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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. |
On April 25 2013 12:05 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2013 11:49 paralleluniverse wrote: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. 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. 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. Far left blogs? Most of those links are just news websites which have quoted some people. You can probably look up those quotes in far-right news sources, if they even talk about this stuff. Yes, austerity is a plan to combat national debt, except that study which claimed that national debt was close to the catastrophically dangerous 90% of GDP threshold where growth massively dropped of (or so they claimed) had a Excel error, which debunked it's findings. There is no need to combat national debt now. The 3 major economies with the amongst the highest debt are US, UK and Japan, they are also the countries that can borrow at the lowest interest rates. You say that there is no viable alternative to austerity as if you haven't even heard the other side of the story. But there is another side, debt is not at dangerous levels, government spending increases employment and output, which alleviates the waste of human capital caused by long-term unemployment. Keep monetary policy loose, interest rates at zero and continue QE to keep credit flowing and to encourage economic activity. There's no evidence to suggest that austerity is a wall holding a building up. In fact the evidence shows that the event that prevented the Eurozone from collapsing was when the ECB committed itself to unlimited support government bonds. Who's saying the sequester and spending cuts is holding the US up, as opposed to stifling growth? It seems that the case for austerity is falling apart, given the events of the week, that's why I wrote that post. The RR study came out in what 2010? Austerity isn't something that came out of nowhere in the past 3 years. The study didn't claim any massive event other then a lagging of national growth by 1% year over year. This idea that its going to collapse the austerity movement is a product of how hyper-partisan the anti-austerity crowd has gotten. There is no real alternative to it. I don't see how an attempt to balance nations budgets in order to fight off exponential sovereignty debt is in any way contrary to the ECB supporting buying government bonds. I would in fact say that they only way that they can support government bonds unlimited like they are is because china and Germany know that these countries are serious about being able to pay for these governments bonds that the ECB is buying. You can't deny that portugal/spain/greece are on fire literally and financially. Growth simply isn't something you can count on to put out these fires. No economist in the world should or would tell you that they know how to make growth happen. Raising taxes, lowering spending, is how everyone will tell you how a government can lower its deficit.
I never claimed that the debunking of RR will collapse the austerity movement. In fact, I ended my post saying that I'm doubtful that many austerity fanatics and policymakers would change their minds. My argument was that the events of the week, the debunking of RR, the IMF saying that UK should change course on austerity, the IMF saying that fiscal consolidation reduces growth (something they've been saying for a while now), a major European official admitting the austerity is at it's limit due to not having social support, even Bill Gross attacking austerity and saying that spending was needed, in total, in one week, seems to suggest that the tide is finally turning. While some people will never change their minds, no matter what, it seems a few people are having second thoughts.
You still claim that there is no alternative to austerity by simply ignoring the alternative.
The link in my previous posts shows that the death spiral of increasing borrowing costs that Eurozone countries were in, which led to harsh austerity, was not due to economic fundamentals, but rather a self-fulfilling panic. When the ECB stepped in as the lender of last resort to these government, their borrowing costs fell. It has nothing to do with China or Germany. That piece of evidence does not show that austerity saved the Eurozone, it shows that the ECB did, in fact austerity has brought depression to Europe. This was not a crisis caused by excessive government spending, it was caused by the GFC which started in the US housing market, in fact, none of the European countries in trouble had high government debt before the crisis, except Greece and Italy.
Also, the difference RR found over 90% was not 1% of growth, it was 2.8% vs -0.1%.
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Europe has different problems than the United States. The reason that various European countries are having to cut their budgets so much and raise taxes is that no private individuals want to loan them money and a sustainable interest rate. This forces them to cut their budgets and beg for money from other countries. Those other countries see them in a negative light and would not be willing to just bankroll stimulus spending to help them recover. I think they did ask for reforms to help with competitiveness, but those have been sort of ignored. In the end I don't see any alternative to "austerity" in Europe. Nobody is willing to finance any additional spending atm.
I see the US as totally different. Everyone wants to loan us money atm at interest rates below the rate of inflation and our debt problems are mostly from future entitlement spending. Given that, even minor spending to increase growth a tiny bit could help out a ton.
Overall tho, the biggest difference is that the US has a legitimate choice on which way to go, but I don't really think Europe does.
