While much attention has focused on averting the fiscal cliff, the U.S. is just $66B below its $16.4T debt ceiling, which it's due to hit towards the end of the month. Treasury would then embark on some fiscal maneuvering that could buy it another 6-10 weeks. As with the fiscal cliff , Republicans want cuts to entitlement programs before agreeing to increase the debt limit again. [View news story]
Paul Krugman .... has a terrible record of being a partisan shill who changes his justifications and positions based on who is in the white house. A $200 billion deficit was a disgrace to him when Bush was president, but with Obama, he is just fine with a $1,200 billion deficit. He bashed Republicans for destroying entitlements but now admits they didnt actually touch them. The stimuluus was a failure - he wants more. He makes up facts and distorts others.
He and pundits like him are a bane for the country, giving horrible and bad advice.
oh, and Obama is a big spender, thats Captn Obvious.
While much attention has focused on averting the fiscal cliff, the U.S. is just $66B below its $16.4T debt ceiling, which it's due to hit towards the end of the month. Treasury would then embark on some fiscal maneuvering that could buy it another 6-10 weeks. As with the fiscal cliff , Republicans want cuts to entitlement programs before agreeing to increase the debt limit again. [View news story]
OK, so you described about 4% of our spending... Do you have anything to say about the other 96% of our Federal budget?
The President wants to spend $45 trillion by 2020... you want that?
While much attention has focused on averting the fiscal cliff, the U.S. is just $66B below its $16.4T debt ceiling, which it's due to hit towards the end of the month. Treasury would then embark on some fiscal maneuvering that could buy it another 6-10 weeks. As with the fiscal cliff , Republicans want cuts to entitlement programs before agreeing to increase the debt limit again. [View news story]
Anyone proposing more taxes in our flatlined economy is already greedy. But it wont 'backfire' unless the people smarten up and start opposing the Democrats.
While much attention has focused on averting the fiscal cliff, the U.S. is just $66B below its $16.4T debt ceiling, which it's due to hit towards the end of the month. Treasury would then embark on some fiscal maneuvering that could buy it another 6-10 weeks. As with the fiscal cliff , Republicans want cuts to entitlement programs before agreeing to increase the debt limit again. [View news story]
The 'fiscal cliff' is 3 things: - tax increases passed by Obama in Obamacare/ACA and - tax increases because bush tax rates are expiring - spending cuts that Congress put in there in case the President failed to come up with a real spending cut plan. The President failed.
So now the President's solution to a 'cliff' that is mostly tax increases, is ... tax increases.
The floggings will continue until morale improves.
AAII Sentiment Survey: Pessimism Falls To Lowest Level Since August [View article]
The so-called 'fiscal cliff' is a mis-construction. "Scheduled higher taxes" and "Obamacare higher taxes" is what is really going on ... so replace with those terms and you get a sense of the real issue.
Why this is important is that the cliff term disembodies the policy choices and implies uncertainty is the problem. There is NO problem with a 'lack of resolution' as DC argues ad infinitum and will never agree.
Obama's bad policies will harm the economic not when they are uncertainly a possibility but when they ARE certain. the 'lack of resolution' is just about what votes will happen and the real risk is around the real economic consequences of the WRONG vote or wrong path.
What is the wrong path? Higher taxes. But, that is what is most certain to happen. in short, the risk is not 'uncertainty' but 'higher taxes'.
The coda to this is that its false to assume the market will rise after resolution - it will more likely fall as a result of the worst-case thing happening, as happened in aug 2011.
"or a grand budget bargain in the US" hmmm, with the most fiscally reckless president in history, who won re-election on the backs of class warfare and panders that will bankrupt the govt, the chance of real fiscal discipline in the USA is effectively nil. The 'grand bargain' if any will be a surrender to the forces of Big Government.
Weighing The Week Ahead: Time For Clarity On Key Market Issues? [View article]
"The cliff diving odds increased to 75% according to one good source."
