Delay = RINO
 

Yes.

Please find me a reputable economist who thinks this is true.

Don't worry -- I'll wait.

I think the commodities futures market was bloated high while the Clinton were co-presidents. Unwarrented confidence in their ability to run the show. Don't know if that ties in.

Please find me a reputable economist who's predicted anything other than his next shit with accuracy above 14% in the past century.

I've actually heard what Spanky said from a very close relative in banking numerous times. But what the fuck does a banking exec know compared to an economist?

#15
 

Is that Thurman Munson? If it is, nice fucking avatar!

Find me one that doesn't (and I hate to break it to you, but Reich is not considered a reputable economist except on the blogs you frequent).

Don't worry -- I'll wait

Delay = RINO
 

http://cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=1821&sequence=0#table1


"on-budget" (i.e., not counting Social Security) surplus in 1999 -- 2 billion. In 2000, 87 billion.

Then -- 2001 -- 32.5 billion deficit
2002 -- 317.5 billion
2003 - 538.4 billion
2004 - 567.4 billion

Exactly. If his predictions are wrong about the deficit he loses his job. If an economist is wrong he, well, .............

As Clinton said the most powerful person in the world is the bond market. Clinton sucked up to the bond market when he first got in (making his lament in "All Too Human" that he was an Eisenhauer Republican). The markets gave him the benefit of the doubt, but when he raised taxes and couldn't reign in spending in the "93 deficit reduction act" the market lost all confidence in him and jumped over 8.

Once the Repubs took Congress confidence was restored and has stayed ever since. Bush deficits have not wrecked it. However, I think Bush's honeymoon is about over. He was given a pass for the recession and the war and all. But if Delay doesn't shut up about there being no more fat in the budget, long term interest rates will probably start climbing again.

My prediction is that if the long term bond market decides the Repubs can't be trusted, and they already know the Dems can't be trusted, long term rates will shoot way past 8. Either we get really high growth rates, or some spending cuts, or it is game over.

#15
 

You will be happy to know that there is a Thurman Munson constitutionaly theory. http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/...terview_10.pdf

Thank you.

Game, set, match!!!! Well done Spankinator!!!!

You seem fond of explanations that cite a single cause, in this case the election of a Republican congress. Do you really think that is a panacea?

And I do not understand the importance of a rate of "8". Why do you think that number in particular has any importance?

8 is just the highest number we have seen in a while. I think, if the current deficits are not tackled soon 8 will seem like a low number.

Congress passes the budget. How many times has congress declared the presidents budget DOA? Pretty much every budget for every president from Carter through Clinton.

When Bond traders talk about the budget they talk about Ways and Means, and appropriation bills etc. In the campaign, communication with the public requires that everyone pretend that the President controls the budget. But educated people should know that this is not true.

Clinton was a centrist and tried to control his party but he had to give way to many concessions to the left of the party to get his budgets and even then he had trouble passing them.

The Republican take over of congress was a big event. For a while, at least while Gingrich was in power, there was fiscal dicsipline that had not been seen in a while. Because of this discipline rates dropped to levels not seen in a long time.

To be honest, I am surprized they have not climbed higher recently.

If you know people in the bond markets. Ask them. I am pretty sure what I am saying is conventional wisdom at the fixed income departments at any investment bank. If they don't predict the deficits right they lose money. If they get it right they make a ton. Anyone know a bond trader at Lehman or at Goldman?

When I was in Japan, all the long term bond traders of Japanese government bonds (I knew most of the major ones) kept predicting that the budget would stay out of control and that the Japanes economy would not turn around.

The Japanese government kept trying to convince people that the growth would return, revenue would increase (because of the growth) and the deficit would be dealth with. The bond traders would have none of it. The Japanese government accused them of intentionally hurting the economy, of being over pessismisstic. Every day in the Japan Times there was some Japanese Economist talking about how a return to prosperity was just around the corner.

That was 1994. It is 2005 and the Japanese government still hasn't gotten its fiscal house in order. The bond traders were right. They had to be, because that is how they make their money.

It was for our budget problems. Obviously they didn't accomplish many things and fix many things. But fiscal discipline was not one of their problems.

Delay = RINO
 

It amuses me that you will not believe that the projections have been inflated so that this clima can be made. It does not surprise me that you do not acknowledge that this has been pointed out to you before.

Kelo meets Katrina
 

This idea makes a lot of sense to me:

Kelo was a bad decision, (articles here and here). But let's USE IT anyhow - (while we can; before the most effected states (LA & MISS) pass laws banning the practices which Kelo allows: chiefly, the seizure of private land by the state in order to give it to a private developer whose redevelopment of said land will have public benefit).

