I get the impression that much of the current woes have resulted from people who should have known better classing the big picture, as well long term effects of their actions / decisions on the big picture, as being someone elses problem or responsibility.  So basically we have our business and political leaders consistently displaying a lower level leadership, responsibility and accountability than we expect, even demand, from many professionals or even ordinary employee's.

 

It is ironic that the people who are chosen and paid to provide leadership and vision are less accountable as well as less likely to face the consequences of getting it wrong than an ordinary person in their ordinary job would be.

 

I wonder how big a part inappropriate or poorly targeted KPI's play in the current mess.  Automatic rewards for achieving short term goals irrespective of the long term damage done, while ignoring efforts towards long term results does not encourage responsible or ethical behaviour.

...How do these CEOs of those failing corporations really stand to make out like bandits in the bail out?

 

Simple: when the gov't bails out the companies that those guys' leadership didn't hinder sinking further,

their stock options' values will go thru the roof.

 

How then do we reward such pisspoor leadership in the US?

By granting them even bigger windfall profits.

 

I don't know just how credible this Michael Brush guy is over there at MSN.Com,

but his articles here...    and over here...

certainly provide some interesting food for thought. 

 

...the above links are bad enough,

but this...

is the one that can really make you sick.

Sorry FO but while I think socialism is fine along with the principals behind it; communism is not and this is a proven concept. Communism ALWAYS turns in totalilarian states. It always suprises me the amount of people who decide to look back and continue to repeat the same mistakes over. Yes capitalism is an un-sustainable form however, why on earth move backwards towards something that is proven to be represive and fail. Move forward.

 

The collective ownership part (not state ownership) of socialism is a path no one ever talks about and yet it is the way to prevent the greed we see today without the totalilarian society. An example of this is when say 30 people from the local community majority own the local pub that they go to. What point is there to have high profits if they are the ones paying for the higher drink prices. Same things go for companies if they employees own the majority of shares and their wages are affected by profits. In terms of banks, credit unions today are probably the closest form of this where quite often you have to buy shares in the credit union.

 

Of course these are simplified examples but it relates to de-centralisation of power and wealth into the local communities rather than by a select few. This spreads the risk and and helps to limit any adverse effects of greed mainly to those who were greedy. This is a problem with both communism and capitalism which is causing the problems we are seeing now. These induce a neo-humanistic approach of "helping my neigbour is goor for me" rather than screw everyone else as long as I do well.

 

Personaly I think the financial crisis will takes years to properly resove let alone for banks to pay governments back (so get into a secure job if your not in one :-) ). I see the US heading to a depression if its not really in one now. The big questions is will this mean the US cuts back on military spending? If so how will this shift the balance of power in our part of the world and how will it affect australia?

 

Food for thought if the US "needs" to cut production of the F35 by half and it dramatically increses its price to levels unaccpetable levels for australia where we won't or can't buy it. What will this mean for us; we buy the typhoon, more Shornets or something else ( not the F-22!), cut production of planned naval vessels, etc. Interesting times are ahead.

 

 

Getting into a post Cold War mentality (or post Desert Storm mentality) and starting another cutback on US military personnel would be a disaster.

First, we have to find a means to solve the current 2 major conflicts in such a way that they aren't going to rise up and bite us again anytime soon (next several decades would be nice).

 

Suddenly shortly afterward the US Government announces that some 400,000-500,000 military personnel are now out of a job due to downsizing and budget-saving cuts,

and that's disastrous both for the men and women who were planning on making a worthwhile career out of it, complete with guaranteed paychecks, re-enlistment bonuses, and retirement money those people could be investing into homes, cars, and elsewhere in the already-hurting economy,

 

and disastrous also if, a short time later, we find ourselves in the midst of another continent-hopping large scale military exchange with the next group of terrorists, or worse yet, armed conflict with a major player who would then have us considerably outnumbered (bringing back The Draft to make up for lost numbers means death knell for political careers who OK'ed it).

 

As to the coming crunch on defense contracts: if it isn't the Republican party taking the next Presidential election (Republicans love a big fat healthy military),

then consider your prescious F-35s to be going up in price to compensate for delays, or outright cuts, in the US batches of aircraft.

 

(but the optomistic hope then is that, with approval from the US Government,

the defense contractors are allowed to market those aircraft,

the ones the US won't be buying after all, 

at foreign customers instead, in a hail-mary effort to keep the production lines running (jobs, tax base) and prices low so even more customers won't cut their orders also and settle for other solutions from other suppliers (not necessarily US companies)).

 

Either way, naturally, I for one will then be saying, "who didn't see this coming?"

My final hope could only then be that, instead of buying shiny new F-35s and keeping a low-rate F-22 line open, we somehow manage to get some orders for new-build, latest-Block-with-latest-tech F-15s, F-16s, and Super Hornets to replace the aging aircraft that aren't getting replaced by more expensive 5th-gen stealth aircraft (and that 2018 bomber we've discussed elsewhere here suddenly becomes the 2028 bomber, or later).

But then again, any cuts in that manymilitary personnel would mean we don't need as many vehicles (land, air, sea)  in the inventory to be operated by and maintained by the lower manpower available.

 

Sacrificing military budgets to fund other projects across the economy is a lose-lose situation,

 

both for the US (rise in unemployement from departing military personnel who are then competing with those civilians currently struggling to find adequate (and worthwhile) work,

and add in the fact that defense contractors who are fighting to keep contracts certainly won't be hiring all those departing military personnel with experience, not if the contracts aren't there to support),

 

and it's also bad for those US allies who were counting on lower prices for US equipment that suddenly rose in price when the US cut back its own orders.

 

It's gonna get messy no matter what,

but in the end it comes down to the lesser of the two evils,

just like ev

Yes we have libertarians in the Netherlands.

"http://www.vrijspreker.nl/wp/"

"http://www.libertarian.nl/NL/index.php"

 

PS

The US could become much stronger, because of this:

By saving enough money to buy something you only pay the price once. By borrowing to buy something you eventally end up paying double, triple the price or even more. So for instance if you save money to buy a computer you pay 1500$, compared to if you borrow to buy a computer you end up paying 3000$ ovet time. That means that the person who saves money first and then buys something can buy for twice the amount of stuff compared to someone who borrows (both having the same amount of money).

 

So delaying gratification and saving for stuff has very powerfull economic benefits over the long term. All that money that would be spent on paying off loans and interests/profits to banks could be spent on additional consuming instead. I would not be suprised if that modification could case an America that is able to consume twice the amount of goods it has done in the past. I wonder wether the world would be ready for such a thing though.

 

 

 

We here in the states have made hash of this and IMO the bleeding will not stop for some time.  The stock market is no big thing, the problem right now is credit lines for operations.  Lay offs are already starting and the B word will be big in the news soon if the credit lines to companies don't start coming through.  Budgets that were based on 2007 commodity prices are now out the window.  The supply chain here in the states is in trouble, 10" valves that last year were two weeks for delivery are now 8 to 16 weeks.  "We are waiting on the castings from our supplier, they are waiting on steel from there their supplier, they are having problems getting the pig iron from Bananastan."  Or get a quote on 316 plate and compare that to last year.  I could go on and on.  All it takes is one company in the chain to run out of money and not be able to fill its orders.  I think that in the near term we are going to be seeing companies demand prepayment for goods.

 

gf0012-aust,  help me here.  Would the exchange rate guarantee that you have shown, keep the price of the F-35 down if the numbers were drastically cut by the USA as the poster suggested: