Compare Android to Apple’s iOS. Well, try anyway. Which version of Android? On which device? The stock Android UI or the (purportedly) far superior Sense UI from HTC?
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The fact that redistributional difficulties tend to arise together with overall stagnation is no accident. In order to redistribute income and assets in their favor, rulers need to exert their power on the rest of society; to exert such power, they have to strategically limit and partly sabotage the well-being of the underlying population; and this strategic sabotage tends to appear at the aggregate level in the form of stagnation.26 The rulers themselves, because of their social position, cannot comprehend, let alone accept, this necessity, and their dominant dogmas and ideologies hide and deny it. But the historical evidence, particularly during acute crises, proves it time and again: unable to see the contradiction, the rulers attempt to alleviate the general malaise as well as to keep their redistributional power intact; but because their power depends on the sabotage they cause, this attempt invariably fails.
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Plain money in the bank is now, more so than before September 2008, a risk asset.
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Something has got to give. Warning! PDF.
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In short, CountryWide was trying to collect on a debt that didn’t exist, supposedly owed by a person who they had wrongly identified, by seizing property owned by other people. And yet the Sheriff’s Department acted on their claim, and refused to give us, the party affected by that series of errors, so much as a return phone call. The only conclusion I can reach from this is that there are no safeguards at all built into the system. None. After all, it would have taken only a trivial amount of due diligence by any of the parties (CountryWide, their outside attorneys, or the Sheriff’s office) to derail this crazy train before it started. However, I assume CountryWide would be against such checks, as they cost money. But guess what? This whole process has cost my wife and me money, time, frustration and emotional distress. It would make more sense to hit up CountryWide for an extra few bucks every time they ask the Sheriff to auction off a house than it does to force the victims of CountryWide’s errors to pay for the company’s mistakes. Fortunately, we could afford an attorney, and despite the whole pinning-a-note-to-a-straggly-tree-in-the-pouring-rain thing, we also had the time to mount a defense.
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Talk about unsustainable. The next chart is one of something that cannot be. The US cannot borrow $15 trillion in the next ten years. It’s just not there. Long before that, the bond market will simply rebel, rates will rise, and the aftermath will make the last crisis seem like a cakewalk.
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The need to maintain the confidence of rating agencies and investors as well as access to markets may ultimately force the required disciplines. As James Carville famously observed: “I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.” Politicians everywhere will learn the reality in Thatcher’s terms: “You can’t buck the markets.” The need to reduce the overall level of debt in certain economies has not been fully addressed. Public debt has been substituted for private debt. As his friend Dink tells author Joe Bageant in Deer Hunting with Jesus: Despatches from America’s Class War: “Sounds like a piss-poor solution to me, cause they’re just throwing money we ain’t got at the big dogs who already got plenty. But hell what do I know?
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Botox is commonly used to improve a person’s appearance by removing facial lines and other signs of aging. The effect is temporary and can have significant side effects. The world is currently taking the “botox” cure. A flood of money from central banks and governments — “financial botox” — has temporarily covered up unresolved and deep-seated problems.The surface is glossy and smooth, the interior decayed and rotten The 2009 ‘recovery’ was based on low or zero interest rate policies (“ZIRP”) of major central banks. Massive government intervention also helped arrest the rate of decline of late 2008/ early 2009. Without government support, it is highly probable that most economies would have been in serious recession. Just as China practised capitalism with Chinese characteristics, developed economies discovered socialism with Western characteristics.
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They’re not associated with Muslim countries, that’s what they’re called when they are associated with Muslim countries. When they’re associated with rich black guys, they’re called OJ Simpson.
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