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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 20, 2011 - 10:53am PT
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If you work for a wire factory that goes bankrupt, you may well have a rough year or two before you find another job, and your income may never fully recover. But if you own that factory, it will be years before you have an income even close to what you enjoyed before--and it's very possible that you'll never get there at all.
Oh, boo-hoo-hoo!!!
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 20, 2011 - 12:01pm PT
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Crocodile Tears
As the author notes near the end. The data only go to 2009. Sure Wall Street (boy there's a generalization if there ever was one) took it in the shorts in 2008 and 2009. Then the taxpayers of the US bailed them out. You and I.
Let's see what the 2010 data shows when it's published. $22 Billion profit for 3 banks in Q3 2011. So you suppose the bonuses won't reflect this?
By the way, I had to deal with a "Vice President" at a well respected brokerage firm last week. He was dumb as a post and his executive assistant had to come into the meeting to bail him out. He was too stupid to be an accounts payable clerk at any company I've worked for.
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new world order-
climber
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Oct 20, 2011 - 12:15pm PT
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We need a world government!
A world central bank, world single electronic currency and a world army to impose the will of the world government.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 20, 2011 - 12:19pm PT
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new world order-
climber
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Oct 20, 2011 - 12:21pm PT
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nwo,
How do you know what Obama dreams about every night?????????????
The evil one Both wings of the U.S. government are of the same bird, fattrad.
Do you honestly believe things will change for the better should a Republican win in 2012?
You're dreamin'.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 20, 2011 - 02:01pm PT
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from vdh:
"So here goes an explanation for the multifaceted unrest. For the last six decades, constant technological breakthroughs and growing government subsidies have given a billion and a half Westerners lifestyles undreamed of over the last 2,500 years. In 1930, no one imagined that a few pills could cure life-threatening strep throat. In 1960, no one planned on retiring at 55. In 1980, no one dreamed that millions could have instant access to civilization’s collective knowledge in a few seconds through a free Google search.
Yet, the better life got in the West for ever more people, the more apprehensive they became, as their appetites for even more grew even faster. Remember, none of these worldwide protests are over the denial of food, shelter, clean water, or basic medicine.
None of these protesters discuss the effects of 2 billion Chinese, Indian, Korean, and Japanese workers’ entering and mastering the globalized capitalist system, and making things more cheaply and sometimes better than their Western counterparts.
None of these protesters ever stop to ponder the costs — and ultimately the effect on their own lifestyles — of skyrocketing energy costs. Since 1970 there has been a historic, multitrillion-dollar transfer of capital from the West to the Middle East, South America, Africa, and Russia through the importation of high-cost oil and gas.
None seem to grasp the significance of the fact that, meanwhile, hundreds of millions of Westerners were living longer and better, retiring earlier, and demanding ever more expensive government pensions and health care.
Something had to give.
And now it has. Federal and state budgets are near bankrupt. Countries like Greece and Italy face insolvency. The U.S. government resorts to printing money to service or expand entitlements. Near-zero interest rates, declining home prices, and huge losses in mutual funds and retirement accounts have crippled the middle classes.
Bigger government, marvelous new inventions, and creative new investment strategies are not going to restore the once-taken-for-granted good life. Until “green” means competitive renewable energy rather than a con for crony capitalists, we are going to have to create and save capital by producing more of our own gas and oil, and relying more on nuclear power and coal.
Westerners will have to work a bit longer and more efficiently, with a bit less redistributive government support. And they must confess that venture capitalists, hedge funds, and big deficit-spending governments are no substitute for producing themselves the real stuff of life that millions now take for granted — whether gas, food, cars, or consumer goods.
Otherwise, a smaller, older, and whinier West will just keep blaming others as their good life slips away. So it’s past time to stop borrowing to import energy and most of the things we use but have given up producing — and get back to competing in the real world."
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 20, 2011 - 02:04pm PT
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"So here goes an explanation for the multifaceted unrest. For the last six decades, constant technological breakthroughs and growing government subsidies have given a billion and a half Westerners lifestyles undreamed of over the last 2,500 years.
Well it did until the '70s. Then the corporate agenda started rolling back the gains made by the middle and working classes. vdh didn't bother to mention that did he?
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 20, 2011 - 02:06pm PT
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"Then the corporate agenda started rolling back the gains made by the middle and working classes"
at least vdh's argument makes sense and is validated by tangible evidence
life has gotten much better much faster for ALL of us since the 70s
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 20, 2011 - 03:39pm PT
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at least vdh's argument makes sense and is validated by tangible evidence
life has gotten much better much faster for ALL of us since the 70s
Uh, yeah, right. Is that why the middle and working classes have been losing ground all that time?
You should at least pay attention, bookworm.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 20, 2011 - 03:45pm PT
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And Republican voters have failed to see that they vote against not only their own best interests, but the best interests of America as well.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 20, 2011 - 03:47pm PT
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This is from the years of the Run Old Ray Gun debacle.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 20, 2011 - 03:51pm PT
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This is also from the Ray Gun Daze.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 20, 2011 - 04:33pm PT
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losing ground?
i'd rather be poor in america than middle class anywhere else because i'd still have a standard of living that many people are willing to risk their lives to have
as vdh says, ows isn't about poverty; owsers are not claiming they can't eat or find shelter...they're pissed off because they have huge college loans they used to pay off overpriced universities for distributing unmarketable degrees (how they managed to pay for their iphones and ipads and laptops, etc. is politely ignored)
from wsj:
"Here's a puzzle: Try to figure out what we're describing.
