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Beauty contests are nothing more than...
infantile exercises of narcissism. Attractiveness is no measure of worth.
ROFLMAO!!!...
Every state governor's wet dream is to legally expand his tax base to include all Americans. i.e;...Getting paid & not providing services in return.
I have no issue w/paying for the continuance of the federal gov & my state/local govs, but I'll be damned if some idiot is gonna tax me solely for the benefit of his citizens. The collection of local taxes interstate negates the proceeds of the individual vote process and imposes the hegemony of each state's local laws upon ALL Americans.
Hey I thought you were the exalted tax payer. Are you not?
Pope playing hardball...
Vatican vetoes Barack Obama's nominees for US ambassador
* Chris McGreal in Washington
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 14 April 2009 14.43 BST
The Vatican has vetoed three of Barack Obama's potential nominees as US ambassador amid a growing dispute between the White House and the Roman Catholic church over the new administration's support for abortion rights and the lifting of a ban on stem cell research. Vatican sources told Italy's Il Giornale newspaper that among those rejected were Caroline Kennedy and two other Roman Catholics who were unacceptable to the pope because they have publicly stood against church dogma. The conservative Il Giornale described the vetoes as part of a "trial of strength between Barack Obama and the US church that involves the Holy See", amid uproar among the church's hierarchy after America's principal Catholic university, Notre Dame, invited the president to give an address and receive an honorary degree next month.
Conservative Catholic groups called the potential nomination of John Kennedy's daughter, who is a prominent Obama supporter, "inappropriate" and "a calculated insult to the Holy See" because of her outspoken support for abortion rights. The Vatican also rejected another potential nominee, Douglas Kmiec, a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University and former head of the office of legal counsel for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. Kmiec, a Republican who endorsed Obama during the last election campaign, has said that Catholics who support the right to abortion need not follow the church's admonition to vote for an anti-abortion presidential candidate. The Vatican is maintaining the official line that there have been no formal rejections of Obama's ambassadorial nominees because none has been officially put forward.
There is unhappiness in Washington that the Vatican should veto its choices because they do not adhere to Catholic teachings. But the White House has been caught off guard by the intensity of the backlash within parts of the US Catholic community, which is divided over whether private religious beliefs should decide public policy. Some Catholic bishops swiftly challenged the president over his lifting of the ban on stem cell research and restrictions on the funding of overseas family planning groups that perform abortions. Bishops and priests have also joined university alumni in criticizing Notre Dame's president, the Rev John Jenkins, for inviting Obama to speak and offering him an honorary degree.
Cardinal Francis George, the head of the US conference of Catholic bishops, told an anti-abortion rally that the university had veered away from church teachings. "Notre Dame didn't understand what it means to be Catholic when they issued this invitation," he said. Jenkins defended the invitation as honouring an "inspiring leader" who is healing racial wounds. The Notre Dame president said that listening to Obama did not mean the university endorsed his positions but it was a "basis for further positive engagement". But that has been dismissed by some bishops, who point to a declaration they made five years ago saying that "the Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honour those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles".
However, Catholic public opinion is not solidly behind the church hierarchy, with a recent Gallup poll finding that 63% of American Catholics consider embryonic stem cell research to be morally acceptable. Richard Allen, a Notre Dame graduate who served as President Reagan's national security adviser, argues that Obama should be permitted to speak but said he should not be honoured with a degree. "It's important to remember that Notre Dame is a Catholic institution. The school openly flouts the guidelines of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops when it bestows an honorary degree upon a president who supports something anathema to the faith: abortion," he said.
Another university, Arizona State, has declined to give Obama an honorary degree when he speaks there before his Notre Dame address. The university denies any slight is intended.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/14/vatican-vetoes-obama-nominees-abortion
THG, stirring the pot izs good thang...
But promoting the John Birch Society is going a bit far, okay?
12873 of 10000? Really?
The free ride may soon be over.
For the past decade and a half, most Internet shoppers haven't been forced to pay sales tax while buying goods online. But now, according to CNet News, an alliance of "brick-and-mortar" retailers and state governments has teamed up to end that — and they've crafted federal legislation that may be introduced in Congress as early as next week. Previous attempts in past years to do so have flopped. The sheer complexity of sales-tax-collection in the U.S. — it's estimated there are about 7,000 different states, counties, municipalities and other governmental agencies that collect it — has made it nearly impossible to collect taxes from online retailers.
In theory, customers are supposed to calculate how much they owe and to whom they owe it, and then pay it separately, but few if any people do. The only exceptions until recently have been in cases where large online retailers have physical offices in certain states. For example, Washington state residents pay sales tax on orders from Seattle-based Amazon, as do residents of Kansas, Kentucky and North Dakota, where the company has facilities.
States and municipalities hate the current system, but few have done anything about it — except New York state, which has very aggressively fought to get back its money. As of June 1, 2008, all online retailers have been obliged to charges local sales taxes on items shipped to anywhere in New York — and also charge tax on the shipping and handling.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,516988,00.html
This could pizz me off.
I'd refuse the check as ambiguous. LOL!
Reps ain't gonna like this...
Obama's stance worries Israelis
* Jason Koutsoukis
* April 18, 2009
CAN Israel still call the United States its best international friend? Apparently not, if you believe the tone of the local media. Watching the drama unfold inside Israel, the increasingly tense dialogue between US President Barack Obama and new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is taking on all the trappings of a duel. Almost every day brings news of another sore point between the two countries, a source of yet further inflammation of their once warm relations. One could be forgiven for thinking that the more immediate threat to Israel's national security lay across the Atlantic rather than from closer to home.
It is bad enough that President Obama uses almost every opportunity he can to set the parameters of a final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Now US officials are openly using Israeli anxiety over Iran's fledging nuclear program as a bargaining chip to force Israel's hand on giving up control of the West Bank Palestinian territory. No less a figure than White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel — whose father fought with the militant Zionist group the Irgun, and whose appointment had provided such reassurance to Israeli officials — was quoted this week laying down the law to Israel. If Israel wants US help to defuse the Iranian threat, Mr Emanuel was reported to have told Jewish leaders in Washington, then get ready to start evacuating settlements in the West Bank.
Talkback radio blazed with fury across the country the same day, as Israelis protested that no US official had the right to tell them where to live. Then on Thursday came the news that Mr Netanyahu's planned first meeting with President Obama in Washington next month had been called off. Mr Netanyahu had hoped to capitalise on his attendance at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington to visit the White House. But Administration officials informed Mr Netanyahu's office that the President would not be "in town". Washington sources added that the Obama Administration would not be continuing the tradition that had developed during the Bush years of hosting Israeli prime ministers whenever they showed up in town, sometimes with just a phone call's notice.
It might have been no more than coincidence, but yesterday Israeli defence officials told the liberal daily Haaretz that Israel's $US15 billion ($A21 billion) purchase of 75 US-made F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets was now under review due to "the unexpected high cost and disagreements with the manufacturer". Contrary to initial expectations, President Obama has wasted no time becoming fully engaged in the Middle East peace process, despite the magnitude of his domestic political agenda. While Mr Netanyahu has refused to endorse a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict agreed to by his predecessor, President Obama has made it abundantly clear that the US will accept nothing less than Israel living side by side with a sovereign Palestinian state.
Mr Obama is also demanding a freeze on Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank, and has dropped the Bush administration's opposition to Hamas being part of a future Palestinian Authority government. According to prominent Israeli political commentator Maya Bengal, who writes for the country's second-largest selling newspaper Maariv, the holiday is over. "As Passover comes to an end, so comes to an end, it seems, the days of grace granted to the Netanyahu Government by the American Administration," says the commentator.
Tel Aviv barman Meir Avraham, 30, says he can feel on the street the tensions being played out between the US and Israel. "This is one of the the main things that the people are talking about at the moment," says Mr Avraham, who recently returned to Israel after several months in Townsville. All Israelis, says Mr Avraham, understand the vital nature of the relationship between Israel and the US. "If we lose America, then we are alone," he says. "So we must listen to what America wants. But really I think this is more about the little brother testing the limits of the big brother."
http://tinyurl.com/djjvm5
It's about time!
Delusions are illusory. ;-I
Raven...
Are you implying that those areas with fewer hippies in residence are somehow less 'refined'? ...Like Oklahoma?
LOLOLOL!!!
You know what they say about W.VA.; "The North don't want it...& the South won't have it".
Be nice Raven...
He's a decent guy...just a little deluded at the moment.
LOL!
THG, A repost just for you...
Legerdemain for Fun & Profit...
Commentary: Why your taxes could double
By David M. Walker
Special to CNN
Editor's Note: David M. Walker served as comptroller general of the United States and head of the Government Accountability Office from 1998 to 2008. He is now president and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
(CNN) -- Even under the best of economic circumstances, tax season is a tense time for American households. The number of hours we collectively spend working on our returns is probably a lot more than government agencies claim. The burden in financial terms is even greater: A recent independent survey found that the average American's total federal, state and local tax bill roughly equals his or her entire earnings from January 1 up until right before tax day. Now imagine that tax bill doubling over time.
In recent years, the federal government has spent more money than it takes in at an increasing rate. Total federal debt almost doubled during President George W. Bush's administration and, as much as we needed some stimulus spending to boost the economy, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office now estimates total debt levels could almost double again over the next eight years based on the budget recently outlined by President Obama. Regardless of what politicians tell you, any additional accumulations of debt are, absent dramatic reductions in the size and role of government, basically deferred tax increases. Remember the old saw? "You can pay me now or you can pay me later, with interest."
To help put things in perspective, the Peterson Foundation calculated the federal government accumulated $56.4 trillion in total liabilities and unfunded promises for Medicare and Social Security as of September 30, 2008. The numbers used to calculate this figure come directly from the audited financial statements of the U.S. government. If $56.4 trillion in financial commitments is too big a number to digest, think of it as $483,000 per American household, or $184,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.
Even broken down, the numbers can be tough to swallow. Yes, you've paid your taxes, but you still bear a significant share of the government's own financial burden. To help this news go down with a smile, the Peterson Foundation is supporting a campaign designed to help Americans understand what Washington is doing to us, rather than for us. Meet Owen & Payne (www.owenandpayne.com), partners in a fictional accounting firm that specializes in helping Americans fill out the "new" Form 483000, which spells out how our elected officials are putting our nation into more and more debt and how that bill eventually will have to be paid: By doubling your taxes. The campaign is all in fun, but the intent is very serious.
Unless we begin to get our fiscal house in order, there's simply no other way to handle our ever-mounting debt burdens except by doubling taxes over time. Otherwise, our growing commitments for Medicare and Social Security benefits will gradually squeeze out spending on other vital programs such as education, research and development, and infrastructure. Personal savings, while experiencing an uptick lately because of the recession, have been too low for too long. As a result, when our government has to borrow money, it must increasingly turn to lenders overseas.
Effectively addressing these issues will require tough choices and comprehensive reforms, including budget controls, changes to our entitlement programs, reductions in health care costs, other spending cuts, and yes, tax increases. But as the old saw goes, paying now, or paying soon, won't be as painful as paying later. So as you file your tax returns this year, bear in mind that no matter how much you're paying now, you'll pay much more in the future because of Washington's failure to get its finances in order. If you don't like the idea, then get informed and get involved. And by listening rather than punishing, help encourage our elected officials to speak the truth about our financial condition, even if it means reforming entitlements, cutting spending, and yes, raising taxes.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/15/walker.tax.debt/index.html
===================================================================================================================
Looks bad, doesn't it? IT WAS MEANT TO.
Who owns CNN?
Which population segment pays the highest taxes?
Which business segment pays the lowest due to special interest tax loopholes?
The vast majority of Americans make less than $60k/yr. Their taxes have dropped tremendously in the last 20 yrs., yet they are being encouraged to protest 'egregious taxation'. By whom...WHY?
Remember the Flat Tax proposals a few yrs. back? Who Proposed them...& WHO DEFEATED THEM?
The Big Corps and the Affluent know a Flat Tax w/NO loopholes is coming,...they're laying the groundwork now to defeat it again.
Don't let them snow you.
Look at it this way, beer...
The system THG wants would create two classes, those who pay the bills...& those who don't. Believe me, if I'm an Exalted Tax Payer & have a beef w/you...a non-payer...who do you think will win?
Who would have the necessary 'contacts' to prevail?
It wouldn't be you, I promise.
Believe me, it's only too true.
Look, THG...
The payment of taxes isn't just the transfer of funds from a population to a government to ensure its continuity. Much more important is the implied statement of responsibility to...and a personal stake in...said government.
If you take that away, what's left?
Anarchy.
Been there, done that.
You do not want that...believe me.
98% of the Tax Movement are people either w/ a real beef or a grudge...ordinary Americans, in other words. The remaining 2%?
Think about...it'll hit ya eventually.
Hell, THG...
You're actually proposing the creation of a patronage system that would make Russia's old system look like Amateur Hour in Daly's Chicago.
U forgot one lil' thang...
Simple you don't owe income taxes...if you are not in the public sector.
Under that rubric...you'd rather transform the 'public sector' into a true 'Royalty' rather than spread out the responsibility, benefits, etc. across the spectrum the way things are now?
...Just to evade a few taxes?
Didn't forget...
My real point is this:
No roads
No colleges
No medical research
Few hospitals
Ad infinitum
No taxes = No America.
Shifting the total tax burden to the super rich would guarantee their financial demise unless they set up individual fiefdoms in competition w/ ea other.
Removal of all tax liability from the 'common man' also removes his personal stake in, & responsibility to, America.
YES, the technicalities you list are true, but have you really considered the consequences should all taxation be declared illegal tomorrow?
Millions of lives would be ruined.
America would be a 3rd world country in six months.
Is it worth that much just get a little revenge and win what's really a minor point in the Law? If you destroy the infrastructure, what good will the money you 'saved' really do you or your family?
I totally agree the system sucks, but the fact is that the process to change it will destroy it...and all of us too.
Believe me...you don't want people like me coming out of the woodwork to preserve the system. The system IS changing...have a little patience.
THG re;taxes, keep it simple, ok?
What is "Despicable' and "Shameful"...
is making people pay taxes that they don't owe.
Support your phatasmic hypothesis.
I thought...
someone said a couple years back that the lawyers dropped it because they couldn't locate anything to grab/steal.
Of course there is always the contingent who feel the lawsuits were dropped because the lawyers didn't think they could win. Good luck with that supposition.
You're saying we were lied to?
Don't do it, bubba...
Before you know it, you'll start seeing them as just people...when the illusion's gone there usually isn't much left.
...one day I will indeed have several hot lawyer babe secretary gal fridays running around my estate.
Wassup THG...
I've never seen you so quiet when such opportunity exists to jerk a chain or three. ('honest' equivocation will get you nowhere)
(GRIN!)
That about covers it, micah.
re; Grant Swank...
A fine example of Republican 'thought'...
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/swank/090410
Somebody's nervous! LOL!
ddfred & benzdealer...
Y'all sure got scarce alluva sudden...mebe playing gamez w/peoples lives isn't near as much fun as it's cracked up to be, is it? When all those well-meaning, frustrated people figure out how & why they were played for fools, the backlash against the Rep Party won't be funny. The only thing you accomplished is to eventually swell the Liberal ranks w/a glut of angry people...just what our country needs, more extremists...right?
WRONG.
===========================================================================================================
Life in These Untied States
So, to sum up:
1. People who make far less than 250K per year, whose tax rates will be cut, spent Wednesday out in public demanding that Obama stop increasing their taxes. They proudly marched and defiantly yelled and etc., etc., insisting with waved signs and shaken fists on their opposition to something that is not the case. They have made it their business to prevent something from happening that was never going to happen in the first place--and they mean it!
2. These same people, whose economic and physical well-being are a matter of supreme indifference to the richest families in America, have been persuaded to insist on policies that will only benefit the richest families in America. There is a term for these people, and it isn't "right-wing" or "conservative" or "patriotic" or even "Republicans." The term is "sucker." These people are suckers. They have been tricked and manipulated into working against their own interests and for the interests of people who could literally not care less about them. Their patron saint isn't Barry Goldwater or Thomas Paine or Ronald Reagan or Jesus H. Christ. It's P.T. Barnum.
3. People who would be forced into bankruptcy by an attack of appendicitis, who have no idea what "socialism" is or how it differs from "communism" or "fascism," were to be seen Wednesday out in force, self-righteously pissed off and calling Obama a socialist, a communist, and a fascist, often interchangeably. And what are their ideas about how to deal with the worst economic crisis in eighty years? "Let them go bankrupt!" Ignorance and indignation: it doesn't get any more American than that. Each of them--proud, free, unafraid to speak stupidity to power--is like a homeowner whose house is on fire and yet who refuses to let the fire fighters turn a hose on the flames because "it'll get my stuff all wet." And when the fire chief ventures the suggestion that the fire is a) going to destroy their stuff anyway, and then b) spread to other homes, he gets shut down with such wised-up, common-man arguments as, "I pay your salary!"
4. Glenn Beck--a prancing, sobbing, gibbering buffoon who will say literally anything to keep his audience's attention--has become the new spokesperson for the right. Yes, just when you thought Sean Hannity was, not only as bad as it got, but as bad as it could get, here comes the next level in televised right-wing demagoguery. Glenn Beck--whom Dickens himself would delete from a novel as being "too obvious"--is a star. As a consequence of this...
5. Rush Limbaugh has become the "de facto leader" of the right. Think about it--if you dare! Glenn Beck has accomplished the impossible. This is science fact, not science fiction: He's somehow managed to make the country's most famous sex-tourist drug-addict saloon-loudmouth hate-mongering hypocrite seem dignified and thoughtful. Glenn Beck has succeeded in bestowing gravitas on Rush Limbaugh. Still, maybe we shouldn't be surprised. When the spotlight is grabbed by the dancing monkey, the rhinoceros in the background starts to look downright serious and thoughtful.
