What is Digg?390 Comments
- inactive, on 02/25/2008, -13/+129How can this be? Tax cuts for the rich were supposed to make the economy boom... hey, what's that yellow stuff trickling down on me...?
- otakushark, on 02/25/2008, -10/+107No surprise. Bush has mismanaged every company (and every government) he's ever run.
- inactive, on 02/25/2008, -17/+58No! I love it! And no, I dont care whether or not this will have effect on Europe (I am pretty sure the effects will be very limited) - we need to see happen, whatever it takes, to reduce the US from an empire to a normal, accountable country that honors international treaties and the rule of law. For starters I'd like to see the US treat its own citizens, including the poorer ones, as human beings.
- chase001, on 02/25/2008, -1/+38Not just mismanaged, he has bankrupted every company and country he has ran.
- VaporBro, on 02/25/2008, -4/+40I'M MAD AS HELL AND IM NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!
- Gemfinder, on 02/25/2008, -2/+36And John McCain (who at least admitted that he knows precisely Butt-kiss about economics), is considered a viable Presidential candidate.
Help? - andreinvictoria, on 02/25/2008, -4/+31One bright spot.
People might start taking better care of there personal finances.
Don't charge it.
Buy locally.
Success in life is not measured by the size of your TV.
Wake the ***** up people! - inactive, on 02/25/2008, -3/+29Deep recession feared everywhere.
There has been an inflation worldwide for the past couple of months. It is likely that a recession will also hit in Australia, the UK and all other markets heavily influenced by the US - theinept, on 02/25/2008, -7/+31I think that it's important for people to remember that media tends to exaggerate in both directions. There was no end to discussion circa 1999 amongst analysts, professionals and the outlets that report their comings and goings of how the advance of technology would never end how we were entering a new economy with a new way of doing business. Very few people disagreed and those who did were made fun of by popular outlets. And then the same for real estate circa 2005, wherein housing, flipping and all that crap was the subject of endless trumpeting and even popular television programs, and how everyone and their dog knew that real estate only ever goes up. And these are just the two most substantial recent examples, which everyone on Digg is sure to remember.
As enthusiastic as people get when things are going well, they become equally fearful and demoralized when things are going poorly. Whereas everyone was previously in agreement that things were stupendous, now everyone is in unanimous agreement that this is the end. It's the people who apply logic and rational thought to the situation who come out on top, not those who follow along.
It's important that you look critically at the information you're being provided by these outlets, both when it's universally positive and when it's universally negative. Media outlets and the analysts whose information they report tend to produce very polarized information because it's easiest to present in short-format and they always tend to align with one another because nobody gets fired when everybody is wrong.
Things do look bad in a macroeconomic sense and nobody's going to argue that everything's just peachy right now but I could post you excerpts from the worst days of the 70s, 80s and 90s without the dates and you might think it was all written yesterday. The point is that no matter how bad things looked then or how bad they may look now, we're all still here. People with long memories have seen this all before. They may not know what's going to happen over the next day, month or year but they do know that in the long run things tend to iron out. - rotundo, on 02/25/2008, -1/+23That's like saying my finances improved when I started living beyond my means with a bunch of credit cards.
The US boom was just postponing the inevitable. We didn't want to take our medicine when it was first presented, so we put it off for a few decades. Now we have to take a lot more medicine. Blech. - megaton, on 02/25/2008, -5/+27If you think a U.S. recession wouldn't affect the rest of the world, you need to take basic Macroeconomics and some History. Many, many countries are heavily invested in the United States, and a decline in U.S. value will (and do!) negatively impact those countries.
This is not an isolated, cubbyhole problem, friend, and to think so is quite ignorant. - inactive, on 02/25/2008, -8/+28"Vote for Ron Paul you ***** idiots" should be his campaign slogan...
- inactive, on 02/25/2008, -3/+21lol, true, but the sky is falling :)
- d38as3r, on 02/25/2008, -3/+21No ***** recession, geez, its only gonna get worse, much worse, Cheers! hope all you fools that voted for bush are happy now.
- kev110382, on 02/25/2008, -3/+20Guess whose fault this all is... its all not Bush or his cronies. It's your fault and your parents fault. You overspent, you undersaved, and you're now dealing with it.
If you bought a house recently for $600,000, it better have been a mansion. Otherwise, you got ripped off and probably owe more than your house is worth.
As for the government overspending, its not Bush's fault. Its Congress's fault. Bush doesn't pass the bills- he just signs them. Traditionally, over expenditures are caused by Democrats funding of social programs. Unfortunately though, this 'disease' now affects both sides of the aisle.
