Truly, there is a great desire among households to be stable economically on a single income. Many households occupied by even as low as one individual find it necessary to supplement their full-time 40 hour salary with a part-time paying position. This is required to simply make ends meet.
Also, once you register on this blog, then the CAPTCHA goes away and all of the features are enabled.
Many community blogs don't allow anonymous (not logged in) comments at all because it's a major security issue, so this is my compromise.
Believe me spam bots are notorious and why the CAPTCHA is so tough. They have broken most.
As far as the economy, watching today's rally I was thinking, this is so out of reality from all of the real numbers, so there does appear to be this separate Wizard of Oz economy and us mere mortals are not allowed behind the curtain. I highly recommend Winter Watch blog who writes about this daily.
I'm an amateur who manages his own IRA. When I saw the coming crisis, my strategy was kind of like a bracket. I bought gold, silver and Euros as a hedge against a hyperinflationary collapse of the greenback and I bought muni-bonds as a hedge against a depression style deflationary collapse in asset value.
My understanding was that in a time of extremely low interest rates and non-existent yields from stocks, the demand for munis would sky-rocket. All other things being equal, a muni that currently pays a 4% yield would appreciate in value if interest rates were around 1%; this is because there would be increased demand for the higher yield of the munis. So, the price of munis would have to rise, until their effective yield had dropped to the point that demand for them had equilized.
So, why does the Bond Market fear deflation (besides the collateral damage it will do to the economy)?
Watching what seemingly is becoming fictitious capital (Wall Street), I'm wondering when the chickens will come home to roost due to the hollowing out of the America in terms of production, manufacturing.
Reading this makes me suspect the US will have to go all the way to 3rd world status before corporations start shopping for yet another cheap labor market across the globe and then realize it is now the United States.
if wages were high enough, one would be able to adequately maintain their household with a single job. But the cost of housing, food and heating oil has increased at a higher rate than wages. Because the American worker's wage does not go far enough to maintain their household, it has become a necessity for dual income earnings. This causes the need for secondary jobs.
That's exactly what I'm wondering about, how are they dealing with that bad debt and is it being dumped onto the taxpayer, through some ponzi scheme? I mean using bad debt against bad debt is what I've read (mortgage securities against fed funds) so I'm confused. If you find out details I hope you post about it.
I'm watching DOW futures they are already at -240 but last time this was building up the Fed did an emergency surprise rate cut to circumvent a major market correction.
So, as your "scenario 3" I'm wondering if we're looking at the big one and there are no more tricks.
I read it was 1% of the value just 16 days ago. God lord help anyone if they had all of it in Bear Sterns.
Well, the good news is, Bear Sterns shareholders were virtually wiped out. They are getting less than 2% of what their shares were worth at the company's peak.
The not so good news is this quote:
The Fed will provide special financing to JPMorgan Chase for the deal, JPMorgan Chase said. The central bank has agreed to fund up to $30 billion of Bear Stearns' less liquid assets.
I would like to know what risk the taxpayers' central bank signed up for here. There may be none. The Fed may simply be providing liquidity until the debts are unwound. Tough to say since the article gives no specifics. I am sure we will find out lots more in the next few days.
I would also like to remind everyone that we are maybe 30% of the way through the bursting of the housing bubble.
What roles, what constitutes a family is sociology, cultural, which is way off topic for this site.
I'm basically requesting you start posting on economics and not sociological definitions that have more to do with sociology mores, culture. This is not a cultural website and most assuredly not a social conservative dogma site.
That's unreal! all over the weekend to avoid bankruptcy and JP Morgan isn't responsible for all of the bad debt!
A collapse of Bear Stearns could have created a further crisis of confidence in world financial markets amid a deepening credit crunch. JPMorgan's acquisition of Bear Stearns represents roughly 1 percent of what the investment bank was worth just 16 days ago
and the Fed set this up!
Good god. I hope others comment on what this really means.
Firstly the topic is too broad and one will get the libertarians saying no in absolutes and probably some absolute yeses.
I also think some assumptions are incorrect. Take for example, community colleges. While they maybe cheaper the reality is their mastery attainment bar is considered lower. That's really the issue, in the classroom.
I know one program that does not work, which is government retraining programs. One reason is corruption. I saw a community college obtain $750k of funding to retrain people in STEM who already had a Bachelors college degree, in restaurant service. Now to give some institution that much money to retrain qualified technical professionals to be burger flippers is pathetic.
It used to be that employers provided retraining, for increased labour mobility within their own organizations Now they want ready made skills, preferably the obtainment of those skills was also outsourced (educated abroad).
Somehow (and I don't know how) that retraining, continual education, new skill sets have to be incentives, subsidies in the US and not dumped upon the worker in terms of costs.
We have a huge initiative to privatize and globalize higher education, it's a trillion dollar market potentially ( right behind financials). Once again we have institutions that used to support a society being turned into private, for profit entities, not answering the needs to who is funding them in many cases (state governments, Fed) and the additional cost is dumped onto the taxpayer and the student.
I also question this claim of market distortion for the immediate thought was corporate welfare and just how much that distorts the market.
Then, there is real effectiveness per program. EPI
found that living wage ordinances actually decrease the total net income because it kicks people out of the food stamp program as well as the earned income tax credit.
So, obviously many of these subsidies need a graduated reduction, not an absolute number where then the benefit is denied.
One thing you claim which I question is when benefits are extended to the middle class somehow they lose their effectiveness. I question that.
But on the other hand, it appears there is little monitoring and analysis on the effectiveness of studies. There needs to be an expansion on data collecting, statistics generally and more expansion of the GAO, creation of an additional trade accountability office to analyze these programs for their actual effectiveness.
Here's one thing I think is stuck on stupid, many of the state, federal functions, such as maintaining the food stamp program are offshore outsourced. Now, how stupid is that? Why not hire some of the people receiving food stamps, let them work from their homes to answer questions on the food stamp program and keep those taxpayer dollars within the US domestic economy?
I'm sure if we went through each program, one by one, we will find stuck on stupid legislation and policy in most of these areas.
So my general response is devil in the details in that the US does not enact smart policy, strategic policy or monitor effectiveness, adjust accordingly, by objective metrics.
Ya know I cannot count the number of papers, books I've read describing problems after the fact, but strategic, policy, analysis, recommendations that have a dynamic adjustment or will actually dramatically change the status quo, those are few and far between.
..........these Titans Pygmies of Industry are walking dead men. The days when Industry could extract from and pollute the commons are coming to an end. Either progressive government will stop them or we will see an economic collapse due to Peak Oil or other abuses of the commons. Yet these fools sit there agitating for 18th Century economic solutions.
The fact that the 'free market' give rise to an income distribution modeled on the power function rather than the convenient fiction perpetrated by the dumb asses in Traditional Economics that it is a bell-curve is now becoming common knowledge and folks....
The citizenry will not be amuse to find out that they can never, ever get rich. Can never be other than poor as wealth inexorably accumulates on the right as the function soars to incredible values. Unless they win the Lottery....
One interesting factoid I ran across in: The Origin of Wealth by Eric Beinhocker is that GE, established in 1878, is the oldest continuous operating business entity researchers have yet found.
Interesting is it not that the oldest business in the world is less than half as old as the U.S. government yet feels quite comfortable in dictating what is and what is not true about the relationship between government and business.
Perhaps these johnny-come-lately folks should shut up and listen for a change.
Truly, there is a great desire among households to be stable economically on a single income. Many households occupied by even as low as one individual find it necessary to supplement their full-time 40 hour salary with a part-time paying position. This is required to simply make ends meet.
His Nobel prize was for monetary policy but also differentiating between business cycles and crisis cycles.
Here are the debt service figures from the Fed; they’ve just been updated.
.....daddy of 'Disaster Capitalism' that evil lil' elf Mr. 'Chicago School' Friedman?
Him and pals Cheney and Dr. Kissinger helped 'figure out' Chile and Argentina. Funny how such incompetents came to be regarded as genius's.
Not hah...hah funny.
The genius was in turning normal humans metrics upside down.
Destroying a country's economy turned out to be an enormously profitable undertaking.
And so it continues.
Do you have a link?
Also, once you register on this blog, then the CAPTCHA goes away and all of the features are enabled.
