Economy
Related: About this forumWeekend Economists Study How to Get Lucky July 24-26, 2015
Our text today is How To Get Lucky by Max Gunther, published in 1986 by Stein & Day, Inc.
I recently stumbled somehow on this little gem of a practical book on preparation for whatever Life hands you...one could say, I got lucky! The author, Max Gunther, (1927 – 1998) was an Anglo-American journalist and writer. He was the author of 26 books, including his investment best-seller, The Zurich Axioms.
Born in England, Gunther moved to the United States at age of 11 after his father, Franz Heinrich (Frank Henry) became the manager of the New York branch of a leading Swiss bank, Schweizerischer Bankverein (Swiss Bank Corporation or SBC). In 1998, the bank was merged with Union Bank of Switzerland to form UBS, the second largest wealth management organisation in the world and the second largest bank in Europe. Gunther's book, The Zurich Axioms is largely based on his father's trading advice.
Gunther graduated from Princeton University in 1949 and served in the United States Army from 1950 to 1951.
He worked at Business Week magazine from 1951 to 1955 and during the following two years he was the contributing editor for Time Magazine. He also contributed to Playboy, True, Reader's Digest, TV Guide, McCall's, and Saturday Evening Post.
He lived most of his adult live in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
Selected Bibliography
The Weekenders (1964)
The Split-Level Trap (1964)
Wall Street and Witchcraft (1971)
The Very, Very Rich and How They Got That Way (1973)
Instant Millionaires: The Secrets of Overnight Success (1973)
Writing and Selling a Nonfiction Book (1973)
Virility 8: A Celebration of the American Male (1975)
"The Lucky Factor" Harriman House ISBN 9781906659950 (1977)
The Zurich Axioms ISBN 9781906659943 (1985 1st print)
How to Get Lucky: 13 Techniques for Discovering and Taking Advantage of Life's Good Breaks (1986)
D. B. Cooper: What Really Happened (1986)
Doom Wind (1987)
Confessions of a P.R. Man (1989)
He wrote other books as well...a survey of Amazon's website turns up Kindle editions as well as used copies of many his oeuvre for sale. I have yet to plunge into that briar patch, but I hope to collect a few. I suppose it's too much to ask that somebody put them back in print...
http://www.amazon.com/Max-Gunther/e/B001HMMA58
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Demeter
(85,373 posts)The two former branches of Premier Bank will reopen as branches of United Fidelity Bank, fsb during their normal business hours...As of March 31, 2015, Premier Bank had approximately $31.7 million in total assets and $29.6 million in total deposits. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, United Fidelity Bank, fsb agreed to purchase essentially all of the assets...
The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $4.4 million. Compared to other alternatives, United Fidelity Bank, fsb's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. Premier Bank is the sixth FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the first in Colorado. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Community Banks of Colorado, Greenwood Village, on October 21, 2011.
I apologize for being so forgetful...that was the weekend I slipped away for the decadent pleasures of Men in Kilts.
Warpy
(111,352 posts)Pick rich parents. Luck will flow to you as long as you're not a complete fuckup after the age of 25 or so.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)
MattSh
(3,714 posts)I'll let your imagination take over now.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Gunther talks about relationship luck, too. I'm getting there...
MattSh
(3,714 posts)
Salviati
(6,008 posts)
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Colbert is a national treasure!
Thanks so much for the link! (Don't be shy, post again!)
Ghost Dog
(16,881 posts)in her Tenerife kitchen (not youtube or vimeo but site seems clean)...
https://video-mad1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hvideo-xtp1/v/t42.1790-2/11289299_10205444047393369_1170053386_n.mp4?efg=eyJybHIiOjY1NSwicmxhIjoxNTc4fQ%3D%3D&rl=655&vabr=364&oh=5bc98c31223c9a29b9b86b7e97f9d81a&oe=55B3A15D
Demeter
(85,373 posts)MattSh
(3,714 posts)Not working.
Ghost Dog
(16,881 posts)Some kind of facebook thing I now see...
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)Just for Demeter (and friends):
Lucky That Way by Joe Walsh:
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)I Feel Lucky by Mary Chapin Carpenter:
Hotler
(11,445 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)well, that's my usual theme song, for sure.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I am literally crying from it. That is a song of hope, luck, and aspiration. I had never heard it before. Thanks for coming through, as you always do.
Hotler
(11,445 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)Opera doesn't provide too much on luck (or love, for that matter).
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)Lucky Town by Bruce Springsteen:
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)Lucky by Melissa Etheridge:
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)That Lucky Old Sun performed by Ray Charles:
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)You Got Lucky by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers:
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)(I had to look this one up)
I Always Get Lucky With You by Merle Haggard:
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I FIRST THOUGHT IT SAID:
"CAN YOU RUIN THE ECONOMY JUST USING THE BIBLE?"
THE ANSWER IS: HELL, YES! OF COURSE! AND THAT'S ESPECIALLY TRUE WHEN YOU ARE FACING COMPETITION FROM THE CONFUCIANS, MUSLIMS, JEWS AND ATHEISTS.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/can-you-run-economy-just-using-bible-many-christian-right-believe-so?akid=13314.227380.LekNzR&rd=1&src=newsletter1039595&t=16
According to the Christian Right, only the Bible and God can determine how our economic system is run...In February, the culture warriors at Iowa’s “pro-family” group The Family Leader distributed personalized copies of The Founders’ Bible to every member of the state legislature as part of their lobby day—or as they put it in an invitation letter, the “war with Satan, who has taken many captive in Des Moines.” Greg Baker, Director of Ambassador Church Network, told pastors that the goal of “The Iowa Capitol Project” is to help legislators “do what God has asked them to do,” and The Founders’ Bible should help given its “compelling content pertaining to their job at the Capitol.”
Most of that “compelling content” —the non-biblical part anyway—comes courtesy of David Barton, the Republican Party activist and self-styled historian whose “Christian nation” revisionism informs the rhetoric of conservative pundits and politicians. But Barton’s essays go beyond his claims about the biblical origins of the U.S. Constitution; The Founders’ Bible, a New American Standard Bible translation, is also filled with Barton’s arguments that right-wing economic policies are divinely mandated.
Though Barton’s work has been repeatedly challenged by reputable scholars, including his fellow evangelical Christians, he is no fringe character, but rather a major player within the Republican Party and conservative movement. He was an active member of the GOP platform committee in 2012 and his rhetoric about America’s founding as a Christian nation is promoted by other religious conservatives, from Glenn Beck to Newt Gingrich.
Barton uses his essays and frequent media and public appearances to argue that the Bible, indeed God Himself, opposes minimum wage laws, capital gains taxes and progressive income taxes. He defines the free enterprise system—which he believes is “the economic system set forth in numerous passages in the Bible”—as “one in which ‘prices and wages are determined by unrestricted competition between businesses, without government regulation,’” and sees any policies that penalize productivity and profits as “a completely unBiblical system.”
To most readers, Jesus’ parable of the vineyard is generally understood to be about the gift of God’s grace, a metaphor for the Kingdom of God. In Barton’s exegesis, the story about the landowner who pays workers an equal amount no matter how many hours they worked is a literal handbook for God’s approach to employer-employee relations. Government, he writes, “certainly has no right to tell an employer what to pay an employee, including with a so-called minimum wage.”
Yes, this is a Bible the Koch brothers can love...
OH, MY FUNDIE AUNT! MORE OF THIS GARBAGE AT LINK
I WILL BE DRINKING IF THIS CONTINUES...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The red flags and marching songs of Syriza during the Greek crisis, plus the expectation that the banks would be nationalised, revived briefly a 20th-century dream: the forced destruction of the market from above. For much of the 20th century this was how the left conceived the first stage of an economy beyond capitalism. The force would be applied by the working class, either at the ballot box or on the barricades. The lever would be the state. The opportunity would come through frequent episodes of economic collapse.
Instead over the past 25 years it has been the left’s project that has collapsed. The market destroyed the plan; individualism replaced collectivism and solidarity; the hugely expanded workforce of the world looks like a “proletariat”, but no longer thinks or behaves as it once did.
