Recent comments

  • It's costing us millions of jobs and trillions of dollars, but the politicians seem to be as much captured by China's peg as by Wall Street's bribes.

    Reply to: Is Obama going to grow a pair & demand China float their currency?   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • The life (I mean not losing their heads type life) of the ruling class depends on it. They have to protect their export driven economy as best they can. They may appreciate it a little but I doubt if they ever would let it float - it would destabilize the country IMO.

    Our biggest mistake was thinking that an authoritarian government like China would be a fair "partner" in trade. But that didn't matter to MNCs - they got what they wanted - exploitation of cheap labor and cheap resources and ruling class got what it wanted - jobs. The plan was working out great for MNCs - margins increasing - supply of cheap imports to keep Americans happy but the bottom fell out. The "house of cards" collapsed when the limits to growth via consumer debt and mortgage debt kicked in. I digress.

    Bottomline: as a matter of survival of ruling class in China we will never see the China float its currency. Workers in China would not handle high unemployment too well.

    RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

    Reply to: Is Obama going to grow a pair & demand China float their currency?   14 years 9 months ago
  • We still have questionable underwriting practices. It is still an illusion. When Fed pulls out and no more bail outs for Fannie/Freddie the illusion will finally be over.

    All of this for what - to save the financial oligarchy. If they really wanted to help people we would have macro principal reductions a long long time ago.

    Here is a prediction: When the book is closed on the one-term Obama Administration - its handling of the mortgage crisis will go down as its biggest mistake - even bigger than its health care fiasco.

    RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

    Reply to: Is Residential Real Estate a Ticking Time Bomb?   14 years 9 months ago
  • I thought of deleting it, but hey, all of you Congressional staffers and other politicians if you are reading this site...

    we REALLY want you to move on policy that is going to create a butt load of jobs...

    I'm sorry if this is disrespectful but we really want you to move and do something and put all of the U.S. might and power behind some moves for the U.S. middle class.

    Reply to: Is Obama going to grow a pair & demand China float their currency?   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • An annual ritual -- where assumptions are made that defy belief. Ketchup in the school lunch program is a vegetable. Congress will pass the tax proposals sent up by the White House. A few years back, I was in a meeting with the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and he said: "George Bush is my friend, but I wish he would read the Constitution. Every nickel this country spends starts right here in this committee."
    Since then, I've always thought of the Federal Budget in the same way you think of a kid's letter to the smiling man at North Pole.
    Frank T.

    Reply to: Obama Releases 2011 Budget   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • If only I had written this yesterday, what a theme! Damn I missed an opportunity.

    That is what I felt like when I was looking over all of these figures...I thought it was 2006 but instead of BoA, or Countrywide or whatever, I had in those names places Fed, Treasury, Gimmie....

    Honestly I think us little Populists sometimes can see the forest through the trees. Forever I was asking myself, who can afford a house payment when their salaries are crap, they are fired all of the time, it's totally permatemp work culture and houses are so expensive?

    It's like duh, it doesn't add up, because...it does not add up!

    Reply to: Is Residential Real Estate a Ticking Time Bomb?   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Re-inflating the bubble. Every day is "Ground Hog Day" - same thing over and over again. I don't want to say anymore.

    RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

    Reply to: Is Residential Real Estate a Ticking Time Bomb?   14 years 9 months ago
  • ok, the midtowng's graph is about a 27% ratio of social taxes to income, yet the 2006 graph is 85% ratio of social taxes to income taxes.

    Even if I put it as somehow doubling down in the count, on social taxes it's still 42% so who knows..

    I think 27% ratio seems to be reality though. I don't know the context, is it possible the GAO had a little GOP graph maker in there, trying to freak everybody on in order to attempt to privatize SS?

    I have no idea.

    Reply to: It's time to live within our means once again   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • frankly. Firstly Keynes was not involved AT ALL in communist USSR and it's implosion or Zimbabwe and from those statements, it's pretty clear you do not even know what the actual theory states.

    Secondly, we are not enacting Keynes economics. Unfortunately more people who do not understand Keynes claim that but by the theory, that is not what is happening.

    Now if you want to talk about corporate favoritism and corruption...oh yeah, that's unfettered capitalism isn't it? Oops...

    God, when will a real reporter get on FAUX news and get idiot Glenn Beck off the air. You might consider listening to a pundit who at least has a BS in economics to get a real clue here.

    Reply to: Robert Reich's Supercapitalism (book review)   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Nope, I was using that as an example of the one thing that is understandable --- look at the ratio between social insurance taxes paid and individual taxes --- and the previous ratio --- just doesn't look right, something appears amiss?????

