byEngineer

Tea Party members voted against bank bailouts. Not democrats, not old-republicans. My point is, yes, you can buy democrats and some republicans to vote in favor of more government spending. But you apparently can't buy them all to do it.

During cold war you could try to buy Moscow communists as much as you wanted so they allowed you open bank branch in USSR, but this would never happen.

You can try buy guys like Ron Paul all day long in attempt to get bailout, but you won't get it.

The problem is with the voter. If the feeling at the Capitol was that there will be severe punishment for the bailouts, our beloved Senators and Representatives would be too worried to loose their office to vote for that nonsense. Mind you they can sell their services to other industries too and make money in the process without the risk of loosing office (aka "everything"). The voter allowed them to do that. Because voter doesn't understand that bankruptcy and crisis are important parts of economic cycle. And are needed! To remove excesses from the system. To relieve workers from BS jobs too! So you can start over after 1-2 years in healthy economy without zombie banks. We didn't allow capitalism to work. Blaming capitalism for that doesn't add up.

BTW, I respect socialism and socialist movement. I'm liberal on social issues as liberal you can get. But for the economic issues Right just gets it.

I work at a large bank in the US. We build websites. Internal websites. The company employs maybe 300k people in the US alone. None of the websites gets more than 10 hits a day! There are 5 websites. And we have 40-50 people to support just that! If all these websites disappeared overnight there would be no difference to the bank. And to the society. The best part: the bank has been rescued by tax payer money. If it went bankrupt -- as it should have -- I would be working productively somewhere else. Unless "somewhere" else is also supported by the tax payer money and artificially cheap credit, FED rates at 0% full economic cycle now. The solution is more capitalism, not socialism. I.e. let them go bankrupt! This is what capitalism is all about. You take risks. You win, big payout! You loose, you go bankrupt! This is capitalism, not tax funded corporations. That's socialism for the rich. But don't call that capitalism, please! Interest rates at 0% for 7 years?! Set by whom? Capitalist free markets? Or socialist bureaucrats who know it all better?! Who sets the rates? Mr. Market or Ms. Yellen? Get rid of the FED too. You will see jobs like mine disappearing. And forcing me to do something more productive than slacking off for $120k / year curtesy of the tax payer.

Capitalism in crisis is all about reallocating work force from unproductive work at looser companies to do something great at productive companies! That's what bankruptcies are all about. Yes, my bank should be history long time ago. Its assets should be taken over by a bank that didn't make the stupid mistakes. And smart people who avoided those mistakes. This is what the bankruptcy process is about. Then this new CEO that weathered 2008 crisis making his small bank winning party here and taking over assets of bankrupted banks -- would see that nonsense and fire half of the staff. So they can go do something productive! This is how it works in true capitalism. We don't have it though because we believe in socialism. So yep, pay for your zombie bank (and my salary!) because the people who you voted into the office, didn't let the markets work!

I agree. Maybe the solution would be to be paid per task completed. I.e. create a bug tracking system (just like JIRA) where employees (working from home) would bid for how much they could do the task in what timeframe. Something like desk but only company's employees could take part in bidding.

And they say there is no inflation

My rate is 65usd/hr on w2 at the moment

I make 65/hr on a remote project. Had an offer of 95usd/hr on w2 for an onsite project.

> Calling something "Ideology" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.

Of course. It is after all entirely different than:

Calling someone "Gay" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.

Or:

Calling someone "Jew" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.

Or:

Calling something "Black" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.

Or:

Calling someone "woman" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.

Or:

Calling someone "Muslim" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.

Right.

Obviously our public sphere is full of criticism of Islam (a.k.a. islamophobia), Black people (a.k.a. racism), women (a.k.a sexism), Jews (a.k.a. antisemitism), Gays (a.k.a. homophobia).

And YES I would take a racist for CEO - if he is more qualified than others - each and every time. Because I truly believe in a society where gender, sex orientation, race, religion, ideology - do NOT matter.

See, this is a paradox. You can't have that, and you just admitted it. Cultural Marxism is full of paradoxes like that. It's impossible to truly have society where gender, sex orientation, race, religion, ideology - do NOT matter. Thank you very much for providing evidence that you see a paradox there as well.

http://www.shadowstats.com -- try that. See who opened that site. And no, they are not charging close to $200 / year and have the type of Customers they do because the US Gov stats are trustworthy. See which insitutions follow thesee stats vs. official stats, you will be surprised.

