What is Digg?73 Comments
- icndvl, on 07/20/2008, -3/+62The US has had 8 years of bad economic policy, fighting expensive wars because they were fun to watch on CNN, and letting the poor fall through the cracks. You can say China's/India's progress hurts the US, but the truth is the US hurts the US way more.
- jasoninoakland, on 07/20/2008, -2/+41Started reading but it's amazing how poor formatting can make something like this difficult to read.
- Raerth, on 07/20/2008, -0/+17Ewww, horrible format. If anyone want's to listen to the interview:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/d ... - inactive, on 07/20/2008, -3/+15Oh common surely you can do better then WordPad?
- LokitheComplex, on 07/20/2008, -0/+11Why not just grab the podcast?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/analysis/
Have a listen while you replant your garden with crops. - jahurt, on 07/20/2008, -1/+12The US has had catastrophic economic policy for 8 years, but it's had bad economic policy for a lot longer than that. A generation ago the US was the world leader in manufactured goods and the world's largest creditor nation... now the trade deficit is enormous and the US is world's largest debtor nation.
Check out what that "crazy" Ross Perot was saying nearly 20 years ago. - connieLingus, on 07/20/2008, -2/+10its not just 8 years its 30+ years, and no particular party is to blame, thats for sure. politician sell themselves to the highest bidders on a daily basis and are far too concerned about getting re-elected then doing whats correct for the long-term.
there is *no* difference between the two political parties once they take office...ie dems move to the right (as witnessed by Obama's recent stands) and repubs move left (as witnessed by our now redicious national debt since they took over congress and the pres starting 12 years ago) - drape, on 07/20/2008, -5/+11It is only returning from an imbalanced state.
- LokitheComplex, on 07/20/2008, -0/+6Lets hope the recession means and end to these pointless wars.
- nick1971, on 07/20/2008, -1/+7It makes for a large nightmare particularly when you think of how much western debt and stock is held by oversees companies. I think as we move further into a bear market we may need to rename it a suicidal.
What would happen if the countries outside of the G8 started selling off their privately or publicly held offshore investments to spend the money at home because they need it to pay the bills.
If the G8 and especially America need to finance large public deficits then how high will interest rates need to go to make the debt attractive - connieLingus, on 07/20/2008, -1/+6the financial realty is that the world is "selling" our political leadership ie the rest of the world, which owns 1/3 of our total national debt of $9-friggin TRILLION dollars, is losing faith in the ability of washington to responsibly deal with the fact that we owe so much money. this fear is causing many worldwide investors to flee both treasury securities (the instruments that finance our reckless spending) and our stock market (as indicated by the 20% drop recently in the S&P). this will result in higher prices for our governments to raise money (we will have to pay higher interest to migrate the risk, thus putting us even further in debt)
and you know what? i don't blame them. washington is *so* dysfunctional and so self-absorbed that there is little if anything to indicate that our so-called leader have any stomach to deal with this fiscal crisis. - livestradamus, on 07/20/2008, -2/+7Comment of the day
- Ratteler, on 07/20/2008, -1/+6The WAR in Iraq was never about terror or oil. It was about moving the wealth of the United States elsewhere. The "rich" are getting ready to abandon this nation for places like Dubia. Our current economic crisis is nothing but the scammers pulling out of the top tier of the great ponzi scheme they have been calling our economy.
Do really think Bush has the brains to do any of this. Bush is a sacrificial lamb from the New World Order. A dopey yes man barely able to read a script written by those who would steal the future of 350 million.
Want to know who to blame. Look who has made a profit in the past 30 years fromt he sabotage of the free market. - cambob76, on 07/20/2008, -0/+4THAN
- DangerCollie, on 07/20/2008, -2/+5You're right, but a problem that may be just as big is we had 4 years of catastrophic economic policy and re-elected the stooge implementing that policy because we thought a drunken Connecticut frat boy pretending to be a religious fighter pilot from Texas would make a better leader than someone who could have gotten a deferment but choose to take their chances fighting in the jungle.
If our collective judgment is that bad, maybe we deserve what we're getting. - thal3s, on 07/20/2008, -0/+3That's the dumbest argument i've seen all week.
Please provide details of how Obama is going to redistribute our wealth in a detrimental way.
PS: Note that CONGRESS passes laws in America and President signs them. The President does not drive down to the National Reserve and redistribute money at will. - brad3378, on 07/20/2008, -1/+48 years of bad economic policy? The national debt has been decades in the making and both the Democrats AND Republicans are to blame.
I don't have a clue how my generation is going to fix the problems we inherited. It may soon be time to flee to another country in matter very similar to what happened 200 years ago when people came here to escape from other countries. - drape, on 07/20/2008, -2/+5Actually, i don't 'need' to explain myself coz its an expression of my thoughts whether it makes sense or not.
But since you asked..... I think USA enjoyed an unusual global economic influence over the rest of the world due in large part to its geographically isolated location and its success in WWII.
