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On September 15 2012 08:17 Defacer wrote:An incredible article from Vanity Fair about Obama, his day-to-day life, and the thought-process behind deciding to help the rebels overthrow Qaddafi and liberate Lybia in the first place. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/10/michael-lewis-profile-barack-obamaIt's long, but it's provides remarkable insight into the stressful life of any president. On the average day for a president. Show nested quote + But if you happen to be president just now, what you are faced with, mainly, is not a public-relations problem but an endless string of decisions. Putting it the way George W. Bush did sounded silly but he was right: the president is a decider. Many if not most of his decisions are thrust upon the president, out of the blue, by events beyond his control: oil spills, financial panics, pandemics, earthquakes, fires, coups, invasions, underwear bombers, movie-theater shooters, and on and on and on. They don’t order themselves neatly for his consideration but come in waves, jumbled on top of each other. “Nothing comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable,” Obama said at one point. “Otherwise, someone else would have solved it. So you wind up dealing with probabilities. Any given decision you make you’ll wind up with a 30 to 40 percent chance that it isn’t going to work. You have to own that and feel comfortable with the way you made the decision. You can’t be paralyzed by the fact that it might not work out.” On top of all of this, after you have made your decision, you need to feign total certainty about it. People being led do not want to think probabilistically.
The second week in March of last year offered a nice illustration of a president’s curious predicament. On March 11 a tsunami rolled over the Japanese village of Fukushima, triggering the meltdown of reactors inside a nuclear power plant in the town—and raising the alarming possibility that a cloud of radiation would waft over the United States. If you happened to be president of the United States, you were woken up and given the news. (In fact, the president seldom is awakened with news of some crisis, but his aides routinely are, to determine if the president’s sleep needs to be disrupted for whatever has just happened. As one nighttime crisis vetter put it, “They’ll say, ‘This just happened in Afghanistan,’ and I’m like, ‘O.K., and what am I supposed to do about it?’”) In the case of Fukushima, if you were able to go back to sleep you did so knowing that radiation clouds were not your most difficult problem. Not even close. At that very moment, you were deciding on whether to approve a ridiculously audacious plan to assassinate Osama bin Laden in his house in Pakistan. You were arguing, as ever, with Republican leaders in Congress about the budget. And you were receiving daily briefings on various revolutions in various Arab countries. In early February, following the lead of the Egyptians and the Tunisians, the Libyan people had revolted against their dictator, who was now bent on crushing them. Muammar Qaddafi and his army of 27,000 men were marching across the Libyan desert toward a city called Benghazi and were promising to exterminate some large number of the 1.2 million people inside. On the decision to propose a UN Resolution to bomb Qaddafi forces in Lybia: Show nested quote +On March 15 the president had a typically full schedule. Already he’d met with his national-security advisers, given a series of TV interviews on the No Child Left Behind law, lunched with his vice president, celebrated the winners of an Intel high-school science competition, and spent a good chunk of time alone in the Oval Office with a child suffering from an incurable disease, whose final wish had been to meet the president. His last event, before convening a meeting with 18 advisers (which his official schedule listed simply as “The President and the Vice-President Meet With Secretary of Defense Gates”), was to sit down with ESPN. Twenty-five minutes after he’d given the world his March Madness tournament picks Obama walked down to the Situation Room. He’d been there just the day before, to hold his first meeting to discuss how to kill Osama bin Laden.
In White House jargon this was a meeting of “the principals,” which is to say the big shots. In addition to Biden and Gates, it included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (on the phone from Cairo), chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, White House chief of staff William Daley, head of the National Security Council Tom Donilon (who had organized the meeting), and U.N. ambassador Susan Rice (on a video screen from New York). The senior people, at least those in the Situation Room, sat around the table. Their subordinates sat around the perimeter of the room. “Obama structures meetings so that they’re not debates,” says one participant. “They’re mini-speeches. He likes to make decisions by having his mind occupying the various positions. He likes to imagine holding the view.” Says another person at the meeting, “He seems very much to want to hear from people. Even when he’s made up his mind he wants to cherry-pick the best arguments to justify what he wants to do.”
Before big meetings the president is given a kind of road map, a list of who will be at the meeting and what they might be called on to contribute. The point of this particular meeting was for the people who knew something about Libya to describe what they thought Qaddafi might do, and then for the Pentagon to give the president his military options. “The intelligence was very abstract,” says one witness. “Obama started asking questions about it. ‘What happens to the people in these cities when the cities fall? When you say Qaddafi takes a town, what happens?’” It didn’t take long to get the picture: if they did nothing they’d be looking at a horrific scenario, with tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered. (Qaddafi himself had given a speech on February 22, saying he planned to “cleanse Libya, house by house.”) The Pentagon then presented the president with two options: establish a no-fly zone or do nothing at all. The idea was that the people in the meeting would debate the merits of each, but Obama surprised the room by rejecting the premise of the meeting. “He instantly went off the road map,” recalls one eyewitness. “He asked, ‘Would a no-fly zone do anything to stop the scenario we just heard?’” After it became clear that it would not, Obama said, “I want to hear from some of the other folks in the room.”
[...]
Asked if he was surprised that the Pentagon had not presented him with the option to prevent Qaddafi from destroying a city twice the size of New Orleans and killing everyone inside the place, Obama says simply, “No.” Asked why he was not surprised—if I were president I would have been—he adds, “Because it’s a hard problem. What the process is going to do is try to lead you to a binary decision. Here are the pros and cons of going in. Here are the pros and cons of not going in. The process pushes towards black or white answers; it’s less good with shades of gray. Partly because the instinct among the participants was that … ” Here he pauses and decides he doesn’t want to criticize anyone personally. “We were engaged in Afghanistan. We still had equity in Iraq. Our assets are strained. The participants are asking a question: Is there a core national-security issue at stake? As opposed to calibrating our national-security interests in some new way.”
The people who operate the machinery have their own ideas of what the president should decide, and their advice is pitched accordingly. Gates and Mullen didn’t see how core American security interests were at stake; Biden and Daley thought that getting involved in Libya was, politically, nothing but downside. “The funny thing is the system worked,” says one person who witnessed the meeting. “Everyone was doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing. Gates was right to insist that we had no core national-security issue. Biden was right to say it was politically stupid. He’d be putting his presidency on the line.”
[...]
Public opinion at the fringes of the room, as it turned out, was different. Several people sitting there had been deeply affected by the genocide in Rwanda. (“The ghosts of 800,000 Tutsis were in that room,” as one puts it.) Several of these people had been with Obama since before he was president—people who, had it not been for him, would have been unlikely ever to have found themselves in such a meeting. [... ] An N.S.C. staffer named Denis McDonough came out for intervention, as did Antony Blinken, who had been on Bill Clinton’s National Security Council during the Rwandan genocide, but now, awkwardly, worked for Joe Biden. “I have to disagree with my boss on this one,” said Blinken. As a group, the junior staff made the case for saving the Benghazis. But how?
The president may not have been surprised that the Pentagon hadn’t sought to answer that question. He was nevertheless visibly annoyed. “I don’t know why we are even having this meeting,” he said, or words to that effect. “You’re telling me a no-fly zone doesn’t solve the problem, but the only option you’re giving me is a no-fly zone.” He gave his generals two hours to come up with another solution for him to consider, then left to attend the next event on his schedule, a ceremonial White House dinner.
[...]
Obama insists that he still had not made up his mind what to do when he returned to the Situation Room—that he was still considering doing nothing at all. A million people in Benghazi were waiting to find out whether they would live or die, and he honestly did not know. There were things the Pentagon might have said to deter him, for instance. “If somebody had said to me that we could not take out their air defense without putting our fliers at risk in a significant way; if the level of risk for our military personnel had been ratcheted up—that might have changed my decision,” says Obama. “Or if I did not feel Sarkozy or Cameron were far enough out there to follow through. Or if I did not think we could get a U.N resolution passed.”
Once again he polled the people in the room for their views. Of the principals only Susan Rice (enthusiastically) and Hillary Clinton (who would have settled for a no-fly zone) had the view that any sort of intervention made sense. “How are we going to explain to the American people why we’re in Libya,” asked William Daley, according to one of those present. “And Daley had a point: who gives a shit about Libya?”
