>> ^marinara:

Jobs created are less than we need for natural growth of population (but we're in a recovery)

I think people get pretty hung up on the technical terms. "Recession" means all the growth indicators are trending downward. "Recovery" means all or most growth indicators are trending upward.

Most people think "recession" means "the economy is bad" (aka below peak), and "recovery" means "the economy is good again" (aka in record territory). That's not what economists mean when they use those words.
>> ^marinara:
bank bailouts cause the 'lost decade' period. Contrast to iceland, which is in recovery, and they bailed out no banks.


Bailing out the banks doesn't cause the lost decade, it's the fuckup that made the banks need bailing out that causes it. Letting them collapse catastrophically doesn't make the economy better, it just makes the recession deeper and longer; just ask Herbert Hoover!

What Iceland did differently wasn't that they didn't bail out the banks, it's that they didn't ask their taxpayers to pay for it. They let the banks default on their international debts (which was most of it), had their central bank print up the money to cover their domestic debts (and then some), and instituted capital controls (taxes on international investment) to prevent people from pulling their money out of the country.

In other words, they did the polar opposite of what people like Peter Schiff or Ron Paul want anyone to do, and it's working out pretty well.

@NetRunner,

Peter Schiff: The dollar closed weak last year. The inflated dollar is pushing commodity prices up.

Paul Krugman: Make it weaker. Stimulus. More jobs. Yay! I like beards!

The investments are proving correct. And the recession was said to be officially over, but everyone knows it's not. Things are getting a lot worse. Prices are going up, the dollar is going down. Commodity prices continue to go up.

@blankfist, no, I have it right.

Schiff: If the Stimulus passes, hyperinflation will destroy the country by 2010 at the latest.

Krugman: The economy will be stuck at high unemployment with low inflation for years, despite a 0% interest rate at the Fed.

I apparently just hit my NYT paywall limit for the month, so I don't have a link for Krugman but that's Krugman in a nutshell from the late 2008 through early 2009 period on what we'd see.

I dunno about you, but I don't remember having to take wheelbarrows of cash to buy a loaf of bread last year.

@NetRunner, you meant if Paul Krugman continues to be wrong and Peter Schiff continues to be right.

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^blankfist:
And their stock suggestions have worked out well for me. But that's mainly because I think it's a good idea to bet against the US dollar, especially now, and their stock suggestions are basically mostly that.

So be specific, how are they saying to bet against the dollar? Buy gold and silver? Buy foreign currency or foreign stocks & bonds?
Which of those have paid off big (you mentioned tripling your 401k)?

I didn't say they said "bet against the dollar". I said that. They don't sell gold or silver, either. They review companies that do though. And as far as I can tell they're not selling anything.
They have a number of stocks they think will do well as the currency inflates, and so far they've been spot on. Mainly mining companies and the occasional agriculture company. Read on.
http://inflation.us/stocks.html


Intro paragraph at that link:

One of our missions at the National Inflation Association is to discover and profile companies that we believe will prosper in an inflationary environment. Typically we will bring to you producing, profitable, Gold and Silver companies with strong balance sheets. We believe these stocks have a chance of becoming some of the best performers of the next decade.

That said, those look like decent enough picks, even if the much ballyhooed hyperinflation never actually arrives. They've got oil, gas, food, tech stocks, even some potash (very trendy) in there, which are mostly bets that global warming is real, the oil is running out, and the developing economies will rapidly increase their demand for food & oil over the next decade. All safe bets!

Though the bulk of it is stock in precious metal traders and miners, and I'm not sure that quite counts as "betting against the dollar" so much as betting that the hysteria about inflation will lead to a boom for gold traders. At least inflation.us knows which side their bread is buttered on.

Assuming these companies themselves aren't scams, they're not setting you up to lose your shirt if Paul Krugman continues to be right, and Peter Schiff continues to be wrong. You might take a hit if/when a Republican reclaims the White House, and all the talk of inflation disappears though.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

I don't recall anything about pacifism in his speeches, only non-interventionism and anti-colorization.