6. Fox News, a factory of propaganda and lies on the best of days, has decided "the hell with it" and become an outright partisan fomenter of "revolution." While formerly (as a study showed during the Bush years), watching Fox News actually made one stupider, now watching it (as a follow-up will surely prove) makes one insane. During Bush, Fox News merely promulgated falsehoods. Now, during Obama, its function is to corrode its viewers' very understanding of reality itself. But what else can it do, since...
7. The devolution of the Republican Party (for which Fox News serves as Pravda) proceeds apace. The GOP, fifty years ago the Cotillion Party, is now the Toga Party Party. Newt Gingrich--hippie-dippy marital history, ethics charges and all--is newly converted to Catholicism and plotting his return. (Who said there are no third--or is it fourth?--acts in American lives?) The governor of Texas threatens to secede. (Memo to Gov. Perry: Here's your Stetson; what's your hurry? Just leave us Austin as your going-away present to us.) A senator openly talks about advising his wife to hurry down to the ATM and withdraw all their money, suggesting what in the good old days we used to call "a run on the bank." Libertarians (which is a fancy poli-sci term for "adolescents with firm political opinions about an imaginary society") threaten to "go Galt" but then somehow can't follow through. Whither the courage of the Randroids? And no one in the party of Wm. F. Buckley and Norman Podhoretz seems to know that the term "tea-bag" refers to dangling a man's genitals into someone's mouth.
This is not "the loyal opposition." This is Animal House. Every week brings a new hit single from the demonstrably unhinged Michelle Bachmann. And talk about legislation--what do these frat rats do? They release--get this--a budget with no numbers. What a goof!
8. The right-wing blogs, from the most crayon-on-paper-bags illiterate to the airy summit of the National Review, from obscure typists like Pastor Grant Swank (Google it; you'll be amazed) to the preening elite like Jonah Goldberg and Michele Malkin, have heard that funky jungle beat and formed a great writhing conga line of lunacy: having turned their brains inside-out defending the indefensible Bush (never mind Cheney) for eight years, now they say anything that comes to their fevered minds just to keep the gig and not actually have to work for a living. "Where is Obama's birth certificate?" "The Navy shot those pirates but Obama had nothing to do with it." "This tea-bag revolution--" (well-documented as having been conceived, directed, funded, and scripted by right-wing foundations)--is a marvel of spontaneous grass-roots populist grass-rootsy spontaneity!"
What does it all mean? I'm asking, reader. Is this widespread madness fun? Is it business and politics as usual? Should we derive from it nothing more than good old fashioned schadenfreude, and just pass the popcorn while watching the people who created and supported the catastrophes of the past eight years as they now wallow in their impotence and irrelevance?
Or is all this manipulated, phony "grass-roots" outrage fated to lead to some serious danger to innocent people? For every thousand citizens who gather in public to scream idiotic slogans and proudly flaunt their ignorance, how many more are laboring away in basements and garages, building bombs or assembling arsenals? How many does it take to lead to disaster?
The anger and fear of these people are real and, probably in most cases, justified, however much they misidentify their causes. That's what the Limbaughs and Hannitys and Becks depend on exploiting in order to make themselves rich and famous. But this entire cycle (rage; exploitation; more rage) seems to me worse than usual, as does its manipulation by the wealthy and their servants.
Is it? Or is all this just more publicized than it used to be? Doesn't publicizing it make it grow, and therefore make it worse? Or is it a relatively minor, if lurid, sideshow?
Should I be worried, indifferent, or vastly amused? What does it all mean?
http://tinyurl.com/d5tpmn
Need blinders, do ya?
Oh, woe is me!...
For you've revealed my teacher.
The next global economic shock?
By Milton Ezrati Milton Ezrati – Tue Apr 14, 5:00 am ET
New York – As American financial strains have at last begun to show some signs of healing, another risk from the European side of the ocean has become more evident. For some time now, America's friends and associates on the other side of the Atlantic have, as is their habit, enjoyed blaming all problems on America's risky ways. But of late, it has become clear that Europe's own financial wizards have opened their financial institutions to a potentially bigger problem: Eastern European and Asian debt. The losses could even surpass those of the subprime meltdown. Though at present the potential problems deserve the tag "risk" and not "probability," investors need to remain alert to the situation.
