The Coming Revolution: Evolutionary Leap or Descent Into Chaos and Violence?

The article is inane. He seems to be implying that everything would be fine if the nasty rich people would just "spread the wealth" around a little more. It's kind of like you have a barren field and in one corner there is a big pile of manure. If you could just pread it evenly over the field, everyone would be better off.

Sure they would, particularly the people who were in charge of deciding where the manure was applied aftertaking it from its rightful owner. Maybe just a little bit more for their corner of the field and those of their friends. After all, isn't that their right as overseers/

This is the essence of our brilliant President's economic theory. I recall seeing it in action in the epic movie Dr. Zhivago. Only it didn't work out so great. You see, an economy is complex. It runs on price signals and is driven by raw greed, ie the profit motive. Take those away and you get a big mess, like the old USSR.

Things could work better here. There is no excuse for corporate CEO's to make tens or hundreds of millions when they take no personal financial risk. There is no excuse for the government to bail out big banks and let the same execs who drove them in the ditch not onoy stay on the job, but cash in big bonuses. Universities shouldn't create hyperexpensive ivory towers and expect the government to subsidize them, particulalry not when what they are offering can be done for basically nothing over the internet.

None of that justifes wealth confiscation, which is the point of the article and progressives' next Big Idea. Get their hands on all those juicy IRA's and 401k's. After all, it's not fair that some were responsible and planned for retirement and others didn't.

The IRA and 401(k) thing has been kicked around since democrat GW Bush was in office. But with this communist, it could happen in a blink if some major issue occurred. After all, big gubment got big broke, and fast. Gotta get in those really bad folks pockets who actually wanted to retire to a nice area after working their asses off. Shame on those bad people for not giving it all up to the big gubment-loving, parasites.
 
She was just sad for me, as her Mother and Father came here just as communism was gone there. Her Mom and Dad tee totally despise communism, and she said she's sad to see what she thought was perfect, about to go to civil war. I just met the Parents (help!), and they've gotta be the most freedom loving folks I've met. She's the same. Wouldn't vote for a dem, and asks me how they're "not in trouble," meaning jailed. She was trying to point out just how sad it is that a free guy like me, has to have $5,000 in canned food, in the land of freedom. I do hope she's close by when the shtf, so I can know she's at least with me, and not hurt somewhere. Is painful to type this, as I can see what's coming. And even I'm not ready for it...:( Is sad that a girl that was born into communism, is now a Woman who loves freedom, but really can't have it here anymore...

Scat, I should have been more clear in my post. It does read the wrong way. Anyhow, I've dated all kinds of gals, and completely refuse to date a libtard gal, as all I'd want from her would be her ___, and in my experience, libtard gals are all talk, and not anything behind closed doors. I'll say, she's probably a little more American than even I am, and that's wild. And funny, she emptied her purse on the kitchen table the other night, and a rolled joint fell out. Yep, she smokes the green stuff. I had to laugh! Even tried some with her, on a trip to over to the beach, and was feeling like I was 18 vs 42.:D
I could actually like Colorado. I'd be the one full out liberty-loving, prior Jarhead, guy on the corner with a USMC t-shirt, and the munchies.:D
 
The article is full of nonsense, eg the claim that rich people's assets are just sitting there, not doing anything. I guess financing the private sector in the US doesn't count as doing anything.

Their idea is to stigmatize private wealth ("unfair," "not doing anything") to make it easier to justify confiscation. This is marxism 101.
 
The article is full of nonsense, eg the claim that rich people's assets are just sitting there, not doing anything. I guess financing the private sector in the US doesn't count as doing anything.

Their idea is to stigmatize private wealth ("unfair," "not doing anything") to make it easier to justify confiscation. This is marxism 101.
This kind of thing precedes Marx by millenia.
 
The article is full of nonsense, eg the claim that rich people's assets are just sitting there, not doing anything. I guess financing the private sector in the US doesn't count as doing anything.

Their idea is to stigmatize private wealth ("unfair," "not doing anything") to make it easier to justify confiscation. This is marxism 101.

Again, I really get fired up when you refuse to go into politics, so you can help save us! Good post! Also, you are a TX guy, working in DC. Hmmm.... If you're a lawmaker, thanks for the help, as God knows, we need it.
 
First, the incomes of the wealthy weren't the beneficiary of rising asset prices, sure. Capital gains on the other hand, went through the roof. Unless you think the majority of the poor out there are raking in huge capital gains on their stock portfolios.

Second, to properly gauge the effect of lowering rates on the middle class, you can't just focus on the small portion of home owners that had purchased way too much house for their affordability. You're taking out the millions of people that would have benefited from savings accounts that paid a better yield, for example, of all of the people who relied on fixed income CDs to live through their retirement. Try balancing the equation instead of focusing on one side, and you come to a different picture. This, of course, doesn't even consider the damage that will be caused by forcing people out of cash and into riskier assets to chase yield - like pension funds and the like. When this goes, and it will, they will incur catastrophic damage.

