2/16/2009 12:44:21 PM

i hope when i go on jeopardy, sweet georgia brown is an answer

2/16/2009 3:42:40 PM

http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2009/02/getting-it-exactly-backwards.html

2/16/2009 4:48:37 PM

Looks like the stock market is already reacting to St. Barry's plan.


http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/17/business/18marketsA.php

2/17/2009 7:38:26 PM

The plan was a foregone conclusion as of the start of last week, so any market moves based on it would have happened then.

More bad news from banks around the world have sent global stocks tumbling. Every major index is down this week, not just the Dow.

2/17/2009 7:42:41 PM

How is this going to help the country? It isn't creating new jobs, it's just giving people who already have jobs something else to do. If anything this will draw more Hispanics into America to work in road construction. A friend of my family lost his job with Caterpillar. He has an economics degree and was in their marketing department. He's not interested in working in road construction. We are an educated society where a large part of the work force doesn't do intense labor. The store managers of Circuit City and all of the other retail stores that have gone out of buisness aren't certified welders who are going to weld bridges. They were talking to an engineer on the news who claimed that building a bridge in one city was going to create something like 138 new jobs, but once again he is another person who will be invovled in the public works programs that already has a job.

2/17/2009 8:02:31 PM

It intrigues me that the University System is still requiring budget cuts, and the State just got 6 billion from the stimulus. Basically Oblinger said they have no choice but to cut jobs to meet the required budget cut. I wonder how do they determine who to let go. I heard from someone that works there that they go by age and years of service, so I would assume that less than a year, and older people, especially ones close to retirement let let go first? Either way no one that works for the State in any agency or system should have to face a pink slip.

2/17/2009 9:12:55 PM

not all faculty/staff are 100% state-funded

i would suspect that the non-state-funded employees would be the first to go... grants and donations aren't quite coming in as fluid as some programs need, so they'll have to cut accordingly

there's also chance of restructuring org charts and then the redundancies might be trimmed

also, for anyone interested, here is the link to the chancellor's most recent statement on the budget
http://ncsu.edu/about-nc-state/chancellor/speeches-and-writings/budget-update-feb16/index.php

[Edited on February 17, 2009 at 9:33 PM. Reason : link]

2/17/2009 9:30:45 PM

I would have thought the opposite - that people getting paid by the State would be let go ahead of people getting paid by grant money since that State doesn't pay them. But it does make sense now that I think about it more.

2/17/2009 9:42:05 PM

And now, the President has introduced a $50B homeowner rescue bill.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/17/news/economy/foreclosure_preview/index.htm?postversion=2009021717

$700B
$787B
+$50B
$1.5T


In one year. Jesus.

2/18/2009 7:58:57 AM

At least it not being spend on war and can practically help the average American.

2/18/2009 8:35:11 AM

So far, the war in Iraq has cost around 1/3 of that to put it in perspective. I was opposed to the Iraq war from the start, but I think the comparison is relevant.

That the money will help people, in the long run, is debatable.

2/18/2009 9:36:03 AM

Congress is talking about a second stimulus bill already.


Holy mother of God when will this madness stop?!

2/18/2009 10:07:38 AM

Quote :

"At least it not being spend on war and can practically help the average American."

The average American is going to be crushed, just a bit, under the future debt payments or, potentially, in a currency crisis. That is ignoring the Americans which will be deprived of credit as all the nation's capital flows to Washington to fund this massive spending.

At any given instance, the money borrowed by individual A cannot be borrowed by individual B. As such, if individual A (the government) depletes the nation's capital markets, the rest of us just have to pound sand.

2/18/2009 10:13:39 AM

So my current 30 yr fixed is at 4.875. Think I'll be able to get a lower rate under the mortgage modification plan?

2/18/2009 12:32:52 PM

damn i should have waited, i bought in july and got 5.75

2/18/2009 12:56:20 PM

Quote :

"$700B $787B +$50B $1.5T "

when does it stop?