And just logically thinking, really: don't you think that the debtor with debt in USD that prints USD at the same time, doesn't have an incentive to under-report inflation? The situation is akin to you being able (as a debtor) to set APR on your own mortgage.

And then, the mystery of people complaining about raising prices of food, gas, housing, everything, and then believing in the official propaganda of "no inflation" in the past 7 years. Are you kidding me? Is your insurance cost the same as 7 years ago? Is the grocery bill the same? Cars cost the same? Maybe equities propped by inflationary policy have the same price?

I don't care if Nobel Price in Economics Krugman tells me I have no inflation for 7 years when I have been shopping for 7 years, watching equities and bond markets, just to know better. Sure, Keynsians are paid "economists" to peddle the idea of no inflation, they are all paid by Government. What do you expect them to do? Report 5-10% inflation y/y ?

And inflation is often hidden: $50k BMW 5-series is now 4-cylinder. Used to be 6. The can of coke in Germany for 1 euro used to be 330ml. Now it is 250ml. Price stays the same. So on, so forth. Isn't that inflation?

I'm Proud Catholic. Now let's see how many down votes I will get. Probably voted by the same people who apparently don't care about your sex orientation. Or religion...

Most gays hate Catholic Church. Do they believe in freedoms that they demand then?

I'm very, very far away from judging people's work abilities (like being an CEO) based on their skin color, sex, sexual orientation, religion, or ideology.

Why you can't be the same?

The data you have from the U.S. Gov is false as it down NOT include benefits like social security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc that are substantial part of the budget. Once you include these guarantees among other guarantees ( like the bank guarantees ) you are looking at 600%

What evidence? Learn history! Churchill's "the Second World War" might be a good place to start.

If you can read between the lines then you will know that the author of "inconvenient truth" mr al gore tells you to cut down on co2 emissions when he flies his private jet between McMansions that he owns from your taxes and owns a business trading co2 quotas internationally. But you prone to his propaganda peddle your little funny bike. The Chinese put online 20 new coal burning plants a week while we are shutting down ours. The chinese, ISIs, Russia, etc don't even need to do anything kick our asses. They just need to sit and patiently wait as the cancer of socialism and cultural Marxism do all the hard work for them. At the end they will just need to knock on the door of our country and the whole thing will collapse under the weight of its own stupidity.

What about "historical" reactions to Hitler before ww2 ?

It might as well all end not too bad. It might be that the rest of the world will finish in much worse shape than the US. I keep my options open. Can live in the US, but also can live in EU. Would be nice to be able to stay in HK for a while too.

Reading 0 to 1 by Peter Thiel at the moment. I think we have had too much of uncertainty in the West from economy thinking to social thinking to medicine.

Peter claims in his book that no CEO looks beyond 3 months timeframe running their Company anymore. Why? Because market knows better anyway. Why to plan, when market will determine what the market is going to be? Uncertainty.

Medical: we can't control genes right? They determine everything, so why to care, why to plan?

Social: cultural marxism. Pessimistic culture -- everything is wrong because we are capitalist society. As long as it exists we can't be certain of anything.

If you have debt to gdp ratio of 600%, what do you expect? Flourishing economy? Things will go down south. You are like a six year old pissed of that two and two is four every time. Some things are certain. Like 600% debt to gdp aren't pretty. Not positive. Not uncertain. Fucking shit. OK?

Yes, certainly. Many things can go differently. For one the US President, Obama, might go there on TV and tell: "My fellow Americans. Starting tomorrow we are raising taxes by 10-25%. We cut social security. We cut military. We cut across the board. Why? Because the Chinese demand their money!"

Possible? Of course! Probable? Your call.

Inflating the monetary base is actually doing the same, but without the need to raise taxes ex explicite. Everything gets more expensive year to year: tuition, insurance, services, etc. That's your hidden tax - inflation. We are paying off the Chinese by returning them money that's less valuable that the money we borrowed from them.

Some things, like 600% debt to GDP ratio that currently the US has are just facts of life. Can I imagine reality without them? Sure! The media is full of them from CNBC to Bloomberg News. Why you insist on me providing you scenarios? Ask them if they can imagine bubble in Treasuries! They certainly couldn't see one in housing or the .com one even though they both were straight in their faces. They laughed off anyone talking about bubbles then. The same now they lough into faces of Peter Schiff, Marc Faber, Jim Rogers, Kyle Bass, and others when they talk about bubble in the US Treasuries. In other words, you are asking wrong person to do the reality check. I'm the reality check to the mainstream camp blind to the obvious. 600% debt to gdp.

