Louis Pasteur became a professor and worked at the university of Strasbourg, this does not make him a government worker, regardless of you mindless accusations.
That's a rather strange assertion on a planet where most roads are public.
He is very dictatorial on his path to 'liberty', like any revolutionary, he would immediately imprison you, would tell you what job you are allowed and not allowed to do, and likely would execute you, if you keep doing things he does not approve of. That's how revolutionaries roll.
If you patent that and then sue anybody who uses the patented method, and then no women will get orgasms..... you are in a world of trouble. Imagine 50% of population hunting your down to kill you and eat your eyes out. Now imagine they are all unsatisfied women. You don't want them to catch you, your best defense will be to kill yourself and then eat your own eyes out.
So food and water was safer before these regulations. There was no typhoid or cholera no, no everything was completely rosy for the average US and UK citizen in the 19th century. Watch your video again, try to switch of the fundamentalist libertarian bullshit for an hour and see how critical Schiff is of EVERYONE.
- Food and water was becoming safer due to the free market forces creating new ways to make food and water safer, all the other nonsense, all the laws, etc., it has no bearing on reality beside one simple thing: reduction of competition, leading to higher prices, lower quality and fewer options.
Refrigeration was not a government invention. Neither was food preservation or pasteurization. The government involvement starts after the fact, when somebody comes up with a new way to use technology to make things better in some way, but government comes in and starts mandating that everybody and anybody must use this technology, this creates barriers to entry for those, who do not have the capital for that particular technology, it creates a monopoly for that technology on the market, with government mandates and all this government moral hazard of patent/copyright nonsense, then other private ideas and research for other types of technologies stall, as they are priced out of the market simply by the fact of the mandate.
Basically government cannot create, but it can destroy. Unfortunately with sentiments like yours, that's what it ends up doing with enough support from the gullible public, and this worsens the market conditions. Competition is preferable on the market, and when government comes up with yet another agency, like FDA, the market suffers reduced competition, increased prices and stalling of many new technologies. All this is totally unnecessary. I must have an option to buy food/drugs that doesn't have the FDA rubber stamp on it. But if I cared for a stamp from some agency, I would be looking for the food, that is certified by somebody privately, and if I like the food and there are no horror stories all over the place about the food, certified by that company, I probably would pay a little extra for that certified food.
But maybe I wouldn't, and instead I'd take my chances. Maybe my cooking style allows me to prepare anything safely (this is especially true for Chinese food, which is never raw, and this prevents most problems, except for the most difficult cases, like Mad Cow). but that's maybe if I weren't a vegetarian, I'd do - buy everything without any certifications, but only buy meat that is certified by one of the companies I trust. And I certainly do not trust the government.
Why should I trust the government? They can't do anything in an efficient way, they don't have the profit motive, they have a monopoly, which cannot be challenged, so they don't care if they lose their face with their 'customers', who are really captive audience more than anything.
But I guess you prefer that system, well, that's why you live where you live, and I live where I live, and it ain't USA either anymore.
When were any of the private actors FORCED to behave the way they did.
- that's a BS question. You want to pose a question that has no bearing on reality - go ahead, but it's a bunch of bullshit.
Nobody forces anybody to make profit, people just want to make profit, so your question can be restated: who is forcing these companies to follow procedures that are set up by the government, and to take up on the offers that are provided by the government, so that these companies would make more profit with less work?
What kind of a ass-backwards question is that?
Why does anybody start a company? To make money. Once you start a company, you assume there will be competition. However once government comes in and says: here is a bunch of free money, and here are our new requirements for 'affordable housing', you can use these however you like, it's easy to get the money from us and we'll rubber-stamp the loans you make regardless of the quality of the borrower.... and you are asking who is "forcing" them?
Nobody is forcing anybody, that's the beauty of it - you don't have to force people to get them to change their behavior, all you need to do is to give them incentives.
You hate government so much that you're quite happy to excuse the stupidity of all the other people involved.
- I hate the government for fucking up a good thing, which is the free market, yes.
As for 'competition' between legal systems - it's a criminal justice system not a McDonalds. It's supposed to protect society by punishing criminals not turn a profit.
- and why do you believe the government to be the best judge of how best to judge the criminals, or what penalties to impose on those who violate contracts?
I have no idea how BP has anything to do with the government deciding whether food is safe to eat and water is safe to drink.
- BP does not have anything to do with government deciding anything about food or drink. BP is an example of how government creates moral hazard, by "removing" risk of liability (setting the liability cap at 10Million or so dollars for a spill in this case)
Plus their liability for the accident now that it's happened is huge, which you should approve of since you're fundamentally against any kind of prevention of these sorts of things.
- they operated based on what they knew at the time was in law for them from the government, they were certain that 10 million liability was in law, so they wouldn't have to pay out more in liability, and that was weighing on their decision making before the accident.
In fact, government repealing that liability for BP accident AFTER the accident is just another default by the government. You can't pretend to have a law, and then retroactively change it, just because you don't like the outcome of your law.
You like the government involved in business and everything? Well, you are in UK, right? Your economy will be crashed too, and if you are blinded by this inability to see through the action-reaction response of people towards the existing laws, if you can't understand the concept of moral hazard, you won't learn anything from the economic/currency crash, that you probably will also have in UK, as government causes the investment flight, drives jobs out and prints money to monetize it's 'social obligations' and other debt.
The mortgage lenders in particular come in for some fierce criticism. Try watching it again yourself, you've obviously only paid attention to the minute or so where he criticised Greenspan and Bush.
- no, I watched that video probably 4 or 5 times since 2006, so I know what is in it well enough.
When did the US government force lenders to bundle up bad debts and then have 65% of them rated AAA+?
- are you looking for a specific point in time, a specific date?
There is no one date, there are many dates doing many different things.
Let's start with interest rates
2001 January 3 Federal Reserve makes surprise rate cut. Federal funds rate reduced to 6.0 percent from 6.5 percent. Discount rate reduced to 5.5 percent from 6.0 percent. Nasdaq jumped a record 14.17 percent. 2001 January 31 Federal funds rate reduced from 6.0 percent to 5.5 percent. Discount rate reduced from 5.5 percent to 5.0 percent. 2001 March 20 Federal funds rate reduced from 5.5 percent to 5.0 percent. Discount rate reduced from 5.0 percent to 4.5 percent. 2001 April 18 Federal funds rate reduced from 5.0 percent to 4.5 percent. Discount rate reduced from 4.5 percent to 4.0 percent. 2001 May 15 Federal funds rate reduced from 4.5 percent to 4.0 percent. Discount rate reduced from 4.0 percent to 3.5 percent. 2001 June 27 Federal funds rate reduced from 4.00 percent to 3.75 percent. Discount rate reduced from 3.50 percent to 3.25 percent. 2001 June 29 First quarter GDP growth rate revised to 1.2 percent. 2001 August 21 Federal funds rate reduced from 3.75 percent to 3.50 percent. Discount rate reduced from 3.25 percent to 3.00 percent. 2001 September 17 Federal funds rate reduced from 3.50 percent to 3.00 percent. 2001 Discount rate reduced from 3.00 percent to 2.50 percent. 2001 October 2 Federal funds rate reduced from 3.00 percent to 2.50 percent. Discount rate reduced from 2.50 percent to 2.00 percent. 2001 November 6 Federal funds rate reduced from 2.50 percent to 2.00 percent. Discount rate reduced from 2.00 percent to 1.50 percent 2001 December 11 Federal funds rate reduced from 2.00 percent to 1.75 percent. 2001 Discount rate reduced from 1.50 percent to 1.25 percent.
2002 November 6 Federal funds rate reduced from 1.75 percent to 1.25 percent.
Discount rate reduced from 1.25 percent to 0.75 percent.
2002 June 25 Federal funds rate reduced from 1.25 percent to 1 percent, the lowest rate in 45 years.
-- Let's see some other interesting dates:
MORTGAGEE LETTER 2004-10 TO: ALL APPROVED MORTGAGEES SUBJECT: Adjustable Rate Mortgages
On March 10, 2004, the Department of Housing and Urban Development published a final rule in the Federal Register amending the mortgage insurance regulations to implement additional product offerings known as âoehybridâ adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs). The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has insured ARMs since 1984; however, these were limited to 1-year ARMs. Under the terms and conditions described below, FHA is now offering mortgage insurance on 3-year, 5-year, 7-year and 10-year ARMs. These hybrid ARMs expand home buying opportunities through the creation of additional product offerings tailored to the financial conditions and desires of the borrowers.
that's just one of the FHA letters I could find. The time-line of FHA is such that by early 1990s, the requirement to provide so called 'affordable housing' - which means housing insured by government, regardless of the lending standards by banks was under between 25 and 30%, by late 1990s it was near 50% and by 2006 it was about 68% or so. The position of FHA was to push people into the housing markets by specifically insuring the most dangerous types of mortgages - variable rate mortgages with little to no downpayment, even some mortgages that had
I believe like any technology it can be used to waste time or help business and I wouldn't worry about it slowing your system down.
- you can believe whatever you want to believe, however so far, the browser on my system (FF on whatever GNU/Linux distro I am at whatever moment) is the most resource consuming piece of software, which also is doing the smallest amount of useful visual output compared to most other applications I am using.