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On April 25 2013 12:34 DeltaX wrote:
Europe has different problems than the United States. The reason that various European countries are having to cut their budgets so much and raise taxes is that no private individuals want to loan them money and a sustainable interest rate. This forces them to cut their budgets and beg for money from other countries. Those other countries see them in a negative light and would not be willing to just bankroll stimulus spending to help them recover. I think they did ask for reforms to help with competitiveness, but those have been sort of ignored. In the end I don't see any alternative to "austerity" in Europe. Nobody is willing to finance any additional spending atm.
I see the US as totally different. Everyone wants to loan us money atm at interest rates below the rate of inflation and our debt problems are mostly from future entitlement spending. Given that, even minor spending to increase growth a tiny bit could help out a ton.
Overall tho, the biggest difference is that the US has a legitimate choice on which way to go, but I don't really think Europe does.
Well, yes, for the Eurozone periphery (most of the southern European countries that are now screwed), they don't have a choice. But in the core (i.e. Germany and France), they have a choice. The UK and US are also completely free to choose their policy.
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On April 25 2013 12:34 DeltaX wrote:
Europe has different problems than the United States. The reason that various European countries are having to cut their budgets so much and raise taxes is that no private individuals want to loan them money and a sustainable interest rate. This forces them to cut their budgets and beg for money from other countries. Those other countries see them in a negative light and would not be willing to just bankroll stimulus spending to help them recover. I think they did ask for reforms to help with competitiveness, but those have been sort of ignored. In the end I don't see any alternative to "austerity" in Europe. Nobody is willing to finance any additional spending atm.
I see the US as totally different. Everyone wants to loan us money atm at interest rates below the rate of inflation and our debt problems are mostly from future entitlement spending. Given that, even minor spending to increase growth a tiny bit could help out a ton.
Overall tho, the biggest difference is that the US has a legitimate choice on which way to go, but I don't really think Europe does.
If the ECB would expand the money supply and aggressively pursue an inflation target, especially one above 2%, that would help out the Eurozone a ton.
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More bad news for the Obama administration's handling of HAMP.
Modified mortgages show ‘alarming’ default trend
Troubled homeowners who received modified mortgages through a federal program are seeing high default rates, a troubling trend that officials inadequately understand, according to an investigator’s report released Wednesday.
The oldest permanent modifications made through the federal Home Affordable Modification Program, which launched in 2009, were redefaulting at a rate of 46.1% as of March 31, according to the report from the special inspector general overseeing the Treasury Department’s efforts to shore up the U.S. financial system. HAMP’s permanent modifications from 2010 have redefault rates ranging from 28.9% to 37.6%. ...
When Treasury launched HAMP, officials said the program could help 3 million to 4 million at-risk homeowners avoid foreclosure. However, as of March 31, only about 2 million HAMP modifications had been started, and 54% of these have been cancelled, according to the report. ...
Link
According to CNBC banks are continuing to switch to their own modification schemes.
A previous article that touches on some reasons why HAMP was been a failure.
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On April 26 2013 03:23 JonnyBNoHo wrote:More bad news for the Obama administration's handling of HAMP. Show nested quote +Modified mortgages show ‘alarming’ default trend
Troubled homeowners who received modified mortgages through a federal program are seeing high default rates, a troubling trend that officials inadequately understand, according to an investigator’s report released Wednesday.
The oldest permanent modifications made through the federal Home Affordable Modification Program, which launched in 2009, were redefaulting at a rate of 46.1% as of March 31, according to the report from the special inspector general overseeing the Treasury Department’s efforts to shore up the U.S. financial system. HAMP’s permanent modifications from 2010 have redefault rates ranging from 28.9% to 37.6%. ...
When Treasury launched HAMP, officials said the program could help 3 million to 4 million at-risk homeowners avoid foreclosure. However, as of March 31, only about 2 million HAMP modifications had been started, and 54% of these have been cancelled, according to the report. ... LinkAccording to CNBC banks are continuing to switch to their own modification schemes. A previous article that touches on some reasons why HAMP was been a failure.
