Topic: It's the economy, stupid! (Read 73132 times)

Brentai · « **Reply #440 on:** February 15, 2010, 08:56:32 PM »

Anecdotally, that's bullshit. Cheer up.

Norondor · « **Reply #441 on:** February 15, 2010, 09:59:46 PM »

I literally can't.

Brentai · « **Reply #442 on:** February 15, 2010, 10:50:50 PM »

Then your only option is to develop a habit of heavy drinking (five or more drinks in one sitting).

R^2 · « **Reply #443 on:** February 16, 2010, 06:12:38 AM »

All of the people I know who are apable of heavy drinking (five or more drinks in one sitting) are only thus because they have jobs and can afford their liquor.

Mongrel · « **Reply #444 on:** February 16, 2010, 06:23:45 AM »

There's always the old Toronto standby of crack cocaine and stealin' bicycles!

Mongrel · « **Reply #445 on:** February 27, 2010, 07:54:03 AM »

According to this, the Administration plan to eliminate the sub-bureau that collects comparitive labour statistics.

I suppose no news is good news? LALALALA I'M NOT LISTENING.

Mongrel · « **Reply #446 on:** April 16, 2010, 07:45:18 AM »

Apparently Goldman Sachs is being retroactively charged by the SEC with fraud as a result of the subprime shenanigans. No details yet.

Mongrel · « **Reply #447 on:** May 05, 2010, 09:56:20 AM »

Just a little question to satisfy my own morbid curiosity: Has anyone else been following the Greek/PIIGS _(LOLcronym)/European credit crunch with anything like attentiveness?

Just curious.

SCD · « **Reply #448 on:** May 05, 2010, 11:10:00 AM »

How can you not expect me to see this.

LOLed a bit on the Globe and Mail Article accusing Germany of being the empire.

Also, there was a cool application of GIS (I'm a bit closer to my own indicators of wealth poverty project I've mentioned on another board btw). Essentially there was this one community with 1423 give or take a hundred pools tracked using google earth. In the same census region, only 123 people claimed they earned more than 60k in euros a year.

I'm really surprised Merkhel has the clout to be able to lead the bail out, knowing well that her constituents will be rightly pissed off. And why do they, the people who work hard into their seventies have to bail out a nation of inexplicably high numbers civil servants who barely even show up to work, and won't commit to settling their books without outright riots that have left bankers dead today.

If I was Germany, I would be considering my status in the Euro Club, specifically the currency. Between the lesser states including Greece and Portugal losing it in the head (albiet portugal will probably do better overall in the long), and Italy and France just being plain suicidal with their bread and circuses, Germany deserves much better than being stuck in the 20's and 30's once again.

Also I imagine the UK is looking pretty smug right about now. Good call Brown, the king is dead, long live the king!

Mongrel · « **Reply #449 on:** May 05, 2010, 12:09:36 PM »

The German Empire article was kind of cute.

I think there's some truth in the background (that the way the EU is set up benefits the large, established players to the detriment of the smaller ones and the deck is stacked against smaller players hoping restore a balance of trade), but they have a ways to go before they're the US-in-South-America or China-in-the-US.

The EU as a whole has really refused to get their legislative sort-of-a-house in order, this situation being a great example of how the current system is broken. Whether you view this as okay because the EU is "still an early work in progress" or "a catastrophic socio-economic time bomb" probably depends on your outlook.

I do think that the whole situation is right on the edge at the moment, despite surface appearances to the contrary. We may have escaped the last recession, but it has finally dawned on the bankers of the world that "Wow, holy shit just about everybody is way over their eyeballs in debt and we might not actually be paid back."

Since the problem is now so overwhelming, we can't go back to glossing it over like we have for the past 15-20 years. I don't know about no doom n' gloom, but I do figure things will be unstable for a while yet. Under the circumstances, I try to keep an eye on the fulcrums of things.

SCD · « **Reply #450 on:** May 05, 2010, 12:26:10 PM »

The EU is a fantastic historical example of how you cannot lead by consensus, and it shows us how it does just that by creating layers of overlapping bureaucracy that is redundant and emasculated from the get-go, only more expensive than that of the host nations respective departments. One of the few good things that have come out of that conglomerate is their policies on inter-nation immigration and work, as evident with the habits of polish workers during the recession versus Pakistani and N African immigrants, who are much more likely to be on the dole compared with the east Europeans who just returned home when the work went dry.

Our economy will be fine, even as the core of Canada shifts to the west. Quebec and Ontario has only themselves to blame. Otherwise, considering that the nation has done fine by sucking off of Alberta's teat for sometime, we should be alright. The US is in a rock-solid position because it is the world's reserve currency, and by that I mean the real currency for every failed state in the official sense (Zimbabwe) and the unofficial sense (IE NK Black Markets). Something big needs to happen for the US to get knocked off in the next twenty, and in that case all bets are off.

