If USA enters second recession is YOUR job safe ?

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Market Myth 1: The Market is the only source of innovation

What is market fundamentalism?

Market Myth 1: The Market is the only source of innovation

The technological dynamism of the U.S. economy is rooted in networks of scientists and engineers whose research is largely supported by government funding. Many of these researchers also work in public universities or government laboratories. The success of U.S. based corporations is largely a result of their ability to use technological breakthroughs that originated in publicly funded research. The case studies provided below give examples of how some our most familiar new technologies derived directly from public research spending.

In some of these cases, the government’s role in innovation was even greater than funding initial breakthroughs. With certain technologies, governmental decisions helped private firms overcome obstacles to commercial development of these technologies.

The Origin of the “Personal” Computer

The Invention of the Laser

The Birth of the Microchip

The Rise of the Internet

The Story of Magnetic Resonance Imaging

The Development of a Key Cancer Drug: Taxol
 
Originally Posted By: javacontour
As safe as one can be I suppose. Had my review today, great review, so as long as the boss can afford to keep me, I figure I'll be around.

Second highest number of Exceptional Service Awards in the area, so if my employer doesn't like me, I have a lot of customers who do. In fact, I have customer who "request" me for their service calls. That can't hurt.

I just keep learning new things and am the go-to guy when my boss or a customer needs support.


Sorry, you should get a paycheck for just showing up and get a raise every year as well
 
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Originally Posted By: Tempest
Most of the manufacturing jobs (4 out of 5) that have been lost are due to productivity increases. China is ADDING to the global market, not taking away. I have posted hard evidence of this before.


Then why the Japanese government is threatening to defend Yen to USD exchange rate instead of just letting it float and let the American hold their own weight? Why should they let their people suffer (if you think devaluing currency is only suffering) instead of just the US consumer?

Because it works, exchange rate manipulation is a very effective tool to gain export and jobs back from your trade partner. Their consumer end up holding the bag instead of your producer (workers). Look at Germany, their export is booming because the lowered Euro make their factory working full time compare to a couple years ago.

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The dollar is the standard monetary unit for the world. If we devalue our currency, all other currency will devalue. This global devaluation is driving prices ever higher and is causing havoc around the globe, especially food prices. People all over the world are suffering because our government can't spend within it's means. What do you think those people think of us?


It will drive price higher due to non labor cost (i.e. natural resource price), that's why now Canada, AUS, NZ, Swiss Franc, are higher because their currency are more agricultural, natural resource, hidden wealth, etc related and less export and production related (than US). There's no way to reduce finite resource price, but inflation and currency devaluation reducing debt and labor cost very effectively, and if you have no other choice (i.e. do not want tax increase to pay off debt, do not want to reduce GDP by reduce spending, etc) then this is one way (not the only way) to make it work.

Let's put it this way, the debt is already there (or already hidden) because we already spend the money in stimualtion, in tax cut, in wars, in bailing out the banks, in foreign aid, in China, Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong. You have to pay now or more in the future either with devaluation (split among the USD holder, or the nations who cheat the fair currency rate), inflation (the saver and the debt holder, the overpriced contract written in the past), or you have to pay with more tax and spending cut (via GDP reduction, reduced domestic economy, etc).

Why would you think it is our responsible if they artificially keep their currency low to dump their export on us? Why is it our fault when they think their safety should build on our back?

They were well aware of the consequence of their action when hoarding USD or debt to gain a trade advantage, they took their risk, so let them take the consequence as well.

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The banks would love to lend money but they are in the same boat. Massive new legislation that has injected much uncertainty into their industry as well. This has hampered private sector lending which is stifling the economy.


Nope, banks hoard cash because they have too much bad debt that they are hiding with creative accounting, and their debt's valuation can drop at any time.

Maybe we should get rid of all bank regulation so they can multiply their loan as much as they want (i.e. print their own money) and let them fold when there's a run, making their depositor pay for it.

We've seen how it looks in the Great Depression, let's repeat that again because it works wonderfully.

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And a LARGE portion of the printing lately has gone to foreign banks to stimulate them, not the US economy.


I though you care about what people in the rest of the world think of us. Why all of a sudden care about not to stimulate their own bank?

p.s. their have bailed out our banks as well, because once you see how massive the bank are interconnected, things spread across the globe very quickly.

