Florida State Seminoles

[Bklyn]

Colbert explains PAC vs Super PAC

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20 ... super-pacs

[Hizzy III]

Given that our rail line is at-grade and people in Houston don't really know how to walk the streets, I'm shocked this doesn't happen more often. That said, I hope the woman's okay.

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas ... 518831.php

Then again, I don't see how you could not see the train coming when you're downtown. I could see it if you were, say, in Midtown, the Museum District or just south of the TMC, but not downtown. You can't help but see that fucker coming.

[Bklyn]

"false flag" operations can be "extremely dangerous. You're basically using your friendship with an ally for your own purposes. Israel is playing with fire. It gets us involved in their covert war, whether we want to be involved or not."

http://www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... an/251434/

[eCat]

Obama loves all that covert mission shit. I bet he secretly wants to be Hannibal Smith

[Saint]

I'll bet he likes to go on a little covert mission when MIchelle's asleep by working from the back and getting that twat wet before she wakes up and plunges that shit in just as she comes to.

[Bklyn]

Interesting little view into job growth by decade in the last 70+ years...



http://seekingalpha.com/article/318129- ... ors_alerts

[sardis]

Interesting little view into job growth by decade in the last 70+ years...



http://seekingalpha.com/article/318129- ... ors_alerts

You would have to say technology, more than politics, is the reason. Since the mid 90s we've had to compete globally with white collar-type jobs. I can't think of any policy that would have stemmed that tide.

[Bklyn]

Actually, white collar jobs are relatively sticky here. Not too much executive exportation to Bangalore.

Manufacturing and some service (blue and light blue collar) jobs have been hit because of the "flattening" of the world. Those would be the major factors in job loss to the global economy. The thing is, all of the losses were not loss to that global economy. The other factor about this chart is that it gives you an aggregate look at the decade. I bet if you dug deeper into the numbers, you would see that construction took a HUGE hit in 2007 after the quant funds blew up...which lead to the mortgage bond explosion in 2008...that lead to the credit crunch and the Recession. Those construction jobs, due to hyper credit markets had a major impact on employment and they are gone now.

So, in essence, I think politics played a large part in that (the housing market boom that went bust due to a securitization market on steroids) as government (removal of) policy and (lack of) oversight was a major contributor to the bust.

Also, our education system and structure (Primary, Secondary and beyond) is such that we are not best positioned to take advantage of the changing global dynamics. That's a political issue.

Tech is huge, but our ability to best leverage technology throughout all income levels has to have a political/governmental component to it. It always has.

[sardis]

I guess your light blue collar jobs I considered white collar. My point was to the outsourcing of IT and other service types to India, etc. that exploded in the 90s-00s.

I think our country's math and science programs are good, it just hasn't been a preferred path for our upper tier of young people. The smart ones chose to pursue a more lucrative entrepenurial direction like finance, etc., a pursuit that is not so rewarding in most other countries as it was in the US. I think this is changing, my 16 year old son is pursuing a math/science type path and so are a large number of his classmates. They see the future in it.

Demographics also played a role. The labor workforce grew very little while th X'ers were coming aboard during the 90's-00's. The echo boomers (second biggest demographic) are now coming aboard when the economy is struggling, a bad combination for them and causing our unmployment to skyrocket.

[Bklyn]

I speak of education in more dynamic ways than just Math/Science. I'm speaking about teaching kids to compete in today's economy. I think it's deeper than Math/Science.

Anyway, I'm watching this SC debate on Fox News. Jesus, it kills me how everyone hates regulation until they are aggrieved. We're in the state that we are because of atrophied regulatory oversight.

[Bklyn]

This article is a little old, but dude is so quirky (and smart) I felt like posting it. Some people claim the place is run like a cult...but all I know is they make lots of dough.

In looking at the economy as a whole, Dalio pays particular attention to the amount of credit that banks and other financial institutions are creating, which he regards as a key factor in over-all spending. This may seem like common sense, but until recently many economists and policymakers didn’t pay much heed to the growth of credit, concentrating instead on the amount of actual money in the economy—notes, coins, bank deposits—which is largely determined by the Federal Reserve. In July, 2007, Dalio and a co-author wrote in Bridgewater’s daily newsletter about “crazy lending and leveraging practices,” adding, “We want to avoid or fade this lunacy.” A couple of weeks later, after the subprime-mortgage market froze up, Dalio’s newsletter declared, “This is the financial market unraveling we have been expecting. . . . This will run through the system with the speed of a hurricane.”

Searching for historical precedents, Bridgewater put together detailed histories of previous credit crises, going back to Weimar Germany. The firm’s researchers also went through the public accounts of nearly all the major financial institutions in the world and constructed estimates of how much money they stood to lose from bad debts. The figure they came up with was eight hundred and thirty-nine billion dollars. Armed with this information, Dalio visited the Treasury Department in December, 2007, and met with some of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s staff. Nobody took much notice of what he said, but he went on to the White House, where he presented his numbers to some senior economic staffers. “Ray laid out the argument that the losses he foresaw in the banking system were astronomical,” a former Bush Administration official who attended the White House meeting recalled. “Everybody else was talking about liquidity. Ray was talking about solvency.”

