Chris will like this. Hope others do too. Economics does not have to be hard.
Chris will like this. Hope others do too. Economics does not have to be hard.
Akula (09-30-2012),Canadianeye (10-28-2012),Chris (09-30-2012),Deadwood (11-13-2012),GrassrootsConservative (09-30-2012),KC (11-02-2012),MMC (09-30-2012),waltky (10-26-2012)
Some notes as i listen...
Krugman: Not big enough.
QE3 is just an attempt at repeating the housing bubble. Insanity.
Madoff called it a ponzi scheme, for crying out loud!
Interesting relationship between Euro and dollar, staving off the cliff dive.
Printing money will be our downfall. This is the government bubble, I think Shiff calls it that too.
No one wants the dollar, nations are selling them off, turning away from it a base of trade.
Drains purchasing power of dollar for Americans. Cost of everything rising. Unemployment, dependence.
End of party.
Work as a means.
Let interest rates rise, default and restructure. Means test welfare, pay out only what we can afford.
Politicians don't have the integrity, aren't honest enough to default.
Party over when dollar no longer world's reserve currency.
Should've let it depress deeper in '08, less painful, more constructive. This time economy could collapse completely and dollar be worthless.
Need to dismantle socialist dependence on government to manage economy, depend instead on capitalism, robust if you leave it alone.
Educate people on the Austrian view, drop Keynesianism.
Economics should be simple, explained in plain words.
Granny says dem politicians done already been greasin' the slippery slope...
‘Fiscal cliff’ already hampering U.S. economy, report says
October 25,`12 - The “fiscal cliff” is still two months off, but the scheduled blast of tax hikes and spending cuts is already reverberating through the U.S. economy, hampering growth and, according to a new study, wiping out nearly 1 million jobs this year alone.
The report, scheduled for release Friday by the National Association of Manufacturers, predicts that the economic damage would deepen considerably if Congress fails to avert the cliff, destroying nearly 6 million jobs through 2014 and sending the unemployment rate soaring to near 12 percent. Across the nation, companies are bracing for the fallout by laying off workers, letting jobs go vacant and postponing major purchases. Commerce Department data released Thursday show business investment stalled in September, as orders for core capital goods such as machinery and equipment plateaued at $60.3 billion.
“The general consensus is things are going to get a lot worse as people expect this fiscal cliff to be on us,” said Thomas Riordan, chief executive of Neenah Enterprises in Appleton, Wis., which makes cast-iron products such as truck axles and manhole covers. The company has eliminated about 150 jobs over the past few months, and four of its six plants have begun operating on short workweeks. Like other business owners, Riordan expressed extreme frustration with Washington’s failure to deal with the looming crisis, leaving momentous decisions about the economy until after the Nov. 6 election. “Everyone is blaming everyone else as the country grinds to a halt,” he said. “I don’t think the political leadership in this country has an understanding of how long it could take to turn this boat around.”
The term “fiscal cliff” is Washington shorthand for an array of policies set to take effect in January, sucking more than $500 billion out of the economy next year. That includes about $100 billion in automatic cuts to the military and federal agencies, adopted by Congress last year as part of a plan to reduce record budget deficits. It also includes about $400 billion in tax hikes, caused primarily by the expiration of a temporary payroll tax cut and other tax breaks adopted during the George W. Bush administration.
All told, the cliff amounts to the largest spurt of deficit reduction in more than 40 years. But it is also likely to push the fragile economy back into recession, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The CBO predicts that a recession would be significant but brief, with unemployment peaking around 9 percent and economic growth recovering during the second half of 2013. The projections in the NAM report — prepared by Jeff Werling, executive director of the Interindustry Forecasting Project at the University of Maryland — offer a substantially darker view of the consequences of inaction, joining others who have questioned CBO’s relatively benign assessment.
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Thanks Pete. I just finally got around to listening to the whole talk. The man knows his stuff and a great speaker to boot.
No problem. He is certainly a man to follow.
Liberals fear betrayal if Obama wins, then bargains with GOP on fiscal cliff...
Liberals fear grand bargain betrayal if President Obama wins
11/2/12 - Labor unions fear a victorious Obama would ink a deal that slashes entitlement benefits.
Labor unions and liberal interest groups are going all-out for President Barack Obama’s reelection — but they’re just as ready to turn that firepower back on him if he betrays them with a grand bargain. These groups fear a victorious Obama would ink a deal with Republicans during the fiscal cliff negotiations that slashes entitlement benefits. And that could hurt the very coalition of voters — minorities, women and low- and middle-income families — that would claim credit for his second term. Even as they turn out the vote in public to keep Obama in office, in private they’re plotting a strategy aimed at pressuring him to protect those who reelected him.
The dual-track campaign, led by the AFL-CIO, MoveOn and a network of progressive advocacy organizations, highlights the political vice grip that awaits Obama if he wins Tuesday. He wants a large-scale deficit deal. But it would inevitably mean making concessions to Republicans that infuriate the Democratic base that spent the past two years and tens of millions of dollars trying to return him to the White House. Progressives worry about which Obama will show up after Election Day: the pragmatist who offered benefit cuts to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the 2011 debt ceiling talks or the partisan chastened by a failed deal to slice into prized Democratic programs.