2/18/2009 2:24:31 PM

Well, either the government volunteers to stop borrowing or the government will run out of lenders, forcing the federal reserve to start printing money to keep interest rates down, causing inflation. As inflation sets in, causing the dollar to slide, foreign holders of U.S. debt, perceiving a negative return on their U.S. investments, will start to sell in search of a better return elsewhere, forcing the printing of exponentially more money until a currency crisis sets in and the dollar becomes unconvertible, leaving America a far poorer nation than when it all started.

But that is a long way from here. The U.S. Treasury would need to borrow trillions more to exhaust America's lenders. But, what it will do, is divert capital away from America's businesses and individuals, exascerbating the already deep recession.

[Edited on February 18, 2009 at 2:55 PM. Reason : .,.]

2/18/2009 2:53:14 PM

I don't think this trillion is the back-breaking straw on the 58 trillion sized pile.

2/18/2009 2:56:50 PM

Quote :

"will start to sell in search of a better return elsewhere"

And won't find it

2/18/2009 3:06:27 PM

Quote :

"I don't think this trillion is the back-breaking straw on the 58 trillion sized pile"

No, but it's a long step toward socialism, and the people were lied to and led to believe that it would actually stimulate the economy. Obama even tried to fool conservatives into supporting it by saying it would cut taxes, but that turned out to be only 13 dollars a week. It also set the stage for a backdoor implementation of nationalized healthcare. The tax cheat Daschle said that the reason the nationalized healthcare program failed in the 90's was that the people were told too much about it, so apparently Comrade Obama has decided to dupe the ignorant masses that voted him in by calling a spending bill a stimulus, and not telling them that it is laying the groundwork for nationalized healthcare. The medical records database will open the door for a lot of privacy intrusions, also.

2/18/2009 3:42:09 PM

Quote :

"long step toward socialism"

LOL

[Edited on February 18, 2009 at 3:45 PM. Reason : that's a lot of crazy]

2/18/2009 3:44:37 PM

the communism is not funny

2/18/2009 3:50:46 PM

not crazy at all. He's dead on about the sneaky healthcare shit.

Quote :

"I don't think this trillion is the back-breaking straw on the 58 trillion sized pile."

I thought it was 78 trillion? Oh who's counting?!

2/18/2009 3:52:17 PM

Quote :

"And won't find it"

You don't need to look hard to beat a negative return rate. Remember: the Federal Reserve is keeping U.S. rates around 1%; if the dollar being to slide consistently at, say, 2%, then putting the money in your mattress (0%) will beat the net return on U.S. treasuries (-1%).

2/18/2009 4:00:06 PM

^^ you don't think claiming that Obama is a pathological liar that is trying to trick people in to making the US communist isn't crazy?

This is essentially the same thing salisburyboy use to say, except replace Obama with the Jews (although according to old salisburyboy, the blacks were being manipulated to do the Jews' bidding).

ON a side note, where are you getting these ideas from? I don't think Fox News would push them, so that leaves either Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh, but Coulter hasn't been in the spotlight for a while now.

[Edited on February 18, 2009 at 4:05 PM. Reason : ]

[Edited on February 18, 2009 at 4:05 PM. Reason : ]

2/18/2009 4:04:56 PM

Quote :

"^^ you don't think claiming that Obama is a pathological liar that is trying to trick people in to making the US communist isn't crazy?"

And you don't think politicians would ever exploit a crisis to push forth otherwise controversial policies? I assume you were in a coma shortly after 9/11? Or how about that old gem from Obama's own chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel:

Quote :

"Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste"

But hey, if you're that credulous, I've got some oceanfront property to sell you...

2/18/2009 4:16:26 PM

I think we're at the point where this is all just funny numbers and Trillion dollar plans will become more common place.

2/18/2009 4:19:14 PM

^^ huh?

Where did I remotely indicate I don't think politicians will be politicians?

Obama is no where close to a communist, and is not secretly trying to become Hugo Chavez.

And Rahm Emanuel didn't mean what most people take that statement to mean. It's unfortunate for him though that he chose those words.

[Edited on February 18, 2009 at 4:21 PM. Reason : ]

2/18/2009 4:20:53 PM

Quote :

"huh? Where did I remotely indicate I don't think politicians will be politicians?"

You seemed to ridicule the idea of Obama pushing for large government interventions in other sectors through the back door of a very large, very hasty stimulus bill as "crazy." So what exactly are we to draw from this?

