All Things in Moderation

Morning Report 8/10/12

23 Responses

1. 

   bannedagain5446, on August 10, 2012 at 7:28 am said:

   I used to be an agressive GDP forecaster myself, but like Mae West said, I drifted.

   I think the best mix in housing would be home ownership down to no more than 60%, so residential properties being bought up for rental is a good thing

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2. 

   bannedagain5446, on August 10, 2012 at 7:30 am said:

   Crazy Obama statement of the day:

   “I said, I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back,” he said. “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.”

   You mean you want to take taxcpayer dollars to create jobs in France, Italy, Mexico and China? Well ok, but the ad for doing so had better be a humdinger!

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3. 

   bannedagain5446, on August 10, 2012 at 7:31 am said:

   sorry, here’s the cite

   http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/08/obama-lets-repeat-auto-rescue-with-every-manufacturing-131566.html

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4. 

   lmsinca, on August 10, 2012 at 8:00 am said:

   If we were younger we would so buy another house for a rental. Yes, even though we had an awful year as landlords, it’s still the best investment for our retirement we’ve made. We’re just not planning on working full time that much longer and don’t need the extra house payment. I’d want to pay it off quickly which wouldn’t really be possible for us anymore.

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5. 

   bannedagain5446, on August 10, 2012 at 8:20 am said:

   lms

   So we can look forward to seeing you more often in the near future then?

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6. 

   bannedagain5446, on August 10, 2012 at 8:29 am said:

   “U.S. import prices unexpectedly fell in July for the fourth straight month as costs declined for imported oil, industrial supplies and many consumer goods, further icing inflation pressures.

   Overall import prices dropped 0.6 percent last month, the Labor Department said on Friday.

   Import prices have only risen once in the last eight months”

   . http://www.cnbc.com/id/48607199

   Stupid article. Not one mention of the dramatic rise of the dollar and the Chinese lowering interest rates twice already this year as the proximate cause.

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   • 

     markinaustin, on August 10, 2012 at 10:22 am said:

     Not one mention of the dramatic rise of the dollar

     Don Juan, is the dollar up 6% against our trading partners, first half of ’12 over first half of ’11? If no adjustment is made for money rates, how can we compare year-to-year trade [im]balance?

     I have not gone to the Commerce web site but assume they explain, there. No?

     Click to access US%2BInternational%2BTrade%2Bin%2BGoods%2Band%2BServices%2B%2528June%2B2012%2529.pdf

     They “seasonally adjust”. Over time, currency swings are reflected later in trade balances, I assume. Dollar goes way up we can import more and export less, but the dollar volume of both stays the same if trade moves to equilibrium. Or so it would seem.

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7. 

   lmsinca, on August 10, 2012 at 8:39 am said:

   So we can look forward to seeing you more often in the near future then?

   Banned, we still have at least a few more years of working the business pretty hard. I can’t get medical insurance without it and we lost about 10K last year on the rental and another 10K on medical bills (at least) so we have some ground to make up. Generally work doesn’t keep me away from here anyway. I’ve had lots of medical issues this year that have kept me really busy with appointments, tests and general malaise. Nothing permanently serious has turned up, thank God, and I’m almost done with all of it so I should be able to be around a little more. Looks like I’m good to go for another twenty years or so anyway.

   Lol, today I’m fasting for a couple of big tests tomorrow morning so I’ll be around and probably grumpy so watch out………………………….

   I’ve been doing a little reading for a post I want to put up this afternoon, on a subject I find fascinating. I don’t know if anyone else will however.

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8. 

   lmsinca, on August 10, 2012 at 8:57 am said:

   So it looks like the Goldman Sachs and GE’s won’t be supporting Obama this time around. Mitt’s one of their own anyway. There was one interesting comment I read that said Obama did his job for them and will continue if he wins, so now they can safely turn their backs on him and throw money at Romney. Either way they win.

   http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-09/goldman-sachs-leads-split-with-obama-as-ge-jilts-him-too.html

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   • 

     ScottC, on August 10, 2012 at 4:56 pm said:

     lms:

     There was one interesting comment I read that said Obama did his job for them and will continue if he wins, so now they can safely turn their backs on him and throw money at Romney.

     Interesting, yes. Far more likely, however, is that people who work at GS are sick of hearing Obama and his fellow Dems demonizing them and the industry they work in, and so are going to throw their financial support behind the opposition.

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9. 

   bannedagain5446, on August 10, 2012 at 9:01 am said:

   I would guess that both GE and GS find ways to support the current administration, even when their donor money goes elsewhere. For instance I doubt they cut themselves off from the GOP in 2008 even though they publicy moved to Obama.

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10. 

    lmsinca, on August 10, 2012 at 9:31 am said:

    Haaaahaaaa, john, financial companies hedging their bets?

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11. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 10, 2012 at 10:21 am said:

    The Romeny campaign used to be the leader in the clubhouse inlies, but now the Obama campaign is racing hard to catch up:

    From Benen:

    “The Obama campaign released an ad with an easily supportable claim this week. “You work hard, stretch every penny,” the voiceover says. “But chances are, you pay a higher tax rate than him: Mitt Romney made $20 million in 2010, but paid only 14 percent in taxes — probably less than you.”

    Not true by any calculation made by any honest method.

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    • 

      ScottC, on August 10, 2012 at 5:02 pm said:

      banned:

      Not true by any calculation made by any honest method.

      Honest arguments are simply not available to anyone who wants to claim that the wealthy do not already pay more than their share in taxes. Hence the routine resort to dishonesty.

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12. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 10, 2012 at 11:05 am said:

    mark

    That’s a very interesting point, but I don’t know where to go to find the numbers in constant dollars terms. Seasonal adjustments are not currency related of course. I struck out on a quick google.

    I use the trading economics web stie for currency figures and the dollar has been rising against the Yuan for the last 8 months;

    http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/currency

    but of course China is not our biggest trading partner overall, Canada is but that puts movements in the price of oil in too big of a focus so I generally stay away from that.

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13. 

    jnc4p, on August 10, 2012 at 12:10 pm said:

    One of the better arguments for Mitt Romney:

    “What Romney’s run with the Big Dig tells us about how he’d manage America

    By Jerry Markon, Updated: Friday, August 10, 9:09 AM

    Mitt Romney was used to summoning state officials and having them appear. So when the head of a troubled agency stood him up in the middle of an emergency, the Massachusetts governor was furious.

    A tunnel ceiling collapse in July 2006 had killed a mother of three, the latest crisis for the massive Boston construction project known as the “Big Dig.” But Matthew Amorello, the official overseeing construction, had ignored Romney’s summons and instead held a televised news conference at the accident site.

    Romney took off for the tunnel, his face red and his jaw set, aides said. He stormed out of his car so fast his staffers scrambled to keep up, and upbraided Amorello in a scene captured on Boston television. “It was the one time I saw him explode,’’ said Thomas Trimarco, a Romney cabinet member.

    It was also the moment Romney took control of the Big Dig, one of the state’s most infamous and vexing problems, and one that had hung over him for 3 1 / 2 years. The project was billions of dollars over budget, years behind schedule and riddled by allegations of corruption — a mess that Romney had inherited and vowed to fix when he became governor.

    Romney’s plunge into the Big Dig offers a case study of his management style, one molded by the private sector experience he promises to bring to the White House. Faced with a crisis, he set out to diagnose the problem and master the engineering details, then ordered a top-to-bottom safety review.”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/what-romneys-run-with-the-big-dig-tells-us-about-how-hed-manage-america/2012/08/10/f78ee398-ba2d-11e1-abd4-aecc81b4466d_story.html?hpid=z1

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14. 

    jnc4p, on August 10, 2012 at 12:36 pm said:

    Good observation by Jonathan Chait:

    “The problem with the ad, rather, is that it relies on an argument Obama obviously doesn’t believe: that a business owner engaging in layoffs is morally responsible for what happens to his employees afterward. If we take the premise of the ad seriously, it is utterly immoral to lay anybody off. Indeed, Obama has proposed laying off federal employees. Terrible things will probably happen to some of those people. You could make an anti-Obama ad telling the story of one of them. Not really fair, is it?”

    http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/08/mitt-romney-not-a-murderer.html

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15. 

    jnc4p, on August 10, 2012 at 2:12 pm said:

    Some interesting speculation:

    “Will Erskine Bowles be our next Treasury Secretary?
    Posted by Ezra Klein on August 10, 2012 at 1:55 pm”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/10/will-erskine-bowles-be-our-next-treasury-secretary/

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16. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 10, 2012 at 2:49 pm said:

    jnc:

    Romney has certainly screwed the pooch with his poorly run campaign. I think it may have been that he thought being generic would get him there, as you have suggested, or maybe he would have have made a bad president no matter.

    Barring something unforeseen on November 7th Obama will become President of the United States. I do wish that he would tell us how he will differ from the mistakes of his predecessor though!

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17. 

    jnc4p, on August 10, 2012 at 2:59 pm said:

    “bannedagain5446, on August 10, 2012 at 2:49 pm said:

    Barring something unforeseen on November 7th Obama will become President of the United States. I do wish that he would tell us how he will differ from the mistakes of his predecessor though!”

    If by predecessor you are referring back to President Obama, then he’s already told us. His only mistake over the past four years was not telling a good enough story.

    ““The mistake of my first couple of years was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right, and that’s important,” Mr. Obama said. “But, you know, the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.””

    http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/with-charlie-rose-obama-reflects-on-lessons-learned/

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18. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 10, 2012 at 3:18 pm said:

    He cares too much. God help us all if there’s no compromise

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19. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 10, 2012 at 6:45 pm said:

    scott:

    As I move from blog to blog, I am really amazed by the numbers of people who think they have an effective tax rate over 20%. It’s unbelievable.

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20. 

    Brent Nyitray, on August 10, 2012 at 7:49 pm said:

    “As I move from blog to blog, I am really amazed by the numbers of people who think they have an effective tax rate over 20%. It’s unbelievable.”

    In the late 90s when I was single, renting and living in NYC, I was pushing 50%

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