patrick.net

If we have flat tax and/or FairerTax (my version of FairTax, but with a 3% rate instead of a 23% rate), the world will be so much better.

Tax should be replaced with user fees.

would you then scale those user fees to income/net worth or would they have a flat structure? (same for all)

Absolutely flat.

Same service. Same price.

if I'm driving my 200K car in the hov lane which has a $20 toll fee to go to my $2M/yr job in the city, am I receiving the same service as Miguel, going into the city to cook burritos for $12/h? After all, I lose a lot more if I'm late. My time is more valuable than Miguel's. HOw's that the same service?

If your time is valuable, fly a f*cking helicopter.

you're avoiding the issue.

Same resource. Same service.

You can fit your life around the price structure.

Of course he's opposed to a bailout.

All his cronies sold their investment properties in '06 and have their money in hedge funds that are short MBS'.

kewp,

that is the correct explanation of Bush's decision.

Bush doesn't give a f*ck about Americans, rich or poor, he only cares about his "loyal" friends.

Re: Iraq war, I believe it is Cheney's war in disguise. Cheney is fully aware of the peak oil scenario, in fact, he was talking about it several years before he became the VP. It's just very sad his execution of securing future energy source is very lousy.

We live in an unfree system.

In every unfree system, people don't really own their property - the state can decide to take someone's money away and give it to someone else, all in the name of *common good*.

Democrats and republicans both agree that the unfree system is the right system so one is not much better than the other. They both want to take your property away (as much as they can get away with) and they only disagree on where to give it away.

Do I want a president who takes my hard-earned money by force and gives it to a FHB? No. Would I respect someone else who didn't do that but instead spent my money AND people's lives on needless wars? No.

On the surface, what he says sounds praiseworthy. But remember, he also said in 2000 - "I will have a humble foreign policy. We will be peacemakers and not peacekeepers" and all along, he was planning invading Iraq.

Bush is among the top 3 worst presidents this country has ever had.

Peter P,
This thread only represents what he is saying right now. I've heard him talk the bailout talk before. Obviously someone who advises him reminded him that he is a Republican.

Remember who it was who signed the debt forgiveness elimination bill that opened the flood gates even more. Even though I might actually be torn on the issue, his action was definitely a pro bailout one.

In Silicon Valley, a Flight to Safety
By PUI-WING TAM
March 7, 2008; Page A1

As the dot-com bust gave way to revival, many Silicon Valley engineers left large companies to join start-ups, drawn by excitement and the promise of fat payouts. Last month, Ameet Kher headed in the other direction.

From late 2006, the 35-year-old software engineer worked at a small telecommunications-equipment maker called Ditech Networks Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. Last year, the company swung to a net loss and laid off employees. Seeing headlines about an economic slowdown, Mr. Kher got nervous and started hunting for another job. Offers came from two tech start-ups, but he wasn’t interested in start-ups anymore. He wanted to join a big company.

Mr. Kher is part of a new flight to safety among tech-industry workers as the economy struggles. In growing numbers, these workers are gravitating to larger companies that they hope can better weather a downturn. Ian Arcuri, an engineer in Research Triangle Park, N.C., left a local tech start-up to join giant Cisco Systems Inc. in October. “If I have to live through an economic downturn for three years, then I’d like to be at a company with a big war chest,” he says.

There’s no data on these job shifts, and recruiters and companies say the trend is nascent. Start-ups certainly aren’t being abandoned en masse. But early signs of a mind-set shift are unmistakable, evoking memories of previous migrations to stabler jobs. During the dot-com bust that began in the year 2000, dozens of Silicon Valley start-ups withered or disappeared, while many large tech firms survived. Sure, big tech companies eventually began firing as well, but engineers who leaped to safety early were more likely to survive cutbacks.

The weakening economy is bringing into focus the risk that technology start-ups face. After a decade of working for such firms, engineer Thomas Hanley last year started getting stiffed on the occasional paycheck, so strapped was his employer, which he declines to name. Having just started a family, the 33-year-old Mr. Hanley took a job at Silicon Valley software maker Intuit Inc., a $2.7 billion company. Intuit actually provides health benefits, in contrast to the tech start-up he escaped. “I couldn’t do that anymore,” Mr. Hanley says of the hand-to-mouth existence of many start-ups.

Half a year ago, recruiter Mark Hill couldn’t find certain types of engineers to consider abandoning their jobs at start-ups. But today, “I get calls back pretty quickly,” says Mr. Hill, of the recruiting firm Harwood Allen.

Across Silicon Valley, the social status of big-company workers suddenly is elevated. David Roman was hardly the envy of his peers when he joined Hewlett-Packard Co. as a marketing executive in 2005. In a valley of sizzling start-ups, giant H-P was “not the type of company you aspired to join,” he recalls.

Hot Ticket

But late last month, attendees of a Silicon Valley marketing event besieged Mr. Roman about job opportunities at H-P. Arriving at his office the next morning, he found five résumés from event participants in his email inbox. Calling H-P a “cooler” place to work, Mr. Roman says, “We’re the hot ticket in town right now.”

Of course, some tech start-ups are thriving. Slide Inc., a San Francisco-based start-up that makes software programs for social-networking Web sites, recently raised $50 million in funding to use for hiring in case a recession materializes. The Web start-up, which currently employs about 70 people, plans to double its work force by the end of the year and also move into an office space that is twice the size of its current 8,300-square-foot digs. Slide spokeswoman Tammy Nam says, “If there’s a serious recession, then we’re in a much better position to be competitive with a serious war chest.”

Workers shifting to large companies now appear more likely to hang on to those jobs, at least for the moment. While layoff rates at big concerns soared amid the slump earlier this decade, large companies are shedding workers more slowly just now. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, layoffs comprising more than 500 workers at a time — typically those made by large companies — accounted for fewer than a quarter of the country’s total layoffs in 2007’s fourth quarter, down from about a third of all layoffs in late 2001.

Moreover, an analysis by Moody’s Economy.com found that big companies had the largest net job gains through early last year, outstripping job growth at small firms.

In the past, layoffs from large companies sent workers in underperforming regions packing to faster-growing ones. According to the California Department of Finance, more than 108,000 people evacuated Silicon Valley between 2000 and 2003, a period when one in five jobs in the nation’s tech capital disappeared. Tech workers dispersed to the East Coast, to up-and-coming tech centers such as Austin, Texas, and to India and China.

This time, however, there is little relocation so far, especially with the housing slump, credit crunch and rising oil prices affecting all corners of the economy.

As Silicon Valley recovered from the tech slump in 2004 and 2005, dozens of Web start-ups flourished, and many engineers sought big paydays by joining tiny companies such as YouTube and Facebook Inc. Venture capitalists poured $9.9 billion into young companies in the area last year, up from $6.8 billion in 2003, according to VentureOne.

Nonetheless, Silicon Valley is now displaying some signs of weakness.

In January, the unemployment rate in Silicon Valley’s metropolitan areas of San Jose, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara rose to 5.3% from 4.8% a year ago. And while the region added a net 28,000 new jobs last year, that was down from 33,000 in 2006, according to Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a nonprofit group representing local businesses and government agencies. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham-Cary region — where Research Triangle Park is located — was 3.6% in December, virtually unchanged from 3.7% a year ago, according to the state’s employment commission.

Urge for Safety

An urge for safety is gripping tech workers like Ravi Narayanan. Through late February, the 45-year-old was a vice president of operations at semiconductor start-up WISchip International Ltd., which was acquired in 2005 by a larger Swiss-based semiconductor maker called Micronas Group. Last October, amid weakening business conditions, Micronas restructured its business, leaving unclear the fate of the unit formerly known as WISchip. “It could be a cold winter,” Mr. Narayanan recalls thinking.

