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

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (144872)	8/1/2014 10:14:12 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 149317

"The MC ... began to fall apart on 1/20/81" That's not really true. It began to fall apart in Oct, '73. Arab oil embargo in response to war[ edit]In response to the US aid to Israel, on October 16, 1973, OPEC announced a decision to raise the posted price of oil by 70%, to $5.11 a barrel. [14] The following day, oil ministers agreed to the embargo, a cut in production by five percent from September's output, and to continue to cut production over time in five percent increments until their economic and political objectives were met. [15] October 19, U.S. President Richard Nixon requested Congress to appropriate $2.2 billion in emergency aid to Israel, including $1.5 billion in outright grants. George Lenczowski notes, "Military supplies did not exhaust Nixon's eagerness to prevent Israel's collapse...This [$2.2 billion] decision triggered a collective OPEC response". [16] Libya immediately announced it would embargo all oil shipments to the United States. [17] Saudi Arabia and the other Arab oil-producing states quickly followed suit, joining the embargo on October 20, 1973. [18] At their meeting in Kuwait the OPEC oil-producing countries, proclaimed the oil boycott that provided for curbs on their oil exports to various consumer countries and a total embargo on oil deliveries to the United States as a "principal hostile country". [19] The embargo was thus variously extended to Western Europe and Japan. en.wikipedia.org

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (144872)	8/4/2014 7:38:26 PM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

You don't believe our economy is centrally planned? Consider this. All assets and contracts are priced in dollars, yes? Prices are determined by supply, demand, and a risk premium, yes? How is that risk premium calculated? How are future discounted cash flows discounted? All of that is predicated on interest rates. In a fiat currency economy, the currency is based on debt and debt is priced using interest rates. So interest rates ARE the price of money. Our Fed moves interest rates around at whim and prints money at whim. They are quite literally manipulating the key lever of our economy to produce their desired results. This is the very definition of a centrally planned economy. A free market capitalism would only operate efficiently if interest rates were free to float based on supply and demand and the market's assessment of the risk of holding US Treasuries. Then we'd have a market based economy, instead of a centrally planned one. At the root of many of the distortions that are destroying our economy is a very sick dollar-debt based economy with interest rates that are 100% distorted and manipulated and do not measure risk properly. Everything else in our economy is predicated on that and therefore we have a highly distorted and inefficient economy, with low growth and lingering malaise. Bad debts and speculation are not allowed to clear. Savers are punished and bad actors are rewarded. No wonder our economy is such a mess and the government then feels to give out welfare to distract everyone from the pain of their own making.