patrick.net

indigenous says

theoakman says

They aren't. This isn't rocket science.

They are, I hope you don't work for NASA...

Defined at 33:50 and 35:50 in this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vxEbCzs1z4

theoakman says

Bear Stearns had bonds they owed money on. Lehman had bonds they owed money on.

Lehman went BK, which implies that any bond holders would have been near the front of the line for assets.

Once again, they slated to get zero dollars. Once again, you have no point.

theoakman says

Once again, you have no point.

It was a question not a point.

elliemae says

It's hard to feel sorry for GM because they're enduring all these recalls. Supposedly they're trying for "transparency," but I think all these recalls and admissions of crappy designs are only because they've been caught (or are about to be).

Perhaps a good solution is to spin off each division. After all GM acquired all these different brands long ago... Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, Opel, Holden. Let each one stand on its own two feet. They are too big to deal with all these issues.

It boils down to the old saw about being interesting or being interested. Look how many young girls walk around with ugly little dogs in order to be interesting. Or people who drive a particular flavor of car to be interesting. Or are politically correct and abhor anyone who is remotely prejudiced towards...

The problem is that this says it is more important to be interesting than to have a viewpoint.

They will say no I just like blah blah

The only way anyone gets anything done is by being interested. This has a lot to do with knowing the water you swim in.

That being said the only real solution is a solution that occurs in nature it is called market clearing. It can occur in an organic way and occurs much like the recession of 1924 (no one has heard of it) or can be gargantuan like next one will be. It will be caused by demographics and an inability to borrow anymore money.

thomaswong.1986 says

elliemae says

It's hard to feel sorry for GM because they're enduring all these recalls. Supposedly they're trying for "transparency," but I think all these recalls and admissions of crappy designs are only because they've been caught (or are about to be).

Perhaps a good solution is to spin off each division. After all GM acquired all these different brands long ago... Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, Opel, Holden. Let each one stand on its own two feet. They are too big to deal with all these issues.

They must stay big. It is their greatest asset. Think 2009. Size is every American corporation's safety net.

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....

In reality General Motors is gone. They are now Government Motors.
The irony is...In China, they prefer Buicks and Cadillacs MADE IN USA. It's prestigious.

JH says

They must stay big. It is their greatest asset. Think 2009. Size is every American corporation's safety net.

Im thinking as ATT spun off divisions which became success on their own.
NCR and Teradata come to mind. Fairchilds given another life outside of National Semi. Fairchilds spin offs in early years which created many SV tech companies including Intel, AMD, National, etc etc in turn spin off Applied Materials and other Semi Equipment cos.

Forget safety net and focus on growth... creating new jobs and opportunities.

socal2 says

Bellingham Bill says

Now the GOP's got millions of racists and southern baptists (and crypto-baptist evangelical organizations) locked up.

Ha! I forgot about the raaacist charge.

The libs got nothing but screechy rhetoric trying to scare the girls cause they got nothing to run on or brag about. I expect to hear this all they way until 2016:

SO I think I get your point, but let me ask you, do you think the republicans could win elections without the racists, and evangelicals?

If the answer is no, then would the GOPs platform have to be more moderate ? (that is if they didn't have the racists and the evangelicals).

(translated "moderate" means not dominated by psycho crazy America destroying right wing fringe assholes)

"The libs got nothing but screechy rhetoric trying to scare the girls cause they got nothing to run on or brag about"

actually, this is pretty true, but "the libs" have been out of power since Nixon won in '68.

Carter was no liberal, and neither was Clinton, and taking arguendo Obama as a liberal, he and Pelosi were gated by the lack of 60 (D) votes in the Senate for most of the two years the Democrats held all 3 power centers (and liberals never had 60 votes in the Senate, let's not forget).

So indeed the liberal agenda has been a big nothingburger, at least economically, for a very long time. Socially, liberals did somehow get gay marriage rights advanced this decade, to the surprise of everyone.

We got the conservative versions of health care reform (2010), welfare reform (1996), financial deregulation (1999), free trade (1993), a couple more wars in the mid-east (2001 & 2003).

Whoopdefucking doo.

But of course racism is alive and well in this country. Hell, in my inner self I'm something of a racist at times, how can one not be if one is honest about things?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPX-u0Be0d0

Where conservatives and liberals differ here is what needs to be changed. Conservatives think "got mine fuck you" is the answer to everything. I don't.

In other words, you suck at whatever you do and have a pittance of a salary to show for it.

jazz music says

Another axis of the republican extremist phenomenon is the type that has to deal every day with the miserable owner of small business

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