The Housing Bubble

Early morning Pimpology.

While your glorious Fed was enabling more debt, did you notice that the cost of feeding a family and driving to those scarcer jobs continued to go up? More disposable income? I don’t think so.

“Fed Policy: Started small, but grew to ~$500 Billion annually, and is ongoing–”

I believe ‘ongoing’ misstates the Fed’s policy stance, which is actually more of an unlimited guarantee of additional quantitative easing or any other stimulus when and if they deem it necessary. From this position, the Fed’s potential to execute QE3 is everlasting, supporting the cargo cult belief in QE3 without ever requiring execution.

I refer you to the Biblical promise of a Second Coming if this doesn’t clear it up for you.

Sorry rental…that didn’t happen to credit cards…..Ohbewanna took 18 months for the CC act to become law…so banks found so many new ways to jack up rates….Used to be prime +4% now it prime +9.999% or variable….so it will not go down anymore only up with each increase by he FED…

That is the next crisis….when prime goes back to 6-7% like all of you want CC rates climb too…. millions will default….monthly minimum will go up 50% or more

——
Fed policy dropped long term interest rates by a LOT, allowing lots of people and businesses to refinance, PERMANENTLY lowering their monthly interest cost.

Deja vu all over again.

Extending unemployment benefits is not intended to create jobs. It is simply intended to short-circuit the negative feedback loop. People lose jobs, spend less, stores with fewer customers lay of, more unemployment, more spending decline, more layoffs.

UI payments keeps the unemployed people spending.

As far as the difference between stimulus and Fed, Fed saving $500B in interest payments cuts both expenses to one entity and income to another entity. On the other hand, government spending is just increasing incomes without any offsetting with drain.

And that is the real difference. Fed can lower interest rates in an attempt to get people borrowing, but the private sector isn’t borrowing new money into existence. Households are walking from debt far faster than businesses are adding debt.

This leaves the government as the borrower of last resort, and that is where stimulus comes in. With stimulus, we pushed what would have been $700B year deficit to something closer to $1.2T… the amount we need to replace the money that leaks from the economy.

As stimulus ended,we replaced it with the 2% SS tax cut and some other deficit increasing measures, along with SS and MC expenses rapidly increasing and tax receipts falling, make sure the annual deficits stayed close to $1.2T a year.

And we need $1.2T a year new debt/money every year.

So, stimulus and Fed have gone hand-in-hand.

Stimulus exploded budget deficits when we really needed the extra debt/money creation, and the Fed is holding down borrowing costs so that the federal government can keep creating the $1.2T new debt/money we need without having interest on the debt absorb a huge chunk of or annual budget.

My commentary on the FED and it’s use of the American People as pavlovian dogs is in the Weekend thread. I won’t repeat it here.

I will give a grade of F on this report

Why is Putin stockpiling gold?

It’s a simple answer, really:

He is stockpiling because gold is cheap relative to the amount of money supply in existence and that a global monetary intervention is underway. China announced new rounds of stimulus this week and the ECB announced unlimited bond buying. With the jobs number coming in well below expectations, QE3 is most likely a done deal, in which case we’ll have easing from the three largest economies in the world.

Alternatively, it could be in preparation for the end of the dollar as the global reserve currency. What would precipitate that in the near term? A Republican Presidential win would create a lame-duck president and Congress leading into the end of the year and the “fiscal cliff”. Add to that Russia explicitly warning the world not to attack Iran, and it is clear that Israel and it’s US ally is preparing to attack after the election. If the conflict escalates [it is already quite hot in Syria], that could be the final nail in the coffin of US dollar hegemony.

[To heck with picking just one or two bits of the whole article. I rarely do this, but here is the whole article. The two speeches are both covered in one article.]

Fact checking Obama’s and Biden’s speeches at the Democratic convention in Charlotte
Posted by Glenn Kessler at 06:02 AM ET, 09/07/2012

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/fact-checking-obamas-and-bidens-speeches-at-the-democratic-convention-in-charlotte/2012/09/07/ef79e0b6-f8a0-11e1-8b93-c4f4ab1c8d13_blog.html?hpid=z3

In their defense of the administration’s policies Thursday night, President Obama and Vice President Biden sometimes took license with the facts or left out important information. Here are some highlights.

