Recent comments

  • Where is Barney Frank or Chris Dodd? Why are they not asking the questions of what is the "end game" with all this?

    Reply to: Why Are Fannie and Freddie Still Publicly Traded Companies?   15 years 7 months ago
  • Another huge thing going on is the ramming through the house giving Geithner even more expanded powers.

    I have no idea why these companies are publicly traded or why they just pumped in that alarming sum into Fannie/Freddie.

    It seems they are simply out to save the investor class and the zombie banks and the national economy be damned.

    That would have been the headlines if it were not for the firing of GM's Wagoner.

    Reply to: Why Are Fannie and Freddie Still Publicly Traded Companies?   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • Yup, the longest, ugliest April Fool's joke in history. I've been following this crap for years, and yet every time it happens again the victims seem to believe that their situation is unique and unprecedented. Year after year, thousands more citizens' jobs handed over to foreign consultancy services because the greed-bags just can't live on their piddly million-dollar salaries and need to skim off more, year after year, the local papers' comments sections fill up with outrage, year after year, the local government whimpers about "being had" by corporations who were given huge sums in tax breaks for promising local jobs that somehow never manage to materialize...but nothing changes, and nothing is done, and the cheap labor kleptocrats and their minions just become more arrogant toward and contemptuous of the American taxpayers they're so successfully raping and pillaging.

    Hell, why shouldn't they? It's human nature. We've been wearing that "kick me" sign for 20 or 30 years now, and it just encourages 'em. Now that the rip-off should be apparent to anyone with half a brain, in all its blatant, sociopathic, obscene glory, it's even more saddening to see those comment writers reveal their innocent hopes that Obama or Congress or some other dear leader would save us from these evil-doers *if only they knew!* Sigh.

    Reply to: BoA, Wells Fargo, TARP Recipients, Forcing U.S. Workers to Train their Foreign Guest Worker Replacements Before Being Fired   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • the forest through the trees with these endless capital injections. Are we buying time hoping that the economy turn itself around?

    Reply to: Why Are Fannie and Freddie Still Publicly Traded Companies?   15 years 7 months ago
  • It's a joke that has been going on since April 1 1996, or at least, that was the earliest I heard of it.

    -------------------------------------
    Moral hazards would not exist in a system designed to eliminate fraud.

    Reply to: BoA, Wells Fargo, TARP Recipients, Forcing U.S. Workers to Train their Foreign Guest Worker Replacements Before Being Fired   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • Does anyone know the typical spread? And will this time be typical?

    For anyone thinking about buying a house, I'd say don't worry about timing the bottom, prices will stay there a while.

    Reply to: Existing home sales nearing bottom?   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • Folks, there is a lot of freedom to post almost anything you want on EP but because of that you MUST PREVIEW and check your posts afterward for layout errors.

    If you are embedding video, you MUST make sure there are NO SPACES in the copy and paste of the code.

    If you don't, it will hose the entire site layout.

    I do have auto correcting algorithms on the site but things like embedded media, you really need to check your code for they cannot fix those errors.

    Thanks.

    Reply to: On Posts   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • Huffington and Taleb on CNBC -

    Reply to: The Real Difference Between Europe and the United States - Hint, it is not "Socialism"   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • His old adage that every worker needs to earn enough to be able to buy the things they are making I think needs to be made into a mathematical axiom for economics.

    Then, frankly many cars just cost too much money. I mean come on $50k for a new car? Even $20k I think lends to about a $400 dollar car payment.

    Who can afford that on our lovely newly touted manufacturing wage of $14/hr?

    Reply to: UPDATE: Car sales DON'T Confound Consumer Comeback   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • When I saw the goal of creating yet another "WTO like" structure for global finance regulation, that's when I thought, "another wolf in sheep's clothing".

    I think at this point it better to create regulations that are firmly and squarely under national sovereignty and try in addition to have all nations agree what those national regulation laws should be, coordinate efforts but exclusively for each nation-state.

    The last thing we need is yet another WTO, more power without Democracy, having multinational corporations write the rules, which is assuredly what will happen.

    Reply to: The Real Difference Between Europe and the United States - Hint, it is not "Socialism"   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • They are willing to buy non-durable items but not big ticketed items.

    As for home sales: is there a way to determine what price point is seeing the activity? Because prices are so low in some areas of the country that first-time home buyers may be jumping in the market. But, is there enough of them?