If you lived through all this, and disliked capitalism, it was traumatic. But in the process technology has created a new route out, which the remnants of the old left – and all other forces influenced by it – have either to embrace or die. Capitalism, it turns out, will not be abolished by forced-march techniques. It will be abolished by creating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which will break through, reshaping the economy around new values and behaviours. I call this postcapitalism.
As with the end of feudalism 500 years ago, capitalism’s replacement by postcapitalism will be accelerated by external shocks and shaped by the emergence of a new kind of human being. And it has started.
Postcapitalism is possible because of three major changes information technology has brought about in the past 25 years:
WELL, I'LL KEEP MY EYES OPEN, AS I SCRABBLE TO SCRAPE A FEW MINUTES OF FREE TIME FROM MY WORK ROUTINE...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I HAVE ONE OF THOSE NEIGHBORS. AFTER 17 YEARS OF INCREASING HOSTILITY, I AM CONTEMPLATING VANDALISM. SERIOUSLY. ARSON IS OUT--THE COMMON WALL IN THE CONDO PROBLEM...
http://www.alternet.org/books/neighbors-hell-bedtime-story-parents-who-want-talk-about-how-predatory-america-has-become?akid=13317.227380.gK4nAY&rd=1&src=newsletter1039645&t=14
It came in a vision a few years back: a book for children that approximated some of the horrors of society that everyday people face, and the monstrous qualities that many people take on as they try to earn a living. Especially since the financial crisis. Mortgage loan officers, slumlords, private prison lobbyists are the new growth industry jobs.
Co-author John Dolan and I spent some time mulling it over. We'd tell it in rhyme, with illustrations. Could be fun.
So we sat down and wrote the book, and found an illustrator in Ukraine, Taras Kharecko, who has quite a knack for portraying American suburbs in the hellish ways many people see them when they face financial duress. And now Neighbors from Hell: An American Bedtime Story has been published, by Feral House. (There's also an awesome audiobook version, recorded by progressive TV and radio host Thom Hartmann, which you can catch at the end of this article.)
The story starts with a boy asking his father for a different kind of bedtime story, about the monsters who live in the neighborhood. The dad takes a breath, and in rhyme, describes the activities of a bunch of monsters in the neighborhood, starting with Rhonda the reality star, who lives just down the street...
OKAY, THAT TOPS MINE.
MORE AT LINK, INCLUDING A VIDEO OF THE BOOK!
WEEKEND ECONOMISTS, THE COMPLETE THREAD, NOW FEATURING SCARY BEDTIME STORIES...
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)they are us...
I suspect every person out there ought to view this and take that lesson to heart.
Especially if you think that isn't gonna be you.
Get the old fairly tales out of your head - this is the new story, if you want to protect yourself. And these monsters are very, very real.
"He'd brought some bad news as an "old friend"...and broker. "...the title is mine..."
...
We'll move in with Grandma and travel by bus.
After that, I don't know what will happen to us."
And to all a good night.
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)
Demeter
(85,373 posts)There are 13 precepts to Max Gunther's little manual. I will write from my notes (had to send the book back to the Connecticut library that lent it out) as the spirit moves me.
- The First Precept is fundamental: Every deal, every situation, has a percentage of Luck, and a percentage of Planning. While the Extraordinarily Lucky can get by without any preparation, most of us would increase our chance of success by doing all the things one is supposed to do: Live Healthy, Be a Good Person, Study Hard, Work Harder, etc.
But there is the addition of Luck. Without luck, one could Prepare one's ass off, and still have nothing to show for it. So, how does one induce Luck to come one's way? - Socialize...go where the action is. Get into the Fast Flow, as Max put it. While Luck could come knocking at your door out of the blue one day (instead of the Wolf, but that's another story), Opportunity likes to travel by people--new people, old friends, complete strangers--so go out and mingle. Talk, but listen, too. And see if what you hear sounds like an opportunity you want to pursue.
- Take Measured Risks: A lottery ticket is not big deal, if you have the spare change available. Just be sure that whatever the reward is, it's worth the risk. Go to a meeting, and if it's not your cup of tea, you lost an hour or two. Don't sign up for a cult, or the Army, without doing due diligence first!
- CUT YOUR LOSSES! Don't push your luck, don't be greedy, take some or all of your profits off the table before Luck changes. Max refers to the stock market, but this applies to bad relationships, jobs, etc. as well. Assume your luck will be short and fleeting--plan ahead, monitor, know where the exits are, accept Realism as your Bible. None of this Hope and Change stuff for Max!
- Accept your setbacks and get over them. One failed attempt does not make one a failure--you just haven't succeeded yet! A stumbling block is not the time to turn hermit, sitting in a dark corner, sucking your thumb or licking your wounds (well, not for longer than it takes for the shock and disappointment to wear off...) Get out there and find a better option. You must both take risks AND be ready to walk away from bad scenarios. Don't get stuck in long-term stagnation, and avoid unfounded "optimism". Pollyannas need not apply.
Things usually ARE as bad as they seem; often, they are worse! Is there some likelihood that the problem will resolve, or that you can fix it? If not, BAIL! Most often, what starts to go wrong stays wrong, and gets worse. - Zig-Zag! Stay open to the possibilities (aka Luck). Rigidity will cut you off from your destiny. Don't bind yourself to a doomed plan and stick to it as a symbol of Nobility of Character. If you see something better, go for it!
HERE ENDETH THE FIRST LESSON!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)SO SAD, TOO BAD...I DON'T OWN ANYTHING BY APPLE!
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/22/apple-share-price-chinese-economy-mining-commodity
Growing concerns about the health of the Chinese economy helped wipe $40bn off the value of Apple on Wednesday despite the company reporting a sharp increase in global sales and profits.
The 5% fall in share price in the world’s biggest company was mirrored by a slide in shares in mining and commodity firms to their lowest levels since the stock market crash of 2008. Investors regard the mining and commodities industries as vulnerable to a slowdown in the world’s second biggest economy.
Oil, gold, zinc, copper and platinum prices were all down on a day when markets were dominated by second quarter results from Apple that showed strong growth but were less impressive than dealers had been anticipating.
Despite a doubling of sales of iPhones to China’s growing middle class over the past year, financial markets fear the recent official Chinese figures showing economic growth of 7% are exaggerated and that consumer demand may flag in the coming months....MORE
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)We truly pity the earnest stockbroker today. Imagine trying to have a sensible conversation with your client about what’s going on in world markets when almost nothing makes sense anymore.
It is an inherent underpinning of “free markets” that they must remain open for trading during regular market hours unless there is a catastrophic event like war or a terrorist attack. Even after the Tuesday, September 11, 2001 event when planes flew into two World Trade Center towers, leaving much of lower Manhattan covered in rubble and a jungle of tangled, destroyed electronic cables, the New York Stock Exchange reopened the following Monday.
But here we are with no war (other than a war of words) and no terrorist attack and yet Greece’s stock market has been closed for more than three weeks. China is officially reporting that it is experiencing 7 percent economic growth but 20 percent of its stocks on its stock exchanges remain halted from trading and commodity prices are collapsing, a further sign of a serious slowdown in the world’s largest raw-commodity consuming country.
And while the U.S. stock markets are indeed trading, far too much of these markets is trading in the dark. Take the shares of Apple, for example. According to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), which only began reporting dark pool trading to the public on June 2 of last year, during the week of June 22, 2015, there were 17.7 million shares of Apple traded in dark pools. (That’s the most recent full week of dark pool trading reported by FINRA; it releases data on a delayed basis.) The largest dark pool trades in Apple that week were in dark pools owned by mega global banks UBS, Credit Suisse, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs.
Goldman Sachs is also the firm that has brought to market tens of billions of dollars in debt for Apple so that it could buy back its own stock.
A dark pool (also called an Alternative Trading System or ATS) is a private, unregulated trading venue that functions like a stock exchange by matching buyers with sellers – but it does so in the dark, without showing its bids and offers on stocks to the public. That has the potential for a great deal of price manipulation.
What could possibly go wrong?
ONE SHUDDERS TO THINK--MORE AT LINK--IT'S ALL ABOUT APPLE, TOO
Demeter
(85,373 posts)It’s all about expectations.
Over the last three months, Apple grew its revenues by 33%, saw its profits increase by 38% to $10.7 billion, put away more than $202 billion in cash for a rainy day — and yet lost more than $60 billion in market value in just three minutes on Tuesday.
Casual observers might be scratching their heads at news that, at first glance, would suggest the world’s biggest tech company had a bad day despite releasing earnings many companies would be proud to call their own. “Apple iPhone Sales, Up 35%, Disappoint Investors” was the Wall Street Journal‘s initial headline. “Apple Profit Up 38%, but iPhone Sales Disappoint Wall Street” blared The New York Times.
The reason for this initially mind-boggling disparity? Expectations.
Before companies like Apple release their latest earnings reports, analysts try to guess what those numbers might reveal. These analysts, typically employed by brokerage firms, are tasked with providing accurate assessments for investors, who want to know if they should buy more stock, hold their current position, or sell their shares. Analysts’ forecasts are then culled together to produce a consensus earnings estimate for a company. If a company beats these estimates, it usually portends good fortune for their market value as investors flock to buy up stock of the company. If the company fails to meet expectations, however, market sentiment shifts against them — sometimes resulting in a selloff like the one we saw in after-hours Apple trading Tuesday evening...
OKAY....PRECEPT 4 APPLIES HERE...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Taking Blue Screen of Death to another level...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/21/robot_surgery_kills_americans/
Surgery on humans using robots has been touted by some as a safer way to get your innards repaired – and now the figures are in for you to judge.
A team of university eggheads have counted up the number of medical cockups in America reported to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 2000 to 2013, and found there were 144 deaths during robot-assisted surgery, 1,391 injuries, and 8,061 counts of device malfunctions.
If that sounds terrible, consider that 1.7 million robo-operations were carried out between 2007 and 2013. Whether you're impressed or appalled, the number of errors has the experts mildly concerned, and they want better safety mechanisms.
"Despite widespread adoption of robotic systems for minimally invasive surgery, a non-negligible number of technical difficulties and complications are still being experienced during procedures," concludes the study [PDF], which was conducted by bods from MIT, Rush University Medical Center, and the University of Illinois.
Two deaths and 52 injuries were caused when the mechanical surgeon spontaneously powered down mid operation or made an incorrect movement. In another 10.5 per cent of recorded malfunctions, electrical sparks burned patients, resulting in 193 injuries.
A major problem, surprisingly, was that one death and 119 injuries were caused by pieces of the robot falling off into the patient, requiring a human surgical team to intervene and retrieve the broken hardware. 18 injuries were caused when the video systems on the human surgeon's console borked out mid-surgery....
MORE HORROR AT LINK
Demeter
(85,373 posts)"It's tricky to compare these robo-op figures to the error rate of pure-human surgeries for various dull reasons; one being that when mistakes are made, they're often settled out of court and are never admitted. With a machine involved, someone can blame the hardware. Between two and four per cent of operations in the US suffer from complications, according to one study, although that doesn't mean someone died in every case that went wrong."
Demeter
(85,373 posts)http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/alexis-tsipras-popularity_55b00772e4b07af29d576d0c
He fought austerity and lost, but still maintains a 60 percent approval rating...Tsipras’ continued success is a credit both to his political talents and the lack of real competition -- but it may not last, several analysts told The Huffington Post. Tsipras’ fate, they say, hinges on how the Greek public reacts once massive new austerity measures take effect and whether Tsipras can hold his ruling Syriza party together in the meantime...Some observers see the Greek public giving Tsipras credit for trying to secure better terms, even if he ultimately failed.
“The fact that he went through five months of negotiations gives him credibility in the Greek population that he really meant to undo austerity,” said Angelos Chryssogelos, an expert in the European Union at London’s Chatham House think tank. “It gives him credibility, in a weird way, to now introduce an austerity package. When he says, ‘We cannot do anything else now,’ he is more credible. Previous governments claimed they had no choice, but Tsipras actually tried. He can truthfully state that he exhausted all other options.”
And Greek voters have exhausted all their options as well...
German Ministry of Finance on Greece: Why Piketty is wrong By Ludger Schuknecht
Ludger Schuknecht is Chief Economist of the German Federal Finance Ministry
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/greece-why-piketty-is-wrong-1.2577830
... To ensure a strong and stable Europe, we have to coexist and cooperate on an equal footing, both politically and economically. This has succeeded everywhere except for Greece. Permanent dependence is demeaning. If a country is not capable of standing sustainably on its own feet, it will have a hard time functioning as a political and economic equal. If a country is unable over the long term to provide its young people with opportunities for employment and personal development because it lacks competitiveness and is dependent on fiscal transfers, then dissatisfaction, strife and anti-European resentment are unavoidable.
For this reason, the only way for Greece to get back on track towards economic success, and thus to return to a level playing field with its partners, is to carry out a successful and decisive programme of reforms. To this end, Europe and Germany will continue to reach out to Greece. But this path also requires determined reforms.
My favourite myth from Greek antiquity is from the Odyssey, where the beguiling song of the sirens lures listeners to their own destruction. To resist the sirens' song, Odysseus had himself tied to the mast to ensure that his ship would stay on course. Europe must strive to resist supposedly simple solutions and false prophets. Success in Europe - based on stability, solidarity and cooperation on an equal footing - requires us to stay on course too.
BY Anatole Kaletsky, Chief Economist and Co-Chairman of Gavekal Dragonomics and Chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. A former columnist at the Times of London, the International New York Times and the Financial Times, he is the author of Capitalism 4.0, The Birth of a New Economy, which anticipated many of the post-crisis transformations of the global economy. His 1985 book, Costs of Default, became an influential primer for Latin American and Asian governments negotiating debt defaults and restructurings with banks and the IMF.
Now that Greek banks have reopened and the government has made scheduled payments to the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, does Greece’s near-death experience mark the end of the euro crisis? The conventional answer is a clear no.
According to most economists and political commentators, the latest Greek bailout was little more than an analgesic. It will dull the pain for a short period, but the euro’s deep-seated problems will metastasize, with a dismal prognosis for the single currency and perhaps even the European Union as a whole.
But the conventional wisdom is likely to be proved wrong. The deal between Greece and the European authorities is actually a good one for both sides. Rather than marking the beginning of a new phase of the euro crisis, the agreement may be remembered as the culmination of a long series of political compromises that, by correcting some of the euro’s worst design flaws, created the conditions for a European economic recovery.
To express guarded optimism about the Greek deal is not to condone the provocative arrogance of former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis or the pointless vindictiveness of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. Neither is it to deny the economic criticism of the bailout provisions presented by progressives like Joseph Stiglitz and conservatives like Hans-Werner Sinn.
The arguments against creating a European single currency and then allowing Greece to cheat its way into membership were valid back in the 1990s – and, in theory, they still are. But this does not mean that breaking up the euro would be desirable, or even tolerable. Joining the euro was certainly ruinous for Greece, but there is always “a great deal of ruin in a nation,” as Adam Smith remarked 250 years ago, when losing the American colonies seemed to threaten Britain with financial devastation. The great virtue of capitalism is that it adapts to ruinous conditions and even finds ways of turning them to advantage...
A NOVEL THEORY, TO BE SURE. HISTORY PROVIDES NO (NOT ONE) EXAMPLE OF THIS, INCLUDING THE ONES HE LISTS...AND IT'S A HELL OF A WAY TO TREAT HUMAN BEINGS, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND THE FUTURE.
Annoying Euro Apologetics PAUL KRUGMAN
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/annoying-euro-apologetics/?_r=0
Are there good arguments against the proposition that the creation of the euro was an epic mistake? Maybe. But the arguments I’ve been hearing lately are really bad. And they’re also deeply annoying.
One argument I keep seeing is that economist critics like myself don’t understand that the euro was a political and strategic project, not merely a matter of economic costs and benefits. Yes, I’m a dumb uncouth economist, completely unaware of the role of politics and international strategy in policy decisions, who never heard of the European project and its origins in the effort to put Europe’s legacy of war behind it, not to mention strengthen democracy in the Cold War.