Where our real twilight may come in however has to do with simple demographics. As I've said before, the population distribution is becoming pretty skewed, to the eXtreme in Nippon and Ruskia. Russia only because the population is shrinking, and Japan because the women have just not been putting out for sometime, not that a large chunk of their younger men are really worth doing. Both nations are xenophobic at worst and ethnocentric at best, and do not share the same buffer that we do. If there's anyone who will fail first, look there.

Mongrel · « **Reply #451 on:** May 05, 2010, 12:47:14 PM »

Quote from: SCD on May 05, 2010, 12:26:10 PM

Otherwise, considering that the nation has done fine by sucking off of Ontario's teat for sometime, we should be alright.

*AHEM*

Don't make me go all statscan on you.

(Note that sadly this does not invalidate the notion that Ontario is a place where ambition and ideas go to die).

Also, demographics are a killer, and it's interesting to bring them up, but the two specific examples you brought up are not the best ones to back up the point.

Russia will limp along on as a commodity economy for quite some time. Japan might be in for some pain, but they have always managed to survive suffering through that peculiar Japanese combination of stoicism and affordable hedonism.

SCD · « **Reply #452 on:** May 06, 2010, 04:01:05 PM »

I respectfully disagree on both accounts, due to more recent trends, although I am more willing to rethink Russia, given their gov's value of human life sometime back. You are fully correct about Ontario, although I'm interested when the next round of census come out.

Their trends towards ethnocentrism or xenophobia are what make them unique compared with the European nations which are on the same path. I won't talk about the rest of Europe here however, except mocking their concept of the universal bank tax!

Which is the same boat for the Prime Minister, for good reason. Again, while some things may or may not call for a tax, the Euro's answer for everything seems to be just to add another layer of bureaucrats, this time in the tax collection office as a "buffer" for failed banks.

Meanwhile, an opinion piece of the Economist shows why we might be on to something. In addition this week they talk about our luck, while comparing the west to Brazil in terms of resource management.

Mongrel · « **Reply #453 on:** May 06, 2010, 04:38:59 PM »

That reminds me. I saw an article yesterday that said that the default risk for canada is actually half-unknown internationally (though it's roughly assumed to be incredibly low), because - unlike almost every economy in the known world - the number of transactions of Canadian Credit Default Swaps is so low that there's no sample size to build a baseline.

Technically, Norway is considered the safest investment for national CDS's but we're such a low risk we're not even worth trading. Our risk is so low we don't even chart.

Mongrel · « **Reply #454 on:** May 23, 2010, 06:43:01 PM »

Can you stabilize the US Debt?

Cute. I don't know if it's actually educational, because I don't know how biased it is. Looks pretty fairhanded at first (and second) glance though.

EDIT: Got it to 60% by 2018, mostly through tax increases and revenues revisions, though I did hammer away at defense spending pretty hard.

Brentai · « **Reply #455 on:** May 23, 2010, 07:27:23 PM »

59%. Kept tax cuts for <250k earners, didn't add any other taxes (except for increasing service charges) and greatly expanded R&D and biofuels.

...I also completely fucked up the military, the rich, the elderly, and the business owners. It'd be interesting to see that simulation run with a corresponding indicator of your chances of actually being elected on that platform, because I get the feeling my plan would get me assassinated before the campaign even started.

Cthulhu-chan · « **Reply #456 on:** May 23, 2010, 07:42:58 PM »

Got it to 51%, but yeah. Totally not surviving my first year.

Mongrel · « **Reply #457 on:** June 18, 2010, 03:16:47 PM »

So what's this making the rounds on various States heading for possible bankruptcy on July first?

There's a lot of wild news reports floating around, some claiming as many as 40+ states are headed for either a) the crapper, b) Washington, cap in hand.

Warren Buffet made the very salient point that The administration can hardly bail out big corporations and not bail out the states - and that most state bonds are only AAA rated because of the implicit assumption that Washington backstops them.

EDIT: I mean, I know the states being broke is old news, but this is apparently significant because the worst-off ones (i.e. Califailnia) are about to reach the breaking point where the state will collapse, Greek-style, barring further cash infusions. And once one state does it...

Pacobird · « **Reply #458 on:** June 18, 2010, 04:08:32 PM »

56%, primarily by closing/enforcing tax loopholes and removing a lot of exemptions, as well as doubling the cap on social security taxable income. I also saved about a half a trillion by bumping medicare thresholds up a few years. 1.5 trillion in increased revenue, and I made Making Work Pay, the EITC, and the higher education tax credit permanent.

I might even go back and lower the corporate tax rate just to make Matt Taibbi cry.

Mongrel · « **Reply #459 on:** June 22, 2010, 06:29:40 AM »

Fun historical comparison of the Pecora Comission and the modern non-equivalent

News:

Author Topic: It's the economy, stupid! (Read 73132 times)