After 2 Years of Obama--Here is your Change! - Page 3

LetItSnow · #31 05-12-2011, 10:52 AM

I paid federal taxes for the first time in my life this year. Higher or lower income, married or single, never before. It's kind of like a 5% pay cut.

I just know it - this wallet raid has undoubtedly lined the pocket of some unscrupulous soul who Clunked an SVX...

lhopp77 · #32 05-12-2011, 11:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by STeeL25T

Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bail outs, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses and paid no taxes?

I think you might be the one that is having problems remembering ACCURATELY. The bailout bills were passed by DEMOCRATS. The huge majority of Republicans voted against all the bills. Also, check out the top 20 wealthiest members of congress--the majority are DEMOCRATS (who pay no taxes). Also, check to see the number of Obama's political appointees that have failed to properly pay taxes.

Lee

Phast SVX · #33 05-12-2011, 11:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Myxalplyx

Stop ya bytching! Quit complaining! If all this is that important to you, get in a position to do something about it or go somewhere else. Sheesh!

I love this country!

+1

I just went for a walk on the capital square here in Madison today. Unbelieveable weather for really the first time this year. Outside of 10 protestors following a legislator around and yelling, "shame" as usual, everyone was enjoying the day and smiling. Can't wait to finish up at work and go enjoy a nice BBQ!

Phast SVX · #34 05-12-2011, 11:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lhopp77

I think you might be the one that is having problems remembering ACCURATELY. The bailout bills were passed by DEMOCRATS. The huge majority of Republicans voted against all the bills. Also, check out the top 20 wealthiest members of congress--the majority are DEMOCRATS (who pay no taxes). Also, check to see the number of Obama's political appointees that have failed to properly pay taxes.

Lee

Sorry Lee, and Steal your both off key in my eyes. You both seem to misunderstand what the differnece between Capital and a funded grant or government stipend are, and how capital (publicly raised or privately raised) is applied to a balance sheet in a fractional reserve banking system.

I've had it out with way to many people of both sides of the eisle to think either of you can get past your BS talking points long enough to think logically about the velocity of money, and if it all of a sudden falls off a cliff from fear, it will all come crashing down before it has time to fix itself.

For fun, let me live vicarously through your two response patterns and see where we end up.

Liberals: "we gave you tax dollars to loan out to people who need them, it dosnt matter weather they were going to make other loan payments with the loan you give them. You didnt! you paid yourselfs and ran and now you have all the money and we should tax, prosecutue and try you for fraud!"

Republicans: "The tax payer has no role what so ever in the banking system! We should have let them fail and let god sort em out! "

My reality: The last twenty years people have gone from spending their entire paychecks, to spending their entire paychecks and maxing out their credit cards; both companies and individual consumers a like. A retarded amount of greed on the part of the entire population, which is amplied at the top and bottom, caused a total drop in the velocity which money circulated. Wealth was mistaken for cash. The average velicoty of money works as an amplifier of wealth as long as there is no reduction in circulation. You can artifically stoke the velocity of money by messing with any of the components, and the fed chose to not only reduce the rate paid to savings (and hereby raise the likely hood of investment to seek a better return) and by money supply (in the form of Quantitive easing, which not only artifically draws down raes but frees up other levels of money supply (m2 and m3) to multiply out the curve)

So 07 and 08 All at once people stopped spending, companies starte deleveraging and dumping assets, consuers tried to pay off debt, and greed turned to fear, which turns to anger and deflection. If everyone pays off their debt all at once, velocity collapses if the volume of money is not increased and you run into deflation (when you pay off 1 dollar in debt, but the remaining 75 cents is now equivalent to the dollar you paid off thus never allowing anyone to get to zero sum). You dont want to be stuck in a liquidity trap, ask 1930.

"Liquidity breeds stupidity and insolvency."

Ok I am done. Now I will go back to making loans for people who actually feel there is a great deal of work to do and that life is what YOU make of it, not some improper noun's fault.

lhopp77 · #35 05-13-2011, 09:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phast SVX

Sorry Lee, and Steal your both off key in my eyes. You both seem to misunderstand what the differnece between Capital and a funded grant or government stipend are, and how capital (publicly raised or privately raised) is applied to a balance sheet in a fractional reserve banking system.

You move the consideration to a totally different, but related problem area. Policy of the Fed, money supply, velocity of money, etc. Connected very closely with extreme government debt and uncontrolled money printing. But, you are wrong in part of your academically based diatribe. You make the statement that all individuals and businesses have spent way beyond their means and created huge debt. Much of this is true about individuals with credit cards, misguided anticipation of SS retirement (read spend instead of save for retirement) and now problem house mortgages made possible by liberal democrat mortgage lending policies. However, it is not true in the case of many large corporations. Many of the large corporations are currently cash rich with huge reserves of CASH. Unfortunately most of it is overseas and they do not want to bring it to the US with our highest corporated taxes in the world. As I have said before--you want to stimulate the economy--give these corporations a free pass on taxes on this money and you will see it come back and be invested in ways that creates real jobs. NOT LIKE HUGE GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS (read Democrat/Obama inspired) THAT EITHER CREATE SHORT TERM JOBS OR ONLY INCREASE DEPENDENCE ON GOVERNMENT DOLE OR INFLATE GOVERNMENT PAYROLLS.

