And if we had spent the borrowed dollars on capital projects that required jobs to get them done, we would have been better off than the hodgepodge of spending programs we had. Plus, the advantage of building a facility that last 30 years or more is that you know you got something for your money. Oh well, maybe next time we spend a trillion dollars.Gob wrote:Guin, this is what we did;
AA+
Re: AA+
Re: AA+
What an apt name!!
A female banker furious about the economic downgrade in the United States hired a plane to fly over Wall Street towing a banner that declared: "Thanks For The Downgrade. You Should All Be Fired."
New Yorkers were stunned to see the vitriolic message fluttering above the heart of the financial district about lunchtime yesterday, less than than a week after the US credit rating was downgraded from AAA to AA+ by Standard and Poor's.
The plane reportedly flew right past Standard and Poor's headquarters in New York.
However that was not the first fly-by choice of single mother-of-two Lucy Nobbe, reportedly the brains behind the aerial stunt.
Ms Nobbe, a vice-president with private equities and investment firm Wedbush Morgan Securities, said she "originally wanted to fly it over Washington, DC, but learned that you can't do that".
"So I chose Wall Street instead, but didn't specifically intend it to fly over S&P. I'm just a mother from St Louis who feels the only reason we got downgraded was people in politics," she told Fortune business magazine.
Ms Nobbe initially declined to be identified in an interview to protect her job, but has reportedly now agreed to do a television interview with an NBC affiliate in St Louis, according to Fortune.
A friend of Ms Nobbe told the New York Observer that Ms Nobbe woke up on Monday night and felt a burning need to vent about those who were leading the country into the economic wilderness.
"She woke up p----d about everything in Washington, especially now with the downgrade,” the friend, who asked to remain anonymous, said.
"She called me up to have me talk her out of it, and of course, I didn't, because I think it's funnier than s---."
The friend said despite her job in finance, Ms Nobbe "does not have a lot of discretionary cash".
"She's a single mother of two. She's been working and paying taxes since she was 16 years old."
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/b ... z1UaGEZIKp
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: AA+
You couldn't be more wrong in your understanding. Hoover (who was the treasury secretary during the 1920 event and the prez did exactly the opposite of his advice) basically began the "new deal" and FDR poored gas on the fire.The question you need to ask yourself, if the comparison with the so-called Depression of 1920 is in any way valid, is why it only continued to get worse for the four years BEFORE FDR became president, when a Republican White House and Congress did next to nothing hoping it would go away, and why the economy took off like a lighting bolt after FDR began to implement his program.
Hoover didn’t cut federal spending, he doubled it. He established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. He propped up wages and prices. Indeed, he launched the New Deal.
Federal spending was $3.1 billion (those were the days!) in 1929, the year Hoover took office and the stock market crashed. It rose modestly for two years, then shot up in 1932. It dropped a bit in nominal terms in 1933, though deflation meant that the real budget increased. Then, presumably reflecting Roosevelt’s policies, it shot up again in 1934. In real terms, the federal budget was almost twice as high after Hoover’s four years as it was when he took office.
Pro-labor policies pushed by President Herbert Hoover after the stock market crash of 1929 accounted for close to two-thirds of the drop in the nation's gross domestic product over the two years that followed, causing what might otherwise have been a bad recession to slip into the Great Depression, a UCLA economist concludes in a new study.
"These findings suggest that the recession was three times worse — at a minimum — than it would otherwise have been, because of Hoover," said Lee E. Ohanian, a UCLA professor of economics.
The policies, which included both propping up wages and encouraging job-sharing, also accounted for more than two-thirds of the precipitous decline in hours worked in the manufacturing sector, which was much harder hit initially than the agricultural sector, according to Ohanian.
"By keeping industrial wages too high, Hoover sharply depressed employment beyond where it otherwise would have been, and that act drove down the overall gross national product," Ohanian said. "His policy was the single most important event in precipitating the Great Depression."
