Quote of the Day

[don]

Re: Quote of the Day

Re: Quote of the Day


The old adage that “money has no intrinsic value, it merely represents value” is clearly one that the FOMC (ex-Hoenig in terms of current voters) wishes to replace with “money does not even represent value, it’s just an illusion”

Marc Ostwald

Maybe a Vegas magician will replace Summers

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: Quote of the Day

“I wanna know. Just who’s[sic] dick do I have to suck to get a loan? Can you tell me that?”

http://brucekrasting.blogspot.com/20...l-at-bank.html

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: Quote of the Day

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/09...good-riddance/

As Allan Meltzer stated, “Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin—it just doesn’t work.”

[karim0028]

Re: Quote of the Day

If somebody has their wealth in dollars, and they’re going to buy consumer goods in dollars, for the typical American, then the deval-, the decline in the dollar, the only effect it has on their buying power is it makes foreign goods more expensive.

- Helicopter Ben Bernanke November 7, 2007, when questioned by Ron Paul on inflation and dollar devaluation.

[don]

Re: Quote of the Day

The Department of Labor Statistics announced on Monday that the recession that started with the subprime mortgage crisis officially ended in June, 2009. Wall Street rallied on the news and the Dow jumped 101 points, but the announcement probably fell on deaf ears in neighborhoods from San Bernardino to Cape Coral.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/...re-belt/63345/

[don]

Re: Quote of the Day

``If Ben Bernanke does a further $2 trillion (on top of the $1.7 trillion already in the bag) the yield on 10-year US Treasuries will drop 50 basis points to around 2.2pc. GDP growth will be 0.3pc higher than otherwise in 2011 and 0.4pc higher in 2012. The unemployment rate will be 0.3pc lower in 2011 and 0.5pc lower in 2012 — (in other words drop from 9.6pc to 9.1pc, ceteris paribus). That looks like trivial returns for a colossal adventure into the unknown, with risks of dollar flight and mounting Chinese suspicions that the US intends to default on its external debts by debasement.''

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance...und-trillions/

[don]

Re: Quote of the Day

Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Double Dip or Banana Split?

"If the 2010 contraction we are now monitoring in consumer demand for discretionary durable goods scales to the full economy as faithfully as the "Great Recession" did, the second dip will, at minimum, be 33% more painful than the first dip and will extend at least half again as long."

This is the case for trouble dead ahead, a worse decline in consumer activity and therefore GDP than the first, and the likelihood of further quantitative easing from the US Federal Reserve to patch over the inability of the political process to reform the financial system and balance the real economy because of their myriad conflicts of interest. These policy errors favoring a small minority will most likely result in a stagflation of the most pernicious and corrosive kind, high unemployment and a rising price of essentials, that may ultimately test the fabric of society. Obsession and sociopathy are not generally ruled or limited by the equilibrium of common sense and ordinary appetite, so I would not expect the powerful minority to draw back from the brink of this crisis voluntarily: a classic scenario for exogenous change. I would enjoy the moral irony of all this if I was watching from the distant future.

The good want power, but to weep barren tears.
The powerful want goodness: worse need for them.
The wise want love, and those who love want wisdom;
And all best things are thus confused to ill.

Shelley, Prometheus Unbound

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot...or-banana.html

[tsetsefly]

Re: Quote of the Day

The Tea Party’s inherent fear of sex is always close to the surface. Earlier this year, Scott Southworth, the DA from Juneau County, WS, and a strong Tea Party backer, warned local teachers that if they used a new state sex ed course they could be committing a crime and serve up to six years in prison. He found particularly objectionable sexual relations between two consenting adolescents, often referred to as “Romeo and Juliet” affairs, that, according to state law, he considered incidents of sexual assault.

* * *

Race, and particularly interracial sex and procreation, is the other unstated, hot-button issue that galvanizes the Tea Party movement. Demographic profiles depict the movement as a predominately middle-aged and older white constituency, often from smaller towns and cities throughout heartland America.

Unstated, their lives have been uprooted by capitalist globalization and they are desperately clinging to post-WWII white skin privileges that assured them the benefits of a “middle-class” life. A half-century later, capitalism has betrayed them.

The promotion of that false consciousness is corporate media’s principal responsibility.

http://www.counterpunch.org/rosen09172010.html

Can anyone take that article seriously? wow...

[we_are_toast]

Re: Quote of the Day

The old adage that “money has no intrinsic value, it merely represents value” is clearly one that the FOMC (ex-Hoenig in terms of current voters) wishes to replace with “money does not even represent value, it’s just an illusion”

Marc Ostwald

[Roughneck]

Re: Quote of the Day

"The recession is over". In Fact it ended in June of 09. It's got to be true I heard it on NPR. Who would have known?

[don]

Re: Quote of the Day

As Floodwaters Recede, a Crisis Emerges

Two months after flooding began in the northern reaches of Pakistan, the waters of the Indus River continue to flood low-lying areas of Sindh, the country’s southernmost province. The flooding killed about 1,800 people, and more than 20 million people, or around 14 percent of the country’s population, have been affected. The United Nations estimates that 12.4 million people are in need of immediate humanitarian assistance, meaning they have no access to clean water and are living in temporary shelters. Millions do not know when they will be able to return home. A majority of the displaced are farmers, and the flooding has destroyed not only their homes but their fields, herds and livelihoods. The complexity of the situation, combined with the instability in the country, makes it the worst natural disaster the United Nations has ever responded to in its 65-year history, according to a recent report by the organization.



http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...html?ref=world

[don]

Re: Quote of the Day

The Icelandic parliament, Althingi, just passed a parliamentary resolution with 33 votes against 30 to take former Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde to High Court (Landsdómur) on alleged negligence in office in the events leading up to the banking collapse in 2008.

Skál !

[don]

Re: Quote of the Day

Republican candidate BJ Lawson (2nd half)

[don]

Re: Quote of the Day

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010...ton_ariely.jpg

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Quote of the Day

The article explaining the above "Percent Wealth Owned" graphic can be found at Actually Existing Capitalism
by John Schmitt. In that article, it describes this graphic thusly:

First, respondents dramatically underestimated the current level of wealth inequality. Second, respondents constructed ideal wealth distributions that were far more equitable than even their erroneously low estimates of the actual distribution. Most important from a policy perspective, we observed a surprising level of consensus: All demographic groups -- even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy -- desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.

This figure from the paper shows the actual distribution of wealth, respondents' average estimate of the actual distribution, and their "ideal" distribution: