Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I do agree that congress seems to be the root of government problems. No matter who the president is, they tend to come off as completely obstructionist. Nothing can get accomplished because every congressman has pet issues that s/he wants to force into every god-forsaken bill. I`m not sure I`d be in favor of giving more power to the executive branch, though. The selling point of a checks and balances system is that we never risk totalitarianism. However, I would be in favor of limiting the three branches of government`s means of negating each other. Nothing gets done because everyone has the power to cancel everyone else out. I think the bar to get an action passed needs to be lower, and the bar to get an action rejected needs to be raised. 

-------------------------

Making limitless possibilities much more limited.

One solution would be term limits on senators and representatives.

Apropos the checks-and-balances built into the Constitution, we now have a unified ideological administration with the same common principles across all branches. Even including the Supreme Court.

The only question is whether or not the new alignment will lean toward or away from totalitarianism.

Here`s an article from the NY Times I just got/read that aught to rejuvenate this thread, and redirect many of the fears present. To summarize, many people call for nationalization. Obama doesn`t want to nationalize. He wants to give the private sector another chance. There is more than one way to nationalize, and it needn`t follow the path of communism. Nationalization helped Sweden, whilst Japan suffered for 10 years on half measures. Anyway, this article seems to have a lot of meat to it. Enjoy.

-------------------------

Making limitless possibilities much more limited.

The idea has two parts. The first is a centralized bank, which in some ways we could say is the Federal Reserve. The second is to make the government a "partner" in the banking system (via stock ownership, whatever).

Europe and Japan have been held up in the past as being "brilliant" because of the interaction between the deep pockets of the government, the bank`s direct ownership-interest in business, and the desire to sustain business for the overall strength of the economy.

When Japan`s economy tanked, mostly due to cultural reasons, the banks were dragged right down with the businesses. In Europe, stupid decisions by the central banks, then the high-proportion government shareholders led to dragging the banks down.

Sweden had a good idea, but in a tiny country, heavily controlled, and with zero expense for defense. Sweden now has massive unemployment for anyone who isn`t part of a union, immigrants, and other "off the books" citizens. There`s almost no incentive to work, and excepting for rare exceptions, they have nothing new coming into their economy. It`s starting to fail, but nobody in Sweden wants to show the numbers.

The problem we have is unrestrained spending, no fiscal responsibility, and no kind of objective connection between real things and paper money. Whether we have government banks, government as shareholders, or private banks forced to accept government regulation, it doesn`t matter.

We`re now at a point where the existing banking system has demonstrated it won`t work. But think about it:

Does it really matter if you earn a wage and put it into a checking account, or if your parents give you an allowance and you put it into a checking account? If you don`t understand how to balance a checkbook, and you routinely spend more than you put into the bank, you`re going to go broke.

I`ve watched the stock market for over 30 years.
I read extensively about the 1987 Stock Market Crash -- the days of Milken & Boesky, and what undergirded the movie & story of "Wall Street" (though that had more to do with corporate raiders like turned-green-activist T. Boone Pickens.).
The U.S. Stock Market -- arguably the most regulated and "safest" market in the world is still full of graft. A scandal happens, lots of talk goes on about ethics courses in B school, but it only lasts for about a decade before the next fiasco.  I think it`s a magnet for sociopaths.  Are there some good people in there.  Yah.  But, it doesn`t take too many sociopaths to spoil the soup.

Given the option of being poor in this kind of economic climate vs. middle class in a more socialistic environment -- what do you think people will choose?

I`m tired of the super-rich picking the pocket of the middle-class.  There`s a blindness in Washington when the Glass-Stiegel Act can be repealed on the (rather quiet) bailout -- to the tune of 50 billion -- of Long Term Capital Management.  A fiasco that 99% of US adults are completely unaware of.

Yes, it could be argued, with our massive debtload (personal, corporate, governmental) that we dug our own grave.  But who was encouraging all that debt? 

I highly recommend the NPR podcast "Planet Money" -- and, in particular, a recent program they did with "This American Life" (within the last week.).  It`s very helpful in understanding things.

As for "nationalization" -- shhhhhhh!  One of the takeaways -- I think it was from the planet money guys is -- "what if they nationalized the bank but didn`t call it that?"  IOW, Citibank is already pwned; they just changed the name.

Things WILL get worse before they get better.

However -- I think we need to re-frame this thing.  Let`s call it what it is -- an economic upheaval.  A recession sounds too much like something that`s out of our control.  An upheaval is -- while not pleasant, at least has the idea that things may actually end up better than before after we get thru the tough stuff.

Definitely, calling this a "recession" is part and parcel of the modern New Speak. It`s all about pretending that if we give something a different word, then ipso facto, we have a new thing! Problems are "opportunities," failures are "challenges." 

And different words trigger different parts of the brain.

It`s not that it`s a "new" thing -- it`s that people get the opportunity to look at things in a different way and not be trapped by limitations of previous preconceptions.

The physiological and mental changes are  very real, and, if you are the person who is controlling how you re-define things, it can be extremely powerful.

You can decide language is brainwashing -- but does that empower you, or scare you?

Language isn`t brainwashing. Language is a medium of communication, where the words AND their definitions in each language hold ideas. What`s new today is to assign a different definition to a word than the actual definition itself.

To accomplish that, people had to be educated in such a way that no word has any "real" definition. Words are all accidental mouth-farts that mean nothing at all, other than whatever the person with the mouth believes they mean.

Modern linguistics and the deconstructionist movement accomplished that awesome task, and wiped out the function and meaning of language itself. And so we have a population who believes that because the government calls our current situation a "recession," therefore it IS a recession.

The physiological changes taking place in the mind as a result of *processing* the meaning of a word are certainly real. But the words themselves don`t cause a damn thing! They`re noise...vibrational movements in the air.

Anyone can play an audio cassette in an alligator swamp and measure brain changes in the lizards. Does that mean the alligators comprehend the meaning of the words, examine their context, process thoughts, and form conclusions? Anyone who claims that has no right to use language in an argument.

Words are noise. Different populations are trained to form certain noises for the single reason of communicating thoughts. The thoughts come first, the words come secondly. Thoughts create words. Words carry meaning. It`s the meaning that (hopefully) generates thought in the listener.

But if the listener can`t speak the language being used, then once again the words revert to simply noise.