US Politics Mega-thread - Page 207

On April 24 2013 03:03 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Three cheers for diversification!

Edit: Maybe it's time to start emphasizing financial literacy in education a bit more? If as a country we want to give more economic control to the middle class then we best make sure that they'll be fine stewards of the wealth.

On April 24 2013 02:48 farvacola wrote:
Gosh, I wish I had enough money to insulate myself from the rest of the country!



Pew: 93% of households lost net worth 2009-11

On April 24 2013 09:13 Tor wrote:


People have finite resources. Do you think people should invest in retirement savings over a house?

I think hoping education will solve systemic problems is a bit naive. Most people lost value in their house because of a bubble they weren't actually a part of, they were collateral damage. You just have to accept that the middle class is more vulnerable to risk than the wealthy, period.

On April 24 2013 14:23 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Do you think the opposite?

On April 24 2013 03:03 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Three cheers for diversification!

Edit: Maybe it's time to start emphasizing financial literacy in education a bit more? If as a country we want to give more economic control to the middle class then we best make sure that they'll be fine stewards of the wealth.

Budget Cuts, Minus the Inconvenience

On Monday, after the sequester cuts forced the Federal Aviation Administration to begin furloughs for air traffic controllers, delays began to build up at airports around the country. Travelers had to wait, but nothing delayed Republicans from scurrying away from all responsibility. Speaker John Boehner started using the Twitter hashtag #ObamaFlightDelays, the latest effort in his party’s campaign to blame all the pain of the sequester on the Obama administration while claiming all the credit for its effect on reducing the deficit.

“Why is President Obama unnecessarily delaying your flight?” Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, wrote in a message on Twitter. If the president wanted to, Republicans said, he could easily cut somewhere else and spare travelers any inconvenience.

As it happens, the sequester law is clear in requiring the F.A.A. and most other agencies to cut their programs by an even amount. That law was foisted on the public after Republicans demanded spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling in 2011. Since then, the party has rejected every offer to replace the sequester with a more sensible mix of cuts and revenue increases. Mr. Boehner is so proud of that strategy that he recently congratulated his party for sticking with the sequester and standing up to the president’s demands for tax increases.

But drastic cuts in spending carry a heavy price. Republicans certainly don’t want voters they care about — including business travelers and those who can afford to fly on vacation — to feel it. They continue to claim that the $85 billion in this year’s sequester can be covered by eliminating waste, fraud, consultants, and the inevitable grant to some obscure science or art project. And, of course, to programs for the poor.

You don’t see any Republican hashtags blaming the president for cutting housing vouchers to 140,000 low-income families, which has begun. These vouchers are given by cities to families on the brink of homelessness, and about half of them go to families with children.

There aren’t any angry tweets about the 70,000 Head Start slots about to be eliminated, which is forcing some school districts to distribute these valuable services by lottery. Or about the cuts to Vista, which is hurting the program that performs antipoverty work in many states. Or the 11 percent cut in unemployment benefits for millions of jobless workers.

The voiceless people who are the most affected by these cuts can’t afford high-priced lobbyists to get them an exception to the sequester, the way that the agriculture lobby was able to fend off a furlough to meat inspectors, which might have disrupted beef and poultry operations. And what was cut in order to keep those inspectors on the job? About $25 million from a program to provide free school breakfasts.

As bad as the sequester was, it is being made worse by these special-interest demands for exceptions, as well as politically motivated attempts to deflect the responsibility for pain.

The maneuvering shows the futility of trying to reduce the deficit with crude and arbitrary cuts. Both Senate Democrats and the White House have proposed budget plans that replace the sequester with a much better mix of spending cuts and revenue increases.

On Tuesday, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, proposed replacing the sequester for five months with unspent money from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those savings may not represent real money, but the idea is no more illusory than the Republican fantasy that billions can be cut with no real effect to the country.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/opinion/budget-cuts-minus-the-inconvenience.html

“I have obviously read the report and have referenced it a number of times,” Bowles said. “I know they had a worksheet error in the report and my understanding is that does make a difference.”

“But what it doesn’t change is the common sense and my own personal experience in both the public and private sector that when any organization has too much debt that is an enormous risk factor and your risks go up then people lending you money will want more money for their money,” Bowles said.

Source: http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/295017-bowles-dismisses-flaws-in-key-austerity-study

"While I think this policy is fundamentally right, I think it has reached its limits," Jose Manuel Barroso said during a conference here. "A policy to be successful not only has to be properly designed, it has to have the minimum of political and social support," Barroso explained.

Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/eu-barroso-austerity-policies-at-their-limits-2013-04-22

“The UK and almost all of Europe have erred in terms of believing that austerity, fiscal austerity in the short term, is the way to produce real growth. It is not,” Mr Gross told the Financial Times. “You’ve got to spend money.”

The investor’s comments are the latest indication of a shift in attitudes towards ongoing budget deficits as European economies show few signs of recovery. In 2010, Mr Gross had conversely warned that UK debt levels were too high, leaving gilts “resting on a bed of nitroglycerine”.

Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6c023bdc-a93c-11e2-a096-00144feabdc0.html

On April 25 2013 01:23 aksfjh wrote:
If I'm not mistaken, parallel doesn't get to post as much as some of us. His posting comes in bursts. His information is still relevant. Also notice that he actually puts information in his posts, Sermokala, as compared to much of the nonsense you espouse.

I was planning to bring up some points to his posts, but have been chin deep in work this morning.

On April 24 2013 18:29 paralleluniverse wrote:

What has diversification got to do with anything?

Are you suggesting that rich people have lived through the Great Recession just fine and gotten richer because they know how to diversify their portfolio, whereas, the rest don't?

And how exactly do you suggest we emphasize financial literacy, when most of these issues aren't even understood by experts? For example, how do you make money on the stock market? There are principles that most people think are correct, e.g. diversification, but there's still no known complete answer to the question. Or, when should I buy a house? Are you going to teach them that you shouldn't buy a house in a middle of a housing bubble and then give them a 5-step guide to detecting housing bubbles?

On April 25 2013 01:24 Sermokala wrote:
Austerity didn't win and isn't winning because its a smart good policy in any way. Its winning because there is literally nothing else out there to argue against it.

Because austerity is a plan to combat a national debt. What other economical plans are out there? Raise the national debt in some attempt to lower the national debt? Can you really sell that to people on the street?

Arguing against austerity is literally arguing against a wall holding some building up that you don't like. It really doesn't give a shit because its a wall.


Glad to see you too. His 3 posts in a row there weren't painted to anyone they were literally just commentary and random links and quotes to various far left blogs, with some far left news papers to give him an aura of credibility. In what aspect even though? None of them have any point, none of them have any direction, all of them are just hate and bashing people he doesn't agree with.

On April 25 2013 02:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

A lot of people went through the past decade with their only major asset being their house. When house prices went up they did well, when house prices went down they did bad. Moreover, when house prices went up they cashed out to finance current consumption.

That's not good decision making.

And when I'm talking about financial literacy I want people to understand the mortgage they're taking out, how to manage their personal finances and how to plan for their retirement. Basic stuff. Stuff that would have saved a lot of people from 'predatory lending' and the like.

As for "how do you make money on the stock market?" - how do you make money owning a home? At it's heart it's the same thing.