The fact is, even without the healthcare issue, this is a very large bill which contains many elements completely ancillary to the idea of "stimulus" - it's a pent-up Democratic wishlist. Add onto that the fact that it is essentially a political process of picking winners and losers (via targeted subsidies) and it adds up to a pretty large thumb on the scale from the government.

Quote :

"Obama is no where close to a communist, and is not secretly trying to become Hugo Chavez."

Don't recall where anyone made that particular claim, although he's apparently also shown no particular distaste for solidifying Bush's grabs on executive power by re-asserting Bush's "state secrets" doctrine to block litigation over the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) - two things he railed against as a senator. (Hope and change!)

So, let's see - massive interventions into the private sector through a so-called "stimulus" + cementing executive power-grabs from Bush... yeah, I don't see how anyone would have any reason for concern. None at all.

Quote :

"And Rahm Emanuel didn't mean what most people take that statement to mean. It's unfortunate for him though that he chose those words."

Then what exactly did he mean? Enlighten us poor, uneducated schmoes. Especially given that the words come from the mouth of a ruthless political operator - one that would send dead fish wrapped in newspaper to his opponents as a regular tactic. I'm sure he was all about rainbows and kittens in his statement - really.

2/18/2009 4:31:33 PM

Quote :

"You seemed to ridicule the idea of Obama pushing for large government interventions in other sectors through the back door of a very large, very hasty stimulus bill as "crazy.""

I was ridiculing the idea that Obama was a secret, lying communist.

Quote :

"The fact is, even without the healthcare issue, this is a very large bill which contains many elements completely ancillary to the idea of "stimulus" - it's a pent-up Democratic wishlist. Add onto that the fact that it is essentially a political process of picking winners and losers (via targeted subsidies) and it adds up to a pretty large thumb on the scale from the government."

Any government spending at all could be attacked with these same accusations, but that doesn't really mean it's true. How "many" of the elements are ancillary to the idea of stimulus? What exactly does "ancillary to the idea of stimulus" even mean? That it doesn't stimulate? That it won't stimulate? That it MIGHT stimulate? You are speaking in vague partisan rhetoric. You'd make a good congressman.

There are plenty of valid objections to this bill, but you don't touch on any of them.

[Edited on February 18, 2009 at 4:38 PM. Reason : ]

2/18/2009 4:34:36 PM

So pushing for a laundry list of Democratic projects in a so-called "stimulus" bill, threatening dire consequences if it's not done right now!one!11!, then immediately bending your transparency pledge in a rush to sign it is acting as a paragon of transparency.

Okay...

Quote :

"Any government spending at all could be attacked with these same accusations, but that doesn't really mean it's true. How "many" of the elements are ancillary to the idea of stimulus? What exactly does "ancillary to the idea of stimulus" even mean? That it doesn't stimulate? That it won't stimulate? That it MIGHT stimulate? You are speaking in vague partisan rhetoric. You'd make a good congressman."

Vague partisan rhetoric? Give me a break. Plenty of people before me have broken down the bill by what's going where - I somehow doubt this is what you're after. Plenty of other folks have shown that much of the money won't even been spent this year - so much for the "stimulus" part of that then, either. You want a breakdown? It's been done before, and it can be posted here again and again.

But let's face it, you aren't looking for answers for this - you're looking to make petulant little snide remarks to make yourself look credible.

Quote :

"There are plenty of valid objections to this bill, but you don't touch on any of them."

This statement is frankly just idiotic, and quite telling at that.

[Edited on February 18, 2009 at 4:44 PM. Reason : .]

2/18/2009 4:38:41 PM

^ Do you honestly expect any president that's trying to hock a piece of legislation to say "I really, really would like this now, but honestly, it can wait a few months, whenever you have time I guess"?

And if you define transparency relative to the past presidents, the Obama admin has represented a paragon of transparency.

I understand needing to keep pressure on our leaders to do the right things, but your angles of attack don't really help in finding any better solutions.

The stimulus bill is based on bad data and untested hypotheses, but i've yet to see an analysis and/or data that points in another direction that's based on anything better. This is practically the nature of economics.

2/18/2009 4:47:42 PM

Quote :

"you can give a man a fish and feed him for a day, or you can teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime"

sounds like all that is going on is 'feeding'.

2/18/2009 4:50:09 PM

Quote :

"Do you honestly expect any president that's trying to hock a piece of legislation to say "I really, really would like this now, but honestly, it can wait a few months, whenever you have time I guess"?"

Maybe I'm dating myself a little bit, but I seem to recall an age when not everything looked like the week after 9/11. Maybe that's just me.

And maybe I'm just a rustic who thinks that a 1000-page bill should get more than 24 hours between printing and passage. You know, for the people voting on it to actually read it.

And maybe when a president makes a specific pledge of posting bills for a five-day public comment period and then immediately violates that pledge, I might think, "Hey, that's kind of lame."

Quote :

"And if you define transparency relative to the past presidents, the Obama admin has represented a paragon of transparency."

Pushing through a bill in which a printed copy of the final draft was available for less than 24 hours before the vote and then not even putting it up for the promised "public comment" period does not exactly compare as favorably to the Bush administration's model of transparency as you might believe. Nor do other things Obama has already done, such as re-asserting state secrets doctrine over terrorism cases (like TSP and extraordinary rendition) - unrelated to this specific case, but part of a broader trend of quickly drawing a line around what exactly we're going to be "transparent" about.

Quote :

"I understand needing to keep pressure on our leaders to do the right things, but your angles of attack don't really help in finding any better solutions."

Real hard to do that when we're rushing the whole thing through based on scare-mongering and not even honoring out own public comment periods, now isn't it? Especially when there's no possible way anyone had a chance to actually read the whole thing before it was passed, much less signed into law.

Quote :

"The stimulus bill is based on bad data and untested hypotheses, but i've yet to see an analysis and/or data that points in another direction that's based on anything better. This is practically the nature of economics."

Acknowledging the fact that the business cycle exists? Allowing institutions that made bade decisions to actually - gasp - fail? Allowing house prices to actually reach a level more reflecting equilibrium instead of trying to continue the policy of asset inflation which landed us in this spot in the first place? Proposals to limit ourselves to actions which have limited scope and known effectiveness, like extending unemployment benefits? This comes without even trying.

2/18/2009 4:58:05 PM

Quote :

"Acknowledging the fact that the business cycle exists? Allowing institutions that made bade decisions to actually - gasp - fail? Allowing house prices to actually reach a level more reflecting equilibrium instead of trying to continue the policy of asset inflation which landed us in this spot in the first place? Proposals to limit ourselves to actions which have limited scope and known effectiveness, like extending unemployment benefits? This comes without even trying."

Record unemployment levels, negative GDP growth, instability in all the world-wide markets is part of the business cycle?

I can reasonably see allowing GM et al to fail, but if you're referring to letting the banks fail (depending on what you mean by fail), there's no way that could happen without causing even deeper problems. The stimulus bill doesn't really address this either.

Housing prices have been dropping and continue to drop. The elements of the stimulus relating to home ownerships don't inflate property values like the sub-prime loans did. They encourage people who have the means to spend money they were thinking about spending anyway.

The stimulus does augment the unemployment program anyway.

And just because YOU would rather do small things individually doesn't mean doing large things simultaneously is wrong, especially when, at least by the numbers, we're potentially in the middle of a large problem. I somehow doubt that if you were in charge, you'd be as timid as you are now in enacting a solution.


http://www.recovery.gov/

[Edited on February 18, 2009 at 5:12 PM. Reason : ]

2/18/2009 5:09:00 PM

Quote :

"Record unemployment levels, negative GDP growth, instability in all the world-wide markets is part of the business cycle?"

Yes. Yes it is.

Quote :

"I can reasonably see allowing GM et al to fail, but if you're referring to letting the banks fail (depending on what you mean by fail)"

By fail I mean nationalization by the FDIC and selling off in a reverse auction to the lowest bidder. And yes, the current round of financial stress is particularly harsh, maybe the FDIC will wind up running at an overall loss over the decade because of this, but if Congress had backed the FDIC rather than the Federal Reserve this time around, it would have been perfectly capable of dealing with whatever bankruptcy remains to occur in the financial system.

