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A True Kaniggit

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35 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

And we pay him for his own travel, because invariably he stays in one of his awful, tacky, leveraged resorts. Him and his flunkies and whatever supplicants have been gulled into coming along, and their Secret Service protection. Welcome to the age of President Rent-Seeker.

Did the SS ever get new funding? 

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Rubio gets this weeks captain obvious award.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rubio-republican-tax-bill-too-far-helping-corporations

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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said Friday that he believes the recently passed GOP tax bill did too much to help the bottom line of America’s largest corporations.

 

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“By and large, you’re going to see a lot of these multinationals buy back shares to drive up the price,” Rubio continued. “Some of them will be forced, because they’re sitting on historic levels of cash, to pay out dividends to shareholders. That isn’t going to create dramatic economic growth.”

Okay, now conservative sorts of people, this is something I kind of want to expound upon because I’ve seen conservative sorts of people, conservatives sorts of people who are well known, “going tisk, tisk, tisk” it’s wrong to say that rich people getting share buybacks won’t create “investment”, even if all rich people do is take the money and put it in banks or buy safe assets like government bonds.

The reasoning behind this process is basically, “it’s savings and ‘investment’ isn’t it? So what’s the problem?” The extra “savings” will lower interest rates and that will create extra investment.

But, this whole notion, is based on a really silly loanable funds theory.

This loanable funds story is one of Robinson Caruso doesn’t think it’s worth investing his coconuts to plant more coconut trees. So he takes his cocanuts to the bank. Well, cool, now that there has been “savings” by Caruso cause he takes his cocanuts to the bank, there can be “investment”. Under this version of events, libertarian man whose always wanted to build that Ayn Rand theme park in Branson Missouri can finally do it because by golly Robinson Caruso “saved” some coconuts. So libertarian man builds the Ayn Rand theme park, and lets hope it has the Paul Ryan haunted theme house (where you are terrified that your social security and medicare benefits got cut) as I’d be really pissed if I drove out to Branson Missouri this summer and there was no Paul Ryan haunted house – I’d kind of feel like Clark Griswold driving to Wally World to find it closed, but anyway libertarian man gives the guy who owns the land where he wants to build the Ayn Rand theme park his deposit, so he gets the land, the land owning guy gets the claim to the deposit, which he cashes in for coconuts. Good thing somebody decided to save something or the Ayn Rand theme park would never get built, and I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the Paul Ryan haunted theme house, where I’d get to imagine working at a company owned town 1890s style, payed just above a subsistence level, and dying in my early 40s, probably by starving to death after I got injured and couldn’t work, coming out with a good scare – man oh man I can taste the “freedom” already.

Conservative sorts of people. You’ve probably encountered a funny little diagram. On this diagram there is a demand curve, it slopes downward. It’s supposed to represent the demand for loanable funds. And then you have a supply curve, it slopes upward, it’s supposed to represent the supply of loanable funds. On the the vertical axis is labeled the rate of interest. On the horizontal axis is labeled the quantity of loans given out.

Now allegedly, if the supply curve shifts down and to the right, you get a lower interest rate and more funds are lent out. You’ve seen this before haven’t you conservative sorts of people?

And if your a conservative sort of person, you’re like yeah, yeah, I get it, what’s the problem here?

The problem here conservative sorts of people, what makes you so sure the demand curve doesn’t shift? What makes you so oh certain that the demand curve is completely independent of the supply curve? 

This conservative story might hold if business thought that declining sales today meant a long term commitment to buy future goods tomorrow, causing businesses to rush out and buy capital equipment. It might hold if the general price level fell, while fixing future price level expectations,  generating more inflation raising the opportunity cost of holding money.

But, this doesn’t happen in the real world, and you’d have to be a real, real, conservative clown to believe otherwise.

In the real world what happens is the demand for loanable funds increases, shifting the demand curve upward and to the right and as that generates more income, the supply curve shifts down and to the left, resulting overall in a higher interest rate, but with more loans being given out.

In the 1920s, when the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of France decided to hoard gold, pushing down the price of commodities, companies didn’t say, “oh well golly, that must mean consumers are committing to buy future commodities, so let’s just ramp up production!”. No that’s not what fucking happened.

We’re just getting out of the Great Recession, largely because people got nervous, and they decided to not to buy real assets, but rather decided to hold safe financial assets like money. And not surprising companies didn’t say, “Oh goody, people are saving to buy future commodities so let’s ramp up production and hire people!”.

And yet, I see random conservative clowns, people like Tyler Cowen, for instance suggesting that it doesn’t matter if share buy backs are held as money or some other safe financial asset like safe bonds, or whether the funds are used to do investment.


Now lets get back to libertarian man building the Ayn Rand theme. In the real world, libertarian man goes to the bank to ask for a loan, and if the bank thinks he’s a decent credit risk, it, it literally creates money out of thin air, by putting a deposit on the liability side of it’s books, and then putting the loan on it’s asset side. And then he takes the deposit and pays the guy who owns the land where he wants to build the Ayn Rand theme park. Notice how not one Robinson Caruso saved any coconuts in this process.

And did conservative sorts of people notice something else about this process? Something that makes you feeling kind of funny? Something troubling you about this process? Did ya notice that the act of investment here created a saving in the form of the loan held on the asset side of the banks books?

Now conservative sorts of people, you might ask, but, but, but surely the banks want to get depositors and that’s true, but they don’t need the depositors before making loans, they can pursue them after making loans, in other words investment generates demand for savings, not the other way around. The central bank policy rate and the demand for loans has more to with the amount of lending and money creation, in the process, than does some prior act of depositors “saving” money.

The reason I bring this up, is because I’ve seen some real conservative clowns as of late suggest that if rich shareholders get a bunch of cash from share buybacks, it doesn’t matter if they just hold the cash or buy safe assets like government bonds or whether they take the cash and purchase actual physical capital. That’s simply not correct.

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8 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

In Exchange for a Political Donation, David Simon Will Personally Apologize for Killing Omar on The Wire

https://slate.com/arts/2018/01/in-exchange-for-a-political-donation-david-simon-will-personally-apologize-for-killing-omar-on-the-wire.html

That's awesome.  But as much as I love you, I'm still not watching The Deuce Simon!

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Yes, somebody badly needs to open up a can of whoop ass on the Republican Party and Trump.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/2/16795804/elections-2018-midterms-consequences

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The results of this year’s midterm elections will be enormously important — not just in shaping both the future of Donald Trump’s presidency, but in shaping the American political landscape for a great many years to come.


The sorry ass legacy of Robert Dork, oops, I meant Bork

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-29/monopolies-may-be-worse-for-workers-than-for-consumers

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Monopoly power is a hot topic of economic debate. Economists are starting to ask whether increasing industrial concentration is choking off productivity growth, reducing capital investment, throttling or deterring would-be entrepreneurs, raising consumer prices, and reducing the share of national income flowing to workers

 

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Fortunately, some politicians are already acting. Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison has introduced a bill that would implement annual reviews of big mergers. Ellison’s bill would analyze not just whether the mergers led to higher or lower prices, but also their effect on wages and the local economy. Nor is Ellison alone in his quest -- there is an entire antitrust caucus forming in the House of Representatives. The country is finally waking up to the dangers of market power.

 

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So glad to hear that K Street is happy.

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“Trump said this was a giant Christmas present to the American people,” said John Raffaelli, a former Senate tax aide and the founding partner of Capitol Counsel, a prominent lobbying firm. “Well, it’s a giant present to the tax lobbying community as well because of the extenders.”  

Russ Sullivan, a lobbyist at McGuireWoods Consulting and a former aide to the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, said the new law would be a “bonanza” for lobbyists.

“If you want to use insurance terms, tax lobbyists just purchased an annuity that will provide benefits for years,” Sullivan said.

 

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/02/tax-overhaul-paydays-for-k-street-261668?lo=ap_a1

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38 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Trump is the best. Now he’s the savior of commercial aviation.

 

So, if there is a good harvest in the Midwest this year, its because of Trump?  If Star Wars IX is well received by audiences and critics... Trump.  If an asteroid misses the Earth Trump adjusted the orbital mechanics.  What did we do before we had this amazing man as president.

:vomit:

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23 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

So, if there is a good harvest in the Midwest this year, its because of Trump?  If Star Wars IX is well received by audiences and critics... Trump.  If an asteroid misses the Earth Trump adjusted the orbital mechanics.  What did we do before we had this amazing man as president.

:vomit:

Well of course. That's what happens when you go out and hire the best people.

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39 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

So, if there is a good harvest in the Midwest this year, its because of Trump?  If Star Wars IX is well received by audiences and critics... Trump.  If an asteroid misses the Earth Trump adjusted the orbital mechanics.  What did we do before we had this amazing man as president.

:vomit:

We suffered under the tyranny of black muslim socialism, of course.

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2 hours ago, Mexal said:

Trump is the best. Now he’s the savior of commercial aviation.

 

Note: there's hasn't been a commercial airline crash in the US since February 2009.

Also note: if he were right, then he and the Republican Party would also be admitting that government oversight and regulation work.

You heard it straight from your president and party head, Republicans: government oversight and regulation works! Time to embrace it!

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Well, this means we get to blame Trump for every natural disaster that occurs while he's squating in office.  Fires in Cali, Trump's fault.  Hurricanes, Trump's fault.  Miami flooding, Trump's fault.  This cold fucking miserable winter, totally Trump.  He did it all.  Fuck him.  

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14 minutes ago, Paladin of Ice said:

Note: there's hasn't been a commercial airline crash in the US since February 2009.

Yeah, apparently Trump has really been working hard on improving the safety record of airlines in Asia and Africa.  When he said SO MUCH WINNING, I'll admit this isn't what I expected. 

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