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Guest yobob1

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However, having travelled a great deal in Europe and Central America, there are stark differences between the societies and they have to do with, I believe, the presense of a social safety net.

 

Societies will always have poor people.  No amount of individual responsibility training given at the youngest age will eliminate people from a lower tier of society.  So what becomes of these people, and what is their impact on society?

 

In Europe, with large social safety nets, the impact was relatively minor.  I'm talking about quality of life issues here; crime, vagrancy, violence, etc..

 

In Central America, these problems were epidemic.  You go to any public place of commerce (a bank, a shopping mall, etc.) and you are surrounded by armed military with AK 47's.

 

Me...I don't want to live in that kind of society.  I'm afraid when I hear you and others talk of eliminating all social programs in their entirety without reflecting on the consequences.

irish, me neither :) ....but the thing about those differences is that they've evolved to be that way, organically, over long periods of time. sometimes you can add or subtract something with relative apparent success, but the bone of contention....welfare, farm subsidies, inheritance taxes, gun rights, handicap parking spaces, 180-degree coffee legislation, whatever....is usually a manifestation of a larger systemic issue.

 

a particular issue can be sped towards resolution by the consistent application of wisdom and spiritual maturity....but ultimately, everybody's gotta choose to grow up to have things work.

 

those many people currently surrounded by armed military in central american malls are each and all choosing whether they want to continue to create that situation....and they are by no means all in agreement with each other. remember, we're all in a big noisy schoolroom here....

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Flaming, I'm well aware of Idaho's budget gap and am anxiously awaiting the propsals. Idaho's budget, like most states, has grown way out of proportion to population and inflation. This is a small state so our representatives are easy to communicate with. This is also a republican state (70%+) and raising taxes here is a lot tougher than it will be in larger states where people don't know who their representatives are. The growth in the budgets came with the boom era growth in revenues that is now evaporating. Idaho by law is not allowed to run a deficit.

 

Phatbubble and Irish Jew I don't think fully appreciate the load that has been transferred to states in terms of responsibilities for federal entitlement programs, which is why I say that a lot of these "safety net" programs are going to get hit simply because there will be no money for them. Trying to make up the difference by raising taxes on individuals and businesses will only serve to suck the economy further into the hole at this point.

 

Education budgets are the ones that should receive the major hatchet job. The reason they are viewed as the last thing to get cut is not because of the "children", but because of the raw power of the NEA using the "children" as a shield. Our city just passed a bond to build a new sports stadium at the new high school that was built just a few years ago. Yet we have a large, well maintained centrally located stadium complex that has served the community well for the last 40 years. Our three university presidents all make roughly twice the money that the governor makes. Teachers work 180 days in this state and yet they want to compare their incomes to people who work year round. They want us to overlook the very generous benefit packages which are far better than 95% of what is available in the private sector. The attitude is, I teach your little snot-nosed 8 year old so either pay me enough to drive a Mercedes and vacation in Europe or I'm going on strike. And no you can't fire me either. Now it wouldn't bother me so much if they were turning out a product that could read and write and be functional as a semi-adult when they get out of high school, but what we are getting is something less than we got 50 years ago at a far lower cost per student on an inflation adjusted basis.

 

The party is over folks. We have entered the vortex. The hard choices have to be made now at the state and local levels. Those states that have the testicular fortitude to make the cuts without raising taxes will fare better than those who take the easy way out by trying to raise taxes. Raising taxes will be only a very short term fix which will backfire almost immediately, manifesting ultimately in lower total revenues.

 

California is like a macro example of Joe Yuppy that wanted it all right now based on wild extrapolations of future revenues. And now Joe is unemployed. It will probably take federal deficits in the 1 trillion range to overcome the downdraft in spending that is going to occur at state and local levels. You simply don't get a one to one ratio. The federal bureaucracy swallows most of the money before it ever leaves DC.

 

I'm about ready to hang up the quill. I see people gravitating to the sides of the room (in real life as well as here) leaving a wide gulf in between. It seems increasingly like I'm either preaching to the choir or arguing with those that will never get it. Both are consuming time without altering anything.

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Phatbubble and Irish Jew I don't think fully appreciate the load that has been transferred to states in terms of responsibilities for federal entitlement programs, which is why I say that a lot of these "safety net" programs are going to get hit simply because there will be no money for them. ?Trying to make up the difference by raising taxes on individuals and businesses will only serve to suck the economy further into the hole at this point.

yobob1, let me with a cheerful grin acknowledge hurtling completely out of orbit on that last post....and while all that i wrote is quite true, it really has nothing do with the issues you're addressing, and probably belongs in its own thread entitled 'Solving the Universe'.

 

in any case, your comments on educational entrenchement brought to mind william henry's in defense of elitism, a literate and scathing assault on mediocrity which contains something to piss off almost everyone who harbors a pet entitlement of one sort or another.

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My apologies for scanning your post too quickly. Evelyn Woods failed me again. I'm mentally beat and feel as if flailing at windmills.

 

I can't get no repect around here and rightfully so, I suppose. Since I don't rely on charts (other than long term) nor am I a trader, people discount what I say as the ramblings of a kook. Fine.

 

Well lookey here. Yobob post 11/04/02

I said several weeks ago I thought this rally would run to 9000 on the Dow + - 200,
What did we do? Bounce right off Dow 9000. This time I put my money where my mouth was and sent Mr. Tice a little wad of cash on the day before Thanksgiving. Since then it has made over 6%. Was this based on a wild assed guess? Not really. Look at the attached chart.

 

Now you can interpret this anyway you like, but my theory is that we need to bridge the 9/11 trough, i.e. ignore it as noise. In doing so, my interpretation is of a massive head and shoulder formation, larger than that of the S & P, with the right shoulder just now being formed to match the left shoulder that peaked slightly above 9000. This is why I think we will see the Dow at around 8000 by year end.

 

When it comes to interest rates I see the 10 year (yield not price) much lower than it is currrently and it will stay down much longer than most people expect. Why? Fear is the stronger motivator. As stocks move down, the need for safety will drive money into US govt. bonds and AAA corporates. Everything else in bond land is suspect and spreads should widen. How long will they stay down? Very difficult to say in this environment which is subject to any number of potential shocks, but I would speculate 6 months minimum, 12 months likely, and possibly longer. I'm pretty much alone on this view. At least nobody else is voicing this view. What causes me to think this? History and logic. Yes markets are emotional, but the interpretation should be logical.

 

Continued in the next post so I can attach another chart.

post-10-1039523599.gif

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I've felt and expressed for a long time that we will experience the 30's all over again (and possibly something worse) but that things would be altered by all the manipulations that have and will occur in an attempt to effect a save. Won't work of course. It will and has merely increased the distortions. Up to this point, all we have done is arrive at the Fall of 1930. In other words what took 1 year back then has taken us 2.5 years to achieve. Now the cowardly way out would be to continue to extend the timeline and say that the market won't bottom untill 2008 or so. Perhaps. My guess is we will get something different. I think that the manipulations up to this point have increased excesses to the point that they won't unwind nicely, but will explode downward and break the spring. There may not even be a stock market by 2008.

 

Look at this little ditty from Pupulava.

United isn?t the only company that is need of spare billions. A report in the latest Elliott Wave Financial Forecast quotes an ominous statistic: liabilities for the 30 Dow Stocks are $3.3 trillion. The net worth of the 30 Dow stocks is only $728 billion of which $218 billion is goodwill. Tangible net worth is only $510 billion, meaning that the Dow 30 stocks have $6.5 dollars of debt for every $1 dollar in equity.

 

Do you understand the ramifications of that? Knowing that previous botoms had Dow stocks at less than book value, just what does this imply if there is no book value of the Dow?

 

In my mind it is imperative to allocate at least 20% of your net worth to physical gold and silver before you do anything else. The guy with the biggest pile of paper is not going to win. Call it a tortise and hare thing. While the hares are rushing about madly shorting stocks and trading paper gold, when it comes crunch time the tortise that held the physical will win. Oh the hares think they can at just the right moment swap paper for the real thing, but it simply may not be possible and the POG at that moment may yeild no more gain than the tortise that sat around munching lettuce, waiting for the hare to keel over dead from a heart attack.

post-10-1039525226.gif

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Maybe they simply replace 'em all with something more viable for the coming years.... Like grave digging conglomerates, casket makers or body bag producers.

 

Better yet, when will they put the first mining stock back in?

We should establish a formal betting pool here at Cap stool on that event. Someone alert that nutty South East Asian Goldbug!

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"Thirty-five years ago was the Summer of Love. Thirty-five years ahead could be the Winter of Resentment. I can picture hordes of wrinkly Fliberal Boomers shuffling along, clutching vinyl LP?s and lava lamps, heading for Strawberry Fields forever, imagining no money, while trying to get satisfaction, and demanding it all be paid for by the government."

 

Attack of the Ill Qaida

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Lol MH I bet theyll be mumbling something about being experienced too. So much for free love...

 

YoBob Its important to remember that everyone on this board is a kook. Generally one must expect to get flamed and when you say something that everyone agrees with, expect to be ignored. Its not personal although its easy to take it that way. Personally I dont think you can stay away but you go ahead and try :rolleyes: What would HRFF do? Skip off to the back country after being flamed by the chief kook, trademark some new terminology, and pick right up where he left off. Maybe you should switch to the third person...

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I've felt and expressed for a long time that we will experience the 30's all over again (and possibly something worse) but that things would be altered by all the manipulations that have and will occur in an attempt to effect a save.

I believe people back in the 30's were less dependent and thus stronger. If the US government and economy disappeared many could survive just fine. Many who owned land were skilled in growing and storing food. They used wood for their energy needs. My grandmother used a wood stove for cooking and heat till sometime in the 70's. They never owed a dime to anyone. Since as long as I can remember my parents have had zero debt and only took a small loan from a relative to complete their house.

 

A depression right now would be a total disaster. The modern lifestyle is one of total dependency. The goobermint will be expected to solve all the problems. What happens when they can't transfer their credit card balance to another 0% offer. I expect the country to move more towards socialism as a result of the coming crisis. The people will start to ask why Bill Gates is paying so little tax and so taxes on Bill Gates will rise. It may not be what I want or what Yobob wants, but just an inevitable result of human nature. Ultimately the goobermint will fail to provide what is expected and massive changes will be made. A big mess.

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