Obama promises more than 600,000 stimulus jobs

Goldenboy219 said:

Not everybody is a failure.

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But they shouldn't expect to be bailed out if they pick a loser.

:shock:

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Late 19th century home prices: look it up.

Where have i said this? Link please:2wave:

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You allude to it:

Even Toyota is reporting record losses (for the first time in their history). It sounds nice in theory, but in practice mass liquidations will create utter chaos.

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The only way to avoid this "chaos" is with bailouts.

The economy is run on credit, nearly all business operations are funded on short term credit. Your lack of knowledge of how the real economy works dilutes your arguments for free markets. Credit is everything.

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Credit is not gone, just hard to come by, as it should be during a correction.

During the great depression, the country faced a massive deflation. Because the Fed at the time pulled money out of the economy, real recovery took nearly two decades. Now there is a massive deflation of assets that use financing (credit) to purchase and produce. Tightening of credit will cause prices to fall even further (just like the GD). There is no reason for this to happen.

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Do you have any idea how much inflation there was in the 20's that led to the crash, or do I need to pull out America's Great Depression?

And this leads to inflation right:roll: BTW, a bubble is extreme overvaluation in which the exit from the market is unattainable for the majority of investors.

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And malinvestment. Malinvestment causes the bubble.

My parents did not make or take bad loans, and can pay their debts just fine. Why should they have to feel the brunt of this pain: because of the stupidity of a few, and the fraud of even fewer? Get your head out of the clouds and take a peek at reality.

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If they had their money in stocks then they took a risk. They should not be spared no matter how you portray it. There is a risk in stocks and they should have realized that.

Goldenboy219 said:

I think your missing what we both are saying.

Under our current economic situation, state capitalism, the government must do these things otherwise it ends in a giant cluster ****.

That does not mean that we want it that way. I'm not sure of Goldenboys specific wants as far as the economy goes so I can't answer it for him.

Free market capitalism and state capitalism are two totally different animals.

We live in a state capitalist system.

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phattonez said:

^^^^That's nothing more than fascism, it's not capitalism.

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???????????? said:

I don't think that word "fascism" means what you think it does.

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All you have to do is to make up a label. As soon as you do you choke any thought tending to be born. The label serves as a condom to render a conversation to be non-fruitful.

Goldenboy219 said:

Ideology and practicality do not always go hand in hand. I have witnessed in one year, several close friends and family members lose 50% plus in their investment/retirement accounts as well as steep declines in the values on their homes. Most forum vets will vouch that before Oct 2008, i was the most bull headed free markets guy there was. That period taught me something; the system is built to require government intervention. As HG and others stated, the majority of all entrepreneurship, commerce, and industry require state intervention to function on the long and short run.

Many free market pundits (including myself) were predicting hyper inflation back in late 2007, as a result of the sub prime mess. The exact opposite came true; asset values tumbled. And here you are prescribing policy that wreaks of a deflationary spiral.

If you are a contrarian investor, then free market ideology will most likely serve you well. If you are a college professor, market orientated economics/finance can help you provide some interesting course material. But if you are an average American, who has children and a long list of future liabilities; free markets equate to a vast array of uncertainty. Mass uncertainty will cause wide spread panic. Telling people to buy gold and stock pile food and ammunition has been a favorite for many so called libertarians.

I on the other hand do not desire panic, and do not want to stock pile for economic collapse. I want to make money, and live a happy life. That is the type of libertarian i am. The fear boat left port back in October....

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But if you are an average American state intervention will cause wide spread panic. It does cause wide spread panic. It HAS caused wide spread panic.

Goldenboy219 said:

I have witnessed in one year, several close friends and family members lose 50% plus in their investment/retirement accounts as well as steep declines in the values on their homes.

