Unintended Consequences of the 20th Century and Beyond - New England Patriots Forums

***maverick4*** · 01-17-2009, 06:26 PM

This is an excellent article by an astute university director. The overall article highlights various events this century that have started an avalanche/cascade of actions that happened afterward, and also talks about recent economic and market events. Unfortunately, as most of the other investors and commentators have already been saying for years, this writer also confirms that we are not even close to seeing a bottom of the market, and that housing and the financial industry is going to be in the tank for at least another decade.

Unintended Consequences of the 20th Century and Beyond :: The Market Oracle :: Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting Free Website

MrBigglesWorth · 01-17-2009, 06:36 PM

I can't wait to see how PR is going to react to you posting this.

wistahpatsfan · 01-17-2009, 09:16 PM

My favorite part of the article:

"Osama Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia in 1990 as a hero of jihad, who along with his Arab legion, "had brought down the mighty superpower" of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. During this time frame Iraq invaded Kuwait and Bin Laden met the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and told him not to depend on non-Muslim troops and offered to help defend Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden was rebuffed and publicly denounced Saudi Arabia's dependence on the US military. After the 1st Gulf War, the U.S. with the support of the Saudi rulers allowed a permanent U.S. military base in Saudi Arabia. This presence led Bin Laden to declare a jihad against the U.S. infidels and eventually led to the 9/11 attack and the War on Terror. This has led to mammoth budget deficits, thousands of unnecessary American and Iraqi deaths, and contributed hugely to the financial crisis of 2008. "

They don't hate our freedom as the out-going traitor says over and over...they hate our military base in Arabia!

NO *****

***IcyPatriot*** · 01-17-2009, 10:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maverick4

This is an excellent article by an astute university director. The overall article highlights various events this century that have started an avalanche/cascade of actions that happened afterward, and also talks about recent economic and market events. Unfortunately, as most of the other investors and commentators have already been saying for years, this writer also confirms that we are not even close to seeing a bottom of the market, and that housing and the financial industry is going to be in the tank for at least another decade.

Unintended Consequences of the 20th Century and Beyond :: The Market Oracle :: Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting Free Website

i don't see it Mav ... lots of rich people have lost a ton of $$$ ... they will need to recoup it. So ... expect them to sell their soul to the devil (Uncle Sam) to get things going up again at which point their greedy alter egos will go about raping the system once again.

PatriotsReign · 01-18-2009, 01:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrBigglesWorth

I can't wait to see how PR is going to react to you posting this.

I'm not that predictable Biggles. No reaction from me, thank you.

I actually agree with the fact we haven't hit bottom. I've predicted that the Dow will go under the 7,500 low point we hit in November on more than one occasion. Just because Mav and I heatedly disagreed on a single issue does not change the fact that we also agree on a lot. So what is there for me to react to?

***patsfan13*** · 01-18-2009, 11:39 AM

I agree that there will be problems but for a different reason. We are facing a falling population which will be a demographic nightmare.

Mercatornet: Walking in a demographic winter wonderland

Canada’s Health Care System heading for “Demographic Blowout” with Aging Population: Study

Catholic World Report | The Underpopulation Problem | by Michael J. Miller

Quote:

The film argues that falling population will mean a diminished quality of life for the aging generation and for future generations. For instance, pensions, both private and public, have to be paid for. When the retired population is too high relative to the working population, paying the promised pensions becomes an enormous burden. Either the young pay crushing taxes, or the elderly will not get what they expected, or both.

Consumer spending keeps the economy humming and the stock market climbing. When population shrinks, the demand for goods and services of all kinds shrinks. Harry Dent, one of the experts interviewed on the film, is an investment advisor. He discovered the significance of population growth by accident. He had a chart showing birth rates over a hundred year period on his desk next to a chart showing the stock market over the same period. He laid them over each other and realized that the stock market tracks birth rates with about a 40 year lag. That is because people spend the most money in their 40s. They buy the biggest house they’ll ever have; they feed, clothe and educate their children; they buy cars and vacations.

I have been thinking about Harry Dent and his charts while I drive through my San Diego neighborhood. Out of 42 homes, we have 4 foreclosures. Yes, the housing prices ballooned up and people took on mortgages they couldn’t pay. But there is more to the story than the credit crunch: there simply are not enough people at the right age, with enough income, to afford these houses. Because the Baby Boomers didn’t replace themselves, there are not enough people to buy their homes. Falling demand translates into falling home prices.

Quote:

Demographers have warned that the aging and slow growth of the Canadian population is a direct threat to the long-term prognosis of its raft of expensive, publicly funded social services, including its health care system.

