Obama up 8 points

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Naked Gents Rut


We must have very different ideas about what qualifies as a "minuscule" amount of money. Net interest on publicly held debt was $239 billion in 2007, about 9.5% of U.S. government spending. Upwards of 44% of that public debt is held by foreigners.



I don't disagree. I just think your "little green pieces of paper" explanation is dumb.

It was dumbed down to explain to Kid. He really does not understand conceptually what currency is, what it means to hold stocks of it, what it's good for, etc.

[Naked Gents Rut]

Don't target your explanations to the double-**** demographic. It comes across as condescending to those of us who are only single-*****.

[KrazyHorse]

Honestly, in general the cognitive error I encounter most in talking about economics with the general public is the currency mystique...

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


If those dollars never come back to the US then there's no crisis. If they all come flooding back at once there will be a crisis. Which I've said over and over again in this thread. However, you haven't noticed it because you've been struggling to grasp even the simplest concepts. Like what currency is. Or how the Fed sets interest rates.

No. The less that comes back the worse off we will be. Oil is demominated in USD. As the value of the dollar falls oil production will slow. Eventually the price of oil will skyrocket.

[KrazyHorse]

Son, I'm done with you for now. I'm not going to get into the details of propensity to hold USD as a foreign reserve currency at 2:45 in the morning. Especially not with a plodder like you.

[Kidlicious]

pwned

Better go back to just calling me a ****. I thought you looked stupid then, but now...

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Kidicious


No. The less that comes back the worse off we will be. Oil is demominated in USD. As the value of the dollar falls oil production will slow. Eventually the price of oil will skyrocket.

You notice that if a currency gets weaker imports become more expensive? Get this man a Nobel Prize!

The main reason that US government debt isn't that big of a problem (compared to other countries) is that it's denominated in dollars. If the dollar falls really low then all of the value of the debts will fall with it. Because of this China won't try to do things like sell off all of it's US debt because doing so would make them lose huge amounts of money.

[Kidlicious]

Bosh,

They will if they have to. They care more about social stability than the value of their foreign reserve. That reserve is only good if they use it.

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Naked Gents Rut
Do you really think U.S. negotiators are so dumb as to not have dealt with non-tariff obstacles to trade in the FTA negotiations? I know that the U.S. allowed the South Koreans to keep their rice subsidies in exchange for opening up their beef market, for example.

Why yes, it seems that the US trade negotiators are rather dumb. They certainly ****ed up rather horribly in their negotiations over Korean beef importation.

[Naked Gents Rut]

How would we know? The FTA hasn't been passed yet, so the South Koreans aren't yet constrained by any of the rules on beef importation that the U.S. negotiators worked out.

[Aeson]

The suckers in the deal are all of us who aren't getting filthy stinking rich... though admittedly there's more Chinese not getting filthy stinking rich

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Kidicious


No. The less that comes back the worse off we will be. Oil is demominated in USD. As the value of the dollar falls oil production will slow. Eventually the price of oil will skyrocket.

WTF are you on about?

Oil is denominated in USD, but to a first approximation it wouldn't matter whether it was denominated in magic beans.

As the USD drops in value relative to other currencies the price of oil in USD will increase and the price of oil in all other currencies will decrease. The quantity of oil produced may increase or decrease. It depends on the relative elasticities of demand in different countries. This will be a second order effect.

The US will consume less oil while others consume more oil. Duh. What is oil? An import. The US will import less as the USD weakens. Which is what I said earlier.

The ONLY difference the currency used in oil markets makes is that it induces foreigners to hold slightly more USD as a foreign reserve currency. The effect of the oil markets on this propensity is relatively minor.

[KrazyHorse]

Now, what did I mean when I said that it would be good for the US if those green pieces of paper never came back to the US? It would mean that the propensity of the world as a whole to hold US debt and currency did not change. The Chinese sold their US debt, got US currency, sent that US currency somewhere else. If another foreign entity absorbed that excess US currency then the effect on the US would be a wash. It is only when the rest of the world's propensity to hold US reserves DROPS (as when China sells Treasuries and gets US goods and services) that the US needs to pay back its debt (Treasuries, private debt and currency).

****.

[Boris Godunov]

I'm going to get back to the polls...

New Insider Advantage poll out today from Georgia:

Insider Advantage Georgia

The two polls were conducted last night, each with 615 registered, likely voters. The margin of errors for both is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

The results:

Presidential

Obama, 48 percent
McCain, 47 percent
Other, 2 percent
Undecided, 3 percent

IA happens to be a Georgia-based polling outfit, too.

Compare that with the approx. 30 state polls released yesterday, which showed great numbers for Obama and little for McCain to smile about:

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yet the Georgia Rasmussen has McCain +5 (from fivethirtyeight as well).