patrick.net

Both parties are wholeheartedly Keynesian. That would include the pure socialists. If they are wrong and the fiat money cannot be sustained with the "put your faith in debt" mantra, neither vision of the future will matter.

There aren't enough young people paying taxes to support old people on govt assistance, and yet current policies have employment of young people at an all time low. Real estate prices have young people unwilling and unable to start new houses. Easing credit or passing new legislation to encourage further indebtedness only increases the inability of young people to break out.

Your prices are too high. They cannot be sustained. They will come down or the prices of everything else will rise in contrast. Neither party knows the solution, and both sides trivialize the believers in currency with backing or consistent money supply, because it makes their Social Engineering dreams impossible.

Food prices are finally going to rise in a big way. That's the beginning pressure for wage inflation, and the real estate will not hold it's value, only it's price.

deepcgi says

There aren't enough young people

most every dollar of "govt assistance" goes to young people in the end. Medicare spending -- that's jobs. SSA checks -- that's food shopping and thus retail and wholesale employment.

Now, if the boomers take their SSA checks and buy tanks of diesel to burn up in their RVs 24/7, then my above would be largely incorrect.

But the US demographic profile is nothing like Japan's.

paying taxes to support old people on govt assistance

as for who's paying taxes, let's tax the 1% more, and corporations.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=BBH

shows that since 2005 corporate profits are 50% higher but their tax expense is lower. Must be nice.

We could raise taxes on the 1% 50% more and they wouldn't notice it, either -- $180B in add'l revenue on a $1.6T tax base, 11% increase. We could use this to pay off the $2.8T SSTF instead of monetizing it like we're probably going to do.

yet current policies have employment of young people at an all time low

"current policies"?

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=BBI

shows manufacturing has lost 6M jobs since 1990. Thanks NAFTA!

Construction is down 2M from the recent bubble peak.

Information jobs are down 1M from 2000 thanks to increasing productivity and offshoring.

Federal jobs are flat thanks to small-goverment conservatism, even though the population has risen ~20% (20M) since 1990.

Current CONSERVATIVE policies is what is killing us, literally in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan.

deepcgi says

That's the beginning pressure for wage inflation, and the real estate will not hold it's value, only it's price

That's my thesis too, but thus far the history of wage increases has shown that rents come along with rising wages.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=BBN

blue is wages, red is rents, 1969 = 100

Only way housing prices go down is with vacancy factor, and it's tough for Gen Y to sit out in the rain or live like a caveman somewhere waiting for home prices to go down. Landlords really hold the whip hand when supply is tight, and per my population graph above, supply is certainly going to be tight for the foreseeable future.

And, also, real estate valuations only rising nominally is still a big win for investors, since their existing debts and interest burden do not rise along with the valuations.

i can't quite figure out how it will end here. the biggest banks are protected by the federal reserve, who will print and loan whatever they need, since big bankers are members of the special club that must never suffer any negative consequences of their actions.

that ought to be inflationary, but you can't have normal inflation without rising wages. if the ordinary workers can't buy stuff now, you can't charge them more. they just can't pay.

one possibility is that the banker class will simply accumulate all wealth, and everyone else will be their hereditary serfs. fairly close to that already. the end of that is of course some kind of revolution as in france or russia.

another possibility is for the fed to increase the lending to house "owners" to keep them afloat so that they feel they are part of the ruling class and have an incentive to join the bankers in fighting the revolution. after all, the banker class is tiny and so needs some allies. if barbequed, the bankers would not feed the public for more than a few days.

Probably deflation.

Inflation is harder on wealthy people, and wage increases are anathema to nearly every modern school of economics.

that ought to be inflationary, but you can't have normal inflation without rising wages. if the ordinary workers can't buy stuff now, you can't charge them more. they just can't pay.

they can borrow

Nothing wrong with the Greek economy that a little discipline won't solve.

I seems it would be to their benefit to leave the EU as with the rest of the PIGS.

Would they then be able to pay debt with Drachma?

Germany never gets mentioned in this conundrum, and how they have benefited from the EU interest rates.

Ceffer says

Nothing wrong with the Greek economy that a little discipline won't solve.

I think she wants to spank me. Oh well, I'm used to suffering.

You vill be treated like the schwein that you ARE!

