[Snowrunner]

Authoritarian folks of his ilk scare the crap out of me. Sadly I think they are the majority report in America today. Betcha he thinks Orwell was merely an unpatriotic crank.

Don't read the site, but from the description of the guy he is no Authorian figure, but he would like to be one.

In his world, he'd be the guy at the corner who reports any "suspicous" activity to the Secret Police.

Personal opinion: It is usually not a good sign for a Country (or Society) when people like him seem to become the majority, it is a clear sign that society is on the verge of imploding. Those "unstable" are the first ones who resort to lashing out and trying to regain control.

[Forney2008]

That is why i like posting on this website and less on Ticker Forum because you have more leeway with posting(within reason) and there are more moderators to sort through the threads to find trolls, spammers, off topic posts, etc. I must say the Mods do a great job balancing this forum in the right ways. KD on the other hand controls his forum with an iron fist. Any slight dissagreement and your GONE!! He must get his kicks by saying "your banned" or "you cannot post in this section anymore".

[MrBill]

Below is a link to one of the best articles on our debt that I have had the pleasure to read. Check it out, you won't be disappointed. I'd like to hear what you all think about it:

LINK

Hi! I edited your link as it was distorting the page size. Please use the link button for the URL addresses. Especially if they are long. Thank you very much. MrBill

As for Denninger (whoever he is) the most important thing about knowledge is that it is independently acquired. Your or my understanding is not dependent on anyone else's understanding of the same information. Therefore, an endless debate is quite besides the point. Read everything. Cross check the information. Accept what seems reasonable. And reject the rest.

Not everyone is going to accept post peak oil resource depletion or agree on its consequences. Even though after the fact it will be painfully obvious for all to see. History is like that. The main thing is that you or I understand what is happening and why. It reminds me of an old toast:

Here's to you. Here's to me. If we should ever disagree. Screw you. Here's to me!

[ROCKMAN]

I'll back up firestarter's thoughts on Mr. Bill. I'll actually avoid reading Mr. Bill's post at times because they can be so damned depressing. Not only does he have a tremendous knowledge base in global economics he also seems to have a very good handle on the long term downside of the US economy. As eloquently and clearly as he presents those thoughts they are still rather sobering.

[MrBill]

I dunno, sometimes it helps to put it all in perspective. Everything is relative, there are no absolute values. So in many ways the rest of the world compares poorly to the good old USA on many metrics. Finance by itself should not be isolated. It is not the be all and end all in itself. That is no reason to be complacent, but also no reason to abandon all hope.

The most striking — and downright shocking — data are the disparities in the relative chunks of income that go toward food and drink.

Impoverished denizens of Ethiopia and Egypt, for example, spend an estimated 55 per cent and 43 per cent of their incomes, respectively, on food and non-alcoholic beverages (excluding purchases made at restaurants, bars, hotels and the like). Americans and Canadians: just 6 per cent and 8 per cent.*

*in 2005, so obviously higher nowHow the world spends its money

U.S. consumers should brace for the biggest increase in food prices in nearly 20 years in 2008 and even more pain next year due to surging meat and produce prices, the Agriculture Department said on Wednesday.

Food prices are forecast to rise by 5 percent to 6 percent this year, making it the largest annual increase since 1990. Just last month, USDA forecast food prices would climb between 4.5 and 5.5 percent in 2008.

source: Food prices to post biggest rise since 1990: USDA

The deepest bucket by far: restaurants. In 2007, U.S. consumers spent $390 billion (US) at eateries, representing nearly 43 per cent of their overall discretionary spending. Electronics, at $141 billion, or 15.5 per cent of discretionary dollars, came in second, followed by furniture and apparel.

In the last three years, the relative dollar-split among all eight buckets hasn't changed much. The most dramatic year-over-year downward shift--nearly a full percentage point — came in the furniture category, which accounted for $113 billion or 12.4 per cent of discretionary spending in 2007, a year which saw home foreclosures jump 79 per cent from 2006.

