SodaHead - perks's Questions

HYPER-INFLATION???

2008-11-11T01:17:33Z

HYPER-INFLATION???

23 answers, +18 raves

Since July 2008, the dollar has staged its most dramatic rally in years. However, from a fundamental standpoint, the dollar’s position has worsened significantly. Let’s start with the bailouts. The US already had $9 trillion in debt on its balance sheets before the Federal Regulators started nationalizing the mortgage and banking industry. When they took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they added an additional $5.2 trillion worth of potential liabilities in the form of mortgages to this mess. Now, obviously not all of Fannie/ Freddie’s mortgages are junk. However, both companies’ managements have already admitted that at least $1.2 trillion worth of these mortgages were subprime or Alt-A (garbage). If anything, they’re probably understating the amount of junk they own. During the housing boom, smaller, regional financial firms typically kept the best mortgages to themselves. The junk - or lower quality mortgages - were usually pawned off on Fannie/ Freddie. Because of this, I believe it’s safe to assume $2 trillion worth of their mortgages are no good. That puts the US debt at around $11 trillion: close to its total GDP. Then there’s the $85 billion nationalization of AIG, the insurance giant. Most people think this was a one-time deal for $85 billion. However, the government has already loaned AIG an additional $37.5 billion, which puts the tag at over $100 billion. Aside from this, AIG has over $441 billion worth of credit derivatives on its balance sheets. If you’re unfamiliar with credit derivatives, these are the unregulated, opaque financial instruments that got Wall Street into trouble in the first place back in July 2007. The reality is no one knows whether any of these are good or bad. But considering the fact AIG had to be nationalized in the first place, it’s highly likely a considerable amount of them are garbage. By nationalizing AIG (or at least 80% of it) the US government has taken on the burden of these securities. So add another half a trillion dollars in liabilities to the US balance sheet. And then there are the money printing presses… If you annualized the rate of money printing the Feds have maintained during the last four weeks, the total US monetary supply would more than triple in the next 12 months. Eventually - and I cannot tell you when because it’s impossible to know - banks will stop hoarding this money and it will spill over into the general economy. When it does, we’ll enter a period of hyper-inflation never before seen by the US. When this happens, dollar’s rally will not only end, the dollar will hit new lows never before seen. In light of this, I strongly urge you to buy physical gold now while the paper gold markets are keeping the price low. As you know, there are two markets for gold: the “paper” market and the bullion market. The recent drop in gold prices has everything to do with the former and nothing to do with the latter - the bullion markets are extremely tight due to demand. “Paper” gold has been hammered because of two trends: Institutional liquidations The dollar’s rally Funds have to liquidate their positions in order to meet these redemptions. And mutual funds have been hit with $967 billion in redemptions since the beginning of 2008. Gold - which the stock-centric crowd never really believed in anyway - was one of the first items to go. And since the “paper” gold market is relatively small - the total value of gold on the Commodity Exchange in New York (COMEX) is only $5 billion - it doesn’t take much capital to crush gold in the “paper” markets. As for the dollar’s rally, I’ve laid out precisely why this will be short-lived at the beginning of this piece - the Fed’s interventions AND the hyperinflationary money printing. I don’t know when the dollar rally will end, but looking at its recent action - it staged its largest single one day drop against the euro since 1999 - it may be coming sooner rather than later. Simply put, the dollar will eventually roll over. When it does, gold will erupt higher. The bullion market is already red hot. The dollar’s rally has been the last obstacle to a renewal in the bull market in gold.

We must be on the verge of a depression!!	30% (7 answers)
Is gold the only answer?	26% (6 answers)
None of the above	17% (4 answers)
Can this really happen?	9% (2 answers)
Undecided	9% (2 answers)
This can't happen because we now have the messiah!!!	4% (1 answers)
All of the above	4% (1 answers)

Deception and Attitude?

2008-11-09T14:59:37Z

Deception and Attitude?

30 answers, +18 raves

What is your definition of deception and if someone uses deception to get what they want, do you think it's ok?

I hate when people deceive me!!	43% (13 answers)
It's a sin like any other sin!!	20% (6 answers)
None of the above	13% (4 answers)
What does deception mean?	7% (2 answers)
It's ok if they can get away with it!	7% (2 answers)
All of the above	7% (2 answers)
Undecided	3% (1 answers)

A SIMPLE QUESTION???

2008-11-01T14:47:46Z

A SIMPLE QUESTION???

89 answers, +23 raves

For months the right has been trying to convince the left how dangerous an Obama presidency will be, with no luck. The left has been trying to convince the right how a McCain presidency will be more of the same, with no luck. With that said, can we all agree that Washington is the basis for every problem that we all face in our daily lives? My question to you is, Which political ticket will be more likely to take a stand against Washington and do everything in their power to clean up government? Try and set aside your political bias and answer truthfully. I think this issue could help everyone make a better decision come election day.

Republicans	48% (43 answers)
Democrats	26% (23 answers)
None of the above	13% (12 answers)
Cleaning up Washington will take a real professional	7% (6 answers)
Corruption will multiply 10 fold with these people	4% (4 answers)
Undecided	1% (1 answers)
All of the above	0% (0 answers)

IN HIS OWN WORDS???

2008-10-28T23:43:07Z

IN HIS OWN WORDS???

27 answers, +16 raves

The constitution is fundamentally flawed because it doesn't give the government enough power over us?? A charter of negative liberties, really????

All of the above	59% (16 answers)
Don't mess with my constitution!	22% (6 answers)
Send him back to Kenya!	11% (3 answers)
None of the above	7% (2 answers)
Wow, he is a socialist?	0% (0 answers)

FINALLY A DEMOCRAT REPORTER TELLS THE TRUTH?????

2008-10-22T23:26:05Z

FINALLY A DEMOCRAT REPORTER TELLS THE TRUTH?????

99 answers, +44 raves

By Orson Scott Card October 5, 2008 Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights? An open letter to the local daily paper -- almost every local daily paper in America: I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know. This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration. It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans. What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay. The goal of this rule change was to help the poor -- which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -- along with their credit rating. They end up worse off than before. This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them. Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.) Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefitting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending? I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate." Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed. As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled Do Facts Matter? "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury." These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party. Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout! What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame? Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae. And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing. If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was. But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign -- because that campaign had sought his advice -- you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign. You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican. If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama. If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis. There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension -- so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.) If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression. Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper. But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie -- that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad -- even bad weather -- on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to. If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth -- even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate. Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means. That's how trust is earned. Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time -- and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing. Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter -- while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months. So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means? Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for? You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles. That's where you are right now. It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there. If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices. Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door. You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way. This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion. If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe --and vote as if -- President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie. If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats -- including Barack Obama -- and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans -- then you are not journalists by any standard. You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.

Well, it's about time!!!	63% (62 answers)
None of the above	16% (16 answers)
Thank God for the truth!!	12% (12 answers)
All of the above	5% (5 answers)
I don't want to think about it!!!	2% (2 answers)
It's the proof the opposition will finally listen to???	1% (1 answers)
Undecided	1% (1 answers)

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY????

2008-10-19T16:59:39Z

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY????

13 answers, +12 raves

I would like to thank Irishnurse for bringing this video to my attention. I think all Americans will agree that this video can help us understand how we got into the predicament we now find ourselves in. This has been going on since the 60's. Feel free to comment if you like, but it is more important that you watch the video than it is to comment.

All of the above	54% (7 answers)
WOW!!!	15% (2 answers)
None of the above	15% (2 answers)
What can I say?	8% (1 answers)
No wonder!!	8% (1 answers)

HALFWAY TO COMMUNISM?????

2008-10-18T15:33:22Z

HALFWAY TO COMMUNISM?????

60 answers, +20 raves

I think we can all agree that in a socialist or communist country, you have to control the media. I think we can also agree that the socialist democrats have had the media working for them for 30 years. After witnessing what the media did to Joe the plumber, I think it's safe to say that the control of information is happening all around us. As obama was slipping with his true agenda (spread the wealth, aka, socialism) the media went into attack mode and tried to cover it up. I suppose they will now begin to have a 5 second delay on anything that obama says to keep his lies from us. Even if you are an obama supporter, you have to admit that the media is controlling public opinion, so my question is, are we halfway to communism already?

All of the above	47% (28 answers)
None of the above	22% (13 answers)
They are doing everything in their power to hide obama!!	10% (6 answers)
Say hello to our new neighbor!!	7% (4 answers)
The media are nothing more than treasonous scum!!	7% (4 answers)
Racist and liars are a must in a communist media!!	5% (3 answers)
Undecided	3% (2 answers)

CIVIL WAR II ?????

2008-10-12T01:50:04Z

CIVIL WAR II ?????

40 answers, +19 raves

Is it possible that we are on the verge of civil war II? As I wander around SH, I see the same words coming out of the mouths of liberals as well as conservatives. Each side is dead set on their own ideology. As a conservative I have difficulty believing that any American would rather choose what I see as socialism coming from the Democrat party. I don't really know how to make concessions with people who can't come to grips with simple truths like, the rights of an unborn baby or the right to believe in god. What about the right to a strong military and using that military to not only protect our interests, but to help others in their pursuit of freedom. How do you compromise with people, who after more than 200 years of proud history are willing to elect a man that not only has no experience at all, but has such a dubious background that it would sully the office of the president for years to come. How do you compromise with people who believe the government should be our nanny for our whole lives? I'm beginning to believe that the division between ideologies is so great that a civil war is imminent. I wish I could say other wise, but I have tried for months to convince liberals here that they are not thinking straight and they have been confused as to the real objective of the socialist Democrat party, but I get nowhere on every attempt. It leads me to believe that a compromise is not possible and the inevitable conclusion is that conservatives will not let you steal our country and subject us to your insane ideology. If this is the way it must be, then let the war begin.

Conservatism is the only cure for America's ills.	43% (17 answers)
None of the above	28% (11 answers)
It's too scary to think about.	15% (6 answers)
All of the above	8% (3 answers)
Undecided	5% (2 answers)
After the election, everybody will be friends again.	3% (1 answers)
The liberalism of yesterday is long gone.	0% (0 answers)

Debate falsehoods?????

2008-10-03T16:01:35Z

Debate falsehoods?????

37 answers, +17 raves

Why is lying allowed in such important debates? Should there be a red light that goes off every time someone lies?

All of the above	30% (11 answers)
None of the above	19% (7 answers)
Truth doesn't exist for some	16% (6 answers)
iIf we had to tell the truth, we could never be elected.	14% (5 answers)
Americans want the truth and we should give it to them	14% (5 answers)
Undecided	5% (2 answers)
The truth is coming to Washington	3% (1 answers)

10,000 raves for Roberto!!!!

2008-09-06T13:56:33Z

10,000 raves for Roberto!!!!

44 answers, +28 raves

Hey everybody, Roberto has passed 10,000 raves. Lets give him a big hand.

All of the above	41% (18 answers)
Wow, how did you do it?	34% (15 answers)
You're the best pal, you deserve it.	14% (6 answers)
Roberto is just a great guy.	7% (3 answers)
I know he's a golfer so he must be ok.	5% (2 answers)