Gold and other precious metals are one of the ways to store wealth but they are not good to use for a monetary system. For the following reasons: They wear away over time in minuscule amounts that are not recoverable, thus disappearing overtime. They are heavy to carry in anything but small amounts. They are risky to carry. Most importantly there is a finite amount of them making it impossible to expand the money supply to allow for the growth of jobs and business. The argument against fiat money is that it causes inflation. That is true when the supply is corrupted or manipulated unethically as in the counterfeiting of Continentals during the Revolutionary war, or during the Weimar Republic in the 1920s in Germany, and many other examples. However, Lincoln successfully funded the civil war using fiat money (the Greenback dollar), and there wasn't an inflation problem. He had the choice of doing that or borrowing from the banks at the offered rate of 30% interest. Other governments have successfully used fiat money without the inflation problem - i.e. the Islands of Guernsey printed their own money to fund the building of a market place in the early 1800s. When the marketplace was completed they put a small tax in place, and all the money they had created was recovered over time via the tax, and then they burned it to remove it from circulation. One of the problems today is we have given the power to create money to the private federal reserve banks, and also the power to control that money supply. When the gov't needs money they go to the Treasury and the Treasury borrows it from the privately owned Fed Reserve banks. The banks make a credit entry into their books thus creating money which is made (out of nothing - i.e. a simple ledger entry) available to the Treasury. The government in turn hands the Fed bank treasury bonds in the amount of the borrowed money. The bonds carry an interest burden, meaning that the buyer must be paid interest on the money he gives to buy the bond, and when the bond matures he gets his money back, but in the meantime has earned interest on them, which is the incentive to purchase the bond. Bonds are sold at public auction to private buyers such as pension funds, individuals and foreign countries (originally the interest on the bonds that weren't sold went to the Fed banks, but in the 1970s congressman Wright Patman implemented legislation forcing the banks to return that money to the US Gov't - currently the bonds that aren't sold can be considered as a reserve against which the bank can loan money - at interest, of course). The bonds that are sold carry an interest burden, which the taxpayer pays. This is the primary problem - we are borrowing money with an interest burden. We don't need to do this. We can create the money without the interest burden and without the involvement of the Fed. As long as only enough money is created for goods and services then inflation won't be a problem. If it starts to rear it's head, we can increase taxation and the incoming tax money will go against the credit on the books, which makes that money go out of existence. Not only would this do away with the national debt, but income taxes would go way down, as their would be no interest on debt to pay.
Employers actually look at your credit report, not your score. Which means if you've just started building your score, and it's low simply because there's nothing in your report, you have nothing to worry about. But in cases like Sammy above... it true that seeing so many things on a credit report will make any employer question the prospect's ability to make good decisions.
As for the credit score... that's full of crap. I've been earning a steady income, paying everything on time, have no negative records and no loans at all, and yet, my wife has a score 100 points higher than mine! She has never had a job, I've been paying for everything ever since we graduated from college (when we got married)! That makes absolutely no sense to me... I've been doing everything that I find online on blogs like www.creditrepair.org but still, my score is barely moving up. Naturally, I'm not going to spend any money and hire a credit repair agency because I simply see no reason why they'd do a better job than me since I have no negative records to begin with.
That said, it's not just India companies who labor arbitrage. HP, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, the list is quite long, of U.S. companies who do the same thing. Displace U.S. engineers, U.S. techies for H-1Bs or move the project offshore.
You don't get the "big picture". Find a Detroit personal stories video interview clip and we can add it. How about generally, if you know of a great, in depth, accurate personal stories unemployment video clip, post it in the comments.
Silicon valley is where he went and he walked into a "self help group". Frankly Silicon valley is loaded with Indians and then Chinese, but in terms of domestic diversity, i.e. Black engineers, black middle class, women engineers, Hispanic engineers....it's a wasteland. In addition to that, now it's becoming an age discrimination wasteland and an American worker wasteland.
If 60 minutes went to Detroit, I do believe he could have found Black engineers unemployed, Hispanic HR unemployed and so on.
The point of this interview is you have PHDs, people at the top rungs of their careers, enormous education, experience, skills, who cannot even get a part time job at Home Depot. They are all middle aged because Silicon valley (except for executives of course) is one of the worst areas for age discrimination, but this is new.
I'm sure if he did this personal story segment in 2002, he could have found all of he Black women, the black engineers who lost their jobs.
