Quick summary: Creekstone wanted to go beyond USDA regulations and test all of its cows for mad cow disease. The USDA, beholden to the interests of larger meat packing companies who donâ(TM)t want to compete on safety, told them they couldnâ(TM)t. A lower court had ruled in favor of Creekstone, but now it looks like the company wonâ(TM)t get the chance to market their product with greater assurances of safety. Thanks, USDA!
So there may be no sawdust in your bread, but there may be mad cow lurking in your burger. In your case it is already too late, psycho, but the rest of us would like the opportunity to choose beef that we know has been tested. USDA is preventing that.
You also falsely assume that government regulation is the only kind of regulation there is, and you are also the one who started spouting off about regulation when GP was discussing the massive debt that the spending plan will incur.
I seem to have misread your introduction; here I had assumed you were talking about GP, when I see now that it was a warning against the ism-laden content of your post.
In fact, if you look at historical unemployment graphs you will find it impossible to guess when taxes were cut or raised. There simply is no correlation.
This is true, but that does not mean that tax cuts are ineffective. Rather, it means that they have a subtler effect than what you are expecting. Tax cuts allow people to individually choose where to (and whether or not to) spend their money, whereas government spending forces the people's money, taken through taxation, to be funneled in a particular direction.
Government spending could result in job creation, and those jobs could well be sustained for close to a decade, but there is no guarantee that real wealth has been created or that the investment was a good one. Consumer spending OTOH takes a shotgun approach because different people want different things, and while there will be failures there will also be wild successes the likes of which no-one could have predicted. Tax cuts make these successes more likely because there is more capital available for their creation.
Yes, I am well aware of that. If I were talking about a real girl I would not have used the phrase "adjust her portamento setting" unless I was feeling extraordinarily frisky.
That's actually a very interesting point. With fractional reserve lending, the monetary system we currently use, an original $1,000 deposit into a bank balloons into $10,000 of real money. So they theoretically _could_ use the RIAA tactic as a $9M potential is essentially removed with the withdrawal of $900,000.
Going back to the OP, that would mean 18 withdrawals per card over a 30-minute period, or just under two minutes per transaction. We are now in the domain of the eminently plausible.
Actually, I kind of like R&B, but I refuse to recognize Hip-Hop as music. I mean sure, it's got a beat and you can kill cops to it, but it's still lacking something.
That's fine. As long as you don't complain about my refusal to recognize punk and its ilk as music. I mean sure, they have guitars (and can even play two chords on them!) and you can riot to it, but it's still lacking something.
I'm surprised by the continued popularity of the "rap ain't music" meme. Never mind that almost all hip-hop has at the very least a musical hook or two, and many songs have more orchestration than you'll find in a rock band. Never mind that Hey-Ya was the first big hit in years to use atypical phrasing; you have to go all the way back to Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun or the Toadies' Possum Kingdom to find the last one.
My guess is that you and most of your responders have done nothing more than give hip-hop a cursory listen. A lot of it is crap, but then a lot of everything is crap. The fact that you think cop-killing is the only message shows that you've missed a lot - there is also sex and drugs and money! Seriously though, give a listen to K'NAAN's Dusty Foot Philosopher album for some lyrical depth (including a harsh critique of the thug subculture in "What's Hardcore?") and rhythmic complexity. Hip-hop might still not be your cup of tea--I know it isn't what I choose to listen to most of the time--but at least you wouldn't make a total doofus of yourself by dismissing an entire genre based on twenty songs you heard on the radio over the course of a few years.
At least the mods have wised up; five years ago comments like yours were getting plus fives.
Good Lord that was horrible. Somebody needs to adjust her portamento setting so she can actually nail the pitches instead of slowly sliding into them. It sounds like an cappella record being hand-turned by someone with Parkinson's and played over j-pop.
It is true that the gold standard has to deflate in the same way that fiat currency must inflate: that is how the system is designed. It is not a problem in either case as long as the rate stays within a couple percentage points of zero. With fiat currency the rate of inflation can be pretty easily manipulated by whoever controls the money supply, in our case the Fed. If the Fed could be trusted to maintain a low, positive rate of inflation then we would probably be okay, but that has not been the case:
Celent calculates that the M0 money supply [currency in circulation and bank reserves held at the Federal Reserve] "has recently increased at a pace never seen before in US history," and has increased as much in the last 90 days as it has in the last 83 years.
By the week of 3 December 2008, the money supply was a staggering $630 billion, or 74% higher than it was during the week of 3 September 2008. An increase of this size in the past took on the order of a decade.
In addition, inflation at any positive rate devalues the currency over time. As long as you have a decent income you won't be racing the inflation rate, but any uninvested savings will steadily lose value. Contrast this with the deflation of a gold-backed currency (or one backed by any physical store of value): the rate is low, so you won't notice much day-to-day, but your long-term uninvested savings steadily gain value. As the economy grows, everything gets cheaper.
This is all a little simplistic, of course, but one important item keeps being forgotten in the mostly unheard debate about our currency: the US was on the gold standard (with a few deviations here and there when government moved to fiat currency to fund wars) for 300 years, and the dollar remained very stable throughout that period. We have been on a fully fiat currency for 38 years and now the Fed is using all the tricks of its trade to try and restore the semblance of stability.
Thanks for the substantial response. I was surprised by your terseness before, as I had befriended you, and I tend only to befriend people who I deem insightful or clear thinkers. I am now reassured that I was justified in doing so.
There's nothing in my opinion, that government can do to to stop things from getting worse. The question is how much worse and for how long? That's the only thing we can affect.
On this point we are in full agreement, and you are also correct that we disagree on what actions to take and, possibly, which situation is worse: a short, sharp, painful depression or a milder prolonged one. Government stimulus will result in the latter, but the root problems (see below) are still not dealt with. They aren't necessarily dealt with if no stimulus is given either, but IMO we would be in a more stable position once we recover.
I'd expected the economic policies of the prior administration to end in disaster, and I was aware that there was a housing bubble, although I'd be lying if I said I'd been perspicacious enough to connect the two.
I will refrain (this time!) from assuming I know which policies you're referencing, and simply say again that I believe this crisis has been building for a long time, and the housing bubble happens to be the one that tipped the scales. In my view, it is the loose monetary policies of the Federal Reserve that are the root cause of our financial bubbles, and that the business cycle accepted as normal is one byproduct of it. This is likely a big reason we disagree on what actions should be taken. (Another less-than-useful medical metaphor, just for kicks: the bubbles are infections and colds, while fiat money is the HIV that exacerbates their effects.)
To close on a bizarre note, it appears that Vladimir Putin agrees with me...
Your analogy says that this crisis was a sudden, unexpected, unpredictable scenario and that drastic action needs to be taken to save the economy. My analogy says that this crisis has been predictably gestating for decades, and that the drastic action you are calling for will kill the economy or the currency. I decided that the contrast in analogies lent insight to the differences in our proposed methods for handling the crisis, which is why I opened with it. My point still stands if you omit them.
Since I'm commenting again, I may as well mention that you seem to have confused "disinflation" with "deflation," as the spending cuts etc. you mentioned are a sign of the latter.
Disinflation is lower inflation. Prices are still rising during disinflation, but at a lower rate. The general price level still rises, but, at a slower rate resulting in a continued, but, lower rate of real value destruction in money and other monetary items. A lowering of inflation is not deflation but disinflation. Deflation means the general price level is not increasing at all, but, actually decreasing continuously and the internal functional currency â" money - and other monetary items are worth more all the time. Deflation causes an increase in the real value of money and other monetary items. Inflation destroys real value in money. Disinflation destroys real value in money more slowly. Deflation creates real value in money.... Countries have little experience of deflation. Deflation is generally regarded as a very serious economic problem that everyone is trying to avoid at all costs especially after what happened during the Great Depression.