AND you vill OBEY.

that ought to be inflationary, but you can't have normal inflation without rising wages. if the ordinary workers can't buy stuff now, you can't charge them more. they just can't pay.

There are other ways to produce inflation, e.g. debt, as we saw in the subprime housing bubble: even people with little or no wage income could still overpay for a shack, then borrow against the imaginary "equity" in order to spend on other things. Going forward, the American model seems to be ZIRP lending to banks and QE buying back the debt. Like tomorrow being always a day away, tapering is always a year away. So far, thanks to Nixon's deal with the Saudis (they can charge whatever the market will bear for oil so long as they accept payment only in USD and invest the profits here, and our military will protect them), the USD has held most of its value and inflation has occurred mainly in other parts of the world. Nobody else has been able to get away with printing so much money for so long, and eventually even the strength of the Saudi deal may become overwhelmed. In a world of fiat money, inflation is much easier to produce than deflation.

The Professor says

I was proposing that we throw out the system as corrupt and start over.

The system reflects the people. You can't change the system without changing the populace -- what we think, how we are acculturated, etc.

Change for the better has to be marginal, incremental, one battle at a time, at this point.

We could call a constitutional convention now, but any optimism of having any better governmental system come from that would be rather misplaced IMO.

Bellingham Bill says

because conservatism is worse than liberalism, and the GOP is the party of far-right conservatives now, while the Dems are centrist with a smattering of center-left representatives.

The Democrats are a corrupt, ossified bunch of suck-ups to finance and the national security (military/industrial) state.

The Republicans are a corrupt, calcified bunch of suck-ups to finance, the national security (military/industrial) state, and people who think Jesus is real but science is fantasy.

Not much of a choice, but hardly an equivalence.

Iosef V HydroCabron says

Not much of a choice, but hardly an equivalence.

There are some "green chutes" in the Dem caucus, Grayson maybe (though I think he's more a demagoguing opportunist than a true liberal)

The GOP is now structured to move the country as far right as it can. I can't vote for dogcatcher with an (R) on their name now.

This is not to say I'm an enthusiastic Dem, but even Westminster parliamentary systems have their problems that appear when a population becomes polarized -- every Westminster system that I'm aware of is now controlled by a conservative coalition -- UK, Oz, Canada, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Norway, Germany, etc.

The key is winning the people, and the politicians will follow.

And of course cutting back the DOD is tough -- it's a significant money flow into every congressional district. Everybody gets $50M+, if a politician votes to cut that, their electorate will punish them. Best we can hope for is a spending freeze, like the 1990s.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=BDh

Shows the trend is better now than then, actually, thanks to the sequester BS that does cuts without any fingerprints on who did the cutting.

curious2 says

The Republicans keep voting to repeal it because they have nothing else

That and the massive 4% tax "ObamaCare" imposes on investment income.

Bellingham Bill says

"green chutes"

LOL - what color is your 'chute, dude?

http://www.youtube.com/embed/nKOBZSPKvTE

I'll leave that typo

Call it Crazy says

bob2356 says

What's to miss. If gm didn't make good cars people wanted they would be long gone.

Did you forget about the bankruptcy??? They would have been long gone if they weren't bailed out by a certain entity....

The bankruptcy had nothing to do with the cars, it was about letting their pension costs get out of control. You know that so why bother to put this bs up.

rooemoore says

They are different like Miller Lite and Coors Lite are different.

Not when the rubber meets the road. E.g. I can think of maybe one Scalia opinion I agree with, the 'off the wall' surveillance case, Kyllo.

Conservatives would like the populace to think this though, to suppress turnout and keep the system tilting to the right as it has been since the 1980s 1970s.

I'm resigned to the fact that actual leftism is a dead letter right now. To find an actual leftist government I'll have to learn French, though arguably even with their present center-right governments the nordic states (+ Germany + Canada and Australia) are much more left-ish than what the US of A can realistically transform into in what's left of my lifetime.

The difference between the parties is subtle, though. The GOP is the architect of so much disastrous policy -- NAFTA, Graham (R) – Leach (R) – Bliley (R), the Afghanistan & Iraq wars, deregulation & disenforcement of housing / mortgage industries 2002-2006 -- but the Dems did not cover themselves in glory in trying to block all of this. Just floated along on this path of destruction, mostly. Hell, when put into power in 2009-2010, thanks to the required conservatism of red-state (D) Senators (and the two (R) princesses of Maine), all the Dems could do was enact the GOP's own healthcare reform plan of 15 years prior.

