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September 1, 2012 at 4:11 pm #604670
dobroParticipantRmoneys plan… right out of the “corporate leverage buyout” playbook
1. Get control of the company – win the election and get control of congress
2. Harvest profit centers and sell them off- Privatize the postal Service, Privatize education, Privatize all healthcare, military supply already sold to Halliburton by Bush etc.
3. Liquidate Assets – Sell off federal lands and mineral rights.
4. Reduce payroll by laying off personnel – shrink government by getting rid of public employees (teachers,firemen, policemen, postal workers,FDA inspectors, etc.)
5. Get rid of pension plans to reduce overhead – Get rid of medicare, medicaid and social security
6. Provide dividends to key investors for continued support – massive tax cuts to the .0001%ers funding his campaign and buying congress through lobbyists
Boom! America looted, big money for the “shareholders”, tough luck for the middle class, mission accomplished!
September 1, 2012 at 4:24 pm #769502
JoBParticipantSeptember 1, 2012 at 4:35 pm #769503
waynsterParticipantDon’t forget the GOP also wants back on the gold standered…..
September 1, 2012 at 5:20 pm #769504
SmittyParticipantWe need a board fact checker………….wow.
September 1, 2012 at 5:24 pm #769505
waynsterParticipantSeptember 1, 2012 at 6:57 pm #769506
JVMemberThe other option is the GM strategy. Let corrupt fools run a proud product into the ground.
Pay unrealistic pay/benefits package negotiated by corrupt fools, then produce a failing product that is no longer competitive, and get your ass handed to you for years by smarter companies like Toyota, Honda, and even Ford.
Then blame everybody else when the leeches eventually kill the host, and a great company falls.
That’s the Dim plan, which seems to be working out just super for GM, the Dept. of Education, Public Employee Unions, etc.
Again, it’s a clear choice of 2 competing plans in November.
September 1, 2012 at 9:12 pm #769507
kootchmanMemberwaynster…. you financial wizard you! Now, let’s see… why would a country want to go on a gold standard? Why are central banks buying gold like crazy? All around the world . How did gold get to 1600 per ounce? when you can answer those simple questions,. I would really like to know. I think I know,… but you seem to have it down so I will defer to your knowledge base. Does it have anything to do with the currency markets are collapsing? Could it have anything to do with the fact that central banks around the world think the US dollar holdings are inflated holdings and they should buy “something” now while they can? This is a trick I want to see,.. lower college, medical costs during hyperinflation… oh yea.. and watch as your NPV SS dollar buys .40 cents of the same staple in 10 years, Dims are fools. I do like the idea though of the federal government selling off federal lands to the states… especially in the mountain west.
Sell off a “profit center” like USPS?!!?? WHAT profit? That’s a good one.
September 1, 2012 at 9:54 pm #769508
megMemberRe: the gold standard, may I recommend a fabulous book called “Currency Wars, The Making of the Next Global Crisis”. Jim Rickards is author.
It’s a terrific historical story for understanding (even if you’re a financial novice like me) what happened to our economic and monetary policy when Nixon removed the gold standard in the early 70s, and what have been the repercussions so far and what violent turmoils are still lying ahead of us – maybe fairly close ahead. Before reading this book, I always thought a gold standard was a terribly antiquated and obsolete idea.
Really. Any age person should read “Currency Wars”, but I think for younger generations this monetary and economic learning is a MUST. Our educational system has left this out, keeping us ignorant intentionally or not. The SPL may have a copy. Read, ask questions, keep learning.
September 1, 2012 at 10:35 pm #769509
miwsParticipantSeptember 1, 2012 at 10:48 pm #769510
TanDLParticipantPlease tell me you’re not advocating for a return to the gold standard! That would be … I don’t know.. IMPOSSIBLE!
“The U.S. holds 8,133 metric tons of gold reserves, according to the World Gold Council, or about 261 million ounces. At current market prices of about $1,667 an ounce, those reserves are worth roughly $435 billion.
That would cover less than 3 percent of the $15.9 trillion in Treasury debt outstanding. In fact all the worlds’ reserves — estimated at 31,353 tons, or just over a billion ounces — is not nearly enough to cover the outstanding U.S. debt.
And that’s just the money owed holders of public debt. On top of that $15.9 trillion, the U.S. would have to be willing and ready to exchange gold for the additional $10 trillion supply of money, from paper currency to bank deposits, denominated in dollars.
That was one of the reasons cited by Reagan’s gold commission when it recommended against the idea in March 1982.” DUH
September 2, 2012 at 1:25 am #769511
JoBParticipantsmitty..
downsizing government workers results in fewer customers for small business.
people without jobs can’t buy much.
fact check that
September 2, 2012 at 2:28 am #769512
kootchmanMemberNowwwwwww you are getting the point TanDl… job, it takes three workers in the 10% tax bracket to support one government worker. Fact check that. Now, if that government worker was producing something, had a work product to sell.. that would be a gain. But, they are the “overhead” of a civilization. An expense, To pay them you have to tax that small business. You also have to tax his customers, who have less to spend in his business. A double loss.
See the more money we print the less it is worth. Consider this.. the reason gold is so high? The dollars needed to buy it are worth less. Second, as foreign reserves dump dollars.. and more of them are “free” .. the supply is even greater, they are worth even less. The downward spiral continues, Now you know are starting to smell how bad our debt is. See, at the moment everything is dollar denominated, oil, pork bellies, silver, everything. But, when the Chinese become the worlds largest economy … then they get to tell the world just what currencies are the accepted medium of exchange.. more likely than not it will be a political mix that gives them hegemony in the world markets… it is called a balance mix.. example.. they may say we will set the world oil price this way…. the Brazilian rial is 10 per cent, the Swiss Dollar is 10%, the pound sterling is 10 per cent, and the Chinese yuan is 70 per cent. I suggest for a fun reading, got to old wikikpedia… and read the Weimar republic currency devaluation…. when it took literally a wheelbarrow to buy a lof of bread, That’s how an inflated currency behaves, They tried to pay off their war and international debts with a devalued currency,… that’s the DUH reading you should be doing… that is how South America stayed in poverty so long… they printed money to pay foreign debt… trouble is,, they could never buiild a domestic economy… because their currency couldn’t buy shit… the import markets were shut down. We will get some horrific shock… unless we get our dollar deflated and our deficits under control. Printing more money does not make you more prosperous.. it means you will pay more for you goods and services.
This is what people do in crisis… they look for saviors…
“In addition to being in political trouble from the beginning, the Weimar Republic also faced serious financial challenges. Inflation in Germany skyrocketed in the 1920s, and at one point, six million Germans were unemployed. Citizens grew increasingly restless and angry, and Adolf Hitler took advantage of this once he was sworn in as Chancellor on 30 January 1933. “
Read the section on hyperinlfation and in particular one Hugo Stinnes who stopped accepting the German currency and demanded payment in US dollars…. least you think this is an isolated event.. currency manipulation broke the Dutch, the Spainish,, italians… it’s not a new phenomenon. Printing money is called “quanititative easing”… it means printing money with no corresponding increase in productivity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic
Not only are we leaving debt.. we are going to have retirees living on a currency that is, to a point, worthless. what will you do when it’s time to borrow 40 cents for every dollar spent and the Chinese, Germans, Saudis, Japanese say.. no thanks…we want yo redeem Treasuries in 10 years at .. the existing price of gold? Yikes!!! Like I said… the worlds central banks are all hedging against US currency, buying up gold reserves as a hedge against an inflated dollar .. the demand is so high it is now avbove $ 1600 per oz. How bad is it? Simple,,, how many dollars did it take to buy and ounce of gold 20 years ago? That is currency inflation.
we keep printing Obamabucks… and others will make the choice for us… we won’t have any say in the matter. They being the lender get to dictate the terms…. as bankers do with sub prime borrowers.
September 2, 2012 at 2:42 am #769513
kootchmanMembermeg no one will read it… all they want to hear is we raised the minimum wage to a “liveable” $20 per hour…and if it buys Dims another year of happy, ignorant bliss… they are content. They don’t want to know… they are like children hiding under the blanket to escape the bogeyman. Don’t expect kids to learn economics in school… that’s like asking Ghengis Khan to teach a course on mercy. Teachers unions? Teaching fiscal responsibility… that’s a priceless vision. The republican plan? I would laugh if they had one.. first they have to wade through a tax code … 80,000 plus pages of special interests… I am just content to know they are going to do it. Next… the 28,000 pages of regulation the EPA printed just in the past three years… I would go for a 10 per cent across the board reduction…. and start working on the details. Democrats know the complexity and task are monumental… we will have to take broad, fiscal conservatism….and let the Paul Ryans do the line by line review of the whale that is our national government,
September 2, 2012 at 3:39 am #769514
megMemberTanDL, you really need to read the book “Currency Wars” or some other work equal to it, before you can seriously argue for or against a gold standard. The author is extremely respected. He is one of the people the DoD consults when they want to understand economic/financial policy, setting up scenarios and playing global ‘war games’ with them, using monetary policies.
I’m assuming you don’t know the various and flexible ways you can put a gold- or other value-backed currency into place? Ratios & prices are always flexible and you could use baskets of valuables behind the dollar. Valuables such as gold, plus other rare or precious metals, even oil which is probably the most valuable when you think about it. A value-backed currency doesn’t inhibit monetary expansion, whenever that is necessary. But. A government needs to have something that sobers their monetary expansion, something precious and valuable behind their printer, the currency they magically produce, that people can exchange for their paper, so that a govt does not print so much that all of it becomes worthless and their citizens are all impoverished. Today there’s a green bill in your pocket. It is an “IOU-nothing”. The day that green dude was born, he made the 1% a little richer and the 99% a little poorer. Of course, the little green dudes riding in wallets are the visible and only a tiny portion of our total USA IOU-nothing currency… we have stupifying amounts of of IOU-nothings in digital form.
Interesting fact. Rickards, the Currency Wars author, is consistently accurate in predicting the Federal Reserve actions – way ahead of time. He KNOWS the global currency crisis that’s on our door step. Really. We are facing a crisis that can be dealt with, either by going onto gold (or other basket of valuables) standard… or immediately slash govt. spending.
Everyone’s looking for an easy way. A free lunch. Something that doesn’t hurt. Well as I see it, all the free lunch has been eaten. All the easy bridges were burned a couple decades ago. And the cancer has progressed, without treatment. We now have a choice between painful or horrific.
September 2, 2012 at 5:30 am #769515
JanSParticipant“This is what people do in crisis… they look for saviors…”
sort of like you’re doing now, Kman?
September 2, 2012 at 4:11 pm #769516
TanDLParticipantSome of these postings sound to me like we’re on the brink of disaster, close to a national financial meltdown which will destroy us in our sleep. Although I saw more people gathering supplies, hunkering down and fleeing the country over the Y2K debacle, which didn’t materialize either.
I for one choose not to believe we’re one step away from national extinction, just yet. Perhaps my Pollyanna glasses are skewing my vision, but from everything I’ve read, the nation diverted a huge financial disaster 2007 – 2009 and sure we made some mistakes and the bailouts and handouts to salvage us weren’t done well at times, but it could have been a lot worse. My parents lived and suffered through the Great Depression as young children and from what they’ve told me, this one really could have been a whole lot worse. We have a lot to be thankful for and yes, we still have a lot of work to do.
The economy sputters along, couple of steps forward, a step or two backward, but you don’t pull away from the edge of financial disaster overnight. That being said, the link below tells what economists think about the future – and contrary to popular opinion and pre-election positioning to make sure we vote for one party or the other who will save us from all this disaster, it’s not all doom and gloom. So get out in the sun today and breathe in some fresh September air. Change your perspective and maybe, just maybe we could all have a wonderful day. I wish all of West Seattle a warm, wonderful, refreshing weekend, free from fears about impending disaster.
September 2, 2012 at 8:12 pm #769517
megMemberTanDL, your Y2K v. ’08 Financial Crisis comparison is like apples v. oranges. Here’s why.
A. Y2K = a MATH problem
B. 2008 Fin. Crisis = a SOLVENCY problem
Y2K was fixed by replacing code.
How has the solvency problem been fixed?
4-5 years later? How much better is our solvency picture? So then, I ask what is coming around the corner. Could it be? Another bigger financial crisis, bigger than 2008? yes.
See, the 2008 financial crash was NOT a liquidity crisis. Yes, we’ve been told that it was. The Fed and the govt. have been using their liquidity ‘solutions’ (QEs and stimuluses and such) which have been making the US solvency problem Way worse. They’re playing from the 1930’s Great Depression playbook – problem is, the 1930s GD WAS a liquidity problem and US banks WERE clean and solvent. In this one here… this 2008 Great Depression… our banks were Dirty & Insolvent. They were holding crap. They did not have enough good collateral to pay their bills IOW. The banks needed to be closed — orderly, of course, but they need to be shut down and the stockholders needed to take the hit from the risk they held. Instead. Insolvent banks got lots more liquidity – money, purchases of their crap collateral by the Fed, Zero interest borrowing, etc.
You can strap on your rosy shades, if you want. No one’s stopping anyone from hoping and praying, extending and pretending. In fact, there’s nothing your govt. (both parties and their surrogates) would like more than have you think a Pollyanna normalish economy is right around the corner in a few more years with a breath and a prayer and all good hopes that all cylinders fire miraculously.
In your article there’s a telling phrase. Speaking about adding jobs someone says, ‘it is certainly possible if the economy starts “clicking on all cylinders.”‘
Now, isn’t “all cylinders” what Ben Bernanke, Geitner, and Obama and his Citigroup/JPM Wall Street entourage have been desperately trying to whip-start for these last 4 years? Even as they make US insolvency grow and worsen?