The problem for much of the emerging world is that the global economic downturn has severely hurt exports, their main – and in some cases, only – engine of economic growth. Take China. Its exports have fallen by about 17 percent, as have Singapore's. Others have fared a lot worse. South Korea's exports have plunged by 21 percent, and Taiwan's by 36 percent. Similar figures typify the situations elsewhere in Asia and in Eastern Europe. Not surprisingly, given the export-oriented growth model of these economies, overall economic growth has also turned sharply downward. Singapore's gross domestic product (GDP) declined 11.5 percent from a year ago, while South Korea's economic output sunk 4.2 percent. In the Ukraine, December industrial production registered a 26.6 percent decline from a year ago. Other nations, from the Czech Republic to Hungary to Russia, have experienced sharp contractions, too.
The problem for Western European finance is that it holds most of the international loans in these sinking economies. European banks, for instance, hold some 54 percent of the $1.4 trillion of foreign bank loans residing in the Asian emerging economies. (For perspective, American banks hold only 15 percent of such debt.) Of the $1.8 trillion of foreign bank loans in Eastern Europe, more than 70 percent resides in Western European banks. The economic difficulties in these regions are bound to pressure European finance, where, according to the International Monetary Fund, bank leverage exceeds that of American banking by 50 percent. It is hard to make American banks look prudent, but the Europeans seem to have managed.
The aggressive nature of European lending has created a particularly difficult regulatory situation should circumstances require a rescue operation, as the American subprime excesses did in the United States. Because European banks are far more extended than American banks are, their governments and even the European Central Bank lack sufficient resources to replace lost capital, as the Federal Reserve and the Treasury are doing in the United States. In contrast to American banking, which holds assets equal to some 85 percent of US GDP, Eurozone bank assets in total amount to 330 percent of Eurozone GDP. What makes matters still more precarious, these aggregate figures look moderate when compared to the lending ratios of some individual Eurozone members. Irish banks, for instance, took on debt equal to almost 11 times their national GDP. Dutch banks took on debt equal to seven times their national GDP, and Belgian banks took on debt equal to four times their national GDP.
The potentially troubled loans in Eastern Europe and Asia could amount to some 33 percent of Eurozone GDP, a far higher figure than subprime in the United States, which, in the worst calculated scenarios, amounts to some 8 percent of American GDP. So far, these borrowers, if they have not managed to remain entirely current on their obligations, have paid sufficiently well to avoid the troubles implicit in these comparisons. If, as expected, the American economic situation can stabilize in the second part of this year, and China can sustain an adequate growth rate as it reorients its economy toward a domestic growth engine, there is a good chance that European finance and, by implication, global finance, will avoid the dangers implicit in these great vulnerabilities. But still, for the time being, investors need to recognize the significant risks.
This vulnerability may also explain why the Europeans are so focused on regulation and have chosen to emphasize it above the kinds of fiscal stimulus that the Obama administration has pushed. On the one hand, they want to garner all the resources they have should the banking sector need them at some future date. On the other, the emphasis on regulations might well reflect an urgent need to prevent this from happening again.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090414/cm_csm/ymiltonezrati
Like any bright kid...
w/a new toy, China has discovered the advantages of supply & demand...control supply & you can demand whatever you want. Natural resources have always been the true monetary standard as the result of scarcity...real OR manipulated.
I wonder how long it'll take for certain nations to discover the joys of asteroid hunting?
Heinlein and Asimov would be proud!
A 'Copper Standard' for the world's currency system?
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 2:41PM BST 16 Apr 2009
Hard money enthusiasts have long watched for signs that China is switching its foreign reserves from US Treasury bonds into gold bullion. They may have been eyeing the wrong metal. China's State Reserves Bureau (SRB) has instead been buying copper and other industrial metals over recent months on a scale that appears to go beyond the usual rebuilding of stocks for commercial reasons.
Nobu Su, head of Taiwan's TMT group, which ships commodities to China, said Beijing is trying to extricate itself from dollar dependency as fast as it can."China has woken up. The West is a black hole with all this money being printed. The Chinese are buying raw materials because it is a much better way to use their $1.9 trillion of reserves. They get ten times the impact, and can cover their infrastructure for 50 years. "The next industrial revolution is going to be led by hybrid cars, and that needs copper. You can see the subtle way that China is moving into 30 or 40 countries with resources," he said. The SRB has also been accumulating aluminium, zinc, nickel, and rarer metals such as titanium, indium (thin-film technology), rhodium (catalytic converters) and praseodymium (glass).