Many community blogs don't allow anonymous (not logged in) comments at all because it's a major security issue, so this is my compromise.
Believe me spam bots are notorious and why the CAPTCHA is so tough. They have broken most.
As far as the economy, watching today's rally I was thinking, this is so out of reality from all of the real numbers, so there does appear to be this separate Wizard of Oz economy and us mere mortals are not allowed behind the curtain. I highly recommend Winter Watch blog who writes about this daily.
I'm an amateur who manages his own IRA. When I saw the coming crisis, my strategy was kind of like a bracket. I bought gold, silver and Euros as a hedge against a hyperinflationary collapse of the greenback and I bought muni-bonds as a hedge against a depression style deflationary collapse in asset value.
My understanding was that in a time of extremely low interest rates and non-existent yields from stocks, the demand for munis would sky-rocket. All other things being equal, a muni that currently pays a 4% yield would appreciate in value if interest rates were around 1%; this is because there would be increased demand for the higher yield of the munis. So, the price of munis would have to rise, until their effective yield had dropped to the point that demand for them had equilized.
So, why does the Bond Market fear deflation (besides the collateral damage it will do to the economy)?
I've put an excerpt from this on my blog. This is exactly what Edwards kept trying to tell us, so of course the media had to marginalize him....
BTW, that capcha is VERY difficult to figure out and confusing - probably will discourage many commenters. Took me three tries.
New benchmark 2.25%
plus a 3/4 pt cut on the discount rate.
I don't see how this helps anything beyond this rigged paper economy game. But bad debt, worthless assets are worthless assets.
Excerpts from Iraq for Sale film that was banned from being shown in Congress.
Senator Bryon Dorgan on March 11, 2008 on the Senate Appropriations Committee
Democracy Now interview with economist Joseph Stiglitz on the how the Iraq war has hurt the US economy.
Watching what seemingly is becoming fictitious capital (Wall Street), I'm wondering when the chickens will come home to roost due to the hollowing out of the America in terms of production, manufacturing.
Reading this makes me suspect the US will have to go all the way to 3rd world status before corporations start shopping for yet another cheap labor market across the globe and then realize it is now the United States.
These statistics are:
ALARMING
You are assuming that women or families somehow do not want dual careers and this is quite a sexist assumption.
Moreover, secondary job implies somehow someone doesn't have their own, equal career to the other.
There is an assumption by you that implies magically someone would prefer to stay home, have no career in a family and that is not the case.
if wages were high enough, one would be able to adequately maintain their household with a single job. But the cost of housing, food and heating oil has increased at a higher rate than wages. Because the American worker's wage does not go far enough to maintain their household, it has become a necessity for dual income earnings. This causes the need for secondary jobs.
That's exactly what I'm wondering about, how are they dealing with that bad debt and is it being dumped onto the taxpayer, through some ponzi scheme? I mean using bad debt against bad debt is what I've read (mortgage securities against fed funds) so I'm confused. If you find out details I hope you post about it.
I'm watching DOW futures they are already at -240 but last time this was building up the Fed did an emergency surprise rate cut to circumvent a major market correction.
So, as your "scenario 3" I'm wondering if we're looking at the big one and there are no more tricks.
I read it was 1% of the value just 16 days ago. God lord help anyone if they had all of it in Bear Sterns.
Well, the good news is, Bear Sterns shareholders were virtually wiped out. They are getting less than 2% of what their shares were worth at the company's peak.
The not so good news is this quote:
I would like to know what risk the taxpayers' central bank signed up for here. There may be none. The Fed may simply be providing liquidity until the debts are unwound. Tough to say since the article gives no specifics. I am sure we will find out lots more in the next few days.
I would also like to remind everyone that we are maybe 30% of the way through the bursting of the housing bubble.
What roles, what constitutes a family is sociology, cultural, which is way off topic for this site.
I'm basically requesting you start posting on economics and not sociological definitions that have more to do with sociology mores, culture. This is not a cultural website and most assuredly not a social conservative dogma site.
article
at $2 dollars a share!
That's unreal! all over the weekend to avoid bankruptcy and JP Morgan isn't responsible for all of the bad debt!
and the Fed set this up!
Good god. I hope others comment on what this really means.
The cost of maintaining a family is ECONOMICS.