You really think all of your savings are independent from UBS and Deutsche Bank? You really think none of your savings are connected to Greek debt? You really think we are doing this to "care about" people in another nation?
 
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The banks would love to lend money but they are in the same boat. Massive new legislation that has injected much uncertainty into their industry as well. This has hampered private sector lending which is stifling the economy.


This is only about 30% true. Amazing you fail to realize that consumers are in debt and don't have the spending power they had. Demand creates jobs.

14 million people all of a sudden did not become lazy starting in 2008.
 
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WWII was a great example of the size stimulus that was needed to pull us out of the Great Depression.

We are nearly at WWII spending levels now!
33.gif


So tell me buster, exactly how much money should be printed and where should it go. Put yourself in the place of the unelected regulators you want running our economy and enlighten me with specifics.

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Show me one example of a free market country. There are none.

That is correct. Those that are closest to it are always better off.
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Companies are not hiring because demand and uncertainty.

Correct. What entity can inject the most uncertainty into the market and distort it most?
 
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The hand-wringing is all about the "debt crisis," but the national debt is not what has stalled the economy, and the crisis was not created by Social Security or Medicare, which are being set up to take the fall. It was created by Wall Street, which has squeezed trillions in bailout money from the government and the taxpayers; and by the military, which has squeezed trillions more for an amorphous and unending "War on Terror." But the hits are slated to fall on the so-called "entitlements" -- a social safety net that we the people are actually entitled to, because we paid for them with taxes.

The Problem Is Not Debt But a Shrinking Money Supply

The markets are not reacting to a "debt crisis." They do not look at charts ten years out. They look at present indicators of jobs and sales, which have turned persistently negative. Jobs and sales are both dependent on "demand," which means getting money into the pockets of consumers; and the money supply today has shrunk.

We don't see this shrinkage because it is primarily in the "shadow banking system," the thing that collapsed in 2008. The shadow banking system used to be reflected in M3, but the Fed no longer reports it. In July 2010, however, the New York Fed posted on its website a staff report titled "Shadow Banking." It said that the shadow banking system had shrunk by $5 trillion since its peak in March 2008, when it was valued at about $20 trillion -- actually larger than the traditional banking system. In July 2010, the shadow system was down to about $15 trillion, compared to $13 trillion for the traditional banking system.

Only about $2 trillion of this shrinkage has been replaced with the Fed's quantitative easing programs, leaving a $3 trillion hole to be filled; and only the government is in a position to fill it. We have been sold the idea that there is a "debt crisis" when there is really a liquidity crisis. Paying down the federal debt when money is already scarce just makes matters worse. Historically, when the deficit has been reduced, the money supply has been reduced along with it, throwing the economy into recession.

Most of our money now comes into the world as debt, which is created on the books of banks and lent into the economy. If there were no debt, there would be no money to run the economy; and today, private debt has collapsed. Encouraged by Fed policy, banks have tightened up lending and are sitting on their money, shrinking the circulating money supply and the economy.

Spending More While Borrowing Less

In an economic downturn, the government needs to spend more, not less, as history shows. This can be done while still balancing the budget, simply by taking back the government's constitutional power to issue money.

The budget crisis is an artificial one, and the current "solution" will only guarantee a deeper recession and more widespread suffering. Rather than obsessing over deficits and debt, the government needs to turn its focus to jobs, sales and quality of life.
 
Originally Posted By: Tempest
Quote:
WWII was a great example of the size stimulus that was needed to pull us out of the Great Depression.

We are nearly at WWII spending levels now!
33.gif


So tell me buster, exactly how much money should be printed and where should it go. Put yourself in the place of the unelected regulators you want running our economy and enlighten me with specifics.

Quote:
Show me one example of a free market country. There are none.

That is correct. Those that are closest to it are always better off.
Quote:
Companies are not hiring because demand and uncertainty.

Correct. What entity can inject the most uncertainty into the market and distort it most?


I agree with you that government has been part of the problem. You just seem to focus on just that part of it though which ignores a lot of other factors.

Who controls or has more control over our elected officials? We sure don't. $$$
 
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Amazing you fail to realize that consumers are in debt and don't have the spending power they had. Demand creates jobs.

