What is keeping our country afloat

Originally posted by Valhall

Now, for the rural view:


The long-story...we're approaching the inability to sustain ourselves food-wise. Yep...the bread-basket to the world is going to have to start cutting the pipelines.

I work in the grain industry and we are still shipping tons of non-gmo food grade soy beans to Japan

See! you got one of those red stickies pasted on you.

As a fellow NYC er I must warn you............they take no prisoners here. This is unlike any other BBS I've posted to...........and I've been do it for 10 yrs..........

They nailed me big time. I got 2 red stickies for the same damn post. I technically did not break the rules...........I just asked the guy if he was a........... I never called him one......... so I technically did not brek the rules........but sure was not posted in the spirit of the rules so I got nailed big time. No appeals so don't even try.

But the tight monitoring........it does go a long way to make a fun site to post to............and if ya get banned..........well, no more fun.

See my point?

They will not allow NYC street corner rap ..........stuff we are accustom to ... the adjustment isn't to hard .........plus if you can make it NY.......this place a breeze..........

?

queens

That ain't NYC...............NYC is across the 59th ST bridge.......

What part?

I lived and worked in Manhattan.............upper east side..........for 25 yrs retire 8 yrs ago to west coast Fla...........

You're is school still? Which one if I may ask?

One.
Last.
Time.

Stay on topic

Further chatty off-topic posts in this thread will result in warnings.

sorry.......I got carried away,,,he's a home boy...........OK no problem

Originally posted by Banshee

Stay on topic

Further chatty off-topic posts in this thread will result in warnings.

It's not really doing any harm though is it?

Oil prices have risen steadily since the situation in the Middle East began deteriorating. So even if they stay where they are, this represents a serious shock to the system � and there could be more to come.
Economists have never reached a consensus about what happened in 1979, but my interpretation is that it was similar to the recent California electricity crisis. In both cases the key was the combination of a tight market and demand that wasn't very responsive to price. Under those circumstances, individual producers � power companies in California, oil-producing countries in 1979 � have a lot of market power. That is, it is in each producer's interest to cut back production to drive prices higher. The result is a price surge, even though there is no real capacity shortage.
The point is that markets are so tight that the logic of market power kicks in and countries decide that, quite aside from politics, their financial interest lies in reducing, not increasing, their output. The Saudis 10% increase is nothing more than a fart in the back of the classroom.
If an oil crisis can happen so easily, why haven't we had one since 1979? The answer is that we made ourselves crisis-proof for a while, then became complacent. After the oil crises of the 1970's, Western economies sharply increased their energy efficiency: the U.S. economy was a third bigger in 1985 than it was in 1973, but it consumed less oil. The result was the marginalization of the danger zone: in 1985, the Persian Gulf produced only 18 percent of the world's oil, less than half of its share in 1973. But rapidly growing oil consumption in the S.U.V. era was met, inevitably, by increased Persian Gulf production. So oil prices are once again hostage to Middle Eastern politics.
Today, after a decade of price stability, fears of inflation are much more muted. Instead, the main concern is the drag of oil prices on purchasing power. Each $10-per-barrel increase in the price of oil is like a $70 billion tax increase, one that falls most heavily on middle- and lower-income families.
And this is not a good time to slash purchasing power. Business investment, which plunged last year, has still not recovered; optimistic economic forecasts depend on the assumption that buoyant consumer spending will keep the economy afloat until businesses do decide to invest again. If consumers are made poorer by higher oil prices and cut back instead, that assumption goes out the window. And the Fed can't respond with another big round of interest rate cuts: since it has already reduced rates from 6.5 to practically nothing, it doesn't have much ammunition left.
We've had our economy buoyed by nothing much more than consumer spending, housing & military purchases by the Fed. Only one of those 3 is unaffected by depleted purchasing power due to higher oil prices. Those two that are? Well, don't forget that they are also impacted by droughts, which drive up food costs ( $3.80 for milk!?! ) and the states making due with a litany of taxes to compensate for what the Fed is not providing.

What did the Irishman say to Braveheart again!??!?!

[Edited on 3-6-2004 by Bout Time]

What's keeping us afloat? Look at who's buying billions in Treasury bonds.

This is my first post on these forums. Is there always this much bickering amongst you guys? Children, we have more important matters in this world then to quibble about petty differences.

Anyways, to stay on course of the topic. What is keeping this economy afloat.

