We're in a lot of trouble!

[Snorri1234]

BUT .... folks have been seeing signs and predicting the end of times since humans have been in existance.

JULIUS CAESAR HAS BEEN CROWNED AS A DICTATOR! THE END TIMES ARE UPON US!

[brooksieb]

World War will not occur. We still have the majority of nukes, and the best equipment. Russia knows this, as does China.

For fixing the economy, two simple solutions:

1) Logan's Run-kill off the old and infirmed. Eases SSI benefits, medicare, medicaid, RX drug benefits, frees up doctors/hospitals for other patients (more supply+less demand=lower prices)

2) New Tax forms- once income taxes are calculated, 33% goes to debt/interest payments , 10% to defense, and the rest you can earmark for sectors you want your money to go to: Homeland Security or Education for two examples. THen COngress doesn't decide where the money goes, but you do. Do you realize you only control $3 of your US Income tax bill, where it asks if you wnat it to go to the Presidential Election Fund. Every other penny and then some is spent willy nilly by COngress.

Make me King, and the US will be back on its feet and away from the brink of extinction.

Russia has the majority of nukes...

[PLAYER57832]

Except that liquidation requires buyers. You can't just say "I declare that this stock just turned into dollars." Not even if you're the all-powerful US government.

You have to go even deeper.

Stocks are ultimately worth no more than the products a company makes. Yes, I am fully aware that many on Wallstreet can manipulate sales and make money off every losing game. BUT, the bottom line is that someone, eventually has to pay. You can take your earnings and fly for a while, but when the foundation of our economy is eroded, when folks completely forget and bypass the basic workers and productions of products ... then there is no paper left.

OUr system is built upon the idea that by competing, companies/people will ultimately do what is best for the economy, us as a whole. BUT, history shows that is not so. There will always be those who are not happy, who want more, who will do whatever they can to manipulate the system. In the old days, it was Rockafeller giving kerosene away until he drove his competition out of business and could them jack up prices (to name just one of the more well known examples). The government had to come in and say "no monopolies".

Now, the government has to come in and say that you can no longer loan out money unless you have a certain percentage of REAL ASSETS to back it. Unfortunately, things are so far gone that the amount of money that must NOW be gauranteed is so astronomical no company, ONLY the federal government can do it.

It is shameful, it should make ALL of us angry, but that is the reality. At the same time, I, and I believe most of congress (but NOT the Bush administration) think the bigwigs should take some hits in exchange for this huge bonus. They can whine and complain all they want about having to reduce their incomes and bonuses from the 20,000,000-30,000,000 range to "just" a couple of million. You know what, most of us don't care.

Actually a lot of that is blatantly false propaganda. For instance, stocks are worth whatever people will pay for them, not the value of the product produced. Any number of companies don't actually produce anything, but have very high stock prices.

Services are products.

BUT there are companies that produce nothing and really DO nothing (don't perform a real service or anything else)...and that IS part of the problem. Because it eliminates some fundamental "checks and balances" that should be in any economic system.

And no, someone somewhere doesn't eventually have to pay. Economics isn't a zero-sum game.

No, but it is not a free game either. If this latest bailout goes through, it WILL cost every man, woman and child alive today $3000 each. That is not my figure ... check it out.

We figured this out about the time mercantilism went out and Adam Smith came in. And your theories about how competition doesn't help the economy are laughable, particularly since you use an example that consists of the government insisting that competition is necessary.

Not quite. Government is the referee that ensures all the players compete fairly. The Players (the big companies largely) and to a lesser extent people (world wide) decide the rules. The problem in the US is that on occasion the players become so much stronger than the government that the government stops refereeing. Now it is happening on a world scale.

I'm not saying that people don't do nasty things. But the free market structure is the best thing anybody's come up with to work with people's tendency to do nasty things, instead of idealistically assuming that everyone will do what is best for everyone (e.g. communism.)

I agree, but not PURE capitalism. If you truly study history, this becomes evident. The markets work, competition works, but only when the really aggressive folks are reigned in slightly. Communism is a far extreme. We have, and pretty much always have had a capatilistic socialism or a form of socialist capitalism (you can debate which).

