--> Stimulus protests across US today!!! <--

Originally posted by jfj123
reply to post by Dbriefed

 

Wow, there's a lot of real bored, neo-con sore losers huh??

They don't want a stimulus package and it looks like the republicans are deliberately trying to sabotage the package.

Just curious but whomever is not in favor of a stimulus package, what would you do to fix the country?

Instead of band aiding a severe, gangrenous wound I'd let it fail!

The more bailouts the longer it takes to fail and the harder it falls. Each bailout inflates the currency. You are printing more and more money. If a business is bad let it fail - the small guys don't get any help so why should the big ones.

If they keep going this course the dollar is worth nothing and they'll replace it with the amero.

So stop the bailouts, stop devaluing what's left of the USD and stop shackling your children with debt. It's not a hard decision to make is it?

Originally posted by vonholland
build Geothermal PPlants from www.turbojack.com for cheap electricity. tell the runners they cannot charge over 6 cents and 2cents. period. Rule of law.

give out the Earth4energy guide for free, and instead of stimulus rebates, have everyone at the IRS send pre built solar panels to every house.

give out books on shaker gardens. tell people to learn how and get crackin!

restrict foreign trade (yes i took economics) for anything that is not USEFUL. China sells a bunch of stuff, at our expense (go to chinatown in philly and you'll see what I mean).

legalize marijuana and other drugs. All of america now gets the tourism of Amsterdam!

well these are the points I agree on, sort of... geothermal, as I'm learning, isn't exactly free energy unless you have solar panels to offset the additional electricity requirements.

hence the prebuilt solar panels I guess

stop bringing junk in for people to buy - I'm all for that. how much money is wasted on crappy throwaway products, INCLUDING electronics. like my husband always says, they used to make t.v.'s to be fixed, now they make them to break down and be thrown away, so they can sell you another one.

I can remember when people used to garden a LOT and helping with freezing and canning each fall. a freezer full of veggies and fruit that weren't bought at the grocery store - imagine that.

and legalize marijuana at least - the war on that is a joke, and an expensive one.

as for these bailout protests, they are all well and good as long as people have other solutions in mind. otherwise they are just more hot air.

as for health care, we have universal health care in Canada, and no it's not perfect, but I know that whether I have money or not I can go see a doctor, get checked out, and if I can't afford the meds I need (whole other topic), there are plans in place to make sure I still get them. so this whole idea of universal health care I support.

I lived in the U.S. briefly, and one of my biggest fears (aside from getting used to the guns everyone seemed to have!) was that I would get sick while I was there and wouldn't be able to afford to go to the doctor. that was a very uneasy feeling, and I can't imagine dealing with that all my life.

I guess one question would be (and I honestly don't know the answer), why is Canada not as affected by all this as the U.S.? we are affected, certainly, but it does not seem as desperate here, or is that just the media hype going on down there that makes it seem that way?

at least people are paying attention and trying to do something. I don't know if it's the right thing (tho I tend to say yes it is), or what good it will do... but a disaffected apathetic public would certainly be worse. maybe a crisis like this, as scary as it seems to be, was needed to wake some people up to realize life is more than acquisition and mindless spending.

On his way out the door Bush gives a trillion dollar bailout to his Wall St buddies and bankers with absolutely no oversight or accounting of how these funds were to be used. All of this is done under another Bush administration threat that the world would end tomorrow if this bailout was not passed immediatly in the middle of the night. Up until then the economy was just peachy according to the administration.

Now Obama comes along with a stimulus package actually designed in a transparent manner that should distribute money to the middle class and offer good jobs to the middle class which just as in FDR's day should stimulate spending and the economy and these dimwits don't want it!

Like Bobby Jindal turning down relief to Louisiana. Nah they don't need any help. My God how stupid are these people? We need a program along the lines of the New Deal which the government is the employer of last resort and the super rich individuals and corporation are taxed within an inch of their lives.

Ridiculous is all I can say. The first time the middle class is offered relief these folks act as if they are being robbed!

I guess it is going to have to get to soup lines before these folks understand who is on their side. To bad.

Originally posted by Leo Strauss
On his way out the door Bush gives a trillion dollar bailout to his Wall St buddies and bankers with absolutely no oversight or accounting of how these funds were to be used. All of this is done under another Bush administration threat that the world would end tomorrow if this bailout was not passed immediatly in the middle of the night. Up until then the economy was just peachy according to the administration.

Now Obama comes along with a stimulus package actually designed in a transparent manner that should distribute money to the middle class and offer good jobs to the middle class which just as in FDR's day should stimulate spending and the economy and these dimwits don't want it!

Like Bobby Jindal turning down relief to Louisiana. Nah they don't need any help. My God how stupid are these people? We need a program along the lines of the New Deal which the government is the employer of last resort and the super rich individuals and corporation are taxed within an inch of their lives.