Vast tracts of fouled (and previously BLIGHTED) New Orleans property should be bought by a federal government trust - (overseen by the likes of Paul Volker and Colin Powell and Rudy Giuliani and Tommy Franks and Mario Cuomo and Paul Ueberroth and real estate developers Hovnanian, Trump and Rudin).

Then -- AFTER a master plan is developed, with new state of the art utility, port, and communications infrastructure mapped out and finaced by the commission -- neighborhoods should be put up for competitive bidding by PRIVATE developers.

The private developers would submit master plans of their neighborhood redevelopment - which would have to conform to the federal master plan for the overall city and the neighborhood. And their redevelopment plans would have to conform to historical architectutral standards set up by the commission to protect the CHARACTER of the city.

Private developers redeveloping NEIGHBORHOODS en mass (or at least redeveloping several square blocks at a time) would work faster, cheaper, and bring completed projects to the market sooner than anyone or anything else.

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for us to redesign and redevelop New Orleans in a way which will leave the mistakes of the past in the past: no more ghetto projects; no more over-crowded poverty-stricken de facto segregated blocks, no more crack-houses.

Let's use Kelo. Let's begin NOW.

3000 plus reasons why America can't affourd a Dimocrit again
 

I have to admit, I was surprised to see Bush criticizing Reagan, his father, and himself like that.

Nice try, but I asked first.

And like *that*, the constitutional responsibility for doing things like raising taxes switches from Congress to the President. Ladies and gentlemen, that is how it's done.

does it make anyone feel better if i apologize for this sort of behavior now?

Delay = RINO
 

You general statements aappear to me to be all true.

However, they absolutely does not counter either the Captain's specific statements or the numbers he cited which underly his statement. In fact, they seem to be non sequiturs.

Let's roll the tape:

Captain: "Here are the numbers showing that these oranges are larger than in past years. Based on those numbers, it appears that the unusual changes in the weather patterns which affected the growing season may account for this phenomenon."

Spanky: "Actually, this is not true. Oranges are, in fact, orange in color -- unless not fully ripened, in which case they are green. They most commonly originate in Florida. Oranges are also generally roundish.

"BTW -- we do not have the benefits of oranges from other countries due to those damn Democrats who hate free trade."

What did I miss?

S_A_M

Delay = RINO
 

Yes - but it was such B.S. I did not think it worthy a resonse. The projections are always off. Unless you think Bush can perfectly predict the future, your accusation is absurd.

Why should I care if you asked first. I am not going to waste my time doing research because you can't face the truth.

The bond market made the mistake of assuming that since Clinton was the head of the Democrat party, and the party controlled congress, that he could have some influence on the budget.

They were mistaken.

Switch? Are you trying to imply that I am wrong when I keep insisting that the budget is controlled by Congress.

Or do you think it is absurd to assume that if the President and the Congress are of the same party that the president might have some influence on what Congress does.

Delay = RINO
 

Let's try and pay attention. Did you miss his statment about differentials? Did you miss his comment where assumed that growth in receipts should equal economic growth? Explain to me how my countering one of the critical assumptions underlying his argument is a non sequitur?

Just compensation
 

New Orleans was a poorly planned city. With the destruction of large swaths of the city it would be foolish to rebuild it exactly the way it was before if the cities growth was not well planned out. In a metropolitan area you need to be able to do some redisigning etc. when stuff changes or when past government planned poorly. In a metropolitan area property is an easily priceable commodity. People's attachment to sacrosanc property rights in the city is just unrealistic. As long as there is just compensation, cities needs to be able to move stuff around to make the city liveable for everyone.

It's a rude shock to discover that I will be just like Hank when I'm 50.

Delay = RINO
 

I don't need to think that Bush's people can predict the future perfectly to think that they are inflating publicly announced initial estimates so that they can later crow that the hellacious deficits they're running up are nonetheless less than the even hellaciously larger deficits previously predicted.

Oh, good one.

It's impressive that the entire bond market could get a matter of constitutional law so wrong, especially since you were there to set them straight.

Delay = RINO
 

Do you have any evidence to support this theory?

Delay = RINO
 

I guess I'm just not smart enough to follow this Board.

The key to communication is how the message is received and understood by by your audience. If you think you say X and everyone else heard something else, you did not say X. The problem may lie with the speaker and not the audience.

S_A_M

Delay = RINO
 

I do not believe I made these assumptions. I am simply trying to test your hypothesis, and making an initial stab at it based on very broad data. If you'd like your hypothesis to hold up, I'd suggest digging deeper into the data.