By continuing to give them money, we are only creating a situation where the banks are more consolidated than ever. If they were too big to fail before, a statement with which I strongly disagree, then allowing them to use government money (i.e. our money) to get even bigger by purchasing the banks who were not "too big to fail" only sets the stage for more, bigger problems down the line.
Give it a few million years and we'll know if our impact is positive or negative.
Good luck with that. In a few million years, whatever is living (if anything) on this planet may dig up our bones, but they will look at us as we look at cavemen. Or, if we're lucky, Mayans.
Natural selection is based on extinction. The failed mutations die. Sometimes the whole failed species dies. But somewhere up the evolutionary tree, their second or third cousins twice removed were better adapted and survived.
This sounds like a lot of free-market libertarian talk to me, sir. You know we don't go for that sort of thing nowadays. Keep the failures alive, I say!
Printing money is an improvement on what? On bartering? Perhaps, if you print money responsibly. I don't think any closed, private organization (like the Federal Reserve) can do that. I'm skeptical that a public one could.
We used to have a nice middle-ground in the gold standard, or any standard where paper scrip is backed by something physical. Gold is nice because it has traditionally been a very stable store of value: it's a hell of a lot harder to get more than just by turning on the press. You're right that bartering, while a nice alternative option for small communities, makes for a poor system of trade. Money is pretty necessary. I guess I'm just a little pickier about how sound I'd like it to be than most people.
Your last line shows that you've misdiagnosed the problem. This isn't a gunshot wound, it's an illness that has been building for a long time due to the poison of fiat money, the most obvious effects of it being the bubbles we've experienced for decades. The housing bubble is by far the most damaging to date, and if we keep it up it won't be the last unless we destroy the currency while trying to "fix" it.
The way to counteract the effects of mismanaged fiat currency is absolutely NOT to inject more of it into the system. Rather, the Federal Reserve needs to be regulated (most of you love regulation, now's your chance to make some good ones) or abolished entirely. I think the former far more likely, but I hear nobody talking about it except for Ron Paul's camp. Thankfully they're getting some credit for the accurate prediction of the current crisis, but it's apparently still not enough to warrant listening to the guy.
Bah, wish I could edit. This is the page to go to for email addresses. The contact page is a web form that requires a from address, name, a to address, and has a body maxlength of 250 characters.
I would say they must be following their own program, but I've seen enough bad web forms to know that homegrown "designers" are just as plentiful.
Wow. For those wondering if the link is worth clicking or not, it is if you want to get angry. It is clips from a law firm's seminar on how to advertise to get as few resumes as possible, and, should you receive qualified resumes despite all efforts, how to interview with the goal of rejecting applicants so that you can get green cards for H-1b workers.
What needs to happen is to turn off the money tit. Okay, $350BN is down the tubes (or did they give out the other half by now?) but this stuff gets everyone riled up when they hear about it. Unlike a lot of the stuff we hate in government on/., this is something that Man On The Street hates just as much. Call your congressmen, and tell Man On The Street that you did and give him the numbers. If enough direct pressure is put on them, they won't keep throwing gasoline on the fire because they don't want to get burned in the process. Everybody wins (in the long run and not painlessly) except for the losers who ran their banks into the ground. Otherwise it's fire and brimstone etc. for much longer, and the fail gets spread around.
Slashdot Mirror
Counterpoint:
Quick summary: Creekstone wanted to go beyond USDA regulations and test all of its cows for mad cow disease. The USDA, beholden to the interests of larger meat packing companies who donâ(TM)t want to compete on safety, told them they couldnâ(TM)t. A lower court had ruled in favor of Creekstone, but now it looks like the company wonâ(TM)t get the chance to market their product with greater assurances of safety. Thanks, USDA!