Well, we are in the story about a successful private schooling system in India being raided by the government, so that's one. But USA used to have private schooling system - private schools, which provided competitive education at affordable rates before federal government brought in all sorts of money, which created artificial demand and pushed prices up and quality down, simply because there is no reason to bother with quality - anybody can get a loan, and there is no reason to bother with competitive affordable pricing, again - anybody can get a loan. In the climate, where anybody can get a loan, there is no incentive to compete either on quality or on price, and the education is inflated, so more and more is needed to stand out of the pack, all this, while kids are getting insane loans from government to go to schools they shouldn't even go to, because they don't know neither what they are doing there, nor what they are getting themselves into with these loans.
As to public schools ran by localities - there is competition between localities, so if you want to attend a public school, you move to one, that offers this, and if you do not want to, you move somewhere, where you get good private education.
1979-80 was when they created the 'department of education', so that was clearly a huge loss for education quality and affordability, but 1965 was when they passed SS act and Medicare as well, so they started collecting even more taxes for government spending and growing, that's why I hold that year as an important one in terms of affordable education and other services (health care, insurance) becoming the thing of the past.
People used to be able to pay for their education and health care before government stepped in with the bread and circuses votes and passed more taxes and punished the workers more, but of-course the ultimate destruction started in 1913, when they introduced the Fed with the printing press, who got the ability to monetize government debt and they started collecting income taxes and created the IRS. Both of those things are responsible for very quick growth of government, and now in USA, government work force consists of about 10% of the population (including contractors and the military).
Government spending is destroying everything - from education to healthcare, to insurance to peace on this planet, to currencies themselves.
Oh, how great it will be - Google text ads scrolling past you, as you are trying to find that damn file. Anytime you try to open your word processor, there will be an appearing/disappearing link to Google web-based office, anytime you try to edit a picture, there will be a bunch of ads about various photo-studio and album offerings, every attempt at typing find . -name somefilename will bring up the Google page with 'Are You Feeling Lucky' button pressed already for you.
Computer is not for web only, I know, it's amazing to think otherwise, but some of us actually work on them, and most of the work is not happening on the web, though reading/. you won't be able to deduce this fact.
Anyway, I always wanted my shell to take all of my RAM, overbook the CPU, run the fans on full throttle just to refresh the clock on the background.
You read it, you understood it, I am not a book writer, so what's your problem? Or should I write it in my mother tongue instead to make it easier for you to comprehend?
Wheel bearings today are perfectly capable of handling whatever road shocks we throw at them.
Maybe in Miami, maybe in LA and possibly on Autobahn, but not in Toronto or St. Petersburg or Moscow, and even in Miami the road is not always perfectly polished, and those wheel assemblies, with electrical motors in them will come apart.
it was the selling of debt that really brought the house down
- you should watch it again. The lax lending standards were the result of government policies, pushed via housing acts, FHA, Freddie/Fannie, while the money came from the Fed.
In absence of government, banks compete based on risk aversion and lending standards are high. Government created FDIC, which destroyed the reason for customers to bother checking the banks' risk aversion, destroyed reason for banks to bother with that, customers won't leave, they don't care.
Government regulation creates the moral hazard, which absent without government regulations.
With the selling on of debt that was no longer a problem so these companies started throwing money at people who would never be able to pay it back
- you missed the main point. The reason why debt could be sold, was government guarantee behind it.
It was government agenda, that it would back those liar and other risky loans, that's why banks made them. Rewatch the video.
They punish murderers, thieves and dangerous drivers.
- don't need government to do that, private police force and competing justice systems would suffice.
They ensure that our food and water supply isn't contaminated,
- not when it creates moral hazard of 10million USD oil caps.
that products we use are safe, that our borders are defended
- not anymore. They now make sure that you are always under control by the TSA and oil fields in Iraq are under control, that's all.
and, in civilised countries they ensure that everyone has access to the healthcare they need.
- gov't can't do that either, unless you are calling most of the West uncivilized.
They aren't perfect, but to paraphrase Churchill, "it's the worst system apart from all the others".
- free market capitalism and Constitutional republic that US had was better than what Churchill was talking about.
Just as a matter of interest, how would removing limited liability help if there weren't any government to prosecute the misbehaving corporation. Would an individual have to sue?
- competing justice systems for absence of government. But if you have to have gov't, then the justice system provided by it must do this right: criminal and contract law.
So you would trust corporations to do this properly even though the link your sig is an object lesson in what happens when corporations aren't watched properly?
- if you actually watched the video in that link, you'd understand that the failure was the government meddling in business and economy, not corporations, and that's why the guy was able to predict it accurately, because it was very logical as to what government was doing to the money and laws that was going eventually to crash the housing bubble and eventually the currency and economy.
