wrote in message
...
On Mon, 22 Feb 2010 23:05:30 -0500, bpuharic wrote:

On Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:00:53 -0700, Canuck57
wrote:



l

who are you talking about? brave and heroic US and Canadian troops who
are dying to protect freedom?

In no way disrespectful of the fighting men, do you think we are more
"free" than we were in 1991 when we started our middle eastern
crusade? It is clear the terrorists have won.

the NIH researchers who've discovered cures for diseases, new drugs,
etc?

Private companies do a lot more than NIH. I only have to point to the
human genome project where a private company cracked the code in
months and NIH dunced around for years on it.



and how do you measure inefficiency when capitalism itself just
dropped the US economy by hundreds of billions in the last year? was
that efficient?

Yes, the economy was an illusion and we were going to lose a couple
trillion no matter what because it simply did not exist. It was phony
profit that we traded like real money. In that sense the market is
self correcting. If anything, things like TARP are only prolonging the
misery because we still have not paid the bill. We basically just paid
off our Amex bill by charging it on the Visa.
Much like a Visa card, we don't even know what our interest rate will
be, a year down the road.
This crisis is far from being over. It is simply hidden in the debt we
keep ignoring. 10 years from now the republic could be in worse shape
than the Soviets.

Well said. We have felt very little pain from this economy melt down. Yes
the 10-20% unemployed, but most have unemploymnent insurance, and those who
bought $500k homes with a $50k income were never going to be able to pay for
the house. They got to live in a nice house for a few years, and when they
stopped paying the mortgage, they lived in the house for another 6 months or
so rent free. Net, they probably paid less than rent with the 1% for the
first two years home loan. But overall the pain has not hit. Has been
hidden by the massive borrowing and printing of money by the Fed. What
happens in a year of two, when people figure out there is no beef in the US
dollar?