Why American's might want to care what foreigners think.

[NUKE]

Originally posted by J_A_B
I believe Nash is referring to a well-known case involving an older lady and a cup of McDonald's coffee.   Most people (the ignorant ones) hold this case as a shining example of lawsuits gone mad.

People more familiar with the case will realize that spilling coffee on yourself shouldn't cause third-degree burns and require a week-long hospital stay including extensive skin grafting.    More damaging to McDonald's was evidence shown that the corporation had seen injuries of that sort from their coffee hundreds of times before and consistetly covered it up through quiet settlemets--putting their drive for profits ahead of public safety.  

I think Nash was pointing out the irony in the fact that the one case most often used as an example of "litigation run amok", is in all actuality a case which is uquestionably sound.  I think he's saying that people always want to take the easy way out and blame the evil scum sucking lawyers, while in truth the issue is a whole lot more complex.


J_A_B

I am aware of the lady that spilled coffee on herself, then sued McDonalds. I was wondering what that had to do with healthcare costs going up due to litigation, since the lawsuit had nothing to do with healthcare.

The example he gave had nothing to do with healthcare, and his whole statement made no sense based on that.

[J_A_B]

"The example he gave had nothing to do with healthcare, and his whole statement made no sense based on that."

Well, it'll take Nash to answer that one for you; only he knows his intentions.


Personally I saw his comment as not even being strictly about healthcare per se, but rather about the often flawed nature of public perception in general.


J_A_B

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Thrawn
Not as informed as I appear to be.  Thanks for the link.

Outstanding load balance from 1946 to 2002 is just under 20 billion dollars.  So would account for only 4.5 percent of this years deficit alone.  Sorry, I don't think that should clear up any foreign investment problems.

Thrawn, Africa owes us 220 billion ALONE.  Between foreign aid and loans, we'd have a surplus!

[lazs2]

people by hot coffe and then when they spill it on themselves it is the fault of the place that sold it to them?

I never get coffee hot enough anywhere even fresh from the brewer... I have to put it in the microwave for half a minute or so.   I do know tho.... that while I can drink it carefully.... I probly shouldn't  spill it on myself.    Why not sue the state for making it legal to drive with hot coffee?

How can yu sue a company for making a good product?

lazs

[Mickey1992]

http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=94897

08-27-2003 02:31 PM

Originally posted by Mickey1992
There will come a time when the US budget problem will get so large, that we will be unable to sell our debt to generate financing.  That's when we will all be screwed.

[airguard]

Originally posted by lazs2
people by hot coffe and then when they spill it on themselves it is the fault of the place that sold it to them?

I never get coffee hot enough anywhere even fresh from the brewer... I have to put it in the microwave for half a minute or so.   I do know tho.... that while I can drink it carefully.... I probly shouldn't  spill it on myself.    Why not sue the state for making it legal to drive with hot coffee?

How can yu sue a company for making a good product?

lazs

Is that story true, I read about it,  if it was the woman that got $$$$ for being clumsy enough to spill coffe on her legs or what it was ?
That is freaking increadable and just too plain stupid, coffe is supposed to be hot not cold.

[deSelys]

Originally posted by lazs2
How can yu sue a company for making a good product?
 

Mc-Do does make a good product??? The world has gone mad...

[Masherbrum]

Originally posted by Thrawn
Bearish on Uncle Sam?
As Foreign Investment Shows Decline, Economists Keep Watch
By Jonathan Weisman and Ben White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 19, 2004; Page E01


NEW YORK -- On Sept. 9, as it must frequently do, the U.S. government turned to Wall Street to raise a little cash, and Paul Calvetti bet that demand for $9 billion worth of long-term Treasury bonds would be "huge."

But at 1 p.m., as the auction opened and the numbers began streaming across his flat-panel screens, the head of Treasury trading at Barclays Capital Inc. slumped in his chair. Foreign investors, who had been voraciously buying Treasury bonds, failed to show up. Bond prices cascaded downward, interest rates rose, and in five minutes, Calvetti, 38, who makes money by bidding on bonds at one price and hoping market demand lets him quickly resell them at a profit, had lost $1.5 million.

"It's amazing," he gasped, after the Treasury Department announced that Wall Street traders, not foreigners, had been left to buy virtually the entire auction. "I don't think I've ever seen this before."

The most recent auction of 10-year Treasury notes may have been a fluke, a momentary downturn in one aspect of the massive world market for U.S. government and private-sector bonds, stocks and other securities -- a market so large and diverse that it has long been the world's safe haven. But a rash of new data, including Treasury Department figures released yesterday showing a net sell-off by foreigners of U.S. bonds in August, has stoked debate over whether overseas investors -- private individuals, institutions and government central banks -- are growing dangerously bearish on the U.S. economy.

It is a portentous issue. Foreign governments and individuals hold about half of the $3.7 trillion in outstanding U.S. Treasury bonds, for example, and the government has been heavily dependent on continued overseas bond purchases to finance the roughly $1 billion a day it has to borrow to pay its bills. Foreign lending and investment are also needed to finance the country's roughly $50 billion monthly trade deficit, while foreign capital has been a key prop to U.S. stock prices.

A turn in overseas attitudes toward the United States could ripple deeply through the economy, depressing the market, raising interest rates and pushing down the value of the dollar.



In August, foreign private investors actually sold $4.4 billion more in Treasury bonds and notes than they bought that month, the Treasury Department said yesterday -- the first time in a year that net foreign purchases were negative. That followed a 20 percent decline in July that shrunk net foreign purchases to $18.3 billion.

Bond purchases by foreign central banks also dropped sharply in July, falling 76 percent, to $4.1 billion. A rebound in August brought them back to $19.1 billion. The recovery was timely: Without it, the dollar may have taken a serious hit, said Ashraf Laidi, chief currency analyst at MG Financial Group in New York, who headlined yesterday's client newsletter, "Foreign Central Banks Save Dollar From Disaster."

Foreign purchases of stocks are off as well, going from net purchases of $9.7 billion in July to a net sell-off of $2.1 billion in August. Over the past 12 months, private foreign investors have purchased a net of $17 billion in U.S. stocks, compared with $30 billion in the 12 months before that.

Measuring the combined purchase of stocks, corporate bonds and government debt, overall capital flows into the United States fell in August for the sixth straight month.

Treasury officials said such data should not be overanalyzed. Net purchases of U.S. government securities may have been low in August, at $14 billion, for example. But foreigners still bought more than $807 billion in Treasury bonds, while selling $793 billion, in a month that is usually a slow one in financial markets, said Treasury spokesman Tony Fratto.

"These movements are taking place in a huge market," he said.

But the downward trend in capital coming to the United States is nevertheless worrying, some economists argue, with particular implications for U.S. government debt.

Foreign central banks and individuals rushed to finance U.S. government budget deficits over the past three years, buying $19.2 billion in Treasury bonds in 2001, $118 billion in 2002, and $279 billion in 2003. Lending from foreign governments in particular exploded last year -- to $109 billion, up from $7.1 billion in 2002.

The fear among economists is that those foreign lenders may grow concerned that their portfolios are too swollen with dollar-denominated assets.

The Chinese -- whose Treasury holdings have tripled since 2000, to $172 billion -- have already begun buying more euro-denominated assets, said Rebecca Patterson, a senior currency strategist at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Earlier this year, both China and India diverted tens of billions of their dollar holdings to domestic projects, with China pumping $45 billