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Landru Guide Us

['Member']Joined: October 21, 2015 at 20:55Last active: February 06, 2016 at 02:51None discussions245 comments

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The Kochs renew my long-standing commitment to the judicious use of the guillotine.
January 26, 2016 at 21:37
Well, the Saudis are burning up their cash reserves at an alarming rate. But they are willing to wait it out and not decrease production in order to i...
January 21, 2016 at 00:42
This sell-off is an odd one in that it seems to be driven by good news (the oil price collapse) and irrelevant news (the China stock market losses). P...
January 16, 2016 at 17:45
Well, the Social Security Fund is invested almost totally in special treasury bills, which are the safest investment on the planet. The concept of SS ...
January 16, 2016 at 03:40
The vast majority of US workers have no pension of any significance - they were destroyed along with unions. Pensions are a luxury of the rich. Most w...
January 16, 2016 at 00:15
I explained in detail. IPOs have no impact on the market or in capitalizing businesses. I told you why. Anybody who understands IPOs beyond what they ...
January 16, 2016 at 00:13
I agree. Few things can jump start an economy better than cheap fuel prices. Right now, tens of millions of Americans who commute are on average getti...
January 15, 2016 at 20:06
The reputable ones do. Every recession is preceded by a growing income gap. Every single one. The larger the gap, the larger the recession. The facts ...
January 15, 2016 at 20:02
It's just shorthand, Bitter, for the rather serpentine process whereby Republicans, particularly the odious conservative Phil Gramm, made sure they we...
January 15, 2016 at 19:57
We already know how the Bush Meltdown happened: deregulation of mortgage lenders (the gutting of Glass-Steagall) plus deregulation of credit default s...
January 15, 2016 at 16:25
Actually, no, they usually aren't. Since most of the market is owned by the rich, they are basing their decision on their particular economic situatio...
January 15, 2016 at 16:20
Ironically, the companies that can issue IPOs are the very ones that don't need capital. If they are so successful that they can go public, they can g...
January 15, 2016 at 16:16
Dave Foreman, of Earth First! fame, suggested the Great Plains be repopulated with bison and native grasses, and open only to subsistence hunters. You...
January 14, 2016 at 21:32
I had personal experience with the Sagebrush Rebellion in the 80s. My view is that they are no different from the Bundy Militia types. They wanted to ...
January 14, 2016 at 18:13
By "repressive tolerance" Marcuse meant tolerance of the violent, repressive structures in an advance industrial society - like wage slavery and capit...
January 12, 2016 at 17:35
But of course leftists aren't occupying public land with guns trying to get free stuff. Rightwing knownothing ranchers are. And the same is true about...
January 12, 2016 at 17:28
I'm amazed you'd think otherwise. Working people have almost no significant ownership in the market. Working people have very little credit issued to ...
January 11, 2016 at 22:38
More whacky economics from somebody who doesn't understand what the stock market does. SSU probably thinks that when he buys IBM stock the money goes ...
January 11, 2016 at 19:51
Investopedia -- a perfect source for your understanding of advanced capitalism! Of course you have it backwards. Recessions cause stock prices to fall...
January 09, 2016 at 04:54
The market has always been a side bet. Like the guy who bets on whether the dice player will crap out or not. You must be aware that when you "invest"...
January 09, 2016 at 04:52
Zizek said it a long time ago.
January 09, 2016 at 04:51
Well, no - it means that the rich have put their money somewhere else. It's not like they care about the US economy or the glories of the stock market...
January 09, 2016 at 04:49
I'm not quite sure what decline here means, but the relationship between unemployment rates and stock prices is well studied. The relationship is comp...
January 08, 2016 at 08:25
I'm well aware of the overall decline in income in the lowest quintile over the past 30 years. The Bush Recession however affected the US economy in o...
January 08, 2016 at 08:04
You need to avoid aggregated information in economic matters. It leads to nonsense (like the Bush tax cuts providing Americans "on average" $1800 of r...
