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| 5/23 |
| 2007/3/19-22 [Politics/Domestic/President/Clinton, Finance/Investment] UID:46015 Activity:low |
3/19 Ben Stein: It's A Good Time To Buy
http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/26744
\_ useless article with no analysis. Typical. -tom
\- you should read the BEEN STEIN smackdown from paul krugman.
"i won the john bates clarke medal. you are a game show host."
\_ Ugh, Krugman is an idiot--and Stein isn't a real estate expert.
\_ dont you feel the slightest bit reticent calling a person
well-acknowledged by their peers an idiot? i mean maybe his
comments on march mandness are stupid, but in his area?
\_ Krugman may be a bit gloomy, but could you point me
to where he has been dead wrong? Thanks.
\_ http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_luskin/luskin032003.asp
http://www.poorandstupid.com/chronicle.asp
http://www.onthefencefilms.com/commentary/stuart/krugman.html
http://www.thenewsocialsecurity.com/Library/129.html
\_ the first url isn't very convincing, spending the first
three paragraphs on an ideological rant
\_ The third one does not contain any evidence of factual
errors, just a difference of opinion as to how scarce
resources should be allocated. The author thinks that
medical resources should be allocated on the basis of
ability to pay, Krugman thinks they should be socialized.
Just because someone disagrees with you, it doesn't
make them "dead wrong." |
| 5/23 |
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| finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/26744 Print this Story Excellent (387 Ratings) 4330752/5 Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007, 12:00AM I was going to write about how to give a good job interview, and maybe I will someday soon. But right now I'm moved by the stock market's continued gyrations downward to say a few deathless words on that subject. Let me explain a few basic things about the stock market. For one thing, it allows entrepreneurs and established companies to raise money for factories and laboratories and mills and mines. It also allows small and large investors like you and me to purchase stocks to place long-term bets on the economy. We buy into America's industrial growth, and help it propel us into retirement and prosperity. But the stock market is also a vast casino for the people who work in it. They play feverishly, trying to make a dollar or two (or a million or a billion) via short-term trades. They sell short, buy and sell options, use trades so complex they break computers -- all to make a quick buck. In particular, they can make money by selling short and using "sell programs." These allow traders to make money as markets fall, just as we long-term investors make money by holding on for the long run. Take Advantage of the Sale These trades should be totally irrelevant to us long-term investors, except for one thing: Sometimes, when the traders and gunslingers drive down the price, they give us a chance to buy into long-term growth on the cheap. As I've said before, if the market sells itself down a few percent or more, why not take advantage of the sale the same way you would a sale on paper towels or a washing machine? It's the same market, and eventually the traders will decide to start their manipulations to make the market go up. Ultimately, when the trading frenzies die down, stocks are priced according to earnings and interest rates, not according to who has the quickest finger on the sell-program trigger. They always have some supposedly legitimate, "statesmanlike" reason. Barely Blip-worthy Today, the reason is supposedly terror in the subprime mortgage market. To put this as frankly as possible, this is just nonsense. Even if subprime delinquencies and defaults are up, they're a tiny portion of total mortgages. Suppose 13 percent of subprime mortgages are in default. Subprime itself is less than 15 percent of total mortgage debt, so that means that roughly 2 percent of mortgage debt is delinquent or in default. Yes, that's more than it used to be, and is a disaster for the subprime mortgage companies. But when a mortgage defaults, the lender takes back the house or condo, sells it, and usually recovers about 75 percent of the loan value or more. That means the real loss would be about 25 percent of 2 percent, or 1/2 of 1 percent. In the context of a market as huge as the nation's mortgage market, that's not a lot. A few companies will go bankrupt, and someone will make a killing buying their bonds and portfolios at a huge discount as they turn out to be worth a lot more than people thought in March 2007. But it won't mean a lot to a roughly $14 trillion economy, of which the subprime mortgage market is a tiny blip. Buy and Hang On It's all a fig leaf for unscrupulous traders to spook other traders and try to scalp them. This will make speculators' easy-money-borrowing in Japan and subsequent re-lending in New York at a much higher rate a tiny little bit more difficult. But you and I have nothing to do with the carry trade, and the carry trade has nothing to do with the long-run level of the stock market. Employment is very, very strong, and corporate profits are great. It's a good time to buy -- especially because traders and speculators