US Election 2012...the aftermath

[Calax]

Two things:

 

One, GD, I'm pretty sure a lot of the notes you posted were just layoffs. Not all of which were directly connected to Obamacare. The Rocketdyne one really caught my eye due to a personal attachment to one of the companies involved (Aerojet, my dad's old company before he retired). They're dropping people, not because of Obamacare, but because they're merging with another company, and you don't want redundant positions. You can't have two "Director of Human Resources" for that company can you?

 

On a silly side note related to that, My dad had to fight every single brand new CEO of Aerojet because his group was probably the #1 expense in the company's ledger. So they'd want to look good and investigate if they could cut his budget, so he fought something like 6 investigations into his expenses, and each CEO backed off when they learned that his group was probably the most advanced water treatment crew on the planet right now.

 

Honestly, if you wanted to gut the expenditures, you could probably just do a complete overhaul of military spending. There is hundreds of millions of dollars being tossed into R&D projects that basically no longer exist, and even more being thrown at projects that are VERY far behind their targets, and very far over their limits, simply because of how... contractor bias the entire thing is.

[Wrath of Dagon]

 

@ WoD: Right now I've got all of my money invested in real assets. I strongly recommend you doing the same. Stocks, non asset backed securities, money markets are all subject to wipe out if there are currency devaluations. As Enoch correctly pointed out before it is unlikely that the dollar will collapse because 1) there is nothing to replace it with in the world market right now, 2) It is still the most stable currency. However, if the Obama admin begins more rounds of Quantitative Easing i.e. flushing non-existent money into the economy then it will devaluate. That will be a problem beyond inflation.

If the economy collapses, real estate prices will collapse also. Plus it's very non-liquid. The dollar will collapse if we stay the same course, you can not pump out huge amounts of new money and still have its value stay the same, it's simply not possible. Right now the Fed balance sheet has already gone from 800 billion to 3 trillion.

 

 

...

So yeah, invest your cash in the glorious Socilist States of Australia please! We'd love to take your money!

None of the things you listed have anything to do with being able to manage the currency. The problem with the US as I said before is we want to have our cake and eat it too, and right now we're spending 50% more than we're taking in, and it only gets worse in the outlying years.

[Calax]

WoD, GD throws his money into precious metals.

 

My question is how exactly is Obama just going to out and out tank the economy? Romney wanted to spend at least as much money as we are now (with an increased military budget added on, natch), but was also suggesting tax breaks be increased (with the nebulous "loopholes" being used to close the gap). Obama is intending to (from his speeches) drop military spending, up social spending (making the government an employer), and try to stabilize and regulate wallstreet to SOME degree.

 

One thing my dad pointed out to me as I talked to him earlier, was that this is the time when not only does the GOVERNMENT look at it's yearly budget, but the Industries do too. And one of the reasons for all the defense industry jobs going poof is because the corps' that make up that segment say "Well, crap, guess Obama isn't spending another billion extra on us" and tightening their belts to get around that.

[Nepenthe]

@Nepenthe: None of these layoffs were thrown together in the last four days. I'm quite certain many would have happened anyway and were prepared contingencies from well before the election. However, with regards to regulatory costs the election of Romney might very well have made a difference for many of the folks receiving pink slips. Companies lay off employees to reduce operating costs.

 

Not ruling that out as a possibility, but if they are like corporate management elsewhere in the world, they will have timed it to coincide with an event where they can cut cost and wash their hands at the same time. It wasn't us, it was the evil government that made us do it. Similar things happened in Australia with carbon taxes, suddenly energy prices got an astronomical price hike, trying to wipe it off on the carbon tax (despite even non-economists being able to do the math, the taxes could in no feasible way account for the amount that prices increased), European corporations used the introduction of the Euro currency as an opportunity to "round up" prices rather than trying to actually convert prices etc.

 

If you can score a few points on the bottom line and pass blame elsewhere, your shareholders will love you. Politics is not the only dirty business

^^ Pretty much what I meant, thanks Gorth for standing in for me while I timezoned.

[Raithe]

So is it just a comedic hissy fit, or something to produce a lot of interesting sound bites in the next month?

 

20 States have filed to secede from the United States

 

While many in Texas have been outspoken about seceding from the Union for years, in the aftermath of the recent election the first push for secession began in Louisiana and has quickly spread to states including New Jersey and Michigan.

 

The U.S. government allows one month from the date the petition is submitted to WhiteHouse.gov to obtain 25,000 signatures in order for the Obama administration to consider the request.

 

The likelihood of the current administration to even entertain the idea of allowing states to secede is almost non-existent. What is sobering to realize though is that in less than 48-hours there have been tens of thousands of people who have quickly rallied behind this very grassroots approach to request change, autonomy, and a small measure of freedom.

 

As of the evening of Sunday, November 11, here are the current links and numbers of petition signers for each of the 20 states (each petition needs 25,000 signatures within 30-days to be considered by the government):

•Alabama - 3,975 signatures

•Arkansas - 350 signatures

•Colorado - 3,055 signatures

•Florida - 4,033 signatures

•Georgia - 1,629 signatures

•Indiana - 3,194 signatures

•Kentucky - 3,229 signatures

•Louisiana - 12,192 signatures

•Michigan - 2,482 signatures

•Mississippi - 3,171 signatures

•Missouri - 2,196 signatures

•Montana - 2,867 signatures

•New Jersey - 2,485 signatures

•New York - 2,847 signatures

•North Carolina - 3,823 signatures

•North Dakota - 2,508 signatures

•Oregon- 2,678 signatures

•South Carolina- 2,632 signatures

•Tennessee- 2,659 signatures

•Texas- 14,883 signatures

 

Edited November 12, 2012 by Raithe

[HoonDing]

Damn rednecks.

[Humodour]

It's an interesting thought experiment to consider what would happen if you, roughly, got all the Democrat states, made a country out of them, then took the Republican states and made a country out of them, and then came back 20 years later to see what each country had become.

[Pope]

I strongly oppose Republican independency, for the sole reason that their ignorance of climate change is a threat to the global population. Someone has to keep their tendency for laissez-faire pollution in check, and that might as well be a Democrat.

[GuybrushWilco]

There have always been angry fringe groups talking about secession, but since the civil war, they have never gained any traction. This is really just the immediate knee jerk reactionism from anti-Obama folks and super right wing groups that are just trying to make a statement. The reality is that it is only a pipe dream of a few extreme people, and none of these states would be able to survive on their own. Also, people in general would never support secession, because many American families are spread all around the country, and people would not support the idea of breaking up their families and relationships across states, by forming new countries. Also, you can see it as though a few thousand signatures in a couple of days is a lot, but when you consider that Texas for instance, is home to 25 million people, then 14,9k signatures does not seem like anything. I was born and raised in Michigan, and being a native Michigander, I can tell you that those signatures are a joke, and there is no way that Michigan would ever secede! Look at all the talk of Quebec seceding over the years in Canada, and that has never happened, and probably won't happen in the foreseeable future And that secession movement has always been a lot stronger than anything here.

[Hurlshort]

What amazes me about these people is they can talk about patriotism and secession in the same breath and not see the hypocrisy.

[Raithe]

What amazes me about these people is they can talk about patriotism and secession in the same breath and not see the hypocrisy.

 

But the good ol USA isn't a country. It's an IDEAL!

[Malcador]

That's probably how they see it. Odd to see NY, NJ and Oregon there, heh. You guys could probably let Florida go, with no big loss, no?

[Humodour]

The Democrats now have a supermajority in California.

 

Also, the California voters passed a ballot initiative that raises taxes.

 

lol.

[Blodhemn]

It's an interesting thought experiment to consider what would happen if you, roughly, got all the Democrat states, made a country out of them, then took the Republican states and made a country out of them, and then came back 20 years later to see what each country had become.

 

Democrat states would be up to their necks in debt like they are now.

[Hurlshort]

The Democrats now have a supermajority in California.

 

Also, the California voters passed a ballot initiative that raises taxes.

 

lol.

 

I was very nervous about voting for Jerry Brown, but the crazy thing is all he has done since getting into office is cut programs and lower spending. He's been a total fiscal conservative. So when he put together a reasonable tax program that would allow California to bring its education funding back from the depths of the ocean, it seemed like the right thing to do. Anyone who complains about Brown as a free spending liberal is uninformed. Schwarzenegger was killing me on taxes by the way, every year my state taxes went up when he was governor, and they've dropped back under Brown.

[Blodhemn]

It's an interesting thought experiment to consider what would happen if you, roughly, got all the Democrat states, made a country out of them, then took the Republican states and made a country out of them, and then came back 20 years later to see what each country had become.