Which would be another interesting post. When it comes to labor arbitrage, are the first victims U.S. domestic diversity? Firings seems to move from women, blacks, hispanics to age and then to all Americans as they pick people off to be fired. That's just an observation, I have zero data, zero statistics to back up this statement, so it could be completely wrong.
My girlfriend and I watched this and thought it was kind of strange that no one was interviewed other than middle-aged white, educated persons. Yes, it was sad. But we live in Michigan. Come to Detroit and interview some out of work auto worker with 3 kids and no savings. The comment by the lady in the video still image that said "i was a shopaholic before i lost my job" definitely would have had the teabaggers howling "it was her own fault". Besides, how much longer did any of them have to go before they still get to enjoy the privelege of Social Security and Medicare?
David Kay Johnson analyzed people making $50 million or more and in one year, from 2008 to 2009, the increase in salaries, wages was 500%.
The number of Americans making $50 million or more, the top income category in the data, fell from 131 in 2008 to 74 last year. But that's only part of the story.
The average wage in this top category increased from $91.2 million in 2008 to an astonishing $518.8 million in 2009. That's nearly $10 million in weekly pay!
You read that right. In the Great Recession year of 2009 (officially just the first half of the year), the average pay of the very highest-income Americans was more than five times their average wages and bonuses in 2008. And even though their numbers shrank by 43 percent, this group's total compensation was 3.2 times larger in 2009 than in 2008, accounting for 0.6 percent of all pay. These 74 people made as much as the 19 million lowest-paid people in America, who constitute one in every eight workers.
...and O'Blather and his cabal of ca$h corrupted cronies 'wonder' why the 'base' has 'abandoned' them?
People in this country are extremely ignorant without a doubt; but, that does not mean they are stupid. They really don't need some fool on the TeeBee tellin' 'em that 'Happy Days are Here Again...' no, nor no idiot 'blogger' who never had a real job, think Bowers or Kos, to tell 'em that the President is their only hope.
They believed last cycle but now they are done with delusion.
I think this claim that legal residents of Latino ethnicity, vote lock step to promote unlimited migration is wrong. There are powerful special interests who want that and of course the illegals want to stay.
If Latinos could swing so many elections, we wouldn't be seeing a GOP tidal wave. And the polls on immigration are strong that most of the country wants the current laws enforced, especially checking on legal status for a job and securing the border, on those two the polling hits over 70%, way high.
So, using the illegal immigrant it's more the classic GOP thing. Whitman had no problem using illegal labor and then dismissing that illegal labor when it became politically expedient to do so. That's their thing, to exploit labor.
Whitman is also a huge promoter of H-1B, L-1 guest worker Visas, which labor arbitrage American professionals and she loves offshore outsourcing too.
Back to illegal immigration, bottom line, the U.S. needs to control the Population, the size of the workforce, so exploitation or not, that job should be going to an American, a legal worker in the first place. Yes wages will go up if that was done but anyone believe these millionaires cannot afford to pay a little more for their help?
Anyone technical knows all too well, Fiorina is and was on the offshore outsource everything not nailed down bandwagon. We also know HP used to be a pillar of high quality products and innovation. Now...it's just made in China.
This is the best negative ad I've seen. Now Boxer ignores techies continually, doesn't do a damn thing for them on limiting, reforming H-1B,L-1, foreign guest worker visas or confront the labor arbitrage going against U.S. techies....that said, I believe if Fiorina could dig up the land around Silicon valley and plant it in Bangalore India, she would.
On the other hand, Democrats are nuts in California on illegal immigration. It costs the states $11 billion a year and I'm sorry, statistics are statistics. That's just the way it is and due to their special interests, they won't face those statistics. I think that pisses people off too.
Yet other hand, to me some real practical things, such as legalize Pot, are supposedly going to fail and it's just ridiculous. Demand is not going away, Pot to me is better than Alcohol and tobacco, which are legal and that would be an immediate cash crop, a huge savings.
I don't do any drugs myself so, this isn't a stoner saying this, it's the economics, the Drug Cartels and reality.