Asia and Europe were devastated by wars that ate into the treasury while wealth generating machines like factories and homes were destroyed. USA on the other hand had no home turf wars to worry about while at the same time was profiting handsomely from wars waged by others.
Even the wars that USA fought in were overseas while their infrastructure remained largely untouched. Hence its easy for them to recover. On top of that, there was a mass migration of intellectuals to USA who saw it as a safe place from the wars that plagued their homelands.
But now, asia and europe have achieved some reasonable infrastructure and wealth such that USA's consumption is no longer dominant as the trade between asia and europe is able to support one another even were USA to fall into recession -- which has been the case in the history of mankind.
Hence my comment that economies of the world is only regaining balance. For there is no reason that the economic mistakes made internally by the USA should drag the whole world down with it. - netneutrality, on 07/20/2008, -5/+8Short version: Everybody's screwed, I think.
- QuickHunk, on 07/20/2008, -0/+3"STOP WAR" spread "PEACE"
- Number23, on 07/20/2008, -2/+5I think the "--" does not mean what you think it means.
- LokitheComplex, on 07/20/2008, -0/+3Yes there's the Podcast of the radio programme.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/analysis/ - vanebeard, on 07/20/2008, -0/+3Bernstein:After the fact, everybody is explaining in elegant
detail what went wrong, but I didn’t read anything about that before it
was going on. I had no sense of foreboding about it at all.
actually quite a few people explained exactly what was going to happen, its just that they were outside the mainstream. The fact that this "expert" did not understand and therefore believes that no one understood just proves he is not an expert at all, and can offer no more insight than he could have a year ago. It is this kind of arrogance from people who should know better that got us into this mess. - inactive, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2I found this to be a good and interesting read. And it was all in one page!
- hoodster, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2100% true...
- inactive, on 07/20/2008, -2/+4George Bush never moved to the center and look where we are now. A position to put a stake in the ground without cooperation is just as bad as a politician who wants to appease everyone. Not every decision is going to be popular with 100% of voters. But it better be popular with the majority and more importantly the initiative better succeed. Combine unpopular decisions with failed agendas and ta-da: Iraq.
No politician who voted in favor of the war or signed the Patriot Act should be in office today. They displayed their inability to analyze critical details of major initiatives and the consequences. Both times they opted for the vote they thought would best represent their image in the media and country club social circles. It was all about future elections and not at all about what was best for America. - CrushThemTorg, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2Thank god for a multi-polar world – it'll keep us on our toes.
- Kyan, on 07/20/2008, -1/+3Thank god for Safari-> Services-> Speech.
- rsh28630, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2Thank You
- richmomz, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2Reminds me of an old picture of a lady stuffing her furnace with wads of cash to heat her home - was from Weimar Germany when their inflation got out of control after WWI.
- krnldmp, on 07/20/2008, -2/+4Dugg only because stability means one nation can't ***** everything up for everybody.
- inactive, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2 The war was also about staging further wars in the Middle East once we get our bases set up in Iraq and of course the all important goal of establishing Central Banks in those nations owned by the families that run our own Federal Reserve.
- inactive, on 07/20/2008, -1/+3It won't.
- richmomz, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2Correct - there were warnings about what was to come but nobody wanted to hear it. Warren Buffet himself has been speaking out about our 'financial weapons of mass destruction' for years and how we were in danger of an epic screwing if we didn't wise up. But hey, what the hell does he know, he's just the richest man on the planet.
- richmomz, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2But the question is WHEN will we get over it? Are things going to get better after a year or two, or ten? It makes a big difference to some people, especially those that are close to retirement that are seeing their assets plummet in value daily.
- arjie, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2I never thought I'd hear 'crappy unreadable' about plaintext.
Save it to your desktop and open it in Notepad or whatever with your default font. Jeez. - rearlgrant, on 07/20/2008, -0/+1Your first sentence is correct.
The rest is from Goebbels playbook.
Focus on the real problem. - inactive, on 07/20/2008, -0/+1 Back then we had a manufacturing base and a citizenry that was mortgaged to the hilt.
- synik, on 07/20/2008, -0/+1dug down for whining about "brown and yellow people".
Go on, tell us that the first world doesn't care about "brown people" you know you want to. - inactive, on 07/20/2008, -0/+1 I'm trying to focus on the real problem. And the real problem is that you can't talk about the real problem for the reason I stated. Go ahead and try and watch what happens to you professionally.
- hoodster, on 07/20/2008, -0/+1correct 2005
- rearlgrant, on 07/20/2008, -0/+1Sadly, history shows it's more likely to end by global conflict instead of homegrown hard-work and investment. The reverse of think globally act locally -- spend locally and devastate globally; I prefer the original.
- rearlgrant, on 07/21/2008, -0/+1Scapegoating Jews isn't focusing on the problem.