Source (plenty others available): http://www.jacobgrier.com/blog/archives/1326.html
So there may be no sawdust in your bread, but there may be mad cow lurking in your burger. In your case it is already too late, psycho, but the rest of us would like the opportunity to choose beef that we know has been tested. USDA is preventing that.
You also falsely assume that government regulation is the only kind of regulation there is, and you are also the one who started spouting off about regulation when GP was discussing the massive debt that the spending plan will incur.
I seem to have misread your introduction; here I had assumed you were talking about GP, when I see now that it was a warning against the ism-laden content of your post.
The Federal Reserve?
Oh, yes. Very helpful. Don't bother attempting to address any of the arguments written about in the article; we are happy to take you on faith.
...comes flying around a corner, tires squealing and horn honking
...putting on makeup and eating a Ho Ho while careening around 2nd Ave at 30mph with no hands on the wheel
Consistency check..................fail
In fact, if you look at historical unemployment graphs you will find it impossible to guess when taxes were cut or raised. There simply is no correlation.
This is true, but that does not mean that tax cuts are ineffective. Rather, it means that they have a subtler effect than what you are expecting. Tax cuts allow people to individually choose where to (and whether or not to) spend their money, whereas government spending forces the people's money, taken through taxation, to be funneled in a particular direction.
Government spending could result in job creation, and those jobs could well be sustained for close to a decade, but there is no guarantee that real wealth has been created or that the investment was a good one. Consumer spending OTOH takes a shotgun approach because different people want different things, and while there will be failures there will also be wild successes the likes of which no-one could have predicted. Tax cuts make these successes more likely because there is more capital available for their creation.
Yes, I am well aware of that. If I were talking about a real girl I would not have used the phrase "adjust her portamento setting" unless I was feeling extraordinarily frisky.
That's actually a very interesting point. With fractional reserve lending, the monetary system we currently use, an original $1,000 deposit into a bank balloons into $10,000 of real money. So they theoretically _could_ use the RIAA tactic as a $9M potential is essentially removed with the withdrawal of $900,000.
Going back to the OP, that would mean 18 withdrawals per card over a 30-minute period, or just under two minutes per transaction. We are now in the domain of the eminently plausible.
Out of curiosity, what were the two albums? I need some new music, and you seem like a logical person to ask since I don't know you or your tastes.
Though admittedly the image of mercilessly beating a bard with a lemur is rather entertaining, and if he uses an auto tuner then he deserves it!
Actually, I kind of like R&B, but I refuse to recognize Hip-Hop as music. I mean sure, it's got a beat and you can kill cops to it, but it's still lacking something.
That's fine. As long as you don't complain about my refusal to recognize punk and its ilk as music. I mean sure, they have guitars (and can even play two chords on them!) and you can riot to it, but it's still lacking something.
I'm surprised by the continued popularity of the "rap ain't music" meme. Never mind that almost all hip-hop has at the very least a musical hook or two, and many songs have more orchestration than you'll find in a rock band. Never mind that Hey-Ya was the first big hit in years to use atypical phrasing; you have to go all the way back to Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun or the Toadies' Possum Kingdom to find the last one.
My guess is that you and most of your responders have done nothing more than give hip-hop a cursory listen. A lot of it is crap, but then a lot of everything is crap. The fact that you think cop-killing is the only message shows that you've missed a lot - there is also sex and drugs and money! Seriously though, give a listen to K'NAAN's Dusty Foot Philosopher album for some lyrical depth (including a harsh critique of the thug subculture in "What's Hardcore?") and rhythmic complexity. Hip-hop might still not be your cup of tea--I know it isn't what I choose to listen to most of the time--but at least you wouldn't make a total doofus of yourself by dismissing an entire genre based on twenty songs you heard on the radio over the course of a few years.
At least the mods have wised up; five years ago comments like yours were getting plus fives.
Good Lord that was horrible. Somebody needs to adjust her portamento setting so she can actually nail the pitches instead of slowly sliding into them. It sounds like an cappella record being hand-turned by someone with Parkinson's and played over j-pop.
