US debt six times greater than declared - study

[head of joaquin]

Really?

The productive part of the internet would have been developed anyway. The bubble brought us the collective crap like Boo.Com with first class tickets and five star hotels for everyone. These projects tended to draw value resources away from doing productive things.

I happen to have seen the consequences first hand. As you draw resources away from doing productive work, productive businesses have a more difficult time finding employees. Our good employees were drawn away by the promise of equity which was in truth worthless. We tried to compete with cash, but in the end all bubbles draw in the truely stupid. Our management joined bubble-mindset at the very end, giving stock incentives to new employees. The managers had no idea what these options were worth and made massive empty promises. At the end, we had staffed something like 15 teams probably 3 times what we needed with marginal employees who had no work because businesses cut the cap-ex on which our sales depended.

We had a solid product which couldn't compete in a stock-option world because stock-options distort the allocation of resources. Once we joined, the distortion bled straight into our employee mix and we never sold another dollar of new product.

No, the bubble caused greater investment in the internet infrastructure that led to the current boom, as well as created hundreds of thousands of jobs that were easily translated to the current market. And more to the point, the secondary effect was to channel talent into that industry. Prior to the dot.com bubble the idea of having a career developing internet services was unknown. Once the bubble occurred (and by the way a bubble lasting about 8 years is no bubble), talented young people wanted to get involved, classes were established, industry standards were put into effect, and so forth. We're seeing the results now.

Generally bubbles that affect working people are a problem -- as in Bush's Meltdown. The dot.com bubble mostly affected those in the industry and had very little effect on the general economy.

I'll take the dot.com bubble right now. Something like 2 million jobs over 7 or 8 years, producing huge tax revenues.. We need a dot.com bubble.

 

[joG]

Generally not true, but this is your second fallacy -- that institutional investors aren't funded by the rich. You probably think every working American has a 401(k) with $500,000 in it. A typical rightwing myth.

I would grant you that in might be something to think about. It does seem odd. On the one hand there are a few people with a couple of billions, while another guy has to put his newborn baby girl out in the jungle, because he hasn't enough to feed the second kid. Sure. We can talk about that.

But it is silly to want to demonstrate that that is the force behind our present bubbles. If you really want to do that and you should if you believe what you say, you will need at least a couple of hundred pages of stringent economic analysis. And believe me. I have read a lot of that stuff and would not want to take the odds on your success. But power to the people!

 

[joG]

Not only is it a cool chart, but joined with the fact that the rich do most of the investing in bubbles, the causation is complete.

The bigger the income gap, the more money that's taken out of the real economy and put into bets. Every recession shows that. Indeed, you can predict the recessions depth by the size of the income gap preceding it.

That is quite another proposition. Of course it has an effect if money is horded ("taken out of the real economy"). But that has nothing to do with the behavior of your average would be trillionaire. The only way he is going to make the big number is by putting his money into things like ideas that take of in the real economy. These guys know this. Its the guy who works for his bread who has crazy ideas of getting rich with commodity speculation. Now don't say it. The Hunts did not think they were speculating nor really did Soros. They were just doing a daring but rational job. In one case it soured.

 

[DDD]

He definitely does.....But like the Rolling Stones said. Can you Hear him Knocking? :roll:

I have been hearing the knocks for a while. The thing is though I thing we are way passed just hearing. I think it is time to engage now. How about you just posit me into something where I could be of some use?

 

[MMC]

I have been hearing the knocks for a while. The thing is though I thing we are way passed just hearing. I think it is time to engage now. How about you just posit me into something where I could be of some use?

Seems the Media has a problem with getting in bed with the politicians.....might be a place to start. Just sayin!

 

[DDD]

Seems the Media has a problem with getting in bed with the politicians.....might be a place to start. Just sayin!

Could you elaborate?

 

[MMC]

Could you elaborate?

Not to hard to understand.....the Media wants to be part of the Aristocracy. So they write what they want to write. Report things the way they want to report it. Rather than stay neutral and report the facts. Or question politicians with the Right type of Questions they should be asking.

 

[DDD]

Not to hard to understand.....the Media wants to be part of the Aristocracy. So they write what they want to write. Report things the way they want to report it. Rather than stay neutral and report the facts. Or question politicians with the Right type of Questions they should be asking.

Say this stands, where would I be of use in this? Also how would my engagement help with 70 trillion debt you have?

Are we on the same song here? I thought you meant that you are knocking/asking for help?