have driven prices down. it always feels a lot better to buy when the market is going up. But you make more money buying when the market is going down. Buy when it's low and just be happy -- and, as always, be patient. Terms of Service including spam, hateful, or obscene messages may result in the termination of your Yahoo! is not responsible or liable in any way for comments posted by its users. Rate It: Poor Fair Good Very Good Excellent 4000 characters left. Sort: first to last * D E - Monday, March 19, 2007, 7:05PM ET + Overall: 5/5 Thanks Ben for your great column. I still refer to your remarks on variable annunities when I get confronted with someone who reads Suzy Orman. Please Ben, write more columns so I don't have to deal with her drivel. The only possible fault is in one of the reasons Ben states that the stock market exists: "We buy into America's industrial growth". Once all our industry has been outsourced to other countries, then the stock market will only exists for the other reason Ben cites: "The stock market is a vast casino for the people who work in it". Because, the small investor doesn't have direct access to all markets, nor the time to research all companies, and don't mention the mutual fund sharks. When this market turns don't listen to these salesman and throw your hard earned money away. Tell that to millions of manufacturing workers who got the pink slip over the last 3 years and to additional 100,000 construction workers who lost their jobs just last month... View all experts The columns, articles, message board posts and any other features provided on Yahoo! Finance are provided for personal finance and investment information and are not to be construed as investment advice. Under no circumstances does the information in this content represent a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security. The views and opinions expressed in an article or column are the author's own and not necessarily those of Yahoo! All information provided "as is" for informational purposes only, not intended for trading purposes or advice. nor any of independent providers is liable for any informational errors, incompleteness, or delays, or for any actions taken in reliance on information contained herein. site, you agree not to redistribute the information found therein. Answers is provided for informational purposes only, and no Q&A is intended for trading or investing purposes. shall not be responsible or liable for the accuracy, usefulness or availability of any Q&A information, and shall not be responsible or liable for any trading or investment decisions based on such information. |
| www.nationalreview.com/nrof_luskin/luskin032003.asp Don't make the mistake of underestimating this diminutive Princeton economics professor. Sure, as the old joke goes: those who can, do -- and those who can't, teach . But the problem is that Krugman, who teaches economics, writes a column twice a week for the New York Times -- and he uses it like a flamethrower aimed at everything conservatives and libertarians hold dear. Utterly vaporized every Tuesday and Friday by a man recently named "Columnist of the Year" by Editor & Publisher magazine, a man on a few short-lists for the Nobel Prize in economics. I have to admit he has a beguiling rhetorical style and he writes with supreme self-confidence. But more important is his limitless willingness to prevaricate, exaggerate, character assassinate, use innuendo, and scare-monger -- whatever it takes to make his case. For all that, what makes Krugman so devastating and dangerous is the fact he operates from the pages of America's "newspaper of record." Yes, yes, we all know about the liberal bias of the New York Times -- but most readers assume that at least the Times fact-checks the claims made by its columnists. they'd be sliced full of little cut-outs like censored letters to World War II GI's. But there he is, every Tuesday and Friday, amidst "all the news that's fit to print." As though through some horrid alchemy, falsehoods are transmuted into facts -- and those facts get repeated over and over for years to come, in everything from politician's speeches to children's homework, with the New York Times cited as their authoritative source. This commentary is the first of many I intend to write for NRO Financial that take on Krugman one lie at a time. But I'm just one of many members of what has evolved informally into an online Krugman Truth Squad. In these NRO Financial commentaries I'll draw heavily on the work of many Squad members. It's one of many he's written over the last couple of months on how George W Bush has caused the United States to be feared and distrusted around the world. You tell me if you think anyone at the Times fact-checked this Krugman paragraph: Victory in Iraq won't end the world's distrust of the United States because the Bush administration has made it clear, over and over again, that it doesn't play by the rules. Remember: this administration told Europe to take a hike on global warming, told Russia to take a hike on missile defense, told developing countries to take a hike on trade in lifesaving pharmaceuticals, told Mexico to take a hike on immigration, mortally insulted the Turks and pulled out of the International Criminal Court -- all in just two years. If you're a conservative, you might choke on the highly questionable premise that begins that paragraph -- that there are supra-national "rules" that the Bush administration is bound to play by. But Krugman asserts it with sublime self-assurance and moral authority -- and then follows it up with a rapid-fire barrage of evidence. By the time you're done with this paragraph, you know you've been mugged -- but you're not sure exactly how, and maybe you're wondering if perhaps you deserved it. And if you're a liberal, you took mental notes so you can use all these "facts" the next time you get into an argument with a conservative. Minutes after Krugman's column was posted on the Times' website Monday night, the Krugman Truth Squad was all over it. That happened on Bill Clinton's watch, not Bush's, in 1997 when the Senate voted it down 95-zero (and the Republicans did not have a 95-0 majority in the Senate then). The Russians considered it no big deal -- unlike certain American politicians and pundits. The Bush administration is spending $15 billion on AIDS in Africa. They're still alive, and its parliament is now considering letting the US use Turkish airspace for attacks on Iraq. Clinton signed the treaty, and he admitted that it needed major changes. He -- not Bush -- never even submitted it to the Senate. Musil focuses on this partial paragraph from Krugman's column: Look at how this war happened. bear in mind that an exasperated Clinton administration considered a bombing campaign in 1998. But it's not a case that the Bush administration ever made. Instead we got assertions about a nuclear program that turned out to be based on flawed or faked evidence; we got assertions about a link to Al Qaeda that people inside the intelligence services regard as nonsense. No mention of the United Nations at all, including any of the 17 Security Council resolutions. That Japan, Australia and most European governments support the United States is omitted, especially Britain's stalwart support. No mention of the inspector hide-and-seek or the damning evidence of deliberate concealment presented by Colin Powell. Not a word of the large quantities of previously discovered-but-undestroyed anthrax and nerve agents. Nothing of Iraq's prior use of such agents against Iran . No discussion of the Administration's rebuttal of assertions that its evidence of nuclear programs is "flawed" . That the Administration has presented Iraq's cooperation with al Qaeda as likely, but supported by less conclusive evidence than the WMD charges that justify the war, warrants not a syllable . He willfully ignores that the entire case has been made to the public and the United Nations by both the American and British governments. And here's a surgical-strike fact-check from one of the many ex officio members of the Krugman Truth Squad who don't run their own websites, but who send me e-mails whenever they discover a particularly offensive Krugman lie. Paul Philp sent me one, noting Krugman's claim from that same paragraph that "an exasperated Clinton administration considered a bombing campaign in 1998." Philp recalls -- correctly -- that Clinton dropped 400 cruise missiles on Iraq in 1998. If Clinton had "considered" any harder, there'd be nothing left! Philp wrote, "Do you think Krugman is under-reporting this because Clinton didn't go to the United Nations Security Council for clearance?" Krugman is most dangerous because he can shout these falsehoods from the august pages of America's "newspaper of record." But each time he does, the Krugman Truth Squad gets to work, busily fact-checking his words throughout the night. Maybe you should think of us this way: We'll read Paul Krugman so you don't have to. |
| www.poorandstupid.com/chronicle.asp Powered by Blogger Pro(TM) Chronicle of the Conspiracy Join us as we discover, document, expose and challenge the bad people, the bad institutions and the bad ideas that stand in the way of wealth creation -- and show you how to fight back! Monday, March 19, 2007 THIS IS WHY I TRY NEVER TO EAT IN NEW JERSEY Seen in the men's restroom of a coffee shop in Plainsboro. An op-ed by Arthur Brooks in the Wall Street Journal defends the super-rich: First, the super-rich have the ability -- and increasingly the willingness -- to be super-givers as well. Bill Gates is an obvious example: Through philanthropy, he has turned his attention to giving away the vast wealth he has accumulated, proving that giving money can signify as much success to a person as accumulating it can. Second, as long as a fortune is earned (as opposed to stolen, squeezed from governments or otherwise extorted from citizens), pecuniary acquisitiveness is directly related to the comfort of others. Larry Ellison's company has created tens of thousands of jobs, introduced technology that has benefited all parts of the economy and paid billions in taxes. When Mr Ellison measures his success with money, he spills opportunity and economic abundance onto all of us, directly or indirectly. With a defense like this, the rich might as well just give up and march into a gas chamber and get it over with. Their wealth doens't need to be justified on the grounds that it has any particular effect on other people. Their wealth is their property, and that's the