Summers & Krugman: Lost Decade

[flintlock]

Re: Summers & Krugman: Lost Decade

American Politics is like British Soccer -- fans choose teams for life, and it matters not what they do.

Love the analogy, and so true!

[shiny!]

Re: Summers & Krugman: Lost Decade

Back in the 1950s, savers would bring their bank passbooks into banks (or saving and loan offices) and receive very interesting interest on their account balance. A machine would print their interest addition contributed by the bank ( or S&L ) into their passbook, and a new (updated) balance on their account would be printed. You were then handed back your passbook and offered candy out of their dish and thanked.... As you walked-out of the door of the bank, your account balance began to earn compound interest.

Before you left the bank, you could trade your paper money in for real, honest-to-goodness, silver dollars made in the 1878-1935 era. Or the bank teller would just pay you your change or withdrawal in a stack of silver dollars........ The whole experience was wonderful !

Now under Bernanke and that bunch running the Federal Reserve Bank in Washington, on a $100,000 account balance you might receive one-cent per day interest, if you are lucky. The receipt for your deposit you get is a tiny shred of paper, and nothing more. Your bank balance might be shrinking due to service charges on your account..... In order to even deal with the bank, you have to present an account number ( often 11 digits long, if not longer ) and a secret password or a secret phrase of passwords, as well ..... Meanwhile, the government covertly monitors your account activity in order to study your deposits and withdrawals and tax the one-cent interest per day that you might be lucky enough to receive..... And whatever the government doesn't grab in a tax audit or the bank doesn't grab in service charges, your account balance loses in purchasing power by the hidden inflation.

So, this is how savers are now treated in America and in Canada, too. Now for slow learners like myself, I have two questions to ask:

Why would anyone want to have a savings account now? Another question to ask: Why would the nation want to be a nation of savers and a nation which is a creditor nation to the world?

The entire experience of saving and thrift to-day is dismal. And sad to say, the zero interest rate policy in place now has made for America ( and Canada ) to become nations of debtors, and nations in debt to other nations in the world.

When you leave the bank to-day, the attitude in the air is: "Who were you, get lost and good-riddance, jerk.".... If your car hasn't been ticketed and towed-away outside, your drive home is filled with unanswered questions about your account activity and a general irritation from the whole banking experience.

All true. Sad but true.

Here's an unasked-for piece of advice, if I may. I know that's always the worst kind, but I hope you'll forgive me.

Take care of your children. They come first! Take the day off and put your affairs in order, for their sake. True, you're not dead yet, but life is full of surprises (and bad drivers), as I found out to my dismay when my husband was killed last year. He drove off to work that morning full of life, and he was dead a few minutes later. Just take care of your kids, OK? Don't put it off.

[cityqat]

Re: Summers & Krugman: Lost Decade

My goodness, I'm not dead yet......

Understood. It is incredibly important to arrange things in advance. I, for instance, had everything arranged by the time I was 29 yrs old.

"LEAN FORWARD", right? I love you very much, dad, and only want your wishes and life to be honored to the tee.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Summers & Krugman: Lost Decade

Back in the 1950s, savers would bring their bank passbooks into banks (or saving and loan offices) and receive very interesting interest on their account balance. A machine would print their interest addition contributed by the bank ( or S&L ) into their passbook, and a new (updated) balance on their account would be printed. You were then handed back your passbook and offered candy out of their dish and thanked.... As you walked-out of the door of the bank, your account balance began to earn compound interest.

Before you left the bank, you could trade your paper money in for real, honest-to-goodness, silver dollars made in the 1878-1935 era. Or the bank teller would just pay you your change or withdrawal in a stack of silver dollars........ The whole experience was wonderful !

Now under Bernanke and that bunch running the Federal Reserve Bank in Washington, on a $100,000 account balance you might receive one-cent per day interest, if you are lucky. The receipt for your deposit you get is a tiny shred of paper, and nothing more. Your bank balance might be shrinking due to service charges on your account..... In order to even deal with the bank, you have to present an account number ( often 11 digits long, if not longer ) and a secret password or a secret phrase of passwords, as well ..... Meanwhile, the government covertly monitors your account activity in order to study your deposits and withdrawals and tax the one-cent interest per day that you might be lucky enough to receive..... And whatever the government doesn't grab in a tax audit or the bank doesn't grab in service charges, your account balance loses in purchasing power by the hidden inflation.