Ridiculous is all I can say. The first time the middle class is offered relief these folks act as if they are being robbed!

I guess it is going to have to get to soup lines before these folks understand who is on their side. To bad.

So you think all the pork that was put with that package was a good thing then, right? Transparent? Sure it was, if you had about four to five good days to read it first before they passed it. But, did they get that much time to read it? No they didn`t, they had between the hours of around ten thirty pm till nine am the next morning. Wow, that`s nice of them. And please, tell me just what part of this package was so great and how it`s going to help get us out of this mess we`re in. Let`s see, the new jobs they were talking about would not come on line for another two-three years, yea, that`s really going to help right now isn`t it? And these dimwits don't want it because they know that it will be their kids and grandkids who will have to pay for it, gee, sure, just what we all want to do is stick our future with paying for it all. Real nice of us grown ups to do.


"We need a program along the lines of the New Deal which the government is the employer of last resort and the super rich individuals and corporation are taxed within an inch of their lives."

No, we need to weed out the ones who caused this mess in the first place, and make them pay for it. Taxing those companies who didn`t cause this mess will only ruin it for the growth of those companies who are doing as they should.

"Ridiculous is all I can say. The first time the middle class is offered relief these folks act as if they are being robbed!"

Please show us just what kind of relief we are going to get. Use a little foresight and you can see who it is that will be robbed, our children and grandchildren will be robbed.

Originally posted by David9176
I remember reading about this and actually seen it reported on the news. I'm glad this is happening...

I agree.... if they didn't have the right to protest, they may actually get angry enough to take violent action.

This way, they can be like all the other protesters through the ages... Vocal... but Impotent.

Taxes are here. This isn't taxation without representation, so the whole chicago tea party thing is completely off base...

It's like the lady on Fox said the other day... "With all this tax the rich and give to the poor, it sounds like Peter Pan!"

In reality she meant "Robin Hood" Which just goes to show you how out-of-touch with historical references these protesters really are... God love em....

So are these people protesting against the bailout Bush signed for banks?
Hell, none of it’s real money, that‘s why it‘s so easy to throw a billion here and a billion there. So why are they crying now?

I just wish I could get some of that funny money in my bank account.

Auntie’s 2009 prediction: I predict a paper shortage in the near future.

So are these people protesting against the bailout Bush signed for banks?
Hell, none of it’s real money, that‘s why it‘s so easy to throw a billion here and a billion there. So why are they crying now?

I just wish I could get some of that funny money in my bank account.

Auntie’s 2009 prediction: I predict a paper shortage in the near future.

Sorry for the duplicate post.

reply to post by FiatLux


Read this short essay to give you a clue who you might want to "weed out"

The Global Financial Crisis: What Caused it, Where it is heading?*

by

Ravi Batra

© November 15, 2008

Professor, Department of Economics

Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas 75275, USA



Two thousand eight was year extraordinaire. It started off in a rather nonchalant way, but ended with a bang. Its myriad and breathtaking events caught the world off guard, but please allow me to say, arrogant as it sounds, that they did not surprise me, including the epoch-making victory of Barack Obama in the US presidential election. I had anticipated them all in two books more than two years ago. The first, Greenspan’s Fraud, was written in 2005, and the second, The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos, was finished before October 2006. In fact, the title of the second work itself reveals that I had anticipated an Obama-like revolution in the United States.

It now appears vain to remind the people of my forecasts, but see what I had to endure after I made them. Both books had served to reinforce my reputation as a crack pot, who sought public attention with bogus claims and phony prophecies that occasionally came true. Greenspan’s Fraud was especially galling to my fellow economists, even some of my colleagues. Alan Greenspan was still the chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States, and had been so for the past 18 years. Some people regard the Fed chairman, with his all-encompassing ability to influence interest rates globally, as the most powerful man in the world.

This is perhaps an exaggeration, but Greenspan, who had actually been in the limelight for over three decades, was more than just a Fed chairman. Investors around the world came to worship him in the 1990s, as share markets broke record after record in many nations. Best-selling author Bob Woodward, who achieved celebrity writing about the Watergate scandal, declared Greenspan as the Maestro in 2000 in a book with the same title. Others were equally euphoric about him. Some called him a rare genius, the best economist ever; even Queen Elizabeth chipped in and knighted him in 2002 as Sir Alan Greenspan. Here I was, a mere professor at Southern Methodist University, who had the temerity not just to criticize him but call his policies self-serving and fraudulent. My book’s title shocked the people, who in turn mocked me without reading my facts and arguments. But sometimes one has to bear insults to bring out the truth.

Where did I learn my economics? The question makes me nostalgic and takes me back into the 1960s, when I was a masters’ student at the Delhi School of Economics. There I studied under luminary professors such as K. N. Raj, Jagdish Bhagwati, Amartya Sen, and India’s current prime minister, Manmohan Singh. They were great teachers and taught me the fundamentals of modern economics.

However, there was one other teacher, whose theories were remarkably different and unknown. He was not even at the Delhi School. I met him in Lucknow, at the time a rather small town in India. He was Shri Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, a wonderful man of vast knowledge in many different areas. He had written books on history, economics and philosophy among others. Two points stood out in his theories. First, the foundation of prosperity is people’s purchasing power; second, rising inequality eventually destroys any economy.

I left India for the United States in 1966 to do a Ph. D., but Sarkar’s ideas stayed with me and followed me wherever I went. I studied classical economics, Keynesian thought, and numerous other schools, but none focused on what Sarkar had stressed. Finally, I decided to write about his ideas and introduce them to the world, because few paid attention to the gems he had offered. I wrote a number of books based on his theories, starting in 1978, but here I want to emphasize how his ideas enabled me to see through the vacuity and deception of Greenspan’s policies.

The Wage-Productivity Gap

Greenspan focused on company profits and labor productivity as the main engines of economic growth and prosperity. He believed that high profits generate high employment and high wages lead to joblessness. I will now show how this view is myopic and the sole cause of most of the economic travails afflicting the world.

Let me start with a universally acceptable statement. A healthy economy requires that there is a balance between supply and demand. Here supply means the production of goods and services offered to entire society, and demand means society’s demand for such things. Thus, economic balance requires that



Supply = Demand



Without this balance, there is either high unemployment or high inflation. The main source of supply is labor productivity, whereas the main source of demand is the real wage, or people’s purchasing power in Sarkar’s nomenclature. When productivity rises, production or supply goes up and when the real wage increases, consumer spending, and hence investment spending, go up. Because of this investment and new technology, productivity grows over time, which means supply rises over the years. Therefore, demand must also grow proportionately to maintain the economic balance, implying that the real wage must rise in proportion to productivity. However, Greenspan loved to see the rise in productivity but hated the rise in the real wage. He even wanted to abolish the minimum wage, and always argued against its rise, although relentless price increases in the United States had all but demolished its purchasing power. In this respect, the maestro had a lot of company, including the support of President George W. Bush and economic establishment. As a result, the U.S. minimum wage, which peaked at $10 per hour in 1969 in terms of 2008 prices, is now less than $7. Incidentally, the unemployment rate in 1969 was just 3.5 percent, among the lowest in US history.

If the real wage fails to grow as fast as productivity, then over time, a wage-productivity gap develops and



Supply > Demand



Then how do you maintain the indispensable economic balance? This is where the special genius of Greenspan, along with that of conventional economics, came into play. This is where liberal and conservative economists alike, some of them Nobel Laureates, preached their gospel and in the process failed the world.

There is another way through which demand can be raised—new debt. It is an artificial way, and cannot be used forever, but it can postpone the problem for a long time, while the potential economic imbalance builds and cumulates. From 1981 on, U.S. budget deficits, with Greenspan and company advising President Reagan, grew apace. Economists called it fiscal policy, but in reality it was a debt-creating policy. This is how the supply-demand balance was maintained in the presence of the rising wage gap. Thus, for a while, economic balance occurs when



Productivity growth = growth of the real wage plus debt

and

new debt = supply – demand



The Profit and Stock-Market Bubbles

Once productivity outpaces the real wage and debt fills the supply-demand gap, company profits skyrocket, because the entire fruit of rising productivity goes to capital income. However, these are debt-supported profits, because without this debt goods will be unsold and profits will fail to materialize. With rocketing profits come rocketing share prices, so everybody becomes happy and begins to dance. This is how Greenspan won the world’s adulation, and no one looked at the magical role played by debt.

Once federal debt began to sore in the United States from 1981 on, it took barely a year, before the Dow Jones Index (the Dow in short) began to rise. The Dow ended the year around 800, but climbed above 2,000 by mid-1987. It had taken the ballyhooed index about 100 hundred years to go past 1,000, but the next 1,000 came in merely two years. A grateful Reagan appointed Greenspan as the Fed chairman in August 1987, but two months later the maestro had to face the music of his own handiwork. The debt-built stock market bubble, founded by that debt-built profit bubble, crashed in the month of October. Greenspan had no idea of how the rising wage gap generates the supply-demand gap. Instead of focusing on wages, he turned to the other way of creating debt. He flooded the world with money and trimmed the interest rate to lure consumers into borrowing. New debt was now created with the help of fiscal policy as well as what economists like to call monetary policy. However, such euphemisms only mask the truth, which is that these policies solve the problem only by generating new debt.