What is going on in the economy right now is the equivalent of a clown riding a unicycle with a flat tire juggling 6 flaming pins on a tight rope over a pool of sharks. However, this juggler, the guys behind the scenes running the shots, is an extremely good juggler.

One of the main problems in our economy right now is the unequal distribution of wealth. Too much money is in too few of hands. To compensate for this immense problem is the amount of outstanding dept. This huge dept pyramid is what is artificially keeping our economy afloat. This is in the form of cheaper houses and cheaper cars. The housing market however is the single biggest thing keeping our economy afloat. With the massive amount of people taking equity out of their home, they can use that equity to either consume more, or pay of credit card debt, which also leads to consuming more.

The media is a lovely tool for the elite. They can put a spin on any bad news about the economy making it seem like everything is ok. They even expect us to believe that inflation is only running at what, 4%? LOL

What this does is 2 things. Its increases the positive sentiment of the public, this allows them to psychologically to consume more. This huge consumption can't be entirely met by American companies, to the tune of over 500 billion annually. This would be our trade deficit. This doesn't just pose a problem for the US though, this is a problem for the entire world. If the US economy tanks, so does every other economy.

The other thing that this positive sentiment does is all that money that leaves our country, gets invested right back in. After all, our economy is doing great right? Sure we don't have a lot of jobs being created but that will soon follow. The US economy is a great place to invest right? LOL

Anyways, since so many economies in the world depend on the US, they are actually devaluing their currencies at the same rate that we are. The reason for this is to not create an unfavorable trade situation where all of a sudden foreign goods are really expensive. Japan has been doing this steadily right along with us. The yen has fallen almost in sync with the dollar.

The next thing keeping the economy up is the artificial constraint imposed on the price of gold. You can read about the ongoing battle of the illegal price fixing going on with gold at: www.gata.org

The details of what is going on with this are quite lengthy so I'll try to briefly summarize it. Through complex derivatives and the leasing of gold, gold in central bank vaults around the world are leased out with a delivery date but the gold that has already been leased is counted by the banks as gold inventory. Long story short, central banks have about half the gold as to what they claim. Add in the extremely negative sentiment in the media as to gold being just a relic of the past and gold is a horrible investment. How many investment brokers actually advise to buy gold? In an era right now that is on the brink of massive inflation when no other time would be more perfect? All this downward pressure on gold makes the dollar look more attractive because typically in times of inflation the price of gold forms a direct correlation. However this hasn't even really begun to happen.

The massive amounts of money printed by the FED in the past couple months in my opinion offset the massive amount of deflation that should occur. Inflation in the 1970's was primary due to the fact that factories simply could not produce more. There was too much money chasing too few goods. Now a days, factories are no ware near capacity due to the massive productivity increases due too so much investment in new equipment. Now there are way too many goods being chased by not enough money. The inflation we are seeing is primary due to oil and not simply overproduction of money. This works its way through the economy because so much depends on oil. The only people who benefit are oil producers and everyone else loses. Not to mention Bush's family business is oil. If the FED was not pumping up the money supply we would have massive price deflation. In my opinion, the pumping of the money supply is keeping the economy afloat by trying to balance the fact that their is too little money chasing too many goods.

One final thing is the fact that companies lost so much demand after the tech crash that most companies still havne't reached in terms of income what they predicted before the tech boom. When income is so low its easy to beat the previous years income. So the steady good news of higher year over year income doesn't take into consideration they are beating low estimates and havne't reached what they estimated before the tech crash.
Also this good news makes the US economy more attractive for investment. I would really like to hear everyone else's opinion on this.

It's called pumping the economy full of liquidity to stay afloat and building the biggest credit bubble in US history. We are spending our brains out on borrowed funds to stay afloat, and you can bet there will come a day when the Pied Piper of Financing wants to collect. Already Saudi Arabia has switched to euros for payment of oil commodities, since the dollar has lost over 20% of it's value in the last 2 years.

The M3 money supply is sky rocketing and Greenspan at the presses is like a treadmilling hamster on meth.

www.thestreet.com...

When the rate hikes come, your not going to like it when this credit bubble implodes...

Just like the pied piper
Led rats through the streets
We dance like marionettes,
Swaying to the symphony
Of destruction


[Edited on 4-6-2004 by Regenmacher]

China is pumping billions into US Treasury bonds to keep the RMB pegged at 8.28 to the USD. Without this action the dollar would be valued much lower, and interest rates would rise much higher. The Fed could be pumping money into the M-3 supply to prepare for an upcoming conflict. I'm not an economist, I'm an engineer, so I could be just talking out of my butt!