As for me, there’s no gloom in sleeping easier cuz I search around, digging and learning and getting a better idea of what’s likely to be around the corner for me, and my kids, and my small extended tribe of peeps. Esp. important for me, is getting a general sense how many folks still have fingers stuffed into their ears in disbelief. Their inerta is part of the equation, and can be somewhat modeled.
And, I agree! There’s nothing like late summer sunshine. :)
September 2, 2012 at 8:24 pm #769518
SmittyParticipant+1
September 2, 2012 at 9:53 pm #769519
megMemberThanks Smitty! Everyone should read Currency Wars. The author can larn’ya good- from ppl with PhDs down the ladder to a financial and economic dummy, like me. It’s possibly the best econ book I’ve read.
September 2, 2012 at 10:04 pm #769520
kootchmanMemberRectal bleeding is an early sign of colon cancer. It’s bad news, and might be fatal.. but you have symptoms. It assuredly wil be fatal if you ignore the symproma for fear of a confirmed diagnosis.
TanDL… when you sit down to dinner on Weds night.. your share of the deficit will be $51,000… and everyone at the dinner table , regardless of age, will owe the same. The calculus gets worse.. add all your personal debt, Now, add unfunded liabilities… SS, Medicare.. and you are all over $275,000 in debt.
September 2, 2012 at 11:28 pm #769521
JanSParticipantWTF? Kman, sometimes your posts astound me…
September 3, 2012 at 12:18 am #769522
kootchmanMemberGlad to hear it. Early detection and early treatment… same thing goes for economic woes. Don’t wait til the only option left is palliative care.
September 3, 2012 at 1:39 am #769523
JanSParticipantgeez..have another drink for me, won’t you?
September 3, 2012 at 6:20 am #769524
TanDLParticipantSorry Meg, but I have to remain the corner with most of the country’s leading economists on this one… I did however enjoy a wonderful day in the sun. :)
To convert to a gold standard we’d have to have enough gold stored away to redeem for every dollar out there in circulation, because every dollar out there would be backed by gold – circulation is currently estimated at about $2.6 Trillion. We don’t have that much gold.
We could buy more gold from world markets but that would drive the price of gold up dramatically and then we would be paying higher and higher prices for gold and where would we get the money to do that? Well, we’d probably have to borrow which sort of defeats the whole idea.
We could artifically inflate the price of gold to make the gold we do have worth enough to cover our circulation, but that could destabilize the economy (and possibly other economies around the world) and again, kind of defeat the whole reason for going on the gold standard in the first place.
Market Watch (Wall St Journal) reports that even talk of returning to a gold standard will drive the cost of gold up, so if the Republicans talk about it loudly enough, watch the price begin to inflate.
The other problem is of course, that we owe all that debt and returning to the gold standard just sets us up for collapse, if we continue to pay that debt in dollars, or possibly even war if any of our debtors decide to call in the debt – which we could not afford to pay in gold because then we would lose all our gold. And you know we wouldn’t just hand over all our gold without a fight.
I know we’d love to return to a simpler economic time, but that time has passed and it’s now a new world. I appreciate that people are trying to think of ways to fix our economic realities, but I believe that we need to figure out new fixes, not rely on old ideas based on a simpler world that we don’t live in anymore.
September 3, 2012 at 8:07 am #769525
kootchmanMemberOr… you could use oil and gas reserves… no you can’t artificially inflate the price of gold.. it’s a commodity… it responds to the demand curve. the debtors can’t “call in the debt” it’s not a mortgage… we have a fixed rate with a redeemable date… what they can do…. is discount the price of the treasuries, (increasing their yield) and flood the market with them… that would drive down the value of a world currency market flooded with cheap treasuries igniting the bon fire of inflation. These are no more or no less complicated economic times… there two ways to benchmark currency.. one, the credit rating … or “good faith and trust” … which is declining or peg it to a real asset.. tons of coal. barrels of oil, ounces of gold, bushels of corn. Gold, like oil. responds to a devalued currency. You will understand when inflation roars in and your bread prices, milk, all soar.
Gold rises in price because there is demand for it. You can’t print it up on printing presses, changing the plates from 10 to 100 dollar bills to cover your dents. At some point that currency has value only in its ability to purchase something.
Economics.. it’s a philosophy, hardly a science … I can gin up as many conservative economists as you can liberal ones.. bottom line is… at 5 per cnet of total consumer population, and larger coutnries with faster growth rates.. we will soon be eclipsed as the world currency standard.. See what China is doing? They are buying mineral, oil, agriculture land, .. they are already converting the US currency to a commodity asset base. wake up.
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