10 reasons why the recession will last forever. Reason #1 is Barack Obama.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

August 5th, 2009

By David Goldman

10. No innovation. As Nobel Prize Laureate Edmund Phelps told Bloomberg News Aug. 2, “I’m not convinced that there’s going to be another wave of innovation in the offing.”

9. Speaking of innovation, the US is not getting the clever immigrants it used to. Remember that almost half of Silicon Valley during the tech bubble peak was Asian.

8. China will hold its own but its economy is too small to act as a locomotive for the rest of the world (maybe for Korea).

7. The US only can finance its nearly $2 trillion annual borrowing requirement if banks and households buy Treasury securities rather than riskier corporate securities or mortgages. If the rest of the economy starts competing with the Treasury for capital, interest rates rates will rise immediately and suppress economic activity.

6. The rest of the world is full up on US Treasury securities. Asia won’t dump its existing holdings (it would be the biggest loser) but will try to diversify out of dollars. That’s why the Euro is trading at the ridiculous level of $1.40. There won’t be enough Europeans left working in thirty years to pay taxes to cover the interest on newly issued long-term government bonds. But the Euro has diversification value against the dollar and its parity is exaggerated. So revert to Point 5: the US is on its own financing the deficit.

5. The US consumer can’t get out of a hole. The bloggers have been all over the personal income data for June, which shows that household finances continue to deteriorate. I don’t need to reiterate what others have documented.

4. American demographics look suspiciously like Japan’s in 1990, at the beginning of the “Lost Decade.” Japan’s elderly dependent ratio jumped from 18% to 26% over the 10 years; between 2010 and 2020, America’s will rise from 19% to 25%. In other words, a huge component of the labor force is nearing retirement. They have no savings to speak of and what they thought was their nest egg (home equity) just vaporized. Their savings requirements are bottomless. The combination of demographic and wealth shocks should produce a loop-de-loop in the “marginal propensity to save” such as we have never seen before, except, of course, in Japan.

3. More taxes are en route, to pay for health care, the interest on the federal debt, or whatever. No country ever taxed its way out of a recession.

2. The rule of law has been severely weakened in financial transactions, through heavy-handed White House intervention into the bankruptcies of the auto sector, through mortgage renegotiation, and so forth.

1. Barack Obama!

Bill Clinton, the last Democratic president, thought in effect, “Let’s get economic growth so I can tax it and pay for all my toys and games.” That was the “New Democrat” approach. Obama knows that if the economy crumbles and he’s the only one left with a checkbook, then everyone has to come to him. Where is the independent base of entrepreneurial business to which the Republicans might to to raise money against Obama? The banks, the hedge funds, the manufacturers, the municipalities, in fact everyone who is left standing in the economy is beholden to Obama. This is Chicago city politics writ large. Leave aside all of the individual things that Obama is doing that harm economic growth: Obama is the first American president (with the possible exception of FDR) to actually benefit from economic weakness.

http://blog.atimes.net/?p=1113

[rebeccajo 14]

"Where is the independent base of entrepreneurial business to which the Republicans might to to raise money against Obama?"

They got screwed investing in hedge funds instead of investing in jobs.

[Niels Bohr 72]

People are always wrong with assumptions. Assumptions are cleared by way of analysis - breaking problems into smaller ones. Phelps is wrong about innovation. Innovation technically comes from Engineers, and Scientists. Without us, there would not be EKG machines, MRIs, X-Rays, computers, car, ambulances, hospitals, microscopes (all kinds electron microscope, nuclear microscope, etc...).

Looks like Intel hit another milestone with the feature size of the ICs to 32 nm. The next chapter is going to be 22 nm. Smaller is better, less energy consumption, faster, and cheaper - aside from the equipment used in lithography. Quantum Computers, Molecular Computers are in research phase. Memristors is the new fade that will replace research in spintronics. I will tell everyone that the technology to innovate is available. The stuff that prevent research and developments are politics, and religion.

Thailand recently gave hope by successfully engineer an HIV vaccine that prevents infection from HIV. Thailand probably has one of the most HIV infected populations on Earth. Number 1, they have hot and sexy bar dancers. Number 2, the girls there are cheap, give them $20 and you have them on your bed for the entire day and you could do whatever you want. Number 3, you can sleep with 10 girls at once if you like. Number 4, there's alot of homosexuals in Thailand (no offense Thai VJ members, but, you know how large their population are there). For those who don't know, any new HIV drugs from the US are first tested over there (loose regulation, however, drugs can kill your liver - a hazard in the US to test on people).

[mawilson 2,133]

Thailand recently gave hope by successfully engineer an HIV vaccine that prevents infection from HIV. Thailand probably has one of the most HIV infected populations on Earth. Number 1, they have hot and sexy bar dancers. Number 2, the girls there are cheap, give them $20 and you have them on your bed for the entire day and you could do whatever you want. Number 3, you can sleep with 10 girls at once if you like. Number 4, there's alot of homosexuals in Thailand (no offense Thai VJ members, but, you know how large their population are there). For those who don't know, any new HIV drugs from the US are first tested over there (loose regulation, however, drugs can kill your liver - a hazard in the US to test on people).

Actually, it was France's Sanofi-Aventis, in partnership with two US biotechnology companies

(GenVax and the non-profit group Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases), which developed

the vaccine. The US army provided funding for the trial in Thailand.

The vaccine cuts the risk of infection by 30 percent - doesn't exactly "prevent it", but still

a good number.

[Niels Bohr 72]

Thanks for the information.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Take people at "average risk" and infect them? Wow. I know this is how human trials work but still.. damn.

The trial included non-infected volunteers between 18 and 30 years of age who were at average risk of HIV infection. Approximately 40% of the volunteers were women. Volunteers who acquired HIV infection during the trial were given free access to HIV care and treatment, including highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), according to the guidelines of the Thai Ministry of Public Health.

The study was made possible by an international collaboration involving numerous partners from the Thai and U.S. governments, private-sector companies and non-profit organizations.

http://www.gsid.org/downloads/GSIDRV144_Press_Release.pdf

[mawilson 2,133]

Take people at "average risk" and infect them? Wow. I know this is how human trials work but still.. damn.

Well, no, they got infected on their own.

16,402 people took part in the trial and 0.8 percent eventually contracted HIV, including

51 people who were vaccinated and 74 who were not.

Edited September 25, 2009 by mawilson

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Take people at "average risk" and infect them? Wow. I know this is how human trials work but still.. damn.

Well, no, they got infected on their own.

16,402 people took part in the trial and 0.8 percent eventually contracted HIV, including

51 people who were vaccinated and 74 who were not.

Gee, as a mathematician, I can tell you at first glance, the results are more coincidental, than significant. The results need to be duplicated in further independent studies.

[Niels Bohr 72]

Just like the Hepatitis B vaccine. A small proportion will suffer adverse affects, or may not be effective. This research is very interesting. Researchers found that the HIV must have a constant gene structure that never changes. If it does change then the virus will not be HIV. If that constant structure can be found, then, it certainly can be eliminated.