Right, that's basically my point. He doesn't seem to think war is bad because it kills people, he thinks it's bad because it conflicts with his ideology about the proper role of government.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
And he has frequently said that to just abolish the safety net is also a bad idea, so hardly an extremist. That is more of a straw-man representation of his views on transitioning to a more free market based society and less regulated.

All I hear in there is "he doesn't want to abruptly end them, he just wants to slowly phase them out", which if you were objective about it means that he's more worried about a popular backlash stopping the destruction of the social safety net, and not actually in favor of preserving them.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
I think it is important to note the difference in being anti-war being legal and not moral. Morally, we can't all agree anyway. Was our intervention in WW2 moral? Is killing ever good? A president can't answer those questions, and shouldn't, and nor should congress. What they should preside over is if a majority of people want war, we war, regardless of its moral good or badness. Morality is the charge of the citizens, not the congress. It is also their job, the citizens, to not let their congress take that charge from them. Good and bad shouldn't be a matter of law, that is the most dangerous of all ideas.

This is potentially the beginning of a really long conversation, but to be short about it, what is law for if not an attempt to create justice in a society? What is justice if not applied morality? Yes, no single person or institution should get the exclusive right to decide what is and isn't moral, but single people and institutions get to make important decisions that impact lots of people, and I think it's safe to say that we want them to make those decisions in a way that's compatible with the morals of the people who entrusted them with the power to make those decisions.

In other words, if Paul wants the codes to the nuclear weapons, Paul's personal code of ethics matters a great fucking deal if he wants me to achieve that power.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
Being skeptical is always good, but look as his company.

I do, and that's the thing that bothers me. Take John Tate, who runs C4L. Not a day goes by that I don't get e-mail from him that a) refers to the left as statists, socialists, or tyrants, b) lies about legislation that Democrats are or have proposed, and c) promotes a wide array of pro-corporate Republican policies.

Take Peter Schiff, who's lost his clients' a truckload of money betting on hyperinflation, and who goes on TV constantly to try to sell people on the idea that hyperinflation is around the corner, will destroy America as we know it forever, and that you can protect yourself by buying gold from his website.

Those are just the ones I recall clearly, but I remember there being quite a list of shady characters he'd brought into his campaign in 2008.

Yes, he sometimes "stands with" Kucinich or Nader on an issue, but it's never some positive proposal they want to try to work on passing together. Instead, it's always a case of Kucinich or Nader objecting to something the Democratic party is doing, and Ron Paul "stands with them" in an attempt to try to win some converts amongst liberals frustrated with Democrats.

IMO, he's very, very untrustworthy. I've had plenty of experience with sociopaths, and I quite seriously get that vibe from Ron Paul.

You have been awarded 1 Power Point for fixing the embed code for Dead Pool video Peter Schiff: Why the Meltdown Should Have Surprised No One. Thank you for helping maintain VideoSift's reliability.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'overdose, financial crisis, subprime, peter schiff, Johan Norberg' to 'overdose, financial crisis, subprime, peter schiff, Johan Norberg, Bush, Obama, debt' - edited by blankfist

Dr. Doom, Peter Schiff, has been critical of Goldline.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1zzcuk7JQM

He happens to have a site for his business Euro Pacific Precious Metals:

http://www.europacmetals.com/

@blankfist, since you seem to want my thoughts on this (but for some reason, wanted to edit the comment to look like you were just clearing your throat), I'll give you my rebuttal.

I'll take his three points in reverse order.

#3 about regulatory uncertainty is one of these universal conservative economic fantasies. There's no evidence that this really has any kind of macroeconomic effect. Certainly the usual conservative and business advocacy groups always get a laundry list of businessmen to all line up and say how they won't be able to function if they have to pay compensation to workers injured on the job, have to check to see if the products they produce are poisonous or otherwise unsafe, can't dump toxic chemicals into lakes and rivers, can't use slave labor, etc, etc. They always fight against efforts to stop them from being able to leverage negative market externalities for extra profit.

