EPTthe money loss on those loans were exaggerated as blackholes by the right so the report is still positive. i've said all along that the DoE portfolio is quite decent outside of solyndra
US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1444
| Forum Index > Closed |
Read the rules in the OP before posting, please. In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. | ||
|
oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
the money loss on those loans were exaggerated as blackholes by the right so the report is still positive. i've said all along that the DoE portfolio is quite decent outside of solyndra | ||
|
Sub40APM
6336 Posts
On November 22 2014 06:05 JonnyBNoHo wrote: They report interest earned over losses incurred as $30 million out of about $22 billion disbursed. If the Treasury is paying just 1% interest on the amount disbursed, taxpayers are deep in the red. Edit: Also, if it were a private loan, the government could tax the interest. So there's some revenue foregone as well. First, its unclear what the Treasury's funding structure is, if these were funded on 2-3 year treasury bills that they roll over, they arent even paying 1%. Second, since the Federal Reserve has been the main purchaser of US Treasuries and it forks over its profits back to the US Treasury at the end of the year even if for some reason the Treasury funded this stuff with a longer duration instrument, the interest it paid out went back to it at the end of the year, minus a couple pennies they use to keep the lights turned on at the Fed. But keep shilling for Putin, the House of Saud and the Chavista scum. | ||
|
JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On November 22 2014 06:20 GreenHorizons wrote: Well not all of the (already financed) projects are paying interest yet? @EDIT:You did read why they did the program in the first place right? I imagine they're using the accrual method, which makes the issue of who hasn't paid in cash yet irrelevant. According to the doc I linked they're filling a financing gap. Assuming that's true, I don't see why they'd have to fill it at a subsidized rate. On November 22 2014 06:34 Sub40APM wrote: First, its unclear what the Treasury's funding structure is, if these were funded on 2-3 year treasury bills that they roll over, they arent even paying 1%. Second, since the Federal Reserve has been the main purchaser of US Treasuries and it forks over its profits back to the US Treasury at the end of the year even if for some reason the Treasury funded this stuff with a longer duration instrument, the interest it paid out went back to it at the end of the year, minus a couple pennies they use to keep the lights turned on at the Fed. But keep shilling for Putin, the House of Saud and the Chavista scum. The break even interest rate is far less than 1%, interest rates won't stay so low forever and the Fed has finished the taper. But yeah, we totally need to subsidize profitable businesses that would exist anyways because Putin is very scary guy. | ||
|
Sub40APM
6336 Posts
On November 22 2014 07:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote: The break even interest rate is far less than 1%, interest rates won't stay so low forever and the Fed has finished the taper. But yeah, we totally need to subsidize profitable businesses that would exist anyways because Putin is very scary guy. Lets say they funded it with a 3 year bill in 2010. Below 1%. It expired in 2013 and they refunded it with another 3 year, again below 1%. Seems like 6 years of funding for free is worth the price. I mean, not to you, obviously the DOE is cutting into Putin's budget for your shilling, but for America. But yes, sometime in the future interest rates might go up so that if the Treasury has to re-roll this debt again then maybe at some point in the future it would actually put the tax payers in the red. So a potential future loss is obviously much more important than the actual, present gain. | ||
|
JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On November 22 2014 07:55 Sub40APM wrote: Lets say they funded it with a 3 year bill in 2010. Below 1%. It expired in 2013 and they refunded it with another 3 year, again below 1%. Seems like 6 years of funding for free is worth the price. I mean, not to you, obviously the DOE is cutting into Putin's budget for your shilling, but for America. But yes, sometime in the future interest rates might go up so that if the Treasury has to re-roll this debt again then maybe at some point in the future it would actually put the tax payers in the red. So a potential future loss is obviously much more important than the actual, present gain. 3 year notes are currently yielding 0.96% so if you're loaning out $21.71 billion that costs you $208 million per year. | ||
|
[UoN]Sentinel
United States11320 Posts
| ||
|
Bigtony
United States1606 Posts
On November 21 2014 15:06 Danglars wrote: Yeah I was on phone, but what you see there was quoted in its entirety. Mimics my thoughts on it, in defiance of all these commentators making this out to be justified or no big deal. As for my state: Deep and continuing education problems. The impossibility of firing failing teachers due to union-negotiated rules and others (though two cases in the courts may help on that issue). The trouble educating hundreds of thousands of young kids where spanish is the primary language spoken at home, stressing teachers. The overall failings of common core and CA remains low for educational outcomes. As someone in education in the top state in the country (NJ - top 5 at least) - your poor educational outcomes have nothing to do with the "impossibility of firing failing teachers." New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and (pretty sure) New York all have strong unions and strict rules about termination but significantly better educational outcomes. There is no silver-bullet to education reform, but firing your veteran teachers isn't going to get you anywhere. Despite more invasive observation and data collection techniques, less than 10 percent of teachers were rated "partially effective" (rating 2 out of 4) and somewhere in the 1% range were rated ineffective (rating 1 out of 4). The I-don't-care-newspaper-reading-bad-teacher is exceptionally rare. In 5 years in the profession I've encountered 1 (out of several hundred co-workers) and they pressured him into resigning last year. Many of the teachers rated "partially effective" are new and will naturally improve (and most of them will nearly double in efficacy in just 1 year). Teaching ELL/Bilingual kids isn't ~that~ big of a problem - if your state/counties are properly funded and you're actively recruiting people who speak Spanish. The bigger problem is that those ELL/Bilingual kids are POOR. Unfortunately language education in the United States is shameful. More so than our Language Arts and Math ratings, our comparisons with other countries in foreign language learning are pitiful. Anyway, that's going off the topic at hand. You are right, the reforms in the pipeline should help CA a great deal, but you won't see the results for at least 4 years. Most politicians aren't willing to wait that long and instead will continue to belittle each other and do dumb shit, ruining any hope of progress. | ||
|
Yoav
United States1874 Posts
CA has rules completely different from NJ or comparable states. Much stricter on the whole first-in-first-out, with all the bullshit that attracts. And, for whatever it's worth, The problem isn't newspaper readers. The problem is teachers who are comparatively inferior. The same is true in any other profession. You don't just fire people so woefully negligent as to be twiddling their thumbs on the job... you also fire people who fail to meet performance standards. High performance jobs across fields pay people well, and fire them for insufficient results. The problem is that we pay teachers jack-all and give them near total job security. So it is treated as a low-skill, fallback field. This is a great disservice to the brilliant teachers out there (and all the people who should be teaching but don't because it seems "beneath them." If you adopt the model of DMV employees, that's what you get. If you adopt the model of professionals, you get better results as well as that respect teachers clamor for (and the good ones deserve). But the current situation is all sorts of bull. Republicans want to defund schools, and Democrats want to make teachers unfirable. And so we're left comparing the results of one kind of shit with another. I mean, one might be better, but they're still both shit. Completely agreed on language education. Really feel like it gets a short shrift in the US. | ||
|
Simberto
Germany11542 Posts
I am doing a 5 year education in my two main subjects that is only slightly below the level needed for someone doing a degree in those fields, and some additional teaching courses. Afterwards, there are two years of being basically a half-teacher in a school until i finally get my degree. Of course, in germany that also means that once you are done with that, you get a very comfortable job with reasonable pay (In my state the starting salary is 3440€/month). From what i found online, US teachers have a starting salary of ~3000$/month and only require a bachelors degree in their field. If you want to imrpove education, these are the numbers you want to look at. If you require more education for teachers, they will on average be better teachers, and especially you will mostly get people who actually WANT to be teachers instead of "Well i failed at a normal job, but i still got this bachelors degree, might as well go teaching". Of course, for that to happen you also need to increase the attractiveness of being a teacher, especially considering how expensive education is in the US and how much debt you will accrue trying to get a 5 years degree in teaching. Noone is gonna do that if they will only earn slightly more than a guy flipping burgers. But that is probably not a popular position because it costs money. Making it easier to fire teachers does not cost money, and while it also does not really help with the basic conundrum, it at least looks like you are doing something. | ||
|
coverpunch
United States2093 Posts
On November 22 2014 18:23 Simberto wrote: So, as someone studying to become a teacher, i am wondering what kind of education a teacher in the US needs. I am doing a 5 year education in my two main subjects that is only slightly below the level needed for someone doing a degree in those fields, and some additional teaching courses. Afterwards, there are two years of being basically a half-teacher in a school until i finally get my degree. Of course, in germany that also means that once you are done with that, you get a very comfortable job with reasonable pay (In my state the starting salary is 3440€/month). From what i found online, US teachers have a starting salary of ~3000$/month and only require a bachelors degree in their field. If you want to imrpove education, these are the numbers you want to look at. If you require more education for teachers, they will on average be better teachers, and especially you will mostly get people who