Politics

[pkt77242]

The "sky was falling" analogy is really a little overblown. The banking crisis was due in large part to the government forcing lenders to lend money they had no business lending. And yes, there was certainly the greed factor that played in to the crisis as well. But the economy has been flat, even with the billions and billions that were poured in to help get it going. Job creation has been horrendous. The unemployment rate has dropped but does not factor in those who have simply given up on finding a job. The divide between rich and poor has widened. Obamacare is a mess and we still have no idea just how bad it really is. Foreign policy is a mess. Several scandals that need to be addressed.

And yet, the Dems want to talk about Global Warming? Yeah... it's all smoke and mirrors. Gotta keep that fringe element on their side. And those Independent voters who they have lost in the last five years. All in all, you can put lipstick on a pig... but it's still a pig.

Banks weren't forced to do the subprime loans that kicked this off, that was banks getting greedy (along with individuals who had no concept of what they could or could not afford). To blame the bad loans on the government is a little off (though the government does some carry blame, it is no where near the portion that is deserved by the Banks and individuals who were buying the homes).

 

[chicago51]

Is far as the banks go two of the crapiest pieces of legistlature were passed during the Clinto years.

One was gram-leach biley which was lead by Republican Phil Gram. It ended Glass Stiegal. We need to bring back Glass Stiegal which seperated personal banking from investment banking.

The other piece of crap legislation was the Commodities Futures Modernization Act which created the financial derivatives market which is 1.2 quadrillion dollars and growing. More importantly it allowed the speculation of commodities like wheat for instance. Speculation on food communities like wheat, beef, chicken, you name it has raised food prices because food prices no longer truly reflect supply and demand.

We need to end the purchase of food communities futures by those that aren't involved in producing or selling food.

Bring back Glass Steigal.

Finally break up the big banks.

If we broke up all oligipolies you would see a boom in entreuneurship, you see money stay in local communities, and this economy would take off.

 

[connor_in]

 

[magogian]

All the above and thousands of other things.

Military doesn't need $700B/year to dominate the world. Are we really saying we couldn't get by on $600B or even $500B?
Crop subsidies are ridiculous, completely gone.
Ethanol subsidies, see ya. 10% mandate? later gater. ditto for all the other green b.s. subsidies
Department of Education? Goner. Take the unfunded mandates with it.
Federal pensions? Frozen and replaced with a healthy 403b contribution.
"means test" Politicians, pay them less the richer they are and definitely don't tack on ridiculous pensions and healthcare.
Social security? Add 1 month to all retirement ages for every year of age under 55 to age 19 (3 years at age 19) That would put a 19 year old early retirement at 65, normal at 70 and full at 73.

Hey, look I just fixed our budget in five minutes.

That isn't enough to fix the budget problems, but there is a lot to agree on.

 

[RDU Irish]

Cash Abroad Rises $206 Billion as Apple to IBM Avoid Tax - Yahoo Finance

So we have $2 trillion of economic stimulus waiting to be put to work by the private sector. Let them bring it home and pay dividends, repurchase stock, invest in their company or whatever they want to do with it. Permanent 5% tax on repatriated profit would raise tax dollars and juice the economy.

Chiquita just "merged" with an Irish company and will no longer be based in the USA. Just like Eaton Corp a few years ago they stand to save millions in taxes by changing their domicile. Irish gain is our pain. Level the global playing field and watch companies move to the US and put more folks to work.

 

[RDU Irish]

That isn't enough to fix the budget problems, but there is a lot to agree on.

Yet neither side can agree on jack. Fannie Freddie progress should be interesting to follow. Seems like realistic middle of the road solution to a real problem. Surely has nothing to do with Barney Frank no longer roaming the halls.

 

[connor_in]

 

[MJ12666]

If we can't absorb a three year increase in SS ages over 40 years then we are doomed as a society.

I would prefer to double those increases to reduce the cost and cut the tax if there are enough savings. With 12.4% of wages going to a retirement plan people should be doing better than a $1200 or $1300/month payment in retirement.

A full time minimum wage earner has about $1800/year going to SS (6.2% employer + 6.2% employee). If you work from age 20 to 62, never making more than minimum, you contribute $75,600. Compound that at 5% and you would amass $257,000, enough to pay $1380/month for thirty years at the same 5% (more than the $1250/month you earned working at the minimum wage and in line with the average monthly amount collected from SS currently).

Way oversimplified example but you can see even a $14500/year earner is more than pulling their weight and the program is still broken.

It is broken because the contributions have not been invested in anything for decades. The funds in the alleged trust fund have been withdrawn and spent to fund general government spending, so not only will the employee in your example not earn 5%, they will actually have a -0- balance in the their account upon retirement.

 

[MJ12666]

Is far as the banks go two of the crapiest pieces of legistlature were passed during the Clinto years.

One was gram-leach biley which was lead by Republican Phil Gram. It ended Glass Stiegal. We need to bring back Glass Stiegal which seperated personal banking from investment banking.

The other piece of crap legislation was the Commodities Futures Modernization Act which created the financial derivatives market which is 1.2 quadrillion dollars and growing. More importantly it allowed the speculation of commodities like wheat for instance. Speculation on food communities like wheat, beef, chicken, you name it has raised food prices because food prices no longer truly reflect supply and demand.

We need to end the purchase of food communities futures by those that aren't involved in producing or selling food.

Bring back Glass Steigal.

Finally break up the big banks.

If we broke up all oligipolies you would see a boom in entreuneurship, you see money stay in local communities, and this economy would take off.

I thought I was fairly literate about deritatives but I never heard of food communuties futures. Exactly what are they and where are they traded?

One other piece of information you should be aware of, futures can be used for speculating but are mainly used as a hedge; but regardless as the reason they are traded (or for that matter their price) futures contracts have no impact on the spot market value of the underlying commodity.

 

[connor_in]

Gaffe: Obama Visits Gap, Amazed by Credit Card Machine | Truth Revolt

So he pulls a Quayle and a Bush and we barely hear a peep? Thank goodness there is no bias in the media

 

[Polish Leppy 22]

Yep. That's why the left will do all they can in politics and media over the next 2 years to bash Cruz and Rubio. They would beg for a Christie/ Jeb Bush/ etc. because they want a repeat of 2008 and 2012. The left would fear a Hillary vs Cruz or Rubio.

 

[chicago51]

I thought I was fairly literate about deritatives but I never heard of food communuties futures. Exactly what are they and where are they traded?

One other piece of information you should be aware of, futures can be used for speculating but are mainly used as a hedge; but regardless as the reason they are traded (or for that matter their price) futures contracts have no impact on the spot market value of the underlying commodity.

Financial Speculation and the Alarming Rise in Food Prices | TIME.com

This a pretty good at giving the explanation.

Just a small part of the article:

Traders have always speculated on the agricultural-commodities futures market, just as they do in other commodities like copper or oil. Those with an actual commercial interest — food producers and buyers — use this market to bet against price increases and decreases as a form of insurance against volatility. But after 1999 and 2000, when sections of the Glass-Steagall Act were repealed and President Bill Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act into law, investment banks and other financial actors began to bet on commodities as speculation, not as insurance. “Where we used to see something like 12% of the market made up of financial players, since deregulation, this number has now jumped to over 60%,” says Heidi Chow of the World Development Movement, a U.K.-based campaigning organization.

The statistics are impressive: the German NGO Foodwatch points out that investment in food commodities has jumped from $65 billion to $126 billion in the past five years. Perhaps a more revealing statistic is that speculative investment in these commodities in 2011 amounted to 20 times more than the total spent on agricultural aid by all countries combined.

Bad farming climates have contributed to increasing food prices but speculation has also made the actual price not affect the actual supply and demand of food.

Same for oil and other natural resources.

 

[T Town Tommy]

This should help ease the criticism from the far left for a while. Those who will lose jobs because of it may not be as appreciative.

Obama to order expansion of overtime pay for millions of workers | Fox News

 

[Irish Houstonian]

This should help ease the criticism from the far left for a while. Those who will lose jobs because of it may not be as appreciative.

Obama to order expansion of overtime pay for millions of workers | Fox News

Between this and the Employer Mandate, Obama is waging war on 40-hour schedules.

 

[GoIrish41]

Between this and the Employer Mandate, Obama is waging war on 40-hour schedules.

I found this quote particularly interesting in the article:

"There’s no such thing as a free lunch," Cato Institute senior fellow Daniel Mitchell told The Times. "If they push through something to make a certain class of workers more expensive, something will happen to adjust."

The argument aginst compensating employees who get paid for working a 40-hour week that is really, for arguments sake, 50 hours is that "there is no suck thing as a free lunch." Apparently, that concept only applies to the businesses that are currently getting a "free lunch."

 

[connor_in]

I found this quote particularly interesting in the article:

"There’s no such thing as a free lunch," Cato Institute senior fellow Daniel Mitchell told The Times. "If they push through something to make a certain class of workers more expensive, something will happen to adjust."

The argument aginst compensating employees who get paid for working a 40-hour week that is really, for arguments sake, 50 hours is that "there is no suck thing as a free lunch." Apparently, that concept only applies to the businesses that are currently getting a "free lunch."