With increasing use of computers and the Internet, productivity began to rise faster than before, while government policies restrained wage growth. So the wage gap continued to rise and actually accelerated. Not surprisingly, new debt played an even larger role during the 1990s. The government did not borrow as much as before, but the public did more than its share. The mushrooming U.S. trade deficit also made a contribution in this regard, because the rest of the world bought American government bonds with its trade surplus that resulted in its dollar hoard. Consequently, American interest rates remained low for a long time and lulled Greenspan and the fawning world into believing that his policies were actually responsible for the surface prosperity.

So the debt-and-stock-market party that had been derailed by the 1987 crash returned with a gusto. This time the world got drunk on the dot.com boom that took share markets to stratosphere, with the Dow crossing 10,000 in 1999. Still no one realized the crucial role played by new debt...

It hasn't helped that we've had lawyers or oilmen in charge
for thirty years either! Except for an actor. Go figure...
Doesn't that explain most of it?
Think of whats screwed up now and you'll notice a pattern
like the plague that leeches onto every facet of our society!!!

reply to post by Leo Strauss



Well, if we can bankrupt the Fed by making all these packages, I say more power to them. Then maybe we can set up something that could work for us, and not tax us to death or kill us with high interest rates. I like the idea of going over the Feds books to see just how they have robbed us all these years. They are now trying to get a bill through Congress that will give them the right to audit the books. I say good for them if they can get it done.

The Fed has always been the problem from the start. It is they who set all the economics and money standards. And just what kind of a job have they done? Not a very good one I must say. So let`s get rid of them.




[edit on 1-3-2009 by FiatLux]

reply to post by auntie_11k

Hehe! Good one. I know huh!
There's an idea, for all those "people" that are complaining
about the current bailout, send your extra refunds back then!!!

At least we get some this time instead of the richest cronies! Duh
Its all funny money, so what the h*** lets live it up!
That's what they do, isn't it? Go to Vegas, have massages, etc.
Oh, America, sweet land of liberty, of thee I see.

reply to post by FiatLux

Sorry for trackin' mud all over, that is an excellent idea!
The sooner we can get this over with, the better for all of us.
We need a major reset.
One that doesn't revolve on credit! The banking "way" has
dominated and controlled this system by it's very nature.
Time to pull the rug and let the big dumb dominos fall. Hard.

Originally posted by dodadoom
reply to post by FiatLux

 

Sorry for trackin' mud all over, that is an excellent idea!

The sooner we can get this over with, the better for all of us.
We need a major reset.
One that doesn't revolve on credit! The banking "way" has
dominated and controlled this system by it's very nature.
Time to pull the rug and let the big dumb dominos fall. Hard.

Don`t be sorry. The whole problem is, we have lived under the Feds thumb for way to many years. How is it, that a private bank can have so much power? Well, that is not hard to figure. Who owns the Fed? The Rockefellers and a few other rich people. Just like the central bank in England is owned by the Rothchilds and a few others. It is they who make the policies that we have to live under. Now, what does this tell you?

Maybe this is the only way we can get them off of our backs, by bankrupting them through over extending their wealth to the point where they can not cover it all. I say bring on the spending if it does just that. We will live through it, just as our parents and grand parents did in the twenties and thirties.



[edit on 1-3-2009 by FiatLux]

reply to post by FiatLux

Thank you for the reply. Just wondering how come more
sheeples don't realize the whole banking ponzi scheme
for what it is. Seems like some are waking up but we
continue to bad mouth each other.
Seems like the left and right will always still fight!
Meanwhile we keep giving money to the continually failing banks.
Just like in the manifesto plan.

Originally posted by dodadoom
reply to post by FiatLux

 

Thank you for the reply. Just wondering how come more
sheeples don't realize the whole banking ponzi scheme
for what it is. Seems like some are waking up but we
continue to bad mouth each other.
Seems like the left and right will always still fight!
Meanwhile we keep giving money to the continually failing banks.
Just like in the manifesto plan.

When you live under the cover of being comfortable with how things are being run for so many years, and the hardship has not hit you yet, well, when it does hit, cover your ears, the screaming will start. The bickering is what the rich want, it keeps those who are bickering from looking at the bigger picture, and that picture is the central banking systems. We right now, should be getting a system ready to be put online if the central banks fall apart.

common sacrameto!!!!!!!!!!!

Originally posted by David9176
I remember reading about this and actually seen it reported on the news. I'm glad this is happening...in reality..it's not much...but it's still a start.

It just has to be kept up.

If something like this shows up by me and I don't have to miss work for it (i can't miss work...just can't..baby on the way)...I'll be there along with the rest.

We definitely need more of this!

perfectly stated, my thoughts exactly.