Still feeling bad about your budget? Keep this in mind: Last year, U.S. consumers spent $907 billion on discretionary items. That's roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product of Australia, the 14th richest country in the world.

In a recession, it's hard to remember that everything is relative.

source: How the world spends its money

So what shocks me is the levels of debt. Taking on debt is so insidious. It feels good. You barely notice it, until you start having to pay it back with interest. If you're a government, borrowing to pay interest seems painless. No one enjoys the austerity that it takes to pay back debt. Yuck!

As we say, it is easier to buy an asset than to fund it. But don't worry, economics is not a science, so that economic pain you're feeling is not real. It is just the perception of poverty! ; - ))

[BigTex]

In a lot of ways, I think the US was able to get so deep into some of these debt and leverage problems precisely because the rest of the world has so much faith in the US (even if it says otherwise) and figures nothing REALLY bad could ever happen here (like consumers stop spending for a long time).

[ROCKMAN]

Thanks for the effort Mr. Bill but you've already so killed my hopes for the future my soul is lost forever. (wink/grin)

[Snowrunner]

In a lot of ways, I think the US was able to get so deep into some of these debt and leverage problems precisely because the rest of the world has so much faith in the US (even if it says otherwise) and figures nothing REALLY bad could ever happen here (like consumers stop spending for a long time).

I think HAD a lot of faith is more accurate, right now everybody panics and tries to figure out how to not get pulled down with the ship while still trying to slow the sinking by using a bucket.

I also remember something I was told by the guy I worked for when I lived in the US for a while: "Here, unless you had a business and failed, nobody takes you serious, and no, not taking on any debt is bad too, because you haven't proven to anyone that you can pay it back."

That was back in the late '90s, since then I have met a few people on travels in the States who have (or had) the same attitude....

[ROCKMAN]

Snow -- I've run into that similar philosophy throughout my career in the oil business also. It always works well....until it doesn't work. It works well when applied at the right time in the cycle. If you're smart/lucky you pick the right timing. I have a bad feeling the US is getting close to that part of the cycle where that "borrow now...make money like crazy...pay back the debt" plan may not work too well. We've had economics lows in the past and have eventually grew our way out of them. Growth has always been cyclic. But with the effects of PO growing ever stronger and closer, this next dip may be so deep and so long that we won't see the types of recovery we've experienced in the past. Some type of recover to some level eventually but it's difficult to picture the details. The economy was in pretty bad shape in the 30's but thankfully WWII came along and we prospered as never before. Too bad it cost so many 10's of millions of lives. But, hey, it was progress.

[BigTex]

In a lot of ways, I think the US was able to get so deep into some of these debt and leverage problems precisely because the rest of the world has so much faith in the US (even if it says otherwise) and figures nothing REALLY bad could ever happen here (like consumers stop spending for a long time).

I think HAD a lot of faith is more accurate, right now everybody panics and tries to figure out how to not get pulled down with the ship while still trying to slow the sinking by using a bucket.

I also remember something I was told by the guy I worked for when I lived in the US for a while: "Here, unless you had a business and failed, nobody takes you serious, and no, not taking on any debt is bad too, because you haven't proven to anyone that you can pay it back."

That was back in the late '90s, since then I have met a few people on travels in the States who have (or had) the same attitude....

Judging by foreigners' willingness to continue buying U.S. debt at low interest rates and the continuation of the petrodollar regime, I would say that much of the world sees the U.S. as a parental figure that they sometimes get furious at and even hate, but ultimately deeply respect and have faith in.

The problem with this type of unquestioned underlying faith is that it can allow the party in the U.S.'s position to get into a lot more trouble than it otherwise could because of the continued availability of credit. Also, when a figure like the U.S. does take a fall, it can be deeply unsettling, even to parties that claim to hate the U.S.

To return to the parent analogy, if a teenage boy decided to take a swing at his dad and his dad dropped dead from the blow, it would probably be as surprising and unsettling to the boy as to the dad.