“The base is not going to be happy with ham and egg justice” that requires disproportionate sacrifice from all but the wealthy, said Van Jones, Obama’s former green jobs czar and founder of Rebuild the Dream, a progressive advocacy group. “It is a fiscal showdown. We’re not going to blink. There is no reason in the world why the pillars of middle-class security, the earned benefits that our parents fought for, should be on the chopping block.” The course Obama chooses would set the tone for his second term — and it’s not just Democrats he would need to massage. Republicans are likely to retain control of the House, and with it the power to derail or approve large items on the president’s agenda, such as immigration reform. They will demand major fixes to entitlement programs and a renewal of the Bush-era tax rates for the wealthiest Americans.
Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill are gaming out scenarios, including the possibility of the president releasing his own plan and traveling the country to sell it. But the exact strategy depends on the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential, House and Senate elections, how congressional Republican leaders interpret the results and whether the GOP relents on taxes, officials said. Obama, if he wins, will assert that voters had a choice — and his vision on taxes, entitlements and the deficit prevailed.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories...#ixzz2BFpMfKcY
G-20 to focus on U.S. fiscal cliff...
United States’ ‘fiscal cliff’ biggest risk for Canada, G20
Nov 5, 2012 — Slowly but intensely, the focus of the world’s financial leaders has shifted from Europe to the United States, where a fiscal crisis threatens to push the country back into recession — taking the rest of us with it.
With a divisive and still-too-close-to-call U.S. election only days away, Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers who gathered Sunday in Mexico City are urging political action to avoid the looming “fiscal cliff” of government spending cuts and tax hikes set to take effect next year in the United States. Still on the back burner, but expected to move front-and-centre, another issue is heating up — the slow progress in global financial reforms, known as Basel III.
Eurozone’s debt problems, now nearly three years old, have fueled concerns over another global downturn. That crisis appears to have entered a more positive phase — though far from resolution — as the European Central Bank works with governments and the International Monetary Fund to pull Greece, most critically, from the edge of collapse and a still-possible exit from the 17-nation currency zone.
The fate of Spain and Italy — facing their own sovereign debt concerns — remains unclear, and still a work in progress. A draft communique from the two-day meeting is expected to highlight the elevated risks to the global economy, including from the potential fiscal tightening in the U.S. and Japan, Reuters reported on Sunday, citing sources.
“Global growth remains modest and risks remain elevated, including due to possible delays in the complex implementation of recent policy announcements in Europe, a potential sharp fiscal tightening in the United States and Japan, weaker growth in some emerging markets and additional supply shocks in some commodity markets,” the draft said, according to the source.
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Last edited by waltky; 11-05-2012 at 10:23 AM.
Its make or break for fiscal cliff - but watch `em kick the can down the road again...
With 'fiscal cliff' looming, Congress facing compromise or confrontation
Thu November 8, 2012 - Congress faces an end-of-the-year deadline or "fiscal cliff"; Massive spending cuts are scheduled to kick in and tax breaks begin to expire; Both parties agree Tuesday's vote was a mandate to compromise, avoid the fiscal cliff; But party leaders continue to sharply disagree over the key issue of top tax rates
See also:A day after an election that both parties agreed was a mandate to find compromise and avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders also continued to sharply disagree over the key issue of whether top tax rates should be raised to help resolve the looming crisis. Republicans said higher rates would damage the economy, while Democrats said it was the only equitable way to tackle the debt.
Congress faces an end-of-the-year deadline before massive spending cuts kick in and tax breaks begin to expire, including the Bush-era tax cuts at the end of December. The fiscal cliff also includes so-called sequestration -- automatic across-the-board spending cuts set to trigger at the beginning of 2013 if Capitol Hill fails to create a deficit-reduction plan.
In a formal speech on Capitol Hill Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner sounded conciliatory even as he made it clear higher tax rates would be unacceptable to Republicans who control the House. "For the purposes of forging a bipartisan agreement that begins to solve the problem, we're willing to accept new revenue, under the right conditions," Boehner said.
The speaker then insisted the revenue come from "a growing economy, energized by a simpler, cleaner, fair tax code, with fewer loopholes and lower rates for all," and not from higher rates on higher earners. As part of a broader compromise, Boehner said that tax reform must be coupled with "concrete steps to put our country's entitlement programs on a sounder financial footing."
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Stocks Tumble on Eurozone, Fiscal Cliff Worries
11/08/12 --- The major U.S. equity averages reversed early gains Thursday as fresh worries about the eurozone and fiscal cliff overshadowed upbeat domestic labor market and trade data.
Concerns about Greece's stability were back following a Bloomberg report that the European Union won't decide on whether to provide the next round of bailout funds for the country until sometime next week. At last check, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down more than 47 points, or 0.37%, at 12,885.
The blue-chip index, which began the session up 5.85% in 2012, suffered a steep loss on Wednesday, falling more than 2% to close below 13,000 for the first time since early August, in the wake of President Barack Obama's defeat of Mitt Romney in the presidential election.
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Peter Schiff's statement from December 2009: "I know inflation is going to get worse in 2010. Whether it’s going to run out of control or it’s going to take until 2011 or 2012, but I know we’re going to have a major currency crisis coming soon. It’s going to dwarf the financial crisis and it’s going to send consumer prices absolutely ballistic, as well as interest rates and unemployment."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Schiff#Reception