Financial News

[StrangeSox]

This article gives 3.1:1 at the end of 10

 

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newsh...alian-downgrade

 

These two senetences next to each other make no sense:

 

According to Bank of International Settlements, Italy’s total debt has soared from 109 per cent of GDP in 1980 to 310 percent at the end of 2010, while Greece’s debt rose from 92 per cent to 262 per cent.

 

Italian government debt was 129 per cent of GDP and Greek government debt 132 per cent, both well above the 85 per cent threshold level BIS researchers believe becomes a drag on economic growth.

[Balta1701]

I could swear I read an article just yesterday, that I now cannot find, I think on CNNFN, saying the total debt for Italy was about 1.3T Euro, and their economy was worth about 18% of that amount. And now, Google and CNN can't find it. I'm not going insane, I swear.

It has to have been something different. Could it be government revenues/spending as a fraction of total debt? Because unless they've been hiding an enormous amount of debt, a 600% debt to GDP ratio just doesn't make sense. That country would be paying 700% interest rates.

[southsider2k5]

I hope you realize that this makes no sense at all. The private banking and finance sector collapse, not the government spending.

 

Any economy will collapse without a government, by the way. That's pretty universal.

 

What is being talked about in the case of the US isn't really even true dollar cuts. For the most part we are talking about cuts in projected growth, and that is still plenty to draw the left-wing fear mongers. Again, if the economy is that dependent on government, it is way too dependent.

[southsider2k5]

Seriously, the government could be 5% of GDP, and if the GDP output gap still falls by $5T dollars, you still need $5T of stimulative spending to make up that gap. That doesn't tell you a single thing about the size of government.

 

If austerity is the problem, yet it tells you everything you need to know.

[StrangeSox]

When the Wall Street financiers' money-making schemes imploded, the world economy collapsed. If the economy is that dependent on Wall Street financiers, it is way too dependent.

[Balta1701]

What is being talked about in the case of the US isn't really even true dollar cuts. For the most part we are talking about cuts in projected growth, and that is still plenty to draw the left-wing fear mongers. Again, if the economy is that dependent on government, it is way too dependent.

Or rises in projected taxes, and that is plenty to draw the right-wing fear mongers.

[Rex Kickass]

If economy is so dependent on government, that it is going to collapse without it, government is too big.

Waiting for stories about the Somali economic miracle then.

[southsider2k5]

When the Wall Street financiers' money-making schemes imploded, the world economy collapsed. If the economy is that dependent on Wall Street financiers, it is way too dependent.

 

Pure class-warfare.

[StrangeSox]

If austerity is the problem, yet it tells you everything you need to know.

 

Not really. Lack of demand is the problem. Austerity worsens that problem since those job-creating risk-takers seem content to sit on huge piles of cash and record profits while more and more people lose their jobs. It's not that the economy is dependent on the government always, but that it's dependent on it when you're in a liquidity trap and no one wants to spend money.

 

Pointing out that austerity measures are a complete failure and a bad idea that hurt economies around the globe doesn't reinforce the idea that government is too big and we need more austerity measures.

[Balta1701]

Pure class-warfare.

And if we want to devolve into name-calling, so is every attack on "Safety net programs".

[StrangeSox]

Pure class-warfare.

 

Yes, and the top 2% has been winning it for decades.

[StrangeSox]

Or rises in projected taxes, and that is plenty to draw the right-wing fear mongers.

 

Or fantasies about bond vigilantes and hyper-inflation.

[Rex Kickass]

Pure class-warfare.

 

Just once I'd like to see some class-warfare where the richest don't win every battle. That hasn't seemingly happened in my lifetime.

[StrangeSox]

Just once I'd like to see some class-warfare where the richest don't win every battle. That hasn't seemingly happened in my lifetime.

 

It's only class warfare if you want to raise taxes on the rich above historically low levels or point out that having our economy increasingly reliant on the financial sector's invention of exotic products or show that wealth and income inequalities are historically high and growing.

 

It's not class warfare if you want to cut taxes for the wealthy, cut corporate taxes, cut or eliminate dividend and capital gains taxes and cut or eliminate estate taxes and then propose spending cuts for a wide variety of social programs to pay for those tax cuts.

 

It has been interesting to see the GOP adopt the identity politics and language of the 60's left, though.

Edited September 22, 2011 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Pure class-warfare.

 

By the way the real point here was to illustrate that having the global economy over-reliant on any one thing is a bad system.

[southsider2k5]

It's only class warfare if you want to raise taxes on the rich above historically low levels or point out that having our economy increasingly reliant on the financial sector's invention of exotic products or show that wealth and income inequalities are historically high and growing.

 

It's not class warfare if you want to cut taxes for the wealthy, cut corporate taxes, cut or eliminate dividend and capital gains taxes and cut or eliminate estate taxes and then propose spending cuts for a wide variety of social programs to pay for those tax cuts.

 

I'm fine with most of those things stopping in exchange for lessening our government's ownership of our lives. No one is entitled to what someone else has earned. The fact that this is now considered some kind of horrible thing goes against everything the United States is supposed to be about. To hear the idea that people have money they aren't giving away being some sort of evil is just wrong. We aren't supposed to live in a society where we declare war against success and work ethic, but today those things have become a bad thing. War has been declared against the wealthy, or even moderately successful in this country.

[southsider2k5]

By the way the real point here was to illustrate that having the global economy over-reliant on any one thing is a bad system.

 

So the plan is to exchange one reliance, for an even more unreliable one? No thanks. Especially because that is counter to why the US even exists.

[StrangeSox]

We aren't "supposed" to live in a society where the rich keep getting extraordinarily richer at the expense of everyone else and where millions of people who can't find work face having what little assistance they get cut in the name of austerity and an absolute refusal to raise tax rates on the wealthy above their current low levels.

[StrangeSox]

So the plan is to exchange one reliance, for an even more unreliable one? No thanks. Especially because that is counter to why the US even exists.

 

The US exists to govern US citizens according to the citizens' wishes, period.

[StrangeSox]

Stepping back from the rhetoric for a second, here's a summary of the different views on our economic problems as seen by demand-side and then supply-side groups.

 

http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/...r-weak-economy/

 

[Jenksismyhero]

The US exists to govern US citizens according to the citizens' wishes, period.

 

But only if it's a liberal wish right?

[Balta1701]

But only if it's a liberal wish right?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

[StrangeSox]

But only if it's a liberal wish right?

 

Of course not, that's a silly thing to say.

[StrangeSox]

Balta where's the part about strict adherence to laizze-faire capitalism?!!

[Jenksismyhero]

Of course not, that's a silly thing to say.

 

So if the majority of the country wants to cut taxes and cut gov't spending the gov't is obligated to listen to what its' citizens want? Is that how it's working?