Well, actually I do know all about that. The point, however, is that while the European project has at every stage combined economic objectives with broader political goals – it’s about peace and democracy through integration and prosperity – the project can’t be expected to work unless the economic measures are a good idea in and of themselves, or at least a non-catastrophic idea. What happened in the march to the euro was that European elites, in love with the symbolism of a single currency, closed their minds to warnings that currency union – unlike the removal of trade barriers – was at best ambiguous in its economic logic, and arguably, even ex ante, a very bad idea indeed...
YOU TELL 'EM, DR. KRUGMAN!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)One of the more controversial ideas put forward during the Greek debt crisis has been the suggestion by the German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, that Greece could temporarily leave the Eurozone for a period of five years. Miguel Otero-Iglesias writes that while the idea itself has been widely criticised, the hard-line taken by Schäuble, and the subsequent U-turn by the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, has paradoxically reduced any real potential for a Grexit to take place.
The Greek drama has just produced the greatest twist in the plot. Although his manners were teutonically rude, the German Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble’s much criticised Grexit strategy has achieved something miraculous. Intentionally or not – only he knows – it killed the Grexit fairy tale told for so long by well-known US, UK and German academic economists.
From the start of the race, it was clear that the game of chicken between Syriza and Germany would always be won by the side able to convince their opponent that they were ready to jump into the abyss of Grexit. Alexis Tsipras, the Greek Prime Minister, was close with the referendum on 5 July. But Schäuble did not blink. On the contrary, he stamped on the accelerator, and once Tsipras had taken a good look into the black hole of Grexit, he pulled the hand-break and made a U-turn...Tsipras’ volte-face demonstrates that the economists who call for Grexit might have their economics right (a devaluation could potentially benefit the country) but they have their politics and sociology awfully wrong. There is a reason why 70 per cent of Greeks want to stay in the euro. They know their country well. This is why they have accepted Tsipras’ capitulation in Brussels and encouraged their Parliament to vote, for the first time with an overwhelming majority, in favour of this harsh third rescue package. Until now many in Greece, both on the far left and the far right, dreamed of a better life with the Drachma. Schauble’s Grexit plan, and Tsipras’ reaction to it, have brought them back to reality. Living standards will fall in Greece over the coming years, but Grexit would be much worse. More than any other European leader, over the past six months Tsipras has weighed up the pros and cons of an exit. His determination to stay is a strong message for anyone who will be at the same juncture in the future.
Although the Greek people are not the most Europeanised citizens of the Eurozone, even today, despite their hardship, most Greeks associate membership to the inner club of the EU with progress, modernity and high living standards. They look to their neighbours – Turkey, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania – and know they are better off. Leaving the euro would be a national humiliation much larger than the one experienced by Tsipras in Brussels...
GREECE NEEDS A SHRINK, NOT A BAILOUT!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)There's been a rash of conspiracy theories about secret concessions that Russian President Vladimir Putin is supposed to have made to Western leaders. The latest asserts that Putin could have helped Greece exit the euro but reversed course at the last moment, thus pushing Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras into the cold embrace of European Union leaders.
The Greek newspaper To Vima reported earlier this week that Tsipras had asked Putin for a $10 billion loan so that Greece could transition back to the drachma. If it reintroduced the national currency, it would need foreign reserves to back it up, and Greece was out of euros. According to the report, Russia floated the idea of a $5 billion advance on the construction of a gas pipeline through Greece, a branch of the Turkish Stream project that Russia and Greece agreed to build in June.
To Vima is a reputable newspaper with good political sources, so 17 legislators from the opposition New Democracy party have officially asked Tsipras whether the report was true. The prime minister probably will deny it, as the Kremlin did Wednesday. Putin's press secretary, Dmitri Peskov, told the news agency Interfax that "the Greek leadership never asked Russia for help." Still, if the report were true, it would tie up a few loose ends.
In a recent interview, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said there was a "small group, a 'war cabinet' within the ministry, of about five people" that worked on a scenario for a Greek exit from the euro, but no decision was made to carry out the plan. On July 10, Varoufakis wrote in The Guardian that an exit from the euro would have required resources that Greece didn't have:
The support only could have been obtained from a few countries, Russia and China in particular. China was reluctant to help Greece exit. When Premier Li Keqiang met with European politicians and bureaucrats in Brussels in June, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said China "hopes to see that Greece will stay in the euro zone" and that "members of the euro zone are able and wise enough to solve the debt problem appropriately." Russia appeared more welcoming: In May, Deputy Finance Minister Sergey Storchak suggested that Greece could join the BRICS nations -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- and that the group's new development bank could help with loans. That may be why Tsipras called Putin on July 6, the day after Greeks voted overwhelmingly to reject the conditional bailout proposals of the country's creditors. The readout of the call provided by Russia said only that the parties discussed the vote results "as well as certain matters to do with the further development of Russian-Greek cooperation." Perhaps Tsipras's call was part of a bluff to strengthen his negotiating position with the creditors by making them think he had other options. If so, the bluff worked, but not quite as intended. On July 8, European Union President Donald Tusk told Tsipras: "Seek help among your friends and not among your enemies, especially when they are unable to help you."
Tusk seemed to suggest that Tsipras had been asking Putin for help.
AND THAT THE EUROZONE COMPRISES GREECE'S "FRIENDS". WITH FRIENDS LIKE THAT, WHO NEEDS ENEMIES?
Tusk got at least one thing wrong, however: Russia easily could provide the $10 billion that To Vima said would be necessary for Greece to switch to the drachma. Even though Russia is smarting from low oil prices, it still has more than $360 billion in foreign reserves. Yet Putin didn't offer the help. Alexander Baunov of Moscow Carnegie Center, who once served as a Russian diplomat in Greece, suggested that Putin had little to gain: Support for Greece wouldn't secure a Greek vote against economic sanctions, if only because the Tsipras government was not stable enough, and it wouldn't ensure access to any lucrative assets...
antigop
(12,778 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)The percentage of job seekers relocating for new positions declined in the first half of 2015, suggesting that as the recovery spreads, individuals are able to find better employment opportunities in their local market.
Over the first two quarters of the year, 10 percent of job seekers moved for new employment, according to the latest job search data from global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. That was down from an average of 15 percent in the last half of 2014. In the first half of 2014, 11.4 percent of job seekers relocated for new positions.
The relocation rate in the last six months of 2014 was the highest since the first half of 2009, when an average of 16.3 percent of job seekers moved in the immediate wake of the recession.
The Challenger relocation rate is based on a quarterly survey of approximately 1,000 job seekers who concluded their search by finding employment, starting a business or retiring...
Per John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas:
Nationally, the unemployment rate stood at 5.3 percent in June. However, there were 183 metropolitan areas below that level as of May, according to the latest available data on state and local employment from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Furthermore, there were 148 metropolitan areas with an unemployment rate below 5.0 percent, at which point the balance of power in the job market shifts away from employers and toward job seekers.
As local job markets improve around the country, there is less incentive to move. Employment alone is not a strong enough factor. There would have to be some other motivation, whether that's family, health, lifestyle, or cost-of-living.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Trade ministers from the U.S. and 11 other nations from both sides of the Pacific will meet in Hawaii next Tuesday to attempt to finalize what would be the world’s largest regional trade and investment agreement: the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But while the pact has general public support in most of the countries involved, there are also deep partisan divisions in some of them over the issue.
This partisanship suggests that TPP, one of President Barack Obama’s principal foreign economic policy legacies, is not yet a done deal....
WE ARE GOING TO NEED MORE THAN LUCK HERE---WE ARE GOING TO NEED A MIRACLE!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)You may have heard of the N-11. Yes, it’s another clever Goldman Sachs concoction, to the benefit of that prized specimen - the “global investor”. These are the next BRICS, the new emerging powers.
The N-11 is made up of: Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, South Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Turkey and Vietnam. Some of these upstarts may even become members of the increasingly assertive BRICS.
The moment the sanctions regime vanishes, arguably sometime in early 2016, Iran will become the hottest N-11 in the world. It’s very hard to beat its roll call of assets: a consumer market of more than 80 million, largely well educated people; a human capital mix that is even more attractive than Turkey; and in the all-important energy front, a combination of as much oil as Saudi Arabia, as much gas as Russia, and arguably more mineral resources than Australia.
