The company received $33 billion in debtor-in-possession financing to complete the process.[5] GM filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in the Manhattan New York federal bankruptcy court on June 1, 2009 at approximately 8:00 am EST. June 1, 2009 was the deadline to supply an acceptable viability plan to the U.S. Treasury. The filing reported US$82.29 billion in assets and US$172.81 billion in debt.[6][7] [8][9][10]
They had to use government's help to keep running through reorganization. And even after it they haven't become profitable in a week (or even a year).
the same end game would have been achieved had Motors Liquidation Co., at the time still named General Motors, never received its much vaunted and extolled "bail outs".
Nope. They'd have to proceed to liquidation or very messy bankruptcy because there was no chance in hell to get bridge loans in the 2008-2009 climate. Federal government acted as a lender of last resort. And it worked.
Stagflation is an extreme case - it's not a "real" inflation. It was caused not simply by increase in monetary supply, but by real resource constraints. However, even stagflation lead to salary increases.
You can't have a stable inflation without increasing paychecks. Now, it's another the question if paychecks increase fast enough.
I've actually lived through a hyperinflation (Russia in the early 90-s) with peak inflation about 1000% a year. Salaries were rising pretty much in sync with the inflation.
Actually, no. Working poor living paycheck-to-paycheck don't have significant savings that can be devalued by the inflation. The most affected are rich rent-seekers.
It's not a big deal, you can survive -40C just fine for 30-40 mins. And no US city south of Alaska gets sustained -40C temperatures.
PS: I've actually worked in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakutsk for about a year. Which does get sustained -40C temperatures in the winter. Now, at -50C it is getting distinctively uncomfortable without a face mask.
Keyword here is "beginning". Germany quietly restarted several reactors, which will slowly be decomissioned until 2020. So yeah, they still have power. And cretinously stupid hippies can blather about "being green".
Caffeine has little effect on many people (me included). I can drink a cup of strong coffee and go to sleep 30 mins later just fine. I've once accidentally conditioned myself to expect sleep after drinking coffee by drinking a cup each night before bed. So for a few weeks afterwards I was becoming very sleepy after drinking a cup of coffee during day.
And no, I don't have caffeine dependency - I can live (and often do) without coffee for months just fine.
Actually, in many countries a patent holder might be forced to license their patents. It's not a simple process, but it's usually possible in cases of bullshit like asking $2 for overscroll patents.
Medicaid is under attack right now, especially its use for childcare.
But the rising cost of higher education is largely due to all of the money being thrown at it from the government in the form of grants (a little) and much more so loan guarantees.
I don't really care to discuss it right now, but something should be done here.
Don't know much about decreasing upward mobility.... people still move between brackets plenty - up and down.
1) Healthcare, especially for children (Medicaid).
2) Rising cost of higher education (Pell grants are under attack, as well).
3) Decreasing upwards mobility (income for poor people has actually declined last 15 years) ...
Dude. Have you ever been poor or lived with poor people? I have.
Most of poor work much more than you do, but receive much less. That might be because they are not as lucky or smart as you.
there is increased incentive to appear poor, so as to score more swag
Yeah, that's why WSJ called them "lucky duckies". They're so lucky, they don't pay federal income taxes!
Most of time, however, poor people are glad to earn more and pay more taxes. Mostly because the amount of "swag" is minuscule. Arguably, the main "swag" is Medicaid (which is means-tested).
The central fallacy is that there is no loss in societal wealth as each incremental person leaves the workforce, and thus that there will be no consequences when a massive portion of society doesn't work.
And the main fallacy is that a person _chooses_ to leave the workforce. That's almost NEVER is the case, especially for poor people.
Eah, sure. Frauds, embezzlement, blah blah. In short, it's the variation of the same old: "I've got mine, now GTFO".
The number of social parasites (i.e. who don't work purposefully) is small (about 1-2%, max), so they are non-issue. And charity simply doesn't scale for anything non-trivial.
it works until it doesn't. Look at Greece. All parties competed who can promise the most free shit to the plebes.