If the U.S. were to go down, two immediate effects would be the cascading economic failure from no more mindless American consumers and the end of the U.S. military blank check trying to keep order all over the world.

Some foreign nations will SAY this is what they want, but in reality a stable U.S. is good for most of the rest of the world (unless you happen to be the country that is being attacked by U.S. forces or proxies at any given time).

[nobodypanic]

If the U.S. were to go down, two immediate effects would be the cascading economic failure from no more mindless American consumers and the end of the U.S. military blank check trying to keep order all over the world.

Some foreign nations will SAY this is what they want, but in reality a stable U.S. is good for most of the rest of the world (unless you happen to be the country that is being attacked by U.S. forces or proxies at any given time).

it's been like this forever. in general, mankind has always prospered more when there was a strong power in charge that was unassailable by other regional powers, e.g., pax romana. such a power tends to provide stability and keep, i know this may sound counter intuitive, warfare down to a minimum.

when such a power fails, there develops, as all of you obviously know, a power vacuum into which multiple similarly strong, once minor powers rush to fill, resulting in extended warfare and instability, which has historically lead to declines in the human condition; see: breakup of yugoslavia, fall of western roman empire, etc.--again speaking in general.

historically speaking, then, i'd have to say that a uni-polar world is likely to be much better than a multi-polar world.

[threadbear]

Actually, a bipolar world where each power provides checks and balances against the other, is preferable to what we've had in the last 30 years. A strong USSR actually helped the American, domestically, because post war, the elites, while decrying the Russian boogeyman, also knew the best way to keep a Bolshevik revolution from occuring in their own country was to vaccinate against it, through high rates of home ownership, centered around higher wages, and a more equitable distribution of income, provided by union activity. As Communism became less of an actual threat, look what happened to tolerance of union acitivity, and respect for labour, in the US. And look what is happening to home ownership, presently.

[AlexdeLarge]

Beck did not give Karl much air time.

[Serial_Worrier]

Honestly, what's the big deal about consumer debt? You can just tell the credit card company/bank to go fark themselves! Late on a mortgage payment? Tell the bank to fark themselves!

[ROCKMAN]

True SW. But then when you get your retirement account statement showing it has lost half its value due to the loses incurred by the stock funds its been invested in you might care a little more about those bad debts.

[kdenninger]

Well, since we're into libel around here..... how about some facts?

First, "Nothing" was banned for using a sock puppet. A "sock puppet" is two (or more) accounts owned by the same person. These are explicitly prohibited on Tickerforum (and always have been) because using them is a dishonest tactic on a discussion forum as it appears that you are "building consensus" where none exists. Further, the "sock puppet" account was created with an avatar that contained what appeared to be a person brandishing a firearm, which I and several other forum users took to be an implied threat.

I have conclusive proof that this violation of policy took place.

The incitement to Nothing's decision to do this was a repeated request (by me) to back up its claims with some mathematics. The reason for that repeated request is that I and a few others had actually taken the time to put together and run mathematical models of the fractional-reserve system "as practiced" in the current world, and while those models showed the possibility of an implosion, they refuted the certainty of same.

Now either my (and others) models are wrong, or Nothing's models are wrong. Mathematics is the only true science and through science we find truth.

Repeating an assertion over and over does not make it true; it in fact marks you as someone who is unwilling to objectively examine what you believe.

As for the "rules of debate" on Tickerforum, there were a small number of people who continued to insist that the various rules in the subforums didn't apply to them. "The Bar" is literally "anything goes", but in BREAKING NEWS areas, in particular, incitement and flamefests are not only off-topic, they're destructive as many people have those areas on RSS aggregators.

When people are unable to police themselves they find their posting privileges revoked in those areas. "TheOne" is one of the posters who lost posting access to the Breaking News areas as a consequence of his conduct. I don't care who you are, the rules on Tickerforum apply to all.

In the history of the forum there have been fewer than 50 people banned from access and 30 suspended system-wide from posting, out of a userbase of over 4300 registered users.