2/18/2009 5:33:20 PM

^ Nationalization by the FDIC would have still incurred massive debt for the government, near what we're spending on the stimulus i imagine (although I haven't seen any calculations of this value). I don't see how that's materially different than just bailing them out, with conditions.

2/18/2009 5:40:00 PM

The difference is the moral hazard that we create when we bail them out.

2/18/2009 5:47:06 PM

Not to mention the clearing out from the market of irresponsible players, leaving room for the more responsible players to fill the void.

2/18/2009 5:49:41 PM

In terms of moral hazards, bailing out banks are the least of our government's worries... by a LOT.

This doesn't excuse it, but it means I don't feel bad for dismissing it, if it turns out okay.

[Edited on February 18, 2009 at 5:50 PM. Reason : ]

2/18/2009 5:49:55 PM

Quote :

"In terms of moral hazards, bailing out banks are the least of our government's worries... by a LOT."

plz explain.

I maintain that one of the biggest reasons we got into this mess was the moral hazard created by the GSE status of Fannie and Freddie.

2/18/2009 5:54:18 PM

THis may be too pedantic, but I was thinking things like the Trail of Tears, slavery, jim crow laws, tuskegee experiments, Iran-Contra and its ilk, Panama Canal, and various other sundry affairs our governments been involved with.

I'm not convinced the non-existence of Fannie/Freddie would have prevented this. From what I understand, the investors' computer models based on data up to the late 90s had sub-prime loans classed to be fairly reliable. And using this data, the predicted more sub-prime loans would continue to be reliable. But they didn't factor in that the previous sub-prime loans weren't made willy-nilly and sometimes dishonestly, the way many of the "toxic" loans we now are having problems with were made. These models would have still existed sans freddie/fannie, and at some point after the "Enron Loophole" was opened, some investment banker would have reached the same wrong conclusions that were reached anyway, causing the liquidity crisis when all the bad loans grossly underperformed.

[Edited on February 18, 2009 at 6:09 PM. Reason : ]

2/18/2009 6:05:32 PM

Neal Boortz's stimulus package/what he would do if he were President today:

Quote :

" * Say something positive about the power of the free market system * Call for immediate passage of the FairTax * Lower the top tax rate to 20% while waiting for the FairTax to pass * Immediately eliminate capital gains taxes * Declare a tax amnesty to allow all American funds invested abroad to come to work in our economy with no tax consequences * Cut the corporate tax rate significantly. Having the world's second-highest corporate tax rate doesn't exactly make us a magnet for new businesses and jobs. * Repeal Sarbanes-Oxley * Declare a tax holiday of from four to six months where the federal government forgives all individual income and payroll taxes."

makes sense to me. what are the cons here?

2/18/2009 6:09:02 PM

Quote :

"THis may be too pedantic, but I was thinking things like the Trail of Tears, slavery, jim crow laws, tuskegee experiments, Iran-Contra and its ilk, Panama Canal, and various other sundry affairs our governments been involved with."

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

A moral hazard is a further incentive to act irresponsibly. See: shielding irresponsible actors from the consequences of their actions.

[Edited on February 18, 2009 at 6:10 PM. Reason : .]

2/18/2009 6:09:29 PM

^^ he should have left out the Fair Tax thing if he wants to be taken seriously. I stopped reading his list after that.

[Edited on February 18, 2009 at 6:10 PM. Reason : ]

2/18/2009 6:09:57 PM

without getting into a whole fair tax pissing contest, would the fair tax not put more money in the pockets of the middle class immediately? money that would be spent?

the other points are fair.

2/18/2009 6:13:13 PM

like a teenager with a brand new credit card

Where does this spending end? Holy shit. Throwing good money after bad money. It doesn't work. We are extremely fucked. And apparently this bipartisan bullshit he was spewing during his campaign was smoke up your asses. Hey Obama, keep the change.

[Edited on February 18, 2009 at 6:35 PM. Reason : .]

2/18/2009 6:29:18 PM

We gotta pump some money into the economy to get it moving again. Otherwise we risk a deflationary spiral leading to a full-on depression.

2/18/2009 6:52:53 PM

→

2/18/2009 6:57:40 PM