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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 September 19 2013 14:09 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2013 13:18 Sub40APM wrote:On September 19 2013 12:41 Danglars wrote:We live in the upside down world when every good economic news indicator is met with panic and sell-offs. It might cause the fed to stop QE∞, after all. It's all backwards until the injection ends (Injection might not be the right word considering its length, maybe life support IV?). Slow and then end QE and let the markets go back to reality. He may be the author of the "Gloom, Boom, and Doom Report," but Mark Faber lays it out, My view was that they would taper by about $10 billion to $15 billion, but I'm not surprised that they don't do it for the simple reason that I think we are in QE unlimited. The people at the Fed are professors, academics. They never worked a single life in the business of ordinary people. And they don't understand that if you print money, it benefits basically a handful of people maybe--not even 5% of the population, 3% of the population. And when you look today at the market action, ok, stocks are up 1%. Silver is up more than 6%, gold up more than 4%, copper 2.9%, crude oil 2.68%, and so forth. Crude oil, gasoline are things people need, ordinary people buy everyday. Thank you very much, the Fed boosts these items that people need to go to their work, to heat their homes, and so forth and at the same time, asset prices go up, but the majority of people do not own stocks. Only 11% of Americans own directly shares.
On September 14, 2012, when the Fed announced QE3, that was then extended into QE4, and now basically QE unlimited, the bond markets had peaked out. Interest rates had bottomed out on July 25, 2012--a year ago--at 1.43% on the 10-year Treasury note. Mr. Bernanke said at that time at a press conference, the objective of the Fed is to lower interest rates. Since then, they have doubled. Thank you very much. Great success.
Well, the endgame is a total collapse, but from a higher diving board. The Fed will continue to print and if the stock market goes down 10%, they will print even more. And they don't know anything else to do. And quite frankly, they have boxed themselves into a corner where they are now kind of desperate. bloomberg Faber has been calling for hyper inflation and collapse for the last 5 years. Financial experts and various economists have been dismissing anything wrong with the principal of QE for far longer. You disagree with his benefit analysis, interest rate analysis, or market feedback analysis or just dislike the identity of the guy giving it? I'm not going to go down the line on everything he correctly predicted in the last ten years.
Because that list would be incredibly short? Yes, I know that gold loving survivalist types harden their stance every time hyperinflation fails to arrive.
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On September 19 2013 19:35 Rassy wrote:
Instead of looking at the official figures you should look at your wallet and what you pay for things like quality meat, fresh fruit, rent, healthcare, energy, beers and cofee in bars/cofeeshops.
Then compare that with what you paid 5/10 years ago for thoose items.
Usa had below 2% inflation for the past 10 years yet all thoose things nearly doubled in price.
How much did your rent and electricity bills go up in the past 5 years and what percentage of your income do you spend on rent and gas/electricity?
Yes, this is a good way of doing it. Instead of looking at 'facts' that are broadly applicable to the entire economy you should totally focus on your own microeconomy and then extrapolate that outward. You and the Faber guy, are you by chance from zerohedge?
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WASHINGTON -- Federal prosecutors will soon begin applying a policy that helps certain drug offenders avoid mandatory minimum sentences to defendants who haven't yet been sentenced, Attorney General Eric Holder will announce Thursday.
Holder introduced the new policy last month, but at the time it only applied to new defendants who had yet to be charged. Under the new policy, federal prosecutors will allow drug offenders without ties to large-scale organizations, gangs or cartels to avoid harsh mandatory minimum sentences by removing the drug quantities that trigger such requirements.
“I am pleased to announce today that the Department has issued new guidance to apply our updated charging policy not only to new matters but also to pending cases where the defendant was charged before the policy was issued but is still awaiting adjudication of guilt," Holder will say, according to his prepared remarks. “By reserving the most severe prison terms for serious, high-level, or violent drug traffickers or kingpins, we can better enhance public safety. We can increase our focus on proven strategies for deterrence and rehabilitation. And we can do so while making our expenditures smarter and more productive.”
The policy applies to all cases where a defendant hasn't yet been found guilty, but federal prosecutors have discretion to apply it in cases where the defendant has pleaded guilty but hasn't yet been sentenced. Holder's memo states that federal prosecutors are "encouraged to apply the policy in guilty-plea cases where legally and practically feasible."
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On September 20 2013 03:39 sam!zdat wrote:
I remember reading somewhere that they've changed the measure of inflation and if we used the old one we'd have much more of it. Anyone know abt that
(during that time I moved from portland to seattle and that will make anyone feel like there must be a ton of inflation, so my subjective recollections kinda meaningless!)