 

[GoIrish41]

lots of effort for a typo. lol

 

[connor_in]

lots of effort for a typo. lol

but what a typo!

 

[connor_in]

"How does going from being a Senator to being a President rewrite the Constitution?"

- Rep. Trey Gowdy

 

[MJ12666]

Financial Speculation and the Alarming Rise in Food Prices | TIME.com

This a pretty good at giving the explanation.

Just a small part of the article:



Bad farming climates have contributed to increasing food prices but speculation has also made the actual price not affect the actual supply and demand of food.

Same for oil and other natural resources.

I read the article and I should have guessed that you have no clue what you are taking about and are only regergitating giberish from a dubious source (Time is not exactly known for its non-partisan pieces). The article only has one source to support its thesis that the increase in food prices can be attributable to speculation in the futures market. That source is from the renowned duo of Yayneer Bar-Yam and Greg Lindsay. These two scholars (who probably don’t know the difference between pork bellies and a pig’s ass) came to the conclusion that the spike in agricultural commodities in Tajikistan can only be explained by increased speculation in the commodities futures market. They came to this conclusion based on a mathematical model that they developed; which I am sure is really complex since they both work at the renowned New England Complex Systems Institute. Of course if either had any idea how the futures market works they would have understood their conclusion could not be accurate and therefore their model is flawed. I also noted that both you and the author of the article chose to ignore the opinion of Ann Berg (advisor to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization) that there is no correlation between the rise in food prices and increased activity in commodity futures trading. I presume Ms. Berg’s opinion was ignored because it did not fit the author’s (or your) position.

Now let me see if I can provide you with some information on this topic so that if you ever discuss it with someone you will at not least appear to have a rudimentary level of knowledge about futures contracts.

First there is no such thing as “Food Communuties Futures” (I was being facetious when I asked my question in the post you were responding to). Maybe this is a typo and you meant to write “commodities” and not “communities”, but in truth given your knowledge on the subject matter I am really not sure.

Second, let me give you an example as to how the futures markets work. I was working for a company in the mid 90’s that acquired a French company for approximately $250M. The closing was to take place approximately two months after the legal documents were signed and settlement was to take place in French francs (FF). My company decided to lock in the USD/FF rate so we purchased futures contracts well in advance of the closing date. As it turned out the FF increased in value against the USD and it ended up costing more in USD terms then if we never purchased the futures contracts. You will note the futures contracts were simply an agreement to purchase FF at a specific contract price and the contracts had no impact on the actual FF/USD spot rate on the day the futures contracts were settled. The same is true of future contracts that are traded for certain agricultural products and other comodities (such as oil and NG). "Futures" are simply a contract that sets a specific price for which the parties of the contract agree to exchange for a specific commodity (bushel of wheat for example) on a future date. The contract has no bearing on the spot price of the specified commodity on the date the contact is due to expire (which can go either up or down from the date the futures contract is purchased versus the contract settlement date).

Hope you find this helpful and feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

 

[Polish Leppy 22]

I read the article and I should have guessed that you have no clue what you are taking about and are only regergitating giberish from a dubious source (Time is not exactly known for its non-partisan pieces). The article only has one source to support its thesis that the increase in food prices can be attributable to speculation in the futures market. That source is from the renowned duo of Yayneer Bar-Yam and Greg Lindsay. These two scholars (who probably don’t know the difference between pork bellies and a pig’s ass) came to the conclusion that the spike in agricultural commodities in Tajikistan can only be explained by increased speculation in the commodities futures market. They came to this conclusion based on a mathematical model that they developed; which I am sure is really complex since they both work at the renowned New England Complex Systems Institute. Of course if either had any idea how the futures market works they would have understood their conclusion could not be accurate and therefore their model is flawed. I also noted that both you and the author of the article chose to ignore the opinion of Ann Berg (advisor to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization) that there is no correlation between the rise in food prices and increased activity in commodity futures trading. I presume Ms. Berg’s opinion was ignored because it did not fit the author’s (or your) position.

Now let me see if I can provide you with some information on this topic so that if you ever discuss it with someone you will at not least appear to have a rudimentary level of knowledge about futures contracts.

First there is no such thing as “Food Communuties Futures” (I was being facetious when I asked my question in the post you were responding to). Maybe this is a typo and you meant to write “commodities” and not “communities”, but in truth given your knowledge on the subject matter I am really not sure.