“Independent analysis shows that my plan would cut our deficits by $4 trillion. Last summer, I worked with Republicans in Congress to cut $1 trillion in spending.”

— Obama

President Obama repeated a claim made by former President Bill Clinton the night before, but even less accurately. Clinton referred to a “plan of $4 trillion in debt reduction over a decade.” Obama leaves off the time line, and makes it sound like the current $1 trillion deficit would be eliminated, resulting in a surplus.

But, while the numbers seem large, the results are unimpressive. At the end of the 10-year budget window, Obama would have the national debt at a 76.5 percent of gross domestic product. That actually would be an increase over the 74.2 percent of GDP in this year. In contrast, the debt reduction plan envisioned by the Simpson-Bowles commission — cited by the president — would reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio close to 60 percent.

Moreover, independent analysts have criticized the administration for claiming some $800 billion in phantom savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though the administration had long made clear those wars would end. (The Bush administration had started the wars on borrowed funds.) Then, the president proposes to spend a good chunk of the nonexistent money on other spending — as he put it in his speech, “rebuilding roads and bridges; schools and runways.”

The $1 trillion in savings negotiated with Republicans, mentioned by the president, actually accounts for the bulk of his proposed reduction in spending. Indeed, much of the president’s debt reduction would come from tax increases on the wealthy, not spending cuts.

“I’ve signed trade agreements that are helping our companies sell more goods to millions of new customers.”

— Obama

Obama did sign into law new trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama — which were negotiated by the George W. Bush administration. The trade deals were held up for months by a bitter dispute between the administration and Congress over restoring aid for workers hurt by free trade.

Obama has not negotiated any other free-trade agreements.

“We will keep the promise of Social Security by taking the responsible steps to strengthen it — not by turning it over to Wall Street.”

— Obama

This is a bit of straw man. Obama’s rival, Mitt Romney, briefly supported private accounts as part of Social Security in the 2008 campaign but no longer does.

In his 2010 book, “No Apology,” Romney makes it clear that the 2008 stock market turmoil had changed his thinking on the issue. “The 2008 stock market collapse is proof, however, that we can’t always count on positive returns from these investments,” Romney writes. He said individual accounts could still be considered but would need to be phased in over time. Most important, he added, “I would prefer that individual accounts were added to Social Security, not diverted from it, and that they were voluntary.” (See page 160.)

In other words, Romney has concluded that mandatory private accounts won’t work. The plan he supports now is strikingly similar to what then-Vice President Al Gore proposed in the 2000 presidential campaign, what Gore dubbed “Social Security Plus.” Gore said the accounts would be voluntary and “not be the product of any reduction or diversion of Social Security revenues.”

Meanwhile, Obama’s recent budgets have had limited Social Security reforms.

“Barack, as a young man, they had to sit at the end of his mother’s hospital bed, and watch her fight with their insurance company at the very same time that she was fighting for her life.”

— Biden

This is a carefully worded statement that suggests President Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was fighting for health coverage while she was dying. This is a story that Obama frequently told on the campaign trail, but which was later called into question by Dunham’s biographer. Note that Biden does not specify that Dunham was fighting “health insurance” companies.

During the 2008 campaign, Obama frequently suggested his mother had to fight with her health-insurance company for treatment of her cancer because it considered her disease to be a pre-existing condition.

In one of the presidential debates with GOP rival John McCain, Obama said: “For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.”

But then earlier this year, journalist Janny Scott cast serious doubt on this version of events in her biography, “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s mother.” Scott reviewed letters from Dunham to the CIGNA insurance company, and revealed the dispute was over disability coverage, not health insurance coverage. (See pages 335-339).

Disability coverage will help replace wages lost to an illness. (Dunham received a base pay of $82,500, plus a housing allowance and a car, to work in Indonesia for Development Alternatives Inc. of Bethesda.) But that is different than health insurance coverage denied because of a pre-existing condition, which was a major part of the president’s health care law.