end of the discussion. Here's an hilarious YouTube video of economist Yoram Bauman explaining what Greg Mankiw really meant in his ten basic principles of economics. Thanks to reader Mike Daley for this and many other good humor links. Developers have turned a house into an island in China after the owner refused to move out. The villa now stands alone in a 30ft deep man-made pit in Chongqing city... The Chongqing Zhengsheng Real Estate Company wants to turn the area into a 40m 'Broadway' square, including apartments and a shopping mall. But the owner of the villa says he won't move out unless the company pays his price - the equivalent of 13 million. "The villa owner refuses to move, so the real-estate developer has had to dig out all around it to force him to," says a saleswoman at Weilian Real Estate Sales Company. "He wants 20 million yuan, or he'll stay till the end of the world." The real estate bubble meets the China bubble: A Chinese appeals court has upheld a ban on a company from selling land on the moon, ruling that "celestial bodies" could not be anyone's property, state media said. "Within three days of opening for business, it was reported that 34 clients had bought 49 acres of land, earning the company more than 14,000 yuan. "There was no indication if the company provided discounts to clients who bought multiple plots." and according to the Washington Post, it's modeled itself on the Club For Growth -- it intends to hold Democrats responsible for upholding liberal principles such as protectionism, the same way the Club holds Republicans responsible for conservative ideals such as free trade. org and -- most intriguingly -- blogger icon Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of the influential Daily Kos Web site. Working For Us is modeled explicitly on the Club For Growth, an independent organization that over the last several election cycles has transformed itself into an electoral force by endorsing fiscally conservative candidates in contested primaries and then pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into districts to help those candidates win. Here's what my DC lawyer/lobbyist friend knows who the new organization's first targets are going to be: Democratic senator Max Baucus and congressman Charlie Rangel are the twin gatekeepers of free trade, one of the most important policies enabling individuals and companies to build such a prosperous economy. Some of their fellow Democrats want to cajole and intimidate Baucus, especially on trade issues. Baucus and Rangel tend to be "yes, but" supporters of free trade. Most of the time they are mostly for it but with conditions to placate certain political factions on the center-left (not the far left). It's sadly time to get out the book on speaking "triangulation." Max Baucus, as Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, will play a key role in the legislation to re-authorize fast-track before it expires in June. Today, They Work for Us, an independent 501 organization, launched a radio ad campaign in Montana targeting Baucus on fast-track... corporate management enriches itself with incentives that kick in even when the company performs poorly. Even steep losses at The New York Times didn't stop its family owners from enriching themselves and insiders with bonuses for making "profits" when there were none. As a result, the revisions triggered a payday clause to unleash 75 percent of the cash bonuses targeted for top executives and family members that otherwise would have been lost, filings said. link THE WORST-CASE TAX SCENARIO Dan Clifton at the American Shareholders Association has the darkest possible view for the future of US tax burdens. He says that under the budget now being put together by the Democrat-controlled congress, the 2003 tax cuts will be procedurally impossible to extend beyond their scheduled expiration after 2010. The new IRS data shows a dramatic increase in progressivity from 1996-2004 despite $764 billion of tax cuts for the wealthy including a slashing of the capital gains tax rate from 28 to 15 percent. When Attorney General Janet Reno first announced the blanket dismissal of about 70 United States Attorneys who are Bush Administration holdovers, her aides said she might exempt those needed to wrap up significant investigations. is in the middle of an investigation of irregularities in the House of Representatives and a detailed financial auditing of one of the most powerful House Democrats, Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of Ways and Means. The Wall Street Journal edit page this morning has the same story, but isn't it delicious to read it covered in the New York Times, now so eager to see a Clinton returned to the White House? senators Byron Dorgan's and Hillary Clinton's proposed legislation under which "the White House would be required to take immediate action to reduce the trade deficit if the trade deficit exceeds 5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)." The "immediate action" the White House should take would be to cut taxes. Look what happened after the 2003 Bush tax cuts -- export growth has surged, and never stopped surging, growing way faster than GDP month in and month out. It shows the future track of federal tax receipts as a fraction of GDP, and