So, this is how savers are now treated in America and in Canada, too. Now for slow learners like myself, I have two questions to ask:

Why would anyone want to have a savings account now? Another question to ask: Why would the nation want to be a nation of savers and a nation which is a creditor nation to the world?

The entire experience of saving and thrift to-day is dismal. And sad to say, the zero interest rate policy in place now has made for America ( and Canada ) to become nations of debtors, and nations in debt to other nations in the world.

When you leave the bank to-day, the attitude in the air is: "Who were you, get lost and good-riddance, jerk.".... If your car hasn't been ticketed and towed-away outside, your drive home is filled with unanswered questions about your account activity and a general irritation from the whole banking experience.

When I was in elementary school in the mid 1970's we had a school based savings account program. We would bring our money in weekly to school to have the money deposited into our accounts and our savings passbooks updated. It was a great time throughout elementary school to SEE how compound interest worked.......and great tangible reinforcement for the importance of savings.

I can't imagine how incredibly useless, harmful, and counter productive an elementary school based savings program would be today, unless used as a lesson on failure likely TOO complex for younger children to grasp effectively.

If school kids opening up savings accounts today don't receive special treatment, they'll be going backwards with fees right into negative balances for insufficient minimum funds in account.

So my fear is that if I was raised amongst a cohort where many would have received a good basic positive foundation in savings/compound interest/debt/etc in how it functions properly(at school and at home)....what's going to happen in 5-10-15-20 years time when the cohorts coming through who have received a detrimental foundation in savings/compound interest/debt/etc are in their prime earning years?

[doom&gloom]

Re: Summers & Krugman: Lost Decade

Ha ha! I am fighting with the IRS over interest I do not owe them. I missed a 1099 somehow, and owe them money from that. But they also found... a $7 discrepancy somewhere. $7.00

seriously...

this in a government that blows billions by the day with no clue.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Summers & Krugman: Lost Decade

Back then we were the world's biggest creditor. Now we're the world's biggest debtor.

Back in the 1950s, savers would bring their bank passbooks into banks (or saving and loan offices) and receive very interesting interest on their account balance. A machine would print their interest addition contributed by the bank ( or S&L ) into their passbook, and a new (updated) balance on their account would be printed. You were then handed back your passbook and offered candy out of their dish and thanked.... As you walked-out of the door of the bank, your account balance began to earn compound interest.

Before you left the bank, you could trade your paper money in for real, honest-to-goodness, silver dollars made in the 1878-1935 era. Or the bank teller would just pay you your change or withdrawal in a stack of silver dollars........ The whole experience was wonderful !

Now under Bernanke and that bunch running the Federal Reserve Bank in Washington, on a $100,000 account balance you might receive one-cent per day interest, if you are lucky. The receipt for your deposit you get is a tiny shred of paper, and nothing more. Your bank balance might be shrinking due to service charges on your account..... In order to even deal with the bank, you have to present an account number ( often 11 digits long, if not longer ) and a secret password or a secret phrase of passwords, as well ..... Meanwhile, the government covertly monitors your account activity in order to study your deposits and withdrawals and tax the one-cent interest per day that you might be lucky enough to receive..... And whatever the government doesn't grab in a tax audit or the bank doesn't grab in service charges, your account balance loses in purchasing power by the hidden inflation.

So, this is how savers are now treated in America and in Canada, too. Now for slow learners like myself, I have two questions to ask:

Why would anyone want to have a savings account now? Another question to ask: Why would the nation want to be a nation of savers and a nation which is a creditor nation to the world?

The entire experience of saving and thrift to-day is dismal. And sad to say, the zero interest rate policy in place now has made for America ( and Canada ) to become nations of debtors, and nations in debt to other nations in the world.

When you leave the bank to-day, the attitude in the air is: "Who were you, get lost and good-riddance, jerk.".... If your car hasn't been ticketed and towed-away outside, your drive home is filled with unanswered questions about your account activity and a general irritation from the whole banking experience.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Summers & Krugman: Lost Decade

My goodness, I'm not dead yet......

