans, go public, and then cash out. In just one small example, a company called Amyris Biotechnologies received a $24 million DOE grant to build a pilot plant to use altered yeast to turn sugar into hydrocarbons. The investors included several Obama bundlers and fundraisers. With federal money in hand, Amyris went public with an IPO the following year, raising $85 million. Kleiner Perkins, a firm that boasts Obama financier John Doerr and former vice president Al Gore as partners, found its $16 million investment was now worth $69 million. It’s not clear how the other investors did. Amyris continues to lose money. Meanwhile, the $24 million grant created 40 jobs, according to the government website recovery.gov.

One might think that the Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office, which has doled out billions in taxpayer-guaranteed loans, would be directed by a dedicated scientist or engineer. Or perhaps a civil servant with considerable financial knowledge. Instead, the department’s loan and grant programs are run by partisans who were responsible for raising money during the Obama campaign from the same people who later came to seek government loans and grants. Steve Spinner, who served on the Obama campaign’s National Finance Committee and was a bundler himself, was the campaign’s “liaison to Silicon Valley.” His responsibilities included fundraising, recruiting more bundlers, and managing Obama’s relationship with a cadre of very wealthy donors. After the 2008 campaign, Spinner joined the Department of Energy as the “chief strategic operations officer” for the loan programs. A lot of the money he helped hand out went to that same cadre of wealthy Silicon Valley campaign donors. He also sat on the White House Business Council, which is made up of Obama-supporting corporate executives.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newswe...ative-energy-programs-became-green-graft.html

Wow, that last paragraph is a lot like the earlier article on Crony Capitalism at the FDA; nothing but a pool of like-minded peers, like the Glowball Warning community...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

We were promised the most transparent administration EVER!

The Government Accountability Office has been highly critical of the way guaranteed loans and grants were doled out by the Department of Energy, complaining that the process appears “arbitrary” and lacks transparency. In March 2011, for example, the GAO examined the first 18 loans that were approved and found that none were properly documented. It also noted that officials “did not always record the results of analysis” of these applications. A loan program for electric cars, for example, “lacks performance measures.” No notes were kept during the review process, so it is difficult to determine how loan decisions were made. The GAO further declared that the Department of Energy “had treated applicants inconsistently in the application review process, favoring some applicants and disadvantaging others.” The Department of Energy’s inspector general, Gregory Friedman, who was not a political appointee, chastised the alternative-energy loan and grant programs for their absence of “sufficient transparency and accountability.” He has testified that contracts have been steered to “friends and family.”

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Two years ago, in November 2009, we warned you that U.S. taxpayers would likely have to bail out yet another big government housing agency, and it wasn’t Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

We said it was the Federal Housing Administration, which sells lenders a 100% guarantee against defaults on home mortgages typically for lower income people. FHA has seen defaults skyrocket on these loans.

But the Federal Housing Administration fought us vigorously on our story. So did liberal economic research groups.*

Turns out they were wrong.

As the FHA is now set to soon release its annual report, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School estimates that the FHA faces around $50 billion in losses in coming years.

Last year, economists from New York University and the New York Federal Reserve also warned the government agency would need a taxpayer bailout.

Back in 2009, we found FHA only had a “teacup” of money against a flood of potentially bad loans out of the seven million it insures.

Today it only has $31.7 billion in reserves, out of which only $2.8 billion is set aside to back its $1 trillion book of business.

Thanks to government housing programs like the FHA, together with Fannie, Freddie, and Ginnie Mae, the U.S. taxpayer now insures about nine out of every 10 mortgages.
We’ve been telling you also that Fannie, Freddie and the FHA have dangerously mismanaged their capital cushions to support their business. That’s scary, because their balance sheets are about the size of the economies of France and India combined.

And their balance sheets continue to teeter at a time when the Congress and the Administration have leaned on them to do more to help bail out homeowners or to help them buy homes. We warned two years ago this could only result in “potentially catastrophic consequences for the U.S. taxpayer.” Fannie and Freddie are in government conservatorship.

Even Fannie and Freddie have consistently put out warnings submarined in their filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that they will continue to post losses due to the government’s housing bailouts. And even the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Inspector General has issued withering reports on the FHA.

We’re watching out for you.

Here’s our original story: http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2009/11/05/bailout-fha-works/ .

Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/2011/11/11/warned-fha-bailout-coming/#ixzz1dbE3SeZu



* Gee, where have we ever seen that before? RW blogs always "wrong..."

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

But, in good news for Liberals, inflation will be pushing up earnings next week as the next stock bubble inflates...



Who knows? We might see that magic number of 12K crossed again!

 

[eyer]

Oh, yeah, we have merc's reply in another thread already to this outrage:

How come you didn't include this:

"In early December, officials completed a required "justification for other than full and open competition," which said an antiviral against smallpox was needed within five years and Siga was the only company able to meet that timetable."