it's up, up and away even if the 2003 tax cuts are extended past 2010. The Alternative Minimum Tax and "real bracket creep" -- people moving into higher tax brackets as productivity growth makes everyone wealthier -- are the culprits. But right now the Dems in control just talk about hiking taxes. link KRUGMAN'S PROTECTIVE PAYWALL IS LOWERED The New York Times set up "TimesSelect" -- under which you have to pay $50 a year to read their columnists -- in part to protect their columnists from the constant bashing they were getting on the blogs. Now the Times announces it will make the columnists free for college students. Perfect -- if there were ever a population unlikely to criticize the Times columnists, that would be it. I assume there is some filter for detecting and rejecting members of the Young Republicans. but the burden of this story is that climate scientists are pretty unhappy with the hype in his film "An Inconvenient Truth." "I don't want to pick on Al Gore," Don J Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. "But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data." Although Mr Gore is not a scientist, he does rely heavily on the authority of science in "An Inconvenient Truth," which is why scientists are sensitive to ... |
| www.onthefencefilms.com/commentary/stuart/krugman.html Obvious, that is, if you accept Krugman's "facts" at face value: Let's start with the fact that America's health care system spends more, for worse results, than that of any other advanced country. In 2002 the United States spent $5,267 per person on health care. Yet the United States has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than any of these countries. What Krugman doesn't say is that its easy to hold down health care costs if you do what Canada does: withhold medical treatment from sick and injured people. The US health care system could save billions of dollars if we drastically reduced the number of doctors, hospitals, outpatient clinics, medical devices and diagnostic machines available. If we followed Canada's lead, we would severely limit each surgeon's allotted hours in the operating room so that they couldn't perform too many surgeries. Americans would wait months and years for critical medical tests and treatments - many would suffer greatly, become crippled, addicted to painkillers, go blind or die while waiting - however, the country would spend a lot less money on health care. For heart disease, cancer or any other serious health condition, there's no better place to be than the United States where more modern medical technology and expertise are available and accessible than anywhere else in the world. However, Krugman insists that the US is paying more than other countries and getting less health care as evidenced by 1) lower life expectancies and 2) higher infant mortality rates. There are many factors that determine life expectancy averages and infant mortality rates which are beyond the control of the health care system. These include ethnicity, genetics, lifestyle, environment, education and cultural attitudes. Still, it seems puzzling that we spend so much, with so little return. Well, yes "it would be wrong to jump to this conclusion" - however that's precisely what Krugman does - and what's really "puzzling" is that Krugman never offers any other proof for his assertion that we pay more and get less. In column after column, he monotonously cites these two statistics as clear evidence of the failings of American health care without offering any argument that an alternate health care financing method would make any improvement in these areas. Life Expectancy Averages While it may seem counterintuitive, there is very little correlation between the quality of a health care system and life expectancy averages. Many people die before encountering the health care system. Blacks have shorter life expectancies than whites, hispanics or asians. The black population of Canada is numerically insignificant while black Americans make up 13% of the US population. Thus, a good way for a country to raise the life expectancy average would be to import females of Japanese descent! Instead of basing broad conclusions about the quality of the US health care system on unreliable indicators - as Krugman does - why not judge our system by how well it prevents deaths from cancer, heart disease and other conditions that modern medicine can actually treat? Well, because the US is better at these things than other nations - and that's not part of Krugman's message. In the US, the mortality ratio - the percentage of people with the disease who die from it - is 25%. African American women deliver very small babies at twice the rate of white American women, This is true even when controlling for the mother's age, income and education. It is even true holding constant the number of prenatal medical visits. Why some ethnic groups have disproportionate numbers of low-birth-rate babies is not fully understood. You guessed it: Does this mean that the American way is wrong, and that we should switch to a Canadian-style single-payer system? Hundreds of thousands of Canadians are suffering and waiting long periods of time for medical care that, for the most part, is quickly available in the US The Canadian press consistently