[...]
Obama made his decision: push for the U.N resolution and effectively invade another Arab country. Of the choice not to intervene he says, “That’s not who we are,” by which he means that’s not who I am. The decision was extraordinarily personal. “No one in the Cabinet was for it,” says one witness. “There was no constituency for doing what he did.” Then Obama went upstairs to the Oval Office to call European heads of state and, as he puts it, “call their bluff.” Cameron first, then Sarkozy. It was three a.m. in Paris when he reached the French president, but Sarkozy insisted he was still awake. (“I’m a young man!”) In formal and stilted tones the European leaders committed to taking over after the initial bombing. The next morning Obama called Medvedev to make sure that the Russians would not block his U.N. resolution. There was no obvious reason why Russia should want to see Qaddafi murder a city of Libyans, but in the president’s foreign dealings the Russians play the role that Republicans currently more or less play in his domestic affairs. The Russians’ view of the world tends to be zero-sum: if an American president is for it, they are, by definition, against it. Obama thought that he had made more progress with the Russians than he had with the Republicans; Medvedev had come to trust him, he felt, and believed him when he said the United States had no intention of moving into Libya for the long term. A senior American official at the United Nations thought that perhaps the Russians let Obama have his resolution only because they thought it would end in disaster for the United States.
Good read. This is why I like the guy.
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As one White House staffer puts it, “All the people who had been demanding intervention went nuts after we intervened and said it was outrageous. That’s because the controversy machine is bigger than the reality machine.”
^one of the best insights i read from that article.
the anecdote about obama playing basketball was pretty powerful.
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On September 15 2012 09:13 ticklishmusic wrote:
As one White House staffer puts it, “All the people who had been demanding intervention went nuts after we intervened and said it was outrageous. That’s because the controversy machine is bigger than the reality machine.”
^one of the best insights i read from that article.
the anecdote about obama playing basketball was pretty powerful.
My favorite part is him calling bullshit on senior staff for initially proposing to either do nothing with Lybia or pretend to do something with Lybia. And trying to figure out how to use his acceptance speech of a Nobel Peace Prize as an opportunity to explain why war, sometimes, is justifiable. (LOL)
The parallel story of the downed flight navigator, Tyler Stark -- who happened to also survive the shootings at Columbine (!), is also remarkable. Can you imagine crash-landing in the desert in a hostile country, and not knowing what people that find you are going to do with you? Jesus.
It took a few hours for someone to come and fetch Stark. As he waited with Bubaker inside the hotel, word spread of this French pilot who had saved their lives. When they’d arrived at the hotel a man had handed Tyler Stark a rose, which the American found both strange and touching. Now women from across the city came with flowers to the front of the hotel. When Stark entered a room full of people they stood up and gave him a round of applause. “I’m not sure what I was expecting in Libya,” he says, “but I was not expecting a round of applause.”
Bubaker found doctors to treat Stark’s leg and one of the doctors had Skype on his iPod. Stark tried to call his base, but he couldn’t remember the country code for Britain, so he called the most useful phone number he could remember, his parents’.
At some point Bubaker turned to him and asked, “Do you know why you are in Libya?”
“I just have my orders,” said Stark.
“He didn’t know why he’d been sent,” says Bubaker. “So I showed him some video. Of kids being killed.”
Despite the tragic attack in recent days, you have to give credit to Obama for overthrowing Gaddafi. He probably saved tens of thousands of innocent Lybian civilians, and so far there have been only four (?) US casualties.
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And far away from Libya and Egypt, alarm comes at Bernanke's latest easing (QE).
Central bankers are “counterfeit money printers” and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should resign for messing up the U.S. economy so badly, Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Doom and Boom, told CNBC on Friday.
He said Bernanke was one of the main proponents of an ultra-expansionist economic monetary policy that was to blame for the latest financial crisis.
“If I had messed up as badly as Bernanke I would for sure resign. The mandate of the Fed to boost asset prices and thereby create wealth is ludicrous — it doesn’t work that way. It’s a temporary boost followed by a crash,” Faber said.
Faber, who rose to prominence after predicting the 1987 financial crash report and dubbed "Dr Doom" for his negative predictions, said: “This unlimited QE (quantitative easing) , buying mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and continuing operation twist has the implication of simply having asset prices go up and the money flows down to the Mayfair economy,” Faber said.
A Mayfair economy is one which benefits the wealthier and better off in society. Faber said this latest round of QE would not help the “man on the street”.
“QE helps rich people whose asset prices go up and whose net worth then increases but it doesn’t flow to the man on the street who is faced with higher costs of living with price rises. You just have a small economy that is booming but the majority of the economy is damaged by QE,” he said.
Bernanke announced on Thursday that the Fed would buy $40 billion a month in MBS, giving the impression that this time around there would be no time limit to the program, which would only stop once a sustained uptick in employment is visible.
“The money printers are responsible for this crisis. If we continue with this expansionist monetary policy we won’t be facing a fiscal cliff it will be a fiscal grand canyon,” he added.
Mike Konczal, fellow at the Roosevelt Institute disagreed claiming that this latest round of QE — aggressive as it was — would expand the scope of Federal Reserve policy and was “great for main street”. Crucially, he said, it tackles the issue of employment which would underpin future wealth.
“If anything, monetary policy has been too tight in recent years. We’ve seen a collapse in GDP growth, no wage growth and huge rises in unemployment. Wealth is collapsing because of a collapse in the housing market and prolonged, mass unemployment ,” Konczal said.
Faber poured scorn on the notion that QE helps the economy, declaring that commentators like Konczal would have said the same in 2001 when low interest rates led to the biggest housing bubble in the United States. That in turn led to the financial crisis of 2008.
“If we have an economic crisis in the Western world it’s because the government makes up 50 percent or more of the economy. This is a cancer that is taking away people’s freedom,” he said.
source: cnbc
Yeah, but making credit freely available can't have a harmful effect on the economy, can it? The man famous for his financial crash prediction nailed a few other biggies, including China's rise and current problems with the dollar. Maybe he's right today. "Doom" is a good term for what he sees as only the rich benefiting from a rise in asset prices when those less well-to-do have to cope with the inflated cost of living. One QE too far? Deserving of Obama ridicule for helping the rich at the expense of the poor?
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On September 15 2012 12:29 Danglars wrote:And far away from Libya and Egypt, alarm comes at Bernanke's latest easing (QE). Show nested quote +
Central bankers are “counterfeit money printers” and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should resign for messing up the U.S. economy so badly, Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Doom and Boom, told CNBC on Friday.
He said Bernanke was one of the main proponents of an ultra-expansionist economic monetary policy that was to blame for the latest financial crisis.
“If I had messed up as badly as Bernanke I would for sure resign. The mandate of the Fed to boost asset prices and thereby create wealth is ludicrous — it doesn’t work that way. It’s a temporary boost followed by a crash,” Faber said.
Faber, who rose to prominence after predicting the 1987 financial crash report and dubbed "Dr Doom" for his negative predictions, said: “This unlimited QE (quantitative easing) , buying mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and continuing operation twist has the implication of simply having asset prices go up and the money flows down to the Mayfair economy,” Faber said.
A Mayfair economy is one which benefits the wealthier and better off in society. Faber said this latest round of QE would not help the “man on the street”.
“QE helps rich people whose asset prices go up and whose net worth then increases but it doesn’t flow to the man on the street who is faced with higher costs of living with price rises. You just have a small economy that is booming but the majority of the economy is damaged by QE,” he said.
Bernanke announced on Thursday that the Fed would buy $40 billion a month in MBS, giving the impression that this time around there would be no time limit to the program, which would only stop once a sustained uptick in employment is visible.
“The money printers are responsible for this crisis. If we continue with this expansionist monetary policy we won’t be facing a fiscal cliff it will be a fiscal grand canyon,” he added.
Mike Konczal, fellow at the Roosevelt Institute disagreed claiming that this latest round of QE — aggressive as it was — would expand the scope of Federal Reserve policy and was “great for main street”. Crucially, he said, it tackles the issue of employment which would underpin future wealth.
“If anything, monetary policy has been too tight in recent years. We’ve seen a collapse in GDP growth, no wage growth and huge rises in unemployment. Wealth is collapsing because of a collapse in the housing market and prolonged, mass unemployment ,” Konczal said.
Faber poured scorn on the notion that QE helps the economy, declaring that commentators like Konczal would have said the same in 2001 when low interest rates led to the biggest housing bubble in the United States. That in turn led to the financial crisis of 2008.
“If we have an economic crisis in the Western world it’s because the government makes up 50 percent or more of the economy. This is a cancer that is taking away people’s freedom,” he said.
source: cnbcYeah, but making credit freely available can't have a harmful effect on the economy, can it? The man famous for his financial crash prediction nailed a few other biggies, including China's rise and current problems with the dollar. Maybe he's right today. "Doom" is a good term for what he sees as only the rich benefiting from a rise in asset prices when those less well-to-do have to cope with the inflated cost of living. One QE too far? Deserving of Obama ridicule for helping the rich at the expense of the poor?
Bernanke is destroying the economy by continuing to do this crap. Making credit "freely available" as you put it causes huge inflation. That's why prices for most goods are so high during a down economy. Normally prices go up when the economy is good, not the other way around.
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On September 15 2012 12:37 Voltaire wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2012 12:29 Danglars wrote:And far away from Libya and Egypt, alarm comes at Bernanke's latest easing (QE).
Central bankers are “counterfeit money printers” and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should resign for messing up the U.S. economy so badly, Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Doom and Boom, told CNBC on Friday.
He said Bernanke was one of the main proponents of an ultra-expansionist economic monetary policy that was to blame for the latest financial crisis.
“If I had messed up as badly as Bernanke I would for sure resign. The mandate of the Fed to boost asset prices and thereby create wealth is ludicrous — it doesn’t work that way. It’s a temporary boost followed by a crash,” Faber said.
Faber, who rose to prominence after predicting the 1987 financial crash report and dubbed "Dr Doom" for his negative predictions, said: “This unlimited QE (quantitative easing) , buying mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and continuing operation twist has the implication of simply having asset prices go up and the money flows down to the Mayfair economy,” Faber said.
A Mayfair economy is one which benefits the wealthier and better off in society. Faber said this latest round of QE would not help the “man on the street”.
“QE helps rich people whose asset prices go up and whose net worth then increases but it doesn’t flow to the man on the street who is faced with higher costs of living with price rises. You just have a small economy that is booming but the majority of the economy is damaged by QE,” he said.
Bernanke announced on Thursday that the Fed would buy $40 billion a month in MBS, giving the impression that this time around there would be no time limit to the program, which would only stop once a sustained uptick in employment is visible.
“The money printers are responsible for this crisis. If we continue with this expansionist monetary policy we won’t be facing a fiscal cliff it will be a fiscal grand canyon,” he added.
Mike Konczal, fellow at the Roosevelt Institute disagreed claiming that this latest round of QE — aggressive as it was — would expand the scope of Federal Reserve policy and was “great for main street”. Crucially, he said, it tackles the issue of employment which would underpin future wealth.
“If anything, monetary policy has been too tight in recent years. We’ve seen a collapse in GDP growth, no wage growth and huge rises in unemployment. Wealth is collapsing because of a collapse in the housing market and prolonged, mass unemployment ,” Konczal said.
Faber poured scorn on the notion that QE helps the economy, declaring that commentators like Konczal would have said the same in 2001 when low interest rates led to the biggest housing bubble in the United States. That in turn led to the financial crisis of 2008.
“If we have an economic crisis in the Western world it’s because the government makes up 50 percent or more of the economy. This is a cancer that is taking away people’s freedom,” he said.
source: cnbcYeah, but making credit freely available can't have a harmful effect on the economy, can it? The man famous for his financial crash prediction nailed a few other biggies, including China's rise and current problems with the dollar. Maybe he's right today. "Doom" is a good term for what he sees as only the rich benefiting from a rise in asset prices when those less well-to-do have to cope with the inflated cost of living. One QE too far? Deserving of Obama ridicule for helping the rich at the expense of the poor? Bernanke is destroying the economy by continuing to do this crap. Making credit "freely available" as you put it causes huge inflation. That's why prices for most goods are so high during a down economy. Normally prices go up when the economy is good, not the other way around.
![[image loading]](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=aHJ)
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For those bitching about me "pulling numbers out of my ass" here is the source.
Enjoy trolls.
http://pro.stansberryresearch.com/1206CORRUPTN/LPSIN804/Full
You will have to scroll down a little to find the section but it is fairly early in the huge piece.
Also the numbers of benefits a single mother in Wisconsin with 2 kids receives:
Low-income housing assistance: $7,560
Wisconsin Shares (a local day care program): $9,200
Earned Income Credit: $5,520
Food stamps: $5,328
Badger Care (a Wisconsin health insurance supplement): $3,300
Energy Assistance: $688
Milwaukee School Choice (free private school tuition): $6,440
On top of her 15,000$ a year income.
Do the math. She would have to make 53,036$ to break even on the benefits, tell me how a single mother of 2 kids in Wisconsin can jump from 15,000$ a year to OVER 53,036$ a year in order to actually increase her income? And why would she go through all the trouble when she can sustain a family of 3 just fine with that kind of income? While they won't be super wealthy, they will do just fine and get her kids through school.
Also, that is a LOT of money that is coming from OTHER people, and those other people are NOT just the rich. I am quite poor myself but I still pay a LOT of taxes.
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On September 15 2012 13:16 kmillz wrote:For those bitching about me "pulling numbers out of my ass" here is the source. Enjoy trolls. http://pro.stansberryresearch.com/1206CORRUPTN/LPSIN804/FullYou will have to scroll down a little to find the section but it is fairly early in the huge piece. Also the numbers of benefits a single mother in Wisconsin with 2 kids receives: Low-income housing assistance: $7,560 Wisconsin Shares (a local day care program): $9,200 Earned Income Credit: $5,520 Food stamps: $5,328 Badger Care (a Wisconsin health insurance supplement): $3,300 Energy Assistance: $688 Milwaukee School Choice (free private school tuition): $6,440 On top of her 15,000$ a year income. Do the math. She would have to make 53,036$ to break even on the benefits, tell me how a single mother of 2 kids in Wisconsin can jump from 15,000$ a year to OVER 53,036$ a year in order to actually increase her income? And why would she go through all the trouble when she can sustain a family of 3 just fine with that kind of income, while not wealthy, but still do just fine and get her kids through school.
i'm already confused just by comparing the size of these numbers.
day care is more expensive than private school.
day care is more expensive that housing assistance.
must be the same way mitt romney thinks 200K-250K is middle class
i don't know how reliable that info is either. i googled those statistics and the senator who they're attributed to and didn't get anything of substance.
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On September 15 2012 13:16 kmillz wrote:For those bitching about me "pulling numbers out of my ass" here is the source. Enjoy trolls. http://pro.stansberryresearch.com/1206CORRUPTN/LPSIN804/FullYou will have to scroll down a little to find the section but it is fairly early in the huge piece. Also the numbers of benefits a single mother in Wisconsin with 2 kids receives: Low-income housing assistance: $7,560 Wisconsin Shares (a local day care program): $9,200 Earned Income Credit: $5,520 Food stamps: $5,328 Badger Care (a Wisconsin health insurance supplement): $3,300 Energy Assistance: $688 Milwaukee School Choice (free private school tuition): $6,440 On top of her 15,000$ a year income. Do the math. She would have to make 53,036$ to break even on the benefits, tell me how a single mother of 2 kids in Wisconsin can jump from 15,000$ a year to OVER 53,036$ a year in order to actually increase her income? And why would she go through all the trouble when she can sustain a family of 3 just fine with that kind of income? While they won't be super wealthy, they will do just fine and get her kids through school. Also, that is a LOT of money that is coming from OTHER people, and those other people are NOT just the rich. I am quite poor myself but I still pay a LOT of taxes.
Check this out:
http://dpi.wi.gov/sms/pdf/pcp_income_limits_2012-13.pdf
Eligibility requirements for Milwakee School Choice. In your hypothetical scenario where she marries someone and their household income is 45k with a family size of 4, they would still be eligible.
