Recent comments

  • Japan is in a lot of trouble. It's birth rate is so low that it is on the verge of losing population, if it is not doing so already. This means that demographically Japan is like Florida!

    Japanese Latinos were brought in because Japan as a nation is not about to turn into a nation with Hakujin immigrants (a melting pot, it's not). Though ancestrally Japanese (Nikkeijin) since the Latins could not speak Japanese like the natives, they were frequently treated as if retarded -- unlike Hakujin who look different and aren't expected to speak Nihongo.

    Continuing to discriminate against the recent immigrants will do Japan no good at all in the long run.

    Reply to: Japan Paying to Send Foreign Workers Home   15 years 6 months ago
  • Do these studies accurately reflect changes in oil consumption related to (dramatically) rising unemployment and the collapsing physical economy?

    So many tangential factors are involved in the deflationary collapse that I suspect the relationship, while influential, is not directly causal.

    Reply to: The Continuing(!) Effect of the Oil Shock on the Recession   15 years 6 months ago
  • because you can give open dialog without being called a Troll. The posts are balanced to the point I have no idea of which way the politics lean. And that is good.

    Reply to: As expected, Obama backtracks on NAFTA   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • doesn't do much to make people want to buy them. Add in the really tough credit markets, and GM cars aren't moving.

    UAW workers affected by the shutdown will be placed on temporary layoff, where they receive state unemployment benefits and company supplemental pay that roughly equals about 70% of their gross pay. GM has 47 U.S. manufacturing facilities and employs about 55,000 UAW workers.

    They're asking for another four years -- in a just world, they'd get 10 to 20 ~~ Dennis Kucinich

    Reply to: GM to Close U.S. Factories for the Summer   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • teaches English near the city of Kagoshima. He returned for a brief visit showed us pictures and stuff. One of the ones he showed me were the homeless camps. Actually, you get these blue tents or something like that. The local authorities reserve certain parks or places within parks, but the cops really don't protect the homeless. Dino, my friend, was telling me about stories of youth gangs beating up homeless who are mainly elderly. He says its bad there, not like here bad, but bad for Japan's standards. News stories of factory shutdowns and the economic fallout from them are becoming more commonplace over there.

    Reply to: Japan Paying to Send Foreign Workers Home   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • of the other shoe to drop, perhaps?

    Reply to: Freddie Mac CFO Commits Suicide   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • working on a piece, if they get full pay or some sort of abbreviated pay or unemployment compensation? I've been hearing it's one of the three.

    Reply to: GM to Close U.S. Factories for the Summer   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • Watch this video report -- it's quite shocking. It's by a French TV station. So why don't our news stations do stuff like this.

    http://www.france24.com/en/20090206-plight-japans-homeless-caring-tokyo-...

    Reply to: Japan Paying to Send Foreign Workers Home   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • There likely are what amount to organized I.T. labor "gangs" operating out of India. But I personally do not have much experience with them. I do know that companies like Cisco have been virtually coopted by what could be characterized as nepotism (and to be sure it's a form of reverse discrimination). But I'm reluctant to characterize all Indian I.T. workers as being "conspiratorial."

    Reply to: Obama Gives USINPAC Lobbyists Yet another Official - CTO "Virginia is for Outsourcing" Chopra   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • Now why did Jamie forget to mention they were recipients of a no-bid contract, under the Bush Administration, to manage the Trade Bank of Iraq (Iraq's central bank)??? Sure sounds like he neglected to mention that conflict-of-interest (that would be the same JP Morgan Chase which was fined by the SEC - after they sued them - regarding that $2.3 billion fraud which JPM colluded with Enron on).

    Reply to: JPM CEO: Iraq War damaged the economy   15 years 6 months ago
  • Well, you give the funds to Organized Crime Organizations (JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, etc., etc., etc.) and one would expect those funds to disappear - exactly the way the previous funds disappeared. No mystery there!

    And not only did some of those funds go to lobbying, please don't forget Goldman Sachs purchase of one (or was it two) commodity speculator-type companies (one in Japan, and possibly a second one in Europe). Than all those offshored jobs they're responsible for......

    Reply to: TARP in danger of becoming subsidy for organized crime   15 years 6 months ago
  • I bought some but screwed up my timing (of course).

    If you make a bad entry point ."the bull will bail you out." Never fear RO this is a secular bull market ... all you need to do is hang on to the bull.

    It has always been about class warfare.

