Financial topics

[Higgenbotham]

What hit me with the anecdote from the Chinese woman was that they laughed. I found it telling that they laughed. You would think at least one of the yahoos would have asked why she believed that. Nowadays a grievance is another way to give a low level employee a kick. Approximately the same with the Russian woman. Most probably dismiss what she has to say, so she found an outlet by calling in to talk radio.

Americans still don't seem to believe much bad can happen here, or is happening here. I commented to someone that the US had spent to near its limit and can not now so easily deal with a disaster like Fukushima, were something like that to happen here. He replied that disasters don't happen in the US.

[aedens]

Corporate DNA is said to be a value multiplier. We just have to wait for the noise to lower to see a constructive dialog to appear.
Many are just checking out since you cannot legislate right from wrong anyway.

[aedens]

STAGE 4. The Grab for Power
The collapse can transition to this stage at any time after Stage 3. Most of the middle class have lost everything. What used to be well manicured middle class neighborhoods are filled with the carcasses of empty houses damaged and destroyed by vandals. The nation’s infrastructure has been seriously neglected and is in need of a major overhaul. The power grid becomes unreliable. Rolling blackouts are a daily occurrence. You can no longer buy or sell gold or own foreign currency. Inflation is out of control. Now the economy collapses. There is a rush for everything and the shelves go empty in a matter of hours. Society falls into chaos. The control of urban areas shifts when violent gangs takeover control of the streets and urban neighborhoods. The government issues restrictive measures in an attempt to control the economy. Everything is in short supply and heavily rationed. Food and gasoline is very expensive and there are very long lines to get them when they are available. Affordable quality health care is non-existent and your job is a distant memory. You will do without what you are unable to provide for yourself. You will discover what it is to live in a third world country.
Primary Assets:
1.Relocation to the rural hideaway
2.Firearms and ammo
3.Long term food supplies (1 year minimum)
4.Adequate fuel stores
5.Security plan to protect the group and assets
6.Trained dog for security
7.A working knowledge of survival gardening
8.Survival knowledge and skills
Once all of the above has come to pass, the realization of the current circumstances at this moment must be all too obvious. It is too late to prepare at this point. What you did not acquire earlier, you are not going to possess now. Anything of value necessary for your survival has already been claimed. The situation gets worse… much worse.
Stage 5 is next… and it is not pretty.

[aedens]

Since the project crosses national borders, TransCanada needs a permit from the State Department to proceed. Now, nobody wants to risk contaminating water supplies or miss out on a way to create thousands of jobs, so no matter what side of the issue you come down on, it's clear that the Secretary of State has an important decision to make. Ideally, that decision will be made as intelligently and transparently as possible, but if Susan Rice becomes the next Secretary of State, her judgment may well be unduly biased.
According to financial disclosure reports first highlighted by the environmentalist magazine OnEarth, Ambassador Rice has a good portion of her $23 million to $43 million net worth invested in companies that stand to directly benefit if the project goes forward. Besides a $300,000 to $600,000 investment directly in TransCanada, Rice and her husband have invested at least $5 million in Canadian oil companies including Enbridge (NYSE: ENB ) that are working on the Tar Sands, with at least another $5 million in Canadian banks such as Toronto-Dominion (NYSE: TD ) that are expected to finance the project and at least $2 million invested in infrastructure providers, among them railroad Canadian Pacific (NYSE: CP ) and electric utilities that are expected to benefit from the project. Rice's impressive investment portfolio is heavily tilted toward energy companies and Canadian companies, with as much as half of her net worth at least partially dependent on the success of the Keystone project. Even if the ambassador means well, it's difficult to ignore that approving the Keystone XL pipeline would provide an immediate and substantial payoff for Rice.

[aedens]

At a 50% tax rate, 100% of one spouse's labor is being taken by the government if you both work. I believe the definition of slavery is someone who works entirely for someone else. Ironic since the 1st African American president is looking to enslave a portion of the population. Add up all your expenses.

As for my wife and I, one of us already left the workforce. It just isn't worth one of us getting up everyday to run the rat race and get absolutely nothing from it.

http://confoundedinterest.wordpress.com ... cal-cliff/
DC is sniffing euphoric market fumes. It will crash and when is the latentcy of fact we only note. That is not rain runnin on your back.
You got your revenue report in advance DC, also enjoy your chains you voted for comrads. They will make any number and print any amount to paint
the tape. As was noted, M2 Money Velocity that looks more like a paralyzed eagle dropping to earth.

Similar decisions are being made all over the country right now. That's the real cliff and we already went over.

[OLD1953]

A bit odd seeing the Google [BOT] listed as online, LOL. Guess they are scanning and reindexing.

I doubt it will crash and burn as badly as all that. We may even just get the slow slide to DOW 3000, it is entirely possible.

What has been done to the infrastructure over the last 30 years can be described in many ways, all equivalent, but one way to describe efficiency is to call it the removal of redundancy. And the system has little redundancy left at all. When there is no redundancy in systems, then a single failure brings all to a halt until that failure is repaired. A focus on efficiency will require redundancy to be reduced, redundant systems are inefficient inherently. You simply guarantee 100% up time on the remaining systems and move on. Until something breaks down.

Reading on the fiscal cliff talks, there is much alarm that "raising rates on income over 300K will reduce job creation". Leaving aside the fantasies of the economists, who, as John is fond of saying, are wrong about nearly everything, is there a whit of real world historical evidence to support such a claim? (To set a bracket on that, real world historical evidence would mean relevant information since the modern economy was created, since WWII and the creation of the FED in other words. While the pre 1945 economy has interest to me, it's nearly impossible to relate it to the modern world with an activist Federal Reserve.) I've looked, and it doesn't appear to be there, at least to me, but I've not tried to grind that mill to ultimate fineness. This arguement started with the Laffer curve, but to the best of my knowledge Laffer never proved what the shape of that curve actually was. And why would you want to manage an economy so as to maximize government revenue anyhow? There would seem to be better metrics for success.

[aedens]

I will be indeed be the first to admit failure of a position. By the way being optimistic as I am as 1/3 short as in Gnotes 1/3 hybonds and 1/3 equity. First thing we must remember we are not the problem. Second one I have read and am inclined to note that the twenty percent are eighty percent of the productivity to make things work such as a light switch when you wake and countless other division of labor issue we are rather familiar with here over the years we have tossed around for edification and clarification purposes. They are pushing a string on how we can do more with facts like you only need x amount anyway.

[thomasglee]

A bit odd seeing the Google [BOT] listed as online, LOL. Guess they are scanning and reindexing.

I doubt it will crash and burn as badly as all that. We may even just get the slow slide to DOW 3000, it is entirely possible.

What has been done to the infrastructure over the last 30 years can be described in many ways, all equivalent, but one way to describe efficiency is to call it the removal of redundancy. And the system has little redundancy left at all. When there is no redundancy in systems, then a single failure brings all to a halt until that failure is repaired. A focus on efficiency will require redundancy to be reduced, redundant systems are inefficient inherently. You simply guarantee 100% up time on the remaining systems and move on. Until something breaks down.

Reading on the fiscal cliff talks, there is much alarm that "raising rates on income over 300K will reduce job creation". Leaving aside the fantasies of the economists, who, as John is fond of saying, are wrong about nearly everything, is there a whit of real world historical evidence to support such a claim? (To set a bracket on that, real world historical evidence would mean relevant information since the modern economy was created, since WWII and the creation of the FED in other words. While the pre 1945 economy has interest to me, it's nearly impossible to relate it to the modern world with an activist Federal Reserve.) I've looked, and it doesn't appear to be there, at least to me, but I've not tried to grind that mill to ultimate fineness. This arguement started with the Laffer curve, but to the best of my knowledge Laffer never proved what the shape of that curve actually was. And why would you want to manage an economy so as to maximize government revenue anyhow? There would seem to be better metrics for success.

I have a "more senior" friend that worked for many, many years on Wall Street and seems to have a very good handle on economic trends, etc. Any way, he is always saying, "sure, raise the top rate back up to 90% like it once was, but then also give the speculators the deductions they received back then". His point is that people like to point to the top rates of the 50's, but they never talk about how those making enough to pay those rates also were able to write off all their speculative losses in a single swoop.

[aedens]

http://dailybail.com/home/wake-up-ameri ... spend.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L3ecOtJ ... r_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09np0Ynm ... ture=g-all

[OLD1953]

I never had any problem with writing off losses. But then I was used to writing off all interest charges until the 80's tax reform. Far as I'm concerned, losses are losses, gains are gains, and there's no difference in any of them. The difference between capital gains and income is nil in any real sense, if you can take it and spend it, then it's money in the pocket. That some of it has a different semantic representation in terms of relationship to property is interesting, but to me at least, irrelevant. But then, I had a preacher yelling at me one day when I told him I thought gamblers should be allowed to write off their losses as well. Why not? Under a logical system, those losses would still be taxed as income for the casino, so government doesn't lose anything and the gambler got to have his kicks. But I'm a pigheaded sinner I am, and so it goes.