And you just made me lose the game.
+1, grammar nazi
+1, godwin
+1, combo
Or rather, what's their place in the big scheme of things?
There isn't one. Nanotechnology is the science of little scheming things.
It is true that the gold standard has to deflate in the same way that fiat currency must inflate: that is how the system is designed. It is not a problem in either case as long as the rate stays within a couple percentage points of zero. With fiat currency the rate of inflation can be pretty easily manipulated by whoever controls the money supply, in our case the Fed. If the Fed could be trusted to maintain a low, positive rate of inflation then we would probably be okay, but that has not been the case:
Celent calculates that the M0 money supply [currency in circulation and bank reserves held at the Federal Reserve] "has recently increased at a pace never seen before in US history," and has increased as much in the last 90 days as it has in the last 83 years.
By the week of 3 December 2008, the money supply was a staggering $630 billion, or 74% higher than it was during the week of 3 September 2008. An increase of this size in the past took on the order of a decade.
(source, Dec 2008)
In addition, inflation at any positive rate devalues the currency over time. As long as you have a decent income you won't be racing the inflation rate, but any uninvested savings will steadily lose value. Contrast this with the deflation of a gold-backed currency (or one backed by any physical store of value): the rate is low, so you won't notice much day-to-day, but your long-term uninvested savings steadily gain value. As the economy grows, everything gets cheaper.
This is all a little simplistic, of course, but one important item keeps being forgotten in the mostly unheard debate about our currency: the US was on the gold standard (with a few deviations here and there when government moved to fiat currency to fund wars) for 300 years, and the dollar remained very stable throughout that period. We have been on a fully fiat currency for 38 years and now the Fed is using all the tricks of its trade to try and restore the semblance of stability.
Thanks for the substantial response. I was surprised by your terseness before, as I had befriended you, and I tend only to befriend people who I deem insightful or clear thinkers. I am now reassured that I was justified in doing so.
There's nothing in my opinion, that government can do to to stop things from getting worse. The question is how much worse and for how long? That's the only thing we can affect.
On this point we are in full agreement, and you are also correct that we disagree on what actions to take and, possibly, which situation is worse: a short, sharp, painful depression or a milder prolonged one. Government stimulus will result in the latter, but the root problems (see below) are still not dealt with. They aren't necessarily dealt with if no stimulus is given either, but IMO we would be in a more stable position once we recover.
I'd expected the economic policies of the prior administration to end in disaster, and I was aware that there was a housing bubble, although I'd be lying if I said I'd been perspicacious enough to connect the two.
I will refrain (this time!) from assuming I know which policies you're referencing, and simply say again that I believe this crisis has been building for a long time, and the housing bubble happens to be the one that tipped the scales. In my view, it is the loose monetary policies of the Federal Reserve that are the root cause of our financial bubbles, and that the business cycle accepted as normal is one byproduct of it. This is likely a big reason we disagree on what actions should be taken. (Another less-than-useful medical metaphor, just for kicks: the bubbles are infections and colds, while fiat money is the HIV that exacerbates their effects.)
To close on a bizarre note, it appears that Vladimir Putin agrees with me...
Your analogy says that this crisis was a sudden, unexpected, unpredictable scenario and that drastic action needs to be taken to save the economy. My analogy says that this crisis has been predictably gestating for decades, and that the drastic action you are calling for will kill the economy or the currency. I decided that the contrast in analogies lent insight to the differences in our proposed methods for handling the crisis, which is why I opened with it. My point still stands if you omit them.
Since I'm commenting again, I may as well mention that you seem to have confused "disinflation" with "deflation," as the spending cuts etc. you mentioned are a sign of the latter.
Disinflation is lower inflation. Prices are still rising during disinflation, but at a lower rate. The general price level still rises, but, at a slower rate resulting in a continued, but, lower rate of real value destruction in money and other monetary items. A lowering of inflation is not deflation but disinflation. ...
Deflation means the general price level is not increasing at all, but, actually decreasing continuously and the internal functional currency â" money - and other monetary items are worth more all the time. Deflation causes an increase in the real value of money and other monetary items.
Inflation destroys real value in money. Disinflation destroys real value in money more slowly. Deflation creates real value in money.
Countries have little experience of deflation. Deflation is generally regarded as a very serious economic problem that everyone is trying to avoid at all costs especially after what happened during the Great Depression.
(source)
By continuing to give them money, we are only creating a situation where the banks are more consolidated than ever. If they were too big to fail before, a statement with which I strongly disagree, then allowing them to use government money (i.e. our money) to get even bigger by purchasing the banks who were not "too big to fail" only sets the stage for more, bigger problems down the line.
Give it a few million years and we'll know if our impact is positive or negative.
Good luck with that. In a few million years, whatever is living (if anything) on this planet may dig up our bones, but they will look at us as we look at cavemen. Or, if we're lucky, Mayans.
We agree about the goat.
Natural selection is based on extinction. The failed mutations die. Sometimes the whole failed species dies. But somewhere up the evolutionary tree, their second or third cousins twice removed were better adapted and survived.
This sounds like a lot of free-market libertarian talk to me, sir. You know we don't go for that sort of thing nowadays. Keep the failures alive, I say!
Printing money is an improvement on what? On bartering? Perhaps, if you print money responsibly. I don't think any closed, private organization (like the Federal Reserve) can do that. I'm skeptical that a public one could.
We used to have a nice middle-ground in the gold standard, or any standard where paper scrip is backed by something physical. Gold is nice because it has traditionally been a very stable store of value: it's a hell of a lot harder to get more than just by turning on the press. You're right that bartering, while a nice alternative option for small communities, makes for a poor system of trade. Money is pretty necessary. I guess I'm just a little pickier about how sound I'd like it to be than most people.
Your last line shows that you've misdiagnosed the problem. This isn't a gunshot wound, it's an illness that has been building for a long time due to the poison of fiat money, the most obvious effects of it being the bubbles we've experienced for decades. The housing bubble is by far the most damaging to date, and if we keep it up it won't be the last unless we destroy the currency while trying to "fix" it.
The way to counteract the effects of mismanaged fiat currency is absolutely NOT to inject more of it into the system. Rather, the Federal Reserve needs to be regulated (most of you love regulation, now's your chance to make some good ones) or abolished entirely. I think the former far more likely, but I hear nobody talking about it except for Ron Paul's camp. Thankfully they're getting some credit for the accurate prediction of the current crisis, but it's apparently still not enough to warrant listening to the guy.
Palmisano stood beside President Barack Obama and waxed patriotic
Did anyone else read that as "waxed pathetic?"
Bah, wish I could edit. This is the page to go to for email addresses. The contact page is a web form that requires a from address, name, a to address, and has a body maxlength of 250 characters.
I would say they must be following their own program, but I've seen enough bad web forms to know that homegrown "designers" are just as plentiful.
Wow. For those wondering if the link is worth clicking or not, it is if you want to get angry. It is clips from a law firm's seminar on how to advertise to get as few resumes as possible, and, should you receive qualified resumes despite all efforts, how to interview with the goal of rejecting applicants so that you can get green cards for H-1b workers.
This is bullshit, and I'm telling them as much.
What needs to happen is to turn off the money tit. Okay, $350BN is down the tubes (or did they give out the other half by now?) but this stuff gets everyone riled up when they hear about it. Unlike a lot of the stuff we hate in government on /., this is something that Man On The Street hates just as much. Call your congressmen, and tell Man On The Street that you did and give him the numbers. If enough direct pressure is put on them, they won't keep throwing gasoline on the fire because they don't want to get burned in the process. Everybody wins (in the long run and not painlessly) except for the losers who ran their banks into the ground. Otherwise it's fire and brimstone etc. for much longer, and the fail gets spread around.