"I beat you!"

So low-budget (what is that thing really? A dirty rain tarp? And vaseline?), cheesy music, over acting, and yet...

So effective. Plus there's something about the way they keep panning back to the safety of the shore (the car, the radio). Creep show indeed.

But the real mystery is.... how did himbo keep those joints dry?!

@ghark, thanks for the links, I read all of them, very informative.

I'm sure you know that economics has more than one school of thought, which often times are very opposed to each other not only in theory, but also in their interpretations of important historical events like the Great Depression or even the Industrial Revolution. It seems straightforward that, given all historical evidence we have, there should be only one account of what went down in history, right? It's too bad that's not the case Historians are, themselves, often influenced by their own ideological bias. At least we both know it would be naïve to think all historians agree exactly on everything in history! Ask economists from different schools what happened during the Great Depression and they will invoke very opposite historic accounts.

A quick google search gave me an article stating almost the opposite of your 1st article (which is no surprise given its purpose to dismiss an alleged economic myth):
http://economics.about.com/cs/taxpolicy/a/taxing_growth.htm

That being said, I'd like to address your statement that "higher taxes is bad for our economy" being a rumor spread by the rich. I could just as well state the opposite is a rumor spread by those with a vested interest on taxing other people: the government and those who aren't being taxed. Wouldn't you agree that's more likely, given there are more people with that vested interest than rich people in the world? Also, wouldn't it be more likely that, maybe, a socialist ideology would be behind an effort to spread such a statement? I'm not questioning socialism, just saying, it's very likely a socialist would take a biased interpretation of economic growth and higher taxation and state that they're related in direct proportion (socialists usually want bigger governments that require higher taxes).

Economists say controversial things like "war is good/bad for the economy", "inflation is good/bad for the economy", "when you break a window, that helps/hinders the economy", so it's no wonder that something like "higher taxes is good/bad for the economy" falls into that category.

We cannot solve all economic fallacies here, I'm just trying to point out that we should be aware of the underlying economic schools of thought to better understand the ideological bias motivating their own sets of conclusions.

Chile's approach does not seem free market to me, even if it appears to be closer to that because of privatization. All education there seems to be state funded. When the state comes into a market providing easy money, costs go up, it's supply and demand. If every student has X amount of money provided by the state, private schools stop competing over price, so tuition costs go up (at least that's what I could gather, I'm sorry if I'm not exactly an expert on the Chile situation!)

About the uneven distribution, what I was stating is that not much moral judgement can be made on distribution itself, but on how this distribution is happening. If you have more money than me, I don't have enough information to judge whether that situation is unfair or whether you're undeserving of that money.

When I consider those who benefitted from TARP bailouts though, it pisses me off , because they got money from the taxpayer, money that they're not legitimately entitled to, they didn't have to work for, they didn't deserve. That particular kind of uneven distribution is scandalous IMHO, and it's the kind of injustice that more often results from misallocation of taxpayer money that is more likely to happen with higher taxation.

>> ^Auger8:

Lobbying should be made illegal in my opinion. Money and politics shouldn't mix, it's worse than inbreeding. It just creates a corrupt, deformed, defect ridden system.
I've said this before on other sites but if they limited the salaries of politicians to no more than 20k a year with random audits of gifts and property to prevent bribes the world would be a better and more compassionate place to live in.


Completely agree

I completely agree with you there. We can only hope it happens sooner rather than later.


>> ^Boise_Lib:

>> ^Auger8:
I'm sure the system can be fixed but as it is now it just seems like lobbying breeds corruption.
>> ^Boise_Lib:
@Auger8 @Sagemind
Lobbying is a good thing.
Many years ago I was a member of a successful, grassroots organization which hired a full time lobbyist to talk to state legislators.
Lobbying is not inherently evil.
What is needed is to enforce the existing laws against bribing public officials and re-enact the laws against immoral campaign contributions BRIBES.
Getting rid of Super-PAC's would be an excellent start.
I also really like the Canadian laws against paid political commercials.


It won't be easy--but it can be done.