    Reply to: Frightened investors turning to gold   15 years 6 months ago
  • Sounds like I could very nicely pay for a vacation at Cracker Creek in Sumpter Valley, OR.

    Only $120 and 4 hours work at a Highbanker could easily net you an ounce to an ounce and a half of the yellow stuff- and pay for the rest of your vacation.
    -------------------------------------
    Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.

    Reply to: Frightened investors turning to gold   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • With little-to-no credit purchases. I'd much rather, say, spend $1250 on a subscription farm now, than try to convince my bank to give me a higher credit card limit this summer when out-of-state food starts going through the roof.
    -------------------------------------
    Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.

    Reply to: The numbers just don't add up   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • But sad to see that it doesn't provide an absolute cap on interest rates and total debt load of the consumer.
    -------------------------------------
    Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.

    Reply to: Credit Card Bill of Rights Passes out of House Financial Services Committee   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • Includes Walnut Creek and it's an "outliner" of Silicon valley. Many bought way overpriced homes there...because the way overpriced homes in Silicon valley they couldn't buy...and ended up commuting, which can take anywhere from an hour to 3 one way.

    It's also beyond stratified out there. A huge illegal immigrate population doing under the table, illegal labor, underground economy.

    Seriously, it's the haves and the have nots and even worse is people just "step over" the have nots even when it's "one of their own" that is now a have not.

    It has to be one of the most hypocritical, stratified, "numb" social oblivion areas to me...

    Driving by 3 million dollar homes when the next neighborhood looks like something from the 3rd world and you're stepping over homeless people just to get into your building door.

    Reply to: County can't afford to prosecute minor crooks   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • If you're a progressive,...
    If you're a conservative,...
    If you're a libertarian,...

    Those things are all true in the long term. I'm more concerned about the short term. What if the deleveraging isn't gradual? What if our foreign creditors suddenly rush towards the exits? It only takes one major foreign CB to decide that they need to get out while the getting is good.

    In that case there will be a sudden and dramatic shortage of credit in America. It's a situation familiar in 3rd world nations.

    My point is that I am afraid we will end up like Argentina in 2001, where the government, suddenly without any credit, decides that it will declare an emergency and seize all the retirement holdings of the entire working class.
    "They can't do that. That's illegal, right?" Well, torturing people is illegal as well. Domestic spying is illegal as well.
    Something being illegal isn't going to stop the government.

    Reply to: The numbers just don't add up   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • The Mess That Greenspan Made would love this article. He's been talking about Gold for some time as a reaction to potential inflation.

    I bought some but screwed up my timing (of course).

    Reply to: Frightened investors turning to gold   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • I am starting to think they don't have any idea of what to do with a real economy. They have been helping to grow economic bubbles for so long that a real economy is something that is an animal of a bygone era.

    There are some making policy that weren't even born to see a time that America was a country with great capital producing industries. Their only economic anchor to reality are the bubbles.

    The bubbles were kept alive by ever growing debt. I think what the lawmakers fear is that people will catch on to the game. The game that both sides of the isle have played upon the general population for oh say...about thirty years. The game that all the government statistics on great GDP growth presented by previous administrations was based on smoke and mirrors. It was all a dream. It was the longest running Tulip Bulb bubble in history. Like the froth of a good latte, real capital was resting on the top, in the hands of fewer people.

    The politicians are taking advantage of a chance to cover-up their part in the scheme. They will use the upper tier income earners as a scapegoat. They will raise taxes on the upper tier. They will point out the outrageous pay and bonuses. To keep most of the population under control, they will make another type of bubble, an anti-bubble. An anti- bubble were great portions of the population will pay no tax. In fact they will get money from the government in the form of credits. So these people will be happy, the government will print statistics that will show that a major portion of people feel taxes are fair. Hell, who would say taxes aren't fair when they are getting money back...it is the anti-tax buble. BUT this, like the other bubbles will only last so long. It will last long enough until the scape goats die or move away.

    Eventually the politicians will need to tackle the real problem. The real problem is to keep people out of deeper debt by having jobs that pay real wages. For most of the population are jobs that come from manufacturing. Yes Bunky, manufacturing will need to come back to the shores of the USA.

    The game is almost over and it will be written about in the history books. Will future students wonder, what society in their right mind would move all their jobs to other countries and think they could continue to have a viable growing economy?

    Reply to: Treasury and Fed "Heart" Financial Conglomerates?   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • Bail out recipients were busy spending $9.1 million in Q1, 2009 in lobbying too.

    Reply to: TARP in danger of becoming subsidy for organized crime   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:

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