In December, he began seeking a new job, specifically targeting fast-growing large companies with several thousand employees. Last month, he joined the Silicon Valley offices of Tyco Electronics Ltd., which employs 94,000 workers and last year produced $13.5 billion in sales across 150 countries.

His move came not a moment too soon. A Micronas spokeswoman says the company is closing the office that employed Mr. Narayanan.

Outside Silicon Valley, tech workers are also searching for safer havens. Mr. Arcuri, the engineer who joined Cisco’s Research Triangle Park offices last year, had worked at five tech start-ups since 1995. Most recently, the 42-year-old was a project manager at mobile-video start-up Integrian Inc. in Morrisville, N.C. When he joined Integrian in 2004, he hoped that it would go public and turn his 40,000 stock options into a huge windfall.

In mid-2007, however, he threw in the towel on start-ups. With the economy struggling, his third child on the way and no IPO for Integrian in sight, Mr. Arcuri began surfing the job boards of big tech firms such as Cisco and International Business Machines Corp.

“I saw the entire economy getting shaky; it was a safe harbor thing” to go to a big firm, he says.

In October, Mr. Arcuri joined Cisco’s customer-advocacy division as a program manager. While earning about the same salary as at Integrian — slightly more than $100,000 a year — he says Cisco offers better benefits, a strong bonus program that gives him up to 15% of his annual salary and more-flexible working hours.

Of course, his security isn’t guaranteed. Cisco last month reported a pullback in customer orders amid slower tech spending. The San Jose, Calif., company’s stock is down more than 11% so far this year. Some on Wall Street posit the $35 billion networking giant may trim costs through layoffs of its 64,000-person work force. A Cisco spokeswoman says no companywide layoffs are currently planned, but notes, “Cisco constantly reviews ways to streamline.”

Mr. Arcuri says he recognizes his move to Cisco hasn’t immunized him. “But am I less susceptible than at a start-up? Probably,” he says.

For Mr. Kher, shifting to a large company is a return to his career roots. The India native moved to the U.S. in the 1990s to obtain a graduate degree, then worked at big companies such as Nortel Networks Corp. and Cisco in Research Triangle Park. In late 2006, he uprooted from North Carolina to Northern California to join Ditech, excited by the growth potential of a small firm.

At the time, Ditech was on an upswing. The company, which went public in the late 1990s, was reporting growing sales and profits from customers such as Verizon Wireless, a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC. Ditech, with 160 employees, makes software and gear to improve the voice quality of phone calls on wireless and Internet telephony networks.

Upside Potential

“Ditech was my first small company,” says Mr. Kher, who moved his wife and toddler to a two-bedroom condo in Sunnyvale, Calif., for the chance to make it big through Ditech’s stock-options program. “I wanted to take a chance [because] smaller companies can have a bigger upside potential than a large company.”

Late last year, Ditech’s sales dropped. The company blames the slowdown on the disruption that its telecom customers were undergoing as they transitioned to next-generation wireless networks. Ditech’s revenues have declined to less than $7 million a quarter, down 70% from more than $22 million a quarter a year earlier. In November, it announced layoffs of 20% of its work force.

Mr. Kher grew concerned, especially when several colleagues fled for nearby Cisco and other large Silicon Valley companies. A self-professed “Wall Street junkie,” Mr. Kher trades his own portfolio of tech stocks, and his fears heightened after he watched reports on CNBC about the stock market’s volatility and a possible recession. “The economy will go down eventually,” he recalls thinking.

In December, he posted his résumé on several Internet job sites. His wife, also a software engineer, encouraged him to pursue a variety of options. But “I wanted to go back to a big company,” he says. “Start-ups throw money at you, but after two quarters, they can disappear.” He adds that he and his wife have discussed buying a house this year, despite the area’s high home prices. In January, the median price of a single-family home in Santa Clara County was $750,000, according to the California Association of Realtors.

Loc Tran, a recruiter at technical staffing firm Ryzen Solutions in San Jose, spotted Mr. Kher’s résumé on the Web and called. “Ameet wanted a big company with growth potential,” says Mr. Tran. “A start-up was a hard sell because the probability of a company doing well is one in 100.”

Three Offers

A week before Christmas, Mr. Kher took time off to interview with new employers. He got offers from two networking start-ups, both of which had several rounds of venture-capital funding under their belts and fewer than 100 employees. The third offer he got was from RIM, the $3 billion maker of BlackBerry smartphones that employs 7,500 workers world-wide.

Based in Waterloo, Ontario, and with offices in Redwood City, Calif., RIM wooed Mr. Kher by sketching out a possible leadership role in the future. Mr. Kher says big companies were also offering a 10% compensation increase, including sign-on bonus, with engineers of his experience making $120,000 to $140,000 in salary a year. He declined to detail his RIM pay package.

Elizabeth Roe Pfeifer, RIM’s vice president of organizational development, says she has recently seen that “the economy is causing more pause” among engineers, with more job candidates aiming to move from smaller to larger companies “in search of greater stability, funding and opportunity.”

After getting his RIM offer, Mr. Kher says Ditech matched the package, hoping he would stay. Ditech’s CEO also stopped by his cubicle to ask him to remain. By then, he had decided to opt for the safety of a big firm. “It’s back to what I’m used to,” he says.

>> Bush is among the top 3 worst presidents this country has ever had.

And so is Bill Clinton who helped creating housing bubble while getting
blow jobs.

Coincidently Monica Lewinsky's ex boyfriend's wife is now running for president ...

Bush has not stolen gold from Americans.

When everybody is calm Bush will be seen as an above-average president.

Remember who it was who signed the debt forgiveness elimination bill that opened the flood gates even more. Even though I might actually be torn on the issue, his action was definitely a pro bailout one.

Debt forgiveness elimination arguably made the market more efficient because homeowners are less deterred from short-selling.

You can fit your life around the price structure.

We already have that system. It's called capitalism. The debate is about who gets to set the price structure.

Bush is easily the worst President in my lifetime: worse than Carter, worse than Johnson, worse than Nixon. He is probably not the worst ever, but history may in fact label him that.

The American economy was mostly destroyed under his watch. He didn't exactly do it all himself, but he fiddled while Rome burned. Who else has lost Two Towers, two wars and one great American city?

It's the same old ploy, the same old Punch'n'Judy show. Paulson has already chimed in with how "they" working to get a bill "that the President will sign" (we won't ask who "they" are). So you're already nodding along in agreement that a bill should be signed--just not "the bad one." And the one that he'll sign will be the one the Fed and their international banker puppet masters wanted all along. Have a beer.

When everybody is calm Bush will be seen as an above-average president.

No serious person who is paying attention could ever believe this. Even if you don't blame the current economic problems on Bush and even if you think that the Iraq war will ultimately be concluded favorably for the US, what are the excuses for Bush's pre-9/11 inattention to terrorism, crony appointments, assertions of dictatorial spying powers, abandonment of principle on steel tariffs and entitlement reform, demonstrated incompetence and lack of leadership on Katrina, or sticking by corrupt and incompetent lackeys like Gonzalez, Myers, Rove, Rumsfeld, "Brownie," et al?

I won't try to catalogue all of Bush's failures, but a few will not likely be forgotten by history:

1. 9/11 happened on Bush's watch---despite reams of intelligence on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda and several serious warnings that a plot was in the works. 7 years later, Bin Laden and Al Zawahiri remain at large.

2. The Anthrax killer was never caught by Bush's FBI. (Even if historians forget, the conspiracy theorists won't).

3. Bush massively increased the size, scope and power of the government, while failing to provide funding for the expansion (eg: "no child left behind").

4. Bush failed to reform entitlements and created a massive new prescription drug benefit.

5. Bush encouraged the CIA to produce false and misleading evidence so that he could enter into a "pre-emptive" war of aggression--a first in US foreign policy--against Iraq.

We may someday forget how bad Bush is, but I doubt he will ever be seen as "above average."

I'm glad he's refusing to bailout the people he led to slaughter by recklessly encouraging Americans to spend, spend, spend.

Why doesn't the media question bush about his pleas to the public to buy homes during his presidency and to spend more to prop up the economy. Why don't they ask him why he's sending out $300 checks to Americans to get them to spend more?

Isn't that $300 an attempt to economically bailout the U.S. economy? Well, yes. Why didn't he veto his own idea??

I know it won't help a lick, but he's trying regardless.

bush and bernanke want us to spend everything we make, but when we follow their advice and the advice of their friends who manage the companies and sales people who are turning their heads to certain doom for individuals who purchase way more than they can afford, they are quick to point the finger at us.

i'm glad he's vetoing help to those who followed his stupid ideas, but he's not my hero on this.

I’m not a big Bush fan, but when you look at about 1,000 deaths a year in Iraq with the about 100,000 deaths a year in WWII (don’t forget that we have not had any war time rationing) and compare his prescription drug giveaway to the Social Security giveaway he has not done that bad a job.

Politics is a lot different today and I can’t ever remember hearing anyone “blame” FDR (the man I consider the “worst president ever”) for 12/7/41 but almost every liberal I know (who would hate Bush even if he cured cancer tomorrow) “blames” Bush for 9/11/01…

You Bush haters are like a broken record. We were attacked and he responded. He responded in the most apropriate way at that time. Life has been good in America during his two terms. The economy is quite good unless you've never experienced a REAL ressesion, ie: 10% unemployment. He's a master politician and that's why he was elected for a 2nd term If he could be elected again, he might win given the weak group he'd run against.

Clinton was a great president who balanced the budget. He will be known for getting a blow job while being a president.

Bush might very well go down in history as a brave leader who did his best to put evil in check

but when you look at about 1,000 deaths a year in Iraq

1000 deaths a year if you are inhuman, what about deaths on the other side? do they ever count as people?

Good Lord, I called the White House and got a human being, who nicely took down my opinion that there should be no housing bailout: 202-456-1414

I'm very impressed that there was a person on the line. I hope some more people will call and express opposition to the Frank-Dodd plan.

OTOH:

> We were attacked and he responded.

We were attacked on 9/11 by Bush's friends the Saudis. Bush responded by HELPING the Saudis: he got rid of Saddam for them. Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. The Saudis are the enemy, and in particular their oil-funded fundamentalist version of Islam.

Bush's treason on that particular point is enough to label him worst president ever. No other president has helped anyone who attacked America. Can you imagine if FDR had seen the Japanese attack Perl Harbor and then immediately attacked China in retaliation? That's just what happened with Bush.

So 9/11 was not a Mossad false flag operation?

No other president has helped anyone who attacked America.

Lyndon B Johnson. He blocked a US reponse to ward off the attack on the USS Liberty, then ran interference for the nation that attacked our ship.

I am surprised that so many people have such positive opinions of Bush. Wow. What a bunch of masochists!

That is not to say that the other presidents were great or that Hillobamacain will be much better.

Bush is close to being the worst. I don't know if he is worse than FDR, Wilson and Lincoln.

He will be seen as the man who hastened the death of the American empire.

The thing I like about Bush: he makes it very easy for me to devise my investment strategy. I have to be thankful to him for my spectacular return in the last 4 years.

The thing I dislike about Bush: it will be very costly for me to give up my American citizenship when I decide it is time to leave, 20% on total asset.

So all you green cards out there, don't ever become a citizen. Make the money, give up the PR so that you don't have to pay tax to Uncle Sam globally, at zero cost.

The great thing about being an American citizen is that international travel is so much easier. You dont need visas for many countries and even for those where you need one, you can get one after landing.

That is my biggest attraction towards becoming a citizen.

Peter P Says:
May 7th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
"Debt forgiveness elimination arguably made the market more efficient because homeowners are less deterred from short-selling."

On original purchase mortgages it basically made it a consequence free decision to just walk away.

sriramgopalan,

that is only true if compared to your original Indian passport. Hong Kong SAR passport which I still retain is far better than American passport. It goes to just as many countries visa-free and even more.

Can Americans go to North Korea, Cuba? Or get visa to Iran, Pakistan? You may say, I don't want to go to these countries. But wait, it never hurts to have more options.

It's also more advantageous not to carry an American passport in international travel. It is far more likely for American citizens to be held hostage.

I’m not a big Bush fan, but when you look at about 1,000 deaths a year in Iraq with the about 100,000 deaths a year in WWII (don’t forget that we have not had any war time rationing) and compare his prescription drug giveaway to the Social Security giveaway he has not done that bad a job.

I agree.

Politics is a lot different today and I can’t ever remember hearing anyone “blame” FDR (the man I consider the “worst president ever”) for 12/7/41 but almost every liberal I know (who would hate Bush even if he cured cancer tomorrow) “blames” Bush for 9/11/01…

I also think that FDR is the worst president ever. He *almost* successfully implemented all 10 planks of the manifesto. Fortunately, God exists.

It’s also more advantageous not to carry an American passport in international travel. It is far more likely for American citizens to be held hostage.

When I traveled years ago as a defense contractor, my passport had "contractor stamps" in it. This basically was in lieu of needing a visa to contries with whom we had a status-of-forces agreement to that effect. The stamp read something like "The Bearer is proceeding on Department of Defense business to Japan/Korea/Philippines". I'll bet a hijacker would really love to find that on my person.

American civilians hanging around US military bases abroad are presumed to be CIA by the locals. How charming.

I am thinking about Obama.
If it is true that he is a lock for the Dem nomination I am curious about his views on housing.
They say as a Dem you run Left to win the nomination, then migrate towards the center to get Indies and mad Repubs.
So, will he push for governement sposored bailouts and stay left? Or will he propse a plan that heads towards the center in trying to avoid helping speculators and fraudsters?
Certainly the current Dem plan is poor with his large aid to 'those poor builders'

Here is the follow-up article to the one DennisN posted about murder, mayhem, flipping and a "fictious" straw buyer in the Bay Area.
Authorities say the brazen slaying of a San Ramon real estate investor was rooted in an ill-conceived mortgage scam that employed an 18-year-old as a would-be buyer for a home on a bleak dead-end street in North Richmond.

I mentioned that we have only been losing a few American lives a day in Iraq vs. a few dozen a day in WWII and sa Says:

> what about deaths on the other side?
> do they ever count as people?

WWII was a blood bath for civilians and we had weeks in WWII where more civilians were killed than the total number killed in Iraq over four years...

Then Administrator Says:

> We were attacked on 9/11 by Bush’s friends the Saudis.
> Bush responded by HELPING the Saudis: he got rid of
> Saddam for them. Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.
> The Saudis are the enemy, and in particular their oil-funded
> fundamentalist version of Islam.

We were not attached by the “Saudis”, but a bunch of “nut balls of Saudi decent”. Bush responded by helping family friends/big donors with connections to the oil industry and the Saudi government just like FDR responded (before 12/7/41) to the German attack on GB by helping family friends/big donors (remember that FDR was more of an old money/blue blood than GW Bush) with connections to business in GB and the British Government …

EBGuy,

non-borrowed reserve has improved this week by $5B
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h3/Current/

With all due respect but if you're going to put FDR and GWB in the same sentence, you should at least point out the biggest difference between them: FDR won (and won big) giving us the world we enjoy. So far, GWB is (and we with him) losing.