flipper:

On Sun, 28 Nov 2010 16:35:34 +0100, "F. Bertolazzi"
wrote:
But in this case we are talking about people doing shady business.
Shady because they they are buying something that does not have a real
market value (unless you are doing auctions, but even in this case, given
the low number of participants, they could form a cartel) from a seller
that is not interested in getting as much money from the deal as possible
(I mean, money that goes to the Government, not kickbacks).

I'm not sure what you mean by 'this case' since the discussion here
was my 'optimism', or lack thereof, depending on the observer.

Sorry, for "this case" I meant buyng a public asset.
Your optimism is indisputable.

That doesn't explain the US, mostly government run, so called,
'crumbling infrastructure'

You don't have any idea of what a really crumbling infrastructure is.
Came visit Italy.

I don't agree that a mismanaged government arranged 'deal' with
privatization of one net means all business, in general, favors
destroying their source of revenue for short term gain.

Neither do I. In fact our Autostrade (
http://www.autostrade.it/en/index.html ), which is now owned by Benetton
(the guy that invented white sweaters) is an almost perfectly maintained
infrastructure.

By the way, just to let you know what politicians are able to do to finance
socialist plans, our highways were built by privates that had a 25 years
concession to recoup their investment. Then they become public and should
have been free, while, in fact, we continue to pay them at exactly the same
price as before (roughly as much as the gas consumed to travel it), because
Benetton forked out as much money as the original investors. That's why our
public debt is much worse that it seems (we are talking about 2.000 miles
of highways mostly built though mountains). We sold the crown jewels.

I.e. You have to show x% investment in 'poor communities' whether
there's any merit to the investment.

I could not imagine such a thing. I don't believe that even here they ever
done anything similar.

And there is where your risk vanishes for the banks. As long as Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac buy the loan then it's of no matter to the bank.

Geez, that's much worse than what I thought. I could not dream anything
that perverse.

No, because things keep humming along with low interest rates. What
causes the 'crash'?

The fact that there is a general overproduction, so the price of goods is
too low to repay the investments, becase there has been no recession to
weed out poorly performing enterprises.

That's because the prime rate was below zero.

Prime was never below zero.

You mean that, when the prime rate was 1% you did not have 2% or more
inflation?

By the way, how is measured inflation there? In our "basket" the house rent
"weights" 20%, a ludicrous amount, since most people I know pay, for it or
the mortgage, well more than 60% of their income. Here houses are all made
in concrete, no wood, and the dimension of a lot of items (piping, doors &
windows) is not standardized, the soil is scarce thus expensive, so they
are, on the average, more expensive that yours.

I don't know how much it "weights", but we even have a "equipment and
consumables for digital photography" in our "basket". Is there any reason
to have a similar item if not for showing an inflation rate lower than the
real one?

Because the government guaranteed Fannie and Freddie,

By law they did not. That was simply an 'expectation'.

That was fully fulfilled.

With a conventional loan you'd put, say, 20% down (so you have a stake
in the property) and there'd be an income and credit check to asses
your ability to reliably service the debt.

Here, up to 20 years ago, it was more like 40%. Now some banks advertize
0%, but I don't know wether it's true and which checks are done.

Prime was never below zero.

I found an US prime rate chart, but the inflation chart I found is from1650
to today, so it's not readable.

the 3% interest you apply to
the loan becomes a 5%, you are prepared to take more risks.

I don't know who 'you' is nor how 3% turns into 5%.

"You" is the bank and 3% turns into 5% if you add a 3% of inflation and
subtract 1% of prime rate.

Mortgage rates to the buyer dropped along with prime.

That's the point. On top of the socialistic directives.

There is yet another effect: if the other banks are taking advantage of
this weird situation and you don't, they will earn money that will became
dividends that will attract investors and/or they will attract more
customers with better conditions and you will be left without investors
and/or customers.

That's an argument made about derivatives, a related but not
equivalent issue.

Not only derivatives. Even well managed enterprises, like our Parmalat,
went bust because, for attracting capital from dotcom and derivatives, had
to give huge dividends that they did not earn.

I.E. A speculative investment, like 'dotcoms', will always pay more
than the going interest rate or else they can't attract money at all,
so 'low interest' isn't required for your scenario.

It is. If money is not readily available at low interest rates there are
not enough *amateur investors* to form a speculative bubble.

Because only amateurs without any knowledge of what they are investing on
would buy a dotcom share. I, for instance, invested $20.000 through a
famous site whose name I don't remember, iwas e-something and almost
doubled it in a few of months.
But I invested on Nokia (when that doubled I sold it because I thought was
immoral to gain that much money that way. A couple of weeks later Nokia
made an unsubstantiated profit warning for "cooling" its shares, that lost
3/4 of their value. It was more the satisfaction for the avoided loss than
for the gain), Celestica and Heinz (I love baked beans), that was, in the
meanwhile bought by, if I remember well, Del Monte.

Then, as any sane gambler should, I collected the cash and left the casino.