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So what is bad about it? Should I be sorry about them? I am sorry, but I am not sorry at all. Moreover I am a kind of angry that they want to stop the decline at my expenses. That is simply a robbery. You can label it state capitalism, I label it socialism, he labels it fascism. Whatever label you choose, it is a robbery, it is infringement on my freedoms, it is immoral and unfair on the first place, - whatever are your learned explanations. Their investment/retirement accounts and the values on their homes are not the main value of my life. My freedom and liberty are. If it was all about their investment/retirement accounts and the values on their homes I wouldn’t have to immigrate to the US and to spend years of my life to become an American citizen, - I could spent these years making money. You and other Obamaists have a psychology of robbers and you see your happiness in their investment/retirement accounts and the values on their homes no matter what; but this country was designed so that somebody can pursue other happiness rather than maintaining and increasing their investment/retirement accounts and the values on their homes, - either individually or by family or by society/socialism, - it is called freedom of pursuit of happiness. It is my natural right you are infringing upon. Please submit some justification for the anti Constitutional anti-American actions of Obamaists, feed my anger.

Spending years on breaking the red tape of immigration I have not learned anything about economy and stock market. But each time when I hear educated and experienced Obamaists, like you or don1, my hair goes up. I ask don1 simple questions and he avoids giving any answers. Can you answer simple questions? I think I already asked you once and never heard from you again.

Let me ask you a few more. In one year, several close friends and family members of yours lost 50% plus in their investment/retirement accounts and saw steep declines in the values on their homes. I did loose 50% of my retirement account and 30% of value of my house. Question #3 - What bad, immoral or unfair is about it? And in order to clarify the question even more: Question #1 – What is money? Question # 2 - What do banks do?
There are more questions, all very simple, but let me see if you can handle these ones.

justone said:

Let me ask you a few more. In one year, several close friends and family members of yours lost 50% plus in their investment/retirement accounts and saw steep declines in the values on their homes. I did loose 50% of my retirement account and 30% of value of my house. Question #3 - What bad, immoral or unfair is about it? And in order to clarify the question even more: Question #1 – What is money? Question # 2 - What do banks do?
There are more questions, all very simple, but let me see if you can handle these ones.

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Ill reply in greater detail to your entire post tomorrow morning.

1. Money is a medium of exchange, in which the buyer and the seller know and agree on the value. Keeping it simple: A residential painter preforms a trade that people have demand for. Without a medium of exchange (money), the painter will have to find those who provide the everyday services and products they demand to live their life, i.e. food, clothing, credit, shelter in exchange for their services. Money allows people to focus on the activities that they are most productive, receive specific compensation, and then purchase the other aspects of life in which they are less efficient in providing for themselves.

2. Banks are just like any other business. Their primary goal is to make the most profit possible in the short run as well as the long run. When you deposit money into your checking account (transactional account), your bank has the ability to make loans based on the money "sitting" in your specific account. Not only your account, but every transactional account held in that specific institution. It is a far more complicated than this explanation, but banks provide the financing ability for production and services to be produced and sold. Without the credit provided by financial institutions, business as we know it would nearly cease to exist.

For more information, see these references:

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_banking]Fractional-reserve banking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency]Currency - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

And my personal favorite, which is probably 20 years or more away from becoming a true possibility: [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_banking]Free banking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
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Trust me, i am as "free market" as there is. But our current economic situation was not created from free markets, and cannot be restored by "free market" orientated remedies without great depression like consequences.

Goldenboy219 said:

Trust me, i am as "free market" as there is.

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I'm still waiting for one capitalist idea to come from you.

phattonez said:

People are being punished for taking out bad loans.

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No, they're not.

Is anyone that took a loan out going to jail because they can't repay it?

Not that I've heard.

But if they can't pay for the property they took the loan out for, they're being told to vacate it and turn it over to the owner. That's not punishment, that's life.

The people being punished are those people who wish to buy property but can't because the government is artificially subsidizing high housing prices by unconstitutionally aiding those people who took out loans they couldn't repay.

Other people who are being punished are the taxpayers who pay off their mortgages on time and who are being ordered to pay off this other guy's mortgage, too, because he can't afford his.


People don't take out "bad loans", the loans become naughty when the people who take them home don't feed them on schedule. It's the borrower's fault.

^^It is their fault. I just equated the losing of their property as their own punishment. Of course it's self-inflicted. But you're right about the terrible actions of the government. I totally agree with you there. I actually agree with everything you just said, I think we're just getting confused about terminology.