Look at Somalia! That'd happen if you elect Repubs! It's the same fallacy.
Greeks in fact work MORE than citizens of most of Eurozone countries and have LESS government per capita than in Germany. So please, get your story straight. Are you saying that Greece should get more government?
In need? How is that possible that everybody and their dog is in need? When everybody is, the meaning of the word depreciates and people in real need are lost in the noise.
"Everybody"? Normally about 3% of people are in need (I'm talking about disabled people, jobless without insurance, etc.) That's not "everybody".
It follows. The reason modern successful democracies are successful is because they strive to provide equal opportunity to all their citizens. Only mechanisms for that are rapidly unraveling in the US.
Redistribution of wealth is a direct result of democracy, because politicians play their electorate by divide and conquer strategies, and offering concessions to different interest groups in order to win votes. Underwater mortgage? we will help you! $20 worth of birth control too expensive? you got it! Farmers in redneck states are unhappy? Corn subsidies for everybody! Students know shit? Throw even more money at the problem and give govt backed loans to everybody!
And it works. Turns out that actually HELPING people in need (even if they are partially to blame for it) helps to build a prosperous society. It's much better to give a helping hand than to kick a lying man.
paying taxes on working and subsidizing not working is counterproductive and the govt is not supposed to micromanage every detail of your life, what you eat, who you sleep with
They pretend to say that. Then in reality they mean: "I've got mine, now GTFO!". For instance, about your statement:
1) "Not working" includes children. Should we return to Dicken's Englang?
2) "Not working" includes veterans. Probably we just should let them die on the streets.
3) "Not working" includes disabled people. Natural selection FTW!
4) "Not working" includes retired people. Invisible hand of market wiped out your investments (remember, no FDIC!)? Tough luck.
also correlation is not causation - that the rich countries recycle huge part of their GDP through government channels doesn't mean the govt is the source of prosperity. It may as well be the other way around: prosperous countries can afford to blow money on fluff and would be more prosperous if they didn't.
In the absence of a single freaking example of a libertarian country that is not a hell-hole like Somalia, we are forced to conclude that the redistributionist government is necessary for a healthy society. The only question is the degree of redistribution of wealth.
Besides, natural gas systems can be used with propane instead of NG. So it's easy to install a backup propane tank and use it if NG becomes unavailable during a disaster.
Get the hell out of hurricane flooding zone. That is THE BEST way to prepare, and it worked 100% - no people who were evacuated died in the hurricane. And most of the dead people are those who decided to stay even though it was known they're gonna get flooded. Some of them even failed to do trivial things to prepare (like buying canned food and bottled water).
Yesterday a saw a video of a woman on Staten Island who stayed in the evacuation zone demanding the trucks with food and water to get there ASAP because she hasn't eaten anything but a slice of pizza in 48-hours. Sometimes I simply lose capability for words.
Propane can be a liquid at room temperature. My parents have a house with natural-gas fueled generator and heating. They also have a small tank of liquid propane buried in their backyard as a backup gas supply.
As an owner of a top-of-the line Sony Vaio VPCSE (I bought it for its full-HD resolution on 15" display) _and_ MacBook Pro - they are not comparable. MacBook is _much_ better - it has a faster CPU, it's much more quite and has a great battery life (I had to buy an external battery for my Vaio to get the same life). But yes, it MacBook costs about 1.5 times the price I paid for Vaio.
That's largely because post-1933, governments of the world took up the Keynesian position and began regulating to prevent deflation
And that has worked surprisingly well. But there were several examples post-33 of deflation, and they all were associated with economic downturns.
The stagflation of the 70's showed that the fundamental axiom of Keynesian economics incorrect -- inflation and deflation do not cause economic growth and stagnation respectively
Not really. 70-s have shown that inflation can't boost economy if it hits fundamental resource limits (lack of oil). So Keynesiasm has been duly augmented to detect such conditions. That's how science works, duh.
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They had to use government's help to keep running through reorganization. And even after it they haven't become profitable in a week (or even a year).