His warnings ignored in Washington, Dalio issued more jeremiads to his clients. “If the economy goes down, it will not be a typical recession,” his newsletter said in January, 2008. Rather, it would be a disaster in which “the financial deleveraging causes a financial crisis that causes an economic crisis. . . . This continues until there is a reflation, a currency devaluation and government guarantees of the efficacy of key financial intermediaries.” As the crisis deepened, Dalio continued to assess it far more accurately than many senior policymakers did. When the government allowed Lehman Brothers to collapse, he despaired. “So, now we sit and wait to see if they have some hidden trick up their sleeves, or if they really are as reckless as they seem,” the newsletter said on September 15, 2008.



Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011 ... z1jh4sdR4G

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011 ... ntPage=all

[sardis]

Ok Paultards, 0% income tax? Are we really supposed to take this guy seriously?

[eCat]

he's been preaching that for awhile.

in 2008 Ron Paul showed that if we abolished the income tax, we only went back to like 1996 levels of revenue in the federal government.

I don't know about you but I'd like that 15% or whatever it is in my paycheck every week.

[eCat]

I speak of education in more dynamic ways than just Math/Science. I'm speaking about teaching kids to compete in today's economy. I think it's deeper than Math/Science.

Anyway, I'm watching this SC debate on Fox News. Jesus, it kills me how everyone hates regulation until they are aggrieved. We're in the state that we are because of atrophied regulatory oversight.

I thought last night's debate was pathetic on everyone's part. If a foreigner was watching that debate last night they'd think we are Sparta.

[eCat]

This article is a little old, but dude is so quirky (and smart) I felt like posting it. Some people claim the place is run like a cult...but all I know is they make lots of dough.

In looking at the economy as a whole, Dalio pays particular attention to the amount of credit that banks and other financial institutions are creating, which he regards as a key factor in over-all spending. This may seem like common sense, but until recently many economists and policymakers didn’t pay much heed to the growth of credit, concentrating instead on the amount of actual money in the economy—notes, coins, bank deposits—which is largely determined by the Federal Reserve. In July, 2007, Dalio and a co-author wrote in Bridgewater’s daily newsletter about “crazy lending and leveraging practices,” adding, “We want to avoid or fade this lunacy.” A couple of weeks later, after the subprime-mortgage market froze up, Dalio’s newsletter declared, “This is the financial market unraveling we have been expecting. . . . This will run through the system with the speed of a hurricane.”

Searching for historical precedents, Bridgewater put together detailed histories of previous credit crises, going back to Weimar Germany. The firm’s researchers also went through the public accounts of nearly all the major financial institutions in the world and constructed estimates of how much money they stood to lose from bad debts. The figure they came up with was eight hundred and thirty-nine billion dollars. Armed with this information, Dalio visited the Treasury Department in December, 2007, and met with some of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s staff. Nobody took much notice of what he said, but he went on to the White House, where he presented his numbers to some senior economic staffers. “Ray laid out the argument that the losses he foresaw in the banking system were astronomical,” a former Bush Administration official who attended the White House meeting recalled. “Everybody else was talking about liquidity. Ray was talking about solvency.”

His warnings ignored in Washington, Dalio issued more jeremiads to his clients. “If the economy goes down, it will not be a typical recession,” his newsletter said in January, 2008. Rather, it would be a disaster in which “the financial deleveraging causes a financial crisis that causes an economic crisis. . . . This continues until there is a reflation, a currency devaluation and government guarantees of the efficacy of key financial intermediaries.” As the crisis deepened, Dalio continued to assess it far more accurately than many senior policymakers did. When the government allowed Lehman Brothers to collapse, he despaired. “So, now we sit and wait to see if they have some hidden trick up their sleeves, or if they really are as reckless as they seem,” the newsletter said on September 15, 2008.



Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011 ... z1jh4sdR4G

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011 ... ntPage=all

The end of the article is what I was looking for

his spring, he told me that economic growth in the United States and Europe was set to slow again. This was partly because some emergency policy measures, such as the Obama Administration’s stimulus package, would soon come to an end; partly because of the chronic indebtedness that continues to weigh on these regions; and partly because China and other developing countries would be forced to take drastic policy actions to bring down inflation. Now that the slowdown appears to have arrived, Dalio thinks it will be prolonged. “We are still in a deleveraging period,” he said. “We will be in a deleveraging period for ten years or more.”

Dalio believes that some heavily indebted countries, including the United States, will eventually opt for printing money as a way to deal with their debts, which will lead to a collapse in their currency and in their bond markets. “There hasn’t been a case in history where they haven’t eventually printed money and devalued their currency,” he said. Other developed countries, particularly those tied to the euro and thus to the European Central Bank, don’t have the option of printing money and are destined to undergo “classic depressions,” Dalio said. The recent deal to avoid an immediate debt default by Greece didn’t alter his pessimistic view. “People concentrate on the particular thing of the moment, and they forget the larger underlying forces,” he said. “That’s what got us into the debt crisis. It’s just today, today.”
--------------------------

This same belief held by Ron Paul and is why his supporters are so annoying - because they have a fatalistic version of what will happen to the country if anyone but Ron Paul determines the governments fiscal actions - and is exactly why he rails about the Fed and comes off as a lunatic to those that just like the banks, the U.S. is too big to fail.

[sardis]

In 2007, we collected $2.4 trillion of which $1.1 trillion was collected by individual income taxes. That means you want a budget of $1.3 trillion. That is lower than 1996. You have to go back as far as the 1980's to get an equivolent budget.

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=2007+fed ... 24&bih=574

I agree taxes are too high, but there ain't no way you can make it without some income tax revenue. There is also a moral obligation by all to at least pay some for the protection that the US government provides.

[eCat]

I'm trying to find what his numbers are now.

On May 7, 2001, Ron Paul wrote the following column:

The Case Against the Income Tax

Could America exist without an income tax? The idea seems radical, yet in truth America did just fine without a federal income tax for the first 126 years of its history. Prior to 1913, the government operated with revenues raised through tariffs, excise taxes, and property taxes, without ever touching a worker’s paycheck. In the late 1800s, when Congress first attempted to impose an income tax, the notion of taxing a citizen’s hard work was considered radical! Public outcry ensued; more importantly, the Supreme Court ruled the income tax unconstitutional. Only with passage of the 16th Amendment did Congress gain the ability to tax the productive endeavors of its citizens.

Yet don’t we need an income tax to fund the important functions of the federal government? You may be surprised to know that the income tax accounts for only approximately one-third of federal revenue. Only 10 years ago, the federal budget was roughly one-third less than it is today. Surely we could find ways to cut spending back to 1990 levels, especially when the Treasury has single year tax surpluses for the past several years. So perhaps the idea of an America without an income tax is not so radical after all.

[eCat]

Here is the Washington Post crunching the numbers on his claims in 2007. He said we'd go back to 2000 levels when they say it was 1995

"Expounding on his proposal for abolishing the income tax, Paul claims this would still leave the U.S. Treasury with roughly the revenues it had in 2000, in the final year of the Clinton administration. A post on the Paul campaign website explains that individual income taxes account for “approximately one third of federal revenue.” Unfortunately for the tax slashers, the one-time Libertarian candidate for president is wrong on both counts. According to the Congressional Budget Office, individual income taxes represent between 45 and 49 percent of federal tax revenues, depending on the year. For financial year 2007, total receipts from individual income tax were in the region of $1.1 trillion dollars. If you eliminated all that revenue, the federal budget would shrink to the size it was around 1995."

The Washington Post seems like that information is some damning indictment against. 45% as opposed to 33%, 1995 as opposed to 2000? who cares - the premise is solid.

The idea seems radical because we are conditioned to believe that we must pay income tax to support government spending, and the liberals talk about funding the safety net and the conservatives talk about funding the military - and both use fear tactics to convince you that you should give the government 10%, 15%, 20% or more of your income earned to support it.

Even the most ardent Ron Paul supporter realizes you can' t do that right away. His first step would be to pull back the support we have globally in the tune of 1 trillion in military bases, foreign aid and various expenditures overseas - and take that money to shore up the huge mountain of obligations that will be overwhelming this country as the boomers continue to retire, then you cut out programs domestically like the 5 he has mentioned, reduce the size of the federal government by hundreds of thousands of people and start developing an approach to dial back the dependency of future generations on Social Security and Medicare.

After that, then Americas fiscal house should be at the point you can talk about abolishing the income tax.

[AugustWest]

RP doesnt have a snowball's change of getting the income tax repealed. however if he at least tries then some compromise will be reached which reduces the tax rate, complexity of the tax code etc. RP has several ideas that I dont think have realistic chances of coming to fruition, but I think we need to be moving in those directions rather that following the paths that we've been on.

[eCat]

RP doesnt have a snowball's change of getting the income tax repealed. however if he at least tries then some compromise will be reached which reduces the tax rate, complexity of the tax code etc. RP has several ideas that I dont think have realistic chances of coming to fruition, but I think we need to be moving in those directions rather that following the paths that we've been on.

exactly - Only one candidate is serious about addressing the fiscal crisis we are facing and the others act like cutting future spending (based on increased spending) by 10% is some meaningful shit. If Ron Paul doesn't get it accomplished, at least he will have pushed an agenda that no other candidate would have even considered.

But another harsh reality is that no matter who pushes force austerity measures, they will be the most reviled president in recent history. Americans understand we need to make cuts, but they aren't willing to accept them. If you don't give them a nugget - like abolishing the income tax then you have no leverage. The tea party candidates will even cave on him.