Recent comments

  • are budget deficits really that bad from an economic standpoint

    34% of our outlays are in interest from past debt, and that's with record low interest rates.
    Even just a modest increase in interest rates to historical norms (which would double the current rates) would cause a budget crisis.

    I think the thing that people are forgetting, and is causing the confusion, is that this isn't America circa 1950. We don't have an industrial base. We don't have trade surpluses. We don't have current account surpluses. We don't have a real savings rate.
    We have a 3rd world economy with a 1st world currency. The rules are different.

    Reply to: December deficit nearly doubles   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Once he walks out of the store with it, it becomes personal property. Well Fargo has just made a bad financial decision. Ask yourself: What would Jesse James do?
    Frank T.

    Reply to: Retail Sales Drop 0.3% for December 2009   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • to include the example from the press release.

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

    Reply to: Is This Change We Can Believe In?   14 years 9 months ago
  • I have been reading up on an alternative economic theory that is quite different than how we have been conditioned by neo-liberal economic theory. It's called modern monetary theory. Once I understand it I can do a post on it. But I can tell you from early readings it is truly alternative. For a little taste check out:

    Prof. Bill Mitchell's blog or
    Prof. L. Wray Randall

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

    Reply to: December deficit nearly doubles   14 years 9 months ago
  • I didn't write it up yet but if Obama actually put together a proposal that is useful and effective, yippie! (I didn't even look at this as a priority because I'm so much expecting useless fluff and stuff to feed the Zombie pigs).

    I'll go look at it later and see if it's worth a damn.

    Isn't that sad, you see a press release from the government and just assume it's more corporate welfare BS that's just for show so badly, you do not even read the proposal?

    (oops).

    Reply to: Is This Change We Can Believe In?   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Wow, that's a stat deserving of it's own title.

    Ok, that implies we have a charge off rate of 12.5% for November.

    I'm truly not surprised because credit card companies jack up the rates to absurd loan shark fees.

    But in terms of retails sales, the merchant is always paid, it's the credit card companies themselves that take the loss.

    So, Joe Blow buys a big LCD TV on his Visa issued by Wells Fargo, then later stopped paying on his card and it results in a charge-off (uncollectable debt), big screen TV seller already has been paid and it's Wells Fargo holding the bag.

    Joe Blow keeps his TV unless he declares bankruptcy but is now hounded by debt collectors and also cannot get another credit card or car loan and so on.

    Reply to: Retail Sales Drop 0.3% for December 2009   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Well, the Keynesian assumption is government spending, i.e. deficits are good when in a recession to help spur demand...but that said, how much of this is plain ole interest and how much of this is just flying out the window to China, India and God knows where?

    I mean you're right, that's the assumption but I'm wondering if we need to look at a better breakdown here. There's "good debt" and "bad debt" and Keynes, unless I went to mathematical fantasy land, requires that the increase Gov. spending be put into the Domestic economy it wants to Stimulate.....not dumped off to Canada or where-ever and I suspect also doesn't include Zombie banks hording it and then trying to charge loan shark interest rates too.

    So this would be one awesome blog post, to differentiate between deficit spending that actually stimulates and economy vs. deficit spending that is just sucking the money right out of the U.S. and to somewhere else which does not.

    Thinking out loud, think this is a good blog topic (research topic)?

    Reply to: December deficit nearly doubles   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • It's even worse than you point out above. Check this out.

    Fitch's December Retail Credit Card Index results show that more than one in every eight dollars of receivables was written off as uncollectable during the November collection period on an annualized basis. Taken with the recent delinquency trends and Fitch's expectation for unemployment, Fitch expects retail card chargeoffs to remain elevated throughout first half-2010.
    "We do not foresee any meaningful improvement in the retail card credit quality in the coming months," said Managing Director Michael Dean. "U.S. consumers remain under stress on a number of fronts, most notably on the employment front, and retail card chargeoffs will continue to reflect those pressures."

    So while December retails sales disappointed, the real numbers will actually wind up being worse because they aren't sales that the retail chains will collect money from.
    These delinquencies are 47% higher than they were in 2007.

    Reply to: Retail Sales Drop 0.3% for December 2009   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • What about his ilk: financial oligarchy. They want social security and medicare if they can get that. They tried with medicare advantage.

    My bigger point or issue: are budget deficits really that bad from an economic standpoint. Obviously, politically we have been conditioned that they are bad. Again gov't finances are much different than household/business.

    If the economy is not at full employment then reducing the deficit can actually hurt. Gov't spending becomes inflationary when we are at full employment. I am thinking out loud.

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

    Reply to: December deficit nearly doubles   14 years 9 months ago
  • Just because one guy picks up an issue and uses it for his own purposes doesn't mean that issue isn't real by itself.

    This is another reason for EP to exist, so we can look at budget deficits without worrying about the typical that's the Peterson Institute! attacks.

    I think this might very well be a real problem and that's because I don't see the long term policies being put in place that would enable deficit reduction later.

    Not the same situation to me as FDR and WWII, where they built up a massive industrial machine, which after the war, enabled the U.S. to become the dominant economy (and thus help with deficits).

