the economy revisited

i really suck at articulating my stances on issues. all of these little rants are only half-coherent. heres another one :P

just a short while ago, the senate passed a bill very similar to the bill that failed in the house. it had a few little add-ons meant to entice a few of those who were weary of voting yes on the last bill. im not going to say that the adjustments they made were not good ones.

theres more insurance for peoples savings
they have incentivized private participation (not to the extent that i wanted, but in the right direction)

and thats about it. ive only read summaries. the thing is 400-something pages.

im most certainly not endorsing the bill, but there was a subtle shift toward my position in the adjustments made. it gives me a little hope. and the fact that it enjoyed three-quarters support was pleasant considering how partisan things have been lately.

i keep wanting to endorse the bill. but i still cant. too much of the original language. too much tax payer money. it still supports this idea that the american government has to ride in and save the day, that it is our responsibility to buy faulty mortgages and place a check on the banking industry. i know it looks bad out there. i know the markets are turning to shit and we are trading at a loss an unemployment is going to be higher this quarter. but we cannot afford government intervention to this degree for the sake of the tax payer and for the sake of the market as a whole.

i keep hearing that the crisis is a fire that needs to be extinguished. that we can sort out who started it later. but thats all wrong. i see this unprecedented intervention as rewarding a bad kid simply because you dont want to see him cry. i know there are innocent folks who will lose their jobs. thats going to happen either way. i know we may see a recession and the econoomy wont be as stable. but thats only in the short term.

im just stressing myself out. ill be back soon to review the vp debate.

economic crisis

those of you who listen to me rant know i already predicted this shit, but for the sake of making known my opinions, i will reiterate as simply as possible.

in a free market system, there are bound to be ups and downs. mismanaged companies are going to fail. demand for certain products will drop. dirty deals will have repricussions. get the fuck over it. its not governments place to jump in and buy up all of the mismanaged shit to keep people from losing jobs. its not governments job to place miles of red tape around simple transactions our economic system was founded on.

heres the situation put rather bluntly. the internet and technologies industry provided a huge boom in our economy (it wasnt bill clinton who was responsible for the surpluses; it was the times in which he was president. either party wouldve seen growth). at the beginning of the new millenium that bubble burst and with the attacks on september eleventh it looked as if the economy might start nose-diving. it wouldve sucked, but it had to happen. but instead of letting it run its course, the then-president of the federal reserve decided to pump in hundreds of billions of dollars that didnt exist (he can do that. our currency is a sham read the blog a couple days below) and it delayed the recession. it was still bound to happen. it was just going to be worse because our currency would be devalued a little more. then the subprime shit started to catch fire. then the banks and mutual funds who invested in real estate started to buckle (it turns out even real estate can depreciate. who wouldve thunk it?). now the government wants to put it off again. it will happen and the more we let it snowball, the worse we're gonna have it later.

my solution: incentivize private participation with tax eliminations on rent and capital gains on real estate. reform the tax code. let shit run its course and rethink this whole full faith and credit deal.




hope you are well esha.

review of the first presidential debate

it is that time again. the time when i get all antsy and start asking for peoples opinions on subjects they dont quite understand. get ready for more politics! yes!

the format will be a little different than the reviews of the conventions because this debate is something entirely different from those events. im pretty sure you may be a little anxious to hear my humble opinion on the actual winner of the debate. obama won. handily? not at all.

the first half hour or so of the debate focused on the current economic crisis and the general economic situation of the united states. bear in mind that this was billed to me as a debate on foreign policy. i understand that the american people want to hear the candidates opinions on the pressing issue, but the extent to which this debate focused on economics was ridiculous. but alas, it was part of the debate and did need to be factored into the equation.

john mccain for the first fifteen minutes or so could not articulate any real substantial stance on the economic crisis. he supposedly suspended his campaign to go down there and be superman, bringing about compromise, and he didnt. im not even sure he knew what the hell was even going on. barack obama took the time to articulate his position and list his first priorities as the leader of the country. i didnt particularly agree with some of what he said, but at least he told me where he stood.