If you watched that video and got the message that there was a need for more government regulations, rather than for less government distorting the economy in the first place, then I cannot help but wonder, how did you come to that conclusion...
Corporations can't be given absolute freedom, especially when the well-being of large amounts of people is at stake.
- no no, you got it wrong. Government can't be given absolute freedoms, they are sure to destroy our freedoms in the process.
Corporations should not be given any extra privileges by government power - that's true. So for example owners/managers of corporations should not be able to hide behind 'limited liability' clauses, established by the government - that leads to abuse.
I see businesses as idea/product/service/economic activity generators, which increase our wealth, and I see governments as at best the necessary evil to guard the borders and maintain a working justice system, however the last 2 decades made me question my assumptions as to whether governments on national level should even exist at all, and whether they can be trusted even with those 2 functions. I have serious doubts that they can, and yes, I much rather have businesses running things for their profit, which in absence of government distorting the markets, would result in better quality, cheaper, more variety of products for consumers.
I honestly trust Ford as a company much more, than I trust ANY government on this particular planet to do ANYTHING right.
That's my position, and the good thing about it is that I do not have to buy Ford. But at least one of those governments is trying hard to actively control my life in much more destructive ways than Ford ever could even imagine.
AFAIC we want RTGs everywhere, where they make sense, and they make much more sense in vehicles, than anything else we have today. If government was not impeding on our freedoms, we could have private development in that area, just like the time before government decided to use the nuclear power for war, and shut down any private use of it.
It really is irrelevant how India gets where it's going, and it's going towards more productive economy, regardless of how it is done.
Even if all that Indian's wealthy were doing today is catering to the US market, eventually they will be able to save enough of their own capital to start their own production, and that's what I am talking about, and given that USA is destroying its currency and economy quickly, Indians will not have much choice soon enough, but to start catering to their own markets.
and the shock to the motor assembly? I didn't say it's a completely useless idea, it has limited use potential for fork lifters maybe, but for outside use in cars/trucks/buses/whatever? Yeah, not until we have roads made of perfectly straight glass.
here is what I am talking about, I am sure if they can use something like that on a space craft, they can figure out how to use something of that type in a car, having a number of precautions, including various counters etc., what would prevent any problem ahead of time. It's all a matter of cost, any issue is a matter of cost, but with nuclear reactors the problem is not cost today, it's government not letting people to work with it without government getting their panties in a knot.
Your example is a system that struggled, then failed, then struggled again, then only when we went to war and the Government was the customer to the booming industries in the US and factories were full of relatively cheap labor (women mostly) did it start to thrive again?
- this sentence by (probably) a US 'educated' AC, is the example of the magnitude of sheer ignorance on the role that the government of US played in creation of the Great Depression via money printing in late twenties, to pump up the valuation of UK pound, which then lead to an asset bubble, resulting in the market collapse, which then prompted the US government to do all sorts of spending, bail outs and stimulus, that I have outlined here in some detail
The Great Depression ended only once the WWII ended, and all the government 'stimulus' (money to build and drop bombs) ended, and allowed the USA to restructure its productive capacity towards products and services required by the world. Of-course at the time US had a monopoly on production, so it thrived, but that kind of monopoly couldn't last forever, so as other countries rebuilt their manufacturing base, USA lost its monopoly on labor prices, but the government got used to very high levels of spending, so it couldn't stop and eventually defaulted by getting off the gold standard and printing unbacked fiat.
The US economy has been falling apart not because there's regulation, but because of the nature of the regulation.
- it is falling apart because there is government in business and economy in the first place. ALL government regulations end up distorting the markets and lead to unintended consequences, all of which are bad for the economy, because they rely on forces other than willingness of market participants.
We do a lot of catering to big business owners, while throwing the rest of the people under the bus.
- this is just not true. The business owners are a minority, and politicians learned to be populous by catering to the majority - employees, thus the business owners got screwed plenty. Some of them got out of business, some learned to cope by moving business out of the country, some bought politicians to maintain and even to increase their business, especially because so much competition was destroyed by the government in the first place, so a number of businesses became monopolies only due to government in the first place, and now it bails them out, stimulates them, buys them out, prints cash and hands it over, etc.etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Louis Pasteur became a professor and worked at the university of Strasbourg, this does not make him a government worker, regardless of you mindless accusations.
That's a rather strange assertion on a planet where most roads are public.
- taxes destroy infrastructure - I don't have to repeat myself.
Out of curiosity - how did you come by your libertarian convictions? Did you read a specific book you can recomend?
- I worked most of my life, that's how.
He is very obtuse.
He has no clue about economics, he doesn't understand it.
