All Comments on 'Hey Buddy can you Spare a Dime'

this Just pathetic

As for dealing with terrorists, it is like dealing with most social issues, there are no simplistic answers. Every terrorist is some ones hero just as every hero is a terrorist to his enemy. That being said I fail to see any gains by the terrorist groups that are attaching the western countries. That is unless all they desire is to polarize a people against them

whata Moron... terroists are NOT about social issues. They are not fighting over abortion or eductation ot Taxes or energy policies.

only a truly stupid shallow intellectually bankrupt turd could argue that a every terrorist is someone's hero.

pay attention idiot.

The reason WHY Yassir Arafat was a terrorist is becuase when Bill clinton got israel to offer him 90% of the west bank as a NEW palestinian homleand in 1999.... Arafat said NO.

Think about it. This guy has supposedlty been fighting for a palestine himeland for 40+ years if not longer. He is offered everything HE EVER WANTED and can get it without firing a shot

he said NO. He said he wanted to go on killing Jews.

the same thing applies to Al Q or the Taliban or Hamas. They dont want a peice of the Pie. Hamas does not REALLY want a homeland

Palestintian refugees... we know this because they wont sit down and talk .

the Al Q movement is waging war on the West SOELLY to bring about a religious event... the 12th Iman.

It has nothing do with freedom.

idiot liberals from CALIF like bakeboss simply cannot comprehend that there are some people in the wordl who Hate the system. They want the whole thing to burn.

They arent argung over whether Google should be restricted in China . they dont google or the Internet to even exist.

they dont women to have property. or the the right to vote .They dont want Libraries.

freedom fighter.???!!!... wow ...

get a clue douche bag

Good start Bakeboss to reduce your anger and stress regarding our country's current situation. Here are a few of my thoughts generated from reading your story. BP wanted this particular well in 500 foot waters but our federal government decided it should be drilled in a mile deep area. I wonder if repairs are easier at lower depths? If it is so easy I also wonder why some green billionaire such as T. Boone Pickens hasn't developed an engine/generator that runs on an alternative fuel source? Did you know that the same country (India) that answers your computer questions has developed and manufactured a car that runs on compressed air? Yet I hear nothing from the bailed out autoworkers union but why should I? They got their sweet deal already in exchange for votes. I also wonder if the current White House administration and Congress has ever read the actual historical accounts of what Truman and Roosevelt's administrations did to create and prolong the depression? And since the current administrations tactics are identical is it any wonder that every country involved in the G20 conference rejected our ideas and refuse to spend anything more on a stimulus plan. I am curious to know why our country's leaders and law makers will retain their specialized and completely free health care and six figure pensions instead of getting the same crap that we taxpayers will have to suffer with including reduced social security etc. Speaking of taxes raising them and this current health care plan will be the coup de grace of small business in America. Then you can kiss our capitalist system goodbye as we have already basically stopped manufacturing and allowed most major companies of this ilk to leave the country. Double digit unemployment is here to stay and will only increase. As free enterprise dies and federal government control increases every man woman and child become more dependent on these so called entitlement programs that many people think they deserve. But that well (no pun) too is running dry and remember what happened in Greece recently? Don't worry western Europe, the USA is right behind you and following in your economically stricken and forever socially weakened footsteps. I wonder if 30 million Americans marching to D.C. and demanding changes (instead of watching international soccer) could make a difference? Lastly, immigration. I was born in Oklahoma raised in Illinois and spent over 30 years working with Mexicans (not Hispanics) in Arizona. Some were legal and some were not. But all paid their way including taxes as it should be. Remove the Federal Tax system and let each state collect taxes and care for it's own state. Gotta go.More later.

The current debate among domestic policy makers is whether we should increase government spending (and borrowing) for a second stimulus while long term interest rates are very low, or whether government should begin to cut spending so as to reduce (or eliminate) the deficit and alleviate expansion the overall National Debt.

The economic community is split on these alternatives. Even so, long term they all agree that we must reduce entitlements spending, principally Social Security and Medicare. Politically however, there is no will to cut either.

If we do nothing the decision will be made for us when interest rates rise to the point where debt service becomes impossible, and future borrowing is no longer an option. When the foreign investors who buy our debt, doubt our ability to repay, then we will truly be in deep do-do, and that time will probably occur within the next 10-20 years!

My guess, after reading positions of people like Nauriel Rubini, Simon Johnson and Paul Krugman, is that without another stimulus we’re likely to have very slow economic growth for the next decade, if not longer. We are also likely to have high unemployment too.