I used to be a System's Engineer. I've been living on savings and 401k money since I was laid off. I have chosen to go back to school and learn a new skill as a chef after a two year stint looking for a job in Silicon Valley. I am halfway done and there is, at least, a good chance I will be able to find a job after I graduate. Everyone I knew is either out of work or they've changed careers. There is no sense in trying to find work in the Electronics field, because those jobs are gone and won't come back for a generation. I'm lucky -- I saw it beginning to happen in the early part of the decade, and I saved as much as I could and got rid of everything that cost money every month, like house, car payments, and furniture. I paid cash for a car and I'm still driving it today. I believe I am going to be OK, but I feel for everyone else trying to get by.
That has to be the most realistic "personal story" video segment I've seen in a long time. They made a point to go to the place always screaming "worker shortage" (read young, foreign cheap labor), one of the most wealthy areas in the country, where income inequality is most stark and clearly picked people to interview who are the cream.
I especially appreciated they showed that one can have a PhD and be grateful for a part-time job at home depot, which also blows the lid off of the claim that our problems are just "structural". See Blame the Employers for some statistics on this.
I don't know if anyone here watched TV, but it's like a different world they are talking about from what the reality is for most Americans. Just take any sitcom, they will be working in some job while living in a $500k home and magically have an amazing amount of free time where they don't have to pay bills. Commercials are completely out of reality.
This gets worse, it seems the G-20 meeting is another blow off to convince the Senate not to pass the China currency manipulation bill which already passed the House.
so it doesn't matter what the volume is on the market, its exchange rate is fixed, in reality (despite what kind of announcement China claims). The Fed can devalue the dollar and then China owns a lot of Treasuries to keep the Yuan low.
Like he is being pressured to do something but in reality, refuses. Where is this interview? Link?
Also, can you help out with the facebook thing? I found facebook to be a "black hole" in terms of time sink but it's clearly the platform of choice, increasing for people, so gotta "hook it in".
...I listened to his interview with, I believe it was the head of Sequoia Investment Fund, and dang if he didn't sound just like me on the issues I know about. Very strange to hear the guy go on explicating mostly progressive policy points when what is actually happening seemingly, seemingly, bears no relation to same.
He actually said that at the current time U.S. tax law makes it more profitable for a U.S. company to expand it's workforce overseas!
...I listen to them on Sunday am. You get all the gasbag shows.
Facebook...heh...
I spend toooo much time there. I guess you could start a page for this bog. I am not an expert.
Gold and other precious metals are one of the ways to store wealth but they are not good to use for a monetary system. For the following reasons: They wear away over time in minuscule amounts that are not recoverable, thus disappearing overtime. They are heavy to carry in anything but small amounts. They are risky to carry. Most importantly there is a finite amount of them making it impossible to expand the money supply to allow for the growth of jobs and business. The argument against fiat money is that it causes inflation. That is true when the supply is corrupted or manipulated unethically as in the counterfeiting of Continentals during the Revolutionary war, or during the Weimar Republic in the 1920s in Germany, and many other examples. However, Lincoln successfully funded the civil war using fiat money (the Greenback dollar), and there wasn't an inflation problem. He had the choice of doing that or borrowing from the banks at the offered rate of 30% interest. Other governments have successfully used fiat money without the inflation problem - i.e. the Islands of Guernsey printed their own money to fund the building of a market place in the early 1800s. When the marketplace was completed they put a small tax in place, and all the money they had created was recovered over time via the tax, and then they burned it to remove it from circulation. One of the problems today is we have given the power to create money to the private federal reserve banks, and also the power to control that money supply. When the gov't needs money they go to the Treasury and the Treasury borrows it from the privately owned Fed Reserve banks. The banks make a credit entry into their books thus creating money which is made (out of nothing - i.e. a simple ledger entry) available to the Treasury. The government in turn hands the Fed bank treasury bonds in the amount of the borrowed money. The bonds carry an interest burden, meaning that the buyer must be paid interest on the money he gives to buy the bond, and when the bond matures he gets his money back, but in the meantime has earned interest on them, which is the incentive to purchase the bond. Bonds are sold at public auction to private buyers such as pension funds, individuals and foreign countries (originally the interest on the bonds that weren't sold went to the Fed banks, but in the 1970s congressman Wright Patman implemented legislation forcing the banks to return that money to the US Gov't - currently the bonds that aren't sold can be considered as a reserve against which the bank can loan money - at interest, of course). The bonds that are sold carry an interest burden, which the taxpayer pays. This is the primary problem - we are borrowing money with an interest burden. We don't need to do this. We can create the money without the interest burden and without the involvement of the Fed. As long as only enough money is created for goods and services then inflation won't be a problem. If it starts to rear it's head, we can increase taxation and the incoming tax money will go against the credit on the books, which makes that money go out of existence. Not only would this do away with the national debt, but income taxes would go way down, as their would be no interest on debt to pay.
