patrick.net

BTW, I never said we need to completely abolish ALL functions that a "Central Bank" typically performs. I just said that most of the USEFUL and NECESSARY functions (such as printing currency/coinage, protecting it from counterfeiters, etc.) is already being performed by the U.S. Treasury Dept.

If we already have an efficiently functioning Treasury Dept., then why do we need the Fed?

I see no reason why they cannot simply absorb what (few) useful functions the Fed now performs exclusively, such as setting reserve requirements and regulating lenders. As far as counter-party risk oversight, and nominal interest rate setting, I'm pretty sure the open market has been able to do this effectively for centuries.

central or reserve banks were actually formed in response to frequent credit squeezes, recession, withdrawal panics (or bank runs), and speculative booms and busts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System#History

how well this has succeeded and whether the ideal has been co-opted is a moot point...

see also fractional reserve banking and full reserve banking...

threadmaster,
Please edit that 8-0 to :shock:

Done

how well this has succeeded and whether the ideal has been co-opted is a moot point…

Moot indeed.

extremely moot

SQT,

You haven't weighed in on the thread topic yet. What do you think? Am I "crazy Libertarian" with a capital "L" for wanting to abolish the Fed (and centralized interest rate & money supply manipulation), which I regard as a government-sanctioned cartel of private bankers operating in secret --arguably for political ends?

SQT,

Based on that 2001 appraisal (plus all that other expensive stuff they can sell), I really think your parents may be able to come out of this thing comfortably sitting on seven-figures. As long as they are capable of "downsizing" lifestyle and expectations, they should be able to do just fine on their own. I wish you the best of luck.

@ajh,

is it the Fed. that provides the Lender of Last Resort facility in the US? That’s something that does have to be done

Yes, and I would say this qualifies as a "USEFUL and NECESSARY function" for a Central Bank in any country (see my above post from June 28th, 2006 at 11:49 pm). Again, I don't see why a somewhat expanded Treasury could not handle this function. Hopefully, banking systems (and yes, bank regulations) have evolved to a point where a repeat of your 19th century bank-run scenario would be exceedingly unlikely today.

I never said there was NO regulatory oversight role for government in banking --just that the Fed is not currently fulfilling that role particularly well. And it's performing a number of functions (risk/interest rate pricing) best left to the open market --and doing a poor job of it.

What do you do when the "police" need to be policed as much as the "criminals"?

the thing is, whenever banks and big business have been left to themselves, they also create bank runs, credit squeezes, booms/busts, speculation, recessions, depressions, etc.

one critical view is that the fed only serves to protect other banks interests, so at least the banks won't be hurt by the above-mentioned capitalist phenomena, although everyone else will...

Greenland is losing 52 cubic miles of ice each year, more than anyone anticipated. The amount of freshwater ice dumped into the Atlantic Ocean has almost tripled in a decade. Climate experts have started to worry that the ice cap is disappearing in ways that computer models had not predicted.

RMB Says:
Time magazine? Back in the 70s Time was saying we were heading into the next ice age?

It's called irony, re the quality of reporting in Time. But the Greenland article from the LA Times points out:

"Should all of the [Greenland] ice sheet ever thaw, the meltwater could raise sea level 21 feet and swamp the world's coastal cities, home to a billion people. It would cause higher tides, generate more powerful storm surges and, by altering ocean currents, drastically disrupt the global climate.

By all accounts, the glaciers of Greenland are melting twice as fast as they were five years ago, even as the ice sheets of Antarctica — the world's largest reservoir of fresh water — also are shrinking, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Kansas reported in February.

From cores of ancient Greenland ice extracted by the National Science Foundation, researchers have identified at least 20 sudden climate changes in the last 110,000 years, in which average temperatures fluctuated as much as 15 degrees in a single decade.

The increasingly erratic behavior of the Greenland ice has scientists wondering whether the climate, after thousands of years of relative stability, may again start oscillating."

I think temperatures changing rapidly from year to year will lead to massive die-off of plant species, possibly followed by reductions in the animals that dine off them and live amongst them. Crops may fail on a large scale, as the weather swings around wildly from season to season, jeopardising output from breadbasket farming areas.

It reached 111 here one day last summer, and the manferns outside all but died in that one day. Completely shrivelled leaves.

SQT,

I know this may be of little comfort right now but at least they have each other! Yeah, I know it sounds feeble but ask your husband how many times his "surviving client" (usually mom) had NO IDEA what their true financial picture was like! Poor "mom" is learning of these details at a time when she is ALSO making funeral arrangements. I am SO not kidding.