And soon back with a vengeance in the global market. Talk about an economic game-changer...Even under a nasty UN/US/EU package of sanctions – which Tehran always qualified as unlawful and unjust - Iran has built the most solid industrial base in Southwest Asia. It ranks, for instance, among the Top 15 global steel producers and Top 15 global car manufacturers. It is the worlds’ top exporter of cement, pistachios, saffron and caviar.
MORE
Demeter
(85,373 posts)THIS HAS TO BE PRIMA-FACIE UNCONSTITUTIONAL
http://www.alternet.org/economy/senate-bill-may-kick-200000-social-security-if-they-have-arrest-warrant
The large transportation funding bill moving through the Senate would end Social Security benefits for 200,000 people who have an outstanding felony arrest warrant—but have never been convicted by a court, or have a warrant for violating probation or parole, according to disability rights advocates tracking the legislation.
The proposal, which surfaced late Tuesday, is at odds with recent Republican statements on the need to take up meaningful criminal justice reforms such as less harsh sentencing. It also sets a precedent of raiding Social Security funds for unrelated purposes, in this case transferring $2.3 billion for a range of transportation expenses.
The Senate will be voting on the proposal as part of package of amendments midday Wednesday, where 60 votes are needed to add it to the transportation bill. It also takes several billion from selling oil in the strategic petroleum reserve, Treasury bond interest rates, and U.S. customs fees....
The anti-poverty law group listed 10 reasons why the proposal was unduly punitive and would have very draconian consequences:
• “Those most likely to lose benefits are generally those most in need.
• A significant number of people will become homeless when they lose their benefits.
• Some people have had benefits cut off while residing in nursing homes.
• A very high percentage of those who will lose their benefits are people with intellectual disabilities or mental illness.
• An unusually high percentage of those who lose benefits are African-Americans.
• Many will lose Medicare outpatient (Part B) coverage because of inability to pay the quarterly premium.
• Eliminating what may be their only source of income does not help resolve these issues.
• Many people never know that a warrant has been issued for them as warrants are often not served on the individual.
• These warrants are often not easily resolved since many of those who lose benefits live far from the issuing jurisdiction.
• SSA will have increased administrative costs for processing appeals and requests for waiver of recovery of overpayments.
“A majority of those affected who are receiving benefits based on disability fall into these categories,” it said. “Large numbers of those who will lose benefits had warrants routinely issued when they were unable to pay a fine or court fee or probation supervision fee.”
AND YET STILL MORE--TIME FOR SOME WINE AND CHEESE....
Demeter
(85,373 posts)G'night, everyone!
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)I am presuming it's your wife you are talking about...
MattSh
(3,714 posts)Former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych is no longer listed as a wanted person by Interpol, according to Joseph Hage Aaronson LLP law firm.
"The Interpol Red Notice (an international request made by Interpol seeking the location and arrest of wanted persons) concerning Yanukovych, which was published around 12 January 2015, has ceased to be in force. Furthermore, Interpol member countries have been blocked by Interpol from access to data concerning Yanukovych held by Interpol," the firm said on its website.
It said that Interpol’s actions follows an application to Interpol by Joseph Hage Aaronson on behalf of Yanukovych seeking his removal from the Interpol wanted list, as according to the law firm, the criminal charges brought by the Ukrainian government against Yanukovych were "part of a pattern of political persecution of him."
Complete story at - http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/279256.html
And my insider's view: Yanukovych was as corrupt as hell, but at least some prosperity flowed to the regular Josef on the street. The new government has killed off prosperity. And PM Yats' popularity has sunk to the low single digits, 2.8% last time I heard. They're still somewhat fond of Porky (Poroshenko) though. Maybe they're hoping for free sweets. (Ain't gonna happen). Oh, and apparently Porky has paid the Russian government over $2 million dollars income tax on his earnings from his Russian chocolate factory.
So I guess you can say Yanukovych "got lucky".
MattSh
(3,714 posts)Sad but true, both the block AND the actual story.
War Profiteers: Victoria Nuland and Co. Making Money on Endless Wars / Sputnik International
American neocons have turned wars into a profitable business, a US investigative journalist exposes, nailing Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and her husband, arch-neocon Robert Kagan, for their dubious foreign strategy.
Despite the unsuccessful and disastrous Iraqi war launched under the George W. Bush administration, neocons still play the first fiddle in Washington, American investigative journalist Robert Parry emphasizes.
"If the neoconservatives have their way again, US ground troops will reoccupy Iraq, the US military will take out Syria's secular government (likely helping al-Qaeda and Islamic State take over), and the US Congress will not only kill the Iran nuclear deal but follow that with a massive increase in military spending," Parry underscored.
The point is that American neo-conservatives have turned the war into a profitable business, the journalist pointed out.
Complete story at - http://sputniknews.com/politics/20150721/1024894225.html
Blocked thread at - http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027001379
Some of the comments there are precious too...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)but it still serves a useful purpose, and I love my friends...
Hotler
(11,445 posts)would take a candy bar over a ten ounce bar or silver. I'll take war over peace for a $100.00 Alex.
MattSh
(3,714 posts)These people got lucky! They got themselves a free Hershey bar. Chilled even!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Oh, well...
Hotler
(11,445 posts)this country is fucked up. I have no hope. I see no future.
MattSh
(3,714 posts)By Pepe Escobar
Let’s start with the geopolitical Big Bang you know nothing about, the one that occurred just two weeks ago. Here are its results: from now on, any possible future attack on Iran threatened by the Pentagon (in conjunction with NATO) would essentially be an assault on the planning of an interlocking set of organizations -- the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), the EEU (Eurasian Economic Union), the AIIB (the new Chinese-founded Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank), and the NDB (the BRICS' New Development Bank) -- whose acronyms you’re unlikely to recognize either. Still, they represent an emerging new order in Eurasia.
Tehran, Beijing, Moscow, Islamabad, and New Delhi have been actively establishing interlocking security guarantees. They have been simultaneously calling the Atlanticist bluff when it comes to the endless drumbeat of attention given to the flimsy meme of Iran’s "nuclear weapons program." And a few days before the Vienna nuclear negotiations finally culminated in an agreement, all of this came together at a twin BRICS/SCO summit in Ufa, Russia -- a place you’ve undoubtedly never heard of and a meeting that got next to no attention in the U.S. And yet sooner or later, these developments will ensure that the War Party in Washington and assorted neocons (as well as neoliberalcons) already breathing hard over the Iran deal will sweat bullets as their narratives about how the world works crumble.
The Eurasian Silk Road
With the Vienna deal, whose interminable build-up I had the dubious pleasure of following closely, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and his diplomatic team have pulled the near-impossible out of an extremely crumpled magician’s hat: an agreement that might actually end sanctions against their country from an asymmetric, largely manufactured conflict.
Think of that meeting in Ufa, the capital of Russia’s Bashkortostan, as a preamble to the long-delayed agreement in Vienna. It caught the new dynamics of the Eurasian continent and signaled the future geopolitical Big Bangness of it all. At Ufa, from July 8th to 10th, the 7th BRICS summit and the 15th Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit overlapped just as a possible Vienna deal was devouring one deadline after another.
Consider it a diplomatic masterstroke of Vladmir Putin’s Russia to have merged those two summits with an informal meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Call it a soft power declaration of war against Washington’s imperial logic, one that would highlight the breadth and depth of an evolving Sino-Russian strategic partnership. Putting all those heads of state attending each of the meetings under one roof, Moscow offered a vision of an emerging, coordinated geopolitical structure anchored in Eurasian integration. Thus, the importance of Iran: no matter what happens post-Vienna, Iran will be a vital hub/node/crossroads in Eurasia for this new structure.
Complete story at - http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176026/
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The thing is, one should count up the things one has going in one's favor: one's built-in luck.
Then, you can figure out what is missing from the mix...
Items to list to your credit:
BASIC BODY LUCK: Health, mobility, good genes, ancestry, physical beauty (or talent at disguise), strength, intelligence, etc. Can you improve upon your luck there?