Employers actually look at your credit report, not your score. Which means if you've just started building your score, and it's low simply because there's nothing in your report, you have nothing to worry about. But in cases like Sammy above... it true that seeing so many things on a credit report will make any employer question the prospect's ability to make good decisions.
As for the credit score... that's full of crap. I've been earning a steady income, paying everything on time, have no negative records and no loans at all, and yet, my wife has a score 100 points higher than mine! She has never had a job, I've been paying for everything ever since we graduated from college (when we got married)! That makes absolutely no sense to me... I've been doing everything that I find online on blogs like www.creditrepair.org but still, my score is barely moving up. Naturally, I'm not going to spend any money and hire a credit repair agency because I simply see no reason why they'd do a better job than me since I have no negative records to begin with.
You have to swim through this stuff to get to the meat, but Naked Capitalism has some good quotes on HAMP, many also from this same report.
Cognizant is a notorious user of H-1B, L-1 and offshore outsources. Here is an article about the DOL forcing them to pay back wages to H-1B workers.
Chennai is a large offshore outsourcing center. They are, de facto, an Indian body shop, regardless of headquarters incorporation.
Source: Wall Street Journal.
That said, it's not just India companies who labor arbitrage. HP, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, the list is quite long, of U.S. companies who do the same thing. Displace U.S. engineers, U.S. techies for H-1Bs or move the project offshore.
You don't get the "big picture". Find a Detroit personal stories video interview clip and we can add it. How about generally, if you know of a great, in depth, accurate personal stories unemployment video clip, post it in the comments.
Silicon valley is where he went and he walked into a "self help group". Frankly Silicon valley is loaded with Indians and then Chinese, but in terms of domestic diversity, i.e. Black engineers, black middle class, women engineers, Hispanic engineers....it's a wasteland. In addition to that, now it's becoming an age discrimination wasteland and an American worker wasteland.
If 60 minutes went to Detroit, I do believe he could have found Black engineers unemployed, Hispanic HR unemployed and so on.
The point of this interview is you have PHDs, people at the top rungs of their careers, enormous education, experience, skills, who cannot even get a part time job at Home Depot. They are all middle aged because Silicon valley (except for executives of course) is one of the worst areas for age discrimination, but this is new.
I'm sure if he did this personal story segment in 2002, he could have found all of he Black women, the black engineers who lost their jobs.
Which would be another interesting post. When it comes to labor arbitrage, are the first victims U.S. domestic diversity? Firings seems to move from women, blacks, hispanics to age and then to all Americans as they pick people off to be fired. That's just an observation, I have zero data, zero statistics to back up this statement, so it could be completely wrong.
My girlfriend and I watched this and thought it was kind of strange that no one was interviewed other than middle-aged white, educated persons. Yes, it was sad. But we live in Michigan. Come to Detroit and interview some out of work auto worker with 3 kids and no savings. The comment by the lady in the video still image that said "i was a shopaholic before i lost my job" definitely would have had the teabaggers howling "it was her own fault". Besides, how much longer did any of them have to go before they still get to enjoy the privelege of Social Security and Medicare?
Chennai-based Cognizant...wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognizant_Technology_Solutions
Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is an American multinational IT services and consulting corporation headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey, United States.
David Kay Johnson analyzed people making $50 million or more and in one year, from 2008 to 2009, the increase in salaries, wages was 500%.
His article is here.
...and O'Blather and his cabal of ca$h corrupted cronies 'wonder' why the 'base' has 'abandoned' them?
People in this country are extremely ignorant without a doubt; but, that does not mean they are stupid. They really don't need some fool on the TeeBee tellin' 'em that 'Happy Days are Here Again...' no, nor no idiot 'blogger' who never had a real job, think Bowers or Kos, to tell 'em that the President is their only hope.
They believed last cycle but now they are done with delusion.
Next...
...pitchforks.
I think this claim that legal residents of Latino ethnicity, vote lock step to promote unlimited migration is wrong. There are powerful special interests who want that and of course the illegals want to stay.
