CME on Friday told traders that it would increase the amount of collateral required to trade Treasury futures by 8% to 22%, as the debt crisis was seen ramping up volatility in the government issues underlying the contracts.
>It had been required to move all attention from something. Well, this whole spectacle from the beginning seemed strange. It was immediately clear that the Democrats agree with Republicans so what was this "fight"?
A little too much conspiracy theory here. The difference between the right and left is not tweedle dee and tweedle dum. Elections do matter and the best financed politician doesn't always win. Yes, there's manipulation by outfits like the Koch Brothers but there's still a lot of randomness, unpredictability and uncertainty out there to keep things interesting.
One day my coworker got pissed off that he didn't get any bailout package cuz he's not that poor. I told him, "Your monthly salary is a part of each bailout package."
I was watching Thomas and Friends video with my kids. The show loves saying, "You are a really useful engine." "Great I will work harder to become more useful."
I look around... so many useless jobs around my town and my workplace... all supported by the bailout money. Many people talk about rise of China, every details of their medical symptoms, every TV shows they watched, every fancy vacations they took, every political issues, everything their pets do. Just talk talk talk. It's getting harder to find those who actually do something interesting.
@zigizigi Ooh - that's depressing (the link). But thank you - it's a wake-up call. Just not sure what you do once you know about these things. And @Roy_Batty Very eloquently put. The restaurant analogy is a powerful and disturbing one.
The rot goes far beyond the left-right dichotomy. Politicians and platforms are about as much to blame as the manager of your local fast food chain for the same crappy food being served everywhere the eye can see. Obama is just as complicit, if not more so, than idiots like Bush. In fact, if you believe that Obama is actually smarter than Bush, then his corruption is actually the greater sin. One gets the feeling Bush didn't know any better. One also gets the feeling Obama does, but doesn't particularly care. Which is the greater indictment?
You don't become a national "leader" unless and until you've sold your allegiance to the entities who control wealth globally -- and I don't mean management, I mean gigantic corporate interest or the stratospherically rich. They actually call the shots. Everyone else is an employee, if not servant, to those interests, whether they realize it or not.
When we debate certain policies, Flavor A may taste a little different than Flavor B, but neither flavor gets on the menu without the owner of the restaurant making the decision to serve that dish in the first place. The choices available to most people are actually quite circumscribed. The difference between the right, even the far right, and the left (or center) these days is ultimately meaningless in the long-term. I agree that we need to get out of these wars. But war is a business, a profitable one to the crony insiders, and that's primarily why they keep happening. Democrats as well as Republicans are complicit in this.
Economic downturns, too, have a hidden narrative. Even during depressions, someone makes out like bandits (literally).
Considering US problems most common argument is "all had been ok for long, so it'll continue to be ok". It is fucking bad argument, because debt is exponentially growing. And economic is not growing t all. Especially real sector is in trouble.
As you may see the point of no return was 2009. Since then creating new debt only devours economy. In layman terms it means that US economy considered as an aggregate business of smaller enterprises it consists of is insolvent. There will be still profitable enterprises but the number of bankruptcies will grow inevitably. US will undergo very hard times in the next few years. Along with the whole world. There is no nation that will benefit on a large scale from collapse of the dollar, they're all in the same sinking boat.
Let's be clear it's no coincidence that stark raving mad gun touting mentally ill people hold right ring ideologies.
In the US especially right wing politics is heavily ideological and religious. Seeing all this from the outside (UK) is scary quite frankly and I think most right wing politicians and the tea party in particular should be absolutely ashamed of themselves and the cuts to America, it will weaken America and not make any difference to future default issues. It feels like the old John Ford film Wagon Master, that we've been taken at gun point by an insane outlaw in monument valley.
Right wing party is also savagely cutting at services in the UK as well, so they can give more government responsibilities to private companies. More power to their rich friends, less power to the people. What David Cameron means by 'Big Society' and a small government is really 'big private sector'.
Maybe if Bush had not started 2 massive wars and involved us with it, we wouldn't have needed to balance the books so dramatically. And maybe if the bankers had been more responsible and less like gambling speculators, we'd not have had a huge recession. Yet the right wingers continue to blame all the problems on excess spending on social programs, health services, bus shelters for the elderly! A drop in the ocean compared to bank bailouts and defence.
All credit to Obama for narrowly averting a worldwide crisis created purely for the selfish reasons of a few people in the Republican party. It's not just the US that suffers from these political games it's the world.
Since 1962, debt ceiling has been increased 72 times -- most recently by GW Bush. Interesting how the right wing never had a problem with it until we got ourselves a Black President.
Crazy world- to think that the us Debt Crisis has lowered the price of the Scarlet to that... unbelievable! Now- if only it was 45k and 700 fps- then I would buy 2!
How about more effective at getting out products! Where the $%%$@**! is the Scarlet! :-( And what about the roadmap - you know the one with the 25k sensor... (or was it more?)
Surely, none of this economic decline is real. I--and millions of others--were promised that if taxes for the rich were cut, and they got richer, manna would would trickle down on us. I'm still waiting, as are hundreds of millions of others. Taxes were cut and things got worse. So, is there a Plan B? Or is the result of this 30 year, neo-conservative experiment in supply side economics and tax cuts for the rich to simply be more people living in cars outside of the homes they once owned?
@EOSHD: There's a difference between a nutcase and a right-wing extremist. That guy wasn't right-wing; he was a mentally-ill man with a gun. Likewise, the Obama-created chart at the top of the page deliberately skews the spending towards his predecessor, so as to hide the fact that President Obama has spent more. The current economy has more to do with poor-decision making (e.g. forcing Fannie Mae and banks to give housing loans to people who couldn't afford them) than political ideology. Ideology is just an easy way to hide years of bad decisions by both parties, inside deals, and sweetheart programs for big companies and unions. The solution isn't breaking things into smaller pieces; the solution is holding people accountable for their actions, not their ideology, easier now through the Internet. Never before in history has so much information been so easily available to so many people.
EOSHD: Jared Lee Loughner is not a "right wing extremist", the man is stark-raving insane. Have you seen the videos he put up on youtube? This man is incapable of having a political agenda, he's simply insane, a seriously sick individual.