FAMILY LUCK: So, you may not be in the 1%, but do you have supportive and generous family, willing to share? And have you maintained that connection, not abused it? Can you mend fences?
FRIEND AND ACQUAINTANCE LUCK: For those rapidly losing their family to Death, or how never had much to begin with, adopt a family group (or at least, cultivate a large and useful acquaintance). I know there's LinkedIn and other modern stuff, but there's nothing that compares to a working relationship in person and up front.
LOCATION LUCK: Are you in a supportive and nurturing location? Community, infrastructure, economy, civil rights and liberties, etc. can affect your luck more than most people realize. Can you improve this luck by moving? What are you waiting for?
DATABASE LUCK: How much general and specific knowledge and skill do you have? Do you exercise these regularly? Are they sufficient for your needs? What about future needs?
STRUCTURAL LUCK: Happily married men and women usually have this nailed already; the rest of us have to build upon present living circumstances, usually unaided. Is your home a safe and comfortable shelter, up to code? Is your neighborhood safe? Are your local police and politicians and condo board dutiful, polite, and effective at serving the public, the whole public? Can you fix it, or is it time to seek greener pastures?
FINANCIAL LUCK: This is the kind most people fixate upon, since money can Buy Happiness, or a reasonable facsimile. Money can also attract attention...both Bad Luck and Good. If you can meet your needs, some of your wants, and support your goals, you are indeed lucky!
and last (off the top off my head, without benefit of breakfast),
HISTORICAL LUCK: Being born in the Great Depression was no picnic, my family can tell you that! War, famine, pollution...sometimes the social component of life is purely Unlucky. The thing is, bad luck of this nature will be affecting everyone to some degree. Not a level playing field, but a consideration that means you don't need to beat yourself up for things beyond your control.
REMEMBER; LUCK IS FLEETING! Make use of these items while they are in your favor, protect them, share them, if you are the sharing type...
MattSh
(3,714 posts)hamerfan
(1,404 posts)Love this one. Wish I had thought to post it. Thanks MattSh!
Hotler
(11,445 posts)See my post about an interesting tid bit abput 19:00 minutes in.
MattSh
(3,714 posts)in one concise map!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)It's been 100 years since the Russian Revolution. How time flies!
I think that massive Russian revolt shocked the soul of Corporatism to the roots---as well it should have! The last feudal nation went up in flames, and has never returned to the fold. And now, just when the Fascists thought the storm was over, Russia is back and it's winning on every front.
And heavens above! We've got a SOCIALIST, running for President! And the odds are growing in his favor, as the Corporate Princess flounders in her public and private record, and the GOP as a body enters the Twilight Zone....
Exciting times, people...lots of change. That means Luck is running wild, in non-conventional ways...and the Bad Luck is out there, exposed. Avoid that by any means!
pbmus
(12,422 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)Continuing with Precept #7:
7. Luck is Random (If it isn't random, it's a conspiracy!)
Many events occur that aren't of your making, and you had no control to prevent or induce them. Take "W", no, sorry, that WAS a conspiracy...A hurricane, tornado, drought, famine, a sudden illness like a random cancer or an unforeseen epidemic, an "Act of God"...
Belief in the supernatural force or agent that springs such things upon us is the foundation of religion.
Religion is an attempt to deal with bad luck. There is the "placate the god" aspect, the acceptance aspect (god's will, usually the only consolation for bad luck), the get into heaven free aspect (you win when you are dead...always had a problem with that), and in the very best of the religions, using human agency to mitigate the effects of natural disasters--SOLIDARITY! in a word.
Supernatural beliefs can be helpful, according to Gunther. If you are stuck in a dilemma, with no obvious right answer, flip a coin, read your horoscope, lay out the Tarot deck, whatever gives you a direction when you are faced with an impossible, undefinable choice.
You want to overcome paralysis, get off dead center and up from a dead stop. If a belief in a "lucky number" does it, or any other random input, at least you are moving. And when you are moving, you are getting into a position to win, or to at least get a sense of direction.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)When you take a risk and exercise your choices for experiencing a good luck event, know how you will deal with the Worst Case Scenario.
You are putting yourself and your happiness in play...and the situation is only partly under your control. Good luck, or bad, can come from anywhere...What is the worst possible outcome, and how will you cope with it?
Gunther tells the story of the woman who brought the crossword puzzle to life. Her analysis said that the worst scenario would be if her precious, only copy of her first book were lost or destroyed. So in a time of carbon paper, she wrote out a second copy by hand...
And sure enough, some careless publisher's assistant lost her original in a cab! But she had it covered! And so, the crossword swept America..and the world.
What if something awful happens that you cannot insure against? Then you have to learn to lose, pick yourself up and go after your success in a different way.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Keep your venture under your hat...Mum's the word!
You don't want your idea stolen, your plan spiked, your enemies to thwart you.
Instead: listen, make friends and pick up data. Don't make unnecessary enemies, and don't randomly align yourself to anyone or anything.
Anything you say (especially in these days of the NSA) can be turned and used against you. And there are people who delight in doing that!
Gunther talks about "Silent Cal", Calvin Coolidge, our 30th president. He is the one who set up the Great Depression for Herbert Hoover. Enough said.
Control your temper. Don't let your emotion get in the way of your luck.
I think Vladimir Putin is an excellent example of putting this precept into practice. He doesn't blab. He tells it like it is.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Good and bad luck happens...and Correlation is not necessarily Causation!
Don't confuse Luck with Planning...there are lessons from random happenings, but it isn't a personal failure if a plan goes pear-shaped from bad luck.
Was it a failure of character, or an intervention of random luck? If there's a clearly visible link between cause and effect, then you haven't planned properly. If you did everything you could, and it failed, that's not a failure on your part, but the randomness of Luck.
Don't beat yourself up for things that you couldn't control. Just persist in your ultimate goal.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Bad luck exists for no good reason that Man can understand.
(Hence religion. Of course, as a Democrat and a UU congregant, I prefer the social organizations that seek to mitigate the effects of bad luck for all sufferers. Fundies and GOPers are all into punishment, if the victim doesn't sign onto their cult. And often, even if the victim does...Catholics look upon "punishment from God" as God's Will. Working in mysterious ways, no doubt...and don't even get me started on the Calvinists and Presbyterians, and Predestination!)
Recognize Chaos, when you see it. Chaos is not dangerous, until it begins to look orderly, like a conspiracy...Life is disorderly, and unfair. Society was invented to even out the outcomes, bring some fairness to the unlucky, that the species might survive with enough genetic diversity to remain viable. Sometimes, I wish I could beat this idea into some closed minds.
Natural events have neither memory, nor a sense of fairness. It's Newton's Laws, in motion, with Einstein's quantum theory extensions in the graininess.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)To be a lucky person, luckier than random, the Seeker must learn to juggle, to keep as many pathways to success open as possible. If you pick one way to your goal, when it fails, you have a dead end. There Is No Alternative (TINA) should not be in the vocabulary of a Lucky Person. As James T. Kirk said: "There are always alternatives!"
Just try to avoid the dead-end ones.
For those with a sense of terror, Gunther advises Listing Worries. When you have analyzed the scenario and all its possible outcomes, and figured out your response to each, then you can feel a true sense of control and reduce panic.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)If one is incredibly lucky, one meets one's Missing Half, the person whose complementary attributes complete the toolset for implementing your luck.
This is not marriage...marriage is a social arrangement, and when it works, it's a great comfort. But it isn't the automatic pathway to luck, success, fortune, although it can provide the structure to make success more attainable.
Destiny Pairing is like Abbott meeting Costello, Lauren Bacall meeting Bogie, the whole exceeding the sum of the parts. A Destiny Partner is more than a friend or a lover or a sibling...s/he changes the course of your life and the nature of your luck over the long term.
Precept #2--plunging into the Fast Flow, is the way to actively look for your Destiny Partner.
