United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P • Hacker News Board

Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#471

Post by srl » Sat, Aug 06, 2011, 10:45 PM UTC

kapitan_grant wrote: post #368

paganel wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also remember stories from my mom's family of 7 kids growing up poor in Rochester, NY in the post-war era. Perhaps I've inherited an attitude of bite-down and deal with reality from their history. I have not much to add to your excellent comments, I just wanted to give you a heads-up. I grew up in a former Eastern-European country, and my childhood and teenage years were very much marked by the economic collapse…

vi opyatj vse pereputalji, moj daragoy paganel.

"Again you are mistaken, my dear Paganel."

Care to elaborate? (Preferably in English.)

Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#472

Post by wonnage » Sat, Aug 06, 2011, 10:56 PM UTC

ohyes wrote: post #423

wonnage wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah, reference Moody's, they did such an awesome job rating mortgage securities a few years ago. My own wholly unfounded reasoning goes as this: give a broke guy some food stamps, he'll spend it on food. So the government is essentially buying this guy food. Food and groceries happen to be some of the the lowest-margin sectors of the economy - Safeway's operating margin hovers a little under 3%. So yeah, the guy…

What does margin have to do with it? Why is using the money efficiently important? What is your definition of efficiency? Lets assume he is dirt poor, rather than broke. Everyone needs food and groceries. If he spends the food-stamps on food, he will likely spend the money that he would have spent on groceries on something else. By giving food stamps, you've given him a surplus of money, so he'll buy something that h…

If Safeway makes 3% on everything this guy buys, that's 3% additional wealth that wouldn't otherwise be there, right?

Meanwhile if you give it to a more profitable business, they'll make much more out of it. We're not pissing around stimulus dollars to feed poor people or make them richer. We want to increase the total amount of value in the economy.

Your now-he-can-buy-luxuries argument is bullshit. Great, let the government subsidize iPads, that'll get the economy going.

Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#473

Post by wonnage » Sat, Aug 06, 2011, 11:03 PM UTC

bhickey wrote: post #394

wonnage wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah, reference Moody's, they did such an awesome job rating mortgage securities a few years ago. My own wholly unfounded reasoning goes as this: give a broke guy some food stamps, he'll spend it on food. So the government is essentially buying this guy food. Food and groceries happen to be some of the the lowest-margin sectors of the economy - Safeway's operating margin hovers a little under 3%. So yeah, the guy…

I think your reasoning is unfounded. Safeway's doesn't have a huge margin, but so what? They employ people directly and indirectly: cashiers, truckers, stock clerks, people who work in canneries, farmers, chemists who formulate fertilizers, etc. It isn't as if a dollar spent at Safeway's ends up in an incinerator while a dollar spent at Apple mates with another dollar to make change.

Sure, but the study tries to find the most cost-effective way of providing stimulus. If you don't care how efficiently that money is used then we might as well just employ a fuck-ton of people building bridges to Hawaii.

Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#474

Post by hugh3 » Sat, Aug 06, 2011, 11:12 PM UTC

seldo wrote: post #15

Getahobby wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really should be a call for both parties to start working together but it will most likely turbo charge the blame game.

Correct, and it's already begun: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/gop-tries-to-shif...

My favourite thing about that link is how it functions both ways. It describes an example of Republicans trying to shift blame onto Democrats, and it is an example of Democrats trying to shift blame onto Republicans.

Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#475

Post by redthrowaway » Sat, Aug 06, 2011, 11:32 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #451

redthrowaway wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Driving economic activity by having the military act as a major consumer is really just running on a treadmill. I think you're missing my point. It's not that military spending drives manufacturing, service, and R&D industries (although it does), it's that direct military action has often been, and is often used to promote US economic interests. See the military's actions in Latin America in support of United Fruit,…

that those tanks are used to assert and defend economic dominance And the need for the assertion of force to defend economic dominance in turn cements the need for the military machine and perpetuates the military-industrial complex. We are essentially in agreement. I think it would be better for the US to concentrate on economic dominance through sheer commercial and industrial awesomeness combined with forward-thin…

In that, we are in perctect agreement. With leadership and sane economic policy, the US could still be an economic juggernaut without the need for a military that could take out any two nations on earth simultaneously. It can still be by far the most powerful, without needing to cost as much as the next 8 combined.

Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#476

Post by CamperBob » Sat, Aug 06, 2011, 11:33 PM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #434

CamperBob wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

End all offensive military actions overseas. Finish winding down Iraq and abandon Afghanistan wholesale. These actions have cost several trillion dollars over the last 10 years. We can't get that money back, but we can stop spending more. Once you realize that the military is not a collection of armed forces so much as it is the US's largest social welfare program, these policies and figures start to make more sense.…

i see this point made every time the discussion about military spending comes up, and i hate it so so much. what this argument boils down to, for me, is "we need to keep killing foreigners so that our economy doesn't suffer", and this is a morally reprehensible position.

Yes, it is. I hate it, too. But that doesn't affect the truth of the matter.

Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#477

Post by CamperBob » Sat, Aug 06, 2011, 11:36 PM UTC

jebblue wrote: post #460

wtallis wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think that Fox News could destroy the Tea Party almost as easily as they created it?

Fox News and Christian bashing, it reads like Slashdot on here.

It's almost as if everybody from Jesus Christ to James Madison warned you against mingling religion and government, and you didn't listen.

Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#478

Post by dmm » Sat, Aug 06, 2011, 11:40 PM UTC

rmrm wrote: post #131

geuis wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it the government's job to keep people employed for the sake of employing them? No! There are times in history where government spending can help , like during the Great Depression. The government spent a lot of money on public works projects to help put some people back to work. But this didn't do much to actually end the depression. It was the onset of WWII and the subsequent ramp-up to a war economy that really…

WWII and the rampup was still a public works project. What really turned the economy for good imo was not WWII but the result of WWII -- all of our competitors on the international stage having large parts of their population and infrastructure destroyed. A few year grace period while the rest of the world rebuilt turned into 50 years of global corporate hegemony.

And the USD became the world's reserve currency.

Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#479

Post by abalashov » Sun, Aug 07, 2011, 12:06 AM UTC

srl wrote: post #471

kapitan_grant wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

vi opyatj vse pereputalji, moj daragoy paganel.

"Again you are mistaken, my dear Paganel." Care to elaborate? (Preferably in English.)

Reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_the_Castaways

Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#480

Post by cgp » Sun, Aug 07, 2011, 12:56 AM UTC

usaar333 wrote: post #163

pyoung wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot compare 'person' and 'business' with government. The government has the ability to print money, whereas the other two do not. The only reason they don't print money to pay off all their debts is because it will result in massive inflation. The reason the European debt crises is so serious is because the adoption of the euro means that no individual contry can print their own money to avoid default.

Inflating your way out of debt is as bad to debt holders as a (partial) default.

you can't assume that printing money here will incur inflation, as money is being just sucked up by the system right now - a lot of it in the form of housing prices falling (and thus falling off the assets sheets of banks)