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Workers who do full-time work expect to make enough money to feed and clothe their families, as well they should.
Of course. But in Reagan/Romney-ville, employers get to externalize big chunks of their actual labor costs, forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for those instead of customers or stockholders. Sounds good to them.
Last edited by Major Barbara; 07-20-2015 at 09:51 AM..
Those states had "austerity lite" compared to Greece; futhermore, austerity didn't "work," their government's balance sheets improved but their GDP's fell -- much like going to the doctor for a pulled muscle, getting an amputation and declaring the pulled muscle cured.
The public suffered (a lot) in order to save the banks.
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There's a phrase for this type of short term profit-driven thinking: economic treason.
Yes, but it wasn't short term at all. It's been going on for at least 35 years, and is showing no signs of abating.
Political policy aligned with global corporation and banking interests to make a few people incredibly wealthy at the expense of everyone else and the domestic economy.
To shut down a business and prosecute the CEO personally implies that the CEO committed a crime, and that the business including all of its employees committed crimes. What crime exactly did the banks commit in the mid-2000s?
That crimes were committed is not in dispute. The banks were found guilty of fraud and self-dealing and fined by the SEC. Banks found guilty included J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America.
In my opinion the banks got a slap on the wrist. These crimes hurt the economy deeply, hurt investors who bought their fraudulent products, and the top dogs who okayed these schemes should have gone to jail.
As an example, Citigroup was found guilty of fraudulently putting low grade securities in CDO's but marketed them as high grade; they then took a short position against the investors who bought the CDO. Per the SEC's complaint:
One experienced CDO trader characterized the Class V III portfolio in an e-mail as “dogsh!t” and “possibly the best short EVER!” An experienced collateral manager commented that “the portfolio is horrible.” On Nov. 7, 2007, a credit rating agency downgraded every tranche of Class V III, and on Nov. 19, 2007, Class V III was declared to be in an Event of Default. The approximately 15 investors in the Class V III transaction lost virtually their entire investments while Citigroup received fees of approximately $34 million for structuring and marketing the transaction and additionally realized net profits of at least $126 million from its short position.
I wasn't referring to hyperinflation today, but in the future when the terest on servicing interest on United States debt exceeds the total sum of the government income. At some point in the future, when the treasury bonds are nothing but a junk bond rating, people will stop buying them and the government will have to print money to cover there debt obligations.
Get a grip. The reason US debt is so popular is that the US economy is so large. When that economy shrinks to the size of Zimbabwe's we will have the same problems that they did. Pretty simple, really.
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Originally Posted by TechGromit
So your suggesting that United States continued reliance on borrowing money to close there yearly budget gap is a good thing?
In a word, yes. Keep in mind that we will never repay the public debt, and neither will any of the other major economies that are carrying such debt, which is still all of them.
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Originally Posted by TechGromit
Federal debt has increase from 55% of the GNP in 2001 to 70% of the GNP in 2008 and 102% of the GNP in 2011, the snow ball only gets bigger and bigger as it rolls into the future.
As you may not recall, the US had four consecutive budget surpluses between FY 1998 and FY 2001. Over that period a total of $363 billion worth of debt held by the public was bought back early. Can you think of anything that might have changed in 2001 that could have caused all that to end?
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Originally Posted by TechGromit
Correct me is if I'm wrong, but there only three ways this can end.
You are wrong. About national economics, and just as much about the proper uses of there, their, and they're. What we are doing is what we have always done, and we can simply continue doing it for as long as comets do not impact the earth and destroy our productive capacities.
Wal-martizing would be an *improvement* over the "politically correct" but utterly fatuous and intellectually dishonest pap coming out of too many campuses now.
Once we paid attention to the opinions of actual experts. Now some assume that morons off the street must surely know better.
No, we are not all in agreement. Especially those actually educated and experienced in national economics will be taking a different tack.
By the way, efforts to expand the money supply are garden variety monetary policy. Fears that it will somehow trigger hyperinflation are akin to worrying that watering the lawn will bring about devastating local flooding.
As well you might after being tagged for making up so much crap.
Regardless of the Greece thing, why is it that you think I'm lying about the pension I'm getting starting in Oct.? All the systems in Californaia, whether CALPERS, the 37 Acts (Counties) and other special Districts all have generous pensions that generally pay around 80% of final pay (some more) after about 25-30 years in the system. 75-80% of one's final pay minus Social Security and Medicare deductions and one's retirement contribution (into the defined benefit plan) does equal or comes within a few percentage of one's take home pay as an employee.
Not to mention my agency (a special District) has a 401k, 401a, 457, Roth 401k.
I'm not giving back my pension, but they are too generous. California passed PEPRA in 2013 with a lesser formual for those employees, so that will helping the funding levels some over a looooonnnng period of time but most of these plans are severely underfunded, not to mention most of the post employment employee benefits (health plans) are hardly funded at all.
I don't mind you disagreeing with me, but it seems kind of childish on your part to call me a liar when clearly I'm not lying about my employment. There's hundreds of thousands of public employees in California who are receiving the same pension I'll be receiving starting in Oct.
Oftentimes it's those that beat their chest telling others how smart they are that are the least informed. Have to lift themselves up by calling other people liars. Apparently, that's your case. So call me a liar if you want. It doesn't change who I am or the fact that I'm not lying. It just makes you look like a clueless, little person.
Right, we do it in economics as well. And street-level morons don't understand how that works either. Knowledge is hard work. It takes talent, time, and effort to acquire. In field after field, most people simply fail on all three counts.
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