When combined with the Treasury’s apparent lack of concern about oversight or abuse, the “trial” modification scheme enabled mortgage servicers—and by extension, the banks that owned them—to profit by exploiting borrowers. The easiest way to do this was for the servicers to “lose” and fabricate documents. Suppose you applied for a mortgage modification under HAMP. You were assured by your servicer that your “trial” modification would almost certainly be made permanent. After making all of your payments for months, often for more than a year, you are told that you did not qualify for a permanent modification because you had not supplied the proper papers. As a result, you now owe all of the money you would have paid had there been no trial modification, plus large fees for having been “late” in making those payments. Failure to pay the lump-sum bill leads to immediate foreclosure.
This process ruined many who got “trial” modifications. Plenty of them could have sold their homes at a loss, retained some savings, and preserved their credit score. Thanks to HAMP, however, they lost everything. According to Mr Barofsky, the biggest victims were contractors and other small businessmen who could no longer afford to finance their operations once the credit reporting agencies declared them “delinquent.” Investors were also harmed. They needlessly lost money by selling homes in foreclosure instead of modifying the mortgages to make them affordable. Moreover, the lion’s share of any proceeds from the foreclosure auction went to the servicers rather than investors. The banks, which own the servicers, benefit handsomely from all of these transfers.
Holy crap. That would probably explain a great deal of it.
This seems like more of a problem with government and banks in general though. Obama does share some blame, but I think it would happen regardless of administration.
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On April 26 2013 03:34 aksfjh wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2013 03:23 JonnyBNoHo wrote:More bad news for the Obama administration's handling of HAMP. Modified mortgages show ‘alarming’ default trend
Troubled homeowners who received modified mortgages through a federal program are seeing high default rates, a troubling trend that officials inadequately understand, according to an investigator’s report released Wednesday.
The oldest permanent modifications made through the federal Home Affordable Modification Program, which launched in 2009, were redefaulting at a rate of 46.1% as of March 31, according to the report from the special inspector general overseeing the Treasury Department’s efforts to shore up the U.S. financial system. HAMP’s permanent modifications from 2010 have redefault rates ranging from 28.9% to 37.6%. ...
When Treasury launched HAMP, officials said the program could help 3 million to 4 million at-risk homeowners avoid foreclosure. However, as of March 31, only about 2 million HAMP modifications had been started, and 54% of these have been cancelled, according to the report. ... LinkAccording to CNBC banks are continuing to switch to their own modification schemes. A previous article that touches on some reasons why HAMP was been a failure. Show nested quote +When combined with the Treasury’s apparent lack of concern about oversight or abuse, the “trial” modification scheme enabled mortgage servicers—and by extension, the banks that owned them—to profit by exploiting borrowers. The easiest way to do this was for the servicers to “lose” and fabricate documents. Suppose you applied for a mortgage modification under HAMP. You were assured by your servicer that your “trial” modification would almost certainly be made permanent. After making all of your payments for months, often for more than a year, you are told that you did not qualify for a permanent modification because you had not supplied the proper papers. As a result, you now owe all of the money you would have paid had there been no trial modification, plus large fees for having been “late” in making those payments. Failure to pay the lump-sum bill leads to immediate foreclosure.
This process ruined many who got “trial” modifications. Plenty of them could have sold their homes at a loss, retained some savings, and preserved their credit score. Thanks to HAMP, however, they lost everything. According to Mr Barofsky, the biggest victims were contractors and other small businessmen who could no longer afford to finance their operations once the credit reporting agencies declared them “delinquent.” Investors were also harmed. They needlessly lost money by selling homes in foreclosure instead of modifying the mortgages to make them affordable. Moreover, the lion’s share of any proceeds from the foreclosure auction went to the servicers rather than investors. The banks, which own the servicers, benefit handsomely from all of these transfers. Holy crap. That would probably explain a great deal of it. This seems like more of a problem with government and banks in general though. Obama does share some blame, but I think it would happen regardless of administration.
It's possible that another administration would have made the same errors in structuring the program (assuming they're a bug and not a feature). But the errors were at some point known and tolerated.