At this point, it wont matter. Nobody in DC will want a large middle class tax increase, but Obama has insisted on one of two positions: 1) Tax increases 2) Even MORE tax increases. this is in addition to 3) The ACA/Obamacare tax increases.
So why does the media act like 'uncertainty' is the issue when there is near-certainty of higher taxes?!?
the media is pimping for that more taxes position, rather than the more sensisble "kick it down the road another year by extending all rates and work out real entitlement, spending and tax reform." They are obscuring the fact that the real issue is the spending and the real solution is spending reductions.
there really is no fiscal cliff 'uncertainty' but an almost certain increase in taxes, and the real market negative is not 'uncertainty' about taxes but the certainty that there will be more money taken out of the private sector, small business and economic harm from added taxes that will ripple through.
Lithium-Ion Batteries Were A Bust, But Advanced Lead-Acid Batteries Are Booming [View article]
"I've grown tired with discussing investment issues in the EV space because it's almost like discussing politics or religion."
Uh, that's because it IS politics. The anti-fossil-fuels eco-lobby latched on to EVs as the 'solution' to global warming, peak oil, and whatever other hobgoblins are reasons to want the end of gas guzzlers... That's why billions were poured (wasted) on EV schemes from the Federal govt (and fuel cells, and hydrogen cars, and biofuels, and ...), and why we continue to do so. Politics trumps economics.
Only when such political considerations leave, could you have a rational economics-driven discussion. The problem here is that Govt hype was used to drive stock market pimping hype about the EV market. So investors get misled by the circle of hype driven by political agendas. Yet if you read carefully, there are reports from DOE on the trajectory of battery technology and that we wont be there anytime soon for practical long-range EVs. (I was able to short fuel cell bubble companies 12 years ago on the basis of understanding the flawed science and tech behind the hype. Same cycle here.)
It's an outrage that Obama's DOE chief would (a) say what we need technologically (and be more or less correct - cut the cost, weight and size all by 75% and you have an EV ready battery) and (b) have reports saying that the tech wont be there by 2020 and (c) *also* fund EV efforts that contradict (a) and (b) and predict their success. Chevy Volt anyone? ... Long-range EVs remain an overpriced pipedream (or toy - viz Tesla). Our tax dollars at work!
This ... "There is no more wasteful concept on the planet than using 24 kWh of batteries to save 400 gallons of gas per year in a Leaf when the same batteries could save 2,560 gallons of gas per year in a fleet of 16 Prius class HEVs." - JP
... is brilliantly stated.
PS. Based on battery chemistry for max energy density, Lithium-Sulphur with Si / C cathodes/anode will be the likely winner technology, down the road.
When deficits are 1% or 2% of GDP, in a growing economy of 3% or so, even a 2% of GDP deficit doesnt grow the debt/GDP ratio, which is the real issue. So that kind of deficit doesnt matter. Cheney was sort of right.
BUT ... under Obama was have ecnomy growing at under 2% and deficits got to 10% of GDP, now in the 7-8% range. That means we are increasing the debt/GDP ratio rapidly and heading towards the tipping point where it weighs on the economy, ie, we will become Greece if we dont change course. That kind of deficit matters.
"i am to the right of attila the hun, but we are broke............and we can't afford to be the world's policeman. " We are broke, but most of Federal spending is entitlements and transfer payments. We cant afford these massive redistribution schemes and putting 100 million Americans on various forms of govt dependency.
On The Road To The Endgame: The Farcical Cliff [View article]
"But the reality is that the healthcare in Cuba is superior than the US."
Folks, we have an out and out propaganda-spewing moron. Under Castro, Cuba has gone from one of the richest to one of the poorest nations in American hemisphere. Medical care has declined as well. Please dont spew Castroite BS about how their primitive outdated and broken healthcare system actually is okay ...
On The Road To The Endgame: The Farcical Cliff [View article]
" How can you blame Obama for something that has been happening for 40 years now. This is not a recent trend. Let's be honest on our discussions."