actually WANT to be teachers instead of "Well i failed at a normal job, but i still got this bachelors degree, might as well go teaching". Of course, for that to happen you also need to increase the attractiveness of being a teacher, especially considering how expensive education is in the US and how much debt you will accrue trying to get a 5 years degree in teaching. Noone is gonna do that if they will only earn slightly more than a guy flipping burgers. But that is probably not a popular position because it costs money. Making it easier to fire teachers does not cost money, and while it also does not really help with the basic conundrum, it at least looks like you are doing something. A lot of this is pretty old hat arguments. Sure, America would have better teachers if incentives were in place to pay teachers better. But that usually ignores the fact that teachers' unions created a system that is good for incumbent teachers and very tough for young talent. They create job security for themselves precisely by ensuring that teaching is not as attractive a profession as it could be and killing any attempts to measure quality in a way that might be used to weed out bad incumbents (and let's face it, every attempt to measure quality is an attempt to fire old teachers and replace them with younger, cheaper ones). It would be interesting to hear your experiences in the future if Germany also has ways to ensure you are never TOO successful, meaning successful enough to replace a long-time teacher who has no intention of changing their methods or leaving before retirement. That's not to say old teachers aren't good or the union doesn't want what's best for the kids. But they are protecting their membership and ensuring no system can be created to entice young teachers to push out older ones before retirement, and the simple fact is that most of America's schools are already full up on teachers. I would also point out that money doesn't necessarily improve the quality or development of good professionals. Just ask bankers. | ||
|
Bigtony
United States1606 Posts
On November 22 2014 18:23 Simberto wrote: So, as someone studying to become a teacher, i am wondering what kind of education a teacher in the US needs. I am doing a 5 year education in my two main subjects that is only slightly below the level needed for someone doing a degree in those fields, and some additional teaching courses. Afterwards, there are two years of being basically a half-teacher in a school until i finally get my degree. Of course, in germany that also means that once you are done with that, you get a very comfortable job with reasonable pay (In my state the starting salary is 3440€/month). From what i found online, US teachers have a starting salary of ~3000$/month and only require a bachelors degree in their field. If you want to imrpove education, these are the numbers you want to look at. If you require more education for teachers, they will on average be better teachers, and especially you will mostly get people who actually WANT to be teachers instead of "Well i failed at a normal job, but i still got this bachelors degree, might as well go teaching". Of course, for that to happen you also need to increase the attractiveness of being a teacher, especially considering how expensive education is in the US and how much debt you will accrue trying to get a 5 years degree in teaching. Noone is gonna do that if they will only earn slightly more than a guy flipping burgers. But that is probably not a popular position because it costs money. Making it easier to fire teachers does not cost money, and while it also does not really help with the basic conundrum, it at least looks like you are doing something. You need a bachelor's degree + provisional certification (which typically takes another full year, including student teaching [what you call half-teacher]) + 1 year of teaching + on the job training. There are very few people who become teachers after "failing" at some other job. Typically the weak points are in the individual school districts. The bad one do not do a job mentoring and training their new teachers. The good school districts give better training and more guidance. That's not to say old teachers aren't good or the union doesn't want what's best for the kids. But they are protecting their membership and ensuring no system can be created to entice young teachers to push out older ones before retirement, and the simple fact is that most of America's schools are already full up on teachers. I've never seen a public school that couldn't use more teachers math, language arts, and Spanish teachers. The limiting factors are always space and money. | ||
|
{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
If you want to understand how little urgency there is among the American public about climate change, consider this: A new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute asked people about the severity of recent natural disasters. About six in 10 (62 percent) said climate change is at least partly to blame. About half -- 49 percent -- cited the biblical end times (as in, the apocalypse) for the recent natural disasters. That latter number is up five points from 2011. ![[image loading]](http://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/files/2014/11/EndTimes.gif) Michelle Boorstein has the big run-down of all the numbers from the survey, and we would urge folks to check out her story. The end-times view is held by especially large numbers of white evangelical Christians (77 percent) and black Protestants (74 percent). The fact that half of Americans cite the end times as a cause of recent severe weather events suggests a kind of fatalism that would certainly lead to less urgency when it comes to issues like climate change. Even many of those who believe in climate change -- and about one-quarter of Americans don't, per the survey -- seem to think natural disasters are part of something that is preordained. In addition, 39 percent of Americans say God would not allow humans to destroy the Earth (53 percent disagree). So, apparently, most of those who believe we're in the end times also believe God would intervene. Basically at least four in 10 Americans see little reason for a human response -- or, at least, doubt things will wind up being catastrophic. Source | ||