    On that privatize SS agenda, notice how that's a tough sell since S&P really hasn't bugged for a decade.

    I went through the entire Peterson documentary and I found a lot of useful stuff and also pointed out the admittance that social security wasn't the issue.....

    So, ya gotta kind of shift through the shit with them, IMHO.

    Reply to: December deficit nearly doubles   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Things that I have learned and supposedly applied have been blown away and how I view the budget deficit is no different. Could we be wrong on how we view the budget deficit?

    Government finances are not the same as household or business finances. Households/businesses are far more restrained fiscally than sovereign gov't particularly one with a sovereign currency. And besides, when someone like Pete Peterson and his ilk are pushing hard for deficit reduction, I question their motives.

    Could it be that Wall Street is salivating over the prospect of social security being destroyed and retirement security turned over to the whims of Wall Street?

    This is where I am heading: if the economy is not producing full employment then gov't should provide the (more efficient) fiscal stimulus to do so. Since, we are far from full employment then guess what deficit doesn't matter right now - IMO.

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

    Reply to: December deficit nearly doubles   14 years 9 months ago
  • ok, I'll worry since we're clearly not getting any bang for the buck on those massive deficits.

    Reply to: December deficit nearly doubles   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • how about cross posting on EP? ;)

    Reply to: Blame the Real Cause of this Crisis   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Great quote. But how can they not know what problems are still out there? Economists are screaming them from the rooftops as are economics bloggers and even the MSM, finance people?

    We know that the mathematical models of synthetic CDOs are bad, we also know one cannot monitor or validating pricing....

    yet we have no banning or regulation of these.

    We know we had GS sell these things and bet against them....no regulation on that.

    We know these institutions are too big to fail and need to be broken up. WE also know separating out investment from commercial banking was a very wise move once again...

    Why is it they are acting like we don't know all of this?

    Reply to: Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Hearing   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • RI had 2,200 unprocessed unemployment claims at the beginning of December and they announced they would close a few days a months to take up the slack you know with no calls or walk ins so today they announced they now have 5,500 unprocessed claims and 2,200 unanswered emails from people with questions.

    RI is a small state but the DLT has hired twice last year to try and catch up and then the days off thing and they are falling further behind.

    I have to believe the same thing is happening across the country.

    Reply to: Unemployment 10% for December 2009   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • While the comments are much smaller on EP and hopefully the upgrades will encourage more comments....

    as far as I can tell from the published stats per post, we're getting more reads per post than one would on DK, even at the top of the rec for 24 hrs.

    I might be wrong, reading the wrong stats but that's what I've come up with so far.

    Of course I'm all for cross posting too, just sayin'.

    Then, there are some political agendas going on that really don't add up by the econ numbers, so at least for me, I want this space to be about the numbers even when they conclude something not so popular in some political groups.

    But yeah, we should all be cross posting around but I'd finally say it appears most of EP readers are coming from the financial blogs, econ blogs and financial press...
    at least that's also what the stats say for the site. We get very few link overs from DK and/or other Political sites...which is kind of strange in a way but there ya have it.

    Maybe once a month or so I will put up an admin Instapopulist with some of the stats, but we do need to reach out much more!

    Reply to: Blame the Real Cause of this Crisis   14 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • FCIC Hearings: Round 2

    Check this quote from the summary:

    The committee ended with two interesting observations. The first was what problems were still out there? Mayo pointed out “4 d’s”: “deleveraging”, especially as all the bad assets haven’t been found yet. “De-risking”, as both consumers and the government are going to have to roll over debt with higher risk, “deposit insurance”, which is how are we going to pay for all the bank failures to come, and “deposit overdraft”, which is the ways consumers are getting hit by their banks. They also clarified that unregulated over-the-counter derivatives was the single greatest threat facing the economy right now.

    The last was an observation by Peter Solomon: rather than getting closer to the end of this crisis, he mentioned he felt like he was in the movie Groundhog Day, where it’s just the same crisis with the same banks each and every day he wakes up. As a concerned citizen, I know all too well how he feels.

    Groundhog Day. Wow.

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

    Reply to: Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Hearing   14 years 9 months ago
  • and I enjoyed your preview of FCIC this morning.

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

    Reply to: Blame the Real Cause of this Crisis   14 years 9 months ago
  • ...is that, if you just stick with the headline numbers and ignore all this "extra" analysis you've done, it's still a very, very grim situation.

     

     

    Not pretending to be an economist&

    Reply to: Unemployment 10% for December 2009   14 years 9 months ago
  • ...were getting more visitors. Although I know that Daily Kos isn't always the friendliest environment for serious thought pieces like many that are posted here at Economic Populist, I would urge you all - since you already have done the hard work of researching, thinking and writing, to cross post. Even if you only pick up 10-20 comments, that 10-20 more that you didn't have before. Over time, I think the folks I read here could all find a reasonably sized audience at DK.

    But, whether you choose to or not, thanks for your good work.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Not pretending to be an economist

    Reply to: Blame the Real Cause of this Crisis   14 years 9 months ago

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