Recent comments

  • Wait just a minute. You can't be serious. CNBC's word is gospel...GOSPEL! (Besides, Erin w/Squak on the Street & Melissa w/Fast Money...hey, they're too hot to be shills, right?)

    Reply to: Are Financial Conglomerates in a Position to Lend?   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • Why is this such a surprise? It would be interesting to compare employer costs for each category, and this would probably indicate why H-1B is preferred. One can only wonder if things get even more desperate there will not be varied forms of outrage expressed. If prolonged, would eventual Balkanization ensue?;-)

    Reply to: Employed Foreign Guest Workers Outnumber ALL Unemployed U.S. Technical Workers   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • You'd be amazed at the number of PhDs who are unemployed. It almost reminds me of those out of work Russian scientists right after the fall of the USSR.

    -

    www.venomopolis.com

    Reply to: Economic things I learned or overheard this Memorial Day   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • WALL STREET is parasitic on the US economy.. with the exception of the initial IPO, which in recent years has been often found to be little other than a scam in and of itself..

    (sorry, that business model projection didnt pan out.. my LLC is bankrupt, your IPO money is ahem.. well..''gone'', OH, and our former board of directors is off to Bermuda on my personal Yacht, where we will do some 'banking' (well, depositing) while enjoy the scenery..
    With the exception of the random legit IPO the markets exists to lavish stolen income on manipulators, schemers, and fraudsters who did nothing to create anything of value, who bring nothing of value to the table but a lack of character and a willingness to benefit without any labor on their part, no matter its cost to the nation as a whole.
    Basically the market is means of minimizing the legitimate labor of others, and maximizing the non-existant conribution of its parasitical cabal.

    Reply to: Debunking the Myth of the Financial Markets   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • and I think they might have gone to the Treasury as well.

    It also prompted Bernie Sanders and others in Congress to start focusing in on Fed transparency...

    so, ya know, I think it was a legit move by Bloomberg.

    Reply to: Are Financial Conglomerates in a Position to Lend?   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • Kudos on the content and research..
    the problem is not that a logical, concise case cannot be made for exactly where the causative factors originated in our man-made, corrution induced economic malaise..
    everyone from the top down knows that you cannot give up the underpinings of a world leading state, and still maintain the standard of living of that prior state.
    the problem is more 95% a function that the common sense version of nationalistic economics is essentially banned from all our mass media,
    while the ''Its much better to sell your childrens birthright for chinese plastic flip flops, 2 for a dollar'' version, is available 24 hours a day on every cable channel, and is promoted using false, misleading terminology by the paid lackeys of those global corporations with a vested financial interest, and who also happen to own our mass media.

    The old story of "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it- did it happen?",
    today is the equivalent of -
    ''if your nation is bought out from under you with your own tax money as a leveraged buyout, and parted out for the benefit of a corrupt elite - if no one is allowed to mention it on the current means of information distribution, did it really happen''
    Although the article is great,
    the underlying problem is the Goebbels-esque media ownership that is working 24 hours a day to use its ownership of our mass media and their paid propagandists to sell national suicide as ''free'' trade. Until the Media consolidation is broken and destroyed we are unwilling inmates of a gulag that used to be a country.

    Reply to: A Tale of Two Recessions, or Will the Dead Cat Bounce?   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • I'm referring to by occupation. For example, someone with a PhD in Chemistry who is working at home depot is counted as a retail clerk and not an underemployed Chemistry PhD.

    Reply to: Economic things I learned or overheard this Memorial Day   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • As far as MSM goes - but that's not saying much. Didn't Bloomberg file that FOIA against the Fed Reserve recently?

    Now everybody knows that one can only file an FOIA lawsuit against a government agency, and the Fed is private!

    Reply to: Are Financial Conglomerates in a Position to Lend?   15 years 6 months ago
  • I fully believe that the most profit (albeit unethical and illegitimate) is only realized WHEN THE LOANS GO BUST - although the "front office" may not be in the know, and appears to be acting in a contradictory fashion.

    With the individual takedowns of Lehman Bros., Bear Stearns,WaMu and others, yielding the optimum profit -- the takedown of the entire economy (regardless of how outlandish it sounds to rational people) yields the absolute optimum in profit to those who have gamed the economy via credit derivatives (CDOs, CBOs, CMOs, CFOs, CLOs, CDS, etc.).