Lee

Phast SVX · #36 05-13-2011, 01:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lhopp77

You move the consideration to a totally different, but related problem area. Policy of the Fed, money supply, velocity of money, etc. Connected very closely with extreme government debt and uncontrolled money printing. But, you are wrong in part of your academically based diatribe. You make the statement that all individuals and businesses have spent way beyond their means and created huge debt. Much of this is true about individuals with credit cards, misguided anticipation of SS retirement (read spend instead of save for retirement) and now problem house mortgages made possible by liberal democrat mortgage lending policies. However, it is not true in the case of many large corporations. Many of the large corporations are currently cash rich with huge reserves of CASH. Unfortunately most of it is overseas and they do not want to bring it to the US with our highest corporated taxes in the world. As I have said before--you want to stimulate the economy--give these corporations a free pass on taxes on this money and you will see it come back and be invested in ways that creates real jobs. NOT LIKE HUGE GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS (read Democrat/Obama inspired) THAT EITHER CREATE SHORT TERM JOBS OR ONLY INCREASE DEPENDENCE ON GOVERNMENT DOLE OR INFLATE GOVERNMENT PAYROLLS.

Lee

Feel free to call it esoteric if it landed somewhere over your head, but I take offense to it being a diatribe

. I am not in the world of academia; I am a middle market commercial portfolio manager for large, privately held and small publicly held companies in Wisconsin. The good old rust belt which keeps on kicking moderate growth, lower than average unemployment and relatively stable housing prices.

Rising deposit balances indicate a drop in the risk profile, aka paying down debts and keeping earned profits rather than putting them to work. Corporations started hoarding cash as uncertainty rose; this is a natural response to rising uncertainty which adversely affects wealth. In fact, it’s epitomized by the credit freeze where Money Markets were raided, causing commercial paper markets to dry up overnight for even AA rated counterparties, banks began to limit their counter parties for overnight funds to only those most trusted and known by them personally. All these events, which pull M2 and M3 out of circulation, directly reduce the velocity of money.

And on to your reference to my incorrectness; you did not read my comments carefully, and you’re meshing together pre- and post- crisis comments I made to attempt to prove me wrong.

Ironically I am saying exactly what you’re trying to point out with high cash balances. Where we differ is you cannot or will not deduce the comments of impact on the actual flow of funds and wealth. You choose to leave logic at its door step and apply blame to whom which you see fit without any form of consideration for the numbers.

There is nothing simple about a 14.6 Trillion dollar economy and no one person or group of people can contribute to it without acceptance, weather publicly or privately, by the a majority of the players involved.

I will agree with you that deregulation and over-investment of public money via FMC and FMA sped up the problem, with each now standing in receivership with a 10% Non-performing portfolio (a bank is in bad shape with 4% NPA) but they were immediately propped up and released pressure and risk (weather you thought it necessary or not, it did alleviate the risk related to its holdings.) The more leverage you operate with, the greater amount of fear you will have. If your government sponsored with the full faith of the U.S. Government then you will have little impact on a bank run scenario unless people questioned the immediate solvency in the U.S. Government. Since people Federal Reserve notes (that’s cash money boy!) then I would say they did not.

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were the first to fail and were immediately divested into receivership by the federal government. Their issuance of CDO’s were not large during any period, they just held and purchased a ton of Mortgage backed securities with very little capitalization, since they could raise funding at will for what was the duration of their existence, up to till crisis. This indeed created additional liquidity on the private side; massive expansion of M2 and M3. And don’t forget, wealth to everyone from the homeowner to the brokerage firm to tax receipts on those profits. For the record, they paid their counter parties and continue to do so today. . In fact, 2005 and 2006 if you look at funding by the sponsored entities, you will see that issuance from FMC and FMA, after increasing from 2002 to 2004, dropped off only to be replaced with significantly higher levels of low capital reserved private issuance. They were a means and not an end.

The private organizations which failed and thus were unable to satisfy a counter party caused much more damage, ala Lehman’s collateralized debt and AIG’s uncollateralized insurance products. The failure of products like this start with people not paying their mortgage on time, or at all, and not with Lehmen’s failure to pay to its bond holders

And on your finally comment. Repatriated cash is typically slow to come back as a result of the foreign government’s policy on distribution of held funds, and generally unless you have a place you want to use the cash there is no point in pulling it back and taking a hit on it just to get it back to the motherland. Most of the Euro group has an excise if you want to send it back. As you point out though, the recent strength in the Euro will indeed keep the money over seas as it raises the break even point for when it make sense to move it back. All that said, if you were a numbers guy, which I am not sure you are, USA bank deposits are up 18% YoY TTM 3/31/11. Not sure where your source was on "most of it is over seas.” The profits would have to be raised over seas in the first place, so you have a fairly week argument to begin with.

alltrac · #37 05-15-2011, 05:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lhopp77

Just take this last item: In the last two years we have accumulated national debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as during the rest of our entire nation's history.
OVER 27 TIMES AS FAST!!!!! Metaphorically speaking, if you are driving in the right lane doing 65 MPH and a car rockets past you in the left lane 27 times faster, it would be doing 7,555 MPH!

You might want to check the math does not compute.