For instance, are you telling me that a person making $150,000 a year needs a rebate check for $600? That someone making $500,000 a year needs a tax cut?
What needs to happen is some sort of flat tax... either a flat income tax (including corporations) with no deductions allowed or a flat national sales tax. That way both the poor and rich are treated equally. - inactive, on 02/25/2008, -1/+17Well, what ever he did very little of... it ***** up our economy.
- Search153, on 02/25/2008, -7/+23Of course you're headed for a deep recession. How long did you think an enormous trade-deficit and offshoring jobs to the lowest bidder would last? The Chinese are poised for takeover, having employed the Art of War (read: Sun Tzu). They manufacture all the technology that makes your world go round, from cell phones to computers to consumer electronics, they can knock off all your most coveted fashionista goods with perfection, and they've been working for next to no wages for generations. Couple that work ethic with the virtues they place in education and honor, and you've got the makings of the world's next superpower. Add to this the fact that they pay North Americans big money to go over there and teach English, because a) they can afford it and b) once they are all fluent in English, the rise of the red sun will ensue.
- WikiEasy, on 02/25/2008, -15/+31You had me up til the Obama part. Honestly, I don't see HOW Obama is going to change this. The only guy who has a remote chance of overhauling the system is Ron Paul, and at this time, the nation just isn't ready for such radical change.
- drakethegreat, on 02/25/2008, -3/+19I can confirm this given the opinions of those around me. My best friend is a financial econ major, my mom is a business accountant and my dad is a business finance major. I should include my boss who is a financial econ major who has run his own businesses before. All of them have said to start saving in foreign markets. That should scare people and ***** those who claim that bush didn't cause this. They need to pull their head out of the caves (oh the irony).
- zappa717, on 02/25/2008, -9/+24scary.
- yogy13, on 02/25/2008, -9/+24According to Austrian School of Economics, our fiat currency causes the business cycle.
- drakethegreat, on 02/25/2008, -1/+15you did an excellent job proving you do...
- BrianCrosbie, on 02/25/2008, -20/+34Ron Paul is Americas only hope for financial stability. It's odd to me that the majority of Americans don't get that.
- inactive, on 02/25/2008, -4/+18But the media won't say deep recession just to make people feel better....When we're in the middle of one (we are now), the media will continue to say everything's alright...
You're better off doing business in a foreign currency right now. - bjornski, on 02/25/2008, -0/+13It means buy American, and keep American workers employed. Buy from your local market, to keep your local citizens employed (and fewer houses foreclosed, for sale, keeping property values UP. Helping keep your local economy strong where you live, etc)
Seriously, the fact that you needed that explained to you is very, very sad. - roodammy44, on 02/25/2008, -0/+12@livefr33ordi3
Not all of us Europeans want to see the US destroyed.
I used to love america, but since the torturing, warmongering and civil-rights clampdowns began I can't get to that any more.
Most europeans still have a lot of goodwill towards the US, I hope your next president sorts it out.
And please god make sure McCain doesn't win. - ElectricMunk, on 02/25/2008, -1/+13For those of you into information and different viewpoints....the following is a lecture on the economics of globalization delivered by a friend of mine. He is an economics professor and has been teaching for 30+ years. Very informative....give it a watch and pass it around if you are so inclined.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-345721242 ... - Berkana, on 02/25/2008, -6/+17Actually, it is not fiat currency itself that is the problem; there were societies that used sea shells, declaring them money by fiat. Anything can be used as currency, enforced as legal tender by fiat. The problem isn't fiat currency itself, but what fiat currency permits that hard asset backed currency doesn't.
The problem is not that we have fiat currency, but that 95% of our money supply is made by privately owned banks due to the institutionalized practice of fractional reserve banking. That permits our monetary supply to be manipulated by how easy or hard the banks make it to borrow money; when money is easy to borrow, they literally make the money (in the form of bank credit that can be legally exchanged for currency, so is effectively the same thing) out of nothing, and vice versa when they make it hard to borrow. This gives the power to manipulate the money supply to private corporations that operate for the profit of their share holders. It is this manipulation of the money supply that causes the business cycle.
See these for the details and the full explanation:
http://www.digg.com/business_finance/Our_Debt_base ...
http://www.digg.com/educational/A_History_of_Fract ... - Ribbed4U, on 02/25/2008, -1/+12Newsflash: Not all of us voted for him. Get a clue.
- inactive, on 02/25/2008, -2/+13quick. invade an oil country.
- felman87, on 02/25/2008, -3/+14So it's the media's fault that people are racking up debts, earning less, that the government spends too much, that the dollar is declining? Of course, it all makes perfect sense.
- megaton, on 02/25/2008, -3/+14Kinda is.
