Saffire

Exactly, and what makes people save their money? Higher interest rates! Unfortunately the Federal Reserve keeps rates too low all the time. The fact Americans spend so much money is entirely understandable - the government has cultivated a spending culture by destroying our dollar.

What's funny about the news channels is how they talk down to their viewers. The senators or congressmen get on TV and say something like, "Americans think this is a bailout for Wall Street. It's not. It's a bailout for Main Street." Americans aren't stupid. They understand perfectly well what's going on, and it involves taking money out of their pockets to pay for other peoples' incompetence. Sure, people will lose their homes. Banks will lose money, and some will go bankrupt. But as Rush Limbaugh said today (who I only agree with on rare occasion), there is a one-word solution to all this mess: RENT.

...And one pre-nup prior to marriage. ;)

Okay here it comes again. The Senate will vote on a new version of the bailout tonight (recall they passed the original version as well). This new version includes an extra $100 billion in tax cuts for certain businesses (making the effective cost that much higher, as the deficit will increase and this will cause government debt interest to rise). The tax-credits include stuff for alternative energy sources, which is wholly irrelevant to the bill's core purpose. Everyone take note of how the Congress works: in order to get votes, they tack on extra spending. There is no incentive to spend less. Let's hope when this bill reaches the House, they'll vote it down again. I'm not holding my breath.

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5291 This is an interesting idea, and I've heard it applied to public school teachers also. I know I would get a job teaching in public school if they offered more money.

It's astounding to me how people honestly believe that if the right guy gets in office, all this stuff will be solved! Like there's an incorruptible angel we can count on to impose the correct regulations on any given industry... we just have to find him! The right man for the job! Has Washington ever done anything right? No. Yet they sure try to take credit for everything that goes right. Government adds NO VALUE to society. They are merely asset reallocators. When people finally understand that, they'll see why a truly free market is the best path toward prosperity for all.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that experience really doesn't amount to a hill of beans. George Bush can claim to have 8 years of foreign policy experience but nobody cares too much for his decisions now. Also, what business does Katie Couric have implicitly criticizing Palin, when Couric has 0 years of foreign policy experience? (Heck, she wasn't even a mayor!) What experience do any of us as voters have? Maybe we shouldn't be choosing our president! The whole democratic experiment was a mistake!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs Watch.

This is a fantastic buying opportunity. Everything is marked down 30% from the highs last year.

This is the non-bailout solution, as proposed by a Harvard economist: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/29/miron.bailout/index.html

There are some things more important than the stock market average for a single day. What has been made patently clear by this fiasco is that neither Democrats nor Republicans understand the long term implications of printing more money just to clear up a liquidity issue.

132 Republicans and 94 Democrats in the House have just saved the American taxpayer from a bailout bill that is: a. It is immoral—Dumping bad debt on the innocent taxpayers is an act of theft and is wrong. b. It is unconstitutional—There is no constitutional authority to use government power to serve special interests. c. It is bad economic policy—By refusing to address the monetary system while continuing to place the burdens of the bailout on the dollar, we can be certain that in time, we will be faced with another, more severe crisis when the market figures out that there is no magic government bailout or regulation that can make a fraudulent monetary system work. Hooray! for those politicians who actually listen to their constituents.

I would love to see how long these Chavs would last in a public school in the southern USA. :P

Washington Mutual's capital structure was blown to bits when the federal government came in and seized the assets and then sold them to JP Morgan for a song. Nobody can invest in America now without first considering whether their money will be taken from them. This is a trust issue, and the government is the enemy. Eh, you might be right but I'm not willing to give politicians that much credit. Honestly I think they're just lacking in the brainpower department (and they've probably never taken an economics course in their life). American culture is definitely to blame, though. We've been taught that renting is for lazy-ass college students and goobers who don't want to invest in a home. We were told that buying a home is a "sure bet" that will grow your money. A safe investment. Anytime someone says a whole class of investments is without risk (even if it is a home), they are LYING to you. The lesson here to Americans is: use your brain, research every investment you make, don't buy what you clearly can't afford.

Where did they say that? The only thing hundreds of economists agree on is that this bailout isn't going to work. The root of the problem is crystal clear. The question for the American people should be: If economists know it won't work, and American public opinion is overwhelmingly against it... why are both political parties working overtime to make sure it happens?

You can distill the blame: The Democrats, who passed the Community Reinvestment Act under the guise of helping the poor.