|
Sub40APM
6336 Posts
On November 22 2014 13:57 [UoN]Sentinel wrote: Where can I get a relatively unbiased look at the whole "executive amnesty" thing? As a legal immigrant I'm kinda curious just how much the playing field has the potential to change if this actually goes through http://www.vox.com/2014/11/20/7250255/immigration-reform-obama-executive-action | ||
|
GreenHorizons
United States23268 Posts
the simple fact is that most of America's schools are already full up on teachers. No idea how you arrive at that conclusion? As for the quality of teachers, when I went through school I had some good and some terrible. I've told about my history teacher who was actually just a terrible tennis coach/PE teacher who took on teaching a history class for extra cash. Also, how the classroom was the old weight room where they had to sell the 70's workout equipment to make room for us to sit (until the class turned into an extra gym class). From my experience poor schools (schools with largely impoverished students) are the ones that suffer most from these problems. They are full of new teachers looking to get their certification (they are inexperienced and could hardly handle a class of well educated well behaved students let alone the type of students they encounter at these schools), and older teachers who were willing to stay for one reason or another, many of whom have been beaten down by administrations and piss poor funding (all of my 'good' teachers universally reported spending their own income to provide supplies for class and for the less fortunate students). The new teachers leave as soon as they can to teach at a better school, and the old ones realize many of their students were passed along the system and end up in a high school classroom with elementary level reading and math skills. Then they get to choose between denying them a degree or fudging over the idea that they are woefully under-educated compared to a student from a higher end school with the same diploma. I think the compromise would lay in the timing. Democrats and Unions (at least I presume unions) don't literally want bad teachers to keep their job, they just don't want loosened rules to allow for the kind of stuff that happens at a corporation (where they have an employee for decades and now they make too much $$ so they fire them for bs reasons in order to hire someone to do the job (worse) for less. I'm for strict testing, but you only determine their professional fate off of a new generation. Essentially you start tracking kindergartners and their teachers performance. Instead of no one being able to pinpoint when a student stopped receiving adequate education, we would know precisely who left their students unprepared and could respond accordingly. The problem with performance based firing at the moment is you end up punishing high school teachers for not being able to stuff 3rd-9th grade in a single semester so of course their nearly illiterate students do poorly on tests designed to measure the teachers effectiveness. Finally, obviously education is failing if ~40% of Americans think that Climate change and "The End Times" are both legitimate explanations for recent weather events. | ||
|
oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
| ||
|
IgnE
United States7681 Posts
| ||
|
JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
Crude slide sparks oil-related debt fears LinkOn Energy Road, halfway between the West Texas towns of Midland and Odessa, the nodding oil wells that dot the surrounding fields have been complemented with a gleaming multimillion-dollar performing arts centre. Built with $20m of donated money and $45m of state funding, the centre is a physical monument to the wealth that has poured into a new generation of boomtowns across America thanks to a surge in US oil and gas production. A huge chunk of the shale oil boom can be traced back to Wall Street, where years of low interest rates have encouraged energy companies to fuel their growth by tapping eager investors in the bond and loan markets. Now with the US oil price slipping from $102.90 a barrel to a low of $74.21 in little more than three months, many are left wondering what will become of such companies and the credit investors who bet on them. More than that, the worry is that a downturn in oil-related debt could spark wider turmoil in the market for bonds and loans. + Show Spoiler + “We should be concerned,” says Oleg Melentyev, a credit analyst at Deutsche Bank. “Oil dropped 25 per cent in a matter of three months and nobody was predicting it – it just happened. We don’t have a high degree of confidence to say this is the bottom, we don’t know.” Almost 2,000 miles away from Mr Melentyev’s Wall Street offices, memories of the oil bust that spurred a statewide recession in the 1980s still loom large in Odessa. Here city officials are already on alert