    Reply to: Are Financial Conglomerates in a Position to Lend?   15 years 6 months ago
  • ... to ensure no growth in real wages across the board, so that productivity growth can continue to be captured for profit income.

    Its even more critical for the Reagan political economy now that the "smartest men in the room" lost trillions of dollars in paper wealth and more cream for the skimming.

    Reply to: We're Sorry, 8% Permanent Unemployment is not Acceptable!   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • ... as far as qualifications, but they do count people employed part time who want more hours ... that's part of what goes into U6. Also those who wish to work and have actively sought work in the past year.

    Reply to: Economic things I learned or overheard this Memorial Day   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • the implications of this "race to the bottom"? This idea of trickle down economics has been totally destroyed so what is left - "survival of the fittest". That would be very ugly.

    Reply to: We're Sorry, 8% Permanent Unemployment is not Acceptable!   15 years 6 months ago
  • What they are talking about is no job period. Not some poverty level wage or anything....so this means our homeless will dramatically increase for without income, people plain cannot pay the rent, even when that rent is reduced.

    Reply to: We're Sorry, 8% Permanent Unemployment is not Acceptable!   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • loan losses. Calculated Risk has an article about how JP Morgan may have underestimated loan losses in WaMu acquisition.

    There was talk that Wells Fargo maybe underestimating loan losses and setting aside loan loss reserves.

    Reply to: Are Financial Conglomerates in a Position to Lend?   15 years 6 months ago
  • ... which explains why student college loan people are so eager to offer instant, over the phone, 3-month deferments. Then the loans are in the books as on deferment, and they charge the interest back to the loan, so the borrower is further in debt, but at least its not in the "non-performing loan" account.

    Reply to: Are Financial Conglomerates in a Position to Lend?   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • Indeed, in a context where no prudent financial institution is eager to lend and all the reckless financial institutions are incapable of doing much lending, business investment, residential investment, and debt-financed consumption are all out as income generators. That leaves government spending and exports.

    And unless Congress acts to take us off the suicidal Energy Dependency path that Reagan insisted we remain on, the current account is going to get hammered into deficits from oil price shock should a recovery get going overseas.

    Without Congress, its not going to happen. And with the Congress we have now, its not going to happen. So if we want it to happen, we need a new Congress.

    Reply to: Are Financial Conglomerates in a Position to Lend?   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • standard of living. It seems we are heading in that direction anyway.

    I wish and hope people will reject this consumer based economy and start really saving and continue deleveraging.

    Reply to: We're Sorry, 8% Permanent Unemployment is not Acceptable!   15 years 6 months ago
  • The way they calculate unemployment statistics, they do not even capture the underemployed or those who have dropped off their stats through long term unemployment. Even worse, they do not count all of the contractors who are now categorized as "small business". It's so pathetic, the BLS literally counts foreign guest workers in the employment statistics, which skews and hides the real unemployment stats through selected occupational areas. The number of these being technical occupations.

    Reply to: Economic things I learned or overheard this Memorial Day   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • Firstly they could tie the Stimulus to U.S. citizens, U.S. workers and domestic production. They refused. Secondly, they could tackle some major problems in trade policy that promote labor arbitrage. Take for example China's currency manipulation. Thirdly, they could enact policies to stop the offshore outsourcing of any Federal and State contract. They could change the corporate tax code to give incentives hiring U.S. citizens. They can act or enable a private Venture capital system, which promotes domestic investment and again, the hiring of U.S. citizens for the resulting jobs. They can invest heavily in areas of innovation, but again, tying the R&D jobs to U.S. citizens.

    They refuse to do any of this due to corporate lobbyists as well as other nations lobbying our government.

    Reply to: Are Financial Conglomerates in a Position to Lend?   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • ... 16.2% raw.

    Table A-12. Alternative measures of labor underutilization

    And since the recession started over a year ago, there's going to be long term unemployed that start dropping off of the marginally attached figure even though they would take a job at a drop of a hat if it was available.

    Reply to: Economic things I learned or overheard this Memorial Day   15 years 6 months ago
    EPer:

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