Financial topics

[aedens]

People simply do not understand private and public. When you letter to a Government branch as a private citizen you affirm your position as free
man and not a subject as no man legal fact. How hard is for people to understand this fact under commercial contract. The Goverment does not work for you since they own you. If you ask the wrong question they will never give you the answer according to the contract you are under.

[OLD1953]

I've said before and I'll say again, the US legal code needs a complete reworking from the ground up. It's like an OS that's had thousands of patches, it's not reliable any more and needs to be rebuilt. I'd fault uncertainty about the law as one of the major factors depressing the US economy, and it has been a factor for at least two decades. Business startups do not thrive in a condition of uncertainty. It is much easier to start a business knowing you will pay 20% in taxes than to start a business that pays no taxes, but may be subject to lawsuit for undetermined costs at any point. Uncertainty kills all business models.

Knowing the final effects of a law as complex as the affordable healthcare act is not possible until after full implementation, and then you'll have to wait for adjustments to the law and the adjustments society will make to the change in the law. It might be possible to know the full effect about 2020. Blaming the movement to part time on the act seems a bit much to me though, given that movement started before Obama was even mentioned as a candidate. WalMart in particular started going to as many part time workers as possible by 1990, I know that for a fact because I know people who had their hours cut back to 36 hours then so WalMart could cut them from their insurance and stock participation programs. That this movement has spread to other industries was news in 2000, it's pretty old hat now. I'm sure many partisans gleefully blame every layoff and cutback on healthcare, but it's hard for me to swallow the notion that a movement well under way across the service industry in 2000 got its start from an act passed nearly 30 years after the movement started. It's going to be a meme, and that meme has well taken hold, but it's not logical.

As far as I can tell, the real purpose of the cutbacks in hours is to throw as many workers as possible on food stamps, thus giving the company a backdoor subsidy from the government, government will provide health care and food, the company gives as little as possible but still gets the labor. From a standpoint of not caring how much damage you do to society, it makes perfect sense. Such workers are the equivalent of the miners and quarry workers of the 30's who were told "work till you drop, and if you drop there are 100 men outside the gate who want your job and will take it". The only difference between then and now is that the company then worked them for 60 hours at 25 cents an hour with no benefits, now they work for 30 hours with govenment provided food and health care. Same thing really, from a company perspective, except they have twice as many on the payroll. Given computers to manage the payroll, that's not a burden.

You might also want to read this, it's fairly recent news.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/labor-d ... e-payrolls

Don't think I'm claiming it all makes sense to me. But I'm trying to see the big picture, and both government and company leaders seem focussed on some very narrow vision of the world.

Something else I've noticed is that restricting trade is getting more and more popular in discussions between economists and online.

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archiv ... free-trade

That's a stellar example of the online sites kicking trade agreements

http://www.epi.org/publication/growing- ... 8-million/

http://econ-www.mit.edu/files/6613

And there's a couple by economists. Of course, they seem to be assuming we'll still be exporting while whacking imports. Anti open trade is going to be a populist issue in a very short time, perhaps in time for the next midterms. Politicians are not in control of this kind of issue, people demand it and the pols pass it. If they refuse, they become retired.

[Reality Check]

It seems to me that whenever any institution is taken apart nowadays, it's for the purpose of the enrichment of those who are already enriched. One pattern I am noticing is to convince the public that something is generally true, get the public to act on that belief, then make it false. With MF Global, the concept was that, generally, brokerage accounts are safe and segregated funds are safe. The opposite turned out to be true as the funds disappeared into the hypothecation chain. In the case of Federal Reserve Notes, I would have to wonder if the intent is perhaps to convince the public that they are worthless toilet paper, then for the insiders to accumulate them, take the Fed apart, and "make" them worth something. Just a thought to ponder.

I believe there is more than a little truth in that.

[vincecate]

My post on why Mish was wrong about hyperinflation has gotten 8,500 hits so far. This is my most popular post ever. I decided to try to address all the Hyperinflation skeptic questions and so have a new post, "FAQ for Hyperinflation Skeptics".

http://howfiatdies.blogspot.com/2012/10 ... ptics.html

Any feedback appreciated.

-- Vince

[Reality Check]

In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, the U.S. Dollar did not fail.

Instead the U.S. banks failed, and many of the people who deposited substantial numbers of U.S. Dollars into the bank accounts lost it all.

But the money, the U.S. dollars that were deposited into the banks, were not destroyed, nor were those dollars worthless, they were just transferred from the depositors to someone else. What the depositors lost, and what was destroyed was the value of the credits shown on their bank statements.

By confiscating gold from U.S. citizens at the rate of 19.xx dollars per ounce, and then, a few months later, devaluing the U.S. dollar less than any other currency in the world, initially to about $35 dollars per ounce, the U.S. government, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, built the U.S. currency into the worlds reserve currency.