He is very dictatorial on his path to 'liberty', like any revolutionary, he would immediately imprison you, would tell you what job you are allowed and not allowed to do, and likely would execute you, if you keep doing things he does not approve of. That's how revolutionaries roll.
If you patent that and then sue anybody who uses the patented method, and then no women will get orgasms..... you are in a world of trouble. Imagine 50% of population hunting your down to kill you and eat your eyes out. Now imagine they are all unsatisfied women. You don't want them to catch you, your best defense will be to kill yourself and then eat your own eyes out.
So food and water was safer before these regulations. There was no typhoid or cholera no, no everything was completely rosy for the average US and UK citizen in the 19th century. Watch your video again, try to switch of the fundamentalist libertarian bullshit for an hour and see how critical Schiff is of EVERYONE.
- Food and water was becoming safer due to the free market forces creating new ways to make food and water safer, all the other nonsense, all the laws, etc., it has no bearing on reality beside one simple thing: reduction of competition, leading to higher prices, lower quality and fewer options.
Refrigeration was not a government invention. Neither was food preservation or pasteurization. The government involvement starts after the fact, when somebody comes up with a new way to use technology to make things better in some way, but government comes in and starts mandating that everybody and anybody must use this technology, this creates barriers to entry for those, who do not have the capital for that particular technology, it creates a monopoly for that technology on the market, with government mandates and all this government moral hazard of patent/copyright nonsense, then other private ideas and research for other types of technologies stall, as they are priced out of the market simply by the fact of the mandate.
Basically government cannot create, but it can destroy. Unfortunately with sentiments like yours, that's what it ends up doing with enough support from the gullible public, and this worsens the market conditions. Competition is preferable on the market, and when government comes up with yet another agency, like FDA, the market suffers reduced competition, increased prices and stalling of many new technologies. All this is totally unnecessary. I must have an option to buy food/drugs that doesn't have the FDA rubber stamp on it. But if I cared for a stamp from some agency, I would be looking for the food, that is certified by somebody privately, and if I like the food and there are no horror stories all over the place about the food, certified by that company, I probably would pay a little extra for that certified food.
But maybe I wouldn't, and instead I'd take my chances. Maybe my cooking style allows me to prepare anything safely (this is especially true for Chinese food, which is never raw, and this prevents most problems, except for the most difficult cases, like Mad Cow). but that's maybe if I weren't a vegetarian, I'd do - buy everything without any certifications, but only buy meat that is certified by one of the companies I trust. And I certainly do not trust the government.
Why should I trust the government? They can't do anything in an efficient way, they don't have the profit motive, they have a monopoly, which cannot be challenged, so they don't care if they lose their face with their 'customers', who are really captive audience more than anything.
But I guess you prefer that system, well, that's why you live where you live, and I live where I live, and it ain't USA either anymore.
Cheers.
When were any of the private actors FORCED to behave the way they did.
- that's a BS question. You want to pose a question that has no bearing on reality - go ahead, but it's a bunch of bullshit.
Nobody forces anybody to make profit, people just want to make profit, so your question can be restated: who is forcing these companies to follow procedures that are set up by the government, and to take up on the offers that are provided by the government, so that these companies would make more profit with less work?
What kind of a ass-backwards question is that?
Why does anybody start a company? To make money. Once you start a company, you assume there will be competition. However once government comes in and says: here is a bunch of free money, and here are our new requirements for 'affordable housing', you can use these however you like, it's easy to get the money from us and we'll rubber-stamp the loans you make regardless of the quality of the borrower.... and you are asking who is "forcing" them?
Nobody is forcing anybody, that's the beauty of it - you don't have to force people to get them to change their behavior, all you need to do is to give them incentives.
You hate government so much that you're quite happy to excuse the stupidity of all the other people involved.
- I hate the government for fucking up a good thing, which is the free market, yes.
As for 'competition' between legal systems - it's a criminal justice system not a McDonalds. It's supposed to protect society by punishing criminals not turn a profit.
- and why do you believe the government to be the best judge of how best to judge the criminals, or what penalties to impose on those who violate contracts?
I have no idea how BP has anything to do with the government deciding whether food is safe to eat and water is safe to drink.
- BP does not have anything to do with government deciding anything about food or drink. BP is an example of how government creates moral hazard, by "removing" risk of liability (setting the liability cap at 10Million or so dollars for a spill in this case)
Plus their liability for the accident now that it's happened is huge, which you should approve of since you're fundamentally against any kind of prevention of these sorts of things.
- they operated based on what they knew at the time was in law for them from the government, they were certain that 10 million liability was in law, so they wouldn't have to pay out more in liability, and that was weighing on their decision making before the accident.