One of the most damning passages in Mr Barofsky’s entire book occurs when Mr Geithner is confronted about these problems:
"Helping the banks, not homeowners, did in fact seem to be Treasury’s biggest concern. We learned that when, later that fall, we were invited to another oversight meeting with Geithner, GAO, and the COP [Congressional Oversight Panel, led by Elizabeth Warren]. For a good chunk of our allotted meeting time, Elizabeth Warren grilled Geithner about HAMP, barraging him with questions about how the program was going to start helping homeowners. In defense of the program, Geithner finally blurted out, ‘We estimate that they can handle ten million foreclosures, over time,’ referring to the banks. ‘This program will help foam the runway for them.’ A lightbulb went on for me. Elizabeth had been challenging Geithner on how the program was going to help home owner, and he had responded by how it would help the banks. Geithner apparently looked at HAMP as an aid to the banks, keeping the full flush of foreclosures from hitting the financial system all at the same time…Allison had used the phrase ‘helping them earn their way out of this’ during part of a more extended conversation that summer about his worry that the banks could still collapse. HAMP was not separate from the bank bailouts; it was an essential part of them."
Emphasis mine.
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On April 26 2013 03:44 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2013 03:34 aksfjh wrote:On April 26 2013 03:23 JonnyBNoHo wrote:More bad news for the Obama administration's handling of HAMP. Modified mortgages show ‘alarming’ default trend
Troubled homeowners who received modified mortgages through a federal program are seeing high default rates, a troubling trend that officials inadequately understand, according to an investigator’s report released Wednesday.
The oldest permanent modifications made through the federal Home Affordable Modification Program, which launched in 2009, were redefaulting at a rate of 46.1% as of March 31, according to the report from the special inspector general overseeing the Treasury Department’s efforts to shore up the U.S. financial system. HAMP’s permanent modifications from 2010 have redefault rates ranging from 28.9% to 37.6%. ...
When Treasury launched HAMP, officials said the program could help 3 million to 4 million at-risk homeowners avoid foreclosure. However, as of March 31, only about 2 million HAMP modifications had been started, and 54% of these have been cancelled, according to the report. ... LinkAccording to CNBC banks are continuing to switch to their own modification schemes. A previous article that touches on some reasons why HAMP was been a failure. When combined with the Treasury’s apparent lack of concern about oversight or abuse, the “trial” modification scheme enabled mortgage servicers—and by extension, the banks that owned them—to profit by exploiting borrowers. The easiest way to do this was for the servicers to “lose” and fabricate documents. Suppose you applied for a mortgage modification under HAMP. You were assured by your servicer that your “trial” modification would almost certainly be made permanent. After making all of your payments for months, often for more than a year, you are told that you did not qualify for a permanent modification because you had not supplied the proper papers. As a result, you now owe all of the money you would have paid had there been no trial modification, plus large fees for having been “late” in making those payments. Failure to pay the lump-sum bill leads to immediate foreclosure.
This process ruined many who got “trial” modifications. Plenty of them could have sold their homes at a loss, retained some savings, and preserved their credit score. Thanks to HAMP, however, they lost everything. According to Mr Barofsky, the biggest victims were contractors and other small businessmen who could no longer afford to finance their operations once the credit reporting agencies declared them “delinquent.” Investors were also harmed. They needlessly lost money by selling homes in foreclosure instead of modifying the mortgages to make them affordable. Moreover, the lion’s share of any proceeds from the foreclosure auction went to the servicers rather than investors. The banks, which own the servicers, benefit handsomely from all of these transfers. Holy crap. That would probably explain a great deal of it. This seems like more of a problem with government and banks in general though. Obama does share some blame, but I think it would happen regardless of administration. It's possible that another administration would have made the same errors in structuring the program (assuming they're a bug and not a feature). But the errors were at some point known and tolerated. Show nested quote +One of the most damning passages in Mr Barofsky’s entire book occurs when Mr Geithner is confronted about these problems:
"Helping the banks, not homeowners, did in fact seem to be Treasury’s biggest concern. We learned that when, later that fall, we were invited to another oversight meeting with Geithner, GAO, and the COP [Congressional Oversight Panel, led by Elizabeth Warren]. For a good chunk of our allotted meeting time, Elizabeth Warren grilled Geithner about HAMP, barraging him with questions about how the program was going to start helping homeowners. In defense of the program, Geithner finally blurted out, ‘We estimate that they can handle ten million foreclosures, over time,’ referring to the banks. ‘This program will help foam the runway for them.’ A lightbulb went on for me. Elizabeth had been challenging Geithner on how the program was going to help home owner, and he had responded by how it would help the banks. Geithner apparently looked at HAMP as an aid to the banks, keeping the full flush of foreclosures from hitting the financial system all at the same time…Allison had used the phrase ‘helping them earn their way out of this’ during part of a more extended conversation that summer about his worry that the banks could still collapse. HAMP was not separate from the bank bailouts; it was an essential part of them." Emphasis mine.
