I guess I’m coming around to the realization that capitalism is the mechanism that is the auto pilot check and balance … but the system is rigged for cartels currently with little lobby power for the Joe, Jane, Bill, and Brendas.

I’m wondering if (or nearly) “the present system of legal deductions” if extended to families and individuals would be a mechanism to further the cause out of this mess. Sam the plumber does not understand business as an underling apprentice plumber. Allowing living expense deductions from income and taxing the excess money in a graduated scale would train the mind to our capitalist structure.

Graduated means all folks pay a tax, proportional to the ability to maintain survival and not curtail the incentive to advance.

Of course we would need trained computers for scamming, ie: excess deductions to reduce taxes to Uncle Sam for his business of enforcing law.

So … Energy and IT is our growth industries. Accounting a decline industry.

Our 1st problem right now is these years of trickle down economics has failed.
Our 2nd problem is money flowing into a region or industry without flowback is stifling.
Our 3rd problem is to big to fail is to big to fight.
Balance.
Period.

not ‘bottled water’, most Plastics shed estrogen-mimics–it’s a story the Susan G. Komen Foundation should be on, like White on Rice..but it is a cash-cow for the IVF clinics, so, at least, someone ‘benefits’/riight..

Ritholtz: Not that the government should be a profit maximizer, but we’re bailing out some really bad actors. There needs to be some methodology to make sure they’re not getting away with too much.

Millstone: Don’t know if this deal structure was the way to necessarily do that. After this crisis calms down a bit we are going to deal with this–why and how this can never happen again.
–from the 2nd link..

I really wonder if she knows that Stupidity can rise to the level of a Statutory offense, let alone a Tort?

O Forbes, it’d be an overstatement to call it a shadow of its former self..

Everybody around the world is going to be doing various things. We even got some cooperation globally, which is amazing. I didn’t think we would have governments cooperating until we had an environmental problem threatening people with death, but here we have a monetary crisis, and now governments and central banks are working together.

The impacts ultimately for the world are very positive, not only in the short run–we’re breaking new ground of international cooperation, we’re strengthening relationships, and that’s bound to have some long-term impact that’s positive.

At the same time, balances of power are going to shift and I don’t think the U.S. is going to be the big winner ultimately. Maybe we’ve been arrogant, maybe a lot of this is our fault and maybe we should be cooperating with other countries. There’s talk of a second Breton Woods. Obviously, our financial system globally needs to come into the modern world.
–from the first link.

And this guy’s name is: Millstone !~ Zounds!

simply, ‘thinking’ like this: We even got some cooperation globally, which is amazing. I didn’t think we would have governments cooperating until we had an environmental problem threatening people with death…is, truly, a Millstone, to be carried by anyone falling for that type of abstruse g**bage..
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/abstruse

and, with this: “and now governments and central banks are working together.”–if that cat really believes that this is a “First” for Gov’t-CB ‘cooperation’, he should do everyone a favor and back away from managing his Clients’ ‘money’, and his own..

past that, BR, how do you square your ‘plasma’ take, with your read on the U of M ’sentiment’ indicators?

IOW: if ‘all bets are off’, wouldn’t the read on that indicator be one of them?

as an aside, while I was reading that, the vid-clip of Taleb w/ the 2 two-bits kept coming back to mind–BR you’re one of the Best, your simple Sagacity shines through the Fog advected by even the densest role players you happen to be sharing a stage with..
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/advection

If it is possible to remove our emotion from the equation, perhaps we would see things differently.

Logic would say that the market is not as bad as most think but not as good as some think — that the end is closer than the beginning of this bear market…

How to trade (or not) in this environment is up to your own reasoning…

“Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.” ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

If you think the government has a chance of making money on these bailout maneuvers, then you are in deep denial. We won’t see the bottom until I stop hearing crap like that.

And as far as Buffett is concerned, he got run over by the bubble in 2000…he didn’t see it coming. If you’re looking for advice, go read Grantham or Pachter. Grantham is much more bearish than you let on and Pachter is the true genius.