<p>Someone who talks sense:</p>
<p>[Nouriel</a> ‘Dr. Doom’ Roubini: ?Karl Marx Was Right? - International Business Times](<a href=“http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/197468/20110813/roubini-nouriel-roubini-dr-doom-financial-crisis-debt-crisis-europe.htm]Nouriel”>http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/197468/20110813/roubini-nouriel-roubini-dr-doom-financial-crisis-debt-crisis-europe.htm)</p>
<p>he has been the voice of reason for over 5 years now…</p>
<p>People are predisposed to fearful when it comes to the economy and investing. That is why idiots like Roubini and Krugman are hits with in the media. If you listen to Roubini you will notice all he does is criticize and identify every worst case scenario. He rarely comes up with logical solutions even obvious ones. </p>
<p>As much as I hate China, it clearly shows that Marx was wrong and that capitalism is the best way for a people to have better lives. </p>
<p>If you want to know the solution (and the only solution) to our current economic problems it is this – reduce the cost of energy in all forms and economic prosperity will follow. Yes, it is that simple. If our country adopted policies designed to lower the cost of energy, significant economic growth would return.</p>
<p>^^ The “idiot” Roubini was one of the very few people who saw the forest for the trees and sounded the alarm in 2006 about the sub prime mortgage crisis, and its ramifications on wall street and main street, long before it hit.
So if that is your definition of an" idiot", I wonder who you think is actually “smart”?
on second thought, never mind, I can guess…</p>
<p>It isn’t the capitalist philosophy which has been proven to be problematic. It is the philosophies of Karl Marx and others like him which have screwed up economies here and abroad. Every single aspect of the current economic crisis can be tied to these. Every single one.</p>
<p>If you want to see something really scary, watch the boring but frighteningly realistic movie Atlas Shrugged. If you’ve read the book, which is great, then you already know what I am talking about. It shows where we are headed and why (and how we got to where we are today). Might be good to get a heads-up.</p>
<p>If you are looking for a real voice of reason, it can be found there.</p>
<p>Echhhh…I can’t stand Rand.</p>
<p>I guess 2001-2008 did not happen.</p>
<p>Low taxes. Low regulations. And the economy blew. </p>
<p>You want low taxes and low regulations. Pakistan.</p>
<p>Who said that nothing wrong was done from 2001-2008? The more we move away from true capitalism, the worse it gets. That is why things have gotten so much worse from 2008 until now.</p>
<p>Pakistan is a bad example. Ridiculous - sorry. No, I am not debating that one.</p>
<p>"I guess 2001-2008 did not happen.</p>
<p>Low taxes. Low regulations. And the economy blew." </p>
<p>Well summarized, LOL! Too bad some people seem to have really short memories or blinders on…</p>
<p>“That is why things have gotten so much worse from 2008 until now.”</p>
<p>What HAVE you been smoking?? The unregulated, capitalistic system nearly went off a cliff!
I’m obviously talking to a brick wall…
so I’m out of here…ta ta!</p>
<p>Let’s have the government pull out Of the economy. Let’s just go with capitalism.</p>
<p>Let’s start Monday.</p>
<p>I think the markets couldn’t even open. Decimation.</p>
<p>I wonder how many credit default swaps have been written on Grecce defaults…and Italy…Spain…Ireland…etc.?</p>
<p>People are social animals. We are not mountain lions. What we do as indiviuals impacts others. </p>
<p>People take various amounts of risk. And many people blow up. And those people can
cause other people to blow up who didn’t even take much risk. </p>
<p>But let’s ignore all that. Everyone does what they want.</p>
<p>I’m sure nobody would risk more than they own, and would not impact others.</p>
<p>Um, these aren’t the best of times … not by a long shot. As DW’s cousin says, we won’t get better as a nation until we implement Steve Forbes’ flat tax, reduce corporate income taxes to zero, and amend the Constitution to eliminate the separation of church and state. (Yes, he’s serious.)</p>
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<p>Actually there were many people who raised questions about sub prime loans, but no one was willing to do anything about it.</p>
<p>Yes, Roubini was right in his criticism of the sub prime loans, but no rational person believes that the trillion stimulus of 2008 was too small. Roubini believes we should have borrowed more money from our children and wasted it creating false demand. He is an idiot plain and simple. </p>
<p>People cannot figure out why the stimulus did not work. I can tell you why. The bulk of it was not targeted at creating jobs that create other jobs and the underlying concept is flawed. If you borrow money to stimulate economic growth, the amount of the debt offsets the wealth created by the economic growth. It is the illusion of prosperity that is created when economic growth is funded by debt.</p>
<p>I love listening to people say spending money is just good Keynesian economics. Keynesian economics assumes that government holds surpluses in the good times and then spends those surpluses in the bad time. We spend borrowed money, not surplus. That’s why it does not create wealth.</p>
<p>The economy blows because nobody has had a good new idea in going on 20 years in the US. Tech is still living off what is left of the Net boom in the 90’s. And for many that boom was a bust too.
What is needed is a great NEW idea–power from peanuts or the pill that makes cancer go away. Right now we got nothin. And neither does anyone else. Hence–no growth in any developed countries to speak of.</p>
<p>^ Barrons is correct of course. The past decade has been about the erosion of products and services. TSA is good for air travel, right? High energy prices? Fewer banks, each of which makes fewer loans? And then there’s the big one … corporations with loads of cash, and no obvious place to invest it.</p>
<p>What about Warren Buffet’s comment about raising his and other extremely wealthy people’s taxes? Another person who understands something.</p>
<p>Not as much there as WB or many others might think. Most is invested and not easily taken without disrupting the economy even more.</p>
<p>[The</a> Tax Foundation - Warren Buffetts Proposed Tax Hikes Would Provide Insignificant Revenue](<a href=“http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/27547.html]The”>http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/27547.html)</p>
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<p>His view makes sense to people as long as he only talks about the rich. As Barrons points out, Buffet’s approach is not a solution. It merely satisfies class envy. If Buffet said that his taxes AND the taxes of everyone else should go up, he would be right but no one would applaud him. My income taxes are too low and Warren Buffett’s lunch money is probably more than I will earn in a lifetime, not that I am complaining.</p>
<p>“Class envy” is an ad hominem attack, not a rational counter-argument. If the average federal tax paid by the top 1% of taxpayers (i.e. $400K per year and up) was 30% instead of 20% (as it is now) it would net between $150 and $200 billion a year - that’s $1.5 to 2 trillion over a decade. (My numbers come straight from the IRS website.) Most working people take home 70% of their earnings (or less) - why should the wealthy pay a lesser share of their income in taxes? Is that observation “class envy” or simply an acknowledgment of the reality Buffet spoke of? Is proposing that the wealthy should pay the same proportion of their income in taxes as everyone else “class warfare?” Seriously?</p>
<p>Class warfare and class envy is the new mantra of certain media.</p>
<p>I like Roubini,enjoy reading his insight…However, he was saying the economy and real estate was going to deteriorate LONG before it happened…If you say something frequently enough, it likely might come true…</p>
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<p>Which is precisely why I am right. Comparing corporate borrowing and government borrowing is comparing apples and oranges. </p>
<p>When a corporation borrows money, it intends to fund its operations devoted to the creation of wealth for its shareholders. When the federal government borrows money from future generations to buy tanks, for example, it may create a few defense industry jobs, but it does not create any wealth because a military is not creating wealth for US citizens. The wealth created from the new defense jobs is more than offset by the debt created from the borrowed money and the years and years of interest on that money. If the military’s function was to fight wars and take over the assets of other countries (as was done hundreds of years ago), then you might have an argument that borrowing money to fund the operations of government would be profitable and create wealth. </p>
<p>Very few of the functions of the federal government are devoted to wealth creation for the country as a whole. Most of the functions of a properly running corporation are devoted to wealth creation for shareholders.</p>