Re: We're always in the 1970s.
 

Ah, the investment professionals. I seem to recall some issues with them and their money deployment skills, but that was from like two years ago so I don't really remember what happened.

Re: We're always in the 1970s.
 

I guess those brainy types never drive on federal highways. Or fly anywhere. They never take drugs or use treatments developed at NIH or with NIH grants. They never make use of universities, or use products developed from research done at federally sponsored universities.

All I can say is that these brainy people don't go out much, and must live sick and boring lives.

Is it really that hard to see how it isn't going to be enough if it's more than offset by state budget cuts?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

My fiscal reform plan proposes taxing billionaire democrats and republicans alike for the good of the nation, no matter whether their billions came direct from the government teat through wasteful stimulus giveaways, or through the miracle of free market financial wizardry such as selling distressed debt to the government and taking 0% loans from the Fed. Hence I am above this partisan squabble and have triangulated you all. Check. Mate.

Re: We're always in the 1970s.
 

Of course, much of the stimulus and just about all of the TARP essentially did invest in private enterprise. It is vastly easier to add teachers, for example, and generate more jobs per million invested than to invest in private enterprise and get the same bang for the buck on job creation.

The only situations where I've seen where I think there was more than one job for every $250K of federal investment were nonprofits hiring at pretty low wages or some (but not all) of the biotech mini-grants given out as part of the therapeutic discovery tax credit/grant program, where the funding went to startups who were desperately understaffed.

Otherwise, yeah, to create the jobs companies needed things like capital on their balance sheet, equipment for someone to use or operate, etc. We no longer live in a labor intensive economy.

Re: We're always in the 1970s.
 

you know, I'm sure at Enormous State U, then Florida Coastal and now amongst your ambulance chasing partners, you were/are seen as having a sparkling knack for satire, but that ties back into the IQ and education of your audience.

You may want to drop the act in the presence of Ivy leaguers, because you do not pull it off at our level. :(

Re: We're always in the 1970s.
 

Look, I know your unresolved resentment issues about working on Dorm Crew make you lash out and lose friends here, but as one who believes in the dignity of all labor I can assure you that I'm not judging you, ok?

Re: We're always in the 1970s.
 

I actually did that job. No scarves for me but about $100 in returnable bottle deposit fees! cha-ching!

The hottest girl in the dorm, like could have been in the BYU dance group hot, walked by me one morning as I was mopping the hallway. She gave me a look like you and I will give Adder if the three of us ever get together and he tries one of his jokes, her look was like "I wish they would make these people finish cleaning before I need to walk to the cafeteria." I had no chance with her, but still it was piercing, and the real fear was maybe some girls on my level feel the same, but hide it better?

this conference call will never end
 

Larry Summers and I probably both agree with you that the government does not deploy capital efficiently relative to private enterprise -- I'm pretty sure about Summers and very sure myself -- although there are some times when government actually is more efficient.* But that isn't an answer to what Summers is saying. Because in the current economy, government spending isn't crowding out other forms of spending. In usual circumstances, the fear about government spending is that it displaces other economic activity. As he explains, times are different right now. If you disagree with that, you have to actually engage with the point.

Whether or not the government deploys capital "efficiently," that capital stimulates the economy. If it takes three bureaucrats to process the paperwork for a construction loan, and those are three bureaucrats who otherwise wouldn't have jobs (if they would then that's not a cost), then you have three more people working, receiving a paycheck, and spending money on things. (Hank understands this, so he's trying to be difficult by imagining that government stimulus disappears into bank accounts of Democratics fatcats, never to be spent, except he then forgot that he understands this and started imagining that they spend it on Opus, which also would stimulate the economy.)

It is certainly true that federal expenditures can stimulate the economy in different ways, more and less effective, and that the stimulus bill has some less effective channels, thanks to Congress (and particularly to conservative hostility to some of the forms of spending with higher multipliers). But that's not a question about whether it works at all, that's a question about how best to do the sort of thing Summers is talking about.

Most Republicans are very happy not to stimulate the economy because they don't want to see Obama get a legislative victory, and they have a fundamental philosophical objection to anything the government does that doesn't involve putting people in prison or killing people in foreign countries. If people are unemployed, it's their fault for losing a job. But they know that this doesn't go over well, so they contrive economic theories to explain why those are the best outcomes.

* E.g., in healthcare spending or student loans, the government covers enough people that it can strike a better deal with providers when the Republicans let it.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Were you drunk when you wrote that sentence?

Would it have mattered?

Re: We're always in the 1970s.
 

Professionals like Lehman Bros?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Guess" not "guy." I'm otherwise proud of the post though.

Re: We're always in the 1970s.
 

Beware: Hank will be along shortly to opine that you attended a State School.

Re: We're always in the 1970s.
 

Gosh, I tremble at the prospect of being proven a lesser person than the King of Detroit.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Ty says there is no evidence of democrat fatcats getting billions from the federal teat, so I'd sure appreciate a cite.

Michele Bachmann to Black People: Y R U So Mad
 

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/2...essly-slavery/

Remarkable.

But, you know, I give her a lot of credit for finally coming out and saying unequivocally that Slavery Was Bad, because for a while there it seemed like maybe she thought it was sort of a good thing for black families.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

See, e.g., Hank says they do, and he spied on girls while he was cleaning Harvard toilets, so he knows a thing or two about teats.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Weed wants to harness Soros to balance the budget.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

You've stooped beneath Ty's level, citing to message boards. Can't you even come up with a blog cite? Or something from a published work of fiction?

Re: Michele Bachmann to Black People: Y R U So Mad
 

John Q Adams was quite the prodigy--9 when the Declaration was signed and 20 when the Constitution was adopted, yet still a Founding Father!

Re: Michele Bachmann to Black People: Y R U So Mad
 

This was six months ago. Bachmann has to have done something stupid and/or offensive more recently.

Let's keep current, people. Thurgreed doesn't re-post boobies from last January, we should maintain similar standards here.

Re: Michele Bachmann to Black People: Y R U So Mad
 

Everyone's a critic. I needed context for the more recent, gay marriage fiasco thing that was the second part of the post.

BTW, I see no boobies - political or otherwise -- from you, pal. The internet demands content! Give us content!

Re: this conference call will never end
 

Yes, but at what cost? That is the question that the left never asks or answers.

This is hogwash at every level. Forget about patriotism and just doing the right thing. Most members (other than the ultra safe districts) of congress are more vulnerable the worse the economy is. We have seen massive shifts in congress over the last 6 years because of this.

Re: We're always in the 1970s.
 

They probably would have done a better job. And the Lehman BK was very stimulative to the economy (or so Ty would probably argue). Look how many jobs it created.

In all serious, I wasn't thinking just about investment professionals. I was thinking about people who deploy capital based on qualifications other than economic (cronyism, social engineering, etc.)

Re: this conference call will never end
 

I thought Club said something similar, but if he did I can't find it right now.

But you should both know that this is an inherently Keynesian critique. Fresh water types and Austrians would see this as a good thing, making more money available to borrow, driving down interest rates, and magically returning us to growth.

Rest assured that I will remember your statist tendencies and remind you of them when next you advocate cutting taxes as stimulative policy.

Re: this conference call will never end
 

You said it was $850 million (ignoring that 40% of that is tax cuts).

Are there other costs you have in mind? Or are you arguing that there private investment is being crowded out despite interest rates at zero and all indications being that the market clearing rate for loanable funds, if there is one, should be negative?

Re: this conference call will never end
 

I'm arguing that the ROI is not sufficient to justify the spend given our balance sheet.

Re: this conference call will never end
 

reading the board the last few days I realized the solution to all the country's ills. Tax porn. You log onto youporn there is a $10 Federal tax (we'd have to come up with some way to make the billing not appears on guy's credit card bill- and somebody run the idea by atticus to look for constitutional questions). They would be some stimulus right there.
And, the beauty of it, The republicans would have to support it. For all their craziness the one constant is they all claim to be agaisnt porn.

Re: this conference call will never end
 

We can currently borrow at negative real interest rates. Any ROI is justified in those terms.

And, of course, we disagree on the health of our balance sheet.

Re: this conference call will never end
 

To the contrary, it is Democrats who are for Pay-Go and Republicans who jettison it.

We are suffering massive, massive costs from >9% unemployment and from factories and other resources going unused right now, and there is just this massive myopia about those costs. Those are the costs we ought to be concerned about. Meanwhile, government revenues as a proportion of GDP are lower they they have been since you were born. "What cost?" The reason we have budget deficits is that taxes keep dropping.

You have an entire crew of Republicans in the House who are playing Russian Roulette with the naiton's credit rating and the economy. Give me a break. None of them are saying, yes, we ought to stimulate the economy but we must find the most efficient way to do it.

Re: this conference call will never end
 

You're arguing that it's too expensive to do what Larry Summers wants to do, but I still can't figure out whether you disagree with what he thinks the problem is.

Re: this conference call will never end
 

Suicide centers. Death panels. Arsenic in McDonald's.

Re: We're always in the 1970s.
 

I understand and in many ways agree with you on the inefficiency of goverment. But, I think you frequently overstate the efficiency of private business.

In this context, moreover, you overstate the value of efficiency, as if that were the only relevant consideration. The most cost-efficient way to build a project is often not the best way to create jobs in the US. The Bay Bridge created a fuckload of jobs, but the majority of those are in China where, for cost-efficiency reasons, the steel is fabricated. That's fine -- the purpose of that project wasn't to create jobs, but to fix a bridge vital to an economic sub-region. But the purpose of the stimulus was different.

As for the stimulus, yes -- the per-job cost was ridiculously high. I would argue that this is largely due to the amount of stimulus that was in the form of tax cuts. Targetted spending on real infrastructure projects would have been much better, but the political clusterfuck of DC prevented that.

Re: this conference call will never end
 

Clubby is dead set against these tax cuts we can't afford, and you should be too.

Re: We're always in the 1970s.
 

Question: how are people determining the per-job cost of the stimulus bill? Perhaps someone can send me to a cite or site where that calculation is made.

Re: this conference call will never end
 

Seriously, if Obamacare actually HAD called for "Death Panels" -- in other words, a group of people who could say "it is not worth spending $1 million of public money to give a 90-year old woman an additional year of life hooked up to a dialysis machine" -- could any rational person argue that this would be a bad thing?

Re: We're always in the 1970s.
 

Sorry, I'm not your google-bitch.

Re: We're always in the 1970s.
 

Look, you're the one concluding the cost per job was extraordinarily high, a conclusion neither you nor Michele Bachmann nor Clubby seem to be giving me a source for - I understand why Michele and Clubby don't want to think about the question.

And what is this google-bitch bitch - are you getting lazy on a Friday?

Re: this conference call will never end
 

Your view is that the Black Death was stimulative? I believe that's at odds with historical economic understanding.

Re: this conference call will never end
 

Actually, it was pretty good for the survivors. Things were down for a while, but there is an argument that the economic surplus caused by the rapid population drop was one of the causes of the European Renaissance. There are a lot of historians who would argue (and have argued) that it was, in the long term, stimulative.

Of course, the drop in population was worldwide, so maybe it's not really the best explanation.

Do you actually read history?

Re: this conference call will never end
 

You are talking about a very long term.

Yes, and the near and mid-term effects were devastating. Which should be obvious.

ETA: Alternate answer: I like to get all my medieval history from Ken Follett.