Comments on: Don’t Buy Stuff You Can Not Afford

By: Dan Sells

Dan Sells — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:42:25 +0000

Yes, vote out all politicians and start over, with new, fresh, enthusiastic, NOT-YET-CORRUPTED, public servants who want to serve the public not rape and pilage the system.

ALSO: be sure to vote with where you keep your bank account… here’s how:
start a nationwide movement TO TAKE BACK AMERICA ONE BANK ACCOUNT AT A TIME, one bank account equals one VOTE to not give any business to the largest banks that are “too big to fail”, the banks/crooks that took bailout money from taxpayers and then instead of using it to make loans to us “little” people and small businesses to help the economy, they paid out huge bonuses and put the TARP money on deposit with the Fed to collect interest. Since they did not help the “little” people by making loans, we should NO LONGER DO BUSINESS WITH ANY OF THE 12 LARGEST BANKS, WITHDRAW ALL OUR DEPOSITS AND LET THEM FAIL. Do business with local and regional banks that lend within your local area or state. Big national and multinational banks also charge unfair credit card rates… for example B of A charges 36% on credit card debt. Put these crooks out of business, then they will not be “too big to fail”!

By: 2009 — A Year We Will Live To Regret :: ASPO-USA: Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:58:04 +0000

[...] money from the Treasury, America’s bankruptcy would be obvious for all to see. See my Don’t Buy Stuff You Can Not Afford. Enlarging public debt to solve a problem rooted in excessive private debt merely kicks the [...]

By: The Aftermath of the Great Recession, Part I :: ASPO-USA: Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:18:28 +0000

[...] the San Francisco Fed’s U.S. Household Deleveraging and Future Consumption Growth. See my Don’t Buy Stuff You Can Not Afford for more [...]

By: The Next Oil Shock :: ASPO-USA: Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas

The Next Oil Shock :: ASPO-USA: Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:49:12 +0000

[...] presented my forecast for the GDP growth in the United States in Don’t Buy Stuff You Can Not Afford. Our prospects for a robust economic expansion in the next few years—a “V-shaped” [...]

By: captain Rick

captain Rick — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 23:15:36 +0000

Great article. It clearly shows how morons are ruining things. Best save your money in a credit union and dont buy into gimmicks.Find another source of satisfaction instead of buying stuff,

By: Bill Simpson of Slidell LA.

Bill Simpson of Slidell LA. — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:48:44 +0000

If you examine a graph of the S&P 500 before 2000, you will notice two distinct changes in slope. The first is about 1984, with an even greater one around 1994. I was thinking that something had to cause such a rapid change. I thought that possibly international trade or low interest rates may have been the reason. No doubt the spread of the internet, computer control of robots used in manufacturing, laser measurement control of machine tools, giant mining trucks, ANFO blasting, shipping containers, just in time manufacturing, more chemicals, cheaper computers, or more efficient construction methods were responsible. But noooo, it was a debt bubble. Darn! I should have known, when I would get a new credit card offer every month back then. As far as growing the economy in the future, after the price of energy explodes once oil production starts to actually fall, good luck doing that! Natural gas might be able to keep civilization barely going until it peaks. How long will that take? I have no idea, but unless fusion or something else is a viable energy source by then, both the standard of living, and world population, will fall substantially. Try growing enough food to feed 12,000,000,000 people without synthetic fertilizer made from natural gas. It won’t be easy. Don’t plan on eating too many steaks. I’m doing my part. I stuck some stick-on letters on a sign in the driveway to a nearby middle school. The formerly blank back of the sign now reads, “Wiki peak oil.” Hey, some kid with an I.Q. of 160 might get right on it and solve the problem. If you are under 60, you had better hope so. Algae anyone?

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:26:47 +0000

A good article and I agree with everything in it, except that when discussing Figure 3 and saying that this is _the_ one graph the reader needs to understand. Well, let’s understand it. It is a good example of “lies, damned lies, and statistics”, no matter who produced it. My essential point is that there is _nothing_ magical about the lines being together at the beginning, and it is _certainly_ not warranted to assume that eventually they must converge again. They are together at the beginning because whoever created the figure _forced_ them to be — see the comment “all series normalized to 1 in 1960:Q1″. By assuming they should converge again, all you are saying is that 1960:Q1 represents the economic ideal. Does it? I have no idea. Maybe the originator of the figure thought so. Maybe the lines should turn upside down, I really have no idea, but there is absolutely nothing magical about them being together at the beginning. It is simply a statistical sleight of hand.