Oh, and this stuff about hitting the bigwigs for the bailout is ridiculous. I offer several practical reasons why this is so.
1. They aren't going to stick around here if they're expected to pay for everyone else's mistakes. Same reasons so many corporations are moving elsewhere... we say "Oh, they're a big corporation, they can afford to pay extra taxes so we can subsidize their smaller, inept competition" and they can't, so they leave. Then we whine. California has been seeing this happen in terms of rich individuals for years... tax them just because they're rich, and they'll leave.

You miss my point. I did not say it would or could happen, I said it SHOULD. Big difference!

2. These are the people who have demonstrated the ability to turn their money into more money. If I look at someone who's demonstrated the ability to create wealth in our economy, I don't consider it a good idea to take their capital away, reducing their wealth creation ability, and give to someone who's demonstrated the ability to destroy wealth in our economy... vis. a lot of welfare moms. (Don't get me wrong, I know some welfare moms for whom I have tremendous, tremendous respect... but I know more who are government parasites.)

Typical "trickle down" economic theory... and meanwhile I can't send my son to college and probably will have to work until I am 90, DESPITE working well over 40 hours a week for most of my life, DESPITE hours and hours of community supporting work... Sorry, you can talk all you want about who you admire, but that is just plain wrong.[/quote]

3. Right now, rich people are taking the biggest, meanest hits on Wall Street. Granted, your average working man might be losing value on his 401k, but there are rich people who are losing their daily income, often because they're trying to support the economy by continuing to invest.

BALONEY! They are losing more only because they HAVE so much more. My family survives on under $40,000 a year. We don't HAVE any money to lose. We have a little equity in our house, 2 cars (necessary because my husband is volunteer fire chief) that are worth less than $2000 each. Try seeing how most of the country .. never mind the world really and truly lives before you expect us to have any sympathy for someone losing a few million.

4. By encouraging taxation of rich people, you reduce the incentive to become a rich person by creating wealth. If I know that I'm going to move up several tax brackets and not really make much more money than I am now by starting a new business with an idea I have, I'm not encouraged to put in all the time and effort it would take to make it work. Same thing if I'm considering moving into personal stock trading or something. I am, effectively, being discouraged from investing in the economy.

Again, you take half truths and twist them. I am not suggesting taxing rich ... that is entirely off subject. I am suggesting that those who CAUSED this fiasco should suffer as much or more than I. They take my ability to send my son to school... they should lose the same.

Now, I'm not saying that rich people don't make mistakes, or that there aren't rich people who need to be slapped down for their actions in precipitating the current crisis. But laying a smackdown on the group as a whole for the sins of a few is ridiculous, and could be seriously damaging to the economy at a time when we desperately need to avoid more such damage

.
Sorry, but I am not talking about strangers here. And it is pretty strange how when it comes to poor folks saying they cannot put FOOD on the table its" "those welfare people" or "you made your decisions ... suffer" BUT when its a rich guy s... it's "gee, you made a mistake, but here's all the money you need. Meanwhile, he "supports the economy" by buying a company, then "slimming it down" (business-eeze for a bunch of folks are going to be unemployed.. and probably hitting the food lines in today's economy) and "balances" the books (which might not have even lost money, just were not profitable enough for stockholders) by moving the whole operation overseas ... laying of even more.

Maybe next time, you should consider basic economics instead of popular politics?

Maybe next time you could study real life instead of what you are being hand fed. And try listening to something other than Fox news. I'd say your speil is a lot more like "popular politics" as you call them right now.

[PLAYER57832]

Regardless if GW gets his 700billion approved, it's just a case of sticking your finger in the dyke.

And there is the nub of the issue. Especially when one considers all the other factors....(copied from my Banks and Temple of mammon thread:)

In the USA the biggest threat is $53 trillion, that's $53,000,000,000,000 in government debts and liabilities that start to come due in four years when baby boomers begin to retire.

A USA TODAY analysis found that the nation's hidden debt — Americans' obligation today as taxpayers — is more than five times the $9.5 trillion (I wont do the zeros again, otherwise ones mind starts to numb) they owe on mortgages, car loans, credit cards and other personal debt.

