Comments by Jaylat

@MS: Of course I'm an American, why do you ask? And yes, I'm also married.

MS: Another more accurate analogy is if you and your wife sleep in separate beds. You start bemoaning the fact that neither bed is made and suggest that there ought to be a law requiring you both to make your bed. Your wife points out that you're not making your own bed, and that you certainly could if you wanted to. You tell her she's being rude, and refuse to make your own bed until the law passes that requires everyone to do so.

Perfect analogy, and a recipe for divorce.

MS: Your bed anecdote is not a good analogy. More accurate would be if you and your wife visited your friends' houses, poked your noses into their bedrooms and said. "Hey, how come you don't make your beds?" And when your friends asked if you made your own bed, your reply was "That's impertinent and very rude of you to ask. Besides, there are millions of unmade beds in the US, our making our beds doesn't change a thing."

Buffet and his ilk are hypocrites. He's trying to make a moral argument that the rich should pay more, but refuses to do so himself. The argument has never been "If the rich pay more the budget will be balanced" (we know that is impossible), but that "those that can afford it should pay a higher share." It's a moral argument, not a method to solve all economic problems.

Buffett can certainly afford it, and despite his finger-pointing he refuses to pay his own higher share of taxes. In fact, he has accountants eagerly working on lowering his taxes. He has zero moral standing in this argument - he's just trying to tell other people what to do. And not doing it himself.

Exit question: why has Mr. Buffett not been sued for mega-billions over Moody's role in the mortgage debacle?

"diseases go uncured and potential gains in purchasing power are left unrealised as America's apple-cheeked human capital squanders itself staging the "Vagina Monologues"."

Nominated for Econoblogger quote of the year!

Still, I agree with the overall thesis. Arts major are fine; society needs more art - as long as it's good art.

Haven't seen the flick, but consider this: the TARP funds were paid back in full, while the Fannie and Freddie sinkhole is climbing ever upwards into the multi-hundreds of billions.

The dumb money: your tax dollars at work.

@martin: The proof of political influence will come in the upcoming elections. The Tea Party - like them or not - proved their chops indisputably by overhauling Congress. They are indeed representative of a large segment of the voting population.

OWS may or may not deliver a similar outcome. I'm going to take a wild guess that they won't.

How about these slogans:

Pay my college tuition!
Give me a job now (whether I deserve it or not)!
Demonize the rich (except the "good rich guys" like Steve Jobs, Soros, etc.)!

The only point that matters is 3) - that the government has seen fit to subsidize ethanol consumption, and so drive up corn prices. That's also jacked up land prices as well as food prices around the world, in one of the most regressive wealth transfers imaginable. Locking the door on poor farmers in Brazil is icing on the cake.

And it's all thanks to the enviros. Cheers!

Shubrook: Keep in mind your neighbor might also be barely getting by, and not appreciative of an extra tax burden. Money from the Feds isn't free, you know - we all have to pay for it. In any case nobody is "extorting" anything - budgets need to be balanced, whether you're liberal or conservative.

FYI I have been sending money on a weekly basis to a homeless friend, but I don't think that gives me the right to look down on others who choose not to. It's my decision, and I live with the consequences. I would certainly not condemn you if you chose not to do the same thing.

@shubrook: “the Republicans tried to withhold 2.65 billion in funding for Irene victims unless they also cut 1.5 billion from electric car subsidies. Clearly, this is a despicable act.”

Sorry, I really don’t understand this line of reasoning. If your house gets flooded, wouldn’t you want to cut back on non-essential spending (like that new $40,000+ Volt)?

I also don’t get the assumed moral high ground. Are you paying the cost of the subsidies yourself? No, you’re asking me to pay it as well. So why do you feel you can lecture your fellow citizens about how to spend their tax dollars? The fact that most “progressives” are arguing for higher taxes on higher earners just compounds the hypocrisy.

Again, sorry, I don’t want to be combative, but I honestly do not understand why people feel that arguing for higher spending and taxes gives them the moral high ground. Unless you’re paying it all yourself, it doesn’t.

The problem with this (aside from, you know, undermining our democracy) is that Congress simply disagrees about what should be done. R's say we need less government spending (supposedly), D's want higher taxes and more spending. They are diametrically opposed.

It's like a husband and wife arguing over whether to turn right or left at a traffic intersection - there is no obvious compromise that will get the car "moving forward" unless one or both parties is thwarted.

He sounds great. Why can't there be more fiscal-conservative-social-liberal types?

@newt66: Merrill was considered an investment bank and not allowed to take deposits under GS. They got around it by cutting a deal with a bank (forgot which one) who took deposits and issued checks on their behalf; the difference between a bank and a retail brokerage being the ability to clear checks.

I agree with RR that GS would have been no defense against the meltdown. If anything, keeping it would have made things worse as the big players would not have a deposit base to rely on. Other legislation intended to fix things, like Sarbanes Oxley, was utterly useless as well.

Very glad I moved out of the Bay State (and tossed in my vote for brown before I did).

"I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University."

So Paris Hilton can securitize her Twitter followers to finance a leveraged buyout of Microsoft?

The government "getting things done" is usually code for "spending more money." Therefore, most Republicans and many Independents want Congress to get as little done as possible. Our government has done more than enough already.

"we need modernised policy that makes working in the gig economy less risky and thus more attractive"

I'm currently employing several people in the "gig" economy and their quality of work is (unfortunately) in direct proportion to the level of fear I can instill in them. I think we can certainly do some things to help their plight, but often making a job less risky makes it less productive.

Correction: I see MS did refer to O's pressure (in paren).

Did you read Mcardle's article? The DOE knew that Solyndra was losing $ on each sale, and estimated that it would run out of money in September 2011. That's exactly what happened. There's no need to shower more money on DOE "R&D" (essentially rewarding them for failure). All they had to do was listen to their own staff.

Funny how MS declines to mention the pressure from the West Wing, or the major Democratic donors who got the US to subordinate their positions to their equity. One more reason not to trust MS or the Economist.