The problem isn't one of parties, it is one of ideologies. Conservatism destroyed this country, and neoliberalism is just half-measures.

To really fix things here is going to be a bridge too far. Crab bucket mentality will take over.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality

if & when things get really stressful again.

I'd have Hillary plant a massive fudgie on his face.

komputodo says

I can't imagine any of them wasting a moment of their time worrying about the regular folk.

Well, they do have to get elected, which is why BB is right.

Also, if the people felt strongly enough about lowering what politicians spend getting elected, it might even be possible to change that. If getting elected cost less, then more of politicians energy would be spent doing what's best, and less would be focused on pleasing the owners (who financew their campaigns).

komputodo says

I can't imagine any of them wasting a moment of their time worrying about the regular folk.

I don't think they're that venal, but I do know that if looking out for the little guy imperils their reelection, it ain't going to happen.

And that's what small government conservatism is all about, screwing over the little guy by letting Big Money run free, like how it was prior to the Progressive Era's reforms.

GOP is totally hopeless, now, yes. You can't point to anything from them helping regular folk, other than their holding the line on legalization of people who've immigrated here illegally.

The Comcast / Time Warner merger is an excellent test case of this "regular guy" jazz.

Al Franken (D) and Bernie Sanders (I in coalition with D) are my type of representatives, and they're of course against the merger.

Obama, being more neoliberal than liberal at times, dunno about him or his appointees that are going to produce the regulation.

Of course, laissez-faire conservatism calls for the complete removal of all government intrusion and oversight into commerce.

The Market Provides, Amen.

Still, the politician needs to get elected, which is why it's true that the only hope is the with the people and not the politicians. The people can still (barely) impact who the politicians are that we get.

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

What's a fudgie. Is that like a Hot Lunch?

I think its something like a wedgie shart. Unfortunately, makes things too slippery for a proper twerk decapitation.

Greenspan made credit too easy in the 90's. Investors used it to invest in Tech Stocks, which crashed on Clinton's watch. The money began to find a new home with real estate just as Bush 2 was taking office. He did nothing to halt the Fed's expansion of credit, because he was as much of a Keynesian as Clinton had been (and Bush and Reagan before him). Obama has likewise done nothing to stem the tide.

Many tell themselves that that the Republicans screwed-up the economy and created a massive wealth deflation which is just like good solid investments simply disappearing. To them, the Fed is only reprinting that lost wealth in order to keep the unfairly penalized from losing due to conservative incompetence - except that Obama is somehow helpless to prevent the wealth from flowing unfairly to the top 1 percent.

It's the Keynesian, fractional reserve, derivative driven fiat madness that gives the most leverage to the top 1 percent - and we have BOTH parties to thank for that. Died in the wool, hardcore socialists leaning as far left as they possibly could, would be just as fond of the social engineering made possible by fractional reserve banking. The political differences between the parties are meaningful, but not weight-bearing. The real crime is being committed by the Fed and the Central Banks.

As long as a fiat believer is elected, nothing will change - and they've all been fiat-believers...save one.

How many more tragedies like this have to happen before Realtors are banned?

Looking up at that massive mountain of flab, he'd die from fright before experiencing any chocolate mess.

Didn't the same thing just happen in France?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/european-elections-2014-marine-le-pens-national-front-victoryin-france-is-based-onanguish-rage-and-denial-9436394.html

For the first time in French history a party of the far right, Marine le Pen’s FN, topped the poll in a nationwide election, with 25 per cent of the vote. Ms Le Pen will send 24 MEPs to Strasbourg – she will also go herself – an eight-fold gain on the last parliament.

President Hollande’s Socialists registered scarcely 14 per cent, their worst score in a nationwide election since the party was founded in the 1970s. The “main” opposition party, the UMP – heir to the Gaullists – scored only 20 per cent.

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

How Would YOU Assassinate Kim Jung-Un?

Well that's easy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition

He'd never expect THAT!