We don’t have the discipline of the Japanese. They have survived a decade of stagnation after their own real estate induced banking panic. We are more likely to resemble France in our decline. The French have high taxation, high unemployment, a sluggish social welfare state, runaway unions and a widening gap between the haves and have-nots. Yet they still function as a democracy…albeit a highly inefficient one.

So I’m in favor of another stimulus to help us get out of this mess. Then once the economy is strong again because of private investor spending, then we start reducing government spending for entitlements.

Almost everyone agrees that the Great Depression was ended by World War II. When you look at government spending up through the war years you can see a very large uptick in government spending. <b>In fact, World War II was the largest stimulus package in U.S. history!</b> The government purchased planes, tanks, and other armaments in massive quantities. The government put millions of Americans under arms and clothed, fed, housed, trained and transported those men and women.

It could be argued that FDR’s efforts to jumpstart the economy failed during the 1930’s because the amounts being spent were TOO LOW to make a significant impact. But after World War II that spending rose to over 46% of GDP. That investment in the war effort dwarfed what was spent on domestic programs, and it lifted us out of the Great Depression.

We need another round of spending, this time for critical infrastructure. Things like our bridges, dams, electric grid and transportation networks, need to be rebuilt. The last round of spending was absorbed by tax cuts and aid to the states; not enough money went to projects that put people to work.

Of course, I don’t think that my position will be popular with many folks, particularly the tea party crowd. They seem to have real concern about the national debt. Unfortunately, this same crowd did not have the same concern about the Wall Street shenanigans that got us into this mess in the first place.

I find it ironic that tea party folks can rail against a national debt of $ 12 trillion but remain silent when they learn that Credit Default Swaps in existence may total something like $ 60 Trillion …and they are completely unregulated. And if by this time you don’t know what a Credit Default Swap is, then you need to read up on what brought down AIG.

The AIG story is frightening and every American needs to be a lot more financially savvy. However, I know that that hope flies in the face of reality.

A survey taken before July 4th found that 25 percent of the participants could not successfully indentify the county we fought against during the Revolutionary War. Other surveys taken over the last 10 years have told us that as many as 40 percent of Americans may be functionally illiterate. Hopefully, these statistics reflect the almost 50 percent of the public WHO DO NOT VOTE.

and you need to get your recent History straight

your comments about the TEA party show you to be IDIOT partisan hack. and it shows you to be unable to think critically

you accuse them of being inconsistent about credit swap and AIG.

Ok granted. We agree. But 99% of anyone-- even YOU-- knew NOTHING about the finanical bulshit bears and Lehamns and AIG were engaging in. Until 2007 and 2008......

but that is One of the reason WHY the tea party movement started.!!

It was and IS the collusion between wall street and DC that got them so upset.

instead you sit there and yell at the Tea Party for somehow being inconsistent ? Your reasoning is fucking absurd

this is like yelling at the rape victims for not knowing thier are rapists in the world.....

tell me where was the democratic party from 1996 to 2006 when all this was going on? 100% in bed with AIG and Solmon Brothers and Freddie and fannie Just like the GOP NO regulation crowd.

Oh, look. Another series of self-important, oh, I just got to justify my existance comments from Public Douchebag #1.

" It well might be the time to reinstate a tariff system to help offset other nations from flooding our markets with underpriced goods. I understand this might affect our sales in other countries but we need to find some way to level the playing field if we are to continue as the international consumer country."

The problem with this is that we will lose a lot of sales in other countries, whose subsequent lower incomes will demand less of our goods. A tariff will just find a reciprocal tariff to meet it. It really is a case of an eye for an eye making everyone blind. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff did ruinous damage to world trade the American economy (and consider--the US is a more internationally open economy NOW then it was then. So declines in trade will have an even greater impact now, then it did then.