for a potential turn of the commodities cycle. “Our oil and gas businesses in West Texas are accustomed to the cyclical nature of the business and because of that last big bust an important lesson was learnt to not over extend,” says Mike George, president of the Odessa Chamber of Commerce. “As far as their borrowing capacity goes, I feel like the banks and the businesses have been very prudent during this recent high level of activity.” Others are not so sure. Mr Melentyev and his colleagues at Deutsche worry that the tendency of oil and gas companies to borrow to finance their operations has left the sector highly leveraged and susceptible to further declines in the price of oil. The analysts say a drop in oil prices to $60 a barrel could cause energy companies that have built their business on prices closer to $90 a barrel to default on their debt – a development that could “push the whole US energy sector into distress”. That might generate the first wave of corporate defaults following a six-year period when ultra-low interest rates and easy money have so far suppressed the number of corporate failures in the US. Just as the shale gas boom has transformed the landscape of West Texas – where, for a time, visitors were more likely to see fields full of hopping jackrabbits rather than nodding pumpjacks – it has had a similarly dramatic effect on the make-up of the US credit market. Energy bonds now account for 15.7 per cent of the $1.3tn junk bond market, according to Barclays data – up from just 4.3 per cent a decade ago. “It is the largest sector in our market so by definition it requires a little more attention, especially at a time when the underlying commodity is seeing a pretty significant move,” says Mr Melentyev. A similar trend has played out in the leveraged loan market – where the sector accounts for 4.6 per cent of outstanding loans, compared with 3.1 per cent in 2004, according to S&P Capital IQ. “Pretty much any US high-yield company could raise money at a very reasonable rate,” David Alterman, Credit Suisse North American head of the leveraged finance origination and restructuring group, says of the months before oil’s slide. “At the end of June the credit market started to buckle a little bit and that’s when we first started to see some chinks in the armour.” He says credit investors are now starting to differentiate between high and low-quality oil companies, with the yields of bonds issued by low-rated firms – which move inversely to prices – showing a “very pronounced jump”. Already the debt of some oil companies, such as Denver-based Venoco, is trading at distressed levels. Michael Cembalest, chairman of market and investment strategy at JPMorgan’s asset management group, worries that lower oil prices could affect even “investment-grade” energy companies with their relatively stronger balance sheets. He says Petrobras, PetroChina, Total, Shell and BP have been the biggest borrowers in recent years and only slightly more than half of the top 100 global energy companies have been generating more operating cash than they have been spending on capital. On Wall Street the bankers charged with selling energy deals to investors remain optimistic in the face of falling oil prices. “I sold deals when oil was $40 a barrel six years ago. When it’s still in the $70s I think we can make it work,” says Mr Alterman at Credit Suisse. “People will need to make adjustments to their business plans that were based on $90 a barrel, but there’s enough to do.” In Odessa, Mr George is hopeful too. “I do not anticipate there will be a major bust like back in the early ‘80s,” he says. “We do not see that coming.” Fears of a bust aside, it's nice to see part of the economy functioning properly. High prices led to increased profits, which led to increased supply and increased viability of alternatives, which is leading to lower prices and lower profits. | ||
|
GreenHorizons
United States23268 Posts
@2:30 "You... don't deserve to be here" | ||
|
JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On November 23 2014 09:37 GreenHorizons wrote: If this is how the immigration debate is going to look it's going to be tough for conservatives not to sound like jackasses. + Show Spoiler + https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24cW6nHddeA @2:30 "You... don't deserve to be here" So... that sentence fragment wasn't PC to your standards? If that is how the debate goes, 'liberals' lose by a landslide. | ||
|
GreenHorizons
United States23268 Posts
On November 23 2014 10:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote: So... that sentence fragment wasn't PC to your standards? If that is how the debate goes, 'liberals' lose by a landslide. I'm just saying telling Americans that various parts of their family "don't deserve to be here" isn't going to win any presidential election. O'Reilly is usually more moderate so that means the tea party folks are going to be saying much worse. I think the more policy directed question was from his guest who asked "what is the conservative plan for people like him" combined with O'Reilly's assertion that this is already "permanent" legalization (despite that not being legally true). For instance there will be millions of registered "illegal immigrants" waiting for the next president. Names, addresses, workplaces, and other information. Is the next republican candidate going to deport all those people (to enforce the law and override Emperor Obama's decree of amnesty blah blah blah..) or are they in effect going to give all of those people 'amnesty' anyway and let them stay here? | ||
| ||