His hobby is playing video games. How about if we create some elaborate set based on his favorite game with real guns, then insert him inside the "game." Only give him guns that shoot foam darts, just for fun.

Re: the CSI Biebs dying video - I'm impressed at how many shots it took for him to die. He's much tougher than I thought

elliemae says

Re: the CSI Biebs dying video - I'm impressed at how many shots it took for him to die. He's much tougher than I thought

And yet now one single cop relieved himself on the steaming corpse.

Well that's TV for you.

If realtors had all been rounded up years ago, that woman would be uninjured today, and thousands of children would not have been abducted.

There seems to be a lot of, 1st....after post editing, huh user that uses the face of a communist come to power thanks to a Jewish Bolshevik revolution....that also brought communism into the world, and 2nd, a lot of personality clashes by folks using questionable "facts" on both sides...........
.........While ignoring the facts that Homeland Security, and other governmental agencies ranging all the way to Social Security folks buying hundreds of thousands of rounds of hollow point ammo, the most expensive ammo one can buy....and one that any avid shooter avoids when going to the range to target practice. They are meant to do the most damage to a human and rarely are used on game, if ever.

Regardless of Bundy, a normal American has to ask themselves why our Federal agencies need so many hundred thousand rounds (each agency, not all together as that's in the millions). I haven't heard about any mass invasion of Federal agency's office buildings.....nor of any being murdered or assassinated. That leaves offense as the though, specially with Social Security Administration....or do they fear wheel chair bound elders because of not keeping the cost of living increases up with Bernanke's bringing of 1920s & 30s Germany style hyperinflation to America today (& that won't be undone by a female member of that tribe taking his place).

Couple that with the placing of drones in our American skies and one has a chilling thought. The original rationale was government works for the people. Thus, we are the masters, they are the servants. (Surely the masters have more rights to own arms, weapons, guns....whatever the skillful use of arbitrary words can conjur up......than do their servants.) Same with intelligence files. I can't imagine the idea of letting it be known that we know about some "terrorist" (one should look up who coined that term, called themselves that, and was proud to announce their attacks against English speaking Christian) making it more difficult to STOP that terrorist. Seems to me, it would be just the opposite. It would have a chilling effect on someone wanting to commit a crime if their intentions were known ahead of time. But then some Federal policeman wouldn't get his name and face in the news to justify his taxpayer paid for paycheck.....and more tax dollars for his agency.

And to say Americans don't deserve or aren't qualified to own arms, weapons, guns, etc., is to completely ignore the source of police and soldiers. They are "We the people". Once again, such thinking as today's media and media educated folks (that think others are like them....so no one should own guns...when it is simply them that shouldn't own guns).....would have designated George Washington (the "Father" of our Country) as America's 1st "homegrown terrorist", also a "White Supremacist", who "had a fascination for assault weapons", and "associated with citizen militia groups". In all actuality, a "terrorist" is someone coming to your home land, not his. On his own soil, he is a Patriot.

It defies logic for Wall Street's corporate media....and those Americans indoctrinated by that media sans good logic.....to claim we shouldn't own firearms. That clause was included in the Constitution to prohibit government from becoming so over bearing and intruding into our lives as it once was......and is coming close to being so again. When "Inalienable" is claimed to be subject to qualification because of the "Commerce Clause" and those "Inalienable" rights aren't as permanent as our Founding Fathers intended.......it is the duty of "We the people", the original "militia" to reign in that out of control (currently Wall Street owned) government. "Arms" meant the "assault weapons" of the day.....Muskets, I believe, as the English army was equipped with them. "well regulated" meant their owners were to bring plenty of shot & powder with them when they came as there was no standing army at the time. To ignore the circumstances of the time that clause was written......is a folly of logic, or lack there of, such as that of today's Wall Street corporate media.

And to ignore the tribal membership of the latest of the "mass shooters".........L.A., Sandy Hook, Tuscon, Columbine......is also a folly and lack of logic. It would seem it's not a gun problem as much as it is a "dual citizenship" problem.....bringing us back to (and search this term) today's corporate "Who owns American media", a tribe that also inhabits those "failed" banks on Wall Street.......that sold worthless derivatives to America's pension funds KNOWING THEY WERE WORTHLESS ALL ALONG.