Biden’s remarks were echoed in the film that aired before Obama spoke. The clips were drawn from a film originally narrated by Tom Hanks — this one was by George Clooney — and we had previously given Three Pinocchios to the film for the manipulative way this story is retold.

“He [Romney] was willing to let Detroit go bankrupt.”

— Biden

This statement is drawn from a headline — “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” — on an opinion article written by Romney for The New York Times. But he did not say that in the article. (He repeated the line, however, on television.)

Although “bankrupt” often conjures up images of liquidation, Romney called for a “managed bankruptcy.” This is a process in which the company uses the bankruptcy code to discharge its debts, but emerges from the process a leaner, less leveraged company.

Ultimately, along with getting nearly $80 billion in loans and other assistance from the Bush and Obama administrations, GM and Chrysler did go through a managed bankruptcy. But many independent analysts have concluded that taking the approach recommended by Romney would not have worked in 2008, simply because the credit markets were so frozen that a bankruptcy was not a viable option at the time.

“What they didn’t tell you is what they’re [the Romney campaign] proposing would cause Medicare to go bankrupt by 2016.”

— Biden

It is highly misleading to use the phrase “bankrupt.”

There are different parts of Medicare, much of which is paid from general revenues and premiums. Part A, which pays hospitals, has a “trust fund,” made up of special-issue Treasury bonds, that always seems to be on the edge of running dry, even though it is funded by a payroll tax paid by employees and employers. But even so, the payroll tax could pay most estimated expenditures for decades.

“As a matter of fact, he has a new tax proposal — the territorial tax — that experts say will create 800,000 jobs, all of them overseas.”

— Biden

Biden is quoting from one disputed study.

At issue is a Romney proposal, as part of a corporate tax reform, to allow foreign profits by corporations to be exempt from domestic tax. The Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction Commission, frequently cited by Democrats and Republicans, recommended such a system in its report. “A territorial tax system should be adopted to help put the U.S. system in line with other countries, leveling the playing field,” the report said.

The study cited by Biden, which appeared in Tax Notes, did not actually study Romney’s plan. Moreover, it said that such a system would create 800,000 jobs overseas, but not necessarily at the expense of U.S. jobs if unemployment rates are low.

“Governor Romney believes that it’s okay to raise taxes on the middle class by $2,000 in order to pay for over a trillion dollars in tax cuts for the very wealthy.”

— Biden

The vice president is referring to an estimate of the impact of Romney’s tax plan by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Romney has provided few details of his plan, which he says would lower tax rates while eliminating tax loopholes. The Tax Policy Center calculated that the only way to make the plan revenue neutral would be to eliminate tax preferences that also benefit the middle class, but the Romney campaign has fiercely disputed its findings.

Romney has insisted he would not allow a tax increase on the middle class, so if the findings are correct, he would have to scale back his plan to make the math work.

(As is our practice, we generally do not award Pinocchio ratings in these instant round-ups.)

And here is the Wonkblog fact check of the President’s speech. This group doesn’t have anything up on Biden’s speech yet. There are a few charts in the article that didn’t cut and paste (obviously) so if it reads as if something is missing, check the link.

Fact-checking Obama’s speech

Posted by Suzy Khimm, Sarah Kliff, and Dylan Matthews on September 7, 2012 at 12:09 am

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/07/fact-checking-obamas-speech/

President Obama’s big moment came tonight as he accepted the Democratic nomination for reelection in Charlotte. But did his assertions check out? The Wonkteam looked into it.

TRUE – By 2008, we had seen nearly a decade in which families struggled with costs that kept rising but paychecks that didn’t; racking up more and more debt just to make the mortgage or pay tuition; to put gas in the car or food on the table.

Census Data suggests that median household income fell by $1,005 between 1998 and 2008, when you adjust for inflation. So Obama’s claim checks out there. Here’s what consumer credit looks like from 1998 to 2008:

As Obama said, it grew considerably.

TRUE – Now, I’ve cut taxes for those who need it – middle-class families and small businesses.
Obama has indeed cut taxes on 95 percent of Americans, and, among many other initiatives, passed the HIRE Act which cut taxes on small businesses who hire and retain workers.

DEBATABLE – But I don’t believe that another round of tax breaks for millionaires will bring good jobs to our shores, or pay down our deficit.

It’s almost certainly true that high-income tax breaks do not raise growth enough to pay for themselves in deficit terms. But do they help growth period? That’s debatable. On capital gains taxes in particular, economists disagree about whether having low rates spur investment and thus growth, even if those rates disproportionately affect low-income people. Some, like Nobel laureate Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez, have argued that high marginal tax rates in general do not harm growth. Berkeley’s Christina Romer has conducted research that suggests there are some positive effects on growth of cuts in marginal tax rates, but that these effects are fairly mild. Harvard’s Marty Feldstein, by contrast, has argued that higher marginal tax rates are associated with lower growth.

TRUE – I don’t believe that firing teachers or kicking students off financial aid will grow the economy, or help us compete with the scientists and engineers coming out of China.

The evidence suggests that cutting education is extremely bad for long-run growth, as it leads to higher class sizes which in turn depress students’ lifetime wages. The cuts during the recession have been estimated by the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project to cost almost $100 billion in future earnings by students.

TRUE WITH A BUT – I’ve worked with business leaders who are bringing jobs back to America – not because our workers make less pay, but because we make better products. Because we work harder and smarter than anyone else.

Obama did indeed hold an “insourcing” forum earlier this year devoted to businesses who move jobs back to the US. But the focus on this can be misleading because, as James K. Jackson of the Congressional Research Service has pointed out, there is no evidence to suggest that outsourcing or insourcing has much of an effect on the overall rate of employment.

TRUE WITH A BUT – I’ve signed trade agreements that are helping our companies sell more goods to millions of new customers – goods that are stamped with three proud words: Made in America.

Obama did sign three free trade agreements last year, with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. But he has not negotiated new ones, and those three deals were held up for the first years of his term, in part due to Obama’s demands that they be accompanied by adjustment assistance for workers displaced by trade. The Doha round of WTO negotiations has also stagnated under Obama, to the dismay of international development specialists who wanted him to push harder to eliminate restrictions on poor countries.

TRUE – After a decade of decline, this country created over half a million manufacturing jobs in the last two and a half years.

True when Bill Clinton said it last night, true now.

TRUE – After thirty years of inaction, we raised fuel standards so that by the middle of the next decade, cars and trucks will go twice as far on a gallon of gas.

Again, stated by Clinton, and correct: the Obama administration has doubled fuel efficiency standards.

TRUE WITH A (GOOD) BUT – We’ve doubled our use of renewable energy, and thousands of Americans have jobs today building wind turbines and long-lasting batteries.

As Michael Grunwald pointed out on Twitter, this way undersells what happened to green energy under Obama. Wind energy doubled, but solar grew over 600 percent. 85,000 Americans work in wind energy, and in 2010, 5,918 people worked on battery production for electric cars and other renewable energy projects.

TRUE WITH A (GOOD) BUT – In the last year alone, we cut oil imports by one million barrels a day – more than any administration in recent history.

Here’s how crude oil imports look since the 1980s:

Source: Energy Information Agency

Under Obama they’ve gone down by 2.45 million barrels a day, using the most recent figures. As with solar energy, Obama actually undersells the numbers here. By contrast, under Reagan they went up by about 1.4 million barrels a day, 751,000 under Bush I, 2.76 million under Clinton, and 1.1 million under Bush II. Obama is the only recent president to cut imports.

TRUE WITH A BUT – And today, the United States of America is less dependent on foreign oil than at any time in nearly two decades.

That’s true if you include all energy sources. As Brad has noted, natural gas production and domestic oil production are booming so the US is getting very close to energy independence in coming decades. But if you look at just oil, the case is trickier. The US has definitely made strides under Obama, but 20 years ago the gap between domestic oil production and imports was less than it is today:

TRUE - We’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration in the last three years, and we’ll open more.