In more instances than I care to remember the surviving spouse seems shocked to find that medical bills, consomer debt and mortgages devour much of their "savings" forcing some pretty lean choices. At least your folks can work through this together? When things get "raw" (and they will) please to remind them of this?

*Not family advice

Gore is a bad choice as a cheerleader, he does talk the talk, but he definitely is yet to walk the walk.

he invented the internet and discovered global warming... baron munchausen rides again...

>>[Al Gore] invented the internet

Then who invented the algorithm?

The fastest-warming place on the planet is the Antartic - if this ice cap melts, sea levels rise well over 200 feet

in the Jurassic, there were no ice caps, the earth was 16 deg warmer on average, and the seas were 200 ft higher...

why do you think there are sudden die-offs and mass extinctions of species over time?

>>mostly its XIV and XIII. Where do you live that has not been infected by this dog-marking-a-tree crap?

Oregon. But I look forward to this export, as I look forward to all California exports.

Michael Anderson,

Ever been through Woodburn, OR? Yeah, it would be a lot like that, yeah.

"Gore is a bad choice as a cheerleader"

Precisely. I want to see the movie with an open mind about the topic, but it's awfully hard to take a political hack like Gore seriously.

Sure, he's not as bad as Ann Coulter & Michael Moore, but he's still a shill.

"Then who invented the algorithm?"

Al Gore's father.

SQT,

I forgot to mention they have you too! It's funny now that the sentiment in RE is becoming decidedly more negative how we've become "resident experts" not "crackpot bubblistas" we were just six months ago. Not to over step my bounds here but it may now be appropriate to mention to "the folks" that this is no time to "chase the market down". If they price it to sell out of the gate they can move forward. If they try to "milk it" for every last penny and "test the market" I see another listing going into Labor Day and then nickel dime price reductions won't help. But you already know this and I suppose your primary difficulty is "how to break it to them". My two cents? (And not that you're asking) just come out and say it. It would be a far better thing to have to live with "if we held out for X the house down the street got Y" then to have to deal with "we should have gotten this over with, now we're stuck"!

*Not parental advice

>>Ever been through Woodburn, OR? Yeah, it would be a lot like that, yeah.

I'll add Woodburn to my list. :->

“Then who invented the algorithm?”

Al Gore’s father.

heh heh

SQT,

Sell the "sizzle" not the steak!

Gee mom, think of all the fun you're going to have without this HUGE obligation dangling over your head!

Sell the "relief" and forget the "grief"!

We bought my folks place about 15 years ago and I'll never forget their sense of relief as they rolled down the driveway in that rented U-Haul on their way to their "desert oasis"!

>>Ah but the majority of the world’s scientists didn’t weigh in on that - whereas on global warming the scientific community is pretty united (outside of those sponsored by big oil.

Global warming could very well be a problem, but I don't find this scientific "united front" very convincing. Most scientists aren't expert on the problem. And certitude among scientists doesn't mean a lot historically. See Stephen Jay Gould's books. Revolutions in thinking are common.

I remember as a kid reading about global cooling (the worry at the time) and being scared.

Climate change is complicated. We don't know all the systems and buffers. The models that are used for extrapolations seem to be more trusted by the people that use them to political advantage than to the people that came up with them and tweak them.

That said, it makes sense to try to minimize any impact we have on the earth.

HARM,

LOL!

I have a friend that was in marine biology and he told me that something like 90% of the food chain starts with the Humboldt Current? If it is shut down (which seems likely in a worst case scenario) then life as we know it would be reduced...... to well, you don't even want to think about it.

SQT,

Not to beat it to death but I AM SO GLAD my wife and I didn't wait to downsize. We side stepped the issue of having to sell into a weak market and will shortly have our "pick of the litter" when it comes to homes. I can't imagine confronting these issues at their age (for crissakes I'm barely hanging in there now and I'm only 47!) It seems like there are many out there (as George suggests) where they are facing the law of diminishing returns as their equity erodes and the meter on their debt continues to run. But remember, "You guys can do this!" DinOR researched this!

Kidding.

Climate change - well the scientists at the Met Office in the UK seem to be convinced…

Scientists (and/or engineers) are very easily convinced of things that they like to believe in.

Climate changes all the time throughout history. First they predicted an ice age. Then global warming. Perhaps someone will then predict that the sky will rain donuts. :)

Besides, why CO2?

Because it sounds scientific (see-oh-two) yet most people know it. If they throw in some complex formula then people will lose interest.

Why must we as a soceity focus so much on ourselves? Can’t we take others (our children) into consideration?

Yes, I am sure. NIMBYists love their children so much that they tried to keep California pristine and growth-free. So beautiful that their children could not afford it any more.

Some of the glaciesr are GROWING!