Can FED raise the interest rates to stop all the bubbles in their tracks? Sure they can! They need to be cautious though. Because at interest rates at 7%, the US Government will be spending over 50% of the annual budget just to pay interest on the debt we have. Can we imagine the FED going to raise the rates to 20% as Volcker did in the early 1980s? Sure, but then well over 100% of the state income from taxes would need to be paid on the interest alone! This is how much we owe. Can I imagine reality where this is not true? Sure, but why would I ever do that? Why to imagine world where mistakes aren't happening when they are right in our faces?

I'm not saying we don't have options. I'm just saying that taking into the account the dirty politics, we can't have the President have speech like that, can we?

Another solution: war. In the state of war we don't repay. That's the rule ages old.

So, yes there are plenty of scenarios: from bankruptcy, theory hyperinflation, ending on WW3.

There is no positive outcome from debt to GDP ratio at 600%. Sorry.

One could argue that we will just have "lost decades" as Japanese did. That the process will take forever and we will slowly decline and the rest of the world will follow suite. Might be that it will take 30 years. The thing is that looking at Russia, China, ISIS, I don't think they will just let us decline.

the point is that once they see that the FED wants to keep inflating they might realize that they have parked their assets in pretty risky asset.

Have useful skills. In the worst case scenario it will come to trading services or products. I.e. you are a good web developer and can build a website for a carpenter who will fix your roof in exchange. Some other might know how to fix cars or mechanics. Learn skills that will become valuable in such a scenario.

The best investment is your own skillset. Actually, the "workers" as you call them might be in better position in this scenario as they usually have better and broader knowledge of fixing every day stuff than let's say accountants or software engineers might have.

They do. In mainstream. Things like possibility of US defaulting on its debt or going towards hyper inflationary root are mainstream over here.

Hypothetical scenario: US Treasuries go south, the bubble bursts. The next day Chinese announce they start selling their Treasuries on the open market. So instead of keeping your money with the most indebted Government on the face of the planet, you keep it with the biggest creditor in the world. Doesn't sound as a bad deal, huh? And as an extra bonus just to make sure everyone drops US Treasuries ASAP to buy the Chinese paper: tie the currency to gold. Guarantee that yuan is as good as gold. Why not? Yuan reserve currency of the world, so the same mistakes can be made all over again ;-)

This what Keynsians call in this case problem for Chinese I call a huge win. Keynsians will tell you: oh, but now Chinese exports will get prohibitively expensive! And I say: BS! The yuan currency will go up in value up to 6 times. Why to export anywhere when you just got 1 billion new consumers worth 6 times more than before?! Next step: rest of the world starts producing again, including US. China stops being factory of the world as we can't afford their stuff anymore. We need to relearn how to build and assemble it again. Voila, here you have balance back in the system.

The FED artificially kept low interest rates since 2001 till 2008. All that money had to go somewhere. It went to housing. Cause and effect, plain and simple. The same currently nobody seems to understand that we have even lower interest rates today. From 2008 till 2014. And all this money goes to (primarily) US Treasuries. US Treasuries are currently the most expensive in its 300 year history. Mortgage APR fixed for 30 years at 4%. For 15 years at 3.5%. When the real inflation rate felt by consumers is at about 10%. Why nobody sees that? People don't like to think. They prefer imaginary fantasies where everything is just fine to brutal reality of the unproductive economy running from a bubble to bubble sponsored only by the USD being reserve currency of the world.

Once the US Treasuries bubble bursts, the same moment, the bubble in the US Dollar and America will burst too.

We're living in the final stages of the final bubble, mother of all bubbles in the mankind history. So we have house prices in bubble territory, car loans in bubble territory, Wall Street in bubble territory, VCs/startup scene in bubble territory. Enjoy the ride! But you don't want to be there for the bubble burst of the world reserve currency. I'm already on the other side of the pond.