Sometimes a third party brings together the two halves...Gilbert and Sullivan would never have lasted, were it not for D'Oyly Carte, the impressario who kept them from killing each other.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I don't think I can post more tonight. See you in the morning!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Medicare turns fifty next week. It was signed into law July 30, 1965 – the crowning achievement of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. It’s more popular than ever. Yet Medicare continues to be blamed for America’s present and future budget problems. That’s baloney. A few days ago Jeb Bush even suggested phasing it out. Seniors already receiving benefits should continue to receive them, he said, but “we need to figure out a way to phase out this program for others and move to a new system that allows them to have something, because they’re not going to have anything.” Bush praised Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to give seniors vouchers instead. What Bush didn’t say was that Ryan’s vouchers wouldn’t keep up with increases in medical costs – leaving seniors with less coverage.
The fact is, Medicare isn’t the problem. It’s the solution.
Its costs are being pushed upward by the rising costs of health care overall – which have slowed somewhat since the Affordable Care Act was introduced but are still rising faster than inflation. Medicare costs are also rising because of the growing ranks of boomers becoming eligible for Medicare. Medicare offers a way to reduce these underlying costs – if Washington would let it.
Let me explain.
Americans spend more on health care per person than any other advanced nation and get less for our money. Yearly public and private healthcare spending is almost two and a half times the average of other advanced nations. Yet the typical American lives 78.1 years – less than the average 80.1 years in other advanced nations. And we have the highest rate of infant mortality of all advanced nations. Medical costs continue to rise because doctors and hospitals still spend too much money on unnecessary tests, drugs, and procedures.
- Consider lower back pain, one of the most common ailments of our sedentary society. Almost 95% of it can be relieved through physical therapy. But doctors and hospitals often do expensive MRI’s, and then refer patients to orthopedic surgeons for costly surgery. Why? Physical therapy doesn’t generate much revenue.
- Or say your diabetes, asthma, or heart condition is acting up. If you seek treatment in a hospital, 20 percent of the time you’re back within a month. It would be far less costly if a nurse visited you at home to make sure you were taking your medications, a common practice in other advanced nations. But nurses don’t do home visits to Americans with acute conditions because hospitals aren’t paid for them.
- America spends about over $19 billion a year fixing medical errors, the worst rate among advanced countries. Such errors are the third major cause of hospital deaths. One big reason is we keep patient records on computers that can’t share the data. Patient records are continuously re-written and then re-entered into different computers. That leads to lots of mistakes.
- Meanwhile, administrative costs account for 15 to 30 percent of all health care spending in the United States, twice the rate of most other advanced nations. Most of this is to collect money: Doctors collecting from hospitals and insurers, hospitals collecting from insurers, insurers collecting from companies or policy holders. A third of nursing hours are devoted to documenting what’s done so that insurers have proof.
Cutting back Medicare won’t affect any of this. It will just funnel more money into the hands of for-profit insurers while limiting the amount of care seniors receive.
The answer isn’t to shrink Medicare. It’s to grow it – allowing anyone at any age to join. Medicare’s administrative costs are in the range of 3 percent. That’s well below the 5 to 10 percent costs borne by large companies that self-insure. It’s even further below the administrative costs of companies in the small-group market (amounting to 25 to 27 percent of premiums). And it’s way, way lower than the administrative costs of individual insurance (40 percent). It’s even far below the 11 percent costs of private plans under Medicare Advantage, the current private-insurance option under Medicare. Meanwhile, as for-profit insurance companies merge into giant behemoths that reduce consumer choice still further, it’s doubly important to make Medicare available to all. Medicare should also be allowed to use its huge bargaining leverage to negotiate lower rates with pharmaceutical companies – which Obamacare barred in order to get Big Insurance to go along with the legislation. These moves would give more Americans quality health care, slow rising healthcare costs, help reduce federal budget deficit, and keep Medicare going.
Let me say it again: Medicare isn’t the problem. It’s the solution.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The corporate media in America seems astonished that Donald Trump is polling so well among Republican voters and even independents. They shouldn’t be.
Remember Ross Perot? Funny little billionaire with big ears and a squeaky voice? A well-regarded but geriatric running mate? Nobody took him seriously, as he was basically a one-issue candidate, and kept saying “crazy” things like that George H.W. Bush’s people were planning to disrupt his daughter’s wedding and that, as a billionaire, he knew “how to get things done.” Perot took almost 20 percent of the vote in the 1992 general election. Had he been a more polished candidate with a reasonable running mate, he may well have won the thing with more than a third of the vote.
Perot’s one issue was the same one Donald Trump keeps bringing up, and that the corporate media keeps ignoring: trade. From the George Washington administration to the Reagan administration, our nation pretty much always had a trade surplus. When Reagan came into office, we were the world’s largest importer of raw materials, and the world’s largest exporter of finished, manufactured goods. We imported iron ore and wool, and exported TVs, cars, socks, shirts and Levi jeans. We were the world’s largest creditor -- we even loaned other countries money to buy our manufactured goods, through a slick little device called the Export-Import Bank. But today, after 35 years of Reaganism and so-called “free trade,” America is now the world’s largest importer of finished, manufactured goods, and the world’s leading exporter of raw materials. We ship iron ore, coal and wood to China, and get it back in the form of computers in nice cardboard boxes. We are also now the world’s largest debtor nation, net-in-debt to the rest of the world to the tune of $11 trillion -- our trade debt -- with an annual trade deficit that floats around $500 billion. Unlike our national debt, which is mostly owed to ourselves, our trade debt cannot be paid off by raising taxes on the rich, or inflated away by printing more dollars. It’s real, hard money, that we owe the rest of the world. And it’s killing us, as Public Citizen and other great groups clearly point out.
Ross Perot, it turns out, was right. Every trade deal we’ve entered into in the past 30 years has lost us jobs, industries and good wages. When Reagan came into office the nation’s largest employer was General Motors, and they paid high-school graduates a solid $40-$50/hour (in today’s dollars) with benefits and job security. Today, our nation’s largest employer is Walmart, with an average pay of around $9/hour -- and even GM is hiring new workers at $14/hour. As Bernie Sanders points out, our trade policies have been largely responsible for the loss of over 60,000 factories just in the past 15 years alone.
Donald Trump understands this, as does any businessperson who regularly travels between the US and Mexico, China, or any of the other countries to which we’ve outsourced our jobs. And he’s speaking bluntly about it to anybody who will listen.
AND SO IS BERNIE! MORE AT LINK
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Some drug dealers go to prison. Some get rich. Others get filthy rich. Say hello to the Sacklers, the newest members of Forbes' 2015 List of Richest US Families, who collected a fortune from a national opioid addiction epidemic. Worth $14 billion, they're the 16th richest family in the country. Although they're richer than the Mellons, the Busches, or the Rockefellers, you've probably never heard of them.
But you've almost certainly heard about the product that put them in the 1% of the 1%. The Sacklers own 100% of Purdue Pharma, the Stamford, Connecticut-based company that makes Oxycontin, the opiate analgesic that helped spark a new generation of pain pill and heroin addicts. Oxycontin has been the most popular and controversial opioid of this century. The time-release pain reliever, originally billed as addiction-proof, has generated the vast majority of Purdue Pharma's $35 billion in sales since it was first introduced in 1995. Purdue is currently generating about $3 billion a year in revenues, again most of it from Oxycontin. Sales of oxycodone jumped from fewer than 10 million prescriptions a year in 1991 to more than 53 million prescriptions in 2012, largely impelled by the introduction of Oxycontin and Purdue Pharma's aggressive marketing campaign for the drug. And while it's difficult to isolate Oxycontin from other opiate analgesics, it has been a big driver in the fourfold increase in prescription opiate sales between 1999 and 2010.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, of the nearly 44,000 drug overdose deaths in the US in 2013, more than half were from prescribed drugs, and of those deaths, 72% were from opiate overdoses. The opiate overdose death rate has increased more than threefold in the same period, the CDC reported...The company that would become Purdue Pharma was founded by brothers Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, all practicing psychiatrists, in 1952. The firm was a middling success, initially selling unglamorous products like laxatives, but its fortunes changed after it began experimenting with generic oxycodone, which was invented in Germany during World War I, and eventually created a formulation with a time-release mechanism, which was designed to reduce addictiveness by spreading the drug's effect over a 12-hour period.