The topic was Greenspan's 'motive' and I'm simply saying that him
doing his job doesn't make it a 'bribe'.

Again, he adhered strictly to the job description, but making a lot of
collateral damage.

Yes, you're right. It's not the FED job to puncture dotcom or housing
bubbles, nor to avoid them,

In a way it is.

So Greenspan, in that way, did very badly his job.

nevertheless actively inflating speculation bubbles is not what I would
describe as a responsible and commendable conduct.

Targeting a specific segment would be an entirely new level of
interference and begins to smell a bit like fascism.

No, he could not target a segment, he only had to raise the prime rate and
reduce the money supply to the banks. After all, it is all he could do,
apart from sayng things in his reports. Or does the FED chairman have other
powers?

QED what? Being in the US automatically means they're lying?

Yes. As I said, a muslim living in an occidental country will lie in order
to reassure the poulation and avoid problems.

No, as you confirm below, they know it is a lie,

You're mixing two things and then drawing an unsupported conclusion.

The first issue is, a person is not a liar if they believe what they
say.

Ok, but I did'nt say anything about that. I don't believe that they believe
in the lies they are telling us.

The second is whether lying is an acceptable tactic.

I never meant to touch this topic too. I only said that muslims living in
muslim countries neve ever condemned Al Quaeda, muslims living in
occidental countries sort of condemn Al Quaeda, but they are lying.

And therein lies the problem with seemingly mediocre professions by
the so called 'moderate Muslim community'. The pronouncements usually
dance around what would seem to be a rather simple thing to say.

Moreover.

but, since they know better, because they are enlighted by The Faith (or
Communism, it's the same situation and mechanism), their duty is to lie
in order to help you to achieve enlightment.

The acceptability of lying is not to 'enlighten' but to defeat the
enemy.

Defeat and then convert to the right religion/ideology or kill.

But when it comes to professions of the Faith I assure you they
believe it.

Never had any doubt about it.

You seem to believe that all Muslims think as one monolithic block but
their propensity to kill each other 10 times more often than an
'infidel' should disparage that notion.

True. Luckily the smart move in Iraq made them kill each other, distracting
them from us. The only thing that keeps them together is the hate towards
us. So the ones living among us hate us, the ones living among other
muslims hate the other muslims.

Of course, most societies allow some degree of 'lying' to 'the enemy',
like in time of war.

Well, during war time it's more likely that governments are going to lye to
their own subjects.

More likely than what?

Than lying to the enemy.

By "intellectual persuasion" you mean islam-communist style, i.e. blatant
lies or communist brainwash?

Oh come on. Is that what you think an appropriate means?

No, it's the way it is done here, and there too, by leftists.

Fact is the sanctions were falling apart and it was put up or shut up
time.

Yes, but there was no need to dissolve the army and the public buraucracy.
When you arrived in Italy, you left the public employees you found, even if
80% or more was enrolled in the PNF (fascist party).

Why would you come to that conclusion rather than the traditional
capitalist pig presumption the '*******s only care about making a
profit'?

Because the profit they make on oil is a tiny fraction of the benefits we
gain from using it.

That is, if Romans had anything vital that an earthquake could destroy.

How about PEOPLE?

People don't get killed by earthquakes, but by bricks falling on their
heads. Most of the inhabitants of imperial Rome lived in wooden shacks.

That was 'high tech' and not so simple as you seem to think.

Yes and not. It was at the time, but it can be easly understood with the
knowledge of most contemporary graduates.

After all technology is the proof that science works, and science and
religious fondamentalism don't get along very well.

12'th century Islam didn't think so.

12th century science and technology (and medicine) were still so primitive
that could not pose any threat to God.

The same pot, in 2001 was boiling again.

It may seem so from an outside view looking at, say, the stock market
but the domestic situation was really quite different.

The stock market's job is to predict the near future.

Back then, at least in Italy, electric power distribution was limited only
to the bigger towns and electicity basically used only for illumination,
not for food conservation, accounting and inventory, communication
(telephone exchanges had treir own generators), heathing (a modern gas
furnace does not work without electricity), you name it.

Italy did have a society, didn't it?

Yes, one that could live without electricity. Now we can't.

"Just a year?" Ain't no 'faulty relay' going to destroy the entire
electrical grid for a year.

Yes, but there could have been be some tens of liners or rockets to destroy
power plants.

That's a whole different matter than living in eternal fear a random 2
buck relay is going to destroy civilization.

Never had such fear. The "crrepy" thing is that Osama Bin Laden seems to
have seen that documentary and acted accordingly. On the other hand it's
also true that 911 is a very significative number for US citizens and that
the targets were the easiest ones to spot and hit.

Yes, adapt and go back to the stone age or thereabouts.

No, like rerouting power lines from unaffected power stations to basic
services, as but one example, and a host of other things people can
think of when the chips are down.

Yes, basic. Telephone and food processing. But what about, for instance,
computers and cash registers?