Recent comments

  • If they've committed a crime in California, why go to all the trouble of turning them over to the Feds for deportation? Why not just drive the prison bus into Mexico and release them?

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    Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

    Reply to: California Gets Real - Considers deporting thousands of illegal immigrant criminals instead of footing the bill   15 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • has little to do with the U.S. being currently the reserve currency and the agenda, led by China to move to another reserve currency.

    That has nothing to do with the current financial regulatory reforms, proposals, criticisms before Congress and being pushed by Summers, Geithner.

    Remittances, sure but then USINPAC would be involved, huge remittances to India as well.

    There is evidence, strong evidence that predatory lending skewed towards minorities...but that really isn't what this regulatory reform agenda is about, except a consumer financial protection agency, which is almost a separate issue beyond lobbyists trying to kill the idea of any financial consumer protection.

    The real thrust of the financial regulatory reform has to do with OTC derivatives, the lack of credit rating agencies reform and more importantly, who is going to have the ultimate power and will they actual impose real reforms or just shuffle around the alphabet soup?

    Of course some of this is going to be about stopping liar loans, subprime, option ARMs etc but it's more about structured finance, ABS, shadow banking system (or it should be).

    So what are they even doing now being involved in this?

    We know they will push for economic insanity over and over again, so why would they be interested in regulation of all derivatives, ABS and the restructured, giving more power to the Federal Reserve, not reinstating Glass-Stegall, etc.?

    Reply to: Obama Regulatory Reform Plan - Updated: Others Weigh In, Big Business Opposes Consumer Protection   15 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • The end of the US$ as a global reserve currency means separate currency exchange rates for tangible goods vs straight currency exchange rates, or at least that's so according to Prof. Michael Hudson, which was the system before WWII.

    I think the real reason La Raza is concerned is because this means a possible Banker's Tax on international money transfers.
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    Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

    Reply to: Obama Regulatory Reform Plan - Updated: Others Weigh In, Big Business Opposes Consumer Protection   15 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • I was really shocked. Public Citizen, who is usually pretty accurate is promoting a group Americans for Financial Reform and this is just so amusing, I'm sorry. It's packed with the illegal alien lobby. That is La Raza, the ultimate corporate ethnic agenda company (they are Inc.) promoting illegal immigration, cheap labor, guest workers, you name it.

    Then, ACORN is involved and if you haven't heard all of the issues there you haven't been breathing.

    Ya gotta ask why the illegal alien lobby is trying to get involved in regulatory reform of the global financial system.

    Sorry, but these cats don't acknowledge fundamental labor economics, try to stop anything that would curtail the flow of illegal labor into the country....

    Here is a claim from their website:

    Systemic discriminatory lending practices and residential segregation were major causes of the current financial crisis.

    hmmmm, really? I thought it was giving out predatory loans to people who could not afford or qualify for the most part. So, isn't there a little two way street on this story?

    Claiming this is the major cause? Well, we can't prove it but those foreclosure maps sure do correlate well with residential areas where the majority of the population are illegal immigrants.

    Hmmm, are we supposed to now hand anyone who crosses the border illegally a new house with a fictional mortgage and a new car?

    Seriously...there is this thing called derivatives and asset backed securities....

    I guess that doesn't come into play, it's all about making sure more people who cannot afford a home can get one I guess.

    Reply to: Obama Regulatory Reform Plan - Updated: Others Weigh In, Big Business Opposes Consumer Protection   15 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • Between May - December of 2009, 99,050 people in Michigan will exhaust their Unemployment Compensation benefits. They have only one place to go and that's welfare. Meanwhile , welfare programs are being slashed and Clinton's TANF program, made worse by Bush, requiring welfare recipients to sit in job search programs/centers for up to 30 hours a week hasn't been waived for this state. Nothing has been waived for this state. All of the job training money they are giving to us still requires a 97% entered employment rate after training. On which GD planet!

    YES WE CAN doesn't necessarily mean he will.

    Reply to: 23.4% Unemployment in Michigan?   15 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • sandwiches for many, many years. :)

    Reply to: How to make a scrumptious shit sandwich from economic reports   15 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • A long the retail line, keep in mind that with suppliers/producers of "essentials" is that they will not lower their prices unless their sales volumes fall.

    When the stock market crashed last fall, and the news was made official that the US had been in a recession since Dec 2007, I started looking for recession-resistant companies/stock.

    As a matter of fact, some of them, such as Alberto-Culver,hair care products, and Clorox, cleaning products, were *raising* wholesale prices as their commodity prices were falling as they believe the market will bear the increases, thus increasing their profit margins -> yield ->stock price.

    "Big picture" economics may force them cut margins eventually, but I haven't seen that yet.

    Reply to: The Deflationary Bust Deepens: May 2009 edition   15 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • The huge money, of course made from sick people, is running "concerned citizen" ads on TV like Viagra screaming about how "the government is going to stop you from seeing a Doctor" and so on.

    People are silly they do not check out the background of who is running these ads but they don't.

    So, they get all of these people to call, not realizing the details.

    On the "government" side, because the government has been so busy screwing over the American people, it's not surprise that any sort of government intrusion into people's lives gets so much outrage "stimulus".

    Reply to: Here Come the Lobbyists on Health Care Reform   15 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • We spend over $2 trillion on 2 wars and there is little outrage. We try to help our own people with some form of health care reform. People are howling from the roof tops.

    WTF? I swear a nation that refuses to help its own is doomed to failure.

    Reply to: Here Come the Lobbyists on Health Care Reform   15 years 4 months ago
  • As you probably know, as site admin I see the web statistics of EP.

    Well, we are being quoted by Dirt Bike World. That's cool.

    It's kind of the point of EP, to get everybody asking questions on economic data, policy, statistics and don't leave such an important area of our lives to ivory tower experts and a bunch of greedy wall street guys.

    Welcome Dirt Bike World!

    Reply to: The Economic Populist Site Rank, Statistics and All of That Jazz   15 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • income payments

    the aggregate includes more than just gross wages, at least in national accounts and balance of payments statistics. The reason is that in these accounts, CE is defined as "the total remuneration, in cash or in kind, payable by an enterprise to an employee in return for work done by the latter during the accounting period". It represents effectively a total labour cost to an employer, paid from the gross revenues or the capital of an enterprise

    Reply to: How to make a scrumptious shit sandwich from economic reports   15 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • In CPI/PPI terms, *retail market is a lagging indicator*. I noticed this years ago with hard drives at Wal*Mart- unless something *forces* a retailer to lower prices, the prices will not be lowered- EVEN IF THE REST OF THE MARKET IS. I'll skip the hard drive story to explain the mathematics (boring anyway- just a matter of outdated stock not dropping in price with the rest of the market).

    The three things the force a retailer to lower prices are:
    1. Competition- perceived or real loss of market share.
    2. Inventory taxes- getting stuck with excess inventory at the end of the year.
    3. Cash flow problems- not enough demand to keep up with overhead.

    In a wage/price deflationary spiral, overhead for *big* retailers shrinks, and so they avoid cash flow problems. Small retailers, manufactures, and individuals have overhead too, but that overhead is largely fixed.

    So any deflationary spiral is going to hit the used/mom&pop market first- until #1 kicks in, the perceived loss of market share. Otherwise, deflation just means more profit for middle men and retailers, who won't lower their prices until the lack of demand catches up with them.

    Thus the divergence point- your local retailer and his supplier taking profits while they can, until competition catches up with them.

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    Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

    Reply to: The Deflationary Bust Deepens: May 2009 edition   15 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • It looks like "too big to fail" will be with us until the next crisis. So, as a way to deal with them Soros proposed creating some sort of firewall between commercial banking and trading functions of a financial conglomerates. The trading function should be required to trade with only its money and no money from the commercial bank side.

    I would take it a step further and say if a financial conglomerate gets zombified again then FDIC or who ever has the authority of taking over the commercial banking function and the rest goes by way of bankruptcy.

    Reply to: Obama Regulatory Reform Plan - Updated: Others Weigh In, Big Business Opposes Consumer Protection   15 years 4 months ago
  • why are the two divergent? In Macro economic world the personal experience counts for zero. What the hell is going on, specifically which is making not just Seebert's personal observations, but I mentioned my own personal experience, you did too....how is this so divergent? What element in the CPI is missing, what the hell is going on here?

    I'm personally getting screwed royal at a time I cannot afford it at all.

    but to talk about it on a macro economic level to challenge these deflationary indicators, we need to find out precisely where things diverge....how can this be?

    Reply to: The Deflationary Bust Deepens: May 2009 edition   15 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • While there are natural flaws in drawing conclusions about the world from personal experience, the fact is that official government numbers cannot be trusted anymore for a multitude of reasons.

    Perhaps the best reason not to trust them is because they are almost always too positive, and then get revised downward only months later when no one is looking.
    The CPI is probably the most manipulated stat of all.

    Reply to: The Deflationary Bust Deepens: May 2009 edition   15 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • Seebert, I notice a pattern. You comment on what you personally witness, instead of looking at the economic indicators, the big picture.

    While I am scratching my head, one needs to dig deeper into CPI, inflationary indicators, etc. to see why one's personal experience is divergent from from the statistics....

    but personal experience does not equal overriding the macro economic data.

    So, the question is why, with so many of us talking about massive rising prices in our personal lives....is the CPI down? That's the real question.

    For example, beater cargo vans on craigslist and luxury yachts do not really have much impact on the overall retail markets. Food sure does, energy prices do, etc.

    Reply to: The Deflationary Bust Deepens: May 2009 edition   15 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • But *ONLY* in the secondary marketplace- lower prices on food at direct-from-the-farmer markets, lower prices in the used market where people are trying to unload assets that have maintenance costs or high running costs.

    The value of 3-year-old 15 passenger vans is dropping like crazy- saw one for $600 the other day.

    Same with luxury yachts from the 1980s and earlier.

    I suspect we've got some burn time on overproduced Chinese Imports before we see cash-strapped retailers cutting prices.
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    Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

    Reply to: The Deflationary Bust Deepens: May 2009 edition   15 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • They are trying to build up that EI which these cats believe the whole world revolves around, consumer confidence.

    They don't get that they have tapped out the consumer by firing them, outsourcing their jobs, raiding their retirement and then lending them more money to spend through predatory practices.

    I think we seriously need to trash consumer confidence as the indicator of focus.

    Then, ya know the entire shift in politics went from policy to public relations. Kind of if one packages up some crap right and it all sounds good, then somehow magically it is good.

    They seriously believe that...it's all about manipulation of the masses...

    as if that chicken didn't just come home to roost!

    Reply to: How to make a scrumptious shit sandwich from economic reports   15 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • I was having a glitch (which could be my browser, I am having loading problems with FF) and trying to delete a duplicate of one of my own comments. The system stalled and I must have gotten one of yours too! Sorry.

    Hey, I think the TARP is absurd and I question the entire validity of claiming a global financial meltdown by letting a few of these "too big to fail" companies plain fail.

    I suspect the economy is trying to recover in spite of itself. but I have no proof, I need statistics to write this up, it's a hypothesis at this point.

    Reply to: Leding Economic Indicators up 1.2% in May!   15 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • were positive which is a very bad sign.

    This proposal is already a compromise. The financial oligarchy won. They know that if this is what is initially proposed in congress that it will be watered down more during the process. In the end, nothing changes.

    Reply to: Obama Regulatory Reform Plan - Updated: Others Weigh In, Big Business Opposes Consumer Protection   15 years 4 months ago

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