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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Vosilla who wrote (121404)	9/21/2012 8:43:20 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 149317

John, you are making the typical mistake of looking around your area and believing that you can extrapolate to the whole country. It's kind of like when the GOP members tell me that it snowed in their city the other day and that's proof there's no global warming. The bottom line is that there is a huge amount of shadow inventory and unforeclosed homes. The excesses of the last bubble has not been cleared. One of the key reasons why not is the following: * robo-signing fraud and inability for banks to discover clear title to enact a foreclosure * mark to fantasy accounting, which doesn't put any pressure on a bank to clear toxic assets from their books * lack of bank lending to anyone with less than sterling credit to spur new home sales This is going to take more time. As I've said, I think another 5 years or so. Oh and anyone who thinks they can permanently eliminate down cycles in the economy is living in a complete fantasy world. Ups and downs in the business cycle are simply a feature of a health economy, just as tides in the ocean are a feature of a healthy biosystem. Somehow, Americans have decided that we must pull out all stops to eradicate recessions. Again, that's like pissing into a tsunami and hoping to turn it back. I challenge you to talk to anyone who has a Six Sigma degree and talk to them about processes. They will tell you that they have never seen a process that doesn't have ups and down. The challenge isn't to eliminate the downs, but rather to minimize volatility to within an acceptable range and to make sure your process trends are going in the right direction. They will also tell you about a little natural rule called the Pareto Rule, which is something you find in every process as well. 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Applied to recessions, if you seek to minimize the down swings, you can do so to a certain extend by borrowing from the growth on the upside, to minimize the downside. It's classic Keynesianism. However, that first 80% is affordable, but the last 20% is unaffordable and in the economy, unachievable. I would actually be a fan of Keynesianism, if we actually implemented it properly, but that will never happen in this country. We never save up surpluses for the downturn. We run deficits in upcycles and downcycles. So the Keynesianism applied in this country is never what the man himself intended or advocated. It's become an all consuming monster.