BiggieScooby

Kelsay is a good end. It will be interesting to see him perform with the high caliber of talent he'll be surrounded with.

If Romney is this so called "pillar of conservatism" than why is he following Obama's campaign. If Romney wants to win he will need to lay out what he would do differently. He's basically running around now saying he's going to cut taxes, radically increase military spending, somehow he'll slash the budget deficit. Romney promises to ease regulations on the banking sector & Wall Street, repealing The Affordable Healthcare Act, & expand private sector borrowing to fuel job growth. The facts are we have too much private sector debt, the govt is running huge deficits thanks to W's tax cuts of '01-'02 which have added 5-6 trillion to our national deficit. Most Americans want Wall Street regulated, and most Americans want pre existing conditions covered, and woman to pay the same premiums for their healthcare as men. If Romney wants to win he would be smart to scale back his grandiose plans and tell them American people that we are in a long-term private sector debt deflationary period and that job growth is unattainable without massive investments in education, and infrastructure spending.

I feel sorry for GZ. The poor guy was just trying to ask what TM was doing there. He was trying to give him directions coz he looked lost. GZ knew that 20% of his neighbors were black, and none had children. He also knew most tend to put hoods on in the rain. Clearly TM misunderstood his friendliness and started assaulting him coz he smoked weed days earlier and was suffering from withdrawal. This whole thing could not have been avoided. As TM's girlfriend said he was running away from GZ once he started approaching him. For GZ's dad to interject his opinions into this story shows how much he loved his bastard son. As he told Hannity "Obama is race baiting".

I don't see this attack happening on the mountain bunker enrichment site. The better Israeli option would be "beheading" the political regime and taking out the leadership. Israeli is illequipped to take out the latest mountain uranium enrichment site. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/world/middleeast/iran-sees-success-in-stalling-on-nuclear-issue.html

Okay you got me. Go "Billz"!

Romney's next big decision is his VP. He can always "tap" Palin.

DC Tom is by far the most intellectual "reich" winger on this board. While his prose is excellent he lacks the statistics to back his argument. In other words he's a lot like Newt Gingrich, a professorial "douche" who uses his expanse vocabulary to ridicule those who challenge him. His trademark "you're an idiot", post vocabulary lesson is quite hilarious.

Be careful the mod's are liberals and they don't like name calling.

Dear world traveller, When you come up with your own original thought post it and start a new thread. I'd be glad to provide feedback.

Opps I forgot that Germany as the EU's largest economy has no private banks. Blame the French, and while your at it blame Canada.

Reuters pole - http://www.reuters.com/article/interactive/idUSBRE84C02120120514?&type=domesticNews&view=small Veterans and their families favor Obama 44% to Romney 37% with 18% undecided.

There are so many facts leaking out on this case it should be tried in the media. This case will come down to two things; a cronological reenactment of the crime scene, and whether that jives with the self-defense motive. A huge piece of evidence will be at what point did the cellular call between Martin and his girlfriend end and at what time did the first calls to 911 happen? The screams for help, was that Martin? Why was Zimmerman insisting on talking to his shrink that night? If I'm Zimmerman's attorney I'm out to destroy Martin's character. This shouldn't be too hard to do considering the electronic foot-print he left behind. How bad does that middle finger on Twitter & Facebook look? The school suspension, the bad grades, the possible marijuana use. If I'm the prosecutor I'm digging up dirt on Zimmerman, the previous dropped police assault, the possible alcoholism due to the police incident, his recurrent calls to police, the possible racist remarks "these coons/goons always get away" to dispatch, why he didn't report his $200k from his legal defense website, why he dropped his original lawyers and his disregard to 911 dispatch the night of the killing. I'm also going to be certain to talk to his ex-girlfriends, friends and neighbors.

As Romney said "a prairie fire" of debt is sweeping across this country. So we are the #1 defense spender. My problem is we are outspending the other top 14 countries combine - US $711 billion #2 to #15 defense spenders 698.7. http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/resultoutput/milex_15 We could greatly scale back defense spending by ensuring our troops get paid but slash our military industrial complex spending.

With respect to Euro austerity, keep in mind the core principles of the Euro creation at the Masstricht Treaty that: inflation rates (are to be no more than 1.5 percentage points higher than avg of top 3 EU member states). And government debt to GDP must not exceed 60% at the end of the preceding fiscal year. Again the core idea here is the Euro currency was developed to avoid a post WWI hyper inflation. In doing so the Euro has prevented individual member states from leveraging inflation to offset falling GDPs and asset prices. The ECB is reliant upon 1500 banks to bid on a few weeks to months repo contracts. The U.S. Federal Reserve simply goes to the Treasury and buys treasuries to create money. The ECB is reliant upon the private sector banks. Understand the problem? That the private financial sector is already over leveraged. Here's a great article on what's on the ECB & Fed's balance sheet: http://www.moneyshow.com/investing/article/37/Jubak_Journa-27819/Can-the-Central-Banks-Keep-Us-Safe?/ In short German & French private sector banks are the ECBs financier. The large EU members benefit from lower inflation and over speculation on rising asset prices. No matter what happened the EU big banks were going to win so long as the ECB could keep the system from imploding and getting the poor suckers to agree to austerity. German private sector banks benefit from the austerity of smaller european member states.