In short, Hoover created the depression due to implementing progrssive ideas trying to control the economy, FDR put them in high gear making it longer and worse.FDR, like Hoover, spent much effort trying to prop up wages and prices. This prevented markets from fully adjusting to the severe contraction. Maintaining above-market prices discouraged consumers from buying, and above-market wages discouraged employers from hiring. Also, like Hoover, FDR expanded the power of labor bosses (especially with the 1935 National Labor Relations Act). Unemployment dragged on under Hoover, and it dragged on even longer under FDR—until 1940, when the government began mobilizing for World War II and conscripting young men.
These striking similarities create more than a few problems for the heroic New Deal narrative. If Hoover was bad and FDR was good, then why did FDR adopt Hoover’s major policies? If Hoover’s policies were a reason that high unemployment dragged on for three years of his presidency, then why weren’t FDR’s policies a reason that high unemployment dragged on for seven years of his presidency? If Hoover is viewed as having failed to get America out of the Great Depression, why shouldn’t FDR similarly be viewed as having failed to get America out of it? The main difference between Hoover and FDR might be that FDR went on to win World War II, and probably many people ignore or forgive his depression-era bungling because of that.
The key to Hoover’s and FDR’s failures during the Great Depression was their “progressive” ideas. Both men grew up on those ideas and took them to heart when they served in Woodrow Wilson’s wartime administration.
Sure Hoover was a Rep, BFD, he was a progressive and wrong. I don't agree with much of what the Reps do, their just a lot less wacked-out than the Dems. I am not a true republican, I'm almost but not quite, a pure libertarian.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way. Mark Twain
Re: AA+
Something I have said for years here and the CSB;
President Obama will doubtless use the occasion to scold Congress again and urge politicians to come together not as Republicans or Democrats but as Americans. Some may be chastened enough to do that for a while.
But is fair to put all the burden on the legislators, as though failure to agree a consensus is a moral lapse? The president is fond of saying that Americans vote for divided government not dysfunctional government.
Yet the system, a much-loved relic of a different age, constructed for reasons little to do with the 21st Century, is almost designed to bring about dysfunctional government. The combination of a strict separation of legislature and executive, plus two-yearly congressional elections, all but encourages having different parties in control of different bits of government.
Americans are likely to bemoan the failure of politicians to bridge an apparently unbridgeable gap between two different world views. They may put their faith in Washington politicians, in an outburst of patriotism and goodwill, stumbling on a synthesis that suits all sides. But I wonder whether any of them will muse that the system itself may not be fit for purpose.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14431319
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: AA+
The ass should take his own advice if he says that. The most idealogcally blinded POTUS in the last 70 years.President Obama will doubtless use the occasion to scold Congress again and urge politicians to come together not as Republicans or Democrats but as Americans.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way. Mark Twain
Re: AA+
Talk about blind?liberty1 wrote:The ass should take his own advice if he says that. The most idealogcally blinded POTUS in the last 70 years.President Obama will doubtless use the occasion to scold Congress again and urge politicians to come together not as Republicans or Democrats but as Americans.
He .... didn't .... say .... that.
You're welcome.
Bah!
Re: AA+
Gob wrote: Americans are likely to bemoan the failure of politicians to bridge an apparently unbridgeable gap between two different world views. They may put their faith in Washington politicians, in an outburst of patriotism and goodwill, stumbling on a synthesis that suits all sides. But I wonder whether any of them will muse that the system itself may not be fit for purpose.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14431319
I'll take that as a "no" then.liberty1 wrote: The ass should take his own advice if he says that. The most idealogcally blinded POTUS in the last 70 years.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: AA+
Why in the hell do you think I said "if" he says that. Good God, pay attention.Talk about blind?
He .... didn't .... say .... that.
You're welcome.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way. Mark Twain
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oldr_n_wsr
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Re: AA+
I thought this was a thread about a new upgraded version of alcoholic anonymous called AA+.