Nope. They'd have to proceed to liquidation or very messy bankruptcy because there was no chance in hell to get bridge loans in the 2008-2009 climate. Federal government acted as a lender of last resort. And it worked.
Stagflation is an extreme case - it's not a "real" inflation. It was caused not simply by increase in monetary supply, but by real resource constraints. However, even stagflation lead to salary increases.
You can't have a stable inflation without increasing paychecks. Now, it's another the question if paychecks increase fast enough.
I've actually lived through a hyperinflation (Russia in the early 90-s) with peak inflation about 1000% a year. Salaries were rising pretty much in sync with the inflation.
Actually, no. Working poor living paycheck-to-paycheck don't have significant savings that can be devalued by the inflation. The most affected are rich rent-seekers.
It's not a big deal, you can survive -40C just fine for 30-40 mins. And no US city south of Alaska gets sustained -40C temperatures.
PS: I've actually worked in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakutsk for about a year. Which does get sustained -40C temperatures in the winter. Now, at -50C it is getting distinctively uncomfortable without a face mask.
Hey, -40 (doesn't matter whether C or F) is perfectly fine given enough warm clothes and heating.
Keyword here is "beginning". Germany quietly restarted several reactors, which will slowly be decomissioned until 2020. So yeah, they still have power. And cretinously stupid hippies can blather about "being green".
Caffeine has little effect on many people (me included). I can drink a cup of strong coffee and go to sleep 30 mins later just fine. I've once accidentally conditioned myself to expect sleep after drinking coffee by drinking a cup each night before bed. So for a few weeks afterwards I was becoming very sleepy after drinking a cup of coffee during day.
And no, I don't have caffeine dependency - I can live (and often do) without coffee for months just fine.
Actually, in many countries a patent holder might be forced to license their patents. It's not a simple process, but it's usually possible in cases of bullshit like asking $2 for overscroll patents.
But the rising cost of higher education is largely due to all of the money being thrown at it from the government in the form of grants (a little) and much more so loan guarantees.
I don't really care to discuss it right now, but something should be done here.
Don't know much about decreasing upward mobility.... people still move between brackets plenty - up and down.
Nope. The American Dream is dying. It used to be that a hard-working average citizen could earn enough for comfortable middle-class life and easy retirement. Not anymore. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States and http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2005/01/the_economist_o.html for stats, for example. Point is, it's not getting any better.
1) Healthcare, especially for children (Medicaid).
...
2) Rising cost of higher education (Pell grants are under attack, as well).
3) Decreasing upwards mobility (income for poor people has actually declined last 15 years)
Most of poor work much more than you do, but receive much less. That might be because they are not as lucky or smart as you.
there is increased incentive to appear poor, so as to score more swag
Yeah, that's why WSJ called them "lucky duckies". They're so lucky, they don't pay federal income taxes!
Most of time, however, poor people are glad to earn more and pay more taxes. Mostly because the amount of "swag" is minuscule. Arguably, the main "swag" is Medicaid (which is means-tested).
The central fallacy is that there is no loss in societal wealth as each incremental person leaves the workforce, and thus that there will be no consequences when a massive portion of society doesn't work.
And the main fallacy is that a person _chooses_ to leave the workforce. That's almost NEVER is the case, especially for poor people.
Eah, sure. Frauds, embezzlement, blah blah. In short, it's the variation of the same old: "I've got mine, now GTFO".
The number of social parasites (i.e. who don't work purposefully) is small (about 1-2%, max), so they are non-issue. And charity simply doesn't scale for anything non-trivial.
it works until it doesn't. Look at Greece. All parties competed who can promise the most free shit to the plebes.
Look at Somalia! That'd happen if you elect Repubs! It's the same fallacy.
Greeks in fact work MORE than citizens of most of Eurozone countries and have LESS government per capita than in Germany. So please, get your story straight. Are you saying that Greece should get more government?
In need? How is that possible that everybody and their dog is in need? When everybody is, the meaning of the word depreciates and people in real need are lost in the noise.
