board77

What we really need is the visongoths!

It will be an interesting experiment to see if the red states that refuse the ARRA money do better than the blue states that take it, when all other differences are taken into account.

[rangerhat]And if anyone in this thread is offended by male-bashing let me know. [/rangerhat]

Would it be acceptable for us to make similar remarks about women? I doubt it.

Find stuff women have messed up to the extent that our terrestrial systems are about near to collapse. Go for it. Find stuff that women run that few men are involved in, and that women, as a gender, have fouled up.

I'm perfectly willing, and I've been a woman for my whole life, to be criticized as part of my gender for any crimes or sins or follies of my gender. Women are bitchy? Yup. Women can be snotty? Yup. Women can murder, be cruel? Yup. Women are prone to most of the failings of the human race? Yup.

Quote:

Find stuff that women run that few men are involved in

Dealing with a rather small sample, there.

Dave,

It is a small sample, because it is a small portion.


Luareanna,

I have wondered the same thing too. I have also thought that as unemployment benefits run out and people can't survive in the states without stimulus monies if those people will immagrate to other states. I can see a problem in the future with all of this, especially the poorer states that are refusing stim funding.

laureanna wrote:

[rangerhat]And if anyone in this thread is offended by male-bashing let me know. [/rangerhat]

Offensive? No, but I do find it tiresome in some cases. Maybe it's because I've always been that girl who plays the boys' games. At some point, the bashing and venting is just repetitive. I can't say anything new. All I can do is keep on keeping on.

I'm not saying women should stand down. We should never stand down. We stand down and all is lost. But sometimes it's better to give them ice rather than flame.

This crisis was largely brought upon us by short term thinking. Companies and banks were thinking about the next quarter, not the next year or next decade. They were doing what needed to be done to maximize their quarterly profits and some of those tactics set them up for the hell that we are now paying.

As far as what roles gender plays in that, it's so hard to parse nature from nurture that I'm not even going to try right now. I have my own thoughts, peppered with my own biases, but I'm not sure what's inborn and what's social conditioning.

ETA: yes, that would be an interesting experiment. I'm not sure how to control for all the extenuating factors, but it would be interesting to look back in however many years it takes for all the effects to come through and see how it all panned out.

Vison
you sure could not mess it up any worse.

Speaking as a male possessing all his faculties and required equipment, I think its about time that we have more women in all aspects of society from the board room in the corporate world to the halls of political power.

from Riverthalos

Quote:

This crisis was largely brought upon us by short term thinking. Companies and banks were thinking about the next quarter, not the next year or next decade. They were doing what needed to be done to maximize their quarterly profits and some of those tactics set them up for the hell that we are now paying.

Yes indeed it was. And it will take a grea deal of work to turn around that entire cultural dynamic so that we go back to a long range society which rejects the quick fix and the quick buck artist. Sadly, I see nothing being done right now which will change that dynamic. CEO's stay with companies only a short duration so they can cash in their stock options and move on to other greener pastures.

I think back to the story of Ampex and the creation of the first VTR (think video tap recorder) and how shortsighted American corporations allowed a potentially multi-billion dollar industry to leave our own shores and be welcomed in Japan. I remember standing on the bullet train going from Tokyo to Hiroshima in '94 passing some electronics factories near the tracks and seeing hundreds maybe thousands of workers cars filling the lot. Those jobs could have been here. But US companies did not want to lose money for the number of quarters it would have taken before the item was profitable. Sad.

vison wrote:

What a tempest in a tea pot, honest to god. Why can't you Americans get over this stupid "gotcha" politics? Your country is up to its jawbone in shit, pretty near anything that could go wrong has gone wrong, and here you are, even normally nice sensible people, still dragging Mr. Bush into the picture as if he had anything useful to bring, sniping at Mr. Obama over NOTHING, and meanwhile, the shit piles higher and higher.

I hope you bloody drown in it. I'm beginning to think you deserve it.

Ah but the irony is delicious. I'm holding Democrats to the standards they hold everyone else to, and watching them fail.

I do that to Republicans too, by the way, and watch them fail.

But it's really no fair if I do this to the Glorious Leader, I guess.

You seem to be confusing nihilism with appreciating irony. Setting fire to the city hoping that a phoenix will arise from the ashes is a pretty risky proposition.

vison wrote:

Find stuff women have messed up to the extent that our terrestrial systems are about near to collapse. Go for it. Find stuff that women run that few men are involved in, and that women, as a gender, have fouled up.

That's kind of a silly thing to ask for when women have, in a historical context, only just started moving towards equality in a few places. Call me when Mrs. Palin is our country's leader and when even a quarter of the rest of our political and business leaders don't have a penis.

Cenedril_Gildinaur wrote:

vison wrote:

What a tempest in a tea pot, honest to god. Why can't you Americans get over this stupid "gotcha" politics? Your country is up to its jawbone in shit, pretty near anything that could go wrong has gone wrong, and here you are, even normally nice sensible people, still dragging Mr. Bush into the picture as if he had anything useful to bring, sniping at Mr. Obama over NOTHING, and meanwhile, the shit piles higher and higher.

I hope you bloody drown in it. I'm beginning to think you deserve it.

Ah but the irony is delicious. I'm holding Democrats to the standards they hold everyone else to, and watching them fail.

I do that to Republicans too, by the way, and watch them fail.

But it's really no fair if I do this to the Glorious Leader, I guess.

No, you're not holding anyone to anyone's standards. You are sniping. An equal-opportunity sniper, I agree, but a sniper just the same.

It's not ironic, either.

It might amuse and delight you to see your fellow citizens "fail", but it's a pretty sad reflection on your character - puts you in the same boat with that other guy, the one who supposedly said he "hoped " Obama fails.

I, for one, am already really tired of "The Glorious Leader" meme. Perhaps you could invest in a thesauraus? We all get it, C_G, we all "get" that you think anyone who supports Mr. Obama is a robotic cultist, but guess what? You think wrong.

yovargas wrote:

vison wrote:

Find stuff women have messed up to the extent that our terrestrial systems are about near to collapse. Go for it. Find stuff that women run that few men are involved in, and that women, as a gender, have fouled up.

That's kind of a silly thing to ask for when women have, in a historical context, only just started moving towards equality in a few places. Call me when Mrs. Palin is our country's leader and when even a quarter of the rest of our political and business leaders don't have a penis.

This is the proper place!!! Sorry, yovargas, I keep hitting the "edit" thing on other peoples' posts, and I don't mean to!!!!! Sorry.

Well, that's just my point, yovargas.

I am strongly of the opinion that the most dangerous substance in the known universe is Human Testosterone. The qualities that enabled the human male to "conquer" nature are sadly insufficient for running the world that those qualities created.

Can men learn to behave better? I think they can, with lots of education and about 20,000 years of women's rule.

Then we can compare notes.

yovargas wrote:

vison wrote:

Find stuff women have messed up to the extent that our terrestrial systems are about near to collapse. Go for it. Find stuff that women run that few men are involved in, and that women, as a gender, have fouled up.

That's kind of a silly thing to ask for when women have, in a historical context, only just started moving towards equality in a few places. Call me when Mrs. Palin is our country's leader and when even a quarter of the rest of our political and business leaders don't have a penis.

Do they need to be born without a penis?
It had to be asked. You know it had to be asked...

It's not the penis that's the problem.

vison wrote:

It might amuse and delight you to see your fellow citizens "fail", but it's a pretty sad reflection on your character - puts you in the same boat with that other guy, the one who supposedly said he "hoped " Obama fails.

Holding Democrats to their own moral standards and watching them fail, and finding amusement in it, is exactly the same as hoping their policies fail? Perhaps some who cannot tell the difference might think that, but you are not one of those and neither am I.

Cenedril_Gildinaur wrote:

Perhaps, given that this board's most prominent spokesperson for the Democratic Party has no moral standards to fail at...