The majority of those banned were removed from the system for creating sock-puppet accounts; this "double counts" them ("Nothing's" ban is in fact two bans, since both accounts were locked) and constitutes 15 actual people. Most of the other 20 were banned for spamming the system with advertisements of various sorts, which is explicitly prohibited as well.

You can count on the fingers of one hand the people who were banned from the forum for behaving in a generally boorish way, and the 30 posting restrictions that are system-wide are all for multiple-area violations of the subforum rules on acceptable content (the first one gets you locked out of that specific area, if you then try to do it again in another subforum you will draw a system-wide suspension.)

In addition, accounts on Tickerform are NEVER actually removed and neither are the postings, although they may be "bilged", which is an area open only to registered users (and read-only.) Therefore, anyone is free to log into the forum and verify everything I have said here - you don't have to take my word for it. Banned users show up as "banned" under their login names.

'Just the facts, and now I must return to my trading....

[email protected]
http://tickerforum.org
http://market-ticker.denninger.net

[vision-master]

Well, since we're into libel around here..... how about some facts?

First, "Nothing" was banned for using a sock puppet. A "sock puppet" is two (or more) accounts owned by the same person. These are explicitly prohibited on Tickerforum (and always have been) because using them is a dishonest tactic on a discussion forum as it appears that you are "building consensus" where none exists. Further, the "sock puppet" account was created with an avatar that contained what appeared to be a person brandishing a firearm, which I and several other forum users took to be an implied threat.

I have conclusive proof that this violation of policy took place.

The incitement to Nothing's decision to do this was a repeated request (by me) to back up its claims with some mathematics. The reason for that repeated request is that I and a few others had actually taken the time to put together and run mathematical models of the fractional-reserve system "as practiced" in the current world, and while those models showed the possibility of an implosion, they refuted the certainty of same.

Now either my (and others) models are wrong, or Nothing's models are wrong. Mathematics is the only true science and through science we find truth.

Repeating an assertion over and over does not make it true; it in fact marks you as someone who is unwilling to objectively examine what you believe.

As for the "rules of debate" on Tickerforum, there were a small number of people who continued to insist that the various rules in the subforums didn't apply to them. "The Bar" is literally "anything goes", but in BREAKING NEWS areas, in particular, incitement and flamefests are not only off-topic, they're destructive as many people have those areas on RSS aggregators.

When people are unable to police themselves they find their posting privileges revoked in those areas. "TheOne" is one of the posters who lost posting access to the Breaking News areas as a consequence of his conduct. I don't care who you are, the rules on Tickerforum apply to all.

In the history of the forum there have been fewer than 50 people banned from access and 30 suspended system-wide from posting, out of a userbase of over 4300 registered users.

The majority of those banned were removed from the system for creating sock-puppet accounts; this "double counts" them ("Nothing's" ban is in fact two bans, since both accounts were locked) and constitutes 15 actual people. Most of the other 20 were banned for spamming the system with advertisements of various sorts, which is explicitly prohibited as well.

You can count on the fingers of one hand the people who were banned from the forum for behaving in a generally boorish way, and the 30 posting restrictions that are system-wide are all for multiple-area violations of the subforum rules on acceptable content (the first one gets you locked out of that specific area, if you then try to do it again in another subforum you will draw a system-wide suspension.)

'Just the facts, and now I must return to my trading....

[email protected]
http://tickerforum.org
http://market-ticker.denninger.net

Now go back where you belong. :f_uck_off:

[MadScientist]

no pot to smoke today vision?



It's sad in a way that most Pro American comments these days get ridiculed and labeled neocon.

It was painfully clear watching the forums over the Russia/Georgia weekend. Not only was there a huge influx of russian posters, but so many Americans spouting off antiamerican ranting. Leaving the proamerican posts in minority by far.


I'm not disputing we are in trouble economically. What I am saying is that even though the US has issues, we are still better off than the rest of the world in many ways.

Economically we are intertwined with nearly every other national economy in the world. The degree of entwinment varies, but they all have to consider the value of keeping Business As Usual.


