Comments on: “What Has Meredith Whitney Got to Say…?”

By: Jessica Johnson

Jessica Johnson — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 04:46:00 +0000

How did you do it all? Have a husband, four children and maintain the financial status on Wall Street.

By: LD

LD — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:47:33 +0000

M. Simon…great post. I wholeheartedly agree and from that it is obvious that we need an increasingly well educated pool of labor. Those who increase their skills will be able to benefit.

I understand it is and will be painful in the interim but we have few other choices.

Thanks for sharing.

By: M. Simon

M. Simon — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:55:08 +0000

I have a friend with main street savvy.

He thinks we are in for 5 to 7 years of treading water.

One problem is that we have automated away manufacturing jobs. Making stuff no longer requires near as many workers for a given amount of output.

This is similar to what happened to agriculture in the 20s.

At this point there is no “big new thing” to take up the slack. Biotech is not ready. Green energy in most cases is a net loss (green energy is higher cost than coal). Fusion if it was ready tomorrow would take 5 to 10 years to make an economic impact. And fusion is not ready for roll out tomorrow.

If the research goes well the Bussard Fusion Reactor (BFR) might be ready in 5 years. Projects like ITER are not only not ready (30 years more to go) but the energy is expected to cost 5X to 10X current sources.

The nice thing about the BFR project is that it can be done for about $200 million and will take 5 years. If the answer is positive energy costs will be from 1/2 to 1/10th current prices.

What needs to be done is a lot more research on a lot of things. Research is labor intensive. However, it can’t absorb a lot of labor. Say we started a 100,000 new research projects (there aren’t that many good ideas to fund) that would only absorb 500,000 people. Of that number 100,000 would have to be highly trained. We don’t have that many highly trained people not already involved in research.

We will pull out of this. It is going to take time.

By: knotfourhymn

knotfourhymn — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:54:56 +0000

Same here. It reset twice.

By: bart

bart — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:42:38 +0000

Strangely enough, the video only played for about 3 minutes for me. Then it goes to a network screen and starts all over again. AAAAuuuuuugggghh!

By: “What Has Meredith Whitney Got to Say…?” : NO QUARTER

“What Has Meredith Whitney Got to Say…?” : NO QUARTER — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:09:54 +0000

[...] “What Has Meredith Whitney Got to Say…?” : NO QUARTER Bill Ayers, Bill Clinton, Bill Moyers Journal, Bill of Rights, Bill Richardson, Birth Certificate (Barack Obama), Birth Mystery, Black Agenda… [...]

By: LD

LD — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:32:50 +0000

I’m with you. I want to be an eternal optimist while also being a pragmatic realist.

By: beaming

beaming — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:24:16 +0000

Sorry, this isn’t really funny, but look at the bright side. If we have no income we don’t have to pay taxes.

I’m a custom home builder for 32 years. This is the first time since Jimmy Carter was president that I didn’t know what I’ll be doing next week. Screw Wall St, UAW union, and all the corrupt politicians including the ONEs about to take office.

By: bert

bert — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:21:47 +0000

I get nothing. And I just retried. I only get a blank, black screen. The button that should start the video does not click or move at all.

I do have fairly high security settings on my computer. But when I went directly to CNBC I could play other videos found there. Just not this one.

Strange.

By: LD

LD — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:07:01 +0000

Wodiej…any luck? Please let me know. If need be perhaps I can send it to you directly.

By: LD

LD — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:05:11 +0000

C.S. Thanks for sharing. You are correct the economy is ultimately all about our personal finances. Hopefully through this forum we can help people understand the dynamics at work in the economy as a whole so that they can manage their finances prudently.

Thanks again for your color/thoughts.

By: LD

LD — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:36:18 +0000

Tek,

You are exactly right. “WE” own 80% of AIG yet who is truly minding the store there. What degree of accountability is in place?

Regrettably, we would be naive to think that there aren’t more losses yet to come from that organization.

By: tek

tek — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:34:14 +0000

We are paying off our debt, but we are still stuck with a house that we can’t sell, so we are trapped. Is the government worried about people like us? Nope, just worried about corporations, as always.

By: tek

tek — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:32:02 +0000

C. S. how right you are about everything. The U. S. does feel like a third world country. So far, I haven’t heard anything from Obama or his surrogates that sounds well-informed and knowlegable. I think the Gov. Blago thing highlights that Obama was hand-picked to be in the WH and he’s just as corrupt and inept as the rest of the Chicago machine.

By: tek

tek — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:27:21 +0000

The CEOs at AIG are just gamblers, now we’re supposed to pay off their debts. These same managers are still in charge of the company and the government gave them bail out money even though they have not provided the government with transparency.