While it makes sense for China to take advantage of last year's commodity crash to restock cheaply, there is clearly more behind the move. "They are definitely buying metals to diversify out of US Treasuries and dollar holdings," said Jim Lennon, head of commodities at Macquarie Bank. John Reade, metals chief at UBS, said Beijing may have a made strategic decision to stockpile metal as an alternative to foreign bonds. "We're very surprised by Chinese demand. They are buying much more copper than they will need this year. If this is strategic, there may be no effective limit on the purchases as China's pockets are deep."
Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank governor, piqued the interest of metal buffs last month by calling for a world currency modelled on the "Bancor", floated by John Maynard Keynes at Bretton Woods in 1944. The Bancor was to be anchored on 30 commodities - a broader base than the Gold Standard, which had caused so much grief in the 1930s. Mr Zhou said such a currency would prevent the sort of "credit-based" excess that has brought the global finance to its knees. If his thoughts reflect Communist Party thinking, it would explain the bizarre moves in commodity markets over recent weeks. Copper prices have surged 49pc this year to $4,925 a tonne despite estimates by the CRU copper group that world demand will fall 15pc to 20pc this year as construction wilts.
Analysts say "short covering" by funds betting on price falls has played a role. But the jump is largely due to Chinese imports, which reached a record 329,000 tonnes in February, and a further 375,000 tonnes in March. Chinese industrial demand cannot explain this. China has been badly hit by global recession. Its exports - almost half GDP - fell 17pc in March. While Beijing's fiscal stimulus package and credit expansion has helped lift demand, China faces a property downturn of its own. One government adviser warned this week that house prices could fall 50pc.
One thing is clear: Beijing suspects that the US Federal Reserve is engineering a covert default on America's debt by printing money. Premier Wen Jiabao issued a blunt warning last month that China was tiring of US bonds. "We have lent a huge amount of money to the US, so of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets," he said. This is slightly disingenuous. China has the world's largest reserves - $1.95 trillion, mostly in dollars - because it has been holding down the yuan to boost exports. This mercantilist strategy has reached its limits.
The beauty of recycling China's surplus into metals instead of US bonds is that it kills so many birds with one stone: it stops the yuan rising, without provoking complaints of currency manipulation by Washington; metals are easily stored in warehouses, unlike oil; the holdings are likely to rise in value over time since the earth's crust is gradually depleting its accessible ores. Above all, such a policy safeguards China's industrial revolution, while the West may one day face a supply crisis. Beijing may yet buy gold as well, although it has not done so yet. The gold share of reserves has fallen to 1pc, far below the historic norm in Asia. But if a metal-based currency ever emerges to end the reign of fiat paper, it is just as likely to be a "Copper Standard" as a "Gold Standard".
http://tinyurl.com/cd38ju
Does this mean I passed the class?
I think you attended someone else's 'class' & passed Summa Cum Laude long ago.
You know, if a person could only manage to wake up just two other people and then each of them were able to do the same it really wouldn't take long.
Agendas and memes are too seductive. Societies always forget that Reality is a Hammer...until they're on the Anvil.
Ravin, You know how to think...
PASS IT ON.
Raven...
Methinks Gov. Perry needs to read up on the La Raza movement a bit.
LOL!
Seriously, all that's really going on is the Reps have decided to play real hardball in a last ditch effort to preserve the privileged by threatening to destroy the ethos that is America.
Perry is bluffing. Texas doesn't have the resources to sustain itself without entering into treaties with Mexico, a country that can't even feed its growing population.
Unbridled capitalism eventually feeds on itself to survive when external markets break down. When this finally occurs, the result is always class warfare caused by the protectionist actions of the privileged to preserve their 'right' to low taxation in return for providing jobs to the great unwashed.
The only way out is the promulgation of localized cottage industries restricted in size by laddered taxation and by statute to single ownership to prevent conglomerate growth.
It'll never happen.
Thanks Rover...
I don't claim to be 'right' about much of anything. If I can goose ONE person into believing in their own ability to think critically it's all worth it.
All I ask is that 'IT' be passed on.
Y'know, it's funny...We learn the basics of the most complicated animal society on the planet in our first five years of life by simply asking "WHY?"...then, we shut up and suffer thru the next seventy.
Makes no sense.
THG...
Your pageview count is down today...want me to shut up & let 'em resume their dream?
A little honesty...
April 15 is patriots' day
... So why are a bunch of Fox News clowns and right-wing cranks hosting "tea parties" all over the country? The Boston Tea Party, in case the clods at Fox didn't know it, protested "taxation without representation." Note the second word: without. The goofballs tossing tea bags today have representation. They voted in the election; they lost.
That a bunch of overpaid media millionaires would lead a faux-populist revolt is comical. They somehow held their populist instincts in check as George W. Bush and the Republicans cut taxes on the idle rich and put the screws to the working stiffs.