Again, this is something that has been going on this entire crisis. The only (inside) person that seems to care about actually helping people in all this is Warren.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
the far left sure raced to the right in a hurry.
the overemphasis on banks also overlooks the idea that giving out a loan is supposed to carry risk. if the risk is not there, such as in a bubble in which the loans are unloaded as soon as they are doled out, then you get bad things. the banks assume risk when they made these loans and it's not a clear cut deal whether state power should be exercised to force some soon to be homeless family pay the debt, or the banks assume the loss of their bad decision.
if the banks were private individuals, or a king, the debt could be forgiven in a jubilee to keep stability of the system and not create so many debt slaves. a king to whom all debt is owned has already taken the loss. he realizes that the debts won't ever be paid, but he can also register the burden this debt has on the debtor, who nevertheless cannot pay.
this balancing is absent in the modern system. banks can sell the bad mortgages for cents on the dollar, but the power of the state still enforces the contract as universal rule.
in a way this focus on finance stability etc is ini the same vein of QE etc, which works through massaging the same actors. it is a resignation to the power of an imaginarily idealized finance system.
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On April 25 2013 06:46 Sermokala wrote:
I entirely agree with you there farva. The government really needs to provide something for the middle and lower class to invest their money into something even just while interest rates are kept so ungodly low and saving accounts are a joke. Rise-reward metrics aside the government needs to provide at the very least a single standard for the market to move around. The shipping system was created out of the US mail and I gotta believe something greater can come out of US investments or something.
Imagine selling t-bills in slices of $100 to $10 available to people straight out of their paycheck. Would get governments a lot more flexibility in how they have to approach their debt and give people and easy way to really buy-in to whats going on around them.
Well there are plenty opportunities for the lower class to invest their monney.
You can buy an intel share (recommanded) for as little as 20 something, or even an apple share (not recommanded) at 400 for the richer people.The upper class of poor people might even be able to buy a share of berkshire (or is that still 70k-ish?)
If you dont want to bother with the stockmarket yourself then there are also plenty funds wich invest the monney for you and you can get in with as little as 1000$ (or even less)
On top of that you can lend a huge sum of monney to make a realy good investment (buying a house) with no risk (since you can turn in the key and leave the bank with the loss) or you can take a student loan and invest in yourself
I am realy wondering what these magic investment opportunities are that are only available for the rich.If annyone could recommand me one it would be apreciated.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
you can put it in terms of available choices, but that's different from actual behavior, or likelihood for actual behavior based on available resources and knowledge etc.
the rich have greater portion of their wealth invested, have more credit access, that's one thing. another thing is that it's not easy to get information from a 0 knowledge start point, given all the false advertisement about investing out there looking to fish people. while rich people have connections and prior experience that guide them to the better choices.
the representation of equal possible choices (you could have done A) is in a different modal sense from a behavioral/functional description. (you do A with probability distribution y(A)) this is a rather fundamental distinction of how we represent people. the first approach enables moral coloring, but also neglects quite a bit of information.
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The Washington Post ran an article on PERI - Inside the offbeat economics department that debunked Reinhart-Rogoff
Overall, a flattering piece: Amherst has, over the past 40 years, developed a reputation as perhaps the single most important heterodox economics department in the country.
You'll also see the word "marxist" appear about half a dozen times (mostly from their past). Oh, Amherst!
Also: Robert Pollin emails to note that among the other donors to PERI is Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream fame. Cohen gave more after Ash, Pollin, and Herndon’s paper on Reinhart-Rogoff came out, in addition to “sending cases of ice cream for all our hard-working grad students." They have the ice creams!
Sorry if no one else is amused by all this. It's local for me so it's extra special
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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MIAMI (AP) — The U.S. military says a couple more prisoners have been designated as hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay.
Lt. Col. Samuel House says 94 men are on the hunger strike, up two from a day earlier. Lawyers for prisoners have said the military has been undercounting the number of hunger strikers since the protest began in February. The men are protesting conditions and their indefinite confinement at the U.S. base in Cuba.