the conversation then diverted itself into an earmarks vs. irresponsible spending brawl. i cannot even begin to tell you how much this pissed me off. jim learer seriously let the debate get out of hand. no one cares about any of it. we all know neither candidate can fix it. and we all wanted to hear about foreign policy. this first third or half of the debate goes to barack obama without a doubt. he won it by a good thirty or so point margin. mccain came off looking like an idiot, hesitant to really define anything.

economy- barack obama: 60, mccain:30

the remainder of the debate was a little more spirited. there were misquotations and false characterizations. it was all beautiful political theater. mccain had a built in advantage here. he actually does have significant experience in the field and the surge by most observations has been successful.

mccain displayed an incredible knowledge of the middle east and eastern european political climate. obama appeared to have an accurate broad knowledge, but it was nothing compared to his opponent's detailed knowledge. obama lost points because he could not justify his opposition to the surge, but won them back by deflecting the issue with a "the war didnt start in 2007" line.

obama also staved off a major error in statement he made a while back by giving more nuance to his assertion that we need to be more open with foreign leaders, explaining that of course he would prepare beforehand and only enter into a meeting if he felt it may benefit the american people. mccain came off as a shrewd professional at the negotiation game, citing specific names of leaders im sure the president himself could not remember.

foreign policy- obama:55, mccain: 75

total- obama:120, mccain:105

i would have liked to have seen someone break 150. maybe next time.

the main points to draw from the debate, if you didnt feel like reading all of that:
obama outlined his priorities economically but did little to assure anyone that he knew how to responsibly cut funding where necessary. mccain didnt appear to have the faintest idea as to what was going on domestically or in the markets and harped on his no more earmarking rant. mccain clearly knows foriegn policy, but may be too agressive in his belief that diplomacy can only come when other nations meet certain criteria. obama has a newer, but too braod approach to diplomacy, but lacks the necessary knowledge of the political landscape of these key areas of the world.

they both suck

the federal reserve explained

i was thinking about this last night before i went to sleep. and i have often given little rants about this to people who like hearing my political opinions on things.

united states currency is regulated and printed by a semi-private organization known as the federal reserve. until, i think, about 40 years ago, the federal reserve printed money based on a gold standard. this meant, that any money you had, you could legally exchange for gold.

oh but those days are no more. currency is now based on full faith and credit in the united states, meaning jackshit. our money is based on faith in the assertion that the american economy will always be "good for the money."

(have you noticed im trying to be calm? its really hard.)

the reason this is so bad is because our entire econmoy rests on the legitimacy of the federal reserve and since there is no legitimate federal oversight, its pretty safe to assume the reserve only has its own interests in mind.

essentially all of the dollars in the united states are loaned to us from the federal reserve (AT INTEREST), which means we are at any given moment in time always going to be indebted to our own currency. your dollar is no longer worth a dollar; its worth a dollar and nine cents. royally uncool? yes.

though the federal reserves relies on us not being able to pay the money back, the false inflation really doesnt put me at ease. though the federal reserve has the power to restrict and allow the printing of money, their little bit of independence from the government who represents me is a little scary. and though many libertarians call for, at the very least, a restoration of the gold standard, we have seen no progress. honestly, having a massive reserve system entrenched in the economy of my country isnt a completely bad thing. giants are harder to move. in times of economic uncertainty (like now), i really long for the days when there was more accountability on our part and less discretion on theirs.

september the eleventh

im supposed to write something patriotic. hoop and hollar about how great america is and how we overcame and how heroic the nation was. im not gonna do it. ill simply say:

to all of those who observe a moment of silence for tragedies the world over and all of those who forgot themselves in their love for others and all of those who are truly selfless in the quietest and loudest moments... may you live forever.

china rises

ive discovered that my daily internal monologues tend to be thematic. todays theme: china, the power they hold, and the fragility of a nation on the verge of greatness.

