Recent comments

  • Based on my last two purchases (a 1999 in 2003, and a 2002 in 2006) I won't even consider a car less than 4 years old.

    I'm tempted. Oh yes, I'm tempted by the Neighborhood Electric Vehicles- but they're too new, I want them to shake the bugs out first.

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    Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.

    Reply to: Economic things I learned or overheard this Memorial Day   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • I am and always have been, one of those people that buy used cars. I am good at turning a wrench and know how things work. I bought a new Ford van in 1978 but that was my only new vehicle.

    My wife's car is a 1995 and mine is a 1990. Either car would have no problem running from coast to coast. My car has 175,000 miles on it. I did have a recent big invoice of $1,300. I burned a valve. But I am back up and running. Compression is great (even across all cylinders), does not burn oil, leather seats are 90% good leather.

    I guess I should count my blessings that there are people willing to take the big depreciation hit on new cars.

    If they pass there trial balloon VAT tax, things will then get even a bit harder on the average American. I wonder if the VAT will be considered outside the "I promise to not raise any taxes" statement?

    Reply to: Economic things I learned or overheard this Memorial Day   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • I read yesterday a New York Times article trying to claim that single payer universal health or especially putting controls on private insurance will "run into trouble" as a monopoly and other business law violations.

    What a laugh and to me an obvious health care lobbyist industry story plant.

    We have right now the financial sector, acting like a government endorsed cartel and I'm not even mentioning the mega mergers and corporations like Intel and Microsoft.

    Oh yeah, sure national law for universal health care will be challenged as a monopoly.

    Reply to: U.S. Health Care System is A Blood Sucking Leech   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • 1) Maximizing our return on TARP and other taxpayer giveaways to financial conglomerates;

    2) Health care reform

    3) Environment/Climate change

    4) Education

    That is it. No more war funding; very little defense spending; serious farm subsidy reform. But with all the special interest money in Washington this probably won't happen.

    Reply to: U.S. Health Care System is A Blood Sucking Leech   15 years 5 months ago
  • I had to go and look up the Bank of North Dakota. Amazingly, I can find *NO* Supreme Court challenge on the topic- AT ALL. But it does explain why North Dakota had no usury law unlike other states in the 1970s- they didn't need one. With bank loans being available to all citizens at a mere 1% interest rate (as long as the use the money was put to was in the interest of agricultural or community development- INCLUDING STUDENT LOANS!), the competition kept more expensive loans out of the market.

    EVERY state should do this- and the end result would be no more "foreign" control of the mortgage market.
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    Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.

    Reply to: Create Your Own Money Governor   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • After all, Citibank sold my mortgage to Chase, and the FDIC sold my bank (WAMU) to Chase.
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    Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.

    Reply to: Banks want to sell to themselves Toxic Assets and have Taxpayers foot the bill   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • refuses to deal with the costs of illegal immigration, which is about $10.5 billion annually.

    They won't clean out their social services rolls or pretty much do anything that makes economic/common sense.

    Same is true with a host of states...rather than deal with economic realities they kowtow to special interest groups and it's just out of hand.

    Then, the state is a massive waste machine. They have political gridlock, all sorts of gerrymandered districts, the entire bay area is run by corporations and they have their own personal representatives in Congress...

    They are a combo of overwhelmed free emergency rooms with private health insurance companies that make the entire concept of insurance a joke....raking in their profits at all costs...

    I mean pick a topic, pick an area and you will not find something that is just beyond the boundaries of what is economically feasible.

    ya know, I don't think they should be allowed to generate more debt.

    I think they should plain go down. They wanted their illegal immigrant land and their corporations running certain sections and all of the rest of it, so let 'em suffer the consequences.

    It will be a good example to other states that one cannot defy the laws of economics forever without ruining your state economy.

    Reply to: Create Your Own Money Governor   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • financial conglomerates "toxic assets"? It could be a good deal for JP Morgan Chase - downside protected with taxpayer money - to buy "toxic assets" of Wells Fargo.

    What does Bair say to that?

    Reply to: Banks want to sell to themselves Toxic Assets and have Taxpayers foot the bill   15 years 5 months ago
  • No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

    I'm for amending this personally- I think it would be a great thing if we left coining money and emitting bills of credit to the states. Then states could vote for an *in-state currency* instead of taxes- all state business could be paid for by printing expiring currency that is only good for in-state transactions.

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    Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.

    Reply to: Create Your Own Money Governor   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • Bair Says Banks Can't Buy Own Assets in PPIP Auction

    Does Mr. Geithner agree with that statement?

    Reply to: Banks want to sell to themselves Toxic Assets and have Taxpayers foot the bill   15 years 5 months ago
  • I've got two sessions of an Issues in Economics class, notionally 10 hours work per week. It is 10 hours work the first week, then 16 hours or so for the next 8, and maybe 20 hours the last week.

    Since the target is a Masters, I guess I might be underemployed in terms of qualifications too, but only by one rung, so that's better than when I was hauling boxes off the box line to be shipped off to individual Bed, Bath and Beyond stores.

    I'd have 20 hours notion, more than 30 hours actual except they were able to get a Masters in Math to teach Math classes.

    Reply to: Economic things I learned or overheard this Memorial Day   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • Are the ones actively creating the "race to the bottom"- and have been ever since they decided in the late 1960s to start worrying about the "standard of living gap" between the first and third world.

    Of course, they sold it to us that they'd be raising up the third world, not tearing us down, but most intelligent people realized sometime in the late 1990s/early 2000s that both sides would have to give.

    One smart man whom I voted for instead of Bill Clinton in my first Presidential election saw it coming- and even as a part of his campaign put on half-hour infomercials about it back in 1992- but 84% of America thought he was nuts and didn't vote for him.

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    Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.

    Reply to: We're Sorry, 8% Permanent Unemployment is not Acceptable!   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • Is if the numbers were the other way around.

    I can pretty much guarantee that since 2004, the number of H-1b visa holders had been > number of unemployed American Techies.

    That sounds to me as it should be- you should only be letting H-1bs in if the number of unemployed techies is relatively small.

    If the number of unemployed techies was > number of H-1b visas, then it should be a simple decision to cancel *all* the H-1b visas and hire the unemployed techies to reduce the number of unemployed techies.

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    Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.

    Reply to: Employed Foreign Guest Workers Outnumber ALL Unemployed U.S. Technical Workers   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • And may well explain why the elites seem to be running this country into the ground- because it's short term profit positive.
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    Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.

    Reply to: Are Financial Conglomerates in a Position to Lend?   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • Everytime Geithner and Summers are mentioned together it reminds me of Albert Einstein's quote:

    "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

    It is so true.

    Reply to: SHIP OF STATE OR SHIP OF FOOLS   15 years 5 months ago
  • Mark Thoma had a good post about Summers and his role in deregulation: Link

    Reply to: SHIP OF STATE OR SHIP OF FOOLS   15 years 5 months ago
  • Denmark. Denmark's mortgage system, one of the oldest, practically eliminates the problem of "negative equity".

    Reply to: Are Financial Conglomerates in a Position to Lend?   15 years 5 months ago
  • What the hell, we are the Populist community site after all.

    But Yoozer, you are not messing around....

    although I must agree, the real issues that need to be addressed, such as glass-seagall or how about simple back to traditional leveraging of the banks. They are still approving absurd leverages of 40:1, 25:1.

    Also, on labor, this is getting ridiculous. If they want to stimulate the economy and create jobs for Americans...well, they kind of have to give the jobs....to Americans! (instead of to India, China, guest workers, etc.).

    If the government is getting 70% of GM, then how can they possible think it's a grand idea to offshore outsourcing 98% of future GM production?

    Reply to: SHIP OF STATE OR SHIP OF FOOLS   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • Not putting U.S. citizens first for jobs in their own country is just so ridiculous and beyond common sense (it also happens to be validated with decades of labor economic theory), but I have a feeling Americans are about to explode over all of this.

    Reply to: Employed Foreign Guest Workers Outnumber ALL Unemployed U.S. Technical Workers   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • the "mortgage system cannot afford to truly make the modifications affordable for people." Bingo...you just totally nailed it, dude. That's why we haven't been able to evolve a simple no frills fixed mortgage. Also, it's why we haven't been able to share a market float on the debt side of the mortgage. What if the debt also floated with the market...nothing would be under water.

    Reply to: Are Financial Conglomerates in a Position to Lend?   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:

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