reports outrageous stories detailing the callousness and inhumanity of a system which intentionally limits supply and rations health care to its citizens. Its hard to imagine that long-suffering Canadians would find solace in the notion that British citizens are suffering even more under their thoroughly socialized medical system (which rations care in much the same way as Canada) - and that this would somehow justify similar waits in the US Similarly, Krugman's assertion that Canadians prefer their system to ours is laughable. Most Canadians have no idea how the US health care system works. They've been fed a steady diet of Anti-American propaganda for more than twenty years to the point that there's a perception among many that poor and lower-middle-class Americans are literally dying in the streets after have been denied health care. Younger and healthier Canadians - who have never been really sick - boast of their "free" national health insurance and love the perception that they are getting something at someone else's expense. Many of them change their tune later in life when they find themselves on painfully long wait lists for diagnostic tests or surgery - while others have merely become accustomed to the idea that waiting months for an MRI or even years for orthopedic surgery is a normal feature of any health care system. Since they have little knowledge of the American system, they have nothing else to compare their experiences to. The Trojan Horse Under the government-run health care system that Krugman advocates, Americans would suffer and die while waiting for rationed health care just as the Canadians and the British do. By making health care "free" at the point of delivery and making government the payer for all medical transactions, the advocates of a "single-payer" system would reduce both the quantity and the quality of health care in this country - for everyone. Its therefore, reasonable to ask if Krugman and his ilk have motivations other than promoting better and more available health care. Apart from the patent dishonesty of the implication that only the rich get life-saving treatment in the US - Krugman is finally getting to the point. By establishing the notion that everyone has an unlimited "right" to health care, the left has the perfect trojan horse to effect confiscation of private wealth in this country on a large scale. |
| www.thenewsocialsecurity.com/Library/129.html Like the rest of the MSM, this socialist tries to make the case that by giving a slight advantage to poor people in computing that portion of benefits still conferred on us under the old Social Security law , Bush will eventually eliminate Social Security. Paul opines: If the Bush scheme goes through, the same thing will eventually happen to Social Security. As Mr Furman points out, the Bush plan wouldn't just cut benefits. Workers would be encouraged to divert a large fraction of their payroll taxes into private accounts - but this would in effect amount to borrowing against their future benefits, which would be reduced accordingly. As a result, Social Security as we know it would be phased out for the middle class. "For millions of workers," Mr Furman writes, "the amount of the monthly Social Security check would be at or near zero." What Paul is so obvious about in his deception here is the fact that he never mentions what PRA's would generate in wealth (nest egg) or in monthly checks to a middle class worker. If the participant chooses PRAs over the Old Social Security system, Paul's nightmare scenario for a middle class worker making $36,000 a year average would end up after 50 years of work with a $1,416,382 nest egg and monthly interest of $7,087 in 2005 dollars. The old Social Security system would pay the worker nothing. Paul has decided, like he and his leftist deceivers often do, to take one element of an issue and pretend the other doesn't exist. Here he opines on what will become of the Old Social Security, and in the process completely ignores the fact that PRAs will be part of the Social Security system. Paul ends his screed quite emotionally: No, this is about ideology: Mr Bush comes to bury Social Security, not to save it. His goal is to turn FDR's most durable achievement into an unpopular welfare program, so some future president will be able to attack it with tall tales about Social Security queens driving Cadillacs. There is no clearer proof about the lack of truth in anything written by this man, than this conclusion. We have a President daring to make the poor rich and Paul Krugman opting to keep the poor, poor by touting the old Ponzi scheme of the 20th Century. If Paul prevails, there will be a lot less Cadillacs on the road. And by the way the startling effect of including inflation in my computations (like he did in his) would result after 50 working years in a nest egg of $4,397,916 and monthly interest of $21,990 for someone making $36,000 a year. We have a muscular foreign policy now, why not have a muscular economic policy? Please help in our efforts by gladly giving to this cause. Disclaimer This website is not affiliated with the United States Government. We are an independent non-government organization dedicated to help individuals and their families understand the need for retirement planning. |