Recent comments

  • http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.txt
    foreign holders by nation of US treasuries

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/103265-foreign-debt-holders-and-u-s-nati...
    has some additional

    and this Ross Perot. This is a new website with a lot of charts on the national debt, very useful/nice.

    http://perotcharts.com/home/

    Reply to: Federal deficit for 2009 to reach $2 Trillion   16 years 5 days ago
    EPer:
  • I linked to this post. This is just great stuff!

    Reply to: Friday Movie Night - An Unreasonable Man   16 years 5 days ago
    EPer:
  • ...gonna take a strong minded woman to clean up the mess the big swingin' dicks have created.

    The Hill will get the call sooner or later.

    Obama is already telegraphing the, 'We really can't do a thing....' El Foldo.

    Reply to: Whom are you voting for in the Presidential Election?   16 years 5 days ago
    EPer:
  • I've been trying to gather up data, but its hard to come by. I've seen quotes that America is already absorbing 85% of all foreign investment in the world, so it would seem that any significant increase in our borrowing needs would strain thing (especially when Europe is doing the same thing).
    The trick is finding the raw data, which has so far eluded me. If I can find it I'll make a diary.

    Reply to: Federal deficit for 2009 to reach $2 Trillion   16 years 5 days ago
    EPer:
  • But Obambi has more than a few Goldman Sachs folk in his posse and, just like McSame and The Hill, Goldman Sachs is one of his biggest campaign contributor. In fact the securities industry has given Obamabama approx. four times as much as McSame....

    Hmmmm....I guess when the Obamaites screech change they doan mean 'small change'.

    I look forward to hearing 'BoneHead' Bowers and the rest of the 'Blogger Boyz' commentary on the reports that Obamabama will be asking Rahm Emmanuel to be his COS. That should be interesting.

    In the spirit of All Hallow's Eve:

    Billion!

    The approx. amount Senator 'Change' has spent to purchase the White House. Housing bubble...what housing bubble?

    Reply to: The Ghouls of the Economy Who Still Haunt US   16 years 5 days ago
    EPer:
  • is more corporate generated lobbyist written legislation, guaranteed absurd import of cheap labor and global labor arbitrage, the #1 agenda of these Democrats, more middle class destruction and more shoving the real Progressives and Populists into simply holding hearings or giving floor speeches with zero impact of the facts, statistics, experts on public policy.

    It's clear to me at least the only way to get this nation back is to somehow get the corruption, the lobbyists, the money out of politics.

    This campaign season could have funded a small nation, provided funds for 100 startups, feed how many millions in the United States.....and that's just the selling (shoving) of a candidate down our throats and no, McCain is not better, he's the same.

    Reply to: Obama to pick neo-liberal Rahm Emmanuel for Chief of Staff?   16 years 5 days ago
    EPer:
  • ...in an Architecture firm...see Calculated Risk.

    ...in construction....

    ...in the appliance industry...

    Get the picture?

    Does he get to 'eat it' because Greenspan and his puppetmasters are greedy pigs? Can we dispense with this quaint idea that America is a country where you can get a good job and live a decent life?

    Man the Kool-Aide hangover is gonna be a Beotch!

    Reply to: Finally, The Treasury and FDIC Consider $500 Billion for Homeowners of Bail Out   16 years 5 days ago
    EPer:
  • ....but it means a failed Obama administration. Emmanuel and those he represents are dumber than dirt when it comes to what needs to be done. Well, perhaps I should say he is 'ideologically blinded....' but what's the difference.

    If this is true Obama is done before he starts.

    Reply to: Obama to pick neo-liberal Rahm Emmanuel for Chief of Staff?   16 years 5 days ago
    EPer:
  • Buy a foreclosed-upon container ship and anchor it offshore! I wonder what you could rent empty containers for?

    Reply to: Global trade slows to a crawl   16 years 5 days ago
    EPer:
  • If the inflation caused by the attempts to avoid deflation, ends up basically pricing a huge percentage of the population out of the ability to live?

    Credit-worthy borrowers asking for loans isn't the problem, because they're credit worthy.

    It's the fact that the difference between wages and costs is quickly pushing 60% of this nation *below* credit worthyness that is the problem- and if we end up in a situation where 60% of our population is roaming the streets looking for "foreclosed" houses to squat in illegally, whether your bank account is insured will be the LEAST of your problems.

    Reply to: Deflation risk called impossible   16 years 5 days ago
    EPer:
  • Deflation of 0.5% causes far more damage to the economy than inflation of 5%.

    And while the Fed has extremely strong power to curtail expansion, by pushing the cash rate as high as it needs to be to do the trick (witness the Fed sabotaging the Carter administration in 1980), once the central bank has pushed the cash rate down to 0.1% nominal, there's nothing more that pure monetary policy can accomplish ... if a lower interest rate is needed to forestall the very serious damage done to the economy by deflation, its not technically feasible for pure monetary policy to push it any lower.

    And no matter what the interest rate, there is also the basic assymetry: you can prevent credit-worth borrowers from borrowing, which is where rubber meets the road for the contractionary monetary policy ... but you cannot force credit-worth borrowers to request loans.

    Pure monetary policy on its own has much less clout when faced with a downturn spiraling out of control than when faced with an upturn spiraling out of control. That's why government spending is needed.

    Reply to: Deflation risk called impossible   16 years 5 days ago
    EPer:
  • The credit crunch has gotten so bad that shipping companies are going out of business.

    Yesterday the Baltic Dry freight rate index fell below 1000 for the first time in six years and last night it fell another 40 points to 885. In June the index was 11,900, so it has fallen 93 per cent in a few months – a crash far worse than anything ever seen in the stockmarket.

    The spot daily rental for a Capesize ship is now $6365, down from $234,000 per day over the space of a few weeks. Maybe that previous price was absurdly inflated, but at $6365 it is just $365 above the average daily cost of crews and fuel.

    As a result the world’s ports are filling with empty ships because shipowners can’t afford to run them, as well as some full ships because the owners of the cargo won’t unload without a bank letter of credit, which banks are refusing to supply.

    Shipping companies are starting to file for bankruptcy in increasing numbers as they breach loan covenants, and a shipping researcher, Andreas Vergottis of Tufton Oceanic has told Bloomberg that a fifth of the world’s dry bulk companies may soon have negative net worth because the market for second hand ships has collapsed and the value of their fleets is below outstanding debt.

    Reply to: Global trade slows to a crawl   16 years 5 days ago
    EPer:
  • ....wait for it....yep, you guessed it.

    Nothing can be done.

    You see no matter who get's elected the MSM is braying that, 'their options are limited...' and 'both candidates would find themselves restricted in what they could do...'.

    Yep, Bush the Idiot can sink us in an endless occupation of Iraq but he, McSame and The Precious are helpless against the terrorists of Wall Street.

    Interestingly as I was eating a sandwich at my local bar the guys next to me were waxing heatedly about how stupid the 'bailout' is because it doesn't require banks to loan out the money the G is giving them.

    Gee...ya think?

    The time is approaching when the ruling elite and their moronic bloviators in the MSM are going to find out that the people just are not so into them and then...

    Look out.

    There is a real political path to power in this country that no one is taking. It's been called 'populism' in the past and I predict that when it lifts it's head again it that head will resemble a T-Rex with gaping jaws fit to rend and tear more than anything else.

    The entire 'Leader$hip' of this nation is corrupt. Rotten to the core. Their sagging bellies dragging on the ground and still they stuff their maws with the productivity gains which rightfully belong to the people that created them.

    History shows us that such cannot last indefinitely. I'd say 40 years of Greenspanian stupidity coupled with Bushian greed and cupidity are...

    Just about enough.

    Reply to: Banks Who Don't Need Bail Out Money are the Ones Getting It   16 years 5 days ago
    EPer:
  • yup

    You got this guy right and he's also pushed the corporate guest worker agenda and ...well, this is bad news.

    Reply to: Obama to pick neo-liberal Rahm Emmanuel for Chief of Staff?   16 years 5 days ago
    EPer:
  • Maybe we should just make up a blog post linking over to all of these? Anybody volunteer?

    This is begging the question for me can the US plain default on it's debt?

    It's like the Bush administration's last act is to rob the nation blind.

    I'm sorry, I just don't see why this is all necessary, not at all.

    Reply to: Federal deficit for 2009 to reach $2 Trillion   16 years 6 days ago
    EPer:
  • ....dirt poor losers. Calvinists unite! The facinating thing about this is that the working class and the middle class have been, at least the 'independent' segments thereof, down on their knees offering up their throats to be cut since the advent of Nixon...

    Of course if you read 'John Adams' you will see that this sort of idiocy has been in fashion since the very beginning of our 'republic'. And that, indeed, Republicans have been using this self-destructive wrinkle in the human brain to achieve ever increasing power and wealth over everyone else since the very beginning.

    The only question now is...

    Will The Anointed One take action or...

    Is the great American experiment over?

    I rather think if The Precious does not take real action that the second Civil War will begin.

    And once again it will be about slavery. Dept slavery this time. Yep, you won't have to be black.

    Anyone can qualify.

    And yes, Homer, they were called 'Republican's then also.

    Reply to: Banks Who Don't Need Bail Out Money are the Ones Getting It   16 years 6 days ago
    EPer:
  • you could do like an airplane indicator display and set up the different measures like on a plane or a car speed display.

    Reply to: Global trade slows to a crawl   16 years 6 days ago
  • if global trade collapses, then export dependent economics are going to be headed into the shitter.

    I don't think that internal trade in the European Union is going to be effected, because there integration there is so robust, but I do think that countries like China are in for a hell of a surprise.

    Exports are 37.5% of GDP in China.

    The comparable number in the United States is under 9%.

    If the trade around the Pacific Rim starts to unravel, then China is going to face an economic crisis of biblical proportions. And China depends on rapid economic growth in order to maintain public order.

    There's already been a slow down as factories in the Pearl River Delta (Shenzen and greater Guangdong area) have started to shutter. Right now this part of China is at the stage where labor costs are too high to remain competitive in labor intensive industries like clothing assembly (as opposed to the production of cloth which is capital intensive)

    Chinese factories have been outsourcing assembly to Vietnam, where wages are much lower, but internal transportation costs have higher.

    This is creating large numbers of unemployed.

    This could really bite Beijing in the ass in terms of political instability. And if Beijing can't bring home the bacon, then they have to be a lot harsher in the way they treat their public, and are likely to turn to intense nationalism.

    Reply to: Global trade slows to a crawl   16 years 6 days ago
  • The people who have incomes over 38% the value of their mortgage, ain't in trouble.

    It's the guy who has an income less than 33% the value of his mortgage that is in danger of foreclosure.

    Reply to: Finally, The Treasury and FDIC Consider $500 Billion for Homeowners of Bail Out   16 years 6 days ago
    EPer:
  • Well, I wanted supply chain costs to increase so much, it would be another dampening effect on global labor arbitrage, but this sure doesn't look like it....

    BTW: We need a blog post up just in terms of stuff on the front page and I'm wondering about economic indicators, what would be easier and cooler to get a "big picture" snapshot of so many of our quick posts at once. I have no idea but if there was some way to "macro-ize" all of these indicators in one big picture post or page that would be cool.

    Reply to: Global trade slows to a crawl   16 years 6 days ago
    EPer:

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