patrick.net

Western government policies subsidize debt, and tax savings. What you subsidize, you tend to get more of. What you tax, you tend to get less of. As a matter of government policy, western democracies have chosen increasing leverage, throwing up reckless borrowers at the expense of everyone else.

Government subsidizes reckless spending has been a cause of much pain. People who buy houses they can't afford, that wasn't good for economy. They subsidize irresponsible, stupid behavior, it adds up costing us all a lot.

Just wait till they start pushing for socialized healthcare and watch those costs soar through the roof, it's already happening.

Trump can create TARP II and the Liberals will love him for it, and say he saved us from the depression so no biggie dealeo.

anon_63a6c says

Why not cut spending?

Why not have a depression?

Debt money is not lost. Someone has all this money.
Just need to take them and actually, like, spend it.

On things we, like, need.

Heraclitusstudent says

anon_63a6c says

Why not cut spending?

Why not have a depression?

Why not have prosperity?

AllTruth says

"The world has never been more in debt. According to the International Monetary Funds (IMF), total nonfinancial sector debt has hit $152 trillion worldwide, the highest gross debt ever recorded. The debt-to-GDP ratio is also at an all-time high of 225%, up from 200% 14 years ago."

It's not the Aliens from Mars who own all the debt. They aren't coming to foreclose on Planet Earth.
We just owe the debt to each other. One man's liability is another man's asset. Big deal.

anon_63a6c says

Why not cut spending?

Don't ask questions that might enlighten Patnetters.
...........

Homework for this weekend:
1- Write an essay on how banks create money out of thin air.
or
2- Write an essay on how the govt.prints fiat currency.

HEY YOU says

Homework for this weekend:
1- Write an essay on how banks create money out of thin air.
or
2- Write an essay on how the govt.prints fiat currency.

3. Why capitalism succeeds, while all else fails?
4. Why the world want to immigrate to the USA.

@Patrick - Here's another example. The revival of old threads and it's just the same cryptic nonsense.

Is CAPTCHA in order at some point? Even the version where you just check a box and that's it? At some point this thorn in the ass gets infected. I don't like CAPTCHA as much as the next regular human, but might help to rid patnet of this monster in our midst. Just my $0.02

The concept of an interest rate is to represent the time value of money, illustrated by Wimpy in his quest to have a fine hamburger today. That is, having a desired or needed something today, versus in 10 years, should come with a cost. Of course, if people lived forever, that might be irrelevant. And so it is the finite lifespan of mere mortals that creates the concept of an interest rate.

In aviation accident investigations there is something called an “Error chain”

Essential an aircraft CRASH isn’t the result of one single event; the end result happens because of the culmination of “errors”

As it stands DEBT due to pension portfolio (mis)management and climate change, are the direct result of a culmination of human “errors”

My own reading of the tea leaves, indicates that a “crash” will most likely happen first w/ in the financial system, because pension benefits were allocated w/ out considering the big picture or underlying basic math.

www.TinyURL.com/OptimisticMath
So what’s the big deal if politicians, public-employee union leadership and partisan supporters have a vested interest in keeping the existing system in place and don’t want to acknowledge their own addiction to the economic status quo?

If we consider “The Drake equation” which is a way to estimate the number of ACTIVE ET civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy
www.youtube.com/embed/GWu5GXh0gyQ

and “The Fermi Paradox (filter)” which is a way of considering how an ET civilization might kill itself off

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNhhvQGsMEc
AND then ponder left to our own devices, the natural psychological tendency is we always want more (i.e. human greed),... I therefore have to conclude aspects w/ in the economy (i.e. DEBT) is yet another man made invention that indirectly has the ability to decimate a civilization.

Basically each “crisis” requires resources to fix. Depleting various resources weakens the system (so after a crisis the system is more vulnerable).

So the big question is what happens if various public pensions “fail” and severely weakens the (global) economy? Then shortly thereafter climate change requires large amounts of political, social and/or financial capital to build up various infrastructure (for human beings to adapt)?

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/science/sd-me-scripps-climatechange-20170914-story.html
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2017/sep/15/scripps-study-theres-chance-climate-change-can-wip/
Bottom line, given existing trends and complexity of the system its best we learn to carefully manage DEBT (like unsustainable public pensions) to prevent the BIG CRASH from happening. Looked at another way a BIG CRASH is perhaps why “Stephen Hawking believes we have 100 years left on Earth – and he's not the only one”

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/stephen-hawking-100-years-on-earth-prediction-starmus-festival
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/science/ct-stephen-hawking-escape-earth-20170505-story.html
PS if you have read this far and think this is a joke w/ no basis in scientific rigor or realistic math, unfortunately it is not. See "flow chart" which illustrates the overall "existential" problem...

www.TinyURL.com/DifferentDay

Strategist says

3. Why capitalism succeeds, while all else fails?

"The Great Depression lasted from 1929 to 1939, and was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world."

"By 1933, when the Great Depression reached its lowest point, some 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half the country’s banks had failed."

Must not have been Unregulated Free Market Capitalism.
URMC helped us avoid 2008 TBTFs.That kept the govt. & it's bailouts,out of private enterprise
allowing us to be rich. There must not be any poor due to trickle down.
At least it can NEVER happen again.
I understand that Black Swans are extinct.

Things work until they don't.

http://www.history.com/topics/great-depression

HEY YOU says

Strategist says

3. Why capitalism succeeds, while all else fails?

"The Great Depression lasted from 1929 to 1939, and was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world."

"By 1933, when the Great Depression reached its lowest point, some 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half the country’s banks had failed."

And what gets us out of depressions and allows us to reach even greater heights? Good old Capitalism. Compare with communism, where it's always a depression.

WookieMan says

Is CAPTCHA in order at some point?

Let's see if blocking China solves it. I hate to add any burden to legit users.