I can see you just assumed all these benefits just disappeared to prove your argument (since your source never addresses this situation), but some of the benefits actually still remain.
Edit: Oh look, they'd also still be eligible for Earned Income Credit (45k, married, joint filing):
http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/Preview-of-2012-EITC-Income-Limits,-Maximum-Credit--Amounts-and-Tax-Law-Updates
Edit 2: They would still be eligible for Badgercare, but would have to pay a small premium.
http://www.wihealthnetwork.com/badgercare.htm
200% of FPL for family of 4 is 46.1k for 2012, in your hypothetical situation they're only making 45k.
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On September 15 2012 13:09 paralleluniverse wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2012 12:37 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 12:29 Danglars wrote:And far away from Libya and Egypt, alarm comes at Bernanke's latest easing (QE).
Central bankers are “counterfeit money printers” and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should resign for messing up the U.S. economy so badly, Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Doom and Boom, told CNBC on Friday.
He said Bernanke was one of the main proponents of an ultra-expansionist economic monetary policy that was to blame for the latest financial crisis.
“If I had messed up as badly as Bernanke I would for sure resign. The mandate of the Fed to boost asset prices and thereby create wealth is ludicrous — it doesn’t work that way. It’s a temporary boost followed by a crash,” Faber said.
Faber, who rose to prominence after predicting the 1987 financial crash report and dubbed "Dr Doom" for his negative predictions, said: “This unlimited QE (quantitative easing) , buying mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and continuing operation twist has the implication of simply having asset prices go up and the money flows down to the Mayfair economy,” Faber said.
A Mayfair economy is one which benefits the wealthier and better off in society. Faber said this latest round of QE would not help the “man on the street”.
“QE helps rich people whose asset prices go up and whose net worth then increases but it doesn’t flow to the man on the street who is faced with higher costs of living with price rises. You just have a small economy that is booming but the majority of the economy is damaged by QE,” he said.
Bernanke announced on Thursday that the Fed would buy $40 billion a month in MBS, giving the impression that this time around there would be no time limit to the program, which would only stop once a sustained uptick in employment is visible.
“The money printers are responsible for this crisis. If we continue with this expansionist monetary policy we won’t be facing a fiscal cliff it will be a fiscal grand canyon,” he added.
Mike Konczal, fellow at the Roosevelt Institute disagreed claiming that this latest round of QE — aggressive as it was — would expand the scope of Federal Reserve policy and was “great for main street”. Crucially, he said, it tackles the issue of employment which would underpin future wealth.
“If anything, monetary policy has been too tight in recent years. We’ve seen a collapse in GDP growth, no wage growth and huge rises in unemployment. Wealth is collapsing because of a collapse in the housing market and prolonged, mass unemployment ,” Konczal said.
Faber poured scorn on the notion that QE helps the economy, declaring that commentators like Konczal would have said the same in 2001 when low interest rates led to the biggest housing bubble in the United States. That in turn led to the financial crisis of 2008.
“If we have an economic crisis in the Western world it’s because the government makes up 50 percent or more of the economy. This is a cancer that is taking away people’s freedom,” he said.
source: cnbcYeah, but making credit freely available can't have a harmful effect on the economy, can it? The man famous for his financial crash prediction nailed a few other biggies, including China's rise and current problems with the dollar. Maybe he's right today. "Doom" is a good term for what he sees as only the rich benefiting from a rise in asset prices when those less well-to-do have to cope with the inflated cost of living. One QE too far? Deserving of Obama ridicule for helping the rich at the expense of the poor? Bernanke is destroying the economy by continuing to do this crap. Making credit "freely available" as you put it causes huge inflation. That's why prices for most goods are so high during a down economy. Normally prices go up when the economy is good, not the other way around.
That's actually a chart of the derivative (rate of change) of prices, not the actual prices themselves.
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On September 15 2012 14:23 Voltaire wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2012 13:09 paralleluniverse wrote:On September 15 2012 12:37 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 12:29 Danglars wrote:And far away from Libya and Egypt, alarm comes at Bernanke's latest easing (QE).
Central bankers are “counterfeit money printers” and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should resign for messing up the U.S. economy so badly, Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Doom and Boom, told CNBC on Friday.
He said Bernanke was one of the main proponents of an ultra-expansionist economic monetary policy that was to blame for the latest financial crisis.
“If I had messed up as badly as Bernanke I would for sure resign. The mandate of the Fed to boost asset prices and thereby create wealth is ludicrous — it doesn’t work that way. It’s a temporary boost followed by a crash,” Faber said.
Faber, who rose to prominence after predicting the 1987 financial crash report and dubbed "Dr Doom" for his negative predictions, said: “This unlimited QE (quantitative easing) , buying mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and continuing operation twist has the implication of simply having asset prices go up and the money flows down to the Mayfair economy,” Faber said.
A Mayfair economy is one which benefits the wealthier and better off in society. Faber said this latest round of QE would not help the “man on the street”.
“QE helps rich people whose asset prices go up and whose net worth then increases but it doesn’t flow to the man on the street who is faced with higher costs of living with price rises. You just have a small economy that is booming but the majority of the economy is damaged by QE,” he said.
Bernanke announced on Thursday that the Fed would buy $40 billion a month in MBS, giving the impression that this time around there would be no time limit to the program, which would only stop once a sustained uptick in employment is visible.
“The money printers are responsible for this crisis. If we continue with this expansionist monetary policy we won’t be facing a fiscal cliff it will be a fiscal grand canyon,” he added.
Mike Konczal, fellow at the Roosevelt Institute disagreed claiming that this latest round of QE — aggressive as it was — would expand the scope of Federal Reserve policy and was “great for main street”. Crucially, he said, it tackles the issue of employment which would underpin future wealth.
“If anything, monetary policy has been too tight in recent years. We’ve seen a collapse in GDP growth, no wage growth and huge rises in unemployment. Wealth is collapsing because of a collapse in the housing market and prolonged, mass unemployment ,” Konczal said.
Faber poured scorn on the notion that QE helps the economy, declaring that commentators like Konczal would have said the same in 2001 when low interest rates led to the biggest housing bubble in the United States. That in turn led to the financial crisis of 2008.
“If we have an economic crisis in the Western world it’s because the government makes up 50 percent or more of the economy. This is a cancer that is taking away people’s freedom,” he said.
source: cnbcYeah, but making credit freely available can't have a harmful effect on the economy, can it? The man famous for his financial crash prediction nailed a few other biggies, including China's rise and current problems with the dollar. Maybe he's right today. "Doom" is a good term for what he sees as only the rich benefiting from a rise in asset prices when those less well-to-do have to cope with the inflated cost of living. One QE too far? Deserving of Obama ridicule for helping the rich at the expense of the poor? Bernanke is destroying the economy by continuing to do this crap. Making credit "freely available" as you put it causes huge inflation. That's why prices for most goods are so high during a down economy. Normally prices go up when the economy is good, not the other way around. That's actually a chart of the derivative (rate of change) of prices, not the actual prices themselves.
That's how you measure inflation, by definition. Inflation is low and has been for quite some time, which is the opposite of what Austrian school economists predicted following the Fed's actions.
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[B]On September 15 2012 13:09 paralleluniverse wrote:
I love how you always manipulate the FRED graphs in an attempt to prove yourself right. You did this several months ago, and I called you out then and I will now.
This graph is far more appropriate.
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On September 15 2012 14:37 smarty pants wrote:I love how you always manipulate the FRED graphs in an attempt to prove yourself right. You did this several months ago, and I called you out then and I will now. This graph is far more appropriate.
What???
They're exactly the same graphs and show exactly the same thing.
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On September 15 2012 14:34 kwizach wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2012 14:23 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 13:09 paralleluniverse wrote:On September 15 2012 12:37 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 12:29 Danglars wrote:And far away from Libya and Egypt, alarm comes at Bernanke's latest easing (QE).
Central bankers are “counterfeit money printers” and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should resign for messing up the U.S. economy so badly, Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Doom and Boom, told CNBC on Friday.
He said Bernanke was one of the main proponents of an ultra-expansionist economic monetary policy that was to blame for the latest financial crisis.
“If I had messed up as badly as Bernanke I would for sure resign. The mandate of the Fed to boost asset prices and thereby create wealth is ludicrous — it doesn’t work that way. It’s a temporary boost followed by a crash,” Faber said.