The Obama administration has opened additional land for oil and gas exploration. In January, the Department of Interior announced a deal to lease 38 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil exploration.

TRUE - For the first time in a generation, nearly every state has answered our call to raise their standards for teaching and learning.

This refers to Race to the Top, the Obama administration’s biggest K-12 education policy. That program aimed to bring more uniformity to teaching standards across the country. Here’s how our colleague Michael Fletcher put it in 2010: “48 states and the District…joined in an effort to develop a common core of rigorous educational standards to replace the current system in which states have wildly different benchmarks for what should be taught in school.”

No Child Left Behind, a policy developed under Pres. George W. Bush, also encouraged more standardization in teacher evaluations. Academics were concerned, however, that the structure of the program could encourage schools to develop standards that were weaker rather than more rigorous.

TRUE - Millions of students are paying less for college today because we finally took on a system that wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on banks and lenders.

An executive order last year reduced the amount of discretionary income that students would be required to pay on student loan debt.

TRUE WITH A BUT – “And while my opponent would spend more money on military hardware that our Joint Chiefs don’t even want, I’ll use the money we’re no longer spending on war to pay down our debt and put more people back to work – rebuilding roads and bridges; schools and runways.”

The Department of Defense’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2013 was indeed below what Romney said he’d spend. But whether the DoD’s Joint Chiefs of Staff would have wanted more money than they requested, if they were encouraged to do so under a different administration, is a different question.

It’s true that Obama’s jobs plan would entail more investment in infrastructure and schools.

TRUE – “After two wars that have cost us thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars…”

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost more than $1.37 trillion, according to the National Priorities Project. Over 6,500 US service members have died in the wars.

TRUE – Independent analysis shows that my plan would cut our deficits by $4 trillion. Last summer, I worked with Republicans in Congress to cut $1 trillion in spending…

According to the CBO, the Obama budget reduces the deficit relative to current policy from $10.9 trillion over ten years to $6.3 trillion, a reduction of $4.6 trillion. But those figures include some measures, such as war savings, that other analysts don’t want to count as a real deficit reduction.

MISLEADING - I want to reform the tax code so that it’s simple,fair, and asks the wealthiest households to pay higher taxes on incomes over $250,000 – the same rate we had when Bill Clinton was president….

It’s true that Obama has proposed to let the Bush tax cuts expire for incomes over $250,000, bringing them back to Clinton-era rates. However, his plan would also preserve the Bush tax cuts for all income below that threshold — that is, the first $250,000 that anyone makes, even their total income is above it, as Ezra explains. Obama also proposes changes to deductions and other parts of the tax cuts that would also raise tax rates for the wealthy, above what they were paying under Clinton. So while the individual rate for income over $250,000 would return to pre-Bush levels, the overall tax rate for these wealthy individuals would be higher than what they were paying before.

TRUE – “…when Bill Clinton was president, the same rate we had when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest surplus in history, and a lot of millionaires to boot.”

During the Clinton years, 22.7 million jobs were created, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The largest surplus in history was $236 billion in fiscal year 2000, when Clinton was still in office, although the raw numbers aren’t always the best measure over time.

TRUE – You’re the reason there’s a little girl with a heart disorder in Phoenix who’ll get the surgery she needs because an insurance company can’t limit her coverage. You did that.

This refers to Zoe Lyhn, the 3-year-old girl featured in a video on the first night of the Democratic condition. The Affordable Care Act ended lifetime limits on coverage a provision estimated to affect 105 million Americans with private insurance coverage.

TRUE – You’re the reason a young immigrant who grew up here and went to school here and pledged allegiance to our flag will no longer be deported from the only country she’s ever called home.

This refers to Obama’s executive order stopping deportations for illegal immigrants who grew up here. While the legal status of such immigrants is nebulous, especially if Romney wins, the claim here is essentially correct.

I watched about half of Biden and all of Obama. Biden was a little sloppy, but when isn’t he? NBC called Obama’s speech “workmanlike,” and I agree.

