Thursday, February 4, 2016

SAR #16035


Perfect Storm: Only 52% of college students know how much college costs. Many do not even know how much they already owe, only 8% know how much interest they're being charges and just 6% have even a vague idea how long it will take them to pay it back. And they most decidedly do not know what the government can and will do to get back every penny. And we've let them have $1.3 trillion, so far.
Michigained: In 4Q2015, half of all the money raked in by Michigan Republicans came from a single extended family. Wish my family owned a state.
Say Goodnight, Gracie: The president of the Kurdistan Regional Government is calling for an immediate referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan to decide if the Kurds should take their oil and go home. He didn't say which oil companies would be financing the referendum.
Odds Oddity: Donald Trump's 31% of the vote in the polls became just 24% in the actual voting. No, he didn't slip 7% - his support collapsed by 22%. That is a record drop. What a loser.
Resurrection: Based on a third-place finish in Iowa's corn fields, Marco Rubio is suddenly promoted to first place by the GOP ruling elite. The fact that the people don't want him doesn't bother the leadership any more than Bernie's supporters give pause to the DNC leadership. Ah, democracy.
End-Around: The Rams have left St. Louis. They left St. Louis holding the bag on $144 millin in debt and maintenance costs on the former football stadium that now morphs into the largest tractor-pull venue in the mid-west. The taxpayers got screwed. They always do when the politicians pass the hat for professional sports franchise owners.
Deja Vuing: The House Freedom Caucus – the right wing nuts that forced John Boehner into retirement – is getting restive because they will strongly oppose the 2017 spending plan unless they get to cut tens of billions out of the existing agreement with the Democrats. Speaker Ryan is just delighted.
Musical Chairs: What if the Saudi assumption that it can outlast the shale-fracking US upstarts is false? Sure, they have initiated the financial starvation of their designated scapegoats, but in doing so they have suddenly realized that starving the frackers ends up starving themselves, too. What happens when OPEC's citizenry discovers the pantry is bare?
Recovery: One in seven Americans still rely on food stamps. Go out on the porch and count three houses in either direction.
They All Get Better Looking At Closing Time: The White House is threatening Congress that they had better not delay approving the TPP or they'll miss out on helping him screw the people who elected him.
Porn O'Graph: Visualization exercise.
The Parting Shot:

3 comments:

McMike said...

Re oil. Being of the premise that commodity prices - oil in particular - do not respond merely to classic supply/demand mechanics... one might want to consider whether the "wash" part of the con is ending and the "rinse" part is about to begin.

Some frackers, notably, seem to have been behaving as if the fix is in, and they know something we don't know.

Gegner said...

Re: Perfect Storm (which is weirdly tied to yesterday's brief on the 'flatline economy'.)

The government has been the number one consumer of US output since the nation was founded (often at exorbitant prices.) If you look at student loans as the front end of the 'jobs program' (Remember the Occupy Movement, comprised almost entirely of kids that had spent fortunes obtaining degrees for jobs that didn't exist, which, had anyone been paying attention, is the same as it ever was?)

You'd be given a job as a manager at GE with a degree in 'Art History' back in the seventies, now the competition (The sheer number of MBA's wandering around out there has required your degree to be a bit more relevant to the position you're chasing these days.)

We've seen desert airstrips loaded with 'out-moded' war planes and we heard about the navy dumping tons of surplus hardware into the ocean because it would 'kill the market' (for jobs as well as products) They could literally afford to give the stuff away but charity begins after this life apparently. Let the homeless dumpster dive, then bust them for stealing...

Which would be funny but it happens.

Hold this up next to the electoral circus and ask yourself, "What are we doing?, followed by "Why do we let them get away with this?, are we really THAT STUPID?"

Anonymous said...

A Saudi Tale: Timeline wise, the real function of Saudi Arabia insisting on retaining it's market share was to make life hard for Iran. The problem with squeezing Iran is they were use to living in the dumps already, where as Saudi Arabia depends on massive bribery to secure the head tribe against all the other tribes that make up this fictional Arab nation.

Students: Perhaps the students were never getting value for money. The morons alumini from my university's business & liberal arts schools badgered for a football team until they got a president who'd give them one, while making himself and his friends a fortune off the sleaze that comes with it. Now they bitch they can't afford to send their kids to their alma mater If the university had done a better job of educating it's alumni, or had been more selective in admissions, then perhaps this would not have come to pass.