Where is the US economy headed?

I wonder how many AA + holdings Investment management groups will have to sell off due to them not being triple A status!

My understanding, RL, as I mentioned elsewhere, is zero.

Sorry I must have missed it! Would you give me a link or some info! Thanks

I can't find the article that I read a week or so ago that talked about some large pension funds which were restricted to AAA rated bonds. The article suggested that the rules were quietly changed to AAA or AA+. Or the AA+ was okay if only one ratings agency downgraded.
Please google in "Institutional investors AAA vs AA+" for more recent articles, some of which are quite negative. You will see numerous ones arguing that defaults or differences in AAA vs AA+ interest rates are statistically insignificant.
I spent 5 or so minutes scrolling through and found, with some exceptions, that most pundits did not expect there to be massive sales from big investors.

Seems reasonable! Thanks

You're welcome. Thanks for the comments.
So the Dow bounced back 430 points (4%) while the wider indices were up around 5%. I think many investors realized it was senseless to punish stocks - often well run, profitable and cash-rich companies - for what really is collateral damage.
Yields on some maturities of bonds sank to record lows while gold rose but backed off a new record price earlier in the day.
Oil fell $1/BBl (1.25%) to just over $80. I put $12 in the van at $3.52 a gallon. Not much, but enough for a few days. I am still predicting that gas will get close to $3/gal in the next 10 days.

If I made this decision based on politics alone, I would.


Perhaps it looks that way to you because you're not reading pollingreport.com, not even when people link to it. That would explain your limited view of what constitutes "all" in "all known facts".


By disproportionately disenfranchising poor people, and by making the campaigns money-driven to an extent that's unique among first-world democracies.

This x 1000. He just takes his opinions, declares them 'factual,' and condescendingly sneers at all evidence to the contrary.

Cycloptichorn

You should fill the tank up John. At these interest rates you make more from saving driving to the gas station 5 times than you do from holding the money. Assuming prices are stable.

And there's less worry in traffic jams about running out. Plus time saved in the gas station.

Of course, if your car blows up it makes a bigger fire on a full tank than on an empty one but you probably already know that. I presume you have a cap-lock that works.

True!!!!

Driving to the gas station is not an issue. The cheapest fuel is on my way to work on my 5-mile commute at 6:45 am. I have never run out of gas.
Time at the gas station/convenience store? Amusingly, the Nigerian clerk - with a stop in your country - is the only place I have ever been in with NPR on the radio. He brings me up to speed on the headlines and often adds his own commentary. I stop by many mornings for a soda.

Polling errors are a common thing everywhere. However, the composition of our government, and the government in Germany, is determined by the actions of citizens in voting for their preferred candidates. That too is a poll and it is the one that counts.

Hard to believe that poor people are "disproportionately disenfranchised" in a world in which merely by getting a driver's license one is registered to vote in most states, and given the energetic activities of Acorn and like groups. Polling data records the direction of public sentiments relative to the question asked, but not the associated degree of commitment. Voting requires a trip to the polls or filling out an absentee ballot. I don't think election dates are kept secret here.

Those who object to the money spent in political advertising or propaganda generaslly object most to the spending of their political opponents. I think you would have a very hard time demonstrating that the right wing in American politics has systematically spent more than the left or that it gets more parochial support from the media.

Our democracy is a good deal older and has proven to be more durable than those in Europe. Our politics (and much of our behavior) have always been viewed by Europeans (at least the literary ones) as loud, unspeakably crude and materialistic. For all that, we have done a better job of avoiding the ghastly political excesses that so poisioned the 19th and 20th century history of governments in Europe.

Poll results generally are of widely varying statistical soundness and their results often vary a great deal, depending on the questions asked and the particular stratification of the survey. However their results tend, usually, to converge close to the actual election results as the voting date approaches.

In any event, if it is your contention that public sentiment as evidenced by polling data is consistently different from election results with a systematic distortion to the right in the political spectrum, then I believe you have a very considerable burden of proof that you certainly have not met.

There was no "evidence to the contrary" to sneer at, in Thomas' post, just as there is no evidence behind most of your assertions. You merely cultivate the illusion that the very rare "proofs" you offer are "proofs" at all, and that you offer them on a regular basis: the observable fact is you don't.

If there is any condesention here it is likely as much in your perceptions as my response, though I do have a low tolerance for bombast.

I'm surprised that a man of your experience George doesn't find bombast amusing. I find the female version funniest but that's a matter of taste.

Is there a serious comic who has not ridiculed bombast?

I do often find it amusing and sometimes indulge in it myself. However, I do often react badly (or in a way sometimes found to be condescending) to it in others. Repayment in kind perhaps.

I would like to comment on much of what you have said but I do not think it would be possible to show my point in short order so I will try to address one of your points that I think is easy to see!



I do allot of travel and I listen to many forms of talk radio and one thing that I have discovered is that every day I hear talk show host demonizing the democratic party and I do not mean in just a few conversations but all day long.

I turn the station to listen to what many call liberal, " like NPR and I do not hear them demonizing the right all day long and for the most part I do not hear them doing it at all.
Occasionally you will get a caller that speaks his or her mind but that is from both sides and not just one side! I do not hear the host demonizing the way I hear Rush, Shawn, Neil, Glen or many others.

I do think that the advertisers pay them to preach what they want to hear and you can tell that they have many advertisers because I have to change the station repeatedly. lol

I study human behavior and this is just one of my many observations!

He provided the source where you can educate yourself, but why would he - or anyone else - bother to link to actual evidence? You don't read it and never have. Isn't that correct?

Why should I put in any effort at all, when you regularly disregard that effort without reading it. YOU certainly never put in an ounce of effort into providing any objective evidence of anything; I don't think you've ever linked to a piece of supporting information for your arguments once in the years we've been talking. I honestly don't know if you even know how to do so. That could be forgiven; the less salubrious explanation is that you are so suffused with arrogance that you believe such things are beneath you and unnecessary.

I mean, honestly. You repeatedly claim things about the populace which polling shows to be absolutely false, and refuse to consider the information which shows you to be false. There's not much one can say to that, other than the fact that it's intellectually lazy - and a sign of someone who has grown far too comfortable in their ability to be unquestioned by others in their personal life, I wot.

Cycloptichorn

@ RL

I to listen to a lot of talk radio but I listen to the people on the left. If you don't think the radio hosts with a left bent do not demonize the right, then you haven't heard of Thom Hartman, Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, Randi Rhodes Alan Colmes, Leslie Marshall, Stephanie Miller or Bill Press. I listen to them plus a few local liberals all the time and they are just as bad if not worse then the hosts on the right. I listen to them all during the Bush years and they were horrible to the President. They were the same people who after Obama was elected started in with "We have never heard so much hate on the radio directed towards the President of the US." What they didn't do was listen to themselves for the last 8 years.

Please don't think the left on the radio is so sweet and innocent.

I can only speak of what I hear in the south east!
Where do you listen to these people that you speak of?
I have never heard of them!

You are 100% correct that the left is just as bad on the radio as the right-wing.

Far less popular, though.

Cycloptichorn