    Reply to: It's time to live within our means once again   14 years 9 months ago
  • They offshore outsource jobs and literally have software programs to calculate the best tax advantage by playing nations against each other. I'm assuming that's what you're looking at as to why corporations do not pay hardly any tax. That's why the largest corporations seem to pay the least, they offshore outsource jobs and keep profits offshore, reinvesting them depending on that overall profit scheme. I need to look into this more too, i.e. I believe quarterly reports are global profits but when it comes to paying uncle Sam, this is the game.

    Reply to: It's time to live within our means once again   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • What I love about all these so-called economic experts like Robert Reich (does anyone remember the last time he was right about anything?) and Paul Krugman (dito) is that somehow they still believe in the old discredited Keynesian theory, which has been destroyed by actual output and results. They honestly believe that by raising taxes and regulating (i.e. big business people get appointed to the regulatory boards and create rules that help them and keep competitors out of their way) business is the way to economic prosperity. Zimbabwe, the Soviet Union, need I remind you of the 70s, and everyone else who have tried what these men believe in have failed. Now we are doing the same thing, we increase spending and get nothing out of it, we push cheap money which hurts the poor, and we grow the size of government, all the while we decide to punish the people who we blackmailed in the first place, telling them to make loans that any sane person wouldn't (it is very well documented) and we afford them cheap credit and money. Government and economic policies such as the ones Reich and Krugman, and their discredited god, John M. Keynes; have always led to bigger deficits, economic stagnation, class warfare, devaluing of currency, and the selling out of the one economic system that has worked time and again when allowed to: CAPITALISM.

    Reply to: Robert Reich's Supercapitalism (book review)   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Take a look at the 2005 GAO Federal Tax Revenue pie chart below and compare those numbers with the first chart in midtowng's blog here.

    Notice anything odd about the proportional tax increase ratios? It really looks peculiar to me? The slight increase in corporate taxes follows the logical trend in the large ongoing decrease in corporate tax recovery (their refusal to pay taxes) as pointed out in the recent Full Spectrum Inequality blog.

    I've racked my miniscule brain trying to think up possible scenarios to work out to such proportional tax increases (as, say, comparing the social insurance to the individual tax increases, etc.), but can't think of anything to fit?

    Reply to: It's time to live within our means once again   14 years 9 months ago
  • Volcker is pushing back hard on some testimony.

    Dodd claimed he is "for" the Volcker rule now supposedly, but it's still pretty clear all good ideas, if they do not die in the House, they will surely be killed off in our most corrupt Senate.

    Anywho, might want to do an update on all of this if someone has a mind to take it on.

    While I believe Tim Geithner should never have been hired and of course should be fired, one has to point out that Congress is truly a death trap for any shred of reforms getting passed.

    Reply to: So much for the Volcker Rule   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Even worse, body shops, which are Indian (usually) companies using the intra-corporate transfer visa, the L-1 as well as the H-1B and even the H-2B, are pouring into these jobs...if they cannot or have not already offshore outsourced them, via "contracts", so IT never recovered from the 2000 dot con bust and offshore outsourcing, use of guest worker Visas is the real reason why.

    Even the DOL recently tried to hire a web developer in India for $4400 per year. Yes, that's your U.S. Dept. of Labor.

    Reply to: ISM Non-Manufacturing index for January 2010 at 50.5%   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • I did already but here it is again, Ralph Gomory presents some much needed policy and legislative directives.

    We like more detailed stuff, or at least I do, I think Ralph is writing some conclusions that are the least "technical" so people get the message but underneath these policy recommendations is a host of very serious research.

    We like Gomory's math head frankly, or at least I do, when he goes down to the nitty gritty.

    Reply to: U.S. Manufacturing, Hire America & Buy American   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Looks so so to me. It's all about levels as the last graph points out.

    RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

    Reply to: ISM Non-Manufacturing index for January 2010 at 50.5%   14 years 9 months ago
  • on HuffPo

    Reply to: U.S. Manufacturing, Hire America & Buy American   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • currency. I think you mean that once the dollar is not longer king-dollar it will end. I agree. Once that happens the game they have been playing is over.

    Reply to: It's time to live within our means once again   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • I agree with you Jim. It looks like we are heading for a one world currency...next stop: one world government? I thought it interesting that the US spends the most on defense, so it appears history is repeating itself...again. Good thing we have "bread and circus" to distract ourselves. (mmm...McFatburgers and American Idol!)

    Reply to: It's time to live within our means once again   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:

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