There is $2.6 TRILLION dollars out there in private business alone. There is NO shortage of money. The banks don't have to lend more, the government doesn't have to spend more, and FED doesn't have to print more. It's already there, being sat on. This economy should have taken off long ago but there is too much uncertainty from the government for people to plan, to many taxes looming on the horizon for people to part with their money.
 
Buster,
You are one of the few who actually gets it.
NASA, DARPA, Air Force RFPs as well as massive federal money granted to many universities have brought us most of the technical advances we use daily, including the one on which we are now interacting.
You also had an earlier post in which you quoted someone decrying the very low current tax take as a proportion of GDP.
I've made this argument in other threads.
Federal spending is not far out of line with the average level of the past forty years.
Federal tax take as a proportion of GDP is well below the average of the last forty years.
Do we have a federal spending problem, or a federal tax code problem?
You, Buster, seem to have a better grasp of the realities than do most, including those elected to lead our country.
 
Originally Posted By: buster

Who controls or has more control over our elected officials? We sure don't. $$$

So you want these people that can be bought for $$$ running our economy?? You just punched a huge hole in your own argument.

You have been listening to the demand siders for a long time, I want to see specifics on their "plan" to stimulate us out of this.
 
Originally Posted By: fdcg27
Buster,
You are one of the few who actually gets it.
NASA, DARPA, Air Force RFPs as well as massive federal money granted to many universities have brought us most of the technical advances we use daily, including the one on which we are now interacting.
You also had an earlier post in which you quoted someone decrying the very low current tax take as a proportion of GDP.
I've made this argument in other threads.
Federal spending is not far out of line with the average level of the past forty years.
Federal tax take as a proportion of GDP is well below the average of the last forty years.
Do we have a federal spending problem, or a federal tax code problem?
You, Buster, seem to have a better grasp of the realities than do most, including those elected to lead our country.

Why didn't the Soviet Union, Greece, Spain, California....work? If government spending was the answer, these places should be the utopian paradise that they promised.

Please explain.
 
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The hand-wringing is all about the "debt crisis," but the national debt is not what has stalled the economy, and the crisis was not created by Social Security or Medicare, which are being set up to take the fall. It was created by Wall Street, which has squeezed trillions in bailout money from the government and the taxpayers; and by the military, which has squeezed trillions more for an amorphous and unending "War on Terror." But the hits are slated to fall on the so-called "entitlements" -- a social safety net that we the people are actually entitled to, because we paid for them with taxes.

This person is a complete nut. People are entitled to get more out of a system than they paid into? And future generations must pay the consequence of this via the devaluation of their money?

That is not compassion, that is a Ponzi scheme.
 
Originally Posted By: Tempest
Quote:
The hand-wringing is all about the "debt crisis," but the national debt is not what has stalled the economy, and the crisis was not created by Social Security or Medicare, which are being set up to take the fall. It was created by Wall Street, which has squeezed trillions in bailout money from the government and the taxpayers; and by the military, which has squeezed trillions more for an amorphous and unending "War on Terror." But the hits are slated to fall on the so-called "entitlements" -- a social safety net that we the people are actually entitled to, because we paid for them with taxes.

This person is a complete nut. People are entitled to get more out of a system than they paid into? And future generations must pay the consequence of this via the devaluation of their money?

That is not compassion, that is a Ponzi scheme.


A working, productive person creates wealth and contributes to the wealth that (may or may not) gets taxed whether or not he is credited for it. Some people just want to pretend that working people don't create wealth beyond whatever salary their employer chooses to pay them. Besides, people pay into medicare and SS for up to 40+ years. How is cutting these benefits and not cutting other spending not ripping them off?
 
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"There is abundant liquidity available to finance economic expansion and job creation in America," said Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, speaking at a community forum hosted by the bank in Midland, Texas.

"The banking system is awash with liquidity," he added. "Domestic banks are flush; they have on deposit at the 12 Federal Reserve banks some $1.6 trillion in excess reserves...these excess bank reserves are waiting on the sidelines to be lent to businesses."

And:
Quote:
"Non-monetary factors, not monetary policy, are retarding the willingness and ability of job creators to put to work the liquidity we have provided," he said.

Job creators can't hire because they can't "budget or manage for the uncertainty of fiscal and regulatory policy," he said. "No amount of monetary accommodation can substitute for that needed clarity."

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110817-710817.html

Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. No need for more money, just a stable and profitable business environment.
 