It costs a lot of money, so much that most people have to go into debt to buy it. It has considerable intrinsic value, but it is also understood to be an investment. And it is a status symbol--indeed, almost a necessary condition for achieving middle-class status.
Its acquisition by as wide a swath of the population is widely seen as a social good. Thus the government heavily subsidizes it through tax incentives and other means. That, however, creates an artificial demand that drives prices up and, in a vicious circle, spurs demands for more subsidies. Efforts to make it more easily acquired for minorities, who by objective standards tend to be less qualified, compound the problem.
In the current economy, it has turned out to be considerably less valuable than promised. As a result, many Americans are under water, with debts that they will not be able to pay off easily.
What is it? A...college education...
...young people like Taylor would feel aggrieved. Growing up, they were told they needed a college education as a ticket to a productive life. Now they find themselves deeply in debt, their employment prospects limited in the Obama economy. So they're lashing out at the banks that hold their debt and at the corporations that have made a college degree into a license to hunt for a job.
Their anger is understandable but misplaced. The banks were merely doing what banks do; if they had refused to make student loans, these youngsters would have been just as upset. As for the corporations, the reason they demand college degrees, as we wrote in 2007, is that is that the government forbids them to screen applicants directly for basic intelligence under a doctrine of antidiscrimination law known as "disparate impact" that the U.S. Supreme Court established in the 1971 case Griggs v. Duke Power Co.:
But why are employers able to get away with requiring a degree without running afoul of Griggs? Because colleges and universities--again, especially elite ones--go out of their way to discriminate in favor of minorities. By admitting blacks and Hispanics with much lower SAT scores than their white and Asian classmates, purportedly in order to promote "diversity," these institutions launder the exam of its disparity.
Thus the higher-education industry and corporate employers have formed a symbiotic relationship in which the former profits by acting as the latter's gatekeeper and shield against civil-rights lawsuits. Little wonder that in 2003, when the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of discriminatory admissions policies at the University of Michigan, 65 Fortune 500 companies filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging that they be upheld."
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 20, 2011 - 04:54pm PT
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Why we need to deregulate the "financial services industry"
Why not call them banks? They're nothing like what your Mom and Pop called a bank. And they consider their business to be selling "products". Ergo "financial services". Appropriately vague and non-threatening. "Industry", no longer providing services but wheeling and dealing and figuring the markup for every item sold.
Citigroup is paying $285m (£180m) to settle civil fraud charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The SEC said that Citigroup misled investors when it invited them to invest in a product based on US mortgage debt.
It said that Citigroup did not inform investors that it was betting on the value of the investment falling or that it had chosen the assets itself.
Citigroup settled without admitting or denying the charges.
Credit Suisse was also involved in the transaction and has paid $2.5m to settle the case, also without admitting or denying the charges.
The SEC said that Citigroup built a collateralised debt obligation, or CDO, made up of about $1bn of home loans in 2007.
It alleges that Citigroup sold the CDO to investors, but took a short position itself, betting that the value of the assets would fall.
"The securities laws demand that investors receive more care and candour than Citigroup provided to these CDO investors," said Robert Khuzami from the SEC.
"Investors were not informed that Citigroup had decided to bet against them and had helped choose the assets that would determine who won or lost."
The CDO defaulted within months, leaving the approximately 15 investors facing losses while Citigroup made $160m in fees and trading profits. So Citigroup had a vested interest in their mortgage customers losing value on their mortgaged properties.
Excellent. I wish I had thought of that. And if I had, that I would have had the cojones and entire lack of moral sense to pull it off.
$285 million fine. Wow, nearly $1 for every man woman and child in the US put into the US Treasury. Repubs would label this as a hidden tax, if they wanted to talk about it at all.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15375111
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 20, 2011 - 04:58pm PT
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Facts are overrated
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 20, 2011 - 05:04pm PT
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bookworm
i'd rather be poor in america than middle class anywhere else because i'd still have a standard of living that many people are willing to risk their lives to have
What bullsh#t. OK, sure, "many people are willing to risk their lives to have your standard of living". Presumably you mean illegal South American immigrants. I doubt you'd survive a month in some of the poor fishing villages along the Sea of Cortez that I've visited. No running water, outhouses, scraping a living from the arid land with minimal water and fishing from a panga for the diminishing stocks of fish. Burning sticks of mesquite for cooking. You'd be dead of dysentery or other GI illness that you don't have immunity to. I know you wouldn't survive a week picking squash in Taft California.
These days, not many middle class Northern Europeans or Japanese would trade places with you. First of all because they know our health care system is either laughable or incompetent, or both. Secondly because they know our political system has been bought by Big Business, Big Banks and Koch Brothers.
Get out of your books and see some of the real world. While you're there, live with some real people.
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