Grew up with Atari 800xl in 1980s in communistic Poland and confirm the same. It is quite obvious what happened but first what I really don't like about the article: Object ovation of women. You have "agents" who decide for themselves -- men -- and objects who need to be told/encouraged or have stuff explained as otherwise they will apparently not understand why they should study CS. Or have mammography ( when was the last time you seen an ad explaining men to have prostate checked? ), participate in politics, etc? You don't tell agents what to do. Agents take action by the definition of being an agent. Objects on the other hand need to be told. Feminism is objectifying women this way.

And explanation of why not these many women are in the CS percentage wise today as in 1984? Easy. As CS became very popular instead of being highly scientific niche subordinate to mathematics department, it just became as any other engineering department - overflown with men.

Btw, I studied English language for my Masters. Hihhly recommended : male/female ratio 1 to 7. 😉 And no, there are no articles encouraging men to take foreign languages as their University Major. As we are not objectifying them as feminists are objectifying women. We know that advising agents would be inappropriate. But if you want to spend 4 or 5 years with chicks around you -- go study foreign language. And you can still pick up programming after partying with them for five years 😉

The President relying on experts instead of telling them what to do and trusting their expertise as if they will execute what they are told effectively. If you read biographies of great leaders, ie pope John Paul 2nd or President Reagan you will notice common pattern: the burocracy told what to do screaming in utter shock that they are "under attack". The burocrats just needed some time to get adjusted to a new situation where they don't call the shots anymore, but are there to execute the Leaders policy. For example JP2 was famous for totally ignoring his personal security team demands. At the beginning the pope was banned from travel by his own security team as this is "how it has always been". And they were the experts after all. It took them some getting used to new situation where the pope was deciding where he goes, when and how. Obama seems to be a bit weak. He seems to be someone who would rather have someone else make though decisions, so the result can't be blamed on him. With Syria he actually took advise from... putin😁

The problem is the crisis of leadership above anything else.

They have no family to rely upon and maybe borrow money from or get other help from them - because cultural marxism destroyed family. They don't have society that will laugh in their face when they do something as stupid as this - so they won't do it again - because political correctness doesn't allow us to criticize them in a harsh manner. PC being - of course - a construct of cultural marxism. Instead they have a culture where being poor is something to brag about. Everybody is supposed to do something about their wrong choices - from Mr. President to the Middle Class. It's not their fault. It is our fault. The Capitalist society fault - cultural marxism at works again.

Maybe if we all here just laughed loud enough so other poor could hear it, maybe then it would be just unacceptable for them to do stupid things like this. Maybe, if they knew the society will not care if they waste $4k, they would be much more cautious. Maybe, other poor, need an example, so they don't do stuff like that. Maybe strong families, churches - shouldn't have been targeted for destruction. Because maybe they could help them.

Where I'm coming from we have this saying: communism is all about fixing problems that it created in the first place.

And this story above is a classic example.

ok, then pick up one from the street for free, but talk to the folks at which house you are picking it up from. Tell them you are going to have for your kid, etc.

Then, if you are working 7 days a week, getting up at 5:30am, and all that stuff - why the heck you need a sofa for $1,500? Safe and invest this $1,500 in your child's education for Goodness sake! This is what poor Jews have been doing in the US since before-ww2 and look how well it worked for them!

And blunt jokes aside -- I would fill much more fulfilled putting this 1500 to my kids college fund/whatever then buying something I don't really need.

Why are you poor? Because you are stupid. Why are you stupid? Because you are poor.

No one will break the vicious circle for them. They have to do it.

craigslist, you can pick one up for a few hundred, I'm sure. With kids, that's what I would do.

I think it comes from all the Political Correctness that many of us in the Western World have to adjust to or face employment termination, scrutiny, social insulation.

I will tell you just this: I'm disappointed that "poor" can't pick up a sofa from the street for free.

That's what I did when I was poor. Living in a Brooklyn basement with roaches on minimal wage, straight from the plane, barely speaking English.

These guys aren't poor. Poor don't buy new $1,500 sofas. Heck, right know with kid and wife and combined income close to $200k I don't have $1,500 sofa as there are better ways to spend (invest) money. My sofa is from Ikea, got it in 2007 for about $1,000.

They are stupid.

I invite all the downvotes, but my satisfaction comes from the realization that on the bottom of your heart you know this is true:

Why stupid pay $4,150 for a $1,500 sofa?

Because when I was poor I collected one from the street for free. It hasn't even crossed my mind to go to a store when broken.

I like that concept. I paid to go from MS DOS 3.5 to MS DOS 5.0. Have no problem doing the same with your app bro!