Your hypothesis was the deficit would have been eliminated without the 1993 Tax Act. That is a fine hypothesis, and I would have been happy to see it borne out. If it were borne out, I could pay less in taxes without worrying about it coming back to haunt us later on. To test the hypothesis, I looked at some very raw, general numbers and saw that in the 1990s, there was a very significant growth in tax receipts, much more significant that the growth in the economy. If you can find an explanation, and I buy bracket creep as a partial but by no mean full explanation, for the full variation, that's great. If the differential in the big numbers was 10% or even 20%, I would have said items like bracket creap may well explain it. Does anyone know if there is data somewhere scoring how much money was raised by the 1993 Act itself? While I know the Republicans claimed it was the largest tax increase in History, I do not have any data for how much money it raised.

We also saw a growth in governmental expenditures that was slower than the growth in the economy. That supports your hypothesis somewhat, and likely comes in part from the "peace dividend". See - I've been doing some of your work. But, that reduction was not enough to have eliminated the deficit on its own.

I will offer a contrary hypothesis, which is that a systematic government policy of deficit reduction was maintained in the 1990s that through a unique set of developments that resulted in both the Democrats and the Republicans backing it. Without Clinton and the Democrats, the tax increase component of deficit reduction likely would have been abandoned. Without the Republicans, the reduction of government expenditures may well have been substantially less (though, note, Republicans have been good at defending military expenditures, particularly during the Bush administration but rapidly increasing military expenditures were also a hallmark of the Reagan years, so it may just be that government expenditures would have been different and that Democrats also need some credit on holding down expenditures).

I will also posit a separate hypothesis, which is that deficit reduction and a balanced budget can only be accomplished by general consensus, because of the tragedy of the commons theory. That means that a high level of partisanship in government, as we have now, is a very bad indicator for deficits. As long as there are heavily fought partisan battles, whoever has the balance of power, the Republicans in this case, are going to try to spend their way to political victory. Whether you think that is a good thing or not, of course, will depend on how partisan you are.

Delay = RINO
 

I'd be happy if anyone posted an intelligent article taking any position on what the reasons were for bond rates in the 1990s.

While I really do not believe bond markets are the end-all and be-all of economic health, and have no opinion as to whether bond traders are particularly intelligent or insightful in general (don't they mostly yell loudly in a pit for a living?), at this point I have the sense that everyone's position on what happened is based more on oversimplified partisan rhetoric than on anything that may have happened in the bond market in the 1990s. Will someone please prove me wrong?

Just compensation
 

Just a question for you and the other poster on New Orleans, who mentioned Kelo. Won't some level of redesign and rationalization occur without government intervention? I know that Chicago after the fire was rebuilt in a radically more rational way, but I don't know how much of that was free market forces at work and how much was government intervention.

It strikes me that a rational real estate developer has a better chance of assembling a useful larger parcel for development in the affected area than they had before Katrina, regardless of anything the government does.

Especially since they only make money if they are right, which is why they are always right.

(Except in 1994, when the bond market took a bath. Uh, Piper Jaffray, anyone?)

Delay = RINO
 

You don't really understand how this board works yet, do you? Intelligent article on the subject. Hold you breath waiting for that one. Ha.

Delay = RINO
 

I couldn't even find an obnoxiously long analysis piece to post as "my thoughts" on the subject.

Someone needs to ask Thottam to come here, or maybe Plated, someone controversial.

Delay = RINO
 

I thought I now waited and ridiculed anyone who posted on the bond markets without citing an intelligent article? Or, if someone cites an article, I post ridiculing it as stupid, partisan, and illiterate? Is that not how it works?

By the way, what is a RINO?

Thoughts?
 

I've been seeing articles on the impending retirements of boomers, and the possible effect of these retirements. It's going to start having an effect on me quite soon (about 4 people I work with fairly closely will be eligible for early retirement (we have a DB plan) in the next few years). There was an article in the WSJ a week or two ago, too.

• It is a mistake to think that U.S. economic gains for the past decades will continue based solely on technology breakthroughs and plentiful numbers of skilled workers. There has never been anything like today's aging population, and the potential economic meltdown it might bring on several fronts.
  From 1980-2002, the U.S. workforce exploded by 50% due to the addition of 38 million baby boomers. Women also flooded into the workforce. Now the baby boomers are aging, and in the decade following 2010, the principal talent pool for managers and workers under age 45 will begin shrinking by 6%. The structural demographic forces are now in place for a real skill war for talent during at least the next 20 years, and the problem will be worldwide.

http://www.benefitnews.com/finance/detail.cfm?id=8081