US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1204

On August 06 2014 16:27 WhiteDog wrote:

Yes, but economists would say that such irrationnal event is statistically irrelevant at the scale of a society.

On August 06 2014 15:53 WhiteDog wrote:

It is right because we die more or less. So the money change hand one day or another. But the real theorical justification for this idea is that economists back then considered that people are "rational agents", so people save money to buy something : what's the point of saving money for itself ? Don't you save for something tomorrow ?
It is a poor theorical point of view, that consider two things criticized since then :
- all people are strong enough in math to evaluate the risk - which suppose that all risks are evaluable (economists gently considered that most economic phenomena follow a normal law since a guy, I believe called Blanchard, said it in early XXth century, there are no knightian uncertainty - uncertainty that you can't predict -, or tail risks - specific risks with a strong change in the value, like the price of an asset going from 1 to 100 in a day - which basically mean that you can accurately predict all risks), so agents don't need savings "in case something happen".
- money in itself has no value and no interests for an agent, it is only an intermediary in exchange (which is why most economic model do not include money in their modelization - think about that a little, that's absurd). You're supposed to acquire money to buy something, so agents don't put money in savings "for itself".

You know full well that the curve has no value jonny because that spending was artificially high thanks to the banking system - and you go back to Piketty's point on inequality and capital. Before the crisis the bottom 50% in the income hierarchy spent 110 % of their income : it s debt. The US spending prevented a crisis, but it doesn t mean that agregate demand was OK.

WASHINGTON, Aug 6 (Reuters) - The national battle over same-sex marriage will resume on Wednesday when a federal appeals court in Cincinnati convenes a special three-hour hearing to consider cases that have worked their way up from lower courts in four different states.

In all of the six cases to be heard, lower court judges have sided with gay rights advocates either by striking down state bans on gay marriage, or by requiring state governments to recognize gay marriages from states where they are legal.

Federal appeals courts play a crucial role in flagging legal issues for potential U.S. Supreme Court review. So all eyes will be on whether or not the Cincinnati court concurs with other courts that have backed gay marriage in the past year.

"The courts that have ruled so far have created a judicial consensus that is striking and almost unprecedented on a civil rights issue," said James Esseks, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which backs gay marriage.

Gay marriage opponents do not dispute that, but point out that the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately decide the issue.

"Everybody knows that regardless of what a particular court rules, this will eventually end up at the Supreme Court," said Austin Nimocks, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative group that objects to same-sex marriage.

Medicare spent more than $30 million in 2012 on questionable HIV medication costs, the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in an investigation published Wednesday.

The possible fraud schemes were all paid for by Medicare's prescription drug program known as Part D. Among the most egregious:

In Detroit, a 77-year-old woman purportedly filled $33,500 worth of prescriptions for 10 different HIV medications. But there's no record she had HIV or that she had visited the doctors who wrote the scripts.

A 48-year-old in Miami went to 28 different pharmacies to pick up HIV drugs worth nearly $200,000, almost 10 times what average patients get in a year. The prescriptions were supposedly written by 16 health providers, an unusually high number.
And on a single day, a third patient received $17,500 of HIV drugs — and none the rest of the year. She got more than twice the recommended dose of five HIV drug ingredients.

The inspector general's report raise new questions about Medicare's stewardship of Part D. A ProPublica series last year showed that Medicare's lax oversight has enabled doctors to prescribe massive quantities of inappropriate medications, has wasted billions on needlessly expensive drugs and exposed the program to rampant fraud. Part D cost taxpayers about $65 billion in 2013.

On August 06 2014 23:05 corumjhaelen wrote:
I don't know what equality you're trying to,write between deposits and banks investments, but it certainly isn't grounded in reality. As for the economy adjusting toward equilibrium, is it anything more than a fairy tale for eco101 ?

On August 07 2014 03:07 WhiteDog wrote:

You don t know what you are talking about. Saying it is because of th equilibrium doesn t quite cut it.
The idea of equilibrium is between offer and demand, and it is the pure and perfect market that create this meeting, you have to build up your theory to link it offer and demand to savings.

On August 06 2014 16:46 WhiteDog wrote:

Haha that s a good point ! Neo classical economists belived the economists was an "hard" science (Walras compare it to physics I believe) so history or social science were uninteresting for them.

On August 07 2014 05:37 Rassy wrote:
Usa and Europe are making a severe mistake with their foreign policy of sanctions against rusia.
Despite everything putin has been a blessing for the west for the past 20 years.
He did the most important thing,keeping rusia stable.
The sanctions are undermining rusia,s economy and with that the position of president putin.
The west feels very confident but this is a very dangerous game,the outcome of rusia faling into chaos is completely unpredictable.

On August 07 2014 05:42 Rassy wrote:
"Money for investments come from savings"

How can people still be so naïve. Money for investments comes from the printing press.
This is not a tinfoil hat theory, this is reality lol.
Almost no one today understands how the system works

President Barack Obama edged up to questioning the Federal Communications Commission's newly proposed net neutrality rules, a heavily criticized plan that would favor Internet content providers that can afford to pay more for faster delivery of their services.

Obama campaigned heavily on net neutrality during his 2008 election, but has been largely silent on the issue since the FCC voted to kill it with new Internet service rules that would create "fast lanes" for content providers that can afford to pay for them; those that can't will be hit with slower traffic.

Obama echoed one of progressives' major criticisms of the new rules at the U.S. Africa Business Forum in Washington on Wednesday, saying he is in favor of "an open and fair Internet."

"One of the issues around net neutrality is whether you are creating different rates or charges for different content providers. That’s the big controversy here," he said. "You have big, wealthy media companies who might be willing to pay more but then also charge more for more spectrum, more bandwidth on the Internet so they can stream movies faster or what have you. And I personally -- the position of my administration, as well as I think a lot of companies here is you don’t want to start getting a differentiation in how accessible the Internet is to various users."

The president said an open Internet will allow for "the next Google or the next Facebook" to enter the arena, and succeed.

On August 07 2014 07:02 aksfjh wrote:

He has no idea what he's talking about, and is likely getting conflicting data from his various advisers.

On August 07 2014 05:34 WhiteDog wrote:

No ! Your arguments are just flat out wrong. First you state that it is the equilibrium, then you talk about Bank ! In a society with general equilibrium Banks are not even needed since rational agent by themqelves invest their savings : why would you want to pass by a bank if people have enough information to invest by themselves. I was not talking about reality but about the theorical premises behind the idea S = I.
Finally Banks do not invest they loan and take an interest rate, so the savings do not disappear : you trade liquidity for a property right, a debt, that has value (higher than the money given) but is less liquid and has some risk.

On August 07 2014 05:37 Rassy wrote:
Usa and Europe are making a severe mistake with their foreign policy of sanctions against rusia.
Despite everything putin has been a blessing for the west for the past 20 years.
He did the most important thing,keeping rusia stable.
The sanctions are undermining rusia,s economy and with that the position of president putin.
The west feels very confident but this is a very dangerous game,the outcome of rusia faling into chaos is completely unpredictable.

On August 07 2014 05:37 Rassy wrote:
Usa and Europe are making a severe mistake with their foreign policy of sanctions against rusia.
Despite everything putin has been a blessing for the west for the past 20 years.
He did the most important thing,keeping rusia stable.
The sanctions are undermining rusia,s economy and with that the position of president putin.
The west feels very confident but this is a very dangerous game,the outcome of rusia faling into chaos is completely unpredictable.