"Everybody"? Normally about 3% of people are in need (I'm talking about disabled people, jobless without insurance, etc.) That's not "everybody".
Does not follow.
It follows. The reason modern successful democracies are successful is because they strive to provide equal opportunity to all their citizens. Only mechanisms for that are rapidly unraveling in the US.
Redistribution of wealth is a direct result of democracy, because politicians play their electorate by divide and conquer strategies, and offering concessions to different interest groups in order to win votes. Underwater mortgage? we will help you! $20 worth of birth control too expensive? you got it! Farmers in redneck states are unhappy? Corn subsidies for everybody! Students know shit? Throw even more money at the problem and give govt backed loans to everybody!
And it works. Turns out that actually HELPING people in need (even if they are partially to blame for it) helps to build a prosperous society. It's much better to give a helping hand than to kick a lying man.
paying taxes on working and subsidizing not working is counterproductive and the govt is not supposed to micromanage every detail of your life, what you eat, who you sleep with
They pretend to say that. Then in reality they mean: "I've got mine, now GTFO!". For instance, about your statement:
1) "Not working" includes children. Should we return to Dicken's Englang?
2) "Not working" includes veterans. Probably we just should let them die on the streets.
3) "Not working" includes disabled people. Natural selection FTW!
4) "Not working" includes retired people. Invisible hand of market wiped out your investments (remember, no FDIC!)? Tough luck.
also correlation is not causation - that the rich countries recycle huge part of their GDP through government channels doesn't mean the govt is the source of prosperity. It may as well be the other way around: prosperous countries can afford to blow money on fluff and would be more prosperous if they didn't.
In the absence of a single freaking example of a libertarian country that is not a hell-hole like Somalia, we are forced to conclude that the redistributionist government is necessary for a healthy society. The only question is the degree of redistribution of wealth.
Strong central government doesn't automatically make a paradise. However, lack of any government invariably makes a country become a hell-hole.
Besides, natural gas systems can be used with propane instead of NG. So it's easy to install a backup propane tank and use it if NG becomes unavailable during a disaster.
Get the hell out of hurricane flooding zone. That is THE BEST way to prepare, and it worked 100% - no people who were evacuated died in the hurricane. And most of the dead people are those who decided to stay even though it was known they're gonna get flooded. Some of them even failed to do trivial things to prepare (like buying canned food and bottled water).
Yesterday a saw a video of a woman on Staten Island who stayed in the evacuation zone demanding the trucks with food and water to get there ASAP because she hasn't eaten anything but a slice of pizza in 48-hours. Sometimes I simply lose capability for words.
Propane can be a liquid at room temperature. My parents have a house with natural-gas fueled generator and heating. They also have a small tank of liquid propane buried in their backyard as a backup gas supply.
As an owner of a top-of-the line Sony Vaio VPCSE (I bought it for its full-HD resolution on 15" display) _and_ MacBook Pro - they are not comparable. MacBook is _much_ better - it has a faster CPU, it's much more quite and has a great battery life (I had to buy an external battery for my Vaio to get the same life). But yes, it MacBook costs about 1.5 times the price I paid for Vaio.
What are they smoking? Android devices will surpass the number of PCs the next year. Probably, it's already the most widely used OS.
That's largely because post-1933, governments of the world took up the Keynesian position and began regulating to prevent deflation
And that has worked surprisingly well. But there were several examples post-33 of deflation, and they all were associated with economic downturns.
The stagflation of the 70's showed that the fundamental axiom of Keynesian economics incorrect -- inflation and deflation do not cause economic growth and stagnation respectively
Not really. 70-s have shown that inflation can't boost economy if it hits fundamental resource limits (lack of oil). So Keynesiasm has been duly augmented to detect such conditions. That's how science works, duh.
Except those 'Crisis’s' were nothing compared to the ones we have today.
Yeah, sure. These crises were nothing, people were giving out pies in the streets and unicorns were roaming meadows.
I understand, if facts contradict your religion - so much worse for the facts.