[cityqat]

Re: Summers & Krugman: Lost Decade

Listen, dad, you need to know that you *NEED* to update your Will to include your daughters. They are left out in the cold by the sale of their only inheritance: Your house.

[shiny!]

Re: Summers & Krugman: Lost Decade

They get no traction because of people like Starving Steve on the left, and his ilk on the right.

American Politics is like British Soccer -- fans choose teams for life, and it matters not what they do.

You see this in CONgressional polling, where people rate CONgress continually lower each year, but then say their rep is good. It is mind numbing.

We have now had NO, ZERO, NADA budget for THREE YEARS. WTF?! This is what we ELECT them to do. This is their primary job, or at least what they are paid to do.


A note to Starving Steve and his ilk on the right. All the 'good stuff' was done in the past when the vote of the people actually mattered. Now it is just the dollars from K Street that matter. To continue to blindly believe in some ideology, when the facts support otherwise, is just plain foolish. Witness:

The 'supposed' liberal Clinton gave us job killing NAFTA, and market killing CFMA & repeal of Glass-Steagall.
The 'supposed' conservative GW Bush gave us Medicare part D, zero fiscal responsibility and The Patriot Act (to strip away our Constitutional rights)
The 'supposed' liberal Obama re-upped the Patriot Act, made it worse, and gave us the NDAA and the belief any American can be killed anywhere in the world anytime he says so.

Does anyone see anything strange in thos positions?

I could go on, but really, the facts speak for themselves.

+1! Unfortunately, facts won't change the minds of people who feel a need to BELIEVE in something different. For most people, the truth doesn't matter so much as the feeling of pleasure we get from hearing our beliefs mirrored back to us.

A study was done a few years ago that showed that when people hear talk that agrees with their beliefs, a part of their brain responds the same way it does for an addict receiving his drug of choice. This is why the far right listens to conservative talk radio and gets their news from WorldNetDaily, and the far left listens to liberal talk shows and gets their news from MoveOn.org. People don't want to hear anything that contradicts their beliefs, they simply want the pleasure of having their beliefs reinforced. If they really wanted to learn something new, they would listen with an open mind to arguments from people who disagree with them, because no one side has a total lock on the truth.

Re: Infant mortality rates:

Different countries use different criteria for defining a live birth and calculating infant mortality. In the United States, we consider any baby that is born with a heartbeat or muscle twitch as a live birth even if it dies within moments. When the baby dies, its death adds to our "high" infant mortality rate. Part of our high infant mortality rate comes from the high number of extremely low-birth-weight premature infants that are born here, then soon die. In other countries, those babies are not counted as live births. You have to be sure you're comparing apples to apples, or else you end up believing misleading statistics.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Summers & Krugman: Lost Decade

I am certainly not enamoured with the environmentalists, none of them, and not their EPA either. As repulsive as the religious-right is in America, the environmental bunch are even worse--- if that were possible, and it is.

Speaking about the repulsive religious-right in America--- that bunch that has made abortion their banner issue--- infants born live until their first-birthday die of neglect and poverty in Mississippi at the rate of 9 per thousand live births [ 0.009 live births ]. This rate is no lower than the rate of infant mortality in Sri Lanka. Many third-world nations have a lower rate of infant mortality than Mississippi..... But what is odd is that Mississippi is a stronghold of the religious-right; i.e, a stronghold of those in the rightwing in America who claim to be pro-life, yet Mississippi has a mortality rate of infants that rivals those rates in undeveloped nations.

Let me make this very clear so that every slow learner here might understand what I have written: Mississippi, a state in the southern United States that votes Republican in every federal election and a state that is governed by the anti-abortion and so-called pro-life bunch, has not only the highest rate of infant mortality in America, but Mississippi has a rate so high that it is the same as the rate of infant mortality in the undeveloped nation of Sri Lanka, 9 per 1000 infants between their live birth and their first birthday..... Mississippi has about 360 infant deaths each year from neglect and poverty--- that would be 0.009 per their 40,000 live births per year in that state. (0.009 x 40,000 live births per year = 360 infant deaths each year ).

Maybe some school kids might tack a copy of this post onto the door of some of the churches ( especially the churches in Mississippi that claim to be pro-life ) .

But as repulsive. arrogant and hypocritical as the religious-right is in America, the environmentalists and their EPA are even worse--- if that were possible, and sad to say, it is.