Greed is in human nature, and we should all be so fortunate that it is! Capitalism harnesses greed for the good of society. It's only when the government interferes that greed becomes unhinged - in this case it was the greed of the mortgage lenders and the borrowers equally. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A

There's a lot of misunderstanding out there about what got the US economy into trouble, particularly among politicians (who I can only assume are either willfully ignorant or purposefully trying to mislead the public). The source of the problem is the housing bubble, which is now burst. Over the past decade, home prices have risen faster than inflation. The reason for this is because it was easy to get a home-loan, regardless of your credit or income. Politicians are saying there was a "lack of regulation," which would have stopped these lenders from being too "greedy". That's hogwash. The reason banks made so many bad loans has to do with the "Community Reinvestment Act" (aka CRA), which was a law passed in 1977 and changed in 1995. This law required banks to take on more risk than they normally would by offering loans to people with lower incomes and bad credit: So those "greedy" banks were against this from the start. It was the government's insistence that they give loans to people who couldn't pay them back, all in the name of "affordable housing". Then in 1995, a revision was passed that changed the CRA's requirements for banks to include a certain number of loans targeted to particular races and neighborhoods. That caused the number of "subprime" (risky) loans to increase 39% between 1993 and 1998, while other good loans only increased 17%. The Democrats are mostly responsible for this mess, although Republicans share a big part of the blame for not doing more to fight it and see it coming. Also, many Republicans are going along with this $700 billion bailout even though they are receiving thousands of phone calls from their constituents asking them not to. The bailout will do nothing to alleviate the root of the problem, the CRA, and it will burden taxpayers for another generation with trillions in added debt. In conclusion: Government sucks. Economics always wins in the end.

Is it just me or does Murray look like he could be Guy Berryman's brother? Anyway, really looking forward to the Murray/Federer match tomorrow. I'm not a huge fan of Federer.

I know the answers in the back of the book, I was just quizzing you guys on it. ;)

This is a valid opinion but it still has some issues... For instance, you can't use the term "we" when describing consciousness (or lack thereof) prior to or after life. "We" is only something that denotes living people. So the problem is consciousness. Is it a unified thing, or a number of different things working together over a period of time? I feel I'm the same person now as I was in the 4th grade... but I've changed somewhat since then. My life is linear, going on day by day. Where is consciousness located? It's probably more than one particle of matter. So when I die those particles will break down... does that necessarily mean that the chain of my day to day life will be lost forever? Or will it appear somewhere else? Think of the transporters in Star Trek, where they deconstruct people atom-by-atom and the reassemble the atoms thousands of miles away. If you reassembled someone, they've got the same memories, the same attitude and mannerisms... but are they the same person? Is it the same consciousness? Or did they die when they were pulled apart, atom-by-atom? It's a fascinating problem.

Then please don't give either of them your vote. Remember that men fought and died so you could cast that vote. Don't just toss it at someone who's the lesser of two evils. Make the candidate EARN your vote.

I think it boils down to Americans' fundamental misunderstanding of economics, for which the public school system is responsible. Then there's the prevalence of Christianity in America, a religion which the politicians expertly pander to by limiting personal freedoms of minorities and spending taxpayer dollars on anything they can paint as being an act of benevolence (ending poverty or Saddam's reign over Iraq). Finally there's the collectivist aspect. Americans pride themselves on being anti-Communist but they exhibit much of the same attitudes - you'll notice McCain and Obama making the plea for individuals to sacrifice their own wellbeing for the "greater good". So Obama is a friend to everyone - he can just as easily convince lumberjacks to vote for him as treehuggers. A libertarian, on the otherhand, would be considered an enemy to all groups. Except the individual.

I love this attitude. And you make a good point about there being a drinking culture. Generally it revolves around sex, because alcohol makes your inhibitions wane and people look better. Unfortunately I don't think there's any way to get rid of it. Universities should bear much of the blame, since they're basically set up to be a consequence-free environment for young people to experiment in.

Of course. It's the parent's responsibility to make sure their child isn't getting into that stuff, not the shopkeeper's. If the shopkeeper decides he'd like to discriminate against his customers based on their age, that's his business - it will affect his bottom line (tangible income) as well as his opinion of himself (psychic income). A 12 year old can also buy poison to kill insects, drain cleaner, and all sorts of other caustic chemicals. He can even find some naturally-occurring chemicals to intoxicate himself with. But God, in his benevolence, was wise to allow humanity access to a whole slew of dangerous things that can be harnessed for the purpose of committing good. ;)