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Open thread Sept. 14, 2011

Dan Crawford | September 14, 2011 10:57 am

Tags: open thread Comments (12) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
12 Comments
  • save_the_rustbelt says:
    September 14, 2011 at 11:03 am

    Hey Dan how ya feeling?

  • ilsm says:
    September 14, 2011 at 12:50 pm

    Dan,

    I Hope you are well.

  • Rdan says:
    September 14, 2011 at 6:51 pm

    Better and thanks….

  • Jack says:
    September 14, 2011 at 9:40 pm

    I’ve been wondering lately, and only because his name is coping up in the news again, why Erskine Bowles only seems to know the word “entitlements” when the topic is the deficit. Has he never heard of military expenditures or realistic taxation on corporate profits? Of course that then brings up the question of why is it that any one cares what Erskine Bowles thinks about any aspect of an economic issue. And while I’m asking, does his paid service on several corporate Bds of Directors* influence his thinking regarding how to “fix” a public deficit? Total compensation from such occasional responsibility approaches $1,000,000 annually. Since 2006 Morgan Stanley alone paid the man about $2Million. Is this really someone with an unbiased opinion when it comes to government finance?

    *General Motors, Morgan Stanley (investment banking)
    North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company(investments & finance)

  • Lyle says:
    September 15, 2011 at 12:40 am

    Bankers never have gone to jail for hands in the cookie jar. The following link is to a story about Muenster Bank in Ireland which failed 126 years ago, with directors and officers having their hands in the cookie jar. None of them were convicted of anything: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2011/0915/1224304143721.html

    Just proves that bankers have been teflon for a long time, none of the malefactors of the 1930s went to jail either, not Insull or Mitchell. Whitney went to jail then for embezzlement.

    So nothing is new if you are rich or powerful enough justice is different. Always has been always will be. All that is taught in school in civics is just so much humbug.

  • save_the_rustbelt says:
    September 15, 2011 at 9:01 am

    The RWGs who turned Wall Street into a racketeering center and who mismanaged the federal government are now in charge of fixing the mess. Crazy

    RWGs  = rich white guys

  • ddrew2u says:
    September 15, 2011 at 10:19 am

    For what it is worth for today’s puzzles:  
    I just read in Richard C. Koo’s book, “The Holy Grail of Macro Economics” (the explanation for our Great Depression) that Milton Friedman may have got the cause of the Great Depression right — shrunken money supply — but Friedman and everyone else missed the key — monetary policy is helpless to maintain (or expand) money supply as long as corporations are not borrowing, are paying down the balance sheet deficits instead of borrowing, which is what happened here in 1929 and in Japan in 1990.  
     
    When corporations stop borrowing for years while they pay down debt — what Japanese corporations have been doing since the real estate crash in 1990; just coming out of the woods now — is what happens. If you make 1000 yen and save 100 (typical Japanese) the bank normally keeps the 100 yen in circulation by lending it — and somebody somewhere earns 1000 yen. If the bank doesn’t, somebody somewhere earns only 900 yen and saves 90. Some other body earns 810 and saves … etc.  
    So the Japanese government has been using fiscal policy since 1990  
    — borrowing vast sums and running a vast debt (commercial land prices in six major cities dropped 87%), but has avoided 1929; not that the Japanese government knew what it was doing according to Koo —  
    to make monetary policy work. Took both Milton. Surprise; Milton was on to something.  
     
    So the way to avoid a depression — in a contraction — is for government to become the borrower of last resort?  Hey; that’s Milton Friedman (almost?) Republicans.
     
    http://www.amazon.com/Holy-Grail-Macroeconomics-Revised-Recession/dp/0470824948/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316024126&sr=8-1 

  • rjs says:
    September 15, 2011 at 10:56 am

    just found this; a blogpost by the woman who was handcuffed & strip searched by TSA in detroit on 9/11:

    http://shebshi.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/some-real-shock-and-awe-racially-profiled-and-cuffed-in-detroit/

  • nancy ortiz says:
    September 15, 2011 at 11:28 am

    http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/09/gop-jobs-plan-more-snakes.php
    Sen. Ben Nelson (D-FL) wants to ban the importation of non-native snakes and reptiles into the US because of the invasion of the Everglades by Rock Pythons, Burmese Pythons and other large constrictors and carniverous lizards. It seems that pet owners eventually realize that a 10 foot long snake is expensive to feed (you have to feed them live rabbits, cats and the like) and hard to keep in a 30 gallon aquarium, so they let them loose in the Glades.

    Witnesses at a recent hearing on this issue testified that to ban the importation of non-native reptiles would kill the jobs of those individuals who now make a living by importing, breeding and selling these animals as pets. The number of threatened jobs was not stated.

    As one who was born in Miami and got used to the Glades with just mocassins, rattlers, and coral snakes, I favor keeping the illegal alien reptiles out. Here is a picture of why.
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9600151/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/gator-guzzling-python-comes-messy-end/ It ain’t pretty. 😉 NancyO

  • ddrew2u says:
    September 15, 2011 at 1:43 pm

    Nobody has presented any legal justification for the extreme of strip searching an airline passenger.  If she refused I would not have been surprised if the male officers did not immediately come in and strip her for the female if she still refused.  After researching the TSA I have been shocked to find what I call American law enforcement’s growing doctrine of indifference to sexual trespass.

    Most or all police departments train male officers to frisk females if no female officers are handy or pretty much whenever they feel like it. Any hope for a Fourth Amendment shield has evaporated under many decisions: http://www.rbs2.com/travel2.pdf. Small police departments with only a few male officers even feel free strip search female prisoners: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWokzdFBNLs — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BVgBip-cd8&feature=related.

    Going by this widely reported AP story and pictures, two small Douglas County, Colorado courthouses do not even attempt to avoid same-sex frisking and may even neglect remote viewers not seeing you […]

  • coberly says:
    September 15, 2011 at 8:42 pm

    Don’tcha love it Nancy.

    It’s pretty clear animal importers couldn’t find another job.  And personally I think pawn shop operators ought to be allowed to sell stolen jewelry.  After all their jobs depend on it.

  • coberly says:
    September 15, 2011 at 10:46 pm

    btw

    “the number of threatened jobs” ought not to be a factor.  if a thing is bad, it shouldn’t matter that a lot of people do it.   or that only a few people get hurt.

    anyway, all those out of work animal importers could get jobs as game wardens going out in the Everglades to capture them excaped snakes.

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