Welcome kdenninger. Sorry your first post here had to be in defense of yourself. Funny how some of the posts in this thread acted like you would never see them.

[Roccland]

Well, since we're into libel around here..... how about some facts?

First, "Nothing" was banned for using a sock puppet. A "sock puppet" is two (or more) accounts owned by the same person. These are explicitly prohibited on Tickerforum (and always have been) because using them is a dishonest tactic on a discussion forum as it appears that you are "building consensus" where none exists. Further, the "sock puppet" account was created with an avatar that contained what appeared to be a person brandishing a firearm, which I and several other forum users took to be an implied threat.

I have conclusive proof that this violation of policy took place.

The incitement to Nothing's decision to do this was a repeated request (by me) to back up its claims with some mathematics. The reason for that repeated request is that I and a few others had actually taken the time to put together and run mathematical models of the fractional-reserve system "as practiced" in the current world, and while those models showed the possibility of an implosion, they refuted the certainty of same.

Now either my (and others) models are wrong, or Nothing's models are wrong. Mathematics is the only true science and through science we find truth.

Repeating an assertion over and over does not make it true; it in fact marks you as someone who is unwilling to objectively examine what you believe.

As for the "rules of debate" on Tickerforum, there were a small number of people who continued to insist that the various rules in the subforums didn't apply to them. "The Bar" is literally "anything goes", but in BREAKING NEWS areas, in particular, incitement and flamefests are not only off-topic, they're destructive as many people have those areas on RSS aggregators.

When people are unable to police themselves they find their posting privileges revoked in those areas. "TheOne" is one of the posters who lost posting access to the Breaking News areas as a consequence of his conduct. I don't care who you are, the rules on Tickerforum apply to all.

In the history of the forum there have been fewer than 50 people banned from access and 30 suspended system-wide from posting, out of a userbase of over 4300 registered users.

The majority of those banned were removed from the system for creating sock-puppet accounts; this "double counts" them ("Nothing's" ban is in fact two bans, since both accounts were locked) and constitutes 15 actual people. Most of the other 20 were banned for spamming the system with advertisements of various sorts, which is explicitly prohibited as well.

You can count on the fingers of one hand the people who were banned from the forum for behaving in a generally boorish way, and the 30 posting restrictions that are system-wide are all for multiple-area violations of the subforum rules on acceptable content (the first one gets you locked out of that specific area, if you then try to do it again in another subforum you will draw a system-wide suspension.)

In addition, accounts on Tickerform are NEVER actually removed and neither are the postings, although they may be "bilged", which is an area open only to registered users (and read-only.) Therefore, anyone is free to log into the forum and verify everything I have said here - you don't have to take my word for it. Banned users show up as "banned" under their login names.

'Just the facts, and now I must return to my trading....

[email protected]
http://tickerforum.org
http://market-ticker.denninger.net

The guy who says his veggie mobile is gonna save him from PO shows up....

Welcome to my backyard karl...care to play ball?

[threadbear]

no pot to smoke today vision?



It's sad in a way that most Pro American comments these days get ridiculed and labeled neocon.

It was painfully clear watching the forums over the Russia/Georgia weekend. Not only was there a huge influx of russian posters, but so many Americans spouting off antiamerican ranting. Leaving the proamerican posts in minority by far.


I'm not disputing we are in trouble economically. What I am saying is that even though the US has issues, we are still better off than the rest of the world in many ways.

Economically we are intertwined with nearly every other national economy in the world. The degree of entwinment varies, but they all have to consider the value of keeping Business As Usual.


Welcome kdenninger. Sorry your first post here had to be in defense of yourself. Funny how some of the posts in this thread acted like you would never see them.

The value of keeping Business as Usual amounts to the rest of the world continuing to prop the U.S. If you cannot understand or accept this, you have blinkers on. It is not up to us to play suck up to the retarded bully on the playground who steals everyone's lunch. If you can't tolerate the international super atomic wedgie that is about to be inflicted upon you, keep reading the reader's digest, and don't read anything open to the international community.