Faber, who rose to prominence after predicting the 1987 financial crash report and dubbed "Dr Doom" for his negative predictions, said: “This unlimited QE (quantitative easing) , buying mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and continuing operation twist has the implication of simply having asset prices go up and the money flows down to the Mayfair economy,” Faber said.
A Mayfair economy is one which benefits the wealthier and better off in society. Faber said this latest round of QE would not help the “man on the street”.
“QE helps rich people whose asset prices go up and whose net worth then increases but it doesn’t flow to the man on the street who is faced with higher costs of living with price rises. You just have a small economy that is booming but the majority of the economy is damaged by QE,” he said.
Bernanke announced on Thursday that the Fed would buy $40 billion a month in MBS, giving the impression that this time around there would be no time limit to the program, which would only stop once a sustained uptick in employment is visible.
“The money printers are responsible for this crisis. If we continue with this expansionist monetary policy we won’t be facing a fiscal cliff it will be a fiscal grand canyon,” he added.
Mike Konczal, fellow at the Roosevelt Institute disagreed claiming that this latest round of QE — aggressive as it was — would expand the scope of Federal Reserve policy and was “great for main street”. Crucially, he said, it tackles the issue of employment which would underpin future wealth.
“If anything, monetary policy has been too tight in recent years. We’ve seen a collapse in GDP growth, no wage growth and huge rises in unemployment. Wealth is collapsing because of a collapse in the housing market and prolonged, mass unemployment ,” Konczal said.
Faber poured scorn on the notion that QE helps the economy, declaring that commentators like Konczal would have said the same in 2001 when low interest rates led to the biggest housing bubble in the United States. That in turn led to the financial crisis of 2008.
“If we have an economic crisis in the Western world it’s because the government makes up 50 percent or more of the economy. This is a cancer that is taking away people’s freedom,” he said.
source: cnbcYeah, but making credit freely available can't have a harmful effect on the economy, can it? The man famous for his financial crash prediction nailed a few other biggies, including China's rise and current problems with the dollar. Maybe he's right today. "Doom" is a good term for what he sees as only the rich benefiting from a rise in asset prices when those less well-to-do have to cope with the inflated cost of living. One QE too far? Deserving of Obama ridicule for helping the rich at the expense of the poor? Bernanke is destroying the economy by continuing to do this crap. Making credit "freely available" as you put it causes huge inflation. That's why prices for most goods are so high during a down economy. Normally prices go up when the economy is good, not the other way around. That's actually a chart of the derivative (rate of change) of prices, not the actual prices themselves. That's how you measure inflation, by definition. Inflation is low and has been for quite some time, which is the opposite of what Austrian school economists predicted following the Fed's actions.
Look at the blue line specifically. Food and energy prices are impacted a lot more by global events (droughts, wars, etc.) so the red line should be disregarded as a way of seeing what the fed has done. Every year the rate of change in prices has increased at least 1%. That's huge. That means it's ADDING another 1%+ to inflation every single year. Some year's it's even close to 3%. You can't deny that that chart actually shows how the prices of things have been drastically rising.
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On September 15 2012 14:39 paralleluniverse wrote:
They're exactly the same graphs and show exactly the same thing.
Yep.
Of course it has the same data, but mine is a more precise and relevant graph.
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On September 15 2012 14:41 smarty pants wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2012 14:39 paralleluniverse wrote:
They're exactly the same graphs and show exactly the same thing. Yep. Of course it has the same data, but mine is a more precise and relevant graph.
No. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong,
I see what you've done now.
You've used the change from a year ago, not percentage change. But that's completely wrong. And it goes to show that you have no idea what a CPI is. CPI is an index that measures percentage change from the last period, as such percentage changes are scale invariant, whereas the change is not. For example if an apple costs $5 and changed to $6, a 20% increase, then an index for apples that was 100 last year would increase to 120, an increase of 20. But if the scale had been changed due to inflation 20 years ago, so that the index was 1000 last year, then the increase would be 200. This is wrong, the increase is neither. The change in price is actually scale invariant and it's 20%.
Moreover, inflation is measured by year on year percentage change, not year on year change in the CPI value. Further, the way that CPI is actually calculated is that BLS works out the percentage change for each item group and multiplies it with the previous period index value so that the absolute change is a meaningless, scale dependent quantity.
Don't just take it from me: Here's the BLS's headline CPI release:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
They use percentage change, not change.
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On September 15 2012 14:41 Voltaire wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2012 14:34 kwizach wrote:On September 15 2012 14:23 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 13:09 paralleluniverse wrote:On September 15 2012 12:37 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 12:29 Danglars wrote:And far away from Libya and Egypt, alarm comes at Bernanke's latest easing (QE).
Central bankers are “counterfeit money printers” and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should resign for messing up the U.S. economy so badly, Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Doom and Boom, told CNBC on Friday.
He said Bernanke was one of the main proponents of an ultra-expansionist economic monetary policy that was to blame for the latest financial crisis.
“If I had messed up as badly as Bernanke I would for sure resign. The mandate of the Fed to boost asset prices and thereby create wealth is ludicrous — it doesn’t work that way. It’s a temporary boost followed by a crash,” Faber said.
Faber, who rose to prominence after predicting the 1987 financial crash report and dubbed "Dr Doom" for his negative predictions, said: “This unlimited QE (quantitative easing) , buying mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and continuing operation twist has the implication of simply having asset prices go up and the money flows down to the Mayfair economy,” Faber said.
A Mayfair economy is one which benefits the wealthier and better off in society. Faber said this latest round of QE would not help the “man on the street”.
“QE helps rich people whose asset prices go up and whose net worth then increases but it doesn’t flow to the man on the street who is faced with higher costs of living with price rises. You just have a small economy that is booming but the majority of the economy is damaged by QE,” he said.
Bernanke announced on Thursday that the Fed would buy $40 billion a month in MBS, giving the impression that this time around there would be no time limit to the program, which would only stop once a sustained uptick in employment is visible.
“The money printers are responsible for this crisis. If we continue with this expansionist monetary policy we won’t be facing a fiscal cliff it will be a fiscal grand canyon,” he added.
Mike Konczal, fellow at the Roosevelt Institute disagreed claiming that this latest round of QE — aggressive as it was — would expand the scope of Federal Reserve policy and was “great for main street”. Crucially, he said, it tackles the issue of employment which would underpin future wealth.
“If anything, monetary policy has been too tight in recent years. We’ve seen a collapse in GDP growth, no wage growth and huge rises in unemployment. Wealth is collapsing because of a collapse in the housing market and prolonged, mass unemployment ,” Konczal said.
Faber poured scorn on the notion that QE helps the economy, declaring that commentators like Konczal would have said the same in 2001 when low interest rates led to the biggest housing bubble in the United States. That in turn led to the financial crisis of 2008.
“If we have an economic crisis in the Western world it’s because the government makes up 50 percent or more of the economy. This is a cancer that is taking away people’s freedom,” he said.
source: cnbcYeah, but making credit freely available can't have a harmful effect on the economy, can it? The man famous for his financial crash prediction nailed a few other biggies, including China's rise and current problems with the dollar. Maybe he's right today. "Doom" is a good term for what he sees as only the rich benefiting from a rise in asset prices when those less well-to-do have to cope with the inflated cost of living. One QE too far? Deserving of Obama ridicule for helping the rich at the expense of the poor? Bernanke is destroying the economy by continuing to do this crap. Making credit "freely available" as you put it causes huge inflation. That's why prices for most goods are so high during a down economy. Normally prices go up when the economy is good, not the other way around. That's actually a chart of the derivative (rate of change) of prices, not the actual prices themselves. That's how you measure inflation, by definition. Inflation is low and has been for quite some time, which is the opposite of what Austrian school economists predicted following the Fed's actions. Look at the blue line specifically. Food and energy prices are impacted a lot more by global events (droughts, wars, etc.) so the red line should be disregarded as a way of seeing what the fed has done. Every year the rate of change in prices has increased at least 1%. That's huge. That means it's ADDING another 1%+ to inflation every single year. Some year's it's even close to 3%. You can't deny that that chart actually shows how the prices of things have been drastically rising.