    Reply to: UPDATE: Car sales DON'T Confound Consumer Comeback   15 years 7 months ago
  • Sarkozy and Merkel are pushing for more financial regulation probably further than the Obama Administration wants to go but political circumstances in Europe may push Gordon Brown to do the same thing.

    Link to Story

    Reply to: The Real Difference Between Europe and the United States - Hint, it is not "Socialism"   15 years 7 months ago
  • complete suicide. There were people who thought the manufacturing sector would be the only thing effected by globalization. Guess what, if it deals with zeros and ones it can go or "on-shored" more easily.

    Reply to: BoA, Wells Fargo, TARP Recipients, Forcing U.S. Workers to Train their Foreign Guest Worker Replacements Before Being Fired   15 years 7 months ago
  • You may be right about prices!

    Reply to: More evidence housing sales may be near a bottom   15 years 7 months ago
  • Nope. It's true.

    It's just unbelievable how many idiots push for global labor arbitrage. They think it's "something to trade", that labor, people are something to trade.

    I've heard others say this is all "good" and we need to give away our jobs to foreign countries to "help them"...

    we've "helped them" to the point China now owns the U.S., is recommending a different currency than the dollar and India's offshore outsourcing industry is ~5.8% of their GDP.

    Pure labor arbitrage....

    imploding the U.S. economy, middle class and still these freaks and I truly blame economics, cannot stop pontificating and participating in group think and start paying attention to income, the trade deficits, middle class and even the theory of free trade itself and admit this is destroying the United States.

    It's just like derivatives. Any fool with advanced mathematics can take a look at those base equations, realize they are seriously flawed....and the same is true with the concept of trading people, labor....

    I am beginning to think most of these people got a "D" in Calculus and never actually touch the very theory they are supposedly "expert" in.

    (rant off).

    Reply to: BoA, Wells Fargo, TARP Recipients, Forcing U.S. Workers to Train their Foreign Guest Worker Replacements Before Being Fired   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • Please tell me this is just one big joke.

    Reply to: BoA, Wells Fargo, TARP Recipients, Forcing U.S. Workers to Train their Foreign Guest Worker Replacements Before Being Fired   15 years 7 months ago
  • that classic corporate GOP argument of "lower corporate tax rates" as well as the rhetoric "we're going to stop loopholes in the tax code to encourage offshore outsourcing" is something we need to dig into and write about.

    If there is ever a place to screw the American people because it's so complex and confusing, it's the corporate tax code and international tax havens by these multinational corporations.

    Paul Volcker got shuffled off to "lead a team on examining the US tax code", which many are saying he is being marginalized by the Obama administration. That's probably true, yet on the other hand if someone can stop these tax avoidance, play each nation-state against each other by bouncing around the globe money, locations, profits and workers....that would be quite a feat!

    Reply to: Obama/Geithner/Summers Betray America's Trust   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • It is interesting to note that the GAO's study back in the '90s (covering 1996-2000) demonstrated that 61% of America's corporations paid NO federal taxes (that figure skyrocketed during 2001-2008, some 71-73%), through the process of "profit laundering" via those offshore tax havens, also referred to as "offshore finance centers."

    The head of the economics department at the University of Maryland (I believe it was Prof. Tilly) along with Prof. Morici did a landmark study on such tax avoidance, also back in the '90s.

    Thus, those corporations which once accounted for around 30% to 35% of the federal tax revenue base, now account for approximately 7%.

    No wonder this economy is hurting: missing taxation, offshored jobs, Leveraged-buyout raping & pillaging of employment and companies, and that little old derivatives scam, accounting for trillions and trillions.

    Reply to: Obama/Geithner/Summers Betray America's Trust   15 years 7 months ago
  • is the day I know they bottomed out. After all, the way the U.S. is busy ignoring global labor arbitrage, I expect that to be about the final median wage.....assuredly is heading this way for most with good jobs.

    You'd have to show the link to CR on HAI being nonsense, although intuitively that doesn't make a lot of sense to me as well.

    Reply to: More evidence housing sales may be near a bottom   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • Seattle home prices to 2005 levels is the headline in the Google news aggregator.

    Seriously, big deal that means it's dropped to over-inflated levels that are a good decade away in prices from where they should be.

    Google I swear promotes stories based on "something" other than what is important news of the day.

    Reply to: Existing home sales nearing bottom?   15 years 7 months ago
    EPer:

Pages