Friday, July 03, 2009
RANDOM QUOTE
while in madison i was reading AMERICAN THEOCRACY by kevin phillips. i hit the meat. published in 2007, it addresses what happened in the waning days of bush-
-unexpected federaal budget surplusses replaced them(deficits) in 1998, 1999, and 2000. still buoyed by this, a heady GWB, weeks after taking office in 2001, delivered the state of the union and budget messages proposing to both "pay down an unprecedented part of our national debt" and "double our Medicare budget over the next decade."
ya. of course midass touch did THE OPPOSITE.
-As for rising public consumption and its flip side, nonexistent personal savings, that duality also had excuses. did people really need to save in banks when the values of their assets-stocks and real estate-were climbing like rockets? wise or not(NOT), these were staple explainations.
-Roach, the chief economist at morgan stanley, described the fed chairman as a 'serial bubble blower.' by 2004 others spoke about an echo bubble or a double echo or even referred to greenspan as chairman bubbles. the expansion of debt was huge, indisputable, and a topic of spirited national conversation.
-the fed's policies, however shrewd were not rooted in an abstraction of the national interest but in the pursuit of its statutory mandate to protect the US banking and payments system, now inseparable from from the broadly defined financial-services sector. to this end, the 2001-2003 rate cuts extended a more than two-decade pattern, relentless under greenspan, of slapping large green liquidity band-aids on any financial wound that might get infected.
-in mid 2004, the center for public integrity tabulated the leading lifetime patrons of GWB: the big four were MORGAN STANLEY, MERRILL LYNCH, PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS, AND MBNA, the credit-card giant. the family's background also blended these same origins and commitment. no presidential clan has been so involved in banking, investments, and money management over so much time.
and georgee STILL managed t kill wall street AZND every business he ever touched.
-"the money that's made from manufacturing stuff is a pittance in comparison to the amount of money made from shuffling money around. 44% of all corporate profits in the US come from the financial sector compared with only 10% from the manufacturing sector." -ray dalio
-if history teaches us anything, it's that this so-called cutting edge finance is an accident waiting to happen, despite claims by the so-called new-macro economists that derivatives are tame and BENIGN and that national debt and deficits are manageable within a new global savings pool in which national boundaries no longer matter so much. even alan greensapn occasionally owned to uncertainty about where speculators and new credit instruments-hedge funds and derivatives in particular-might be taking the country.
looks like it headed straight towards implosion, EH?
-we can only wonder which one would have been most appalled: george washington, who in the early 1770's decried london creditors for their treatment of virginians: benjamin franklin, who deplored debt; john adams, who publicly loathed banks; or thomas jeffersonn, who feared the rise of a financial elite(i am gonna say tom). lincoln, who put labor ahead of capital, would have been equally displeased. likewise the 2 roosevelts, theodore and franklin. even the lessons of greece and rome were relevant, as the men deliberating in 1787 had known from their readings
history matters!
-in 1908, as we have seen, winston churchill, then president of the british board of trade, vented a similar historical interpretation in finding 'the seed of imperial ruin and national decay" in " THE UNNATURAL GAP BETWEEN THE RICH AND THE POOR" and "the swift increase of vulgar jobless luxury"
i am sure more to come.
while in madison i was reading AMERICAN THEOCRACY by kevin phillips. i hit the meat. published in 2007, it addresses what happened in the waning days of bush-
-unexpected federaal budget surplusses replaced them(deficits) in 1998, 1999, and 2000. still buoyed by this, a heady GWB, weeks after taking office in 2001, delivered the state of the union and budget messages proposing to both "pay down an unprecedented part of our national debt" and "double our Medicare budget over the next decade."
ya. of course midass touch did THE OPPOSITE.
-As for rising public consumption and its flip side, nonexistent personal savings, that duality also had excuses. did people really need to save in banks when the values of their assets-stocks and real estate-were climbing like rockets? wise or not(NOT), these were staple explainations.
-Roach, the chief economist at morgan stanley, described the fed chairman as a 'serial bubble blower.' by 2004 others spoke about an echo bubble or a double echo or even referred to greenspan as chairman bubbles. the expansion of debt was huge, indisputable, and a topic of spirited national conversation.
-the fed's policies, however shrewd were not rooted in an abstraction of the national interest but in the pursuit of its statutory mandate to protect the US banking and payments system, now inseparable from from the broadly defined financial-services sector. to this end, the 2001-2003 rate cuts extended a more than two-decade pattern, relentless under greenspan, of slapping large green liquidity band-aids on any financial wound that might get infected.
-in mid 2004, the center for public integrity tabulated the leading lifetime patrons of GWB: the big four were MORGAN STANLEY, MERRILL LYNCH, PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS, AND MBNA, the credit-card giant. the family's background also blended these same origins and commitment. no presidential clan has been so involved in banking, investments, and money management over so much time.
and georgee STILL managed t kill wall street AZND every business he ever touched.
-"the money that's made from manufacturing stuff is a pittance in comparison to the amount of money made from shuffling money around. 44% of all corporate profits in the US come from the financial sector compared with only 10% from the manufacturing sector." -ray dalio
-if history teaches us anything, it's that this so-called cutting edge finance is an accident waiting to happen, despite claims by the so-called new-macro economists that derivatives are tame and BENIGN and that national debt and deficits are manageable within a new global savings pool in which national boundaries no longer matter so much. even alan greensapn occasionally owned to uncertainty about where speculators and new credit instruments-hedge funds and derivatives in particular-might be taking the country.
looks like it headed straight towards implosion, EH?
-we can only wonder which one would have been most appalled: george washington, who in the early 1770's decried london creditors for their treatment of virginians: benjamin franklin, who deplored debt; john adams, who publicly loathed banks; or thomas jeffersonn, who feared the rise of a financial elite(i am gonna say tom). lincoln, who put labor ahead of capital, would have been equally displeased. likewise the 2 roosevelts, theodore and franklin. even the lessons of greece and rome were relevant, as the men deliberating in 1787 had known from their readings
history matters!
-in 1908, as we have seen, winston churchill, then president of the british board of trade, vented a similar historical interpretation in finding 'the seed of imperial ruin and national decay" in " THE UNNATURAL GAP BETWEEN THE RICH AND THE POOR" and "the swift increase of vulgar jobless luxury"
i am sure more to come.