[doom&gloom]

Re: Summers & Krugman: Lost Decade

I guess what bothers me is that we have people like Ritholz, Black, Kotlikoff who are identifying problems and solutions, and they get no traction. I think the electoral system is dysfunctional. Is democracy doomed?

They get no traction because of people like Starving Steve on the left, and his ilk on the right.

American Politics is like British Soccer -- fans choose teams for life, and it matters not what they do.

You see this in CONgressional polling, where people rate CONgress continually lower each year, but then say their rep is good. It is mind numbing.

We have now had NO, ZERO, NADA budget for THREE YEARS. WTF?! This is what we ELECT them to do. This is their primary job, or at least what they are paid to do.


A note to Starving Steve and his ilk on the right. All the 'good stuff' was done in the past when the vote of the people actually mattered. Now it is just the dollars from K Street that matter. To continue to blindly believe in some ideology, when the facts support otherwise, is just plain foolish. Witness:

The 'supposed' liberal Clinton gave us job killing NAFTA, and market killing CFMA & repeal of Glass-Steagall.
The 'supposed' conservative GW Bush gave us Medicare part D, zero fiscal responsibility and The Patriot Act (to strip away our Constitutional rights)
The 'supposed' liberal Obama re-upped the Patriot Act, made it worse, and gave us the NDAA and the belief any American can be killed anywhere in the world anytime he says so.

Does anyone see anything strange in thos positions?

I could go on, but really, the facts speak for themselves.

[shiny!]

Re: Summers & Krugman: Lost Decade

The next time some Republican ( some Repuke ) proclaims that they are going to write-in Ron Paul on a ballot, say this:

" Public works and public spending gave us THE St. LAWRENCE SEAWAY opened in 1959; THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM built during the Eisenhower Administration; THE EMPIRE STATE BLDG built in the Depression; the discovery of ATOMIC ENERGY at the Univ. of Chicago in 1940; THE TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY (T.V.A.) with all of its hydro-electric dams built during the Depression; the magnificent SAN FRANCISCO - OAKLAND BAY BRIDGE (opened in 1936) and the magnificent GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE (opened in 1936); the HOOVER DAM and Lake Mead, and the GLEN COULEE DAM, the SHASTA DAM, all three built during the Depression; the GLEN CANYON DAM and Lake Powell, the later just recently opened; MEDICARE FOR THE ELDERLY in America, begun in 1966; COMPLETE MEDICARE FOR EVERYONE, regardless of age in Canada, begun in 1961 with the help of Tommy Douglas ( The Order of Canada, winner ); public education and PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES, including state and provincial universities across the continent; the construction and final opening of the California Aqueduct in 1968; and THE ALLIANCE WITH CHURCHILL, De GAULLE AND STALIN that SUCCESSFULLY LIBERATED EUROPE, AND THE WORLD, FROM THE NAZIS in 1945."

Quoting from MSNBC currently on television: "Public spending at the end of the New Deal gave the returning soldiers from WWII, the G.I. Bill, an act which helped to put me through college. It helped me to put my kids through college........ And the critics called it, 'welfare' !"

LEAN FORWARD

Certainly, there is no excuse for the Federal Reserve Bank reducing the purchasing power of the dollar to about 8 cents of what that dollar used to buy in the early 1950s. But most of that quiet and cruel de-valuation was due to the ridiculous spending on the Vietnam War and also the ridiculous spending on the Cold War. Both Demos and Republicans are to blame for that outrage.

But history has proven that spending to invest in public works projects, both by and for the people, is a good investment. Those investments create jobs, improve the economy, and those investments are repaid through economic growth and taxation.

LEAN FORWARD

Back then we were the world's biggest creditor. Now we're the world's biggest debtor.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Summers & Krugman: Lost Decade

Barry Ritholz pulls no punches...

I guess what bothers me is that we have people like Ritholz, Black, Kotlikoff who are identifying problems and solutions, and they get no traction. I think the electoral system is dysfunctional. Is democracy doomed?

