The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

The two things a business has that our governments currently lack are (a) accountability and (b) measures of effectiveness.

While you would use different standards of measurement for those two things, we really do need something along those lines in government.

In other words, I pretty much agree with Pirate here.

Businesses are accountable?

LOL. Not all the time. That's been a constant uphill battle for years. If businesses were truly accountable then law updates (like Dodd Frank) wouldn't be necessary.

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

What I find particularly frustrating when people talk about the government debt is an inability to assess government assets. Business Fundamentals 101: learn how to read a balance sheet, and learn how to read an income statement.

Balance sheet: what you own and what you owe.

Income statement: what comes in and what goes out.

The extent and depth of financial illiteracy in this country is truly astonishing.

Fishy's economics thread and Flaggy's stock market thread: Educating the USCHO Fan Forum on business fundamentals, one libstain at a time.

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

Businesses are accountable?

LOL. Not all the time. That's been a constant uphill battle for years. If businesses were truly accountable then law updates (like Dodd Frank) wouldn't be necessary.

Only since about 1994, Clinton's bright idea to repeal Glass-Steagall.

 

[Bill]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

Do not confuse unwillingness with inability. We certainly could pay it off if there was a gun to our head.

Not in any type of moral or ethical way. The only way it could ever be paid off is to greatly devalue the dollar and pay the debt off with dollars that aren't worth nearly as much as when the debts were created. That's the choice that I think politicians will make, and we'll all pay for it with much higher prices of consumer goods. It will be an inconvenience for the rich, but will hit the middle class very hard and also the poor. Hopefully it won't reach hyperinflation levels.

 

[sagard]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

Fishy's economics thread and Flaggy's stock market thread: Educating the USCHO Fan Forum on business fundamentals, one libstain at a time.

When your done doing good deeds for the USCHO faithful, please move on to our politicians. Believe it or not I'm pretty sure both sides of the aisle could use your expertise. They really only differ on what they choose to spend our money on.

 

[joecct]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

Pat Buchanan once again chimes in on a possible GOP strategy for the next 2 years ..... http://buchanan.org/blog/the-republicans-after-dunkirk-5448?

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

When your done doing good deeds for the USCHO faithful, please move on to our politicians. Believe it or not I'm pretty sure both sides of the aisle could use your expertise. They really only differ on what they choose to spend our money on.

Probably the only way I can do that is somehow convince the citizens of Central NY to send me to DC. The chances of that happening are about as good as me finding a wife.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

Businesses are accountable?

That's not what I said and I suspect you probably know it and don't mind distorting it anyway like your mentor.

People who work in business generally are held accountable for their actions. and ask any tort lawyer about business accountability; or are all those judgments against them part of what you conveniently ignore as well?

People who work in government generally use third-person passive voice. No one is accountable for anything.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

Not in any type of moral or ethical way. The only way it could ever be paid off is to greatly devalue the dollar and pay the debt off with dollars that aren't worth nearly as much as when the debts were created. That's the choice that I think politicians will make, and we'll all pay for it with much higher prices of consumer goods. It will be an inconvenience for the rich, but will hit the middle class very hard and also the poor. Hopefully it won't reach hyperinflation levels.

Bill,

I am very much afraid that the problem will be even more severe than you describe. There already are movements afoot in international trade to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency because of the Fed's reckless and irrresponsible monetization of the debt. The Fed as a mind-boggling amount of debt on its balance sheet already and once other countries start dumping dollars, watch out below.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

When your done doing good deeds for the USCHO faithful, please move on to our politicians. Believe it or not I'm pretty sure both sides of the aisle could use your expertise. They really only differ on what they choose to spend our money on.

Bingo!

Our problem is career politicians, period. Doesn't really matter much whether they are Repugnican or Demagogic Party. the TEA party could be really helpful (not the stereotype promulgated by left-wing media, the regular everyday folk who know how to balance a checkbook and to say 'no' to spoiled children) if they ever could escape the oceans of slander heaped upon them by the condescending cognoscenti.

