Politics: A new beginning

[rufus leeking]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Fox is bad, blah blah blah

here's more evidence that fox is biased.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,101680,00.html

The increase in gross domestic product (search), the broadest measure of the economy's performance, in the July-September quarter was more than double the 3.3 percent rate registered in the second quarter, the Commerce Department (search) reported Thursday.

The 7.2 percent pace marked the best showing since the first quarter of 1984. It exceeded analysts' forecasts for a 6 percent growth rate for third-quarter GDP, which measures the value of all goods and services produced within the United States.

the economy is doing great indeed. everyone knows the tax cuts for the rich are killing the economy*

*what's the code for indent?

[Connect_the_Dots]

Originally posted by rufus leeking
here's more evidence that fox is biased.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,101680,00.html



" everyone knows the tax cuts for the rich are killing the economy*"

Wrong. Unrestrained spending is killing the economy.

Certain tax cuts (that create incentives to invest) help the economy. Other tax cuts (like the ones to the lower income tax payers who will spend it on immediate consumption) don't help the economy.

If you can't tell which is which, give me your money and I will make sure it goes to the right places--like my hookers and strippers fund.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Connect_the_Dots
Wrong. Unrestrained spending is killing the economy.

Certain tax cuts (that create incentives to invest) help the economy. Other tax cuts (like the ones to the lower income tax payers who will spend it on immediate consumption) don't help the economy.

If you can't tell which is which, give me your money and I will make sure it goes to the right places--like my hookers and strippers fund.

An interesting economic theory that should work if investment lags demand. But at present I do not believe there is a shortage of investment money. Indeed, there is significant investment money sitting on the sidelines waiting for the right time to deploy.

Right now, tax policy should be geared toward encouraging spending (e.g., the hookers and strippers fund) rather than encouraging investment. My bet is that if you encouarge investment right now, much of it will be overseas (I've been making a killing this year on my overseas stocks!).

Maybe you want to connect the dots for me and show me how unrestrained spending is killing the economy. Most of my clients are pretty eager to see some of that spending!

[Replaced_Texan]

Fox nearly sued itself over 'Simpsons' parody: Matt Groening

[Connect_the_Dots]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Right now, tax policy should be geared toward encouraging spending (e.g., the hookers and strippers fund) rather than encouraging investment.

I'll address the rest of your post after lunch (b/c occasionally they make me work too). But what do you mean encouraging spending helps? If lower rates encourage you to buy a car today that you would've bought next year, then you are really only shifting future consumption to the present and postponing the recession for a few months (and likely making it worse). What you need to do is structurally reform the economy (cut spending AND cut taxes) in order to get you out of a fiscal mess.

[notcasesensitive]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Fox nearly sued itself over 'Simpsons' parody: Matt Groening

from the story: According to Groening, Fox took exception took a Simpsons' version of the Fox News rolling news ticker which parodied the channel's anti-Democrat stance, with headlines like "Do Democrats Cause Cancer?"


So does Fox News just completely lack a sense of humor or what? Lucky their motto isn't "fair, balanced and kind of witty".

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Connect_the_Dots
you are really only shifting future consumption to the present and postponing the recession for a few months (and likely making it worse).

Huh? the only real issue is can the economy look good enough over the next year to remove any ability to challenge Bush. right?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Connect_the_Dots
But what do you mean encouraging spending helps? If lower rates encourage you to buy a car today that you would've bought next year, then you are really only shifting future consumption to the present and postponing the recession for a few months (and likely making it worse). What you need to do is structurally reform the economy (cut spending AND cut taxes) in order to get you out of a fiscal mess.

As in all things, grasshopper, balance is key. We saw a lot of investment in the dot com era, but it wasn't sustainable because it was never supported by demand. And if we look at the balance today, the biggest reason you see investment sitting on the sidelines is because investors are looking for indications that there will be demand for products and services that they invest in.

If you want to encourage investment today, giving tax breaks isn't going to do much. The tax break is only an incentive when (a) an investor expects to make something on the investment and (b) there are not old carryover tax losses to offset the income or gain. The fact that there are huge carryforward losses among investors dampens any impact a tax cut might otherwise have, and the fact that most investors are trying to figure out where there is enough demand to justify an investment in the first place means the tax cut is not addressing what is out of whack right now.

[As an aside, of course you do more by encouraging current consumption than accelerate future consumption. In your example, you have shortened the life of the current asset by one year and you have probably also put a used car on the market. If everyone bought a car every four years instead of every five (or whatever they do), you would permanently increase new car consumption by 25% (the average 100 people would buy 25 instead of 20 cars each year). You also would put used cars on the market, having a variety of ripple effects (potentially even on the cost of new cars). But this isn't my main point.]

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
If anyone still doubts that FOX is ideologically biased, here is an account from the inside, from someone who worked there for six years.

• The fact is, daily life at FNC is all about management politics. I say this having served six years there - as producer of the media criticism show, News Watch, as a writer/producer of specials and (for the last year of my stay) as a newsroom copy editor. Not once in the 20+ years I had worked in broadcast journalism prior to Fox - including lengthy stays at The Associated Press, CBS Radio and ABC/Good Morning America - did I feel any pressure to toe a management line. But at Fox, if my boss wasn't warning me to "be careful" how I handled the writing of a special about Ronald Reagan ("You know how Roger [Fox News Chairman Ailes] feels about him."), he was telling me how the environmental special I was to produce should lean ("You can give both sides, but make sure the pro-environmentalists don't get the last word.")

I love it. Every news show since the beginning of television has had a left leaning biased. Now, after some 40 plus years of television, there is finally one which leans right and the left goes crazy. How does it feel, Ty, for peolple not to admit that Fox leans right? Well we on this side are used to it.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Connect_the_Dots
Wrong. Unrestrained spending is killing the economy.

Please explain. The convential wisdom is that unrestrained spending creates large deficets which raise interest rates. Well we have the first two, but not the third, so I'm wondering whether your statement is true.*

*Not that I am an unrestrained spending fan.

[notcasesensitive]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I love it. Every news show since the beginning of television has had a left leaning biased. Now, after some 40 plus years of television, there is finally one which leans right and the left goes crazy. How does it feel, Ty, for peolple not to admit that Fox leans right? Well we on this side are used to it.

Aha! So you admit that Morton Downey Jr. and Rush Limbaugh were not news shows! I now have you just where I want you.

Carry on.*



*fuck, I'm having a hard time working "Weird that" in, but I am not giving up on it...

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Fox nearly sued itself over 'Simpsons' parody: Matt Groening

And that news crawl was one of the more hilarious tidbits in recent memory. Oil keeps seals supple indeed.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I love it. Every news show since the beginning of television has had a left leaning biased. Now, after some 40 plus years of television, there is finally one which leans right and the left goes crazy.

You exaggerate. I doubt that there was a "left-leaning bias" on TV news in the 1950's, and Walter Cronkite was no closet lib. Let's say that you can certainly trace he trend back to the 1970s and erly 1980s, when the 1960s generation began to actually work for a living in positions with some influence.

S_A_M

[ltl/fb]

Could someone please change that to something else? Even "Do Democrats Cause Cancer?" would be an improvement.

[Connect_the_Dots]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Please explain. The convential wisdom is that unrestrained spending creates large deficets which raise interest rates. Well we have the first two, but not the third, so I'm wondering whether your statement is true.*

*Not that I am an unrestrained spending fan.

Conventional wisdom is wrong--as usual.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/BG1660.cfm
[Spree: 10 common myths about taxes and the economy]

A couple of myths in there deal with g3's comment about saving/spending/investing.

MYTH #3:
Budget deficits substantially increase interest rates.
FACT:
Budget deficits have only a trivial effect on interest rates.
Higher interest rates have become the chief argument against any policy that would increase the budget deficit. Since 2000, the $236 billion budget surplus has been replaced by an estimated $300 billion budget deficit. However, instead of increasing, the real interest rate on the 10-year Treasury bond has actually dropped from 3.7 percent to 2.3 percent.6 (See Chart 1.)



In theory, higher demand for a commodity will cause higher prices. Money is no different: An increase in the demand for borrowing money will increase the price of borrowing money (i.e., the interest rate). This is true regardless of whether the borrower is a government, a corporation, or an individual.

The more important question is by how much the interest rate will increase, and that depends on how much is being borrowed and whether the market is large enough to absorb that amount. Today's global economy is so large--trillions of dollars move around the globe each day--that it can easily absorb the federal government's borrowing without triggering a substantial increase in interest rates.

Harvard economist Robert Barro studied the economies of 12 major industrialized countries and found that:7

Real interest rates depend on the total debt relative to GDP, not the annual change in budget deficits. The debt-to-GDP ratio shows whether an economy is large enough to absorb the total level of public debt. America's debt-to-GDP ratio was over 100 percent after World War II, was at 50 percent in 1994, and is just 36 percent today.
Overall debt-to-GDP ratios across the 12 countries matter more than what happens in one country. If one country borrows to finance its debt, capital seekers can still find cheap capital in other countries, thus averting the shortage that would raise interest rates.
A 1 percent increase in America's debt-to-GDP ratio raises interest rates by approximately 0.05 percent. If all 12 countries increased their ratios by 1 percent, interest rates would increase by approximately 0.1 percent.
These small movements are usually overwhelmed by larger trends affecting real interest rates, such as economic growth and expectations of future inflation.