[ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine"

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato
Subject: Re: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are
"asinine"

Il 25/10/2013 16:36, John Clark ha scritto:

>>... Although it will come as a big surprise to the Tea Party the fact is 
> that there are other things in the world than Obamacare, and the 
> pronoun "it" that I used above does NOT refer to Obamacare, "it" 
> refers to all the bills for all the stuff that you already voted to 
> buy that would be declared overdue in just 90 minutes...

Ja very well.  The reason for the laser focus on ObamaCare is that it is an
enormous new entitlement that even the casual observer can see is
fundamentally flawed in concept.  It is dependent on being subsidized by
young males, who will not carry that load.  If a young male has a couple
hundred extra dollars a month, he will use it to buy a faster motorcycle.
That's what I did when I was that age, and I am one of the more cautious
types.

Honestly this isn't difficult to figure out what happened here.  The
government sold one party on a system with a price tag of 900 some billion.
That price has risen steadily.  It was premised on a recovery that never
happened, was passed without a single minority party vote, declared a tax
after the fact when it was sold as not a tax, placing it under the control
of the party which voted in perfect unison against it.

The final disagreement which took us down to the (phony) 90 minutes to
midnight showdown was a disagreement over whether the mandate could be
delayed, just delayed!  The president's party said no.  Now the president's
party is not so sure that was a good idea.  Scratch that, now they are
proposing delaying the individual mandate, at least for a few months,
claiming the website will be fixed by the first of November they promise.
Hmmmmm.

However, the government still intends to use what should be a private
transaction as a means of harvesting personal data.  Double hmmmm.  They
still intend to ask questions that the private citizen does not want the
government to know.  Triple hmmmmm.  Hint, you silly goofs in Washington:
STOP THAT!  

Is it not perfectly obvious that it is time to start over with a clean sheet
of paper?  Give up this arrogant notion of single party rule; Americans have
political parties for a reason: as a check on government power.  We want at
least two parties, with different ideas.

How about if the two mainstream parties just make a deal with the Tea Party:
we delay this train wreck, you guys give us more borrowing space, deal?



>...By the way, defaulting is not the end of the world, just the end of
cheap credit...

DEAL!  Credit shouldn't be as cheap as it is.  Make it hurt.


>...But, are the US (or any government in this world) able to pay their
debts in full without receiving additional loans? I do not suppose so.
Not the US, not Germany, not Italy...

Again, I may have a differing and faulty definition of "paying debts."
Borrowing money to pay a debt isn't paying a debt.  It is rearranging debt.


>...As spike suggested, better to default now on 10% of the debts than
default in three months on 30% or the next year for 100% of the debt...

Ja, but I haven't accepted that we need to default.  We eventually need to
default on Social Security probably, or come up with phony inflation numbers
more likely and underpay retirees.  But that pain will be at least stretched
out.  I think my grandfather called it right over 40 years ago: Social
Security will eventually be converted into a welfare program, and those with
means will get a haircut.


>...The reality ...China and Japan would buy anything and probably
everything not nailed down in the US and would bring it home...

China is already doing that, but not exactly carting anything home.  They
want to keep it here.  The Silicon Valley is seeing more and more suburban
residences bought by Chinese national to use as vacation homes.  I see them
as escape pods as well, just in case something goes seriously wrong in
China.  I also imagine they make the best bank vaults imaginable:  buy a
house, rig it with motion detectors and security cameras, pull up part of
the carpet, drill a 5 cm diameter hole in the concrete floor, down into the
soil beneath, drill down 3 meters, get a PVC pipe, stack the bottom half
with platinum coins, cap it, lower it into the hole, put a rubber stopper
into the hole countersunk a cm, put bondo in the hole, smooth over, replace
carpet.  You have just put a couple million dollars worth of metal into a
bank vault where no metal detector can find it (recall that concrete floors
have metal rebar everywhere) and no one would have any reason to suspect
there is a ton of money hidden there.  

