Now with that I agree I meant to include that assessment in my last post but didn't. I believe the actions taken the Fed is just another band aid on a cancer. And does push the day of reckoning into the future. so on That I'm in full agreement. Actually I agree with every thing in your post here so In would assume including the reason for the stock marked soaring. I meant we are only lucky for the being and if the fed hadn't moved as quickly as it did the result would have been to horrible to contemplate. Of course those who remain unemployed or under employed are not so lucky

Every empire in history has had it's day of reckoning and there is no reason we wont have ours. So I guess the only point we disagree on is whether or not the US has ever experienced true capitalism and If we ever did it surely would have been during the last 40 years of the 19th century that produced the gilded age of the robber barons. This video about Jacob Riis and his (1890) book titled "How The Other HAlf Lives" Is a clear illustration of how true capitalism works

http://youtu.be/87SCTEsIufY

Every empire in history has came to an end but we still have Persians, Macedonians, Egyptians, Italians, Spaniards Dutch French, and Brit's so it stands to reason that Americans will go on. Our biggest worry is how long before our species is on the brink of extinction. Evidence of oceanic acidification came in this mornings news paper of a troubling discovery scientist have found in the waters off the California Oregon and Washington State. The increasing acidity from the oceans absorbing Co2 we are emitting is dissolving the shells of tiny sea creatures at the base of the food chain that is the source of food for salmon,herring. mackerel, and other fish. Fish that are not only eaten by millions of people but also by a wside varity of other sea crfeatures from whales, to dolphins yo sea lions. If the trend continues, c*****e c****e scientist say, it will imperil the ocean invironment. These are alarm bells akin to the canary in the coal mine.

Had to go look this one up, calcifying organisms aren't effected by CO2 until it exceeds 654 ppm, the current amount is only at 380 ppm. Anything beyond this is pure speculation. In other words no degradation of coral reefs or any other shelled sea creatures can or will occur do to carbonic acid at current levels.

Just for the record lobster numbers haven't been as high as they are today since anyone can remember so if that's any indication of the health of shelled sea creatures. But I'm sure someone will say something else is out of wack causing the sudden increase in population.

What scares me though is what the hell is with sea stars legs ripping from their bodies and crawling away under their own power in And around Pugent Sound. I've seen a video of one doing it and is the creepiest damn thing I have ever seen.

Let's try this:

Conventional wisdom is only a hypothesis at best, let's test the theory by eliminating as any variables as possible and confirm the hypothesis before jumping to conclusions.

What we do know by studying sea bed sediment is that different mollusks and corals thrive or decline dependent on the acidity of the ocean through different epochs of global glaciation.

Our planet has gone through many periods of temperature changes and ocean conditions, some species do better and some do worse dependent on its tolerance ranges. Most higher food change species have been through at least one glaciation period and have adapted there behavior to meet the changing food sources.

The successful example you seek does not exist. Any capitalist, c*******t, socialist, monarchist, dictatorship or other hybrid will be run by flawed leaders. Those in charge, by our very nature as humans, will seek advantage and exploit. I suppose you could point to the Nordic countries...possibly Holland or Germany, as examples where private sector success and public welfare strike a positive balance...for now. But the key phrase is "for now." All governmental systems must evolve to accommodate current needs (and future expenditure). This country's problem is short sightedness and the willingness to assume one side or the other is to blame for all of it. Extreme opinions on both sides are unproductive. Centrist policy is by far the most efficient way to move forward, because when everyone is in the pool, we all look for the sharks together.

Thomas Piketty is no radical. His 700-page book Capital in the 21st Century is certainly not some kind of screed filled with calls for class warfare. In fact, the wonky and mild-mannered French economist opens his tome with a description of his typical Gen X abhorrence of what he calls the “lazy rhetoric of anticapitalism." He is in no way, shape, or form a Marxist. As fellow-economist James K. Galbraith has underscored in his review of the book, Piketty "explicitly (and rather caustically) rejects the Marxist view" of economics.

But he does do something that gives right-wingers in America the willies. He writes calmly and reasonably about economic ine******y, and concludes, to the alarm of conservatives, that there is no magical force that drives capitalist societies toward shared prosperity. Quite the opposite. He warns that if we don't do something about it, we may end up with a society that is more top-heavy than anything that has come before — something even worse than the Gilded Age.

For this, in America, you get branded a crazed C*******t by the right. In this past weekend's New York Times, Ross Douthat sounds the alarm in an op-ed ominously tited "Marx Rises Again." The columnist hints that he and his fellow pundits have only pretended to read the book but nevertheless feel comfortable making statements like "Yes, that’s right: Karl Marx is back from the dead" about Piketty. TheNational Review's James Pethokoukis joins in the games with a silly article called "The New Marxism" in which he repeats the nonsense that Piketty is some sort of Marxist apologist.

For Douthat and his tribe, the proposition that unfettered capitalism marches toward gross ine******y is not a conclusion based on carefully collected data, strenuous research and a sweeping view of history. It has to be a C*******t plot.

The very heft of Piketty's book is terrifying to the Douthats, and no wonder they don't dare to read it, because if they did, they would find chart after chart, data set after data set, and hundreds of years worth of economic history scrutinized.

Income and wealth ine******y have not been comprehensively studied to date, which has to do with the paucity of historical data and the difficulties of making comparisons between countries and populations when there are so many variables. Piketty's contribution is to painstakingly comb over the available data and illuminate trends that would leave no reasonable person in doubt of the fact that capitalism's inherent dynamics create ine******y, and that only our express intervention, in the form of things like a global wealth tax, investment in sk**ls and training, and the diffusion of knowledge can lead us to a different outcome.

To the horror of conservatives, the public is rushing out to buy this weighty economic treatise: the book is #1 on Amazon and has hit the New York Timesbestseller list. A public that not only inuits conservative economic nonsense but has the detailed information to back up that gut instinct is just too awful for words.

Piketty is scaring the right because he is a serious researcher and a calm, disciplined observer who writes in measured tones. But for conservatives who have based the last several decades of economic discussion on mythology, this dose of reality has come at them like a chillling blast of Arctic air.

Let them have their hysteria. It's a testimony to the utter bankruptcy of their ideas.

Memo to liberals and progressives: making Piketty into a rock star isn't helping, either. Let's let the facts speak for themselves.

For those with limited time to absorb human intellectual product...I suggest you read M. Piketty's CV before spending the $25-50 to purchase his book. If you are predisposed to an interest in government economics (an oxymoron in itself) unless you have been under a rock you have already read this book...may times over.

There is no evidence or admission that M. Piketty has practical, life experience. He appears to exist entirely inside an academic bubble. He has done a tremendous job of gathering together mountains of world statistics (for the most part) and from these empirical data draws, when all is said and done, the singular conclusion that capitalism, all capitalism, can only create inequity. Hence;

M. Piketty draws the only logical conclusion that can be reached, that the equitable capitalization of labor can only be accomplished by severe limitations on wealth accumulation through taxation and redistribution of the 'excess' to labor. And of course, government is the only entity that can implement such redistribution in a fair and equitable fashion. An original conclusion...never expounded before M. Piketty, I'm sure.

Two questions come to my eternally curious mind; the largest unstated but apparent target of M. Piketty's theoretical observations and conclusions is the United States. Does M. Piketty not realize, did his data not show that 'income ine******y' exists at extremes not imagined under capitalism in countries where capitalistic enterprise is not pursued?

Having passed the better part of six years living with the boot of a hard-core, hybrid c*******t/f*****t on our throats, one who is obviously determined to make Income Ine******y the mantra of world l*****t activity going forward, the timing of this work is odd. As Michael Angelo was chosen to paint the ceiling, was M. Piketty chosen to create the Bible of the 21st century c*******t movement?

To suggest that he has conservatives, capitalists and capitalism on the run is irrational bordering on stupidity. He is nothing more or less than another c*******t who has never worked for a living...but pretends to tell us how to work while he is being handsomely compensated to the + side of ine******y. Follow the money.

I personally will waste no more of my American, capitalist energy on M. Piketty, another c*******t hack diametrically opposed to my beliefs for nothing more than his own monetary and egotistical profit.

I'm sorry, that's a cop-out. Class envy has has always existed to one degree or another, and politicians who play on it for their own gain is beside the point. It doesn't alter the fact that there is ine******y built into our system,made official once we legitimized and institutionalized usury with the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. I'm no fan of the Obama administration, but it seems naive at this point to believe he's solely responsible for the current stagnation. "The system" rolls along, booming and busting, regardless of who is in the White House. I imagine this will continue, getting worse before it gets better, because there are too few people who understand what's happening.

Obama by his policies has made the system so much worse, and is there some reason Obama should not be held accountable for his failures? When Bush was president the media savaged him over the price of gas going up, now that it has gone even higher under Obama they say a president really has no control over that issue, there is plenty of blame to go around, but after five years of going down the redistribution path and not only no success but even worse outcomes it's time to lay the blame where it belongs, Obama's policies

I think when we look at the abys the nation was staring into in September 2008 with the banking system collapsing, 750,000 jobs per month going down the tube, The greatest financal crises since 1932. the American auto industry on the ropes. Some folks seem have short memories. Given all Obama faced when he took office in 2009 It's amazing we've come back as far as we have and given the record filibusters by the Republicans and the obstructionism and the constant attacks I have to admire what he has accomplished and the ability to keep his composure in the face of such adversity. To me it shows class