Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (587810)	9/28/2010 11:44:11 AM
From: Bill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1576346

The groups at the top of the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey were followed, in order, by white evangelical Protestants, white Catholics, white mainline Protestants, people who were unaffiliated with any faith (but not atheist or agnostic), black Protestants and Latino Catholics. Which group does Obama fall into?

To: bentway who wrote (587810)	9/28/2010 11:53:30 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576346

Ken Fisher Dubs New Normal `Idiotic,' Sees `Great' Decade Ahead Angus Whitley and Jacob Greber, On Tuesday September 28, 2010, 5:05 am EDT The next decade will be as good for investors as the 1990s, said Ken Fisher, the billionaire chief executive officer of Fisher Investments Inc., dismissing notions that developed economies face below-average growth. Fisher said the concept of a “new normal” is “idiotic,” pitting him against money managers including Mohamed El-Erian, the CEO of Pacific Investment Management Co., which coined the term to describe a world of high unemployment, more regulation, and the shrinking importance of the U.S. in the global economy. “We are chimpanzees with no memory,” Fisher said at the Forbes Global CEO Conference in Sydney. “The next 10 years are going to be just as good as the 1990s. The problems in this current environment we think are so different, and so new and so unique. It’s the same stupid old normal we’ve always had. We’ve got a great future.” Any revaluation of China’s currency against the dollar is unlikely to have a long-term effect on investors, said Fisher, who oversees $35 billion from Woodside, California. The U.S. is seeking a stronger yuan after its trade deficit with China widened to $145 billion in the first seven months of this year, from $123 billion for the same period in 2009. Skepticism and pessimism are normal sentiments for investors 18 months after the bottom of a bear market, according to Fisher, who said in July 2007 that the global credit crunch was “just all minor volatility” and “just fears of much ado about nothing.” ‘Bumbling Along’ The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed for eight of the 10 years, from 1990 to 1999, including five consecutive annual gains of at least 19.5 percent in the second half of the decade. In London, the FTSE 100 Index also rose for eight of the 10 years. Pimco, based in Newport Beach, California, used the phrase “new normal” last year, forecasting an extended period of lower-than-average economic growth. Bond and equity strategists, bankers and economists adopted the term as concerns grew about Europe’s debt crisis and the strength of the global recovery. “We can quibble about details, but right now, we’ve got the world snarky, skeptical, pessimistic, which is normal a year and a half after the bottom of a big bear market,” said Fisher. “It’s what we always get.” Fisher said in October 2008 that U.S. stocks were close to the bottom. The S&P 500 fell about 30 percent from October 2008 to a 12-year low in March 2009. Yuan Revaluation Fisher said he disagreed with billionaire investor Wilbur Ross, chairman of New York-based WL Ross & Co., who said at the conference today that the U.S. economy will be “sort of bumbling along, not having a lot of direction one way or the other.” An upward revaluation of China’s yuan against the dollar wouldn’t create any new jobs in the U.S., said Ross. “Those jobs are gone,” he said. “‘The only question is, do they stay in China or do they migrate to Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand or Vietnam? It’s total political nonsense, all the China bashing.” Forcing China to raise the value of its currency may create 500,000 U.S. jobs, according to C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. To contact the reporters on this story: Angus Whitley in Sydney at awhitley1@bloomberg.net; Jacob Greber in Sydney at jgreber@bloomberg.net finance.yahoo.com

To: bentway who wrote (587810)	9/28/2010 1:16:24 PM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 1576346

Another shallow "study" designed to promote atheism and agnosticism. Apparently the study is a questionnaire with 32 questions, 12 of them about Christianity. From the LA Times story, it seems two of those 12 Christianity questions involved being able to identify Martin Luther and Mother Teresa. Does this mean a young person raised in say an Assy of God church who doesn't know who Martin Luther and Mother Teresa were doesn't know much about their own religion or God? Thats the premise and its nonsense. Oh wait: "On questions about Christianity – including a battery of questions about the Bible – Mormons (7.9 out of 12 right on average) and white evangelical Protestants (7.3 correct on average) show the highest levels of knowledge." pewtrusts.org Uh, this would indicate Mormons and WEP's actually got higher scores on the Christian section of the questionnaire than any other group, even those brilliant atheists and agnostics. This is contrary to the stories written about the questionnaire most of which claim atheists and agnostics know more about Christianity than those dumb Christians - you just can't count on the media to get stories right. ------ If 12 of the 32 questions were about Christianity (and were of the who was Mother Teresa and Martin Luther type), what were the other 20 questions? Well, 11 of the other 20 involved "other world religions" and the rest must have been on "the role of religion in public life" whatever that is. The server for the questionnaire is down or I'd post the 32 questions. "Jews and atheists/agnostics stand out for their knowledge of other world religions, including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism; out of 11 such questions on the survey, Jews answer 7.9 correctly (nearly three better than the national average) and atheists/agnostics answer 7.5 correctly (2.5 better than the national average). Atheists/agnostics and Jews also do particularly well on questions about the role of religion in public life, including a question about what the U.S. Constitution says about religion."