And with that......maybe we also have the answer why their media, and media educated or owned minions without an individual thought process........want to disarm those very Americans whose pensions are not only underfunded, but thanks to stock market connivances, are a full ten years behind ......maybe without considering the dollar amount of worthless derivatives they hold waiting to mature.

So when the police think it safe enough to give up their "arms", guns..........I'll most likely still have mine.....but won't even entertain the thought until I see the police think it safe enough to give up theirs. I......."We the people".......are their masters. The servants have less rights than the master......by any Human logic. (Maybe we're not all human.)

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/05/27/consumer-confidence-may/9609529/

E'rybodys getting comfortable and entering the more bullish camp. I'm happy that I went all in stocks a year ago so none of the dips scare me off. Let's turn this bitch parabolic!

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

If you're not beating Greenspan to death with Geithner's disembodied arms, you're part of the problem.

I contend that the interview would have been more revealing if Stewart would have broken Geithner's nose at the start.

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

Sure, but he'd have to wait for him to air his cruelly mendacious, auto-hagiographic thesis first, in the interest of fairness.

That was the problem in the first place to do so was obsequious.

socal2 says

You really think Bush "lied" about WMD's? For what? To steal oil? Avenge his daddy? Just to kill A-Rabs? Really? If you believe he was that coniving and evil to start wars on lies, how hard would it be to import a few barrells of anthrax or yellow-cake into the country to prove out his "lies" and save him all of the drama?

Yes he did lie about it. I don't know what his motivation was, nor I care what it was. At the end he spent all the money on a pointless war running our nation bankrupt.

I remember there was an old declassified CIA report. Where it stated that one way to get America into a war with "USSR" was to fly a plane into a civilian building and blame Russians for it. This was on the history channel.

Now I don't know how much of this ever came to reality, but there sure is a lot of common between that and 9/11.

Must have pretensions of athleticism, most Realtors beat their wives with "For Sale" posts they keep in the garage.

How about before TARP when Geithner (Obama's mother worked for Geithner's father while the latter was an investment bankster in China for the Warburg part of the tribe) was head of the New York Fed at the time Maurice Greenberg of AIG was introducing worthless derivatives that even Goldman-Sachs avoided.....until they saw how gullible pension fund managers were, then they jumped in even bigger.

As head of the New York Fed, Geithner was head cop over those Wall Street banks. The only thing there is record of him doing is sending a message, email I believe (and if you ask me for a cite, I'll tell you to employ a 3rd grader to help you use a search engine....and sorry about your handicap)......telling Greenberg "to be careful". What is on record is that he was well aware of what was going on in those banks run by tribal kin of his.....and his total failure to act in the interest of America or Americans.

The man that actually invented those mostly worthless instruments (they were based on left over subprime mortgages.......with emphasis on "left over") himself told Greenberg they needed strict over sight because of that limitation or handicap of being based on something next to worthless. Greenberg promptly fired him.

Geithner, who like Greenberg and most of the players in TARP and the various other scams are tribal members, "dual citizenship" holders.....with questionable loyalty to America and Americans. When he came to office with Obama (they owned Obama since before he hit the ground), he not only gave those "failed" banks our tax dollars for that TARP bailout, he then personally rewarded those criminal CEO kin of his for doing such a good job of bankrupting our economy. (Actually, it was to keep them quiet...as if they left with nothing, there was the chance they would spill the beans about the totality of involvement in the scheme....so he handsomely bribed them into being quiet.)

Thankfully, I didn't see any such interview as I refuse to watch the talking heads (mostly tribal) telling me what to think. If one is just now becoming aware of such as this.......it's another testament to the failure of public education......and, also, another good reason to throw out that television set...and get a life. It's not hard to over come the handicap of a public education if one has a minimum intellect and tries. Personally, Geithner's crimes against the American people is old news.....as is the idea, if I recall, his wife's maiden name was Sonnenberg.

Now, if you really want to see a tribal criminal.....who once out of the Oval Office sold city parking meter income (with a guaranteed revenue stream) to his kin at Morgan Stanley......check out Rahm (I served in a foreign military, but never the American military) Emanuel (and maybe his doctor brother, too, just for kicks). Then you've made a good start at undoing the damage listening to all those talking heads has done to one's intellect and base(less) of knowledge.