“Personally, I didn’t watch Biden…”

I heard a little of his speech, but then my wife got in the car and made me turn it off. I didn’t hesitate. The guy is not quite Mr Charisma.

BTW, it was hilarious to see Charlie Crist succinctly wrap-up Florida: medicare, tourists and building houses.

+1

“It makes me uncomfortable that education is the center piece of Romney and Owheebanaba’s (that’s for you, DJ) platforms.”

It’s stupid. The federal role in education is small — it doesn’t provide it, and provide only a small share of the money to pay for it. It is a state and local issue.

Federal government = senior citizens, health care, defense, income security. A little infrastructure and business regulation. Debt. And how to pay for it.

Kind of like your local city council member bloviating on foreign affairs (happens all the time NYC).

http://veritasdomain.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/praying-mantis-cannabilism-eating-mate.jpg

A true HBB classic!

That clip was my favorite for the disclosure of what the National Association of Realtors represents…… a hive of low-life money grubbing skimmers that want to make a sale, no matter how BAD the result is for the buyer. This skit was at the Height of the Bubble and prices were ridiculous…..so the Realtor is going to “get to work” to “get them in”. Poor bastard.

If you are “underwater” in an overpriced house, thank a Realtor.

“I love that house.”

What?!? (rattlesnake twitch)

I love that. Wish someone would continue it to present.

Interesting perspective. Thanks.

It’s About Time TV series open - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1G-TsdNWGg - 155k

I am happy I raised the issue, and I did get my desired result, which was a great discussion with some excellent comments from folks who understand the politics of the electoral college system far better than I do.

“The democrat is going to win California, and so why waste energy and risk prison to pad a win that is already guaranteed?

In other words, the EC destroys the incentive of election fraud for President in every place where a party has enough control to succeed in the fraud.

In toss-up states, the parties are pretty evenly matched, so election fraud is harder.”

And for a counter-perspective, consider that the existence of only a few swing states needed to tip the national election is exactly what opens the door to fraud. If set up properly, a national democratic election would seem to be far more robust against vote fraud.

Agree, P-bear. With EC, you get a lot of bang for your fraud buck in states like Ohio and Florida. With straight up PV, fraud is operationally impractical. Where do you start, if voting is decentralized over 120(?) million people?

Electoral college means that some people don’t have to deal with election ads on TV. I guess the buys in my area must be combined with Virginia, because I get a lot of them and Maryland is not a swing state.

Thank god! It couldn’t happen soon enough for me.

I’ve always preferring the simplicity of white: never a style fad, but also never likely to look entirely last-decade.

When I bought the home I am in now…

Orange shag carpets and avocado and peach tile in the bathrooms…

Can we please kill off granite too? Please? It’s just so…cliched.

I was stunned to look in the kitchen magazines and see that the appliances were something like 40% of the cost of a new kitchen. IMO I’d rather throw down for something really new, like taking down walls or cutting new windows.

There’s little political benefit in getting close to that third rail.

Amazing what the free market can do to keep prices down…

I can really agree with how wasteful the health care system is and how corrupted it became . The Pharma business that is paid for by insurance and not really questioned to much ,is one of the biggest
rip off parasites of the paid for health system .

There is no way, based on current costs and soon to be more inflated costs that the health system can take care of 65 million
baby boomers ,given their chronic bad health and what the needs will be . THe Affordable Health Care bill didn’t address the corruption or the corrupted costs of health care . This is breaking the back of many a pension system and our Society as a whole .

Looks like we have a world-class health care system. It’s very good at being a screwed up mess.

people who gave up looking for work

Maybe because they’re too busy buying houses to look for work LOL!

Don’t forget what happens to the pets when they mistakenly foreclose - also gone, sometimes forever.

Didn’t the sheriff used to have to be involved when a foreclosure resulted in personal items being removed? And didn’t they have to serve repeated notification so that a “surprise” foreclosure wasn’t possible?

This is a nightmare situation to me. I have ALL of the family photos and my mom’s art, my dad’s photos and camera collection, etc. One bad foreclosure and it’s all gone. (Also true of one bad fire.)