January 08, 2016 at 08:01
Just to gloss this, we have had a credit bottleneck since the Bush Recession. Hardly anybody but the rich can get any credit (except for student loans...
January 08, 2016 at 03:38
This is something most people don't understand. They think that "investing" in the stock market capitalizes the business at issue, which can then prod...
January 08, 2016 at 03:31
No, it doesn't. A credit bottleneck does. A credit bottleneck may also lead to a decline in the market. But a decline in the market does not by itself...
January 08, 2016 at 03:23
I never thought we weren't on the same side, Bitter
January 08, 2016 at 03:14
Yes it does. If they archive, publish, peer review, it means there are institutions for that purpose. Generally that cost money. With more advanced sc...
January 08, 2016 at 02:24
No consistency problem here at all. Einstein lived in a culture that in fact did have scientific institutions (indeed arguably the most advanced in th...
January 08, 2016 at 02:19
The WSJ agitprop likes to talk about how 50% of Americans own stock as if that means working folk's financial well-being is tied up in the market (the...
January 08, 2016 at 02:02
Stock prices have nothing to do with capitalization by foreign investors. The capitalization would have occurred during the IPO. After that stock sale...
January 08, 2016 at 01:55
Credit crunches are serious matters. Hence the Bush Recession was disastrous. They are almost always the result of underregulation of financial instit...
January 08, 2016 at 01:53
You're simply not describing reality. The vast majority of Americans - and even more so in the world - own no substantial stocks. It makes no differen...
January 08, 2016 at 01:51
This may help to see the irrelevancy of stock ownership to 90% of Americans http://inequality.org/wealth-inequality/ http://www.cnbc.com/2014/09/08/th...
January 08, 2016 at 01:35
Read your own link. The amount of stock options are meaningless since the average American has about 10K in savings. Your link is about stocks in any ...
January 08, 2016 at 01:31
No. A huge number do not. 90% of Americans (probably 99%) have no stock options and barely get by on low wages. Stock options are for comfortable peop...
January 08, 2016 at 01:28
Layoffs don't occur when the market collapses. Layoffs occur when there are credit bottlenecks as in the Bush Recession. Markets go down for all sorts...
January 08, 2016 at 01:24
Of course it does, but that's neither the claim nor the issue. The fact is philosophy can't do dentistry. So it matters if we have science or not. And...
January 07, 2016 at 23:56
Yes, knowledge that isn't institutionalized isn't science. It's trial and error. Something people have always done. It has less predictive value than ...
January 07, 2016 at 23:44
By the way, three cheers for science. It makes modern life possible. I love science. Nobody is attacking it here. It just has nothing to offer philoso...
January 07, 2016 at 18:58
Zizek is probably planning a book right now, entitled "I Told You So" But of course hardly anybody but the super rich are in the stock market. Over 85...
January 07, 2016 at 18:51
No my purpose is to show that those who support these thugs by claiming "they have a point" are using counterfactual memes, which is basically all con...
January 07, 2016 at 18:49
We're going to have to disagree on this historically. An interest in nature has nothing to do with science. Neanderthals were interested in nature, an...
January 07, 2016 at 18:44
Hardly anybody does. And even less so as social funding for it dries up. Most philosophers nowadays teach (for minimal pay) while writing books as pub...
January 07, 2016 at 18:32
That's a hobby, not science. Without the Enlightenment and the ultimate institutionalization of science, Lavoisier's work would be an historical curio...
January 07, 2016 at 18:30
Potentially extremely useful since any understanding of fundamental states of matter may have tremendous predictive value. But in any case, this goes ...
January 07, 2016 at 18:25
Yeah but they perform it because people want it and we build schools, publish text books about it, offer jobs, and fund it. They would stop performing...
January 07, 2016 at 04:19
Of course people do other things beside practical prediction. We have literature, art, love, sports, religion. They have no predictive value. But we a...
January 07, 2016 at 04:13