Yes. Read State of Fear. It is a good book of fiction. It also gives a excellent perspective on the subject.

Scientists will try to hide the fact that some glaciers are growing. This fact contradicts the global warming theory and so it must be wrong.

>>I guess what I am saying is, doesn’t it bother anyone who doesn’t believe in global warming that nearly ALL other countries do?

I don't even understand what it means for a country to believe something.

Aside from that, I think they all have something in common that may explain their position--they ain't us.

This discussion keeps reminding me that this science is being driven and evaluated on political, not scientific, terms.

Returning to Bay Area Says:

"This notion that we can do whatever the fuck we want and the consequences be damned because we are the US of A..."

_____

This notion is correct. We must, can, and will do whatever we want, whenever we want, wherever we want to. It's called "just get it on, baby!"

Anything, anytime, anywhere!

Go U-S-A...Hoorah!

FRIFY Says:

62% of Americans, 90% of home owners

Yes, I saw this too. Also from this report:

"Among respondents whose household incomes exceed $100,000, 39 percent favored higher rates, while 52 percent were opposed; for those making $40,000 to $60,000, it was 13 percent in favor of higher rates and 76 percent opposed"

Bottom line: FB's want to avoid getting whacked with ARM resets. Just another piece of evidence showing how damned financially irresponsible this country has become.

>>Please could those who have an understanding recommend a decent reading list of books on economic theory?

Despite being called "the dismal science," there're some pretty enjoyable economics books that are, at the same time, good ways to learn to think like an economist. "Freakonomics" is the typical recommendation here, but I would recommend "The Undercover Economist" as well.

Anything about behavioral economics is a good way of learning about current economic theory. Here's a review of a good one:

http://buythenumbers.blogspot.com/2006/06/review-why-smart-people-make-big-money.html

Your ultimate goal should be to read everything Fischer Black wrote. You may lose interest before that, like a English major deciding to change majors after reading a quarter way through "Finnegan's Wake."

Now, if you want to read about finance instead of economics, I have a ton of recommendations.

>>This is the attitude that I find troubling. This notion that we can do whatever the fuck we want and the consequences be damned because we are the US of A.

No, no, no. You completely missed my point. I hope not deliberately.

My point is that all countries are striving to get ahead. We're the big, successful, fast-growing guy, so it's in their interest to slow us down. My point is it's not surprising that they all do the same thing. It's in their interest to come to the conclusion they came to. It's in their interest to have solidarity with each other. They aren't a bunch of eggheads cooly evaluating the situation. They are bastards just like we are. And China is. And India is. They shouldn't be put on a pedestal.

In other words, they are just as selfish as we are. They are doing what's easiest for them.

Robert Cote'

"careful analysis and financial accumen" LOL!

Excellent point! Especially the "other" 99.99999% that don't participate in this type of format and weren't aware there was a "bubble" until what, late 2005? I mean what's not to like? Btw Robert are you in the "if it has to be 50 bps. hike let's get it over with crowd"? Or are you in the "25 bps. and let's see how the summer goes" crowd? Just curious. Me? As long as you "keep squirming" you're still a man! I say be done with it!

The problem isn’t that there is global climate change, the problem is that there’s a social change cadre that is successfully conflating the fact of global climate change with the dubious theory of anthropogenic climate change. For instance, the global human CO2 ouput is about 0.8% of the total atmospheric annual total. Well below the measuremnt error.

But Robert, how do you reconcile that with this:
(thanks alien!) http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=87

How do we know that recent CO2 increases are due to human activities?

Over the last 150 years, carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have risen from 280 to nearly 380 parts per million (ppm). The fact that this is due virtually entirely to human activities is so well established that one rarely sees it questioned. Yet it is quite reasonable to ask how we know this.

Even though our ANNUAL OUTPUT may only be 0.8% of total atmosphere, isn't it possible this is having a much larger cumulative effect over time?

Crap, alien beat me to the punch :-(

>>finance recs. would be appreciated also.. thanks

OK. I'm moving from one rental to another. (yuck) This is going to have to wait a few days until I get my act back together.

>>So, you believe that these countries could care less about the environment or the future of the planet, but instead are merely ganging up to “pass” global legislation (or global sentiment) to limit our ability to grow and expand?

I believe that people tend toward beliefs that align with their own interest. Absolutely. Usually without realizing it. People selectively grab evidence and ignore what doesn't fit into their prior beliefs. You can see that every day with realtor's statements, can't you?

That's my whole problem with global warming. Everyone has a dog in the fight. You think the scientists don't, but they do. How do they get funding? They pick a side. They make a big claim.

I also see a lot of the attitude, "Those Europeans are smart--they think what I think." This cracks me up.