From following a couple previous links I found some Scottish **** saying this:
And the reason the CPI is losing credibility is that, as economist John Williams tirelessly points out, it’s a bogus index. The way inflation is calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been “improved” 24 times since 1978. If the old methods were still used, the CPI would actually be 10 percent.
It seems a bold claim to me. Maybe someone can categorically show it isn't true.
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to me the bold claim would be that government agencies don't manipulate measures to make them say whatever the want them to say. That to me would be an astounding thing
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House Republicans are still steamed at Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for what they claim is an apparent last minute retreat in an effort to defund Obamacare in exchange for funding the federal government.
House GOP aides exchanged angry emails and even cursed at "amateur" Cruz in the cloakroom Wednesday, according to a National Review Online report published Thursday.
“Cruz keeps raising conservatives’ hopes, and then, when we give him what he wants, he doesn’t have a plan to follow through,” one aide said, according to NRO. “Nancy Pelosi is more well-liked around here," said another.
In a joint statement Wednesday with Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), Cruz said that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) "likely" has the votes to strip language defunding Obamacare from any bill that makes its way over from the House.
"This is outrageous," a senior House GOP aide told TPM on Wednesday. "They demand a fight for two months, supposedly on behalf of the grassroots and constituents and then within hours of getting the fight, they slink away, abandon those same people and do nothing."
Cruz explained to NRO that his intention was never to spark a defund effort in the Senate, but to galvanize the country into doing so instead.
“And on Obamacare, I’ve said, from the start, that if typical Washington rules apply, we can’t win this fight,” he said. “If the forums in which we make this case consist of the smoke-filled rooms of Washington, the votes aren’t there. The only way this fight will be won is if the American people rise up and hold our elected officials accountable.”
Rep. Pete King (R-NY) had another message for the Lone Star State firebrand Thursday evening: Mind your own business.
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On September 20 2013 05:13 sam!zdat wrote:
to me the bold claim would be that government agencies don't manipulate measures to make them say whatever the want them to say. That to me would be an astounding thing
If the government is lying, then why does the billion price index (a private inflation estimate using massive amounts of data from the internet) so closely follow government statistics? Note the close parallels in the changes in prices.
http://bpp.mit.edu/usa/
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I never accused them of lying, I just said they can construct their measures in a way that suits them.
gonna plead nolo for that other measure this is a question for someone who isn't sam. Maybe the measure is fine. It's all greek to me
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We gotta get off the drugs one of these days. It's 5 years into recovery. QE1 may have been called for, given the extraordinary situation. QE1 might've have been a good thing had it stopped there.
It isn't small changes in interest rates. It's $85 bil. a month. Added to the fed's balance sheet (~3tril), subsidizing asset prices as the government buys the bonds from those in the market who sold them the bonds. It's bad policy. They had sent enough signals that there would be a taper that it was essentially free for them to go through with it. The big 'Just Kidding' result is worrisome indeed.
(And I guess it's only Bush that gets blamed for having no exit strategy  )
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WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives on Thursday approved sweeping reforms to the nation's food stamp program that would cut some $40 billion in nutrition aid over 10 years and deny benefits to millions starting in 2014.
By 217 to 210, the House said yes to the measure, with its Republican backers arguing it would help more people find jobs.
"This bill is designed to give people a hand when they need it most. Most people don't chose to be on food stamps. Most people want a job," said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) "Most people want to go out and be productive so that they can earn a living, so that they can support a family, so that they can have hope for a more prosperous future. They want what we want."
While most proponents of the bill similarly argued that they were just promoting work, there was also an undercurrent of accusation that many Americans are abusing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to sponge off taxpayers.
"If you're a healthy adult and don't have someone relying on you to care for them, you ought to earn the benefits you receive," said Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.). "Look for work. Start job training to improve your skills or do community service. But you can no longer sit on your couch or ride a surfboard like Jason in California and expect the federal taxpayer to feed you."
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How ironic that people who take $175k per year from taxpayers can say that while they've done nothing but waste money trying to repeal the ACA 40+ times.
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On September 20 2013 08:48 SnipedSoul wrote:
How ironic that people who take $175k per year from taxpayers can say that while they've done nothing but waste money trying to repeal the ACA 40+ times.
Well let's be fair, they've also converted a vast amount of oxygen into CO2.
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great! We can justify our minimum basic income by saying that we are hiring everyone to respirate. Works for me
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On September 20 2013 08:44 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Show nested quote +WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives on Thursday approved sweeping reforms to the nation's food stamp program that would cut some $40 billion in nutrition aid over 10 years and deny benefits to millions starting in 2014.