In fact, government repealing that liability for BP accident AFTER the accident is just another default by the government. You can't pretend to have a law, and then retroactively change it, just because you don't like the outcome of your law.
You like the government involved in business and everything? Well, you are in UK, right? Your economy will be crashed too, and if you are blinded by this inability to see through the action-reaction response of people towards the existing laws, if you can't understand the concept of moral hazard, you won't learn anything from the economic/currency crash, that you probably will also have in UK, as government causes the investment flight, drives jobs out and prints money to monetize it's 'social obligations' and other debt.
Without government, there would be very little that would be safe to eat for the vast majority of the population.
- pure unadulterated nonsense. Companies want to make profits, which means they want repeat customers and they need a large customer base.
Without government there is much more competition in the food market, like in any market, and besides, the government policies in food and drink and agriculture subsidies are the reason the population is so sick and obese today in US and other Western nations.
The mortgage lenders in particular come in for some fierce criticism. Try watching it again yourself, you've obviously only paid attention to the minute or so where he criticised Greenspan and Bush.
- no, I watched that video probably 4 or 5 times since 2006, so I know what is in it well enough.
When did the US government force lenders to bundle up bad debts and then have 65% of them rated AAA+?
- are you looking for a specific point in time, a specific date?
There is no one date, there are many dates doing many different things.
Let's start with interest rates
2001 January 3 Federal Reserve makes surprise rate cut.
Federal funds rate reduced to 6.0 percent from 6.5 percent.
Discount rate reduced to 5.5 percent from 6.0 percent.
Nasdaq jumped a record 14.17 percent.
2001 January 31 Federal funds rate reduced from 6.0 percent to 5.5 percent.
Discount rate reduced from 5.5 percent to 5.0 percent.
2001 March 20 Federal funds rate reduced from 5.5 percent to 5.0 percent.
Discount rate reduced from 5.0 percent to 4.5 percent.
2001 April 18 Federal funds rate reduced from 5.0 percent to 4.5 percent.
Discount rate reduced from 4.5 percent to 4.0 percent.
2001 May 15 Federal funds rate reduced from 4.5 percent to 4.0 percent.
Discount rate reduced from 4.0 percent to 3.5 percent.
2001 June 27 Federal funds rate reduced from 4.00 percent to 3.75 percent.
Discount rate reduced from 3.50 percent to 3.25 percent.
2001 June 29 First quarter GDP growth rate revised to 1.2 percent.
2001 August 21 Federal funds rate reduced from 3.75 percent to 3.50 percent.
Discount rate reduced from 3.25 percent to 3.00 percent.
2001 September 17 Federal funds rate reduced from 3.50 percent to 3.00 percent.
2001 Discount rate reduced from 3.00 percent to 2.50 percent.
2001 October 2 Federal funds rate reduced from 3.00 percent to 2.50 percent.
Discount rate reduced from 2.50 percent to 2.00 percent.
2001 November 6 Federal funds rate reduced from 2.50 percent to 2.00 percent.
Discount rate reduced from 2.00 percent to 1.50 percent
2001 December 11 Federal funds rate reduced from 2.00 percent to 1.75 percent.
2001 Discount rate reduced from 1.50 percent to 1.25 percent.
2002 November 6 Federal funds rate reduced from 1.75 percent to 1.25 percent.
Discount rate reduced from 1.25 percent to 0.75 percent.
2002 June 25 Federal funds rate reduced from 1.25 percent to 1 percent, the lowest rate in 45 years.
--
Let's see some other interesting dates:
MORTGAGEE LETTER 2004-10
TO: ALL APPROVED MORTGAGEES
SUBJECT: Adjustable Rate Mortgages
On March 10, 2004, the Department of Housing and Urban Development published a final rule in the Federal Register amending the mortgage insurance regulations to implement additional product offerings known as âoehybridâ adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs). The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has insured ARMs since 1984; however, these were limited to 1-year ARMs. Under the terms and conditions described below, FHA is now offering mortgage insurance on 3-year, 5-year, 7-year and 10-year ARMs. These hybrid ARMs expand home buying opportunities through the creation of additional product offerings tailored to the financial conditions and desires of the borrowers.
that's just one of the FHA letters I could find. The time-line of FHA is such that by early 1990s, the requirement to provide so called 'affordable housing' - which means housing insured by government, regardless of the lending standards by banks was under between 25 and 30%, by late 1990s it was near 50% and by 2006 it was about 68% or so. The position of FHA was to push people into the housing markets by specifically insuring the most dangerous types of mortgages - variable rate mortgages with little to no downpayment, even some mortgages that had
I believe like any technology it can be used to waste time or help business and I wouldn't worry about it slowing your system down.
- you can believe whatever you want to believe, however so far, the browser on my system (FF on whatever GNU/Linux distro I am at whatever moment) is the most resource consuming piece of software, which also is doing the smallest amount of useful visual output compared to most other applications I am using.
you, bastard, what do you have against fucking whores? Where would the world be without them exactly?
Well, we are in the story about a successful private schooling system in India being raided by the government, so that's one. But USA used to have private schooling system - private schools, which provided competitive education at affordable rates before federal government brought in all sorts of money, which created artificial demand and pushed prices up and quality down, simply because there is no reason to bother with quality - anybody can get a loan, and there is no reason to bother with competitive affordable pricing, again - anybody can get a loan. In the climate, where anybody can get a loan, there is no incentive to compete either on quality or on price, and the education is inflated, so more and more is needed to stand out of the pack, all this, while kids are getting insane loans from government to go to schools they shouldn't even go to, because they don't know neither what they are doing there, nor what they are getting themselves into with these loans.
As to public schools ran by localities - there is competition between localities, so if you want to attend a public school, you move to one, that offers this, and if you do not want to, you move somewhere, where you get good private education.
1979-80 was when they created the 'department of education', so that was clearly a huge loss for education quality and affordability, but 1965 was when they passed SS act and Medicare as well, so they started collecting even more taxes for government spending and growing, that's why I hold that year as an important one in terms of affordable education and other services (health care, insurance) becoming the thing of the past.
People used to be able to pay for their education and health care before government stepped in with the bread and circuses votes and passed more taxes and punished the workers more, but of-course the ultimate destruction started in 1913, when they introduced the Fed with the printing press, who got the ability to monetize government debt and they started collecting income taxes and created the IRS. Both of those things are responsible for very quick growth of government, and now in USA, government work force consists of about 10% of the population (including contractors and the military).
Government spending is destroying everything - from education to healthcare, to insurance to peace on this planet, to currencies themselves.
I guess, though when in Germany, I drive to Karlsruhe from Baden Baden sometimes and it's smooth.
Oh, how great it will be - Google text ads scrolling past you, as you are trying to find that damn file. Anytime you try to open your word processor, there will be an appearing/disappearing link to Google web-based office, anytime you try to edit a picture, there will be a bunch of ads about various photo-studio and album offerings, every attempt at typing find . -name somefilename will bring up the Google page with 'Are You Feeling Lucky' button pressed already for you.
It's going to be great.
Computer is not for web only, I know, it's amazing to think otherwise, but some of us actually work on them, and most of the work is not happening on the web, though reading /. you won't be able to deduce this fact.
Anyway, I always wanted my shell to take all of my RAM, overbook the CPU, run the fans on full throttle just to refresh the clock on the background.
You read it, you understood it, I am not a book writer, so what's your problem? Or should I write it in my mother tongue instead to make it easier for you to comprehend?
Wheel bearings today are perfectly capable of handling whatever road shocks we throw at them.
Maybe in Miami, maybe in LA and possibly on Autobahn, but not in Toronto or St. Petersburg or Moscow, and even in Miami the road is not always perfectly polished, and those wheel assemblies, with electrical motors in them will come apart.
it was the selling of debt that really brought the house down
- you should watch it again. The lax lending standards were the result of government policies, pushed via housing acts, FHA, Freddie/Fannie, while the money came from the Fed.
In absence of government, banks compete based on risk aversion and lending standards are high. Government created FDIC, which destroyed the reason for customers to bother checking the banks' risk aversion, destroyed reason for banks to bother with that, customers won't leave, they don't care.
Government regulation creates the moral hazard, which absent without government regulations.
With the selling on of debt that was no longer a problem so these companies started throwing money at people who would never be able to pay it back
- you missed the main point. The reason why debt could be sold, was government guarantee behind it.
It was government agenda, that it would back those liar and other risky loans, that's why banks made them. Rewatch the video.
They punish murderers, thieves and dangerous drivers.
- don't need government to do that, private police force and competing justice systems would suffice.
They ensure that our food and water supply isn't contaminated,
- not when it creates moral hazard of 10million USD oil caps.
that products we use are safe, that our borders are defended
- not anymore. They now make sure that you are always under control by the TSA and oil fields in Iraq are under control, that's all.
and, in civilised countries they ensure that everyone has access to the healthcare they need.
- gov't can't do that either, unless you are calling most of the West uncivilized.
They aren't perfect, but to paraphrase Churchill, "it's the worst system apart from all the others".
- free market capitalism and Constitutional republic that US had was better than what Churchill was talking about.
Just as a matter of interest, how would removing limited liability help if there weren't any government to prosecute the misbehaving corporation. Would an individual have to sue?
- competing justice systems for absence of government. But if you have to have gov't, then the justice system provided by it must do this right: criminal and contract law.
So you would trust corporations to do this properly even though the link your sig is an object lesson in what happens when corporations aren't watched properly?
- if you actually watched the video in that link, you'd understand that the failure was the government meddling in business and economy, not corporations, and that's why the guy was able to predict it accurately, because it was very logical as to what government was doing to the money and laws that was going eventually to crash the housing bubble and eventually the currency and economy.
If you watched that video and got the message that there was a need for more government regulations, rather than for less government distorting the economy in the first place, then I cannot help but wonder, how did you come to that conclusion...
Corporations can't be given absolute freedom, especially when the well-being of large amounts of people is at stake.
- no no, you got it wrong. Government can't be given absolute freedoms, they are sure to destroy our freedoms in the process.
Corporations should not be given any extra privileges by government power - that's true. So for example owners/managers of corporations should not be able to hide behind 'limited liability' clauses, established by the government - that leads to abuse.
I see businesses as idea/product/service/economic activity generators, which increase our wealth, and I see governments as at best the necessary evil to guard the borders and maintain a working justice system, however the last 2 decades made me question my assumptions as to whether governments on national level should even exist at all, and whether they can be trusted even with those 2 functions. I have serious doubts that they can, and yes, I much rather have businesses running things for their profit, which in absence of government distorting the markets, would result in better quality, cheaper, more variety of products for consumers.
I honestly trust Ford as a company much more, than I trust ANY government on this particular planet to do ANYTHING right.
That's my position, and the good thing about it is that I do not have to buy Ford. But at least one of those governments is trying hard to actively control my life in much more destructive ways than Ford ever could even imagine.
AFAIC we want RTGs everywhere, where they make sense, and they make much more sense in vehicles, than anything else we have today. If government was not impeding on our freedoms, we could have private development in that area, just like the time before government decided to use the nuclear power for war, and shut down any private use of it.
Sure, absolutely. That's where the research needs to go, and where the private research would go if there was no government impeding on our freedoms.
It really is irrelevant how India gets where it's going, and it's going towards more productive economy, regardless of how it is done.
Even if all that Indian's wealthy were doing today is catering to the US market, eventually they will be able to save enough of their own capital to start their own production, and that's what I am talking about, and given that USA is destroying its currency and economy quickly, Indians will not have much choice soon enough, but to start catering to their own markets.
examples
and the shock to the motor assembly? I didn't say it's a completely useless idea, it has limited use potential for fork lifters maybe, but for outside use in cars/trucks/buses/whatever? Yeah, not until we have roads made of perfectly straight glass.
here is what I am talking about, I am sure if they can use something like that on a space craft, they can figure out how to use something of that type in a car, having a number of precautions, including various counters etc., what would prevent any problem ahead of time. It's all a matter of cost, any issue is a matter of cost, but with nuclear reactors the problem is not cost today, it's government not letting people to work with it without government getting their panties in a knot.
Your example is a system that struggled, then failed, then struggled again, then only when we went to war and the Government was the customer to the booming industries in the US and factories were full of relatively cheap labor (women mostly) did it start to thrive again?
- this sentence by (probably) a US 'educated' AC, is the example of the magnitude of sheer ignorance on the role that the government of US played in creation of the Great Depression via money printing in late twenties, to pump up the valuation of UK pound, which then lead to an asset bubble, resulting in the market collapse, which then prompted the US government to do all sorts of spending, bail outs and stimulus, that I have outlined here in some detail
The Great Depression ended only once the WWII ended, and all the government 'stimulus' (money to build and drop bombs) ended, and allowed the USA to restructure its productive capacity towards products and services required by the world. Of-course at the time US had a monopoly on production, so it thrived, but that kind of monopoly couldn't last forever, so as other countries rebuilt their manufacturing base, USA lost its monopoly on labor prices, but the government got used to very high levels of spending, so it couldn't stop and eventually defaulted by getting off the gold standard and printing unbacked fiat.
The US economy has been falling apart not because there's regulation, but because of the nature of the regulation.
- it is falling apart because there is government in business and economy in the first place. ALL government regulations end up distorting the markets and lead to unintended consequences, all of which are bad for the economy, because they rely on forces other than willingness of market participants.
We do a lot of catering to big business owners, while throwing the rest of the people under the bus.
- this is just not true. The business owners are a minority, and politicians learned to be populous by catering to the majority - employees, thus the business owners got screwed plenty. Some of them got out of business, some learned to cope by moving business out of the country, some bought politicians to maintain and even to increase their business, especially because so much competition was destroyed by the government in the first place, so a number of businesses became monopolies only due to government in the first place, and now it bails them out, stimulates them, buys them out, prints cash and hands it over, etc.etc.