What other factors in your "other recovery measures" also aided the middle class? Pray tell, so that we may examine them in turn.



According to Yellen, yeah. "We know QE exacerbates the problem and we'd wish it were different, but excuse me, I need to leave the meeting so I can hit CTRL-P."



Semantics. The Fed created $4 Trillion to buy assets it otherwise would not have bought (and thus not have created money for) had there been no QE. The fact that others who would have instead bought that debt can now spend their $4 Trillion on something else, creates money. Even Bernanke called it printing money.

You are wrong, flatly.
You raised some good points. Do you have a reference for bernake having called what they were doing "printing"? The only statement I'm aware of that Bernanke made in this regard, I heard him say it, was when he was asked in a hearing specifically about "printing", and he responded "we're not printing".. I have always assumed that's because he is an economist and he was using the economists' definition of printing, as I described in my previous post. "Printing" to most economists means what Zimbabwe did. Of course there are those who use the term "printing" to mean what the Fed and Treasury working together did. But this is inaccurate. In fact, I would venture a guess that the average person, when they hear the term "printing", thinks that the Treasury just cranks up the mint's presses . This, if it happened, would be much closer to the economists definition of "printing".

Some other measures that were taken include rescuing banks via TARP by buying up assets (at a discount) for which at the time no market existed and thus could not be marked to market, the cash for clunkers to help rescue the automobile industry and preserve thousands of Jobs, taking control of General Motors for similar reasons, and government sponsorship of many local and national infrastructure projects. There was a great deal of arm twisting needed to get the stronger surviving financial institutions to buy up the assets of those institutions that would have otherwise gone belly up. Paulson tried to get a deal together at the eleventh hour to rescue Lehman but he got the cold shoulder from Fuld until it was too late. Some of these measures were successful in putting people back to work and some less so. In the end a full on depression was avoided putting even more thousands out of work and on the street. Soros did not like the Fed buying bank assets and said so at the time. He wanted the money to go where the hole was. Presumably the banks then would have been forced to dilute equity by issuing more stock or issue new bonds. I have no idea who had the better plan, but I am a great admirer of Soros. In the end however, Bernanke and the Fed, working together with the Treasury, did a masterful job of preventing total disaster, though the result of the crisis was still quite bad for many.

By the way "others" will eventually buy the debt once the Fed begins to shrink the balance sheet and the money supply by selling more bonds then they buy on the secondary market. You'll get your chance! Obviously, when Treasury needs a few trillion and they need it now, QE provides a far less costly way of raising the money then would the usual auction process. The interest earned by the Fed, after expenses, flows back to Treasury greatly reducing the immediate term cost of raising emergency funds.
 
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More on the whole "money wasn't created" lie...I present the change in cash balances of domestic and foreign banks.

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Money was created of course, and the money supply greatly expanded. But it wasn't created out of thin air or its equivalent known as "printing", it was borrowed since every dollar pumped into the economy by QE is linked to new debt! In an emergency situation the Fed is the buyer of choice for newly issued Treasuries, because having a ready buyer greatly reduces the pressure on interest rates, and the Fed above all else wanted to force rates down and keep them down, particularly rates on the long bond which would affect mortgage rates. So far, they have succeeded magnificently.
 
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You raised some good points. Do you have a reference for bernake having called what they were doing "printing"? .

Have a laugh while you watch.

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/q7hzaa/the-big-bank-theory

The debt wasn't issued for the purposes of QE. It would have been issued regardless, so don't make up silly statements about how every dollar pumped into the economy is linked to new debt. We created dollars to buy the debt which would have been bought by others. The debt has nothing to do with it at all. The QE just simply bought debt. It also bought MBS. That wasn't government issued debt.

As for keeping rates down, sure it did a good job of that - and killed savers, forcing everyone to move into higher risk assets (which they will get burned on down the road - tomorrow, or next week or next year). They inflated a housing bubble (again) and this time an all-asset bubble as well. And all for what? So a few people who would have lost their house because they bought too big a house at stupid rates could refinance? You must be joking.

Now the Fed is frantic because rates aren't rising despite QE ending, and it's because they've gobbled up the bond market, and there's no liquidity out there! How ironic, thwarted by their own stupid policy.
 
If the fed did not buy with their created digital dollars... someone else (other than another private central bank) would have had to use money or assets already in circulation.
They may have had to borrow the money but that loan would have been paid back.
They also would have paid a lot less. When the FED overpays for asses its massively inflationary and massively distorting. Holding down interest rates for years... causes horrible mal investment... and our future and our kids are being screwed right now my the mal investment.
 
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