Bernanke Says U.S. Economy Faces a ‘Wile E. Coyote’ Moment in 2020

Post by mhneu » Fri, Jun 08, 2018, 8:02 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #101

mhneu wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily for us, Clinton moved the budget toward balance during a good economy. So when the bubble burst, Bush was able to stimulate the economy and cut taxes. The current tax cut increases the national debt during a good economy. So this irresponsibility limits America’s options when this bubble (if it exists) bursts.

The current tax cuts are a trivial part of the deficit problem (to note, I'm against the personal income tax cuts they passed). The US deficit was going to $1 trillion regardless of the tax cuts. The forecast for a deficit explosion due to entitlement costs, long predates the Trump tax cuts. Half of those cuts reset. The primary item in the other half, the corporate income tax cuts, were a necessity to compete with t…

Post by leereeves » Fri, Jun 08, 2018, 8:59 PM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #151

jjaredsimpson wrote: post #147

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Pensions are fine if employers accurately discount present wages for the expected payment of future wages, and accurately forecast future population growth to maintain a good ratio of workers to retirees. Some governments seem to be quite bad at this though. States differ in pension liabilities and I haven't looked at the federal level.

It isn't that governments are bad at it, its that they have incentives to fuck it up. It's much easier politically to give the union what it wants and let it be some mess someone cleans up in 20 or 40 years. Only if the electorate is intelligent / educated enough to call bullshit do they temper their bullshitery.

Post by komali2 » Fri, Jun 08, 2018, 9:55 PM UTC

dgzl wrote: post #204

mywittyname wrote: post #195

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Gold is worthless for buying stuff. My dad holds this view that people should keep a bunch of gold on hand for disasters. He was right that disaster would strike (massive snow storm), but he was wrong about the gold. Turns out, when credit card machines are inoperable, grocery stores won't take gold, just cash. Tuck away a few hundred bucks in small bills. It will be more valuable than a chest full of gold when you r…

I can't agree with your opinion or your father's anecdote. Throughout all of history, gold has held intrinsic value in all kinds of civilizations, and is still one of the most valuable elements that's widely traded. If you can't buy groceries with a block of gold (assuming you're not just shredding off dust to pay them), then the seller clearly doesn't understand the value. On the contrary, paper dollars are intrinsi…

Post by nickik » Fri, Jun 08, 2018, 11:02 PM UTC

RobertoG wrote: post #61

nickik wrote: post #53

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Yeah maybe don't start with some snake-oil anti-everything guy. Read the actual literature first and then go to those claiming to know better.

Or better, read some review of the actual literature before investing in a book, to see if it's snake oil. For instance: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105752191... From the cited text: "The question is considered why the economics profession has failed over most of the past century to make any progress concerning knowledge of the monetary system, and why it instead moved ever further away from th…

Post by ianai » Sat, Jun 09, 2018, 12:41 AM UTC

simonh wrote: post #77

komali2 wrote: post #23

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If you're about to argue that there wouldn't be business cycles or depressions if we managed to overthrow capitalism, I don't think people are going to disagree with you lol

True, in most communist systems instead you get really slow growth, with occasional pauses in growth at all alongside frequent severe shortages of essential goods.