House said Thursday that 17 of the 94 prisoners on hunger strike are being given liquid nutrients through a nasal tube to prevent dangerous weight loss. Three of the striking prisoners are at a hospital on the U.S. base in Cuba for observation.
The U.S. holds 166 prisoners at Guantanamo, most without charges.
Source
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Matt Tabbi is back with a follow up to the Libor scandal.
Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything. You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that's trillion, with a "t") worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it "dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets." That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps. Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It's about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget. It should surprise no one that among the players implicated in this scheme to fix the prices of interest-rate swaps are the same megabanks – including Barclays, UBS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland – that serve on the Libor panel that sets global interest rates. In fact, in recent years many of these banks have already paid multimillion-dollar settlements for anti-competitive manipulation of one form or another (in addition to Libor, some were caught up in an anti-competitive scheme, detailed in Rolling Stone last year, to rig municipal-debt service auctions). Though the jumble of financial acronyms sounds like gibberish to the layperson, the fact that there may now be price-fixing scandals involving both Libor and ISDAfix suggests a single, giant mushrooming conspiracy of collusion and price-fixing hovering under the ostensibly competitive veneer of Wall Street culture. Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425#ixzz2RZNh8Pft Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
Like a merry-go-round from hell. Perhaps a series of 'signature strikes' against combant 'leadership'.
J.P. Morgan CEO was killed today at a starbucks with his 7 teenage friends.
Well, not really, but a fool can dream
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
well, the rent generating effect of large quantities of money, and in this case, being among a small number of market participants who have large market power.
it's like leaving a bunch of kids in a room alone to figure out how to divide a cookie jar.
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On April 26 2013 22:23 oneofthem wrote:
well, the rent generating effect of large quantities of money, and in this case, being among a small number of market participants who have large market power.
it's like leaving a bunch of kids in a room alone to figure out how to divide a cookie jar.
Very true. Today is info overload. So many stories/articles. Krugman and R\R dueling op-ed's. Boston updates. Tabbi. Jeremy Scahill's book is making the rounds.
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To be fair, you could easily put together an out of context (or in context) reel of stupid hypocritical crap that's been said at MSNBC or CNN over a four year period as well. Especially if you want to go back to the Bush years.
I'm especially amused by the use of the Beckel comment as he included Chinese students as well. The overarching point he was making was that maybe we should suspend student visas from certain areas of the world until we can figure something out on the security end in dealing with student visas. If I recall correctly, the 9/11 Hijackers were here on them as well (and I think he made that point). I'm not sure if it would be Constitutional or not to use religion as a test for a student visa, as unless they are already here visa applicants don't necessarily have constitutional protection. The comment about the Chinese had to do with all of the alleged hacking by the Chinese government. That doesn't make what he said particularly valid, but he was at least making a point worth debate. \
However, I have no problem with throwing Bolling, etc. under the bus. I'm a freaking conservative and want to throw shit at the TV when I see the freaking out going on. Those that "love the Constitution" should be celebrating the jackass getting due process.
With that being said, with the whole Miranda rights thing there is some fundamental (and common) misunderstanding of how those rights work going on on both sides (the Mirandize or Don't Mirandize) of the issue. If the government has enough evidence to convict you without using your statements they don't have to Mirandize you they just can't use anything you've said without having your rights read to you. All that Miranda basically does is make sure that you understand that your right to not incriminate yourself.
This of course assumes you get proper representation, etc. at trial.
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WASHINGTON -- The number of hunger strikers being tracked by the United States military at its Guantanamo Bay prison hit 100 on Saturday, two weeks after a raid forced detainees living in a communal facility into individual cells.
Twenty of the detainees are being force-fed and five of them are in the hospital, Lt. Col. Sam House said in an email from Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, where the detainees are being held. None of them are in life-threatening condition, he said.
The military had tracked only 43 detainees as hunger strikers before the April 13 raid of Camp Six, a communal facility. House told The Huffington Post on Friday that all of the detainees who were added to the list were hunger striking before the raid "but could not be observed or placed under medical care because they had covered or broken the cameras" in their cells.
A Muslim cultural adviser in Guantanamo told reporters last week that one or more of the detainees would die before the hunger strike ended.
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EPT