Without explaining why he excluded this:

And then the wankers fantasize victory because one doesn't care to respond to their tripe...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

And then the wankers fantasize victory because one doesn't care to respond to their tripe...

Or they pretend to no longer care about this thread, which, if one recalls, began as a victory lap...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Turkey is $0.25 more a pound this year and getting increasingly Islamic...

 

[patrick1]

Social Justice is legalized plunder therefore not part of Libertarianism.

Wiki can say whatever it wants. If you want respect then earn it. Talk to me, tell you how you arrive at your position.

I will tell you this, Social Justice is always about treating a group fairly. Libertarianism is for treating individuals as blindly as justice does. If you believe in groups, therefore, you are not Libertarian. As for treating people fairly...

If you ask your government to treat someone "fairly," the only way it can ever accomplish that task is to treat someone "unfairly."
A_J, the Stupid

... and that is almost always economically and Libertarianism is synonymous with Capitalism (Life, Liberty, Property).

To my mind, if you try and impose on me your view of the world, and don't accept I can even, for instance, call myself a libertarian - you are terribly mis-representing what Mises and Hayek, apostles of freedom against Nazi tyranny, stood for. I disagree with the Austrian school profoundly, but I greatly respect what Mises stood for, given his experience. A brilliant man.

But I am a libertarian of a different political persuasion. I only quoted Wiki at you to say, there are other people in the world who see things somewhat similarly to me. I believe in mutuality. So it goes.

Patrick

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

To my mind, if you try and impose on me your view of the world, and don't accept I can even, for instance, call myself a libertarian - you are terribly mis-representing what Mises and Hayek, apostles of freedom against Nazi tyranny, stood for. I disagree with the Austrian school profoundly, but I greatly respect what Mises stood for, given his experience. A brilliant man.

But I am a libertarian of a different political persuasion. I only quoted Wiki at you to say, there are other people in the world who see things somewhat similarly to me. I believe in mutuality. So it goes.

Patrick

You have yet to make your case for being a Left-wing Libertarian.

Social Justice is not the purview of Libertarianism, so what is it about your leanings that make you unique enough to say that you are at once two diametrically opposed polities?

I'm really curious on this account.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I wonder if this is just another case of definition-shaping that the Left engages in...

At first they were proud Socialists, but when that did not pan out and was rejected by the majority, they co-opted the term Liberal and then, once tarnished they adopted the Progressive label, then Democratic, back to Liberal...,

So, I wonder, is this the same thing, now we will call ourselves Libertarian and change the language of Socialism yet again to mean other things.

Example: How can you have "Liberty" if government does not protect you from Big Business?

How can you have Life without government control of the environment?

How can you have Property Rights if Government does not distribute property "fairly?"

I wonder. Enlighten me...

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Or they pretend to no longer care about this thread, which, if one recalls, began as a victory lap...

Dont look now Cap'n, but the OP is STILL TRUE, over two years later. That's an exceedingly long time to be stuck on the "hope for failure spin-o-matic".

Still no Crippling Inflation, Gasoline is still cheaper now than it was at it's high in '08, The Chinese are still very much interested in loaning us money despite the GOP holding the economy hostage and getting our credit rating downgraded earlier this year.

How many years are you going to wait in hopeful anticipation of the sky fallin Cap'n ChickenLittle? Is there a statute of limitations on the dire predictions that you and yours were making over two years ago or do you plan to just keep waiting and then claim victory when/if something happens in 5, 10, 15 years?

 

[patrick1]

You have yet to make your case for being a Left-wing Libertarian.

Social Justice is not the purview of Libertarianism, so what is it about your leanings that make you unique enough to say that you are at once two diametrically opposed polities?

I'm really curious on this account.

You have yet to make your case for being respectful, but I will answer you as if you had been. You said I could not call myself what I call myself, and I don't understand how that conforms with libertarian principles.

Libertarianism and mutualism are not opposed. To me they combine. I am not claiming to be in any way unique, indeed I tried to point you at sources that suggest my left-libertarian views are, while not in any sense in the majority, at least not uncommon.

You seem oddly reluctant to debate history. I respct the history of those you admire, as you will have seen from my earlier remarks about Mises and Hayek. Do you respect - even if you disagree with - the history of those I admire?

Libertarianism over time has been claimed by left and right, though rarely by the centre. You write as if it's always been a possession of the 'right', which does seem to me odd: that's really quite a modern development. It may be that the USA and the rest of the world see this differently. In Russia at the end of the 19th century, for instance - how would it have looked then?

As a fundamental principle: I am a libertarian. I feel that is not against 'groups' but about 'groups' - how do we form them? Who runs them? To whom are they responsible?

We will only survive by living in groups and finding ways of being run by groups. Tha['s not at all the same as 'group-think', for instance, where I'm with Mises. We must beware of group-think, but work out how to work together in groups.

Will you now respond with some thoughts of your own about what you believe?

Patrick

 

[koalabear]

Where's MORON, one is missing.