That move enabled Purdue to market Oxycontin beyond cancer patients who were the traditional market for powerful painkillers, and it did so with gusto. Thanks to Purdue's aggressive marketing campaign, and especially to the claim the Oxycontin was not addictive, primary care physicians soon began prescribing it for a wide array of painful symptoms. By 2002, Oxycontin was bringing in $1.5 billion a year.
Of course, people interested in getting high off opiates quickly figured out that they could just crush the pill to overcome its time-release mechanism, snort the powder, and get as high—or higher—than they could with heroin. Overdoses, accidental deaths, and addiction followed...Purdue has been "punished" for its misbehavior—it was forced to pay $635 million in fines after pleading guilty to false marketing charges brought by the Justice Department, and is facing a possible $1 billion payout in a false marketing suit brought by the state of Kentucky, one of the hardest hit by "hillbilly heroin." But even numbers like those are chump change when you're sitting on a $14 billion fortune.
At a time when low-level street dealers get sent to prison for decades when one of their customers overdoses and dies on their product, the Sacklers, whose product has killed thousands and addicted tens or hundreds of thousands more, get to join the list of the country's wealthiest families.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Protests by Social Security advocates and objections by Democratic U.S senators who support increasing its payments stopped an amendment to kick 200,000 people off retirement and disability benefits if those individuals had outstanding felony arrest warrants.
“Dropping the Social Security cuts from the Highway bill is the first encouraging sign we’ve seen from this Congress, when it comes to Social Security and Medicare, this year,” said Kim Wright, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare spokeswoman, speaking of the proposal that surfaced Tuesday and was deleted on Wednesday. “We certainly hope they’ve finally realized using these programs as an ATM for everything else under the sun simply won’t fly with seniors who’ve paid into these programs their entire working lives.”
The punitive proposal to slash the benefits of Social Security recipients who may have an outstanding warrant or parole violation—which in many cases is due to unpaid court fees, not criminal activity, according to senior law experts like Justice In Aging—arose as part of a 1,000-page transportation bill as a way to raise $2.3 billion for highway projects.
The proposal has roots in the mid-1990s tough-on-crime heyday in Congress that led to a massive expansion of U.S. prisons and mandatory sentencing. As the Huffington Post reported today, it was “similar to a provision from the 1996 welfare reform law designed to stop benefits to ‘fleeing felons,’ a scheme that was broadened in 2005 and eventually stymied by federal courts. The program had ensnared some innocent people who happened to have the same names as felons and also stopped benefits to some people guilty of things such as writing bad checks in the distant past. In 2009, the Social Security Administration agreed to pay $500 million in back benefits to 80,000 people wrongfully cut off.”
The blocked proposal also was at odds with recent statements from Republicans on the need to take up meaningful criminal justice reforms, such as reduced sentences for non-violent crime. It also would have set a precedent of raiding Social Security funds for unrelated purposes, in this case transportation expenses....
CONSTANT VIGILANCE IS THE PRICE OF CORRUPTION
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The Social Security Board of Trustees has just released its annual report to Congress. The most important takeaways are that Social Security has a large and growing surplus, and its future cost is fully affordable.
It is sometimes reported that Social Security's current costs exceed its revenue, but if that happened, we wouldn't need a report to tell us. The whole country would know, because 59 million beneficiaries would not get their earned benefits as they now do every month. By law, Social Security can only pay benefits if it has sufficient revenue to cover every penny of costs - administrative as well as benefit costs. The claim that Social Security is running a deficit counts only Social Security's income from its premiums, often called payroll contributions or taxes, and disregards one or both of its other two dedicated sources of income: investment income and dedicated income tax revenue. When income from all of Social Security's revenue sources is counted, Social Security ran a $25 billion surplus in 2014.
Social Security is projected to run a surplus again this year. And next year. And the year after that. And the year after that. These annual surpluses simply add to its large and growing accumulated surplus.
Over the next 5 years, Social Security has sufficient funds to pay every penny of benefits and every penny of associated administrative costs. That is true for the next 10 years. And also the next 15 years. Over the next 25 years, Social Security is projecting a modest shortfall of just .51 percent of GDP. Over the next 50 years, the projection is just 0.8 of GDP. And over the next 75 years, the shortfall is projected to be just 0.96 percent of GDP. Let's put those percentages in perspective. Military spending after the 9/11 terrorist attack increased 1.1 percent, of GDP. Spending on public education nationwide went up 2.8 percent of GDP between 1950 and 1975, when the baby boom generation showed up as school children.
The fact is that, as the richest nation in the world at the richest point in our history, not only can we afford the current levels of Social Security protections, we can afford to greatly expand Social Security. At its most expensive, in 2035 when all baby boomers are all over age 70, and indeed at the end of the 21st century, we are projected to spend considerably less, as a percentage of GDP, than Germany, France, Japan, Austria and most other industrialized countries spend on their counterpart programs today.
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Demeter
(85,373 posts)The long run balance of the U.S. Social Security system has improved, but almost all of the improvement comes from improved methods and data. That’s the sharp pencil part, explained in Section IV.B.6, pages 74-79. Put another way, Social Security is in better shape than we thought last year not because of anything that has changed in the world but just because we weren’t thinking exactly right back then.
But the Disability Insurance bit is quite definitely in short term trouble, as the DI Trust Fund is projected to hit zero in 2016. The Trustees recommend changing the law so that the DI Trust Fund can draw from the larger OASI Trust Fund, which seems reasonable on its face, whereupon the next moment of trouble is reached only in 2034 when the joint Trust Fund hits zero. The fix for that one requires either increased income (meaning taxes) or decreased cost (meaning benefits) or a bit of both. Is that the sharp politics part?
Not really. Something that is only projected to happen twenty years from now is unlikely to focus political decision making in the coming year. Normally we would expect this particular can to be kicked down the road.
Maybe not.
The closing Actuarial Opinion by Stephen Goss (255-257) points to a more immediate point of likely political conflict, concerning the way the Social Security system is treated in unified budget accounting, which differs from the trust fund accounting in the Report. His concern, apparently, is that Congress will ignore the sharp pencil Trustees Report and apply instead their own accounting framework...
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Demeter
(85,373 posts)Life is disorderly, and cannot be lived successfully by following a plan. Plans are either too rigid and limited to cope with the basic randomness of our existence, or too complicated for everyday use. (Sorry, religion!)
While it is unlikely that anyone can use all 13 of the Precepts of Lucky Positioning, everybody uses at least one. So, the recommendation is to try some of the less-familiar ones to add to your effectiveness in coping and succeeding. Try to analyze your approach to dealing with the daily randomness, and pick one or two of the techniques you haven't used, or used the least, to expand your repertoire and skill set.
Gunther spoke strongly about the flaws of a liberal education, where all literature is supposed to conform to the "tragedy" or "character flaw" analysis and motivation. He took some common examples from Shakespeare and such, and analyzed the plots according to the flow of Luck, and the skill that each protagonist had in coping with random events. He recommends viewing real life through this lens, as well, to sharpen the eye and mind to the possibilities of Luck Positioning.
I re-ordered them: The Precepts Again:
Socialize in the Fast Flow
Take Measured Risks (Small Investment/Big Payoff)
Cut Losses
Take Profits Off the Table Before Luck Turns (Don't Be Greedy)
Zig-Zag: Keep Options and Eyes Open
Mum's the Word: Anything You Say Will Be Turned Against You (or Stolen)
Avoid Panic: Count Your Worries (Name Them and Define Them to Reduce Anxiety)
Plan for Worst Case Coping
The Universe Is Not Fair
Know Luck From Planning
Recognize a Non-Lesson: When Randomness Wins, Don't Try to Detect a "Pattern"
Accept Bad Luck Happens; Use favorite "Lucky Charm" Only When Stuck Without Information
Don't Pass Up a Destiny Pairing
This concludes my summary of this little book. If you get a chance to read it yourself, let me know what I've missed.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)After all, I have to do some real work sometimes.
Have a Lucky Week, Everyone!
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)This one has nothing to do with luck, but I do like it:
Fruitcakes by Jimmy Buffett:
Demeter
(85,373 posts)blueberries, raspberries and honey rock...and cherry pie
Actually cooked today. The Kid is shocked (or in a food-induced coma). I should do that more often...