So you're saying sf has no morals?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/st ... g_takeover" target="_blank" target="_blank

well worth reading..... it tells you how AIG got to this point and who is responsible

one snippet:

Quote:

Cassano's outrageous gamble wouldn't have been possible had he not had the good fortune to take over AIGFP just as Sen. Phil Gramm — a grinning, laissez-faire ideologue from Texas — had finished engineering the most dramatic deregulation of the financial industry since Emperor Hien Tsung invented paper money in 806 A.D. For years, Washington had kept a watchful eye on the nation's banks. Ever since the Great Depression, commercial banks — those that kept money on deposit for individuals and businesses — had not been allowed to double as investment banks, which raise money by issuing and selling securities. The Glass-Steagall Act, passed during the Depression, also prevented banks of any kind from getting into the insurance business.

Rolling Stone is equal to a congressional investigation?

HERE is a pretty in depth analysis of the entire meltdown.

CG wrote

Quote:

Perhaps, given that this board's most prominent spokesperson for the Democratic Party has no moral standards to fail at...

and Lidless replied asking him

Quote:

So you're saying sf has no morals?

This is funny. CG attacks me as a way of supporting his own position which causes him to only sink deeper into quicksand.

And now we get this from CG

Quote:

Rolling Stone is equal to a congressional investigation?

Really CG! When you make statements like this, does it ever occur to you that
a- you are not actually replying to anything anyone actually said?
b- you make things up as you go along and are fooling nobody here?
c- eventually you will use up all the strawmen in the entire universe just on this forum alone?

And your idea of a response to the Rolling Stone article is not to refute one word of it.... not to correct any false statements .... not to point out an inaccuracies ... not to supply and corrective information ... but to again link to the already discredited investment counsellor Peter Schiff and ask people to watch a speech that runs for over 75 minutes in length.

Amazing.

The other day I tried to help you by showing you how to introduce evidence after you gave us entire books to read. Then I gave you a report with a very concise Executive Summary which outlined 12 major points which could be read in a matter of minutes on what led to all this. And your idea of a rebuttal is to link to a longwinded speech by somebody who we all know is useless and is just another libertarian talking head who loses money for his own clients.

Amazing.

To help inform others here about Peter Schiff and why he should not be given the slightest amount of credibility... despite a flowery introduction by a Von Mises Institute employee ... I provide this again for our enlightenment:

First, be aware that Peter Schiff is NOT an economist. But like many in the libertarian fold, he claims to know more than they do even though he lacks the formal education and the degree in the field. His degree is in finance which I guess is closer to economics than being a baby doctor is.

Second, if the man is not a fraud he is treading dangerouosly down that same path.

Here is an excellent and very detailed article detailing the "accurate predictions" of Peter Shiff:

http://www.erictyson.com/articles/20090213" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank

here is part of it showing you just how accurate Schiff has been in his predictions:

Quote:

Thanks to the wonders of video technology, we have an accurate record of Schiff's views from this 2002 television interview. What is notable here is that in this 2002 interview, Schiff was saying nearly the same exact things that he did during 2008 and in his recent interview with me.

At the time of this 2002 interview, the U.S. stock market had already suffered steep losses and the economy was in recession at the time of this 2002 interview. The highlights of Schiff's predictions: he saw substantial downside over the next couple of years for the stock market. He predicted that the Dow, which was around 10,000 at the time, would plummet to between 2,000 and 4,000 and he even went so far as to say that the Dow might fall below 2,000. He expected the NASDAQ to drop to 500 from its then level of 1,700. He also said that the dollar was going to fall sharply and interest rates were going to go through the roof accompanied by dramatic inflation.

On all of these counts, Schiff wasn't just wrong but ended up being hugely wrong.

Now, fast forward to May 30, 2008 and the U.S. News article, "Permabear Peter Schiff's Worst-Case Scenario." Let's review some of the key predictions he made in that piece As for his investing predictions he said, "I'm getting my clients' money outside of the United States as fast as they can send it to me...You've got to own resources and energy...I've been buying gold, silver, industrial metals, and all kinds of stocks. My main theme is the global economy will survive and the U.S. economy is a disaster. Everything is about how you benefit from the increased purchasing power and rising standard of living in the rest of the world."

This was wrong as commodity prices have plunged since this interview (see graph below). Foreign stocks actually declined more in 2008 than did U.S. stocks so Schiff was wrong on that count too.

If you read the article you will see that Schiff has pretty much a one song act that he has been doing for several years now. He loves to predict the sky is falling and when you do that year after year after year, eventually its going to rain from the heavens.

The article exposing Schiff was written by Eric Tyson


Eric Tyson is a best-selling personal finance book author and has penned five national best sellers. He is also the only author to have four of his books simultaneously on Business Week's business book bestseller list. His Personal Finance for Dummies, a Wall Street Journal best-seller, won the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Business Book of the Year. His latest book, Let's Get Real About Money, is an action oriented guide to developing and practicing the best financial habits and strategies. Eric's syndicated newspaper column is read by millions of readers weekly. He is a former columnist and award-winning journalist for the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle.

Eric's work has been featured and quoted in hundreds of local and national publications and media outlets including Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, Money, Worth, Parenting, USA Today and on the NBC Today Show, ABC, Fox News, CNBC, PBS Nightly Business Report, CNN, and on CBS national radio, NPR's Marketplace Money and Bloomberg Business Radio. He's also been a featured speaker at a White House conference on retirement planning.

The last paragraph of the article may be one of the most revealing when you judge just how "accurate" Mr. Schiff is in the field of economics:

Quote:

Update on 2/23/09: I just got off the phone from doing a radio interview with Jason Hartman for his real estate and financial show. Early on, he asked me about various gurus and Peter Schiff's name quickly came up. Schiff he said had been a guest on his program in the past. Without missing a beat, Mr. Hartman proceeded to tell me how he invested $200,000 through Schiff's firm and now had just half of that left!

And this is the man CG points to to support his claims. In fact, on February 9 of this very year, Peter Schiff was quoted in the Wall Street Journal admitting his shortcomings:

Quote:

My central investing premise, a weakening dollar and safety in gold, commodities and foreign stocks, didn't materialize in 2008.

translation: my predictions were wrong.

I will take Rolling Stone over Peter Schiff eight days a week.

Quote:

You seem to be confusing nihilism with appreciating irony. Setting fire to the city hoping that a phoenix will arise from the ashes is a pretty risky proposition.

Isn't that the Obama-Alinsky strategy in a nutshell? Google 'Cloward-Piven.'

There's not much real substance to this fanfarole, except of course that it proves conclusively that Timmy "Tax Cheat" Geithner and Chris "Tax Cheat + Subprimes + Sweetheart Deals" Dodd are the compulsive liars we pretty much knew they were.

All this sanctimonious faux-outrage masks the real outrages- the true cost of Obama's budgets, running deficits at an insane and unsustainable 5% of GDP out as far as the eye can see. The Fed's Weimar move to print 1.2 trillion Monopoly dollars through the shell game of buying up Treasuries*- even though the Chinese had just warned us that any effort to depreciate the currency would cause them to stop lending the trillions Obama wants to borrow.

Or better yet, the wedge strategy by which the manufactured outrage over the AIG bonuses (a sum of money which amounts to a rounding error in Washington terms) is being used to provide Luca Brazzi's gun.

You see, the Administration's efforts to get private firms to buy up toxic assets has been met with, basically, a collective "You gotta be freakin' kidding!" (wotta surprise). Nobody's buying. But now the Chicago way comes into play- the Offer They Can't Refuse is the prospect of confiscatory taxes and compensation caps for all financial-sector execs except those who play ball and have their firms buy the worthless junk paper the Administration is peddling.

In the meantime,
17 of 18 Treasury appointments remain unfilled.
The Financial Stability Oversight Board, required by law to meet monthly, has yet to convene once.
The Presidential Economic Recovery Advisory Board has yet to convene once.
No action has been taken to repair any of the structural defects in the financial system, most especially (and desperately) the atrocious mark-to-market accounting rule which precipitated both the mortgage bubble and its collapse.

In other words, so far the Administration's approach has been to combat a leak in the boat by drilling a bigger hole to let the water out.

Now, I ask you- is this merely incompetence?

Before you answer, ask yourselves whether the insults to PM Brown and President Sarkozy were really just fark-ups (that somehow the State Dept's Office of Protocol failed to catch)- or deliberate acts of spite by a snotty, egotistical little boy.

---------------

*This is the equivalent of writing yourself a check for a million bucks and depositing it into your empty checking account- and then pretending you have a million bucks.