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edward long

Association of Old Crows

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The Dow is steadily improving while the national quality of life is consistently worsening.

Barack Hussein Obama's first term is over. The numbers are: 1) National Debt up 54.7%. 2) Unemployment up 0.7%. 3) Poverty up 6%. 4) Approval rating down 18%. 5) Dow Jones Industrial Average up 72%!! Explain this disconnect between America's vital signs.

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Closing Statement from edward long

25 contributors offered these points to ponder
~ we need new goals
~distribution of wealth is broken
~it's a bubble and it's going to burst soon
~statistics are inherently deceptive
~we are printing too much unbacked money
~the government is spending too much
~It's Barack Hussein Obama's fault
~5 folks said there is no more connection between Wall Street and Main Street
~we are loading debt onto future generations
~small investor confidence is at all time low
~younger folks American dream includes tech toys but no home ownership
~money can't but happiness
~the top secret TPP is to blame
~Big Pharma is parasitic
~the Military is a budget buster
~ It's NAFTA's fault
~we are living in the New World Order
~Deflation Depression
~Exessive China trade for shoddy merchandise
~Free Trade is good
~US corporate tax is world's highest
~the Landlord Bubble
~youth becoming deluded narcissists
~middle class being strangled by inflation
~the Media is way off target
~poor getting poorer is new phenomenon
~US is too big to fail
~need term limits for Representatives
~need to repeal the 17th Amendment
~need to revise the 16th Amendment
~need to reduce Cabinet positions to seven
~need to go Isolationist
~stop paying Dictators for permission to feed their starving masses
~we have a Placebo Democracy
~all profit comes from someone's pocket
~leaders are corrupt
~Government creates no wealth
~copyright laws benefit the elite only
~people are the whole problem
~Quantitave Easing
~Debt=Money
~all should read "The Creature From Jeckyl Island"
~only Economists can understand
~we elect politicians rather than people
~Debt and the Dow are proportional
~debt can be invested
~unemployment and wages are inversely proportional
~poverty causes wage reduction
~low wages stimulate profit and productivity
What was not mentioned, surprisingly to me, was if the DJIA got Barack Hussein Obama re-elected
Have a look at the 9 links in the post
Conclusion?. . . Wall Street and Main Street are independent!!

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  • bart hsi

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    Jan 25 2013: We are under the new system of quasi-constitutional democracy, but actually quite similar to the socialism of the past centuries. We all know that the solcialism failed because it takes out the incentive to enterprenuership; working hard and reaping the reward. The societal structure in the present system consists of 3 "classes". The upper class is the CEOs of multinational large corporations and a few Wall Street financiers. They keep the high profit mostly to themselves and even avoid paying taxes by keeping the profits off shore. So even the so-called "fair taxes" could hardly harm them. The second group contains the government bureaucrats who pay less taxes and have more pension and benefits than the rest of us.. Interestingly, the group also contains those who are on welfare, because they got paid without working for it and they don't pay tax on their "income" either. The last group are all the rest of us, especially the ordinary working class and the retirees. through the recent 4+ years, we had a negative increment in income when adjusted for inflation. For the retirees, their returns on income have been shrunk and yet subjected to higher taxes in state and local taxes as well as the price inflation in food, utilities ,fuel and medical expenses. We should also include our future generations into this group by the burden of rampant government deficit and debt in the future.
    Now it needs no rocket science to figure out what caused the situation you mentioned in your proposal. First, the stock market was up because the first group was doing well they can keep the major portion of business profits and have the money to lobby for their advantages from the government. Only a little scraps of the profits are distributed to the shareholders. However, the prosperity in the large corporations does not apply to small businesses which belong to the 3rd group. Because they can't avoid the taxes and regulations. That's why we have high unemployment and poverty.
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      edward long 100+

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      Jan 25 2013: You shoot from the hip Mr. Hsi. If everything you say is true is there a way back? Please don't say a people's revolution. I'm too old for that. Thanks for the viewpoint!

      • bart hsi

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        Jan 26 2013: In my opinion, we are not going to have a "revolution" in the ordinary sense, but we will have a voters' revolt (the voters are not really satisfied with the present leaders according to the opinion ratings of the current Congress and the President) to choose some new leaders to lead us out of the crisis of rampant deficit and explosive national debt either before or after the default or bankruptcy by the U. S. government. However, the historical examples. including the present situation in the EURO ZONE, are quite poignant that they may suffer severe and long recession en route to recovery. Some like Brazil or Finland, they recovered after national default, some have never recovered such as Argentina. Of course, there have never been a national default by an economic superpower like the U.S,, But we haven't seen any drastic effects from the previous default by a few countries either. So that is an unknown and unpredictable event.
        Four years ago, there was only our Federal Reserve had Quantitative Easing by printing or creating credits to finance the government spending. Nowadays almost all the developed countries in the world are imitating us by means of QE. This GLOBAL MONETARY INFLATION will eventually come ashore to bite us in the form of buying up our real assets. This has already begun. For example, the Chinese are buying Canadian energy assets, then the Canadians are buying U. S. banks or investing in oil pipelines here. So the US$ are coming back and eventually will cause price inflation. We simply can't hope that the currency printing will always flow out and be kept by the foreigners forever. The stock market boom is also partially supported by such buying-up-assets-with-US$ too.
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          edward long 100+

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          Jan 26 2013: It sure makes sense that the voters would be the way out of this mess since they (we) are the ones who elected the jackasses who got us into this train wreck. The more common way out of a fiscal crisis, historically, is to start a major war. So our future most likely holds some conbination of voter revolt, war, and/or debilitating inflation. God Bless America!

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