Notes from Howard's Sabbatical from Working. The name comes from a 1998 lunch conversation. Someone asked if everything man knew was on the web. I answered "no" and off the top of my head said "Fidel Castro's favorite color". About every 6-12 months I've searched for this. It doesn't show up in the first 50 Google results (this blog is finally first for that search), AskJeeves says it's: red.
Am I the only one who doesn't expect politicians to be experts in everything, but instead I hope they understand their limitations and ask experts for advice?
Ignoring supply and demand and suggesting we cut the gas tax, is about as stupid as giving tens of billions of dollars every couple weeks to Wall Street in an attempt to stop a recession. Printing dollars devaluates the dollar, which in turn drives up the price of internationally traded goods (gas, metal, food, electronics, etc.). This rise in prices fuels the recession, and giving away money supports the perception that the economy is in trouble.
I think Ben Stein said it best: a $2,000,000,000,000 real estate correction is equivalent to one moderately bad day on the stack market. Why is the media trying to panic people, and the fed giving away money?
So you probably meant this comment for the McCain story.
Politicians clearly can't be experts on everything, but if all you've been doing is campaigning for a year, you should be pretty knowledgeable, at least on the basics. And yeah, their advisors should be giving them good advice. I've said before that picking good advisors is probably the most important skill of a president.
I don't get the specifics of what you're saying though. The Wall Street "bailout" of Bear Sturns was just using public money to insure against possible losses of the buyer. That may not be a good idea, but it's not printing money.
I'm clearly no expert on this, but by all accounts the weak dollar has been the one good thing in the economy. It keeps our exports cheap so foreign sales are good. The risk is of course collapse of the dollar and last week I think the G7 took some action to help that.
I have a hard time accepting anything Ben Stein says now, but you wrote $2 trillion and from what I can find that's about 1/8 of the total US market value. That's a lot more than a bad day. But I don't know of a number for the loss in the real estate market. It's clear there was a bubble, and it's also clear that the collapse of the sub prime market has been painful for a lot of people. See here for foreclosure numbers.
2 comments:
Am I the only one who doesn't expect politicians to be experts in everything, but instead I hope they understand their limitations and ask experts for advice?
Ignoring supply and demand and suggesting we cut the gas tax, is about as stupid as giving tens of billions of dollars every couple weeks to Wall Street in an attempt to stop a recession. Printing dollars devaluates the dollar, which in turn drives up the price of internationally traded goods (gas, metal, food, electronics, etc.). This rise in prices fuels the recession, and giving away money supports the perception that the economy is in trouble.
I think Ben Stein said it best: a $2,000,000,000,000 real estate correction is equivalent to one moderately bad day on the stack market. Why is the media trying to panic people, and the fed giving away money?
- Starch
So you probably meant this comment for the McCain story.
Politicians clearly can't be experts on everything, but if all you've been doing is campaigning for a year, you should be pretty knowledgeable, at least on the basics. And yeah, their advisors should be giving them good advice. I've said before that picking good advisors is probably the most important skill of a president.
I don't get the specifics of what you're saying though. The Wall Street "bailout" of Bear Sturns was just using public money to insure against possible losses of the buyer. That may not be a good idea, but it's not printing money.
I'm clearly no expert on this, but by all accounts the weak dollar has been the one good thing in the economy. It keeps our exports cheap so foreign sales are good. The risk is of course collapse of the dollar and last week I think the G7 took some action to help that.
I have a hard time accepting anything Ben Stein says now, but you wrote $2 trillion and from what I can find that's about 1/8 of the total US market value. That's a lot more than a bad day. But I don't know of a number for the loss in the real estate market. It's clear there was a bubble, and it's also clear that the collapse of the sub prime market has been painful for a lot of people. See here for foreclosure numbers.
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