It isn't difficult to see this must be happening: physical gold is steadily
disappearing to somewhere, as is physical silver and platinum.  But don't
take my word for it, go on any Silicon Valley real estate site, pick any
random town and look at the names of the buyers (this is public domain
info.)  Then compare that list with the names of the students enrolled at
the local high school.  Then ask yourself, Why don't these two lists roughly
match?  Reason: those perfectly groomed houses in all those ever more quiet
neighborhoods and not being used as residences, they are being used as
remote emergency bank vaults by mostly Chinese nationals, whose government
is still technically communist, and might at any time do what the US has
done in the last decade, decide it is tired of having rich people.


>...They would buy factories, farmland, timberland, milk, bread, copper,
gold, silver, whatever (even good looking women)...

SEXIST!  They would buy good looking men too.  Hey, if the price is right,
everything is for sale.


>>... Spike, I never said what the Republicans were doing was 
> unconstitutional, I said it was astoundingly stupid and irresponsible...

Ah, thanks for the clarification John.  If I had to choose between the two,
I'll take Stupid for 500 please Alex.  As soon as we allow this big
nuclear-armed government off the leash of the constitution, the terms stupid
and irresponsible do not begin to describe the consequences.


>...the people signing early and willingly is the heavy users...

Ja, the zombies.  The zombies are frustrated by the failed rollout.

>... the people signing later and preferring to pay the penalty will be the
Healthy...

Ja, the track team.  The track team didn't even notice that the site doesn't
work; they haven't been there.  They aren't going either.   If a young man
has an extra couple hundred bucks, it will never go to an insurance company,
it goes for a faster motorcycle.  Or beer.  Or dope.  Or whores.  Or a car
that runs more often than the current one.  Or food.  Or a hundred things a
young man will put ahead of buying "Brosurance."

This isn't an Onion parody, in fact I flatly challenge the Onion to outdo it
for sheer absurdity.  This may take the record as the very most misguided
and least successful  campaign in advertising history:

http://gotinsurancecolorado.org/index.php?id=6

Come now.

When our bodies are young, they can take a lot of abuse.  A day or two
later, good as new, no doctors needed.  These guys aren't buying.

>...Could you explain me why males must have maternity coverage under
Obamacare?

Sure can Mirco.  To subsidize the zombies.

>...Will they be able to become pregnant if the sign Obamacare?...

No.  They will pay the bills of those who do, and they BETTER by god pay up,
or they will face a hypothetical TAX penalty of 95 dollars a year!

>...And they will need a female to impregnate them?

I am sure they will try that.

>>... As for me I no longer much care if Obamacare is a good idea or bad 
> because the significance of the entire issue is dwarfed by the looming 
> menace of default and the slack jawed stupidity that almost
> caused that to happen and still might in January...  John 

It is always a bad idea to pass any major legislation without at least some
buy-in from the minority party; that causes all kinds of mischief as we have
seen.  It can never be fixed.
   
>...Default is not a menace, it is a certain...Mirco

_______________________________________________

Mirco I have never accepted that, at least not completely.  We will likely
partially default on Social Security by converting it to a welfare program.
But that was as foreseeable as the sunrise on a calm sea: my grandfather
called it an obvious Ponzi scheme in 1972.  The government borrowed the
money and spent it, without a clear plan for repayment, betting on growth
rates we haven't seen since the late 90s, many of which were based on phony
business models and irrational exuberance.  

We can pay the Chinese and the Japanese for now, even though our debt to
Japan alone comes to over nine thousand dollars for each man, woman and
child in that nation.  Oops scratch that, Japan doesn't really have many
children anymore.  We owe Japan a Toyota for each married couple, which
constitutes a family for the most part in that ageing nation.

All is not lost for America.  As long as we have a rising political party
which is urging we stand and fight, rather than passively walk off the debt
cliff, all is not lost.  Much is lost, but not all.

spike