Yes. Lets be honest. IT HAS NOT BEEN HAPPENING FOR 40 YEARS. That is total and utter nonsense. 5 years ago, interest rates were 5%, the deficit was 1/5th its current size and spending / GDP was under 20%. In the last 5 years under Obama and the Democrats in Congress and Ben B at the Fed, we have gone into uncharted waters with the most easy ZIRP-style monetary policies and the largest deficits in US peacetime history. Very new, recent and totally unprecedented.
Some of us are convinced it wont end well.
"It seems that whenever a government policy results in wealth redistribution to the top" The Federal govt spending on transfer payments is OVER $2 TRILLION. We are taking taxes from the top 50% in income, most particularly the top 10%, and through the govt passing it to the bottom 47%.
This is wealth redistribution and it is wrong to deny its happening.
On The Road To The Endgame: The Farcical Cliff [View article]
"for a malpractice insurance agency says that some of the biggest costs in the US healthcare system come from malpractice related lawsuits and insurance"
When you add that, and you add in the fact that the USA is in effect the pharma R&D center for the world, subsidizing the rest of the world's innovative medical drug usage, and back out those costs, our costs otherwise are not out of line with other nations.
On The Road To The Endgame: The Farcical Cliff [View article]
Our US Govt (federal, state and local) even before Obama was spending close to $1.5 trillion on healthcare, over 50% of every healthcare dollar. The biggest myth about healthcare in the US revolves around the myths of 'not getting care' and the myth of the govt not being involved. Healthcare is highly subsidized and regulated and govt is very much involved. Anyone who needs care gets it, through a profusion of programs. Obamacare will shift the ratio from 50% to closer to 70%, so the level of govt conrol in US will expand, maybe to be no less than in Canada.
To really answer Tomas' question, for many the answer is: YOU DIE. Bureaucrats will ration care for cost reasons: http://bit.ly/TLdHh0
Too old, unhealthy, smoker? Guess you dont deserve that operation: http://bit.ly/SPQWuR
The end result of any non-market-driven system is bureaucratic-driven cost controls, and that implies rationing. Waiting lists are socialized medicine's equivalent of the bread lines in Soviet Russia.
When you have an incumbent system that creates dependency, it is hard to propose alternatives to that dependency. That does not make it a 'good system' it makes it akin to crabgrass or herpes. You CANT get rid of it. No voter will vote for less benefits, but no system can afford unlimited benefits. So you are stuck. That's the UK's NHS for ya; a crappy, weak, lousy system that a nation depends upon and cant really leave nor properly reform (never enough money!). Socialism is toxic and bad for economy, society and culture, but look at Eastern Europe, it took 2 decades for them to shake off communism, and in some parts of USSR the shackles are still not off.
On The Road To The Endgame: The Farcical Cliff [View article]
Obama and the Democrats have been intransigent to the point where it is clear they WANT a failure here. They want to have a crisis to blame on the Republicans.
There seems to be some irony or a tipping point to the notion that 'no deal' will be deemed Republicans 'fault' to the point where the Democrats will take their 'my way or highway' tax-and-spend position all the way to a point where Republicans will balk.
The middle-of-the-road position is the Simpson-Bowles solution and Boehner has embraced it but Obama and the Democrats have a more extreme response.
What SHOULD happen is this: Extend all the current tax rates for one year, and have a firm commitment to enact entitlement reform in the next year, along with at least $4 trillion reduction in the large spending increases Obama has in his budget. Then include the $1 trillion in tax increases from Simpson-Bowles (tax rate cuts and loophole closures) in the package of entitlement reform, spending cuts and tax increases. That's the centrist "deal" that is possible.
But Obama offers a leftist 'surrender now!' demand to the GOP. No spending cuts, not even spending controls, but spending INCREASES! No entitlement reform. And no tax reform even, just a 'stick it to 1%' populist non-solution.