While the devaluation of the U.S. dollar from $19.xx per ounce to ( eventually ) $42.22 per ounce, over a period of several decades, was substantial, it was less than any other major currency. Of course, any one in the United Sates who had their life savings deposited in banks in the early 1930s, or had investments in gold, paid a heavy price for the strength of the dollar.

[Reality Check]

My post on why Mish was wrong about hyperinflation has gotten 8,500 hits so far. This is my most popular post ever. I decided to try to address all the Hyperinflation skeptic questions and so have a new post, "FAQ for Hyperinflation Skeptics".

http://howfiatdies.blogspot.com/2012/10 ... ptics.html

Any feedback appreciated.

-- Vince

More than $8 trillion of the $16 trillion debt matures in less than 12 months.

Do you have a link to a government source for that number ... that would appear to be mismanagement of debt risk on Herculean scale by the U.S. government, not that I doubt they could be that stupid, but Holy Cow, we are talking Stupid with a capital S.

I already saw the brief paragraph on this blog:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot. ... ional.html

I was looking for something with a little more authority and a little more detail.

[aedens]

As they noted a deliberate shift in investor attitudes towards how best to diversify the asset mix with an eye towards generating risk-adjusted
returns has been underway. What people have failed to garner is that FDR was the culmination of a sovereign to commercial statutes. From the second your naked person arrives on the planet you are titled. The flaw in the logic is when entitled as public lays a claim to the private capital base. Attitudes may change but the realism never does. This is the event of a structured implosion. When you lay claim as private you will see the events of twenty six failed empires. The wheat from the chaff is being sorted in equity and I will convey as a private investor that they will foment anything to assert they provide value. We are closer to Nickel Grass than Reagans acumen to Dealing with liberals on american public policy so ask Stockman truly what happened and he would convey read the book which stated what did happen to balances and we did post that chart here also. The measurement's we are seeing is a implosion rate frame by frame since as conveyed public spending may be defended but it will not change the compass reading as defined earlier of the twenty six reason they are wrong and we are guarded in our private reality of contract and duties. The wind has changed and they never noticed the previous heading.

[Higgenbotham]

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=212901

I suspect there's some truth here with regard to the path and the reasons for it. I believe we've discussed here that printing money does not equate to profits in the long run and he's given a mechanism as to why that may be true. One thing he didn't mention is the year 2000 Nasdaq crash that began in late March/early April of 2000 was 12.5 years back (halfway back to 1987) and the first major crack in tech I remember was the peaking and crashing of Yahoo stock, which peaked well before the Nasdaq on January 4, 2000. This time, Facebook was the first major crack.

[aedens]

Smell the Coffee Test. When you wake up first thing make coffee. Now the test. No electric, no gas, what water do you use since how do I get it
here? You expect the Mayor for water for your Coffee? What bothers me is the blanket statements that people caused all the problems when historical
chemical samples say other. Granted we are a very small part of the issue of a vastly larger issue. The rub is public policy today that conveys, yes you are 100 percent of the issue and our parisidic nature backed with gun powder will take what ever we wish to the eighty - twenty paradox. Now for the middle ground of the extreme they will assure you they control the coffee test since the marble floor people will assure you it is in your best interest that since you live on a wood floor the people on the dirt floor need you to sacrifice as the marble floored wonder why you are so stupid to believe the eighty - twenty paradox of policy. Now that the marble floored have looted you beyond your belief and outsourced for 15 years you ponder were the
next market is? http://transitionvoice.com/2012/07/batt ... e-hatches/

Meanwhile you have twenty percent doing eighty percent of the work since we have lived and worked from the analog to digital reality to date
of American manufacturing in sectors. Mature markets have a meaning in the private sector as the public sectore expects top on down growth.
Simply put they are taxing retards and the so called smart money will and has left.
http://chartistfriendfrompittsburgh.blo ... s-not.html

Moral vacuums we live in to rulings on accounts:
There may be scenarios under which such an approach might relieve some burdens on appellate judges. However, it seems more likely to impose totally redundant and indefensible burdens on appellate and trial courts alike, which will have to pursue consideration of multiple theories in the many cases where one would suffice. It effectively requires the plaintiff to fire additional bullets into the corpse of a defendant he has already killed.

I therefore respectfully dissent.
http://us-code.vlex.com/source/us-code- ... edure-1027

I have posted our case before here already in the case of Private Equity of Contract. In our case the Federal Judge upheld the contract to terms
given the context of the covenant terms.

[vincecate]

Knowing the final effects of a law as complex as the affordable healthcare act is not possible until after full implementation, and then you'll have to wait for adjustments to the law and the adjustments society will make to the change in the law. It might be possible to know the full effect about 2020. Blaming the movement to part time on the act seems a bit much to me though,[...]

If an employer has to pay an $8,000/year health tax for full time employees and nothing for part time employees, then the picture is very simple and clear for him. He should try to just use part time employees and as few full time employees as possible. Nothing complicated or hard to understand for him. Mish has had several articles about this. Employers clearly understand this. Common sense should be able to tell you what will happen. It seems you have too much faith in central planning.