Recession is, in more ways than one, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Say "recession" and people withhold their spending. People withhold their spending, and profit declines. Profit declines and stock value declines. Stock value declines and people say "recession"... - LupeFiasco, on 02/25/2008, -4/+14How bad is it gonna get? Like Germany post ww1 bad? Is there something I can compare this possible upcoming recession to so I can understand the weight of the situation?
- bosssmiley, on 02/25/2008, -0/+10I am interested in your backward-thinking Neo-Feudalist policies, and wish to know more.
For example, what is your position on carriages that move without horses? Be they the work of demons, or merely the result of man playing at God?
Is modern sanitation and scientific medicine morally suspect, or merely an unwitting insult to the peerless wisdom of our ancestors? - Kahlzarg, on 02/25/2008, -0/+10Considering in Wiemar Germany people were payed daily to keep up with inflation, and the price of a loaf of bread would increase from the time that you lined up to when you reached the end of the line, and members of the middle class were sent their life savings of 10,000 marks in a envelope with a 50 million mark stamp because it wasn't worth the banks effort to keep the account open, and the cost of living increased over 560 trillion percent in 3 years... no.. I don't think it will be as bad as WWI Germany.
- radu79, on 02/25/2008, -2/+12I disagree, I think that offshoring will end pretty soon, because as the dollar value decreases, people abroad will not be willing to work for less than they are getting now. And as the USD loses it's value, their currency increases in value (unbalanced trade), so there is no incentive for them to wok for the US.
- bjornski, on 02/25/2008, -2/+11Bullets.
- SweetBearCub, on 02/25/2008, -1/+10Funny that this article came up on Digg.
When I was still homeless, I remarked to a friend that the US needed to have a good, long, hard depression, as a way of forcing people to realize the real (noninflated) value of what they were selling.
My example to him was housing. (How appropriate for a homeless person, eh?) In San Francisco, a basic 1 bedroom apartment costs at least $1,500 per month. That is f*cking insane! There's no good reason for housing to be that expensive! A depression would force the owner of that property to lower the rents while it sits unoccupied because no can afford it.
When the rent the owner is charging drops low enough, people will move into the unit. Rent should then be pegged to go no higher than the annual cost of living adjustment, and all job in this post-depresion era would be required to give employees raises that are at least tracking that level, ensuring that they at least keep 100% of their spending power, and not slowly have it lost to inflation.
Hopefully this comment is readable. Insomnia is annoying. Thankfully, I have a bed to have insomnia in (Finally!) but I must wonder how many other homeless people who are just as deserving as me do not. Quite sad. - nospinhere, on 02/25/2008, -4/+13and arrogance, which Europe is just as guilty as the United States whether they want to admit to it or not.
- emmeron, on 02/25/2008, -1/+10You had a great point up to saying Obama is the cure. His economists are all pro-global economy (fine by me) but in a socialized manner: he wants the US to not only pay for all the things its paying for, but to do it for the rest of the world. That's not going to help our dollar one bit, as an FYI...
- topgigmedia, on 02/25/2008, -0/+9sucks to be a barnacle on a sinking ship ;)
- GramarNatzi, on 02/25/2008, -7/+16I think we need to tax the poor some more... and lower their wages. In fact, ***** it.. lets go back to the middle ages and demand 2 goats and a sheep from every poor person. That should sort things out.
- chase001, on 02/25/2008, -4/+12Too bad the media eliminated all but the establishment status quo candidates for us such as Ron Paul, Mike Gravel and Kucinich.
- bowens44, on 02/25/2008, -2/+10funny how the 'downs' in these cycles always correspond with republican administration. This is what supply side economics gets you every time.
- moontime, on 02/25/2008, -1/+9We have BEEN in a recession for quite some time. Its a DEPRESSION you need to be worried about.
- macwac, on 02/25/2008, -3/+11A lot of economic indicators coming out this week... if they are bad, such as housing, consumer spending etc.. watch the markets fall a LOT more..
- schlurp, on 02/25/2008, -0/+8last time I checked the russians beat Hitler
- kinerry, on 02/25/2008, -0/+7This is what everyone is saying.
Save your money in a foreign currency and you are already gaining more than the banks here are giving. - bentman78, on 02/25/2008, -1/+8Awesome, now I get to read the comments of all those diggers that have PhD's in economics!
- mikeyhell, on 02/25/2008, -5/+12I would just like to point out that my father in law insisted we weren't in a recession(btw. he's very we'll off). I told him this about 2 months ago and he still insisted. Now he's having a hayday wondering why his property values are falling. I guess a silver cloud to it all for me at least, who receives much ridicule for not borrowing on credit.
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