Financial topics

[OLD1953]

What Congress will budget for tomorrow is not that predictable.

Congress has already passed, and Obama has already singed, over One Trillion Dollars in defense spending cuts, which have yet to be translated into actual defense cuts.

At this point the Obama administration get's to choose which weapon systems will be killed and which will live, unless Obama and the Congress agree to something different.

Congress is not part of that decision unless Obama let's them be part of it, or unless two thirds of the House of Representatives and two thirds of the U.S. Senate agree to override a presidential veto.

As for nuclear weapons reductions in the United States that just completed this year, that are in progress, and that have already been planned and contracted for, that is a matter of public record no need to rely on outdated past projections by third party partisans. Specifically we are talking about the two thirds reduction in the number of strategic Nuclear warheads the U.S. has deployed on land based ICBMS. Before Obama took officer there were 450 such ICMBs and 1,350 such warheads. Today there are fewer than 1,050 such warheads and by the time Obama leaves office there will be just 450.

This is not a matter of your opinion, or mine, it is a matter of public record.

That's what the fiscal cliff meetings are all about, whether or not to implement the sequesteration. And there are quite a few assumptions buried in that trillion dollar figure, given that it is an estimate added up over ten years, and backloaded on the end of the ten years to boot. Congress doesn't generally follow GAAP very well. (sarcasm) It helps to keep a frying pan handy, and every time you see a budget cut or tax increase figure that doesn't give a specific term, smack yourself on the head with the pan and scream "TEN YEARS". (/sarcasm) Yes, that ten years business annoys me. It's also true that cuts are made from the next year's requested budget, which is a fairly important matter in itself. Anyhow, until there is a constitutional amendment, budgeting is done by the Congress, and unless the President vetos it, that's the budget.

That reduction in nuclear arms on land based ICBM's is due to removing MIRV warheads. The missiles themselves are staying much the same. I'm a bit perplexed that you call numbers partisan, are you claiming the numbers are incorrect? If so, what are the correct numbers? You'll never get perfect numbers, for obvious reasons.

I fear I consider the entire military budget to be utterly partisan, since I've watched Republicans cheer military cuts under a Republican president and boo them under a Democrat. And I've watched Democrats back a President who was all about more missiles and more nukes, while bashing a Republican who was "weak" on defense. So I take all claims of both weakness and overstrength with pretty much the whole saltshaker, not just a grain. (George Bush in 1992, JFK and the missile gap vs Eisenhower and the unilateral test ban)

[aedens]

The government will meet its obligations by handing out brand-new printed dollars, with declining purchasing power, and the old folks will have to depend on what support they can beg from their tax-ridden children. Men live by production, but the State lives by appropriation. While the haves and the have-nots struggle over the division of existing wealth, it is the business of the State to improve itself at the expense of both; it picks up the marbles while the boys are fighting. That has been the story of men in organized society since the beginning.

[OLD1953]

I ran across a historical reference that might be of interest to some, it was a reference to Tory rape gangs during the Revolution. I was looking up the Harpe brothers due to an odd claim a fellow put on me that serial killers were unknown during earlier "more Godly" eras, which is of course not true, but I wanted the earliest I could get, and the Harpe brothers were the earliest recorded serial killers after the founding of the US. However, it appears at least one of them was probably in a Tory rape gang that was travelling around raping women and burning farms.

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-harpes.html

http://newjacksonianblog.blogspot.com/2 ... re-in.html

I've read similar accounts of events during the Civil War, I was not surprised to read of such during the revolution, but had never looked specifically for it before. I've had some interesting personal accounts of various things from WWII vets, but that generally hits too close to home for people to want to hear about it.

[Reality Check]

American Dream Fades for Millennial Generation Professionals

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-2 ... onals.html

[Reality Check]

That's what the fiscal cliff meetings are all about, whether or not to implement the sequestration.

Wrong. Thit is NOT what the fiscal cliff meetings are all about.
Sequestration is already the law of the land. It, sequestration, has been passed by both houses of Congress and signed by President Obama.
Sequestration will take effect in 11 days. It is the law of the land. No one has to agree to anything for Sequestration to take effect.

it is an estimate added up over ten years

Again, wrong, sequestration is NOT an estimate added up over 10 years. Sequestration has specific spending limits for 2013, which take effect just 11 days from today.