china, it turns out, made one of the wisest decisions ever in terms of economic development. to elaborate- the country intentionally devalued its currency to expand its grasp on the export economy and get cut downs on raw material prices. they proceeded to invest heavily in their infrastructure and in turn their industry. the genius of this plan makes it hard for me to talk straight. seriously.

the situation of china as it stands now:

chinas infrastructure has been improved exponentially
china gets cutbacks on the price of raw materials
china owns the export market
china holds the debts of the greatest economies of the world
china can at any point revalue their currency, call in debts, and buy out the world

scary? you fucking bet it is. but there is a downside for them.

china is a very fragile nation, especially now that the olympics have boosted their ego. domestically, a country of over a billion attempting to to govern from a centralized government is succeptable to inner turmoil. (this is where i cough and shout tibet). theres also an inherent risk in revaluing a currency, deflation. that export industry, the cornerstone of china, will disappear. im afraid that china feels its a super power (it still has low gdp and no major international companies to bring in revenue) and may try something drastic to really establish itself as one. if that happens, they will lose export money, feel civil uprising again, call in american debts we cannot pay, and subsequently collapse (rome proper style).

i trust china because frankly i trust their government to look out for their national best interest. i have an unhealthy obsession with the old scholar-gentry of china. but i wont go into the history.

to be or not to be

i went on a random walk and stumbled on this question: matt, what would you like to be? the internal monologue went as follows:

in order to determine what you want to be, you must first establish what to be actually means. i began by juxtaposing to be with to be perceived as. i then began to explore other languages, all latin based because thats the extent of my knowledge of language and (with the later help of kiersten) i broke down to be into 4 seperate components. 4 bes in their own right.

to be composed of
to be in terms of action
to exist
to be perceived as

the first is where my question began to focus, but i will first go over the others so as to avoid misinterpreting the first.

to be interms of action fits rather well into the spanish estar. i can say for instance, i am running or i am sick. these can all be observed by an outsider and do not apply to what i am or would like to be.

to be perceived as is fairly simple. adjectives, all that i can think of, apply to this. nouns, too, i guess. i want to be perceived as a nice guy. i want to be perceived as cool. this focuses almost solely on others and also deals with aspirations to a certain extent.

existing is a more scientific being. the best example to use for why this deserves a seperate being starts to get into the question of the first being that i asked of myself. if there is a man in a black box, isolated from everything (namely a society in any sense) it is not a stretch to say that at some point he will experience hunger, a physical need. through this hunger we assume that the man is aware of the concept of i, that he must exist because he can recognise his own needs.

i originally thought this might bring me closer to an answer as to what i wanted or could want to be. but on further inspection, that existence is completely different. it establishes, but does not define the concept of i. We know there is an i; we want to find its composition to establish some sort of precedent on deciding what an i can be.

break it down into the simplest sentence: i am. the am defines the i, the am is what (insert pronoun) need.

ill give some examples i went through after these discussions. i started by prioritizing describing words- adjectives. i began by thinking perhaps i wanted to be intelligent, but this begins to interfere with definition 4. i did not want to be intelligent for its own sake, but for the sake of helping a society or establishing myself as superior to those within it. the next word i tried was spiritual, but again, i found that in my least spiritual times i was least inhibited, least worried, and most happy. (i know the same may not be true for you, but if it is true for me, it cannot be something that applies to the broadest sense of a definition). this led me to ask myself whether being happy or peaceful or calm characterized an actual composition, but the problem arises again. can this nonphysical i be defined simply by emotions and desires or doesnt the nature of those things depending on outside forces negate the idea that we are defining an i in a way that is not acted upon by outside forces.

that clearly defines in my mind a couple of things id like to reiterate.

1. there is an i.
2. there is a physical i that can be observed through self-perception
3. self-perception is perception and fits into definition four
4. composition cannot be a function/ there cannot be a society or any outside force at play when defining the composition of i in the first definition of to be.
5. the composition of i is the actual "being" in i am.

heres where i hit the wall on my search, because i took away what i thought was a given: the physical i. after death, is there a nonphysical (metaphysical/existential) i? there is no way for us to observe that.