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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (257252)	2/22/2008 2:02:25 PM
From: bentway	Respond to of 281500

"McCain is one of the few Senators with a credible trackrecord against earmarks and runaway spending. He's a fiscal conservative." What does that MEAN with McSame? Cut domestic spending to the bone while we continue for 100 years in Iraq and bomb Iran? Nadine the Zionist would LOVE it, as would all Zionists!

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (257252)	2/22/2008 2:09:57 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

Obama inspires (some) people with his message of change. So what happened when a bipartisan majority acted in the Senate to protect America? Obama voted with the trial bar to block America's access to foreign phone conversations. So when it comes to bipartisanship and change Obama represents partisan politics as usual.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (257252)	2/22/2008 2:59:32 PM
From: Katelew	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Is there any limit to your tolerance for corruption from the members of your party? Your people have won this contest hands down. Aren't you ever just a teeny weeny bit disgusted by it all? Arizona Congressman Is Indicted By JOHN R. WILKE February 22, 2008 1:50 p.m. WASHINGTON -- Rep. Rick Renzi was indicted in Phoenix on felony counts of fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and extortion in connection with alleged kickbacks and land deals that the Arizona Republican tried to link to federal legislation. The investigation began in 2006 after a local developer complained that Mr. Renzi pressed him to buy land near Sierra Vista, Ariz., owned by a business partner, and a former staff member of the congressman began cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A secret payment of $200,000 linked to these land deals was disclosed in a Wall Street Journal article last April that also reported that Mr. Renzi had pressured copper-mining executives and others in exchange for federal land-swap legislation. The 35-count indictment charges money laundering for the alleged concealment of $733,000, including the $200,000 payment made through the wine company; embezzlement from the family insurance business, including funds used in his congressional election campaigns; and extortion, in connection with his offer of federal land-swap legislation in exchange for the purchase of the business partner's land. The former partner, James W. Sandlin, was also indicted, along with a third associate, Andrew Beardall. Mr. Renzi is one of at least a half-dozen current and former members of Congress of both political parties now under federal criminal investigation. Two former congressmen, Bob Ney of Ohio and Randy "Duke" Cunningham of California, both Republicans, are currently serving time in prison for corruption. In a statement, the Justice Department said that convictions for public corruption wire fraud and extortion each carry penalties of up to 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine or both, convictions for a money laundering conspiracy and concealment money laundering each carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, a fine of $500,000 or twice the value of the money at stake, or both. Mr. Renzi also faces additional prison time and fines for the alleged conspiracy, money laundering and insurance charges, the department said. Mr. Renzi's congressional office referred calls to his attorney, Reid Weingarten, who didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Write to John R. Wilke at john.wilke@wsj.com

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (257252)	2/23/2008 12:14:32 AM
From: c.hinton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Nadine you are loosing it again...as well as being behind the curve. First they are altready talking about stagflation..or dont you read the news. Second you continue over simplify the laffer curve by ignoring completely gov funding necessities and the business cycle. ,laffer is not some economic mantra to repeat till your problems go away. " A harsher critique of the Laffer Curve can be seen with Martin Gardner's satirical construct, the so-called neo-Laffer Curve. The neo-Laffer curve matches the original curve near the two extremes of 0% and 100%, but rapidly collapses into an incomprehensible snarl of chaos at the middle. Gardner based his curve on actual US economic data collected in a fifty year period by statistician Persi Diaconis. The satire illustrates the major fallacy commonly committed with the Laffer curve, namely the assumption that the middle is a smooth, concave function merely because the two extreme endpoints are well-defined. A realistic tax curve would most certainly not resemble a smooth parabola or even any other simple function, but rather a very complex curve with many peaks, valleys, and multiple local maxima. Inside the middle, a wide range of various economic factors confound any simplistic attempt at this interpolation." en.wikipedia.org

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (257252)	2/23/2008 3:12:49 AM
From: c.hinton	Respond to of 281500

Nadine i find it incredible that you blame stagflation on high taxes! Do yo know nothing about what causes inflation? That you can post such idiocy is beyond me! ------------------- nadines statement...... "You think raising taxes on "the rich" (notice how he never defines "rich", cause it's going to be anyone who makes more than $50,000 a year) will raise revenue. I think it will rerun the stagflation of the 1970s. I have history on my side. You have pure wish fulfillment." ---------------------- Fed ready to act if prices psychology turns sour By Krishna Guha in Washington Published: February 21 2008 21:06 \| Last updated: February 22 2008 01:54 How stable are inflation expectations in the US? This is the key to understanding how far the Federal Reserve will be able to go in cutting interest rates to stave off recession. As this week’s minutes show, the Fed views the latest inflation data as “disappointing”. Inflation reached an annual rate of 4.3 per cent in January, with the underlying core rate at 2.5 per cent. The central bank is willing to look past the inflation numbers and focus on fighting recession risk, in part because it believes that economic weakness will ultimately moderate price pressures. But there is a caveat. The Fed will tolerate higher inflation only as long as it believes this is not seeping into inflation expectations and fostering a 1970s-style inflationary psychology. That is the real stagflation risk – not a few months of weak growth and relatively rapid price increases. As Fed governor Frederic Mishkin said in a recent speech: “The flexibility to act pre-emptively against a financial disruption presumes that inflation expectations are firmly anchored.” The awkward fact is that market-based measures of inflation expectations have been moving up for a while. Crude comparisons of the difference in yield between ordinary Treasury bonds and Treasury inflation-protected securities show little change. But these measures do not take into account the jump in the liquidity risk premium since the start of the credit crisis, which increased the attractiveness of more liquid ordinary bonds. Adjusting for this, the Cleveland Fed calculates that the inflation rate the market expects to prevail over the next 10 years has risen sharply, from 2.3 per cent at the end of July last year to 3.2 per cent today. Using a different approach, Macroeconomic Advisers estimates that the inflation rate expected to prevail over a five-year period starting five years from now has gone up from roughly 2.5 per cent last spring to 2.96 per cent today. Some survey-based measures of inflation expectations have also edged up, although they remain much more stable than market-based measures. “Recent data on inflation expectations are not all that reassuring,” says Stephen Cecchetti, a professor at Brandeis university. The Fed minutes argue that the market-based measures may exaggerate the move-up in expected inflation. Changes in recent months “probably reflected at least in part increased uncertainty – inflation risk – rather than greater inflation expectations”. However, economists say this would still be worrying, as it implies that investors do not think inflation expectations are very firmly fixed. The minutes say these expectations remain “fairly well anchored”. But Goldman Sachs detects a “persistent concern” about the need to monitor them. Larry Meyer, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, says the move-up in market-based inflation expectations is “cautionary”. He believes the rise to date would not prevent the Fed from cutting rates again in March. But a significant further increase – or an equivalent move up in the survey-based measures – would be hard for the central bank to stomach. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008