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It's considered theft to repost someone elses published material without giving them credit. Therefore you are a thief I guess. All theives should be arrested and thrown in jail for 50 years. Where is the justice in this world?
Do you have a link to back up your accusation, or are you just lashing out again because Sandy wants to do away with the trading leeches on Wall Street?
I'm all for free speech, but Sandy does make a valid point about the propaganda we're fed as "news". Companies like GE should never be allowed to own the news media.
Companies like GE should never be allowed to own the news media.
So you're essentially saying that the government should censor who owns and produces the news - which is really the same as censoring which views are expressed?
If that's what you're advocating, that's something I find quite scary to be honest.
If Goldman $achs was allowed to fail, we would have never had the economic mess we have now. The leeches divert capital to their grubby hands and starve the innovators of the capital they need. Zero percent interest rates and bailouts encourage reckless speculation and that will destroy the dollar and the whole US financial system. Of course the big players will be fat and happy from all the thievery approved by the Government.
So you're essentially saying that the government should censor who owns and produces the news - which is really the same as censoring which views are expressed?
If that's what you're advocating, that's something I find quite scary to be honest.
I think it's pretty scary that we get our financial "news" from the owners of GE Capital, and the network isn't required to disclose when their parent company will profit from whatever investment they're hyping that day.
What I'm saying is that there need to be some limits. I don't want the military industrial complex to provide war coverage. I don't want a healthcare conglomerate giving us news on healthcare reform. I also don't want Exxon to decide what we get to hear about energy.
It's considered theft to repost someone elses published material without giving them credit. Therefore you are a thief I guess. All theives should be arrested and thrown in jail for 50 years. Where is the justice in this world?
i gave credit to denninger on the part of the post that was denninger's. as usual, you are saying something that isn't even true but no surprise there, though.
Thats a real pet peeve of mine. Everyone wants all the goodies but in my experience very few are willing to make the sacrifices and do whats necessary to get them. I guess it's this whole entiltement mentality we seem to have. If want the gold ring you've got to put your balls on the line. Thats what bugs me about all the complaining about how much some people make. Just do what they do and you can have it to. But middle class was never and can never be about living comfortably having everything you want. It also not something people should aspire to, but thats my opinion.
this post cracks me up. the same people that got BAILED OUT BY OTHER PEOPLE are talking about taking risks and being willing to put their "balls on the line". maybe we wouldn't mind so much if they were actually putting their "balls on the line", without government intervention and government guarantees. i see that GE is chasing government money in today's WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1258...s_Most_Popular
We have to start, first, by redefining "middle class" to something that we can sustain on a large scale. If a middle-class "living wage" is expected to support ownership of enormous homes, multiple fuel-gobbling vehicles per family, a plasma TV in every room, cell phones for each grade-school kid, and a college education for every kid no matter how academically inept he/she might be, well, then we won't get there--there simply isn't enough to go around when the monopoly money created through excessive leverage disappears.
I grew up lower middle class...our family of five lived in a ~1200 sq ft house, with one used car, with dining out reserved for special occasions, and I worked my own way through college. A modern man in my father's place puts his family into a 3,000 sq ft house, has two late-model cars, takes the family out to dinner 3-4 nights a week, pays for his kids to go to college to earn a degreee that will never directly enable them earn them a living--and he does it all on borrowed money he may never be able to repay. That's the "middle crash" not the middle-class, and we've inflated our expectations to the point where we believe that high-school dropout factory assembly-line workers should be able to do all this on a "living wage."
As usual, Bob, you are right on. Unfortunately, your words will fall on mostly deaf ears. Years back, a fellow I knew died in the high country of hypothermia. Even though he had warm winter clothes he still got too cold. They found him dead--naked, with his clothes strewn over a half-mile. Why? Because one of the effects of severe hypothermia is to induce irrational mental behavior. Victims often wind up doing the exact opposite--stripping naked, for example--of rational behavior that might allow them to survive. I think that is where we are as a country--we are in economic, political, and social hypothermia--and we are rapidly losing the ability to behave rationally. We can't even recognize that grave danger in which we find ourselves.
There are things that we could do that could help us survive:
1. Recognize that our resources, natural and financial, are finite and depleting--and adopt conservation of both with a religious-like fervor.
2. Stop immigration--illegal especially, but ultimately all of it--because we now lack the resources to sustain even our current population at anything remotely like our current standard of living.
3. Recognize that our wasteful, energy-guzzling, suburbanized living arrangement is no longer going to remain viable--and begin figuring out how to transcend to something more sustainable.
4. Acknowledge that we no longer can afford government to be everything to everyone--from health care to building endless roads and unsustainable infrastructure--and elect people willing to make the hard decisions about what we really can afford.
5. Move toward an economy that once again is centered around producing products that people really need and can really afford--and quit living in a "dream world" speculative economy that produces little of real wealth.
6. Recognize that there are people in the world--billions of them--who fundamentally hate us, or would destroy us to take what resources remain that are ours, or would enslave us--financially or by force--to reach those goals; and that we must formulate military, diplomatic, and economic policies to defend against those.
7. Fundamentally recognize that the world is becoming a competitive, hostile, and resource-constrained environment where Darwin's "survival of the fittest" mantra is going to hold sway. The days of "Can't we just all get along?"--which never was much more than marginally possible--are over.
Sadly, I think the American people--and, by inference, their elected leadership--are so brainwashed, irriational, and delusionary at this point that they are both unwilling and unable to set this country back on a sustainable course. I think the possibility is real that, like the hypothermic man, the public's collective and individual acts are going to become more, not less, irrational--with compounding damage to what remains of our economy, democracy, and society. If the acts of business, government, and society in general over the past year or so is any indication, that irrationality is already becoming well-entrenched.
this post cracks me up. the same people that got BAILED OUT BY OTHER PEOPLE are talking about taking risks and being willing to put their "balls on the line". maybe we wouldn't mind so much if they were actually putting their "balls on the line", without government intervention and government guarantees. i see that GE is chasing government money in today's WSJ: General Electric Pursues Pot of Government Stimulus Gold - WSJ.com
WTF are you talking about? Nobody's ever bailed me out.
As usual, Bob, you are right on. Unfortunately, your words will fall on mostly deaf ears. Years back, a fellow I knew died in the high country of hypothermia. Even though he had warm winter clothes he still got too cold. They found him dead--naked, with his clothes strewn over a half-mile. Why? Because one of the effects of severe hypothermia is to induce irrational mental behavior. Victims often wind up doing the exact opposite--stripping naked, for example--of rational behavior that might allow them to survive. I think that is where we are as a country--we are in economic, political, and social hypothermia--and we are rapidly losing the ability to behave rationally. We can't even recognize that grave danger in which we find ourselves.
There are things that we could do that could help us survive:
1. Recognize that our resources, natural and financial, are finite and depleting--and adopt conservation of both with a religious-like fervor.
2. Stop immigration--illegal especially, but ultimately all of it--because we now lack the resources to sustain even our current population at anything remotely like our current standard of living.
3. Recognize that our wasteful, energy-guzzling, suburbanized living arrangement is no longer going to remain viable--and begin figuring out how to transcend to something more sustainable.
4. Acknowledge that we no longer can afford government to be everything to everyone--from health care to building endless roads and unsustainable infrastructure--and elect people willing to make the hard decisions about what we really can afford.
5. Move toward an economy that once again is centered around producing products that people really need and can really afford--and quit living in a "dream world" speculative economy that produces little of real wealth.
6. Recognize that there are people in the world--billions of them--who fundamentally hate us, or would destroy us to take what resources remain that are ours, or would enslave us--financially or by force--to reach those goals; and that we must formulate military, diplomatic, and economic policies to defend against those.
7. Fundamentally recognize that the world is becoming a competitive, hostile, and resource-constrained environment where Darwin's "survival of the fittest" mantra is going to hold sway. The days of "Can't we just all get along?"--which never was much more than marginally possible--are over.
Sadly, I think the American people--and, by inference, their elected leadership--are so brainwashed, irriational, and delusionary at this point that they are both unwilling and unable to set this country back on a sustainable course. I think the possibility is real that, like the hypothermic man, the public's collective and individual acts are going to become more, not less, irrational--with compounding damage to what remains of our economy, democracy, and society. If the acts of business, government, and society in general over the past year or so is any indication, that irrationality is already becoming well-entrenched.
Agree with some of it, disagree with quite a lot.
Agree that we should conserve finite resources, but disagree that financial resources are depleting - they're gone already. We need to let the phony economy crash and rebuild. In a stable economy, there is no such thing as finite, depleting financial resources.
Assuming the market leads us to alternative renewable energy, there's nothing unsustainable about suburban living. There will always be those who prefer a rural or urban lifestyle, so there's no need to worry about the entire country succumbing to suburban sprawl.
Immigration - on the contrary, I believe it should be encouraged, especially immigration of wealthy foreigners who want to start businesses here that employ people. We need to do everything possible to bring wealthy and hard-working foreigners to America and entice them to start businesses here. I'm fine with anyone who wants to come to America coming - as long as they don't expect the government to subsidize their existence here.
The rest, though, I generally agree with.
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