Firstly the topic is too broad and one will get the libertarians saying no in absolutes and probably some absolute yeses.
I also think some assumptions are incorrect. Take for example, community colleges. While they maybe cheaper the reality is their mastery attainment bar is considered lower. That's really the issue, in the classroom.
I know one program that does not work, which is government retraining programs. One reason is corruption. I saw a community college obtain $750k of funding to retrain people in STEM who already had a Bachelors college degree, in restaurant service. Now to give some institution that much money to retrain qualified technical professionals to be burger flippers is pathetic.
It used to be that employers provided retraining, for increased labour mobility within their own organizations Now they want ready made skills, preferably the obtainment of those skills was also outsourced (educated abroad).
Somehow (and I don't know how) that retraining, continual education, new skill sets have to be incentives, subsidies in the US and not dumped upon the worker in terms of costs.
We have a huge initiative to privatize and globalize higher education, it's a trillion dollar market potentially ( right behind financials). Once again we have institutions that used to support a society being turned into private, for profit entities, not answering the needs to who is funding them in many cases (state governments, Fed) and the additional cost is dumped onto the taxpayer and the student.
I also question this claim of market distortion for the immediate thought was corporate welfare and just how much that distorts the market.
Then, there is real effectiveness per program. EPI
found that living wage ordinances actually decrease the total net income because it kicks people out of the food stamp program as well as the earned income tax credit.
So, obviously many of these subsidies need a graduated reduction, not an absolute number where then the benefit is denied.
Take Pell Grants. Both Obama and Clinton have a to reduce paperwork for applying to financial aid, a major burden in obtaining a Pell Grant and Clinton goes further to award Pell Grants to non-traditional students. That's a fantastic idea because so often the income bar to obtain financial aid means you are dead or homeless because the income levels to qualify are much too low. Then, if one obtains a Pell, it's simply not enough to live on, yet if you work a job, wala, you no longer qualify for the Pell. A true catch-22 system.
One thing you claim which I question is when benefits are extended to the middle class somehow they lose their effectiveness. I question that.
But on the other hand, it appears there is little monitoring and analysis on the effectiveness of studies. There needs to be an expansion on data collecting, statistics generally and more expansion of the GAO, creation of an additional trade accountability office to analyze these programs for their actual effectiveness.
Here's one thing I think is stuck on stupid, many of the state, federal functions, such as maintaining the food stamp program are offshore outsourced. Now, how stupid is that? Why not hire some of the people receiving food stamps, let them work from their homes to answer questions on the food stamp program and keep those taxpayer dollars within the US domestic economy?
I'm sure if we went through each program, one by one, we will find stuck on stupid legislation and policy in most of these areas.
So my general response is devil in the details in that the US does not enact smart policy, strategic policy or monitor effectiveness, adjust accordingly, by objective metrics.
Ya know I cannot count the number of papers, books I've read describing problems after the fact, but strategic, policy, analysis, recommendations that have a dynamic adjustment or will actually dramatically change the status quo, those are few and far between.
..........these
TitansPygmies of Industry are walking dead men. The days when Industry could extract from and pollute the commons are coming to an end. Either progressive government will stop them or we will see an economic collapse due to Peak Oil or other abuses of the commons. Yet these fools sit there agitating for 18th Century economic solutions.The fact that the 'free market' give rise to an income distribution modeled on the power function rather than the convenient fiction perpetrated by the dumb asses in Traditional Economics that it is a bell-curve is now becoming common knowledge and folks....
The citizenry will not be amuse to find out that they can never, ever get rich. Can never be other than poor as wealth inexorably accumulates on the right as the function soars to incredible values. Unless they win the Lottery....
Nope it's going to be ugly as Sara Robinson's essay: When Change Is Not Enough: Seven Steps to Revolution grimly outlines.
One interesting factoid I ran across in: The Origin of Wealth by Eric Beinhocker is that GE, established in 1878, is the oldest continuous operating business entity researchers have yet found.
Interesting is it not that the oldest business in the world is less than half as old as the U.S. government yet feels quite comfortable in dictating what is and what is not true about the relationship between government and business.
Perhaps these johnny-come-lately folks should shut up and listen for a change.
They might learn something.
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