This hidden debt equals $473,456 per household, dwarfing the $84,454 each household owes in personal debt.

The $53 trillion is what federal, state and local governments need immediately — stashed away, earning interest, beyond the $3 trillion in taxes collected last year — to repay debts and honor future benefits promised under Medicare, Social Security and government pensions. And like an unpaid credit card balance accumulating interest, the problem grows by more than $1 trillion every year that action to pay down the debt is delayed.

But that is not really about mortgages. The problem with all these "solutions" is that they just deal with the symptoms.

PART of the problem was absolutely and completely shady mortgages that people could not afford.

PART was banks that took on too many of those shady loans and then tried to recycle them into insured securities without enough equity to back them.

BUT, those are just the worst cases, the first pegs to fall. The REAL danger is that if you look at any community across American you will find family after family just barely hanging on by their finger nails.

PART of THAT problem is absolutely greed and materialism. Folks will put $200 tennis shoes on a credit card for their kids because they "have" to have them for school.

BUT a lot of that is folks like my husband and I who faced a $3000 medical bill overnight... and, though we paid it off as quickly as we could, STILL ended up getting sent to collections (reversed, illegal, but still affects our credit) and finally ended up putting a good chunk on a credit card. If my husband loses his job or even just gets a pay reduction, we will probably end up on the street. Medical is a whole other issue onto itself, but suffice it to say that every penny big insurance companies take in profit is money that ends up costing us many fold because we, the taxpayers have to, ultimately support their rejects (and/or pay in public health costs indirectly through increased disease transmissions, etc.)

ANOTHER big part is the high divorce rate, which is the number one cause of foreclosures in many communities, including mine.

FINALLY, the biggest part is that most of us have absolutely no gaurantee or even true hope of keeping employed for the long term. Moving companies overseas to increase stockholder profits is not a game, it really and truly means real people lose thier jobs. You can talk all you want about things balancing out and "generating income". The reality is that once those jobs go, they stay gone and only a fraction of the income ever comes back in the form of mostly low paid service jobs. Several plants closed in our region, all NAFTA certified. Some of the former employees got jobs in other plants, but many are now working in Walmart, Dollar General or the local super markets. THAT is the reality that too many on Wall street try to pretend is not happening or pretend does not matter.


THE REAL problem is that things are getting so bad here in the US that the average person does not have money to buy things. So far, we can still get by on necessities, for the most part, but service organizations and charities are seeing demands that they cannot meet at the same time as supplies are being dropped. Those are not fictional people, these are not drug addicts and such, the people in our local food pantry do, of course, include some of those groups. BUT, they more and more include a guy who has to do on 3 days work instead of 5, who's wife got laid off or who cannot work because she has to care for a disabled child.

The REAL problem is that while some greed is OK, even beneficial, when it is not checked, when it gets out of hand, .... THIS is the result!

[PLAYER57832]

I dont disagree that it could be a lot of politicalish mumbo jumbo blowing things out of proportion.

I sort of follow with the idea that the bubble had to burst eventually and that something will follow it, but theres no way to facilitate a little smoother of a transition. I buy the idea that there has to be a negative adjustment (though 10 percent would be quite an adjustment to say the least) but how much would something like that hurt everyone else tied into our economy. I cant imagine any short to medium term lack of confidence in American credit is a good thing. Obviously America cant be the engine that drives the global economy to the degree that it does forever, but i would assume other countries would have to be a little farther along than they are for this to be anything but a rough period for more than just America.

(the internet is too serious of a business as it is to not be able to enjoy a good joke)

If you were talking the US government, true. Unfortunately, companies may have offices in one country, but are international.

[DaGip]

What's this We bullshit? I ain't in any trouble, I got a plan...but you should be worried about yourselves as the nukes will start coming down now just before the presidential elections...Long Live AntiLuns! Destroy All Humanity! Eat More Cardboard! Smoke Crack!

[Snorri1234]

You clearly have not enough trust in the awesomeness that is unbridled capitalism, player.


Of to the camps you go.

[PLAYER57832]

You clearly have not enough trust in the awesomeness that is unbridled capitalism, player.


Of to the camps you go.

No doubt .... or maybe I am already there ...