>> ^Auger8:

I'm sure the system can be fixed but as it is now it just seems like lobbying breeds corruption.
>> ^Boise_Lib:
@Auger8 @Sagemind
Lobbying is a good thing.
Many years ago I was a member of a successful, grassroots organization which hired a full time lobbyist to talk to state legislators.
Lobbying is not inherently evil.
What is needed is to enforce the existing laws against bribing public officials and re-enact the laws against immoral campaign contributions BRIBES.
Getting rid of Super-PAC's would be an excellent start.
I also really like the Canadian laws against paid political commercials.



Sure, the big money lobbyists are the problem now--because they get away with bribery. Enforce the existing laws--re-enact the laws which were repealed (by lawmakers bought and paid for)--and nail shut the revolving door for congresspeople and staff who move to lobbying positions (Gingrich and Dodd).

But, If lobbying itself is gone how will you be able to talk to your representatives? By email?

The system--as it stands now--is a heaping pile of festering shit. Many people need to go to jail over it. But, that doesn't mean the good parts of the system (which have been captured by the Industrial/Military/Bank/Corporation complex) should be completely scrapped--just fixed.

It won't be easy--but it can be done.

I'm sure the system can be fixed but as it is now it just seems like lobbying breeds corruption.

>> ^Boise_Lib:

@Auger8 @Sagemind
Lobbying is a good thing.
Many years ago I was a member of a successful, grassroots organization which hired a full time lobbyist to talk to state legislators.
Lobbying is not inherently evil.
What is needed is to enforce the existing laws against bribing public officials and re-enact the laws against immoral campaign contributions BRIBES.
Getting rid of Super-PAC's would be an excellent start.
I also really like the Canadian laws against paid political commercials.

The reason I say 20,000 a year is for one that's what a lot of the average blue collar workers earn. And two it would eliminate people who only get into politics for the money.

>> ^Sagemind:

@Auger8
I agree that lobbying should be illegal!
But I think your salary cap is a bit low. I'm assuming by 20k, you mean $20,000.
That's low by any standards. You'd never attract anyone with any intelligence for that kind of paycheck. "The current salary (2011) for rank-and-file members of the House and Senate is $174,000 per year." I can agree to a pay scale between 100-200k. And with a limit as to what expenses can be claimed on the office expense account (eg. nothing for personal use, caps on meal claims.)
I do as well, however, agree to the auditing. Any monies gained above and beyond that must be proven as legitimate while living expenses and assets must not exceed their incomes.

To clarify, I'm not expressing support for Goldman or their quickly becoming a commercial bank, etc. What I was commenting on was the implication on the part of the reporter that GS was using TARP money to discriminate (10:40 or so). The CRA requirement is driven by their becoming a commercial bank, not directly because they took (and repaid) TARP money. That's all.

>> ^rex84:

The comments re: TARP money aren't exactly factual. I believe Goldman Sachs paid back their TARP bailout in 2009 and that the U.S. taxpayer made about 23% on the deal. 10 banks in total repaid their TARP funds in 2009.


What comments? Repaying TARP funds has nothing to do with compliance with the Community Reinvestment Act.

>> ^rex84:

The comments re: TARP money aren't exactly factual. I believe Goldman Sachs paid back their TARP bailout in 2009 and that the U.S. taxpayer made about 23% on the deal. 10 banks in total repaid their TARP funds in 2009.


yes, but most banks used the bailout money to consolidate banks
and honestly, why would the big guys want there to be an alternative to them? that's how they monopolize... sorry, i mean that's how the monarchy rules

The comments re: TARP money aren't exactly factual. I believe Goldman Sachs paid back their TARP bailout in 2009 and that the U.S. taxpayer made about 23% on the deal. 10 banks in total repaid their TARP funds in 2009.

Yeah, I looked it up. Basically, the fucking uber-rich were going to lose their money when the housing bubble burst. So we gave them a shit-ton of practically zero-interest loans, and because they paid it back, they say that we made money. But only on TARP. It has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with any of the other bailouts. Not to mention, they should be kissing the American public's ass for saving theirs. This woman is so full of shit it's scary.

They better be careful too. The people that they're mocking are a VERY large group. The mob doesn't have to be polite, or intelligent, or even right to do serious damage.

>> ^Ryjkyj:

NO, seriously. Why is no one on the show refuting this statement? Is there something I don't know? Is this the latest bullshit that we're telling ourselves?