 

[Bill]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

Bill,

I am very much afraid that the problem will be even more severe than you describe. There already are movements afoot in international trade to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency because of the Fed's reckless and irrresponsible monetization of the debt. The Fed as a mind-boggling amount of debt on its balance sheet already and once other countries start dumping dollars, watch out below.

I can't disagree with you although I'm hoping things don't get too terrible. The only other choice for Washington politicians to pay off the debt is to default on it and I don't think any of them have the courage or integrity to do that.

 

[mookie1995]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

People don't want to pay for gasoline (at least the price they now pay for it), but they still do.

demand for gasoline is very high, as a matter of fact.

 

[mookie1995]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

Do not confuse unwillingness with inability. We certainly could pay it off if there was a gun to our head.

absolutely true. the gov'ment has the ability to tax much more than they do. they could also print money and turn the debt into pennies on the dollar and pay it off. not a path that one would suggest they take, but certainly doable.

 

[unofan]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

I am very much afraid that the problem will be even more severe than you describe.

It must really suck to be that scared all of the time. Your ilk is constantly worried about any or all of the following at any given point in time: hyperinflation, the deficit, stagflation, unborn babies, social security, medicare, poor people getting undeserved benefits, job creators being taxed too high, muslim terrorists blowing you and themselves up, etc. etc. etc.

Good lord, life's too short.

 

[5mn_Major]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

I have a considerable amount of experience with business. I consult on biz strategy.

But there is way too much business worship around here. Govt may not be functioning well. But if it were run like a business of comparable size...we would be toast. In a business of comparable size, you'd have more beauracracy, a long term horizon of one quarter, Congress would have individual salaries topping 10 million each...with 10x that as a golden parachutte when they get voted out, and a goal...not of supporting society...but of putting everyone that's not a customer out of business. Whatever you say about govt, a corporate point of view would be faar worse in trying to deliver public goods.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

Only since about 1994, Clinton's bright idea to repeal Glass-Steagall.

Dumbest thing he ever did.

 

[Rover]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

If only we could have a President with an MBA to satisfy our righty friends desire to run govt like business....

Oh, wait - we DID have one? Must have been a time of balanced budgets and sensible economic policies.

Look, some ideas such as pirate's about having a zillion different school districts are spot on. However, the blame for that isn't the gubmints. Its the American people who are wedded to the notion of local schools and local control and reasonably smaller classrooms. I guess you could offer up or restrict federal dollars to get states to consolidate their school districts, but why do I think if you did that the very people clammoring for "less govt" would be going berserk over what they perceive as the heavy hand of the feds telling them what to do.

 

[geezer]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

what a shocker. for the 451st time in four years, our less-than-brainy president's ill-advised, media-driven, short-term-focused policy turned out, in retrospect, to do EXACTLY what I wrote and warned him of in the first place. Most of you have noticed, and it's true, we all would have been a lot better off with geezer in the driver's seat.
"Whoops - Cash for Clunkers was a Dismal Policy Failure Just as Geezer Had Warned"
(Let me add that this story doesn't even go into the deleterious affects that gutting the used car market had on the nation's poor, the affects of which are still dragging down quality of life to this day and will for years to come. Not to mention our friends in Mexico who depended on that market as well. It's all turning out exactly as I warned.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

I've always thought CARS was one of the worst pieces of legislation passed in the last ten years. What a monumentally stupid bill.

 

[Biddco]

Re: The 2nd Term - Round 1 - Diving for Dollars

what a shocker. for the 451st time in four years, our less-than-brainy president's ill-advised, media-driven, short-term-focused policy turned out, in retrospect, to do EXACTLY what I wrote and warned him of in the first place. Most of you have noticed, and it's true, we all would have been a lot better off with geezer in the driver's seat.
"Whoops - Cash for Clunkers was a Dismal Policy Failure Just as Geezer Had Warned"
(Let me add that this story doesn't even go into the deleterious affects that gutting the used car market had on the nation's poor, the affects of which are still dragging down quality of life to this day and will for years to come. Not to mention our friends in Mexico who depended on that market as well. It's all turning out exactly as I warned.

I must have been the only person to have benefited. The car I have today was bought through that program.