Second, let me give you an example as to how the futures markets work. I was working for a company in the mid 90’s that acquired a French company for approximately $250M. The closing was to take place approximately two months after the legal documents were signed and settlement was to take place in French francs (FF). My company decided to lock in the USD/FF rate so we purchased futures contracts well in advance of the closing date. As it turned out the FF increased in value against the USD and it ended up costing more in USD terms then if we never purchased the futures contracts. You will note the futures contracts were simply an agreement to purchase FF at a specific contract price and the contracts had no impact on the actual FF/USD spot rate on the day the futures contracts were settled. The same is true of future contracts that are traded for certain agricultural products and other comodities (such as oil and NG). "Futures" are simply a contract that sets a specific price for which the parties of the contract agree to exchange for a specific commodity (bushel of wheat for example) on a future date. The contract has no bearing on the spot price of the specified commodity on the date the contact is due to expire (which can go either up or down from the date the futures contract is purchased versus the contract settlement date).

Hope you find this helpful and feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

Conservatives can't lean on Reagan's success forever but this line rings true with our buddy Chicago:

He just knows so much that isn't true

 

[Bluto]

Yep. That's why the left will do all they can in politics and media over the next 2 years to bash Cruz and Rubio. They would beg for a Christie/ Jeb Bush/ etc. because they want a repeat of 2008 and 2012. The left would fear a Hillary vs Cruz or Rubio.

Ted Cruz for President would be a disaster for the GOP. He's a Hispanic of Canadian birth so it's like double reverse polarity coming up negative. Anyhow, I could only imagine what the Trumpster would have to say about that. Haha.

 

[Polish Leppy 22]

Ted Cruz for President would be a disaster for the GOP. He's a Hispanic of Canadian birth so it's like double reverse polarity coming up negative. Anyhow, I could only imagine what the Trumpster would have to say about that. Haha.

We'll see about that, and we'll see how "tolerant" leftists are wiith Cruz, Rubio, and whomever else might come up.

 

[connor_in]

US Philosophy Professor: Jail 'Denialist' Climate Scientists For Criminal Negligence

WOW...just WOW

 

[Bluto]

We'll see about that, and we'll see how "tolerant" leftists are wiith Cruz, Rubio, and whomever else might come up.

Rubio needs to be worried about how "tolerant" their own party is going to be during primary season. Rubio already got beat up awhile back over supporting immigration reform. Ted Cruz on the other hand has done and said enough stupid stuff that he would be a disaster in the general election. We shall see I suppose.

 

[Polish Leppy 22]

Rubio needs to be worried about how "tolerant" their own party is going to be during primary season. Rubio already got beat up awhile back over supporting immigration reform. Ted Cruz on the other hand has done and said enough stupid stuff that he would be a disaster in the general election. We shall see I suppose.

Rubio caught heat for caving on amnesty, but still popular especially in Florida. Cruz has done nothing but fight the old, white GOP establishment types and revitalized the conservative wing.

Speaking of saying and doing dumb stuff, good luck trying to put Uncle Joe Biden out there for that party.

We shall see...

 

[wizards8507]

Is Bluto the one who thinks Rand Paul would be a disaster because he isn't likable, or was that Buster? I'll wager all my vBucks that IF Paul is the Republican nominee, he'll win at least 45% of the 18-29 vote (Romney got just 37%). Any takers?

 

[IrishLax]

The Republicans need to nominate Arnold Vinick from the West Wing. That guy was a boss.

 

[chicago51]

Maybe this is a typo and you meant to write “commodities” and not “communities”,

Yes typo.

Banking speculation absolutely raises prices from food, to oil, etc.

We had a couple bad years in terms the last couple years but that doesn't account for the rise in prices we have seen the last couple years.

Common I thought the tea party partically started because it was bull that Democrats bailed out these greedy New York wall street bankers that crashed our economy. Now you guys wanna kiss the banking speculators rear ends?

Oil demand is up but so is oil suppy so theorectically there should not have been a significant jump in oil prices. Why has there been? Speculation.

I got no problem with producers and consumers speculating amongst themselves and locking down prices. However when you got banks and wall street brokers gambling and betting up these prices I have a problem with this.

By the way for the Reagan lovers, we didn't do this under him. This has only happened since 2000.

 

[wizards8507]

I got no problem with producers and consumers speculating amongst themselves and locking down prices. However when you got banks and wall street brokers gambling and betting up these prices I have a problem with this.

Differences between the value of a derivative and the underlying commodity can only ever be temporary. Speculation cannot drive up the underlying value of a commodity past its marginal utility in the long run. The worst it can do is create a temporary bubble that will eventually come crashing down and the "wall street brokers" that you hate so much are going to be the ones who eat it (see also: mortgage backed securities, housing bubble of the 2000s). If the brokers never eat it, it means the inflation is real and caused by factors other than the speculation itself.

Speculative Bubble Definition | Investopedia