#2 The Yahoo Finance link itself debunks this, because what Schiff says is a flat-out lie. Here's what that link says:

In contrast to Schiff's warning, the law does the following, according to Reuters:

“The bill would set up an "orderly liquidation" process that the government could use in emergencies, instead of bankruptcy or bailouts, to dismantle firms on the verge of collapse.

“The goal is to end the idea that some firms are 'too big to fail' and avoid a repeat of 2008, when the Bush administration bailed out AIG and other firms but not Lehman Brothers. Lehman's subsequent bankruptcy froze capital markets.

“Under the new rule, firms would have to have 'funeral plans' that describe how they could be shut down quickly.”

Liberal critics also question whether the bill addresses "Too Big to Fail", but they're talking about limits on the overall size of banks.

#1 I've covered this fantasy of Schiff's about the nature of the crisis before. Here are two quick points I always make, which you never respond to: low interest rates don't create moral hazard, and Fannie and Freddie weren't even remotely the biggest players in the subprime mortgage-backed security space, much less the chief source of moral hazard.

All the moral hazard was created by the financial industry thinking it had found a way to insulate itself from the risks involved in bad mortgages using CDO's and CDS's -- without relying on government backing of any kind.

I'm happy to go into much more depth on #1 if you like, but you've never really demonstrated that you have any interest in listening to what I have to say on the topic with anything like an open mind.

Oh, and liberals agree that this bill doesn't really do enough in addressing the underlying problems that led to the crisis (the real ones). Basically, they say there's not enough rating agency reform, no leverage caps on investment banks, no Glass-Steagall separation of traditional and investment banks, no commitment to break up banks that grow beyond a certain size, etc.

In fact, from what I've read, the strongest part of this bill is exactly the part Schiff lied about -- it should prevent future Congresses from being forced to do taxpayer-funded bailouts. Instead, it'll be like the standard FDIC process for failed banks, only scaled up to deal with corporations of this size and complexity. Under that process, the bank shareholders, owners, and management get wiped out and fired, but the bank's creditors and depositors are made whole. The bank fails, but it doesn't take a huge chunk of the economy with it when it goes.

Haha. Actually I do listen to what he says, just not a fan.

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
Ahh, such open mindedness.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Krugman is a keynesian dick sucker. I don't care to hear anything he says. Thanks.

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
My, that comment is at least 4 times as long as what you are usually able read these days.

You should read some of what Krugman says, you might learn something about mainstream economics!

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
I did read this comment entirely. It wasn't TL;DR. And I gave you a retrospective downvote for supporting that nutjob Krugman.

Ahh, such open mindedness.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Krugman is a keynesian dick sucker. I don't care to hear anything he says. Thanks.

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
My, that comment is at least 4 times as long as what you are usually able read these days.

You should read some of what Krugman says, you might learn something about mainstream economics!

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
I did read this comment entirely. It wasn't TL;DR. And I gave you a retrospective downvote for supporting that nutjob Krugman.

Krugman is a keynesian dick sucker. I don't care to hear anything he says. Thanks.

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
My, that comment is at least 4 times as long as what you are usually able read these days.

You should read some of what Krugman says, you might learn something about mainstream economics!

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
I did read this comment entirely. It wasn't TL;DR. And I gave you a retrospective downvote for supporting that nutjob Krugman.

My, that comment is at least 4 times as long as what you are usually able read these days.

You should read some of what Krugman says, you might learn something about mainstream economics!

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
I did read this comment entirely. It wasn't TL;DR. And I gave you a retrospective downvote for supporting that nutjob Krugman.

I did read this comment entirely. It wasn't TL;DR. And I gave you a retrospective downvote for supporting that nutjob Krugman.