It's a nonstarter, perhaps deliberately so. After all, Republicans in Congress were elected by their voters who are adamantly against Obama's tax-and-spend policies, so why would they affirm a deal that involves higher taxes and more spending? It doesnt make sense to expect their votes for liberal Democrat budget policies.
No good will come of having across the board tax increases. The only 'good' in the fiscal cliff is the opportunity to actually enact some small measure of spending cuts.
Only if the Democrats move from the left to the center is there any hope of a reasonable deal. Otherwise we face bad-deal or no-deal.
While much attention has focused on averting the fiscal cliff, the U.S. is just $66B below its $16.4T debt ceiling, which it's due to hit towards the end of the month. Treasury would then embark on some fiscal maneuvering that could buy it another 6-10 weeks. As with the fiscal cliff , Republicans want cuts to entitlement programs before agreeing to increase the debt limit again. [View news story]
A $200 billion deficit was a disgrace to him when Bush was president, but with Obama, he is just fine with a $1,200 billion deficit.
He bashed Republicans for destroying entitlements but now admits they didnt actually touch them. The stimuluus was a failure - he wants more. He makes up facts and distorts others.
He and pundits like him are a bane for the country, giving horrible and bad advice.
oh, and Obama is a big spender, thats Captn Obvious.
While much attention has focused on averting the fiscal cliff, the U.S. is just $66B below its $16.4T debt ceiling, which it's due to hit towards the end of the month. Treasury would then embark on some fiscal maneuvering that could buy it another 6-10 weeks. As with the fiscal cliff , Republicans want cuts to entitlement programs before agreeing to increase the debt limit again. [View news story]
Do you have anything to say about the other 96% of our Federal budget?
The President wants to spend $45 trillion by 2020... you want that?
While much attention has focused on averting the fiscal cliff, the U.S. is just $66B below its $16.4T debt ceiling, which it's due to hit towards the end of the month. Treasury would then embark on some fiscal maneuvering that could buy it another 6-10 weeks. As with the fiscal cliff , Republicans want cuts to entitlement programs before agreeing to increase the debt limit again. [View news story]
But it wont 'backfire' unless the people smarten up and start opposing the Democrats.
While much attention has focused on averting the fiscal cliff, the U.S. is just $66B below its $16.4T debt ceiling, which it's due to hit towards the end of the month. Treasury would then embark on some fiscal maneuvering that could buy it another 6-10 weeks. As with the fiscal cliff , Republicans want cuts to entitlement programs before agreeing to increase the debt limit again. [View news story]
- tax increases passed by Obama in Obamacare/ACA and
- tax increases because bush tax rates are expiring
- spending cuts that Congress put in there in case the President failed to come up with a real spending cut plan. The President failed.
So now the President's solution to a 'cliff' that is mostly tax increases, is ... tax increases.
The floggings will continue until morale improves.
AAII Sentiment Survey: Pessimism Falls To Lowest Level Since August [View article]
Why this is important is that the cliff term disembodies the policy choices and implies uncertainty is the problem. There is NO problem with a 'lack of resolution' as DC argues ad infinitum and will never agree.
Obama's bad policies will harm the economic not when they are uncertainly a possibility but when they ARE certain. the 'lack of resolution' is just about what votes will happen and the real risk is around the real economic consequences of the WRONG vote or wrong path.
What is the wrong path? Higher taxes. But, that is what is most certain to happen. in short, the risk is not 'uncertainty' but 'higher taxes'.
The coda to this is that its false to assume the market will rise after resolution - it will more likely fall as a result of the worst-case thing happening, as happened in aug 2011.
3 Potential Scenarios For 2013 [View article]
hmmm, with the most fiscally reckless president in history, who won re-election on the backs of class warfare and panders that will bankrupt the govt, the chance of real fiscal discipline in the USA is effectively nil. The 'grand bargain' if any will be a surrender to the forces of Big Government.