Brian Day, past president of the Canadian Medical Association, told the Globe and Mail that with the Baby Boom generation growing older, the system is headed for a “demographic blowout.”

The CIHI study found that government expenditure on health will reach 10.7 per cent of the country's gross domestic product. Yeates said the study’s results are “going to raise questions for Canada and other countries as to how much do we really want to spend on health care.” The organization's findings may prove especially significant and timely given US president-elect Barack Obama's stated plans to move the US towards socialized healthcare.

At the same time that the Canadian government is paying record sums to keep its socialized medical services afloat, which includes government-funded abortion-on-demand, the population of Canada continues to age and its birth rate remains one of the lowest in the western world.

Quote:

Interview

The Underpopulation Problem

Steven W. Mosher on the demographic consequences of birth control policies.

Interview by Michael J. Miller | August/September 2008

Steven W. Mosher is president of Population Research Institute (Population Research Institute Homepage) and author of the book Population Control: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits (Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ, 2008). Michael J. Miller interviewed him on the subject of his book.

Miller: Dire scenarios about imminent overpopulation, from Malthus to Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, have not materialized. Where are the mistakes in their calculations?

Steven Mosher: In some cases they were deliberately exaggerated, even fabricated, in an attempt to frighten individuals into having no more than one or two children, and legislatures into funding population control programs.

Assuming that the alarmists really believed those projections, I think that their principal error came in the 1960s when they assumed that Third World countries would have to reach Western standards of living before birth rates decreased. They supposed that only affluence would convince people in Nigeria, China, or Peru to have fewer children.

Of course, population control programs played a role in limiting fertility. But the principal reason why almost all Latin American countries today are at or near replacement-rate fertility levels is that the death rate among infants and children went down, and therefore couples voluntarily stopped having large families. They’re still relatively poor, yet they began limiting the number of children. Reduce the mortality rate and population growth ceases.

Miller: Even if projections about limited resources are wrong, what’s the harm in a little “underpopulation”? Isn’t a nation with negative population growth like a factory that sells its unused CO2 allowances to less environmentally friendly businesses?

Mosher: A free-market economy is constantly looking for new markets for goods and services. The size of those markets is driven in large part by the size of the population. As a population grows, the demand for cars, houses, and other goods increases. As a population shrinks, this process works in reverse.

I think, though, that the dangers of population decline are even more serious than this would suggest, because a decline in absolute numbers of people is always preceded by population aging. The population gets out of balance: too few young people enter the workforce; fewer young people get married, have children and buy houses; and the population ages, which puts increasing demands on retirement and healthcare programs.

You might say, “Yes, but a growing population with lots of children has a bad worker-to-dependent ratio as well.” But children don’t require nearly as much health care as the elderly do, children don’t consume as many resources, and children live with their parents, so there are economies of scale.

Europe, for example, is going to see tax rates go through the roof in order to support growing populations of the elderly. Who’s going to be taxed? Working people in their 20s and 30s. When you tax that segment of the population you impoverish it and make it less likely that they will have children at all, much less large families. And so you eat your seed corn. You put so much economic pressure on the young and reproductive that they stop having children.

Birth rates in Catholic Spain and Italy are down to 1.1 children per couple. We’ve done some back-of-the-envelope calculations, and in Italy every young couple would have to have four children in order to stop the population decline that’s currently underway. No combination of incentives in the world could turn this thing around. So Italians have no choice but to accept large numbers of immigrants, mostly Muslims from Albania, North Africa, and the Middle East. This creates the additional problem of integrating people from very different cultural, religious, and social backgrounds into Italian society.

Meanwhile the gov is moving to make abortions easier to obtain, and curb non existent mmgw madness.

MrBigglesWorth · 01-18-2009, 11:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by patsfan13

I agree that there will be problems but for a different reason. We are facing a falling population which will be a demographic nightmare.

Mercatornet: Walking in a demographic winter wonderland

Canada’s Health Care System heading for “Demographic Blowout” with Aging Population: Study

Catholic World Report | The Underpopulation Problem | by Michael J. Miller

Meanwhile the gov is moving to make abortions easier to obtain, and curb non existent mmgw madness.

I will say again, let people refinance with a government backed interest rate at 2-3% and it will serve two purposes:

1. the government will be taking in money and that money can be used on the national debt, medicare, and SSI.

2. the people will have more money in their pocket with lower rates and less foreclosures in the country.

this would have to be strict so it won't be abused like anythign else. each person can only have one mortgage at a given time and no home equity loans.