I don't think you even know what inflation is or does in a modern understanding of economics. You're just yelling at numbers and lines and shouting nonsense. You might as well be linking pictures of giant red boxes and complaining about the shade of red being used.
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On September 15 2012 14:41 Voltaire wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2012 14:34 kwizach wrote:On September 15 2012 14:23 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 13:09 paralleluniverse wrote:On September 15 2012 12:37 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 12:29 Danglars wrote:And far away from Libya and Egypt, alarm comes at Bernanke's latest easing (QE).
Central bankers are “counterfeit money printers” and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should resign for messing up the U.S. economy so badly, Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Doom and Boom, told CNBC on Friday.
He said Bernanke was one of the main proponents of an ultra-expansionist economic monetary policy that was to blame for the latest financial crisis.
“If I had messed up as badly as Bernanke I would for sure resign. The mandate of the Fed to boost asset prices and thereby create wealth is ludicrous — it doesn’t work that way. It’s a temporary boost followed by a crash,” Faber said.
Faber, who rose to prominence after predicting the 1987 financial crash report and dubbed "Dr Doom" for his negative predictions, said: “This unlimited QE (quantitative easing) , buying mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and continuing operation twist has the implication of simply having asset prices go up and the money flows down to the Mayfair economy,” Faber said.
A Mayfair economy is one which benefits the wealthier and better off in society. Faber said this latest round of QE would not help the “man on the street”.
“QE helps rich people whose asset prices go up and whose net worth then increases but it doesn’t flow to the man on the street who is faced with higher costs of living with price rises. You just have a small economy that is booming but the majority of the economy is damaged by QE,” he said.
Bernanke announced on Thursday that the Fed would buy $40 billion a month in MBS, giving the impression that this time around there would be no time limit to the program, which would only stop once a sustained uptick in employment is visible.
“The money printers are responsible for this crisis. If we continue with this expansionist monetary policy we won’t be facing a fiscal cliff it will be a fiscal grand canyon,” he added.
Mike Konczal, fellow at the Roosevelt Institute disagreed claiming that this latest round of QE — aggressive as it was — would expand the scope of Federal Reserve policy and was “great for main street”. Crucially, he said, it tackles the issue of employment which would underpin future wealth.
“If anything, monetary policy has been too tight in recent years. We’ve seen a collapse in GDP growth, no wage growth and huge rises in unemployment. Wealth is collapsing because of a collapse in the housing market and prolonged, mass unemployment ,” Konczal said.
Faber poured scorn on the notion that QE helps the economy, declaring that commentators like Konczal would have said the same in 2001 when low interest rates led to the biggest housing bubble in the United States. That in turn led to the financial crisis of 2008.
“If we have an economic crisis in the Western world it’s because the government makes up 50 percent or more of the economy. This is a cancer that is taking away people’s freedom,” he said.
source: cnbcYeah, but making credit freely available can't have a harmful effect on the economy, can it? The man famous for his financial crash prediction nailed a few other biggies, including China's rise and current problems with the dollar. Maybe he's right today. "Doom" is a good term for what he sees as only the rich benefiting from a rise in asset prices when those less well-to-do have to cope with the inflated cost of living. One QE too far? Deserving of Obama ridicule for helping the rich at the expense of the poor? Bernanke is destroying the economy by continuing to do this crap. Making credit "freely available" as you put it causes huge inflation. That's why prices for most goods are so high during a down economy. Normally prices go up when the economy is good, not the other way around. That's actually a chart of the derivative (rate of change) of prices, not the actual prices themselves. That's how you measure inflation, by definition. Inflation is low and has been for quite some time, which is the opposite of what Austrian school economists predicted following the Fed's actions. Look at the blue line specifically. Food and energy prices are impacted a lot more by global events (droughts, wars, etc.) so the red line should be disregarded as a way of seeing what the fed has done. Every year the rate of change in prices has increased at least 1%. That's huge. That means it's ADDING another 1%+ to inflation every single year. Some year's it's even close to 3%. You can't deny that that chart actually shows how the prices of things have been drastically rising.
lol 1% is huge?
Yes, food and fuel is impacted by global events that are outside of the control of the Fed, so they are generally not caused by loose Fed policy and do not reflect economic fundamentals, that's one reason why they are usually stripped out of CPI. But the graph includes both CPI with food and fuel and without food and fuel, so that you can see that these are temporary fluctuations and that removing food and fuel accurately tracks core, underlying inflation.
1% inflation is too low. The Fed targets 2% inflation. This is a symmetric target, i.e, the Fed will use approximately as much effort to bring 1% inflation up to 2% inflation than it does to bring 3% inflation down to 2% inflation. The Australian central bank targets inflation in a 2%-3% range.
Price stability does not mean 0% inflation. 0% inflation is bad, because it does not offer a buffer against deflation, it means that the Fed will more easily hit the ZLB in the case of a severe economic shock (like now) and it encourages hording money instead of investing money to promote economic growth.
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On September 15 2012 15:03 aksfjh wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2012 14:41 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 14:34 kwizach wrote:On September 15 2012 14:23 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 13:09 paralleluniverse wrote:On September 15 2012 12:37 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 12:29 Danglars wrote:And far away from Libya and Egypt, alarm comes at Bernanke's latest easing (QE).
Central bankers are “counterfeit money printers” and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should resign for messing up the U.S. economy so badly, Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Doom and Boom, told CNBC on Friday.
He said Bernanke was one of the main proponents of an ultra-expansionist economic monetary policy that was to blame for the latest financial crisis.
“If I had messed up as badly as Bernanke I would for sure resign. The mandate of the Fed to boost asset prices and thereby create wealth is ludicrous — it doesn’t work that way. It’s a temporary boost followed by a crash,” Faber said.
Faber, who rose to prominence after predicting the 1987 financial crash report and dubbed "Dr Doom" for his negative predictions, said: “This unlimited QE (quantitative easing) , buying mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and continuing operation twist has the implication of simply having asset prices go up and the money flows down to the Mayfair economy,” Faber said.
A Mayfair economy is one which benefits the wealthier and better off in society. Faber said this latest round of QE would not help the “man on the street”.
“QE helps rich people whose asset prices go up and whose net worth then increases but it doesn’t flow to the man on the street who is faced with higher costs of living with price rises. You just have a small economy that is booming but the majority of the economy is damaged by QE,” he said.
Bernanke announced on Thursday that the Fed would buy $40 billion a month in MBS, giving the impression that this time around there would be no time limit to the program, which would only stop once a sustained uptick in employment is visible.
“The money printers are responsible for this crisis. If we continue with this expansionist monetary policy we won’t be facing a fiscal cliff it will be a fiscal grand canyon,” he added.
Mike Konczal, fellow at the Roosevelt Institute disagreed claiming that this latest round of QE — aggressive as it was — would expand the scope of Federal Reserve policy and was “great for main street”. Crucially, he said, it tackles the issue of employment which would underpin future wealth.
“If anything, monetary policy has been too tight in recent years. We’ve seen a collapse in GDP growth, no wage growth and huge rises in unemployment. Wealth is collapsing because of a collapse in the housing market and prolonged, mass unemployment ,” Konczal said.
Faber poured scorn on the notion that QE helps the economy, declaring that commentators like Konczal would have said the same in 2001 when low interest rates led to the biggest housing bubble in the United States. That in turn led to the financial crisis of 2008.
“If we have an economic crisis in the Western world it’s because the government makes up 50 percent or more of the economy. This is a cancer that is taking away people’s freedom,” he said.
source: cnbcYeah, but making credit freely available can't have a harmful effect on the economy, can it? The man famous for his financial crash prediction nailed a few other biggies, including China's rise and current problems with the dollar. Maybe he's right today. "Doom" is a good term for what he sees as only the rich benefiting from a rise in asset prices when those less well-to-do have to cope with the inflated cost of living. One QE too far? Deserving of Obama ridicule for helping the rich at the expense of the poor? Bernanke is destroying the economy by continuing to do this crap. Making credit "freely available" as you put it causes huge inflation. That's why prices for most goods are so high during a down economy. Normally prices go up when the economy is good, not the other way around. That's actually a chart of the derivative (rate of change) of prices, not the actual prices themselves. That's how you measure inflation, by definition. Inflation is low and has been for quite some time, which is the opposite of what Austrian school economists predicted following the Fed's actions. Look at the blue line specifically. Food and energy prices are impacted a lot more by global events (droughts, wars, etc.) so the red line should be disregarded as a way of seeing what the fed has done. Every year the rate of change in prices has increased at least 1%. That's huge. That means it's ADDING another 1%+ to inflation every single year. Some year's it's even close to 3%. You can't deny that that chart actually shows how the prices of things have been drastically rising. I don't think you even know what inflation is or does in a modern understanding of economics. You're just yelling at numbers and lines and shouting nonsense. You might as well be linking pictures of giant red boxes and complaining about the shade of red being used.