Here's Black's comment on Geithner:

Geithner’s assertion also requires that the regulators to have been so stupid or so insipid that they could not recognize that the CEOs were terminally stupid or so indifferent to their oaths of office that they did not object to stupid CEOs running the largest financial organizations in the United States. Since Geithner dealt personally with these CEOs, his assertion, if true, would require him to either be stupid or indifferent to his oath of office.

I am actually thinking the former---he couldn't do his taxes, right?

[Chomsky]

Re: Summers & Krugman: Lost Decade

Barry Ritholz pulls no punches...

http://www.capitalismwithoutfailure....an-miller.html

On Larry Summers: We now find out that the single biggest asshole in America is Larry Summers, who browbeat Obama into bailing out Citibank. Larry Summers oversaw the repeal of Glass Steagall as Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Whitehouse, and oversaw the Commodities Futures Modernization Act which took the entire universe of derivatives and hid them from federal regulators. The Treasury Secretary should have advised Clinton that it was garbage. Then, when he went back to the White House, he wasn't done ******* the country. He gave us one last bend over and grab your ankles.

On Robert Rubin: Another giant asshole - he gave us Geithner and Summers. You don't send the same surgeon in after a botched surgery because the first surgeon is more interested in covering up his work.

On Obama: Putting Rubin, Summers and Geithner in power was the tragedy of the Obama administration. Obama and Bush were both given an opportunity to be transformational - a Churchill, a Roosevelt. Obama's problem was that he sought out the biggest asshole in America - Robert Rubin.

Rubin may be the biggest asshole in America, but that's nothing compared to Greenspan:

[lektrode]

Re: Summers & Krugman: Lost Decade

The next time some Republican ( some Repuke ) proclaims that they are going to write-in Ron Paul on a ballot, say this:
....
Certainly, there is no excuse for the Federal Reserve Bank reducing the purchasing power of the dollar to about 8 cents of what that dollar used to buy in the early 1950s.

well mr steve, how do ya think they (we) paid for all that fine stuff that got built in the 30's?
(along with all the debt from ww2, which was entered by what party's majority in congress? along with creation of the fed reserve)

it also took some backbone to take decisive action to execute a plan that likely went against the status quo of the times - that and 25% unemployment, people starving and rioting in the streets -

coupled with an overabundance of exceedingly cheap (and non-unionized) labor....

NONE of which exists today??? (at least not available or 'qualified' to work on davis-bacon governed contracts)

along with the fact that not only did The US own nearly all the means of production, little to no .gov debt, NO trade deficit and a currency that was BACKED BY GOLD, with an unlimited supply of natural resources, including the WILLINGNESS TO EXTRACT THEM unimpeded by the EPA and all them fun-loving activist environmental groups that you seem... uhh... enamoured with???

i mean really mr steve - could you just imagine trying to do _any_ of that kind of stuff today?
hell, we cant even build a pipeline to bring all that cheap oil down from canada, IN SPITE of all the PRIVATE money and all the jobs it would create?

But most of that quiet and cruel de-valuation was due to the ridiculous spending on the Vietnam War and also the ridiculous spending on the Cold War. Both Demos and Republicans are to blame for that outrage.

yeah, i guess jack kennedy was more like the repukes of today - we know LBJ was, thats fer shur - and you'd have to give him some further credit for all the 'great society' stuff - too bad most of all that was destroyed by the same folks they gave it all to - but i guess in them days - before summers,rubin&co trashed the glass-steagall law, we could afford it

But history has proven that spending to invest in public works projects, both by and for the people, is a good investment. Those investments create jobs, improve the economy, and those investments are repaid through economic growth and taxation.

yeah i would have to agree with you there - too bad that after bailing out all of lower manhattan's finest limosine liberals, making sure AIG paid goldman sachs billion dollar boyz club 100cents on the dollar for all their counterparty gambling BS, along with giving what was left of thethe auto industry to the unions - and hey! dont fergit a temporary reprieve for the state/municipal unions and the coming trillion dollar giveaway to the health/drug insurance mob.

i'm sure NONE of that stuff would've been possible with the repukes in charge, i mean after all, they've been spending money we dont have at least as fast as the dems can propose new taxes - just look what success they've had in california (and NJ, NY, IL, MI, yada yada yada)

yep - the beltway just hasnt been quite the same since queen nancy had to give up her personal 757

LEAN FORWARD

and am wondren just how many metalman had tonite... ;)