Weighing The Week Ahead: Time For Clarity On Key Market Issues? [View article]
At this point, it wont matter. Nobody in DC will want a large middle class tax increase, but Obama has insisted on one of two positions:
1) Tax increases
2) Even MORE tax increases.
this is in addition to
3) The ACA/Obamacare tax increases.
So why does the media act like 'uncertainty' is the issue when there is near-certainty of higher taxes?!?
the media is pimping for that more taxes position, rather than the more sensisble "kick it down the road another year by extending all rates and work out real entitlement, spending and tax reform." They are obscuring the fact that the real issue is the spending and the real solution is spending reductions.
there really is no fiscal cliff 'uncertainty' but an almost certain increase in taxes, and the real market negative is not 'uncertainty' about taxes but the certainty that there will be more money taken out of the private sector, small business and economic harm from added taxes that will ripple through.
Lithium-Ion Batteries Were A Bust, But Advanced Lead-Acid Batteries Are Booming [View article]
Uh, that's because it IS politics. The anti-fossil-fuels eco-lobby latched on to EVs as the 'solution' to global warming, peak oil, and whatever other hobgoblins are reasons to want the end of gas guzzlers... That's why billions were poured (wasted) on EV schemes from the Federal govt (and fuel cells, and hydrogen cars, and biofuels, and ...), and why we continue to do so. Politics trumps economics.
Only when such political considerations leave, could you have a rational economics-driven discussion. The problem here is that Govt hype was used to drive stock market pimping hype about the EV market. So investors get misled by the circle of hype driven by political agendas. Yet if you read carefully, there are reports from DOE on the trajectory of battery technology and that we wont be there anytime soon for practical long-range EVs. (I was able to short fuel cell bubble companies 12 years ago on the basis of understanding the flawed science and tech behind the hype. Same cycle here.)
It's an outrage that Obama's DOE chief would (a) say what we need technologically (and be more or less correct - cut the cost, weight and size all by 75% and you have an EV ready battery) and (b) have reports saying that the tech wont be there by 2020 and (c) *also* fund EV efforts that contradict (a) and (b) and predict their success. Chevy Volt anyone? ... Long-range EVs remain an overpriced pipedream (or toy - viz Tesla). Our tax dollars at work!
This ... "There is no more wasteful concept on the planet than using 24 kWh of batteries to save 400 gallons of gas per year in a Leaf when the same batteries could save 2,560 gallons of gas per year in a fleet of 16 Prius class HEVs." - JP
... is brilliantly stated.
PS. Based on battery chemistry for max energy density, Lithium-Sulphur with Si / C cathodes/anode will be the likely winner technology, down the road.
Shame On Washington! [View article]
When deficits are 1% or 2% of GDP, in a growing economy of 3% or so, even a 2% of GDP deficit doesnt grow the debt/GDP ratio, which is the real issue. So that kind of deficit doesnt matter. Cheney was sort of right.
BUT ... under Obama was have ecnomy growing at under 2% and deficits got to 10% of GDP, now in the 7-8% range. That means we are increasing the debt/GDP ratio rapidly and heading towards the tipping point where it weighs on the economy, ie, we will become Greece if we dont change course. That kind of deficit matters.
"i am to the right of attila the hun, but we are broke............and we can't afford to be the world's policeman. "
We are broke, but most of Federal spending is entitlements and transfer payments. We cant afford these massive redistribution schemes and putting 100 million Americans on various forms of govt dependency.
On The Road To The Endgame: The Farcical Cliff [View article]
Folks, we have an out and out propaganda-spewing moron.
Under Castro, Cuba has gone from one of the richest to one of the poorest nations in American hemisphere. Medical care has declined as well. Please dont spew Castroite BS about how their primitive outdated and broken healthcare system actually is okay ...
http://bit.ly/XGrBHe
On The Road To The Endgame: The Farcical Cliff [View article]
How can you blame Obama for something that has been happening for 40 years now. This is not a recent trend. Let's be honest on our discussions."
Yes. Lets be honest. IT HAS NOT BEEN HAPPENING FOR 40 YEARS. That is total and utter nonsense.
5 years ago, interest rates were 5%, the deficit was 1/5th its current size and spending / GDP was under 20%. In the last 5 years under Obama and the Democrats in Congress and Ben B at the Fed, we have gone into uncharted waters with the most easy ZIRP-style monetary policies and the largest deficits in US peacetime history. Very new, recent and totally unprecedented.
Some of us are convinced it wont end well.
"It seems that whenever a government policy results in wealth redistribution to the top" The Federal govt spending on transfer payments is OVER $2 TRILLION. We are taking taxes from the top 50% in income, most particularly the top 10%, and through the govt passing it to the bottom 47%.
This is wealth redistribution and it is wrong to deny its happening.
On The Road To The Endgame: The Farcical Cliff [View article]
WELL NOBODY IS STOPPING YOU! Go ahead and build your own business from the ground up and pay your employees what you think they deserve. Win/win.
In the meantime, telling other people how to run their own businesses and lives is annoying and arrogant.
On The Road To The Endgame: The Farcical Cliff [View article]
When you add that, and you add in the fact that the USA is in effect the pharma R&D center for the world, subsidizing the rest of the world's innovative medical drug usage, and back out those costs, our costs otherwise are not out of line with other nations.
On The Road To The Endgame: The Farcical Cliff [View article]
To really answer Tomas' question, for many the answer is: YOU DIE. Bureaucrats will ration care for cost reasons:
http://bit.ly/TLdHh0
Too old, unhealthy, smoker? Guess you dont deserve that operation:
http://bit.ly/SPQWuR
The end result of any non-market-driven system is bureaucratic-driven cost controls, and that implies rationing. Waiting lists are socialized medicine's equivalent of the bread lines in Soviet Russia.
When you have an incumbent system that creates dependency, it is hard to propose alternatives to that dependency. That does not make it a 'good system' it makes it akin to crabgrass or herpes. You CANT get rid of it. No voter will vote for less benefits, but no system can afford unlimited benefits. So you are stuck. That's the UK's NHS for ya; a crappy, weak, lousy system that a nation depends upon and cant really leave nor properly reform (never enough money!). Socialism is toxic and bad for economy, society and culture, but look at Eastern Europe, it took 2 decades for them to shake off communism, and in some parts of USSR the shackles are still not off.
In math terms, its a 'local minima'.
On The Road To The Endgame: The Farcical Cliff [View article]
There seems to be some irony or a tipping point to the notion that 'no deal' will be deemed Republicans 'fault' to the point where the Democrats will take their 'my way or highway' tax-and-spend position all the way to a point where Republicans will balk.
The middle-of-the-road position is the Simpson-Bowles solution and Boehner has embraced it but Obama and the Democrats have a more extreme response.
What SHOULD happen is this: Extend all the current tax rates for one year, and have a firm commitment to enact entitlement reform in the next year, along with at least $4 trillion reduction in the large spending increases Obama has in his budget. Then include the $1 trillion in tax increases from Simpson-Bowles (tax rate cuts and loophole closures) in the package of entitlement reform, spending cuts and tax increases. That's the centrist "deal" that is possible.
But Obama offers a leftist 'surrender now!' demand to the GOP. No spending cuts, not even spending controls, but spending INCREASES! No entitlement reform. And no tax reform even, just a 'stick it to 1%' populist non-solution.
It's a nonstarter, perhaps deliberately so.
After all, Republicans in Congress were elected by their voters who are adamantly against Obama's tax-and-spend policies, so why would they affirm a deal that involves higher taxes and more spending? It doesnt make sense to expect their votes for liberal Democrat budget policies.
No good will come of having across the board tax increases.
The only 'good' in the fiscal cliff is the opportunity to actually enact some small measure of spending cuts.
Only if the Democrats move from the left to the center is there any hope of a reasonable deal. Otherwise we face bad-deal or no-deal.