My understanding of the situation is if you take TARP, by itself, not the multi-trillion gift from the FED, and don't account for inflation, then the US government has more cash now than they put in.

It all depends what you mean when you say "the bailout".

We all paid in inflation for the the FED giving money out of thin air before TARP was even proposed, but nobody is even pretending to claim that we go that back, they are just pretending it did not happen.

At the end of the day TARP is a problem because it privileged banks over citizens, not because it cost tax dollars.

Congress could have simply handed $0.25T to Fannie and Freddy instead and told them to buy up all "toxic mortgages" at market rate, and then renegotiated them to keep people in their homes. We could have tippled our money, and gotten the poison off the bank balance sheets, stabilizing the banks, and benefiting the citizenry of the country.

The problem with that plan is that the big fish in the market profit from constructed scarcity, so any scarcity reducing plan like that goes right out the window.

>> ^mgittle:

If the bank in your latest example can't satisfy withdrawal demands, it probably borrows money from a commercial bank, which can request money from the Fed to cover the difference.

Change the word "request" to the word "borrow" and that's correct.

>> ^mgittle:
So, yes, the bank is not literally creating the money on its own, but it seems to me that banks granting loans for more money than they possess at any given time is the most significant reason for the Fed to have the ability to increase the money supply.

Again, banks aren't granting loans for more money than they posses. In the example above, they have $1,000, they can loan out $900, because they're legally required to hold 10% reserves.

Now, their balance sheet shows the following:

+$100 cash on hand as reserves
-$1000 owed to depositor
+$900 in debt owed to them by borrower
+$X in interest on debt owed to them by borrower

Which nets out to +$X interest in net worth.

There are two big risks with this arrangement:

#1: The depositor wants to close his account before the loan matures. The bank doesn't have the money to cover the withdrawl, and will need to borrow funds from another bank. If the borrowing costs are higher than the expected return from its loan, the bank is insolvent, and is gonna die. On conventional banks, the government will step in and cover the depositor's accounts up to some arbitrary dollar amount (I think it's still $250k), but the bank owners will be fired, and they'll seek out someone else to buy the bank and take over future operations.

#2: The borrower defaults on his loan. Since we're talking about only 1 depositor and 1 borrower, this single failure is the equivalent of 100% of the bank's borrowers defaulting at once. This too will result in the government stepping in, covering depositor's accounts, and restructuring the bank and selling them off.

What happened with the US financial crash was that a big, non-insured bank (Lehman Brothers) got hit by scenario #2, and since it was not a traditional, FDIC-insured bank, they just let it go bankrupt, and let the investor accounts get wiped out.

That started a panic, and led to lots of people pulling money out of other similar banks, leading to widespread cases of #1 happening, which had the effect of making banks default on loans they'd taken out with other banks, starting a new wave of #2...

That's why this system is fragile, and none of this has anything to do with monetary policy yet. This is all fiscal and regulatory policy.

What happened was that even after TARP stopped that domino effect of #2 leading to #1 leading to #2 again, banks were worried that all debt was much risker than they'd formerly believed, and so they raised the costs of borrowing (the interest rate) to sky-high levels, which severely curtailed the amount of people borrowing money to invest in real-world business activity.

That drop in investment led to a drop in production, which led to a drop in employment, which led to a drop in consumer demand, which led to a drop in production...

So now, the Fed is stepping in with monetary policy, and trying every trick in the book to stuff the banks with reserves, so they'll lower interest rates. They've had some success, but it isn't really doing the whole job, because unemployment is already so high, and consumer spending is so low, nobody wants to invest in expanding their business, no matter how cheap borrowing costs are...

That's what monetary policy is really about, stabilizing the interest rates and the overall flow of goods and services in the economy. When the economy slows, the Fed pumps money into the economy to try to make it go again. When it starts overheating (and leading to inflation), it siphons money out of the system to slow it down a bit.

Fiat currency doesn't really depend on growth -- if anything, growth depends on fiat currency, and the application of good monetary policy.

ooooo or maybe they I can get one of these to hover over my car and catch all the falling bird shit?
...then again, maybe a tarp would be cheaper.