As for Harry's claim that "But 99% of anyone-- even YOU-- knew NOTHING about the finanical bulshit bears and Lehamns and AIG were engaging in. Until 2007 and 2008" is a bit of hyperbole. It is true that a minority (much more than 1% though) of commentators (including Roubini, Buffet, official gov't reports) did warn about these problems, but their concerns were drowned out by the rush for easy market gains, and by a media all to willing to support the roar of speculation. And yes, I did know what was going to go down. I sold my house in mid 2006, just after the peak of the market, and moved a lot of IRA into money market and bonds--for exactly the reasons we now ALL know--overheated housing market, rampant speculation in the financial sector, etc. Markets go up, and they can come down. It is a fallacy to say that "how could anyone predict this!" People did--they were just not listened to, that is all. And were were the Dems when all this was going down? Being a bunch of almost clueless individuals, taking their orders from wealthy constituencies, and from the Fed (no less!) who said that deregulation would be good for the country since no company would make that bad a series of bets, because the market would discipline itself through failure (Allan Greenspan, cough, cough...). They at least appear to slightly get it in comparison with Republican politicians who seem absolutely clueless or ideologically frozen in OldThink. If you are interested, "Fool's Gold" by Gillian Tett, gives an excellent account of this credit default swap melt-down and what caused it.

As for where we are going--I am starting to lean towards a deflationary trap. I am still open to the idea that the government might try to inflate itself out of debt and this problem, but it appears less and less likely everyday.

Harry, I feel a need to clarify a statement you made about me. While you are correct that I did not know about, or understand Credit Default Swaps until 2007. I was introduced to that instrument and its dangers by John C. Bogle in his book “Enough”. Mr. Bogle is the founder of The Vangaurd Group, the second largest investment management firm after Fidelity. Mr. Bogle is also a life-long Republican;, he would never be considered a liberal.

As for the sub-prime market, a good friend of mine worked for the then GE Capital Mortgage in the risk management area in the 1990s. We talked then about this crapolla being created. GE made a decision NOT TO PURCHASE sub-prime mortgages over 10 years ago! They viewed them as too risky; and they weren’t the only ones.

Only 3 per cent of the banks in Canada invested in the sub-prime market and most stayed completely away from derivatives. I remember one banker stating publicly that he did not understand those instruments and the people trying to sell him on the idea didn’t understand them either. The problem is that you need to develop sophisticated models to even value this crap properly.

These are the instruments, coupled with unrestrained greed that almost destroyed our credit markets. The Tea Party folks ignore the base causes of the problem; instead they focus on government (which was a very minor player in this fiasco).

The Tea Party folks are stuck on the bank bailout. And even there they get confused. A Republican President came up with the TARP and a Democrat president followed through on its implementation. The money was LOANED the banks, not GIVEN to them. Just like money was LOANED AIG at above market rates. In fact, the taxpayers will make a profit on these transactions.

What makes me livid with the Tea Party crowd is their naiveté. They seem to have no clue as to just HOW CLOSE our entire financial system came to collapsing. George W. Bush did not WANT to create a ‘bailout’, he had no other options, save watching this country fall head-on into another Depression.

And while I deplore the philosophy of ‘too big to fail’ (which was coined by the first President Bush in the late 1980s), we had no alternative in the fall of 2008. The government had to act. This wasn’t a Democrat or a Republican action, it was a responsible action.

Why should I give you a dime?

I'm serious. That was not a rhetorical question. Instead of getting lost in the details, let's try to discern the way we should go. The deep and cogent answer to my question will point the way.

Additionally, why should I do anything to forestall or overcome a depression? If you're figuring that there will be free dimes to be had for just the asking, I can go for that. I'm with you.

As I can remember, the American public has been voting to have one for the last few Presidents. Seems a waste of all that effort to try to avoid one now. Why buck the trend?

The answers are harder than you think, much much harder.

We lost our manufacturing to robots. Just as we lost our agriculture to machinery. What? We still do well in agriculture? Well we still do well in manufacturing. We just don't need as much labor.

In 1964 the U.S. came up with the transistor and it made Japan a lot of money.We also came up with the VCR and never even sold one made in the USA.We make some bonehead mistakes like letting companies drill all over for oil and apparently none of them have a clue how to fix it if it breaks.

Doesn't 'non-erotic' refer to a type of fiction at this site? Kudos for trying to get people to read and think [from the other comments, you've succeeded], but mis-classifying your essay will make it hard to return to/find in the future.

Unless you don't want people to find it later. Or even now.

I don't know about others, but I ALWAYS click on 'review/essay' entries, just because of their rarity, and the occasional real gem-of-thought that writers produce. I'm not so attentive about 'non-erotic' submissions.

...try to fathom political-economics. As long as you atavistic Bonobos keep reproducing without abatement nothing you say or think matters. We will be fucked. I hate you delusional over-breeding self-replicators. 10 million dead children a year, and you keep reproducing. Insects. Negative population growth or perish.

only a brain dead idiot would not realize that we have been in a depression for the past several years........