It's also true that cuts are made from the next year's requested budget

Once again, wrong, sequestration is not a budget bill, it is a spending bill. Budget's are guidelines, but spending bills, once passed ( as sequestration was passed over a year ago and signed into law by Obama ) are absolute limits on what can be spent. Those spending reductions, written into federal law, kick in 11 days from now. This is not a budgeting game, nor would the spending limits be replaced by budget guidelines, even if a budget could be agreed to and passed. In the case of Defense Cuts, the defense spending for 2013 was already cut by other spending bills passed and signed into law by Obama prior to the sequester law and already adding up to a similar amount of cuts for 2013, on January 1st, when sequestration kicks in, these will be additional cuts, approximately doubling the cuts which will take effect in 11 days. They are not just reductions in desired increases as may be the case in some parts, or all, of the domestic spending side of the sequester for 2013.

You are entitled to your own opinions. But not your own facts. Sequestration is part of the Unites States Code ( federal law ) and as such is public record. Go read it.

[aedens]

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files ... rolAct.pdf

Already did some time ago

[Higgenbotham]

Sun Oct 25, 2009: "My feeling is that the stock market has gone from being a casino to being a carnival.

Again spot on H as we note this dark carnival.

When a civilization is dying pretending it isn't creates the carnival atmosphere.

When life sustaining productive jobs are moved out of the country, someone can write a book called "Who Moved My Cheese?" and it sells a lot of copies and people are convinced that they don't need productive jobs, just "cheese", when they really do need productive jobs.

When 40 million fetuses are aborted post Roe v Wade, 40 million Mexicans can be moved across the border and people are convinced that America is unique and doesn't have a demographic problem. Yet, as a society, people want to pretend they care about 20 children being shot when they have demonstrated, at root, that they don't really care about children or their future.

As the population ages, "anti-aging" and "life extension" protocols come into vogue and dying people who are part of a dying civilization become convinced that they can be immortal soon and live forever when they cannot.

When the stock market collapsed due to fraud and bankruptcy, a charlatan named Ben Bernanke appeared and convinced people that printing money can cure bankruptcy when it cannot.

Related to CHARLATAN
Synonyms: impostor, fake, faker, fakir, fraud, hoaxer, humbug, mountebank, phony (also phoney), pretender, quack, quacksalver, ringer, sham,

Then one day or night, poof, the carnival will begin to disappear.

Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain
With the barkers and the colored balloons,
You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain
Though you're thinking that
you're leaving there too soon,
You're leaving there too soon.

[Higgenbotham]

I've said here a couple times that I thought the Wall Street manipulators would drive the stock market to a new high for the year on the Mayan calendar date of December 21, 2012 just to "show they can" but it turns out they didn't quite make it, as the Congress became uncooperative the night before and there was a mini panic in the futures markets.

For the conspiracy buffs who believe the illuminati like to play with stock market numbers just to "show they can" here are some coincidences. I'm not so sure the Wall Street manipulators play with the numbers to this extent but these numbers are what they are.

The S&P 500 reached an all time high of 1576.09 on 10/11/07, then fell to a low of 666.79 on 3/6/09, for a loss of 909 points. Note the 3 6 9 in the date. 3 years, 6 months and 9 days after the low of 666.79 was Saturday, September 15, 2012. The previous day, the S&P 500 reached a 3 year high of 1474.51 that has not been exceeded since, for a rise of 808 points.

Earlier this year, the S&P 500 reached a Spring high of 1422.38 on 4/2/12. Rearranging the numbers in the date gives 1422, the same level that the S&P reached at that high.

As would be expected, much has been made of the 666 low.

[aedens]

Lately noting the confirmation bias is pressing in more areas.

[Higgenbotham]

No serious person would question the integrity of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These numbers are put together by career employees.
~ Alan Krueger, White House Council of Economic Advisers

Being a former state government employee for 8 years, I would envision a potential pre-election process like this, based on my experience.

A BLS employee, "Pam", goes out a couple months before the election and finds unusually high unemployment numbers in her district. In a meeting, a Regional boss notes in front of the group that "Pam" has found some unusually high numbers. Later in the meeting, the Regional boss states that there is an election coming up and where there may be some gray areas or areas of inconsistency in some respondent's answers to "use common sense" and to "err on the side of being reasonable". After the meeting, "Pam" is called into the office in a visible way by the low level supervisor and told she has been taking long breaks, engaging in inappropriate computer use, or some other bureaucratic nonsense that the rest of the employees engage in too, but they aren't called on it. The personnel lawyer even gets involved and "Pam" is reprimanded for inappropriate conduct. She files a grievance with the union and the union shoots it down and tells her to do her job. Other employees see this and, not wanting similar treatment, the unemployment numbers magically go down.