I can understand if you focus on the behavior of censorship, and I agree the charge of being an anti-semite is thrown around without basis for political purposes. And your advice that way is good -- take the heat.
But the censorship behavior and the partisanship has nothing to do with being Jewish. If you read the last 2000 years of history, you'd know that "the Jewish problem" is a scapegoat to distract those being harmed by non-jews. It's that kind of behavior that is suppressing action against "the owners of the Federal Reserve and all of their friends in big finance, the war companies etc." - inactive, on 07/24/2008, -0/+1best line from the text imo:
"The governance of the world system is all premised on a
world where the United States was the largest creditor, where the G7
could cluster around the United States and they could be the directorate
of the global economy to some degree. The United States is now the
world’s largest debtor. Trillions of dollars worth of reserves are being
held in emerging market economies. In other words, global financial
stability depends not just on decisions being made in Washington DC
but on decisions being made in Beijing, in the Gulf and elsewhere.
Even the banking crisis can no longer be managed. Banks cannot be
bailed out in the G7. Every major bank is now relying on Sovereign
Wealth Funds; in other words, the funds being produced by
governments in the emerging world. So it means we’ve got an
architecture which is horribly out of date. We’ve got a nice, small,
comfortable, intimate grouping called the G7 who like to get together,
who say they share values and they can regulate the world economy -
making pronouncements, telling China what to do with its aid, telling
China what to do with its Sovereign Wealth Funds. And needless to say
China and many other emerging economies are saying well thank you
for that piece of advice, but I think we’ll ignore it. And why should they
not ignore it?" - rearlgrant, on 07/20/2008, -1/+2I'm not sure, we're still paying off the debt for the Republican policies that began this downward spiral under Regan. Pick up David Stockman's book. It describes, in 1986, the Republican policy to strangle domestic spending by increasing military spending to the point where the debt is the driving force in U.S. economic policy. Shorter summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
- AlbinoRaven, on 07/21/2008, -0/+1Odd thing is nobody really has talked about the obvious. If you have a large percentage of folks in your population that are retiring or retired it can also demonstrate the same thing as stagflation. Retirees tend not to spend as much, if at all, except on essential things like Medicare, drug, place to live and toast (for some reason this is all I see my parents eat for breakfast followed by a cup of tea and about ten pills each).
Basically all of the capital that is in the markets has to come back out of the market. This includes commodities and stocks. It wont stay invested forever. It has to, sooner or later, come out and be spent on those essentials. It's kind of the reason people invest in the first place, to afford a decent retirement.
Unfortunately the biggest investment, real estate, has been obliterated and along with more folks retirement strategies. That unfortunately was the human instincts of stupidity and greed. Commodities and stocks are really a very small drop in the bucket when it comes to where capital sits. For most companies and people it sits in their homes and buildings. But you get a couple of years of shows cramming the idea of home ownership down the throats of the entire population everyone tends to lose sight of what a home really is.
Its a box to keep crap in. Some of those boxes are fancy, others are not so fancy. But at the end of the day, it's still a box that we put all our sticks, metal and fabric (sofa, bed, stove, clothes, etc) into. Society decided with the massive TV advertising scheme of HGTV and about a million news reports, those boxes where very precious. So every human decided to do what they thought was correct. Sell their box for more money than people could really afford even though the seller understood that they could never find a box the same size for remotely the same price. Personally I've talked with dozens of couples that have fallen into this line of thinking. We'll sell the house, make a mint and hopefully buy another house for less.
However it all falls into demographics again. If you have a large retiring population, the two story, giant house isn't even feasible after a certain age. It's to big to take care of so you have to move into something smaller. By dumping the house into a market where supply outstrips demand. What happens? Prices fall back to where they should be, which hasnt quite happened yet, but it will. This includes europe, canada and the usa. Its spotty in the usa right now in pockets, but people are starting to realise its creeping into their neighbourhoods. Developers have been very busy building more homes without looking at the inventory that will be available in 2-10 years as the population retires/dies. Although it's not really the developers fault, they just build what 20-30 year olds want; a new home that looks just like the model they seen on HGTV. So they can go house poor with the rest of their friends.
The market readjustment is annoying, it has to happen sooner or later. Better to happen now. The only sad thing is as it gets readjusted, our parents and grandparents are going to have a bit of shock when they realize their own pension funds have dried up in 15 years, if they live so long. - wattersm, on 07/21/2008, -0/+1http://iopforum.harvard.edu:8080/ramgen/fr040705wo ... for the actual URL
- inactive, on 07/20/2008, -0/+1 Suuuure, that's what they keep saying. Remember 2 years ago how they were saying the economy was rock solid and anyone thinking otherwise was a fool? Of course you don't.
- inactive, on 07/20/2008, -0/+1Thats the unique aspect of every economist / mouthpiece. There always good at stating obvious things and hyping the current situation. Very rarely do the predict / warn of what might happen.
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