So question of the day: Is this scenario more likely to happen to an owner or a renter? Owners - gets foreclosed on falsely due to bad paperwork. Renters - gets their stuff thrown out because landlord had notices sent elsewhere and never let renters know what is coming. (Has this happened - we’ve had so many bank screw-up stories, usually with BoA, but I can’t recall any renters losing stuff without warning.)

I’m voting R&R

LOL. For all our debates and disagreements, we’re voting the same ticket… see my post below.

250 million is what the economists are already predicting. Whether they are right or not is, of course, unknown, but that is what they are saying. So they are promising the same number of jobs that would be created if everything stays as it is now?

Space travel will get cheaper and easier with advancing technology.

the extinction of humanity?

If the future will look like Idiocracy, is this necessarily a bad thing?

If Biosphere projects taught us anything, it is that we are way/way/way away from being able to do a permanent base on the moon or Mars that is not in constant resupply from earth.

It is the oceans that cover 2/3rds of the earth that actually produce the oxygen that we breath, not that small patch of grass in front of our house or the trees in the forests.

To think man could save himself from extinction via a Mars base is so far beyond out current technology that beginning such a base at this time is beyond silly, if that is the purpose.

The real purpose of space exploration should be the same as it was when we went to the moon. To have a very hard thing to do, to justify spending vast sums of money on, to push the cutting edge of science and technological advancement…. and to take lots of money form the rich, and spend it into the hands of the middle class, to keep the money moving.

” From a cost perspective, it is expensive, but can you put a number on the extinction of humanity? Can you put a number of the many billions that would die because of resource shortages [war, famine, disease]?”

According to Stephen King is it 99.4%

Just hope I’m in the first wave as I don’t want to see everyone I love die.

The cheapest thing is just to kill off all the proles occupying the elites land, problem solved. Why colonize space. A manufactured war or famine, or bioterrorism could do the trick quickly.

Can you remember when Democratic leftists proclaimed “Bush lied and people died” on a daily basis?

Most of what I heard last night from the Democrats was crap. I did enjoy the Governor of Montana’s speech. He basically said Romney was good man and a good family man, but not the right man to be President. His points were the same issues I’ve had with Romney since his governorship of Massachusetts:
* he increased taxes on everyone
* he reduced aid to state Universities, forcing tuition increases
* he quadrupled gun licensing fees
* he saddled the state with the most debt per capita of any state.
* he passed mandatory Health Care

My hope, as I won’t vote the Democratic ticket in this election, is that Romney learned from the mistakes of his MA governorship. He had better clarify a few things for the debates if he hopes to get the swing voter independents…

“The number of military casualties under the Obama administration has far surpassed those which took place during the Bush presidency.”

Do the dead Iraqis count? There’s a difference between a war and a war crime.

Then PAY FOR IT.

The entitlement mentality ON ALL LEVELS is an amazing thing to behold.

“From cutting pensions to reducing bureaucracy to scrapping the bank tax and the funds to be made available to banks, everything is in there that’s not in Hungary’s interest,” Orban said, as cited by MoneyControls.

Somewhat related since it involves sovereign debts.
(Sounds like we should send Paul Ryan over to fix this.)

Soviet Bonds Are Haunting Putin
“The government estimates that it needs 25 trillion rubles ($785 billion) to account for what remains of the Soviet balance sheet. That liability equals almost half of Russia’s economic output and would boost government debt nearly tenfold, according to Vladimir Osakovskiy, chief economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Moscow.

The year before its debt default, Bank of America’s Osakovskiy says, Russia settled outstanding tsarist bonds in France for $400 million, a 99 percent haircut. “We expect a similar settlement” with the Soviet-era bonds, says Osakovskiy.”

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-06/soviet-bonds-are-haunting-putin

Download the latest version?

Smart enough to fix planes but too stupid to know the rules BEFORE they paid the tuition bill?

Nobody bothered to tell any of the new students that you can’t get a license with a criminal record. Or that they would have to take their tests in English. So, when they find out 2-3 months in, they are walking.

Fantastic. Too bad real TV weather reports aren’t so — informative!