And for Goldenboy, I thought you might enjoy this:

Thus, for example, the Chicago School has been critical of the Fed, but for the wrong reasons: the Fed supposedly failed to create enough money when the money supply began falling. This is not exactly a free-market criticism, but (surprise!) it's the only one the mainstream has bothered to acknowledge. As a matter of fact, in the nearly two years following the 1929 stock-market crash the Fed engaged in what were at that time the most aggressive rate cuts in its history. (This is in contrast to the Fed's rate increases during the 1920–1921 downturn, which was over quickly but which by Chicago's reasoning ought to have been more severe and persistent.) Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz, Murphy concludes, gave birth to

"a myth, namely that the Federal Reserve sat idly back and allowed the economy to implode. That myth — like the myth that Herbert Hoover sat idly back and watched the Depression unfold — is continuing to drive misguided policies today."

Murphy also includes in this chapter a very useful section on deflation, a subject nearly impossible to find treated without breathless hysteria. To blame the Depression on a decrease in the supply of money is to get the relationship exactly backward. Moreover, the money supply fell by the same percentage between 1839 and 1843 that it did between 1929 and 1933, but robust increases in real consumption and real GNP followed. Under the heat of Murphy's magnifying glass throughout this much-needed chapter, the arguments of the deflationphobes melt away.

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Response to the "Market Failure" Drones - Thomas E. Woods, Jr. - Mises Institute

He's not putting in enough spending. If only he were to make the stimulus something like 10 trillion dollars instead of a measly 800 billion, he would have created over 350 million jobs by now.

phattonez said:

I'm still waiting for one capitalist idea to come from you.

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The only government actions i support are: the general idea of a stimulus package (although i am not pleased with the first one), and all central banks easing credit markets. Because they have to....


That's it:2wave:

Until you can show me specific posts where i am supporting "bailouts", lose the tude.

phattonez said:

^^It is their fault. I just equated the losing of their property as their own punishment. Of course it's self-inflicted. But you're right about the terrible actions of the government. I totally agree with you there. I actually agree with everything you just said, I think we're just getting confused about terminology.

And for Goldenboy, I thought you might enjoy this:


Response to the "Market Failure" Drones - Thomas E. Woods, Jr. - Mises Institute

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And what was the rate of inflation, within the US, during that period? Similarly, what was the federal funds target rate?

However unnecessary and undesirable a central bank is, they are not going anywhere anytime soon.

Goldenboy219 said:

The only government actions i support are: the general idea of a stimulus package (although i am not pleased with the first one), and all central banks easing credit markets. Because they have to....


That's it:2wave:

Until you can show me specific posts where i am supporting "bailouts", lose the tude.

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That's still highly interventionist to me, which is why I get offended at your claim to be libertarian.

Goldenboy219 said:

And what was the rate of inflation, within the US, during that period? Similarly, what was the federal funds target rate?

However unnecessary and undesirable a central bank is, they are not going anywhere anytime soon.

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No response to the bogus claims of the fed not providing enough liquidity or deflationary spiral that my article showed false? Very nice.

Rate of inflation? See, it's not that easy. Just going by the CPI, there wasn't much. However, this period shows that the CPI is not a reliable indicator of inflation. The money supply increased drastically, a 65% increase in the 8 years leading up to the depression. Compare it to the 128% increase between 1983 and 1987, and the 83% increase from 2000-2007, and you'll notice a nice correlation between TMS and recession. And who controls the TMS?

Granted, correlation doesn't prove anything, but I have that theoretical argument that shows that it causes malinvestment.

phattonez said:

That's still highly interventionist to me, which is why I get offended at your claim to be libertarian.

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When the Fed was created it caused banks, that were traditionally lenders of last resort, to convert to just regular old banks.

The Fed banks are the lenders of last resort, it is their job.
Being a Libertarian, we keep telling people "don't let them do that" and "I told you so". It gets old being ignored.

Instead of being ignored and ridiculed why not play the game we know so well?
All the stupids make it so easy to earn a living off of their foolish actions.

You can be a Libertarian and continue to warn people about the errors of the current government and still profit from it.

Harry Guerrilla said:

You can be a Libertarian and continue to warn people about the errors of the current government and still profit from it.

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Well, I am invested in the errors right now. Well, as much as a student can be. My oil stocks are paying off big time.