 

Democrat states would be up to their necks in debt like they are now.

 

Although this is 2 years old, graphs like this are cool to look at. http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/50-states-and-their-debt.png

14 of the top 20 are straight up Democratic states.

[Hurlshort]

It's an interesting thought experiment to consider what would happen if you, roughly, got all the Democrat states, made a country out of them, then took the Republican states and made a country out of them, and then came back 20 years later to see what each country had become.

 

Democrat states would be up to their necks in debt like they are now.

 

Although this is 2 years old, graphs like this are cool to look at. http://www.ritholtz....-their-debt.png

14 of the top 20 are straight up Democratic states.

 

Huh, that makes the democratic states look great, actually.

[Blodhemn]

 

Huh, that makes the democratic states look great, actually.

Yeah, if you believe government creates wealth then you would see it that way. You can take several things from it depending on your view. It doesn't remove the fact that more democratic states are higher towards the top in debt despite having more average gdp. Government answer to that is tax more.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

It's an interesting thought experiment to consider what would happen if you, roughly, got all the Democrat states, made a country out of them, then took the Republican states and made a country out of them, and then came back 20 years later to see what each country had become.

 

Democrat states would be up to their necks in debt like they are now.

 

Although this is 2 years old, graphs like this are cool to look at. http://www.ritholtz....-their-debt.png

14 of the top 20 are straight up Democratic states.

 

Huh, that makes the democratic states look great, actually.

 

Yep, I don't think that having less GDP is a bad thing.

 

Also I think it is quite funny that some of the most Republican states get the most money from the federal government.

 

[Wrath of Dagon]

WoD, GD throws his money into precious metals.

 

My question is how exactly is Obama just going to out and out tank the economy? Romney wanted to spend at least as much money as we are now (with an increased military budget added on, natch), but was also suggesting tax breaks be increased (with the nebulous "loopholes" being used to close the gap). Obama is intending to (from his speeches) drop military spending, up social spending (making the government an employer), and try to stabilize and regulate wallstreet to SOME degree.

By running up the debt until we can't even pay the interest while the Fed keeps creating money out of nothing. Look at Japan, they've been following the same policies US is following now for 20 years since their real estate bubble burst and they're still mired in recession, while their debt is astronomical.

 

It's an interesting thought experiment to consider what would happen if you, roughly, got all the Democrat states, made a country out of them, then took the Republican states and made a country out of them, and then came back 20 years later to see what each country had become.

To answer that question, consider which states people are leaving and which states they're moving to.

 

What amazes me about these people is they can talk about patriotism and secession in the same breath and not see the hypocrisy.

It's the Federal government that betrayed us by ignoring the Constitution. It's only supposed to have limited and enumerated powers, with the rest reserved for the states. Texas never signed up to be dictated to on every issue under the sun. Plus now that we're locked out of selecting the President, we're a colony, not a state.

 

Btw, the Texas petition is currently closing on 50000 sigs

[Calax]

I think when the Daily show went to the RNC, they found that most of the "We should run this nation like a business" people were from states that recieved the most money from the Feds, and thus were "Failed businesses" that should be cut/sold.

 

Also, didn't Lincoln declare that secession, at least in the case of 1866, was illegal?

 

And WoD, 50k is less than a municipal district, much less an actual state's will.

Edited November 13, 2012 by Calax

[Wrath of Dagon]

Most of it is in one day though, plus people are just now finding out about this. There is also the possibility you might wind up on the no-fly list by signing, I had to think a bit about that.

[Humodour]

Most of it is in one day though, plus people are just now finding out about this. There is also the possibility you might wind up on the no-fly list by signing, I had to think a bit about that.

 

[Gorth]

Btw, the Texas petition is currently closing on 50000 sigs

 

Just a thought, when Texas secedes from the Democratic Peoples Republic of America, you better start signing mutual defense treaties. There is bound to be one of more Mexican populist politician who wants to promise the liberation of the Mexican province of Texas during some election

[Calax]

I'm pretty sure there's more mexicans with guns in Texas than "THE SOUTH SHALL RISE AGAIN" whites with guns.

 

And yeah, people are still finding out about it right now, but to actually secede would end up making their lives miserable because they wouldn't have the federal backup, or trade breaks that they get now.