That’s the kind of whiny attitude painful but realistic observation that contributes nothing. Kudos!
we don’t like to hear and will mock you for.
LimeyGeek on July 13, 2009 at 2:15 PM

FIFY.

Flat out and plain…. Obama is destroying the Nation. Do the Obamabots that voted for him realize what dunces they are? Probably not. God Help Us All.

ultracon on July 12, 2009 at 8:53 PM

I just spent some time with family members/friends in Michigan who are bots. You are correct, they do not get it. A frequent comment was about how “Obama is trying to fix things” and they are happy for that. Their political sphere is very small – they just want to know that they can keep their jobs, houses, cars, and take a small vacation once a year. They don’t view big government as a problem. They don’t want to understand our Constitution. They don’t want to “be political” – so they have blind faith in any Democrat elected and leave the politics to them. They think that Republicans are only about wealth and war. It breaks my heart.

American ‘capitalism’ for the win. Not.

Dark-Star on July 13, 2009 at 11:07 AM

That’s the kind of whiny attitude that contributes nothing. Kudos!

We the People have now slipped into “We the People who want free stuff”, and “it’s not my fault”.

When the founding fathers created this country, They did not promise anything special to anyone, there were no “entitlement” programs, no free health care, no free lunch, and you were expected to carry your weight. If you were unable to carry your weight, your neighbors and relatives either helped you, or you starved. I guess you stopped being an asshole if you needed help from others.

Those of us responsible enough to care for our families and friends, while being taxed to care for others, are tired of carrying your deadbeat asses around for your free stuff. Get up off your ass and get a job,get up off that ass and just please give me a reason to give a damn. Why I should care
to help you out when you dont care yourself?

BOTTOM LINE: We all are responsible for our own personal destiny. Without responsibility, we cannot have our own personal destiny

Taxing, borrowing, or printing just determines the flavor of the damage:
Printing money destroys the purchasing power of those who have contributed more to the society than they have taken in return, by inflating their savings away, and punishes the behavior of contributing more than you consume now (damaging incentive).
Borrowing soaks up venture capital, reducing not only future production, but reduces the effort taken by individuals now to create the opportunities that venture capital could be used on in the future.
Taxing transfers purchasing decisions from the individual to the government (reducing efficiency), but also lowers the incentive to work now for that purchasing power or to invest for increased purchasing power later.

Notice the recent downfall barely mentions the folks who are being hurt – those a year or 2 away from retirement – whos value has decreased 30-70%. Yet, the same charade of “if your young – roll the dice in the grow sector of stocks”. Those thought-to-be-retired folks are not retiring, extending their work hours/careers and selling anything they can to stay out of the poor house.

Odie1941 on July 13, 2009 at 10:02 AM

Yep. And the young people, with all the decent-paying jobs going or gone, and Social Security looted, have no option but to work in crap jobs until the day they drop dead.

American ‘capitalism’ for the win. Not.

Odie1941 on July 13, 2009 at 10:26 AM

You’ve got your head on straight ;)

LimeyGeek on July 13, 2009 at 10:11 AM

Which is why me and the wife only invest in fixed-rate instruments. $150k at 3.75% over 30 years is our nest egg.

Ironically – a mutual fund wholesaler, who was very successful in selling funds – never dabbled in growth sector. His presentation was simple – he would hold up Fortune or Mutual Fund magazines “Top 5/10 Funds You Must Buy” that were printed over the past 5 years or so. Then he would show the rate of return – of which 90% were even or down. He then pitched fixed income instruments and retired at the ripe age of 40.

Odie1941 on July 13, 2009 at 10:02 AM

Absolutely right. It amazes me to hear people talk about how much they’ve ‘lost’ from their stock portfolios – they seem to imagine a magically growing pile of cash behind every stock certificate, that has now evaporated.

Listen, gullible guppies, the only thing that has evaporated is the fraudulent illusion you’ve been sold.

You’ve been lied to, to convince you to hand over money so that you can ‘build wealth’. There was never any wealth behind your portfolio, only a speculative valuation (that could vanish in a heartbeat, but you were conveniently not told about that part).

You’ve swallowed the lie hook, line and sinker. You believed ‘the only way is up’ and that the magical pixie-gold in your portfolio could only increase in size.

And you staked you future on it.

How dumb do you feel now?

LimeyGeek on July 13, 2009 at 9:47 AM

Dead on Limey. It is also why asset management/401k companies love to use the tired “3/5/10 year “valuations” when selling their products. And specifically use Morningstar (the track past performance and ratings) to compound the lie of your “future wealth”.

I am still waiting for a 30 year net analysis of Americans 401k’s, being they have been popular, funded and sold in the past 30 years; while companies have gone away from guaranteed pension plans – which are no longer even guaranteed when “brilliant” Ivy leaguers get a hold of a companies “restructuring” plans today.

Notice the recent downfall barely mentions the folks who are being hurt – those a year or 2 away from retirement – whos value has decreased 30-70%. Yet, the same charade of “if your young – roll the dice in the grow sector of stocks”. Those thought-to-be-retired folks are not retiring, extending their work hours/careers and selling anything they can to stay out of the poor house.

Nothing but a huge slush fund for the masses of asses in America. I believe less than 5% of people who invest long term actually break even…

The loss of $8 trillion in housing bubble wealth, coupled with a loss of roughly the same amount of stock wealth

Why should we expect these people to be able to understand economic realities (and thereby the idiocy of liberal economic policy) when they don’t even understand the difference between ‘value’ and ‘wealth’.

What the moron is referring to is not ‘wealth’ but ‘value’.

Until people understand how profoundly incorrect the above quotation is, there’s no hope for sound economic policy.

Unemployment among blacks in New York City has increased much faster than for whites, and the gap appears to be widening at an accelerating pace, new studies of jobless data have found.
While unemployment rose steadily for white New Yorkers from the first quarter of 2008 through the first three months of this year, the number of unemployed blacks in the city rose four times as fast, according to a report to be released on Monday by the city comptroller’s office.

Tell bold lies about the net effect, rate of return and where money is going – only to pull back the covers and realize it is nothing but a power-grab Ponzi scheme. Billions are being lost as are jobs every day. The bogey man is Obama himself, just as is Maddoff.

This is a simple analogy that should be repeated each and every day.

Now Chase is switching the agreement in increasing my minimum payment or I could agree to a higher interest rate. This isn’t what I agreed to.

Actually, it is. One provision of every credit-card agreement I’ve ever seen is that the bank can modify the terms of the agreement any time they want, upon 30 days’ notice to the cardholder. At that point, if you object to any of the new terms, you have the right to stop using the card and pay off any balance.

One of the newest wrinkles is that they no longer have to give the notice in (physical) writing. Instead, they post the new terms on their website, and maybe they send an email, or put a few words in the monthly statement directing you to the full text of the new terms on the website.

Don’t like it? Go with another bank. Oh, but when the new rules are imposed by the government on all credit cards, you can’t do that.

unseen on July 13, 2009 at 12:43 AM

Said my own points better than I could, and I agree with everything you said.

(Whether or not the $789 trillion “stimulus” bill passed in February effectively achieves this intent is another question.)

Billion, trillion–who knows any more?