Originally Posted By: Tempest
Why didn't the Soviet Union, Greece, Spain, California....work? If government spending was the answer, these places should be the utopian paradise that they promised.

Please explain.


You are mixing many different reasons into one.

Soviet: they got bankrupted from excessive military spending and their central planning didn't make supply where demand is (food, for example), same as the communist China before 1980s.

Spain: low interest rate artificially boomed the real estate market as well as the infrastructure project (like high speed rail, solar farm, highway, etc). They though they could pay for it when they stole all the manufacturing jobs from France, but all of a sudden they got outsourced to Romania and Czech, and hold a bag of debt.

Greece: speculation causes cheap money to be made in new loan because they are in Euro, and sovereign debt is "supposedly" guaranteed, but oops, they weren't. Now they cannot devalue their currency to pay for it so everyone else is trying to rescue and they pay for it. They wouldn't have so much problem if their original currency isn't speculated so high. Look at a vacation in Greece and you'll see that their currency (not living standard) sky rocketed unreasonably after joining Eurozone.

California: public employee pension sky rocketed due to previous underfunding and flawed union contracts, prop 13 that limit tax increase to outside inflation adjustment, extremely high property price because of, some population (i.e. high Asian population) bid them up, and extremely low property tax rate (i.e. 1.25% only). People have to be paid enough so they can afford a $2k rent or a $400k house in the slum ($600k in safe neighborhood). You can cut all the welfare program and it is still going to be the same unless union contract got pension reformed (mainly police and fire fighter) and eliminate prop 13 when 33% of the politicians can block any attempt to increase tax even if necessary. A lot of Californians are extremely wealthy and are doing well, but the income inequality is very big as well so you get all sorts of confrontation in local and state politics.


Now your tern, list the reason why Las Vegas is in the slum due to your local government's failed policy on tax (because that's the rule you want to apply to everyone else in the world and that's the only question you seems to care about).

p.s. if you surrender I'll let you use the excuses that it is because people are not coming to LV to gamble and the real estate bubble popped.
 
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Besides, people pay into medicare and SS for up to 40+ years. How is cutting these benefits and not cutting other spending not ripping them off?

Off course they are being ripped off. That's what happens in a Ponzi scheme. It's far worse than anything Ponzi or Madoff did because you are forced into it.

Is it more or less ethical to screw adults that have benefited from the scheme and had a chance to vote on the people that supported it, or screwing future generations not yet born that will never get a vote?

That is the dilemma our country now faces. Since kids and the unborn can't vote, politicians have little incentive to protect them.
 
http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2011/08/stephen-roach-consumers-need-debt-jubilee.html

Public purpose has been lost to private interests. We deregulated banks starting in the early 80's. We cut taxes dramatically. And now that Wall St. has squandered our wealth and funneled it to the top 1%, the middle class is being told we have to suck it up. This is what neo-liberalism creates. It creates an imbalanced society. Corporations and banks have more power than we do.

I think the Fed has to be pulled in or abolished. Give congress the money power, that is the only way we will have any control over it. Otherwise, the government will be in a secondary rank.
 
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if you surrender I'll let you use the excuses that it is because people are not coming to LV to gamble and the real estate bubble popped.

Yes, and our government raised taxes as well so they could "stimulate" the economy. Didn't exactly work out that way.

Governments have simply spent their people into oblivion. Debt levels at %150 GDP in some countries. If that isn't "stimulus", then I don't what is.

Government spending makes things worse, not better.
 
Originally Posted By: Tempest
Quote:
"There is abundant liquidity available to finance economic expansion and job creation in America," said Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, speaking at a community forum hosted by the bank in Midland, Texas.

"The banking system is awash with liquidity," he added. "Domestic banks are flush; they have on deposit at the 12 Federal Reserve banks some $1.6 trillion in excess reserves...these excess bank reserves are waiting on the sidelines to be lent to businesses."

And:
Quote:
"Non-monetary factors, not monetary policy, are retarding the willingness and ability of job creators to put to work the liquidity we have provided," he said.

Job creators can't hire because they can't "budget or manage for the uncertainty of fiscal and regulatory policy," he said. "No amount of monetary accommodation can substitute for that needed clarity."

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110817-710817.html

Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. No need for more money, just a stable and profitable business environment.


Not a fan of Fisher.
 
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