robak

Read it very carefully. This is USA in the future. 800 bilion bail-out - printed, over 1 trillion budget deficit - printed, another 800 billion bail out - printed. Only 5% of all the US dollars ever created is in circulation in the US. Rest of them are deposited in banks of the rest of the world as I.O.U.s... treasuries (us gov debt) that was bought by foreigners. The very moment foreigners realize that Treasuries have negative R.O.I. - as it will become true once treasuries bubble bursts and Fed starts printing to pay them off... well, this is how the whole Communistic Block collapsed in matter of months - hyperinflation due to inability of repaying debts. The exactly same thing will happen with the USA. Nation with no production, no savings and the biggest debt in the history of the man-kind... this country is going bankrupt. Kaput!

Well, nazis also never said directly they're killing weak people in camps. I just meant the overall style they represent. It reads like the newest findings of Nazi science or something...

like with communistic propaganda - people are having weird problems not a political system that doesn't work.

Or as Easter Germany chief of communist party said in the 50s - "The Party is really disappointed with the people in this country". If M$ is disappointed with their customers reactions to their flaky products - let M$ got to hell.

What happened to The Economist recently? First, day say that intelligent men have better sperm then stoopidos. Now, they treat Sergey like an example for super-human. A few more articles and they'll be explaining why euthanasia for poor and stupid is a good thing.

This is so obvious. I think it has been for a few years now. I would push it one step further: if you need to borrow money, you are not efficient enough.

afraid of competition, huh? ;-) Maybe get to work;-) LOL

And why he broke out from Britain dependence is probably because he believed that:

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

What about having savings instead of "investor funding" ? If you have developed a great product why in the world would you like to share your company with VCs anyway ? Why you need somebody to invest in your company ? I mean come on people, you can save $10k in vacation as a college student waiting tables and have 100% pie for yourself. I don't understand the logic here. Never did.

I'm so bored of listening to this! just let them go bankrupt! Is this capitalism or what???? Nationalize insurance industry, finance industry, automotive industry. Let the Market clean up the excesses as it has been doing for hundreds of years! This time is NO DIFFERENT.

Could not agree more. Wall St. is soooo capitalistic in boom times. And when the bust comes they all cry for socialism. I would pack all these guys and send to Cuba or North Korea. They want socialism? Give it to them!

> Again, you don't realize what the bailout will mean to the companies - they will be gone! Kaput. The US will own them. They just won't renege on obligations is all.

Good. This is how capitalism works. Right? You take risks and when you loose you pay the price. If it works out you rich. Banks have been going kaput since beginning of time, big deal. It is like with forest fire. It kills old and weak trees, so new forest can grow on it. Let the banks with bad, sometimes even illegal practices fail, so the new ones that will replace them won't take such a risky bets and give loans to people who can't repay them. What is wrong with that? Capitalism has 2 parts - boom and bust.

Why Wall St, is SOOOO capitalistic in boom times and SOOOO socialistic in bust times? Give them some of their own medicine. They made their decision they should pay for them, not a taxpayer. Let the market clean up the mess from the system!

> BTW: Why do you exclude the gov from the market? These days the fed owns all sorts of things, maybe they'll make a profit.

Oh yeah sure! Let's nationalize our insurance industry, our financial industry, our automotive industry and so on. Is how America was built?

> Look, again, I'm not saying that the bailout is a good idea. I'm saying your stated objections to it were poor and based on "it's not fair" rather than analyzing what the effects on the economy might be.

The effects on the economy would be great. Sure, there would be a period of deep recession, but this is better than popping up inflation. This will not make a single of these banks solvent. We will pay inflation tax for it and at the end of the day, we still have "toxic" assets in books. In government books instead of - so called private - banks - but the issue will be still there.

> What exactly do you want to do about the "entrenched poor"? Give them presents?

No let's give them to multi-billion corporations and banks. There is no capitalism in the US anymore. Bad decisions at the corporate level are not being allowed to be punished by Market. Instead Market is manipulated, so we all get punished. This my friend is called SOCIALISM. Even freakin' swedish don't bail out their business. This nation became a parody of values it used to represent.

because at the end they are all begging for tax payers (this would be you...) money?

You should have start doing long time ago... savings (China) vs. "deficits don't matter" (USA), being the biggest creditor in the world (China) vs. being the most indebted nation to foreigners in the history of the man-kind (USA)... production and underconsumption (China) vs. spending on credit and overconsumption (USA).

Your situation is bad exactly because you are not paying attention to this how to build an empire (China) vs. collapse one (USA).

Well, they do, but here is the thing they are afraid of: Before WW2 the US economy was doing poorly. The war brought a lot of war manufacturing business and huge boom in the US occurred thanks to the war production.

Economist at the time were afraid that the end of war will kill the boom because there will be no more war production needed. Well, once the war was over big US companies just switched their production capacity to civilian markets: cars manufacturing, appliances, houses construction... there was no contraction after the war. Opposite: 50s were the time of enormous economic boom.

Now, you are mistaken with setting "Prisoner dilemma" as the problem foreigners have. They may also look at their situation from the same perspective as Americans did during WW2. That is: If we stop producing for the export to the US (war effort) - there will be crisis. Who will buy our stuff but the American consumer. Well, no fear. Just switch production to your domestic markets as US did by switching industrial production to its domestic market after WW2. Nothing bad will happen with China the day "war" will be over and China will stop exporting production to the US. They will just realize that they have huge 1.3 billion consumer market at home and no need to export to the US. They will just switch production.

Therefore, Prisoner's dilemma has nothing to do with the fear of losing market based on false predictions. Nothing happened to the US market once the war was over. Nothing will happen to China once its main customer goes bankrupt.

Asian banks who has been crediting this whole mess for the last 20 years and now started asking for the pay back.

The day foreigners realize creditworthness of this nation, it will be so much done.

Can you imagine this country without credit. Not only easy credit, but without access to credit at all. And mountains of debt to pay off before anyone will even think about buying another T-bill.

Capitalism: system in which you save to raise capital to fund investment (production).

Definitely not one where you spend on credit that you hope to never pay back living from credited bubble to credited bubble.

gallon of gas cost was 1/4 ounce of silver in 1968, 1978, 1988, 1998 and is still the same in 2008. The only speculator here is Ben Helicopter imposing inflation tax on Americans, so they pay for all the stupid wars and bail outs.