By 217 to 210, the House said yes to the measure, with its Republican backers arguing it would help more people find jobs.
"This bill is designed to give people a hand when they need it most. Most people don't chose to be on food stamps. Most people want a job," said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) "Most people want to go out and be productive so that they can earn a living, so that they can support a family, so that they can have hope for a more prosperous future. They want what we want."
While most proponents of the bill similarly argued that they were just promoting work, there was also an undercurrent of accusation that many Americans are abusing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to sponge off taxpayers.
"If you're a healthy adult and don't have someone relying on you to care for them, you ought to earn the benefits you receive," said Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.). "Look for work. Start job training to improve your skills or do community service. But you can no longer sit on your couch or ride a surfboard like Jason in California and expect the federal taxpayer to feed you." Source
Doublespeak at its finest.
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http://news.yahoo.com/house-approves-40-billion-cut-food-stamps-poor-222219735.html
+ Show Spoiler +By Charles Abbott
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-run House of Representatives voted to cut spending on food stamps for the poor by $40 billion over 10 years on Thursday, defying a veto threat from the White House in the name of fiscal reform.
Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the driving force behind the legislation, said it was "wrong for working, middle-class people to pay" for abuse of the program, whose costs have skyrocketed in recent years.
Democrats pointed to nonpartisan estimates that the bill would end benefits to 4 million needy people in 2014.
Representatives passed the bill on a party-line vote, 217-200. Speaker John Boehner said passage would trigger long-awaited negotiations with the Democratic-controlled Senate over a new $500 billion farm bill, already a year overdue.
Senators voted in May for $4.5 billion in food stamp reductions, about 1/10th of the House proposal. With nutrition programs as the sticking point, analysts are skeptical that a compromise farm bill can be written that would pass in the sharply partisan Congress.
Debbie Stabenow, chairwoman of the Democrat-controlled Senate Agriculture Committee, called the House bill "a monumental waste of time" that would never become law.
"We have never before seen this kind of partisanship injected into a farm bill," Stabenow said.
The White House on Wednesday threatened to veto the House bill to prevent damage to "one of our nation's strongest defenses against hunger and poverty."
A near-record 47.76 million people, or one of seven Americans - about 85 percent of them children, elderly or disabled - received food stamps at latest count.
House Agriculture Committee chairman Frank Lucas hailed the House bill for its "common sense reforms," while other Republicans used harsher language.
Kevin Cramer of North Dakota decried a "culture of permanent dependency" associated with food stamps, whose proper name is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Rick Crawford of Arkansas said food stamps were "fraught with abuse."
"There won't be needy people taken off of this," said Steve King, Iowa Republican. "This is a sincere effort to manage the budget."
SNAP, which helps poor people buy food, is the largest U.S. anti-hunger program. Enrollment has doubled and costs have tripled since 2004. Benefits average $1.47 per meal per person with an aggregate cost of $78 billion last year.
To fiscal conservatives, the program is a costly taxpayer burden. Tea Party-influenced Republicans demanded deep cuts in it and blocked an earlier proposal to cut $20 billion over 10 years as insufficiently small.
"This legislation is preying on people. P-R-E-Y-I-N-G!" said House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, spelling the word out for emphasis.
The Cantor-backed package would limit able-bodied adults without dependents to three months of food stamps in a three-year period unless they worked part-time or were in a workfare or job-training program. It would end a provision, created by the 1996 welfare reform law, that allows states to give food stamps to people whose assets are larger than usually allowed.
Those two steps would save $39 billion over 10 years and reduce enrollment by almost 4 million people in 2014, said the Congressional Budget Office. Another reform would reduce benefits by $90 a month for 850,000 households.
Marcia Fudge, Democrat of Ohio, and other Democrats said there were not enough jobs, workfare assignments or job-training programs to match the number of people who could lose food stamps after three months.
"We all know there are three people for every available job in this country," Fudge said.
Florida Republican Steve Southerland said, "Work is a blessing" and stricter eligibility rules would move poor people into jobs.
David Beckman, president of the charity Bread for the World, said the cuts included in the House bill, roughly $5 billion a year, were equal "to doing away with all the food charity in the country."
Food-stamp defenders say continued high enrollment is a sign of the weak recovery from the 2007-09 economic recession, depressed wage growth and persisting high poverty and jobless rates.
While the Senate in May passed a comprehensive farm bill, with statutes ranging from crop subsidies and food stamps to conservation and rural development, the House, in an unprecedented move, divided its bill. Thursday's bill was devoted to nutrition, the lion's share of spending, and it earlier passed a smaller bill dealing with farm programs.
The split was a tactical victory for fiscal conservatives in the House because it is easier to cut spending when programs are isolated. Food stamps would face another review in three years and farm programs in five years under the House plan.
This actually deeply saddens me.
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all they need is a little encouragement. Then they will be able to find jobs and get this country going again! Those food stamps were just making them soft and lazy sucking on the government teat.
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Humanity is pretty disgusting at times. It baffles me that a large section of America truly believes that poor people have the jolliest fucking time being impoverished. I mean, fuck, if its so awesome why doesn't everyone decide hey I'm just be poorly paid, eat shit food, and only have minor hopes in life.
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On September 20 2013 05:10 Dapper_Cad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2013 03:39 sam!zdat wrote:
I remember reading somewhere that they've changed the measure of inflation and if we used the old one we'd have much more of it. Anyone know abt that
(during that time I moved from portland to seattle and that will make anyone feel like there must be a ton of inflation, so my subjective recollections kinda meaningless!) From following a couple previous links I found some Scottish **** saying this: Show nested quote +And the reason the CPI is losing credibility is that, as economist John Williams tirelessly points out, it’s a bogus index. The way inflation is calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been “improved” 24 times since 1978. If the old methods were still used, the CPI would actually be 10 percent. It seems a bold claim to me. Maybe someone can categorically show it isn't true.
Bold claim indeed. He made up a magic formula to make the .govs look bad. Just so happens it was their method in the first place.
So basically what you assert is that you want someone to come along and prove the Gov has had it's head up it's ass all those years, and has only gotten it right, as of now? Prove to me they got it right as of now and do something positive with your calculator rather than nitpick a major critic with absolutely nothing more than a feeling. A desire for it to be wrong isn't good enough.
The Trouble With Shadowstats
Often, when I talk about inflation being low, people who disagree tend to cite John Williams’ Shadowstats as evidence that price inflation is not low at all.
Now, I don’t disagree with the idea that some people have experienced a higher level of price inflation than the CPI. Everyone experiences a different rate of inflation based on their purchasing habits, so by definition everyone’s individual rate will diverge from the official rate to some degree; some will be higher, and some will be lower. And I don’t disagree that rising food and fuel prices have been a problem for welfare recipients and seniors on a fixed income, etc, who spend a higher proportion of their income on food and fuel than, say, young professionals with a lot of disposable income.
It's only high 'if you notice you're broke'
http://azizonomics.com/2013/06/01/the-trouble-with-shadowstats/
That's John Aziz
Yesterday, Ron Paul briefly inhabited the body of Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn during a hearing involving the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. When a Ron-Paul-animated being has the ability to question Bernanke, the being usually asks whether gold is money, and then Bernanke replies simply "no." But on an off night, such a being will talk about how inflation is out of control and way above the official estimates. Tom Coburn sadly fell into that trap on Thursday, insisting in front of Bernanke that our actual inflation rate is 8%, more than quadruple the official estimate.
Needless to say, Coburn's view on inflation is misinformed, if not totally fevered. Matt O'Brien at the Atlantic repeats an old Paul Krugman point that independent inflation metrics like MIT's Billion Prices Project closely mirror the official inflation measurement. Matt Yglesias at Slate amusingly notes that Coburn's 8 percent figure entails that we have been in a basically permanent recession and real GDP decline for decades, which is obviously not the case.
One point missed in the debunkings so far is that the source Tom Coburn is almost certainly using, shadowstats.com, is total nonsense. The basic thrust of Coburn's and Ron Paul's inflation conspiracy theory is that the government has changed the way it measures inflation over time to intentionally generate a deceptively low inflation figure. By using older inflation-measuring methods (e.g. the method used in 1980 for some reason), we can cancel out all that deception and get the true inflation. But, as John Aziz pointed out recently, this Shadow Stats site people like Coburn rely upon for this "real" inflation figure is clearly not measuring anything. Instead, Shadow Stats just takes the official government inflation figure and adds on some fixed constant to arrive at its own figure. That's it.
Really. This is the best P.R they can summon? No really....Get off my Lawn. Two percent is official, here at shadowstats, we add an addiitional 6 % for shits and giggles. A fixed constant would have been fairly easy to pick up, instead, insert rambling about the certitude of "what they must be up too" whilst pre-emptively using terms conspiracy, goldbugs and sooner or later 'terrorist suspect'.
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these are the descedants of people who believed that the slaves were happy being slaves, and that freedom would be too much for them to handle and would be really just a cruel thing to do to the happy negro. Keep that in mind during your bafflement
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Come on, be consistent and properly criminalize poverty already... you know you want to.
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EPT