If Latinos could swing so many elections, we wouldn't be seeing a GOP tidal wave. And the polls on immigration are strong that most of the country wants the current laws enforced, especially checking on legal status for a job and securing the border, on those two the polling hits over 70%, way high.
So, using the illegal immigrant it's more the classic GOP thing. Whitman had no problem using illegal labor and then dismissing that illegal labor when it became politically expedient to do so. That's their thing, to exploit labor.
Whitman is also a huge promoter of H-1B, L-1 guest worker Visas, which labor arbitrage American professionals and she loves offshore outsourcing too.
Back to illegal immigration, bottom line, the U.S. needs to control the Population, the size of the workforce, so exploitation or not, that job should be going to an American, a legal worker in the first place. Yes wages will go up if that was done but anyone believe these millionaires cannot afford to pay a little more for their help?
Anyone technical knows all too well, Fiorina is and was on the offshore outsource everything not nailed down bandwagon. We also know HP used to be a pillar of high quality products and innovation. Now...it's just made in China.
This is the best negative ad I've seen. Now Boxer ignores techies continually, doesn't do a damn thing for them on limiting, reforming H-1B,L-1, foreign guest worker visas or confront the labor arbitrage going against U.S. techies....that said, I believe if Fiorina could dig up the land around Silicon valley and plant it in Bangalore India, she would.
On the other hand, Democrats are nuts in California on illegal immigration. It costs the states $11 billion a year and I'm sorry, statistics are statistics. That's just the way it is and due to their special interests, they won't face those statistics. I think that pisses people off too.
Yet other hand, to me some real practical things, such as legalize Pot, are supposedly going to fail and it's just ridiculous. Demand is not going away, Pot to me is better than Alcohol and tobacco, which are legal and that would be an immediate cash crop, a huge savings.
I don't do any drugs myself so, this isn't a stoner saying this, it's the economics, the Drug Cartels and reality.
I used to be a System's Engineer. I've been living on savings and 401k money since I was laid off. I have chosen to go back to school and learn a new skill as a chef after a two year stint looking for a job in Silicon Valley. I am halfway done and there is, at least, a good chance I will be able to find a job after I graduate. Everyone I knew is either out of work or they've changed careers. There is no sense in trying to find work in the Electronics field, because those jobs are gone and won't come back for a generation. I'm lucky -- I saw it beginning to happen in the early part of the decade, and I saved as much as I could and got rid of everything that cost money every month, like house, car payments, and furniture. I paid cash for a car and I'm still driving it today. I believe I am going to be OK, but I feel for everyone else trying to get by.
I could have said, "watch this" and almost did.
That has to be the most realistic "personal story" video segment I've seen in a long time. They made a point to go to the place always screaming "worker shortage" (read young, foreign cheap labor), one of the most wealthy areas in the country, where income inequality is most stark and clearly picked people to interview who are the cream.
I especially appreciated they showed that one can have a PhD and be grateful for a part-time job at home depot, which also blows the lid off of the claim that our problems are just "structural". See Blame the Employers for some statistics on this.
I don't know if anyone here watched TV, but it's like a different world they are talking about from what the reality is for most Americans. Just take any sitcom, they will be working in some job while living in a $500k home and magically have an amazing amount of free time where they don't have to pay bills. Commercials are completely out of reality.
broke my heart. Thanks for highlighting it.
This gets worse, it seems the G-20 meeting is another blow off to convince the Senate not to pass the China currency manipulation bill which already passed the House.
so it doesn't matter what the volume is on the market, its exchange rate is fixed, in reality (despite what kind of announcement China claims). The Fed can devalue the dollar and then China owns a lot of Treasuries to keep the Yuan low.
Like he is being pressured to do something but in reality, refuses. Where is this interview? Link?
Also, can you help out with the facebook thing? I found facebook to be a "black hole" in terms of time sink but it's clearly the platform of choice, increasing for people, so gotta "hook it in".
...I listened to his interview with, I believe it was the head of Sequoia Investment Fund, and dang if he didn't sound just like me on the issues I know about. Very strange to hear the guy go on explicating mostly progressive policy points when what is actually happening seemingly, seemingly, bears no relation to same.
He actually said that at the current time U.S. tax law makes it more profitable for a U.S. company to expand it's workforce overseas!
I'm soooo confused!
Why can't the fed just intervene directly, print dollars, and buy yuan.
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