How about you respond with an argument instead of resorting to ad hominems?
On September 15 2012 15:06 paralleluniverse wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2012 14:41 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 14:34 kwizach wrote:On September 15 2012 14:23 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 13:09 paralleluniverse wrote:On September 15 2012 12:37 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 12:29 Danglars wrote:And far away from Libya and Egypt, alarm comes at Bernanke's latest easing (QE).
Central bankers are “counterfeit money printers” and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should resign for messing up the U.S. economy so badly, Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Doom and Boom, told CNBC on Friday.
He said Bernanke was one of the main proponents of an ultra-expansionist economic monetary policy that was to blame for the latest financial crisis.
“If I had messed up as badly as Bernanke I would for sure resign. The mandate of the Fed to boost asset prices and thereby create wealth is ludicrous — it doesn’t work that way. It’s a temporary boost followed by a crash,” Faber said.
Faber, who rose to prominence after predicting the 1987 financial crash report and dubbed "Dr Doom" for his negative predictions, said: “This unlimited QE (quantitative easing) , buying mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and continuing operation twist has the implication of simply having asset prices go up and the money flows down to the Mayfair economy,” Faber said.
A Mayfair economy is one which benefits the wealthier and better off in society. Faber said this latest round of QE would not help the “man on the street”.
“QE helps rich people whose asset prices go up and whose net worth then increases but it doesn’t flow to the man on the street who is faced with higher costs of living with price rises. You just have a small economy that is booming but the majority of the economy is damaged by QE,” he said.
Bernanke announced on Thursday that the Fed would buy $40 billion a month in MBS, giving the impression that this time around there would be no time limit to the program, which would only stop once a sustained uptick in employment is visible.
“The money printers are responsible for this crisis. If we continue with this expansionist monetary policy we won’t be facing a fiscal cliff it will be a fiscal grand canyon,” he added.
Mike Konczal, fellow at the Roosevelt Institute disagreed claiming that this latest round of QE — aggressive as it was — would expand the scope of Federal Reserve policy and was “great for main street”. Crucially, he said, it tackles the issue of employment which would underpin future wealth.
“If anything, monetary policy has been too tight in recent years. We’ve seen a collapse in GDP growth, no wage growth and huge rises in unemployment. Wealth is collapsing because of a collapse in the housing market and prolonged, mass unemployment ,” Konczal said.
Faber poured scorn on the notion that QE helps the economy, declaring that commentators like Konczal would have said the same in 2001 when low interest rates led to the biggest housing bubble in the United States. That in turn led to the financial crisis of 2008.
“If we have an economic crisis in the Western world it’s because the government makes up 50 percent or more of the economy. This is a cancer that is taking away people’s freedom,” he said.
source: cnbcYeah, but making credit freely available can't have a harmful effect on the economy, can it? The man famous for his financial crash prediction nailed a few other biggies, including China's rise and current problems with the dollar. Maybe he's right today. "Doom" is a good term for what he sees as only the rich benefiting from a rise in asset prices when those less well-to-do have to cope with the inflated cost of living. One QE too far? Deserving of Obama ridicule for helping the rich at the expense of the poor? Bernanke is destroying the economy by continuing to do this crap. Making credit "freely available" as you put it causes huge inflation. That's why prices for most goods are so high during a down economy. Normally prices go up when the economy is good, not the other way around. That's actually a chart of the derivative (rate of change) of prices, not the actual prices themselves. That's how you measure inflation, by definition. Inflation is low and has been for quite some time, which is the opposite of what Austrian school economists predicted following the Fed's actions. Look at the blue line specifically. Food and energy prices are impacted a lot more by global events (droughts, wars, etc.) so the red line should be disregarded as a way of seeing what the fed has done. Every year the rate of change in prices has increased at least 1%. That's huge. That means it's ADDING another 1%+ to inflation every single year. Some year's it's even close to 3%. You can't deny that that chart actually shows how the prices of things have been drastically rising. lol 1% is huge? Yes, food and fuel is impacted by global events that are outside of the control of the Fed, so they are generally not caused by loose Fed policy and do not reflect economic fundamentals, that's one reason why they are usually stripped out of CPI. But the graph includes both CPI with food and fuel and without food and fuel, so that you can see that these are temporary fluctuations and that removing food and fuel accurately tracks core, underlying inflation. 1% inflation is too low. The Fed targets 2% inflation. This is a symmetric target, i.e, the Fed will use approximately as much effort to bring 1% inflation up to 2% inflation than it does to bring 3% inflation down to 2% inflation. The Australian central bank targets inflation in a 2%-3% range. Price stability does not mean 0% inflation. 0% inflation is bad, because it does not offer a buffer against deflation, it means that the Fed will more easily hit the ZLB in the case of a severe economic shock (like now) and it encourages hording money instead of investing money to promote economic growth.
You misunderstand what that graph is showing. It's showing the rate of change from year to year. That means when it's at 2%, inflation was 2% higher than the year before. That doesn't mean inflation is 2% overall (when you're comparing to a dollar value in say 1950); it's even higher than that. So for the rate of inflation to increase by 1% every year is huge.
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On September 15 2012 15:14 Voltaire wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2012 15:03 aksfjh wrote:On September 15 2012 14:41 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 14:34 kwizach wrote:On September 15 2012 14:23 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 13:09 paralleluniverse wrote:On September 15 2012 12:37 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 12:29 Danglars wrote:And far away from Libya and Egypt, alarm comes at Bernanke's latest easing (QE).
Central bankers are “counterfeit money printers” and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should resign for messing up the U.S. economy so badly, Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Doom and Boom, told CNBC on Friday.
He said Bernanke was one of the main proponents of an ultra-expansionist economic monetary policy that was to blame for the latest financial crisis.
“If I had messed up as badly as Bernanke I would for sure resign. The mandate of the Fed to boost asset prices and thereby create wealth is ludicrous — it doesn’t work that way. It’s a temporary boost followed by a crash,” Faber said.
Faber, who rose to prominence after predicting the 1987 financial crash report and dubbed "Dr Doom" for his negative predictions, said: “This unlimited QE (quantitative easing) , buying mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and continuing operation twist has the implication of simply having asset prices go up and the money flows down to the Mayfair economy,” Faber said.
A Mayfair economy is one which benefits the wealthier and better off in society. Faber said this latest round of QE would not help the “man on the street”.
“QE helps rich people whose asset prices go up and whose net worth then increases but it doesn’t flow to the man on the street who is faced with higher costs of living with price rises. You just have a small economy that is booming but the majority of the economy is damaged by QE,” he said.
Bernanke announced on Thursday that the Fed would buy $40 billion a month in MBS, giving the impression that this time around there would be no time limit to the program, which would only stop once a sustained uptick in employment is visible.
“The money printers are responsible for this crisis. If we continue with this expansionist monetary policy we won’t be facing a fiscal cliff it will be a fiscal grand canyon,” he added.
Mike Konczal, fellow at the Roosevelt Institute disagreed claiming that this latest round of QE — aggressive as it was — would expand the scope of Federal Reserve policy and was “great for main street”. Crucially, he said, it tackles the issue of employment which would underpin future wealth.
“If anything, monetary policy has been too tight in recent years. We’ve seen a collapse in GDP growth, no wage growth and huge rises in unemployment. Wealth is collapsing because of a collapse in the housing market and prolonged, mass unemployment ,” Konczal said.
Faber poured scorn on the notion that QE helps the economy, declaring that commentators like Konczal would have said the same in 2001 when low interest rates led to the biggest housing bubble in the United States. That in turn led to the financial crisis of 2008.
“If we have an economic crisis in the Western world it’s because the government makes up 50 percent or more of the economy. This is a cancer that is taking away people’s freedom,” he said.
source: cnbcYeah, but making credit freely available can't have a harmful effect on the economy, can it? The man famous for his financial crash prediction nailed a few other biggies, including China's rise and current problems with the dollar. Maybe he's right today. "Doom" is a good term for what he sees as only the rich benefiting from a rise in asset prices when those less well-to-do have to cope with the inflated cost of living. One QE too far? Deserving of Obama ridicule for helping the rich at the expense of the poor? Bernanke is destroying the economy by continuing to do this crap. Making credit "freely available" as you put it causes huge inflation. That's why prices for most goods are so high during a down economy. Normally prices go up when the economy is good, not the other way around. That's actually a chart of the derivative (rate of change) of prices, not the actual prices themselves. That's how you measure inflation, by definition. Inflation is low and has been for quite some time, which is the opposite of what Austrian school economists predicted following the Fed's actions. Look at the blue line specifically. Food and energy prices are impacted a lot more by global events (droughts, wars, etc.) so the red line should be disregarded as a way of seeing what the fed has done. Every year the rate of change in prices has increased at least 1%. That's huge. That means it's ADDING another 1%+ to inflation every single year. Some year's it's even close to 3%. You can't deny that that chart actually shows how the prices of things have been drastically rising. I don't think you even know what inflation is or does in a modern understanding of economics. You're just yelling at numbers and lines and shouting nonsense. You might as well be linking pictures of giant red boxes and complaining about the shade of red being used. How about you respond with an argument instead of resorting to ad hominems? Show nested quote +On September 15 2012 15:06 paralleluniverse wrote:On September 15 2012 14:41 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 14:34 kwizach wrote:On September 15 2012 14:23 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 13:09 paralleluniverse wrote:On September 15 2012 12:37 Voltaire wrote:On September 15 2012 12:29 Danglars wrote:And far away from Libya and Egypt, alarm comes at Bernanke's latest easing (QE).
Central bankers are “counterfeit money printers” and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should resign for messing up the U.S. economy so badly, Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Doom and Boom, told CNBC on Friday.
He said Bernanke was one of the main proponents of an ultra-expansionist economic monetary policy that was to blame for the latest financial crisis.
“If I had messed up as badly as Bernanke I would for sure resign. The mandate of the Fed to boost asset prices and thereby create wealth is ludicrous — it doesn’t work that way. It’s a temporary boost followed by a crash,” Faber said.
Faber, who rose to prominence after predicting the 1987 financial crash report and dubbed "Dr Doom" for his negative predictions, said: “This unlimited QE (quantitative easing) , buying mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and continuing operation twist has the implication of simply having asset prices go up and the money flows down to the Mayfair economy,” Faber said.
A Mayfair economy is one which benefits the wealthier and better off in society. Faber said this latest round of QE would not help the “man on the street”.
“QE helps rich people whose asset prices go up and whose net worth then increases but it doesn’t flow to the man on the street who is faced with higher costs of living with price rises. You just have a small economy that is booming but the majority of the economy is damaged by QE,” he said.
Bernanke announced on Thursday that the Fed would buy $40 billion a month in MBS, giving the impression that this time around there would be no time limit to the program, which would only stop once a sustained uptick in employment is visible.
“The money printers are responsible for this crisis. If we continue with this expansionist monetary policy we won’t be facing a fiscal cliff it will be a fiscal grand canyon,” he added.
Mike Konczal, fellow at the Roosevelt Institute disagreed claiming that this latest round of QE — aggressive as it was — would expand the scope of Federal Reserve policy and was “great for main street”. Crucially, he said, it tackles the issue of employment which would underpin future wealth.
“If anything, monetary policy has been too tight in recent years. We’ve seen a collapse in GDP growth, no wage growth and huge rises in unemployment. Wealth is collapsing because of a collapse in the housing market and prolonged, mass unemployment ,” Konczal said.
Faber poured scorn on the notion that QE helps the economy, declaring that commentators like Konczal would have said the same in 2001 when low interest rates led to the biggest housing bubble in the United States. That in turn led to the financial crisis of 2008.
“If we have an economic crisis in the Western world it’s because the government makes up 50 percent or more of the economy. This is a cancer that is taking away people’s freedom,” he said.
source: cnbcYeah, but making credit freely available can't have a harmful effect on the economy, can it? The man famous for his financial crash prediction nailed a few other biggies, including China's rise and current problems with the dollar. Maybe he's right today. "Doom" is a good term for what he sees as only the rich benefiting from a rise in asset prices when those less well-to-do have to cope with the inflated cost of living. One QE too far? Deserving of Obama ridicule for helping the rich at the expense of the poor? Bernanke is destroying the economy by continuing to do this crap. Making credit "freely available" as you put it causes huge inflation. That's why prices for most goods are so high during a down economy. Normally prices go up when the economy is good, not the other way around. That's actually a chart of the derivative (rate of change) of prices, not the actual prices themselves. That's how you measure inflation, by definition. Inflation is low and has been for quite some time, which is the opposite of what Austrian school economists predicted following the Fed's actions. Look at the blue line specifically. Food and energy prices are impacted a lot more by global events (droughts, wars, etc.) so the red line should be disregarded as a way of seeing what the fed has done. Every year the rate of change in prices has increased at least 1%. That's huge. That means it's ADDING another 1%+ to inflation every single year. Some year's it's even close to 3%. You can't deny that that chart actually shows how the prices of things have been drastically rising. lol 1% is huge? Yes, food and fuel is impacted by global events that are outside of the control of the Fed, so they are generally not caused by loose Fed policy and do not reflect economic fundamentals, that's one reason why they are usually stripped out of CPI. But the graph includes both CPI with food and fuel and without food and fuel, so that you can see that these are temporary fluctuations and that removing food and fuel accurately tracks core, underlying inflation. 1% inflation is too low. The Fed targets 2% inflation. This is a symmetric target, i.e, the Fed will use approximately as much effort to bring 1% inflation up to 2% inflation than it does to bring 3% inflation down to 2% inflation. The Australian central bank targets inflation in a 2%-3% range. Price stability does not mean 0% inflation. 0% inflation is bad, because it does not offer a buffer against deflation, it means that the Fed will more easily hit the ZLB in the case of a severe economic shock (like now) and it encourages hording money instead of investing money to promote economic growth. You misunderstand what that graph is showing. It's showing the rate of change from year to year. That means when it's at 2%, inflation was 2% higher than the year before. That doesn't mean inflation is 2% overall (when you're comparing to a dollar value in say 1950); it's even higher than that. So for the rate of inflation to increase by 1% every year is huge.
I fully understand what my graph means. Yes, 2% increase year on year, means that the price of things are exponentially increasing.
This is like saying that the $1 trillion US deficit is HUGE. One trillion, that's a HUGE NUMBER. O.M.G. But this is just for shock value, it says nothing about economic fundamentals. The economic effect of the deficit is measured relative to the $16 trillion GDP, so you can't just say "$1 trillion. HUGE NUMBER." Likewise, the economic effect of high prices is measured relative to the price level a year ago, you can't just say "Exponential increase. Huge."
You can try and argue that 1% inflation (or a $1 trillion deficit) has a large economic effect. But that's not what you're doing. You've said nothing about economic effects. You're saying: "Look. Big number. LOOOOK. It's HUGE. We're screwed."
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EPT![[image loading]](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?&id=CPIAUCSL,CPILFESL&scale=Left,Left&range=Custom,Custom&cosd=2007-01-01,2007-01-01&coed=2012-08-01,2012-08-01&line_color=%230000ff,%23ff0000&link_values=false,false&line_style=Solid,Solid&mark_type=NONE,NONE&mw=4,4&lw=1,1&ost=-99999,-99999&oet=99999,99999&mma=0,0&fml=a,a&fq=Monthly,Monthly&fam=avg,avg&fgst=lin,lin&transformation=ch1,ch1&vintage_date=2012-09-15,2012-09-15&revision_date=2012-09-15,2012-09-15)