Bush's tax policies were a godsend to the Paris Hilton class, but they sent the country on the road to bankruptcy and helped ruin the economy. But now that we the people have decided to set things right, now that we've hired Obama to fix the mess conservatives created, now they're protesting?
Give me a break. Instead of tossing tea bags for the cameras, the Fox phonies ought to go to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. There they would find better, braver men who have truly sacrificed for their country. They deserve nothing but the best -- not the shameful and shoddy conditions they endured during the Bush administration. MORE...
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/15/begala.taxes/index.html
You might ask yourself whether or not the Tea Bag Rally issue may be nothing more than an IQ test.
Did you pass...or fail?
mbc...
Most people don't understand their personal 'reality' is largely the product of societal manipulation by various entities whose agendas might not be in their best interest.
Gullibility is the best recipe I know for failure.
Legerdemain for Fun & Profit...
Commentary: Why your taxes could double
By David M. Walker
Special to CNN
Editor's Note: David M. Walker served as comptroller general of the United States and head of the Government Accountability Office from 1998 to 2008. He is now president and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
(CNN) -- Even under the best of economic circumstances, tax season is a tense time for American households. The number of hours we collectively spend working on our returns is probably a lot more than government agencies claim. The burden in financial terms is even greater: A recent independent survey found that the average American's total federal, state and local tax bill roughly equals his or her entire earnings from January 1 up until right before tax day. Now imagine that tax bill doubling over time.
In recent years, the federal government has spent more money than it takes in at an increasing rate. Total federal debt almost doubled during President George W. Bush's administration and, as much as we needed some stimulus spending to boost the economy, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office now estimates total debt levels could almost double again over the next eight years based on the budget recently outlined by President Obama. Regardless of what politicians tell you, any additional accumulations of debt are, absent dramatic reductions in the size and role of government, basically deferred tax increases. Remember the old saw? "You can pay me now or you can pay me later, with interest."
To help put things in perspective, the Peterson Foundation calculated the federal government accumulated $56.4 trillion in total liabilities and unfunded promises for Medicare and Social Security as of September 30, 2008. The numbers used to calculate this figure come directly from the audited financial statements of the U.S. government. If $56.4 trillion in financial commitments is too big a number to digest, think of it as $483,000 per American household, or $184,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.
Even broken down, the numbers can be tough to swallow. Yes, you've paid your taxes, but you still bear a significant share of the government's own financial burden. To help this news go down with a smile, the Peterson Foundation is supporting a campaign designed to help Americans understand what Washington is doing to us, rather than for us. Meet Owen & Payne (www.owenandpayne.com), partners in a fictional accounting firm that specializes in helping Americans fill out the "new" Form 483000, which spells out how our elected officials are putting our nation into more and more debt and how that bill eventually will have to be paid: By doubling your taxes. The campaign is all in fun, but the intent is very serious.
Unless we begin to get our fiscal house in order, there's simply no other way to handle our ever-mounting debt burdens except by doubling taxes over time. Otherwise, our growing commitments for Medicare and Social Security benefits will gradually squeeze out spending on other vital programs such as education, research and development, and infrastructure. Personal savings, while experiencing an uptick lately because of the recession, have been too low for too long. As a result, when our government has to borrow money, it must increasingly turn to lenders overseas.
Effectively addressing these issues will require tough choices and comprehensive reforms, including budget controls, changes to our entitlement programs, reductions in health care costs, other spending cuts, and yes, tax increases. But as the old saw goes, paying now, or paying soon, won't be as painful as paying later. So as you file your tax returns this year, bear in mind that no matter how much you're paying now, you'll pay much more in the future because of Washington's failure to get its finances in order. If you don't like the idea, then get informed and get involved. And by listening rather than punishing, help encourage our elected officials to speak the truth about our financial condition, even if it means reforming entitlements, cutting spending, and yes, raising taxes.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/15/walker.tax.debt/index.html
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Looks bad, doesn't it? IT WAS MEANT TO.
Who owns CNN?
Which population segment pays the highest taxes?
Which business segment pays the lowest due to special interest tax loopholes?
The vast majority of Americans make less than $60k/yr. Their taxes have dropped tremendously in the last 20 yrs., yet they are being encouraged to protest 'egregious taxation'. By whom...WHY?
Remember the Flat Tax proposals a few yrs. back? Who Proposed them...& WHO DEFEATED THEM?
The Big Corps and the Affluent know a Flat Tax w/NO loopholes is coming,...they're laying the groundwork now to defeat it again.
Don't let them snow you.