Tanney did have an injury history with a shoulder. Wonder if upon inspection it was going to be an issue?

"Fudge it. We'll do it Live!!!!" Mr. O'Reilly

Europe is sinking thanks not to social welfare but deflation with respect to private sector debt. As Paul Krugman points out "you have no idea what you're talking about." Stop regurgitating the right wing talking points and do some reading. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/opinion/krugman-what-ails-europe.html

Lots of "wedge" issues here. On these wedge issues, I believe its best for the state to decide. Didn't see Energy, Postal Service, Education, and R&D which is surprising. Very few of these have a direct impact our economy. 1. Abortion: State Issue allow the state to decide. 2. Gay Marriage: State Issue allow the state to decide. 3. Prayers in school: State Issue allow the state to decide. 4. Death Penalty: State Issue allow the state to decide. 5. Guns: State Issue allow the state to decide. 6. Health Care: National Issue, as this impacts us all much like the idiot who does not have car insurance. 7. War on drugs: State Issue. 8. Taxes: National & State Issue. At national level Eliminate Corporate Taxes & Tax Breaks too. Get rid of lobbyists on K-Street - no need. Increase Capital Gains Tax to 40%, labor & investment should be taxed similarly. Get rid of loopholes & write offs. Uncap Social Security tax from $105,000 limit to unlimited. Don't raid Social Security Trust, keep money separate. 9. Immigration: National Issue - encourage the folks to come here and work. 10. Illegal Immigrants: National & State Issue - allow 12 million illegals a path to citizenship. 11. Free trade: National Issue. Nothing is free, someone always wins and loses. As a way out of our "free trade" policies Pass Buy America Act: to improve American manufacturing. Reimburse manufacturers at point of sale. Force federal government to buy american and if we cannot make it in the U.S. find a way to make these goods over a 5 year window. 12. Military Spending: National Issue. Pay the troops, but slash military industrial complex spending. We outspend all other countries on military defense spending combine. It's time to realize that we can scale this back and still be #1. 13. Foreign Policy: National Issue. We've spent 1.5 trillion in Iraq & Afghanistan. Iraq was a huge waste on federal dollars and did little to fight the war on terror. Kill the enemy were he lays.

GG in short the answer to your question is yes, we are still at record levels of private debt with respect to GDP. The attached charts highlight the changes in U.S. Sector debt relative to GDP from 1950 to 2011. The sectors are broken down as follows: finance, business, household, & government. The second attachment is combine private sector debt to gdp from 1920 to 2010. The last time we saw anything like this was 1932. We experienced 13 straight years of declining private debt relative to GDP. In 1932 we were at roughly 240% private debt to GDP, whearas in 2008 we were at 301%. Considering our private sector debt has come down to roughly 235% Q2 2012 estimate we are looking at another 135% decline before we get to sustainable private sector GDP growth levels. The goal of QE2 was to dump liquidity into the markets. Whearas the European Central bank has a strict policy against "printing" money to avoid the inflation Europe experienced post WWI, our Federal Reserve decided to play chicken with inflation by dropping interest rates to near record lows, and pumping liquidity in the market. There is a delicate balance that must happen happen when you do this because you run the risk of hyper-inflation.

Henry was on SNL last night performing "Mother Lover" with Will Ferrell.

As a college educated finance and business major and business owner there will be no dining out at the local McDonalds dumpster. How does citing the CIA.GOV website and legit news sites change the facts? I wish you well in your dumpster diving 3rd. And as the say dont let the lid lock you in. I was agreeing with what you posted. You are one of the smarter guys on here Tom.

Europe's austerity measures have largely been focused on government sector debt. In France their Govt debt to GDP is 82% about 18% lower than the U.S.. In Greece we are talking about a society where 40% of the jobs were government. Ther debt to GDP is 165% https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2186.html. The problem with the prevailing school of economics is they often ignore private sector debt and solely focus on public sector debt. In fact Greece private sector debt to GDP is only 124% to GDP. So while Greece has huge government debts it's private sector is better off than the U.S. private sector. In Ireland the private sector debt to GDP is an astonishing 341% to GDP. http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0214/debt-business.html

My point is the key element hampering our economy is private sector debt deleveraging. We haven't seen private sector debt to GDP levels this high since the eve of the Great Depression. We are now at 250% of debt to GDP down from 301%. We are still at an unsustainable level of private sector debt. It's been 5 years since this began. If it takes 5 years to bring debt down 50% we are looking at a period of low growth no growth similar to what Japan endured starting in 1990 to the present day. Both Presidents can promise growth, but my contention is this won't happen via the private sector taking on more debt since we are record levels of private sector debt. So the only way to growth is via stimulus, something that will require higher govt tax revenues and/or higher government spending.

The idea is that govt spending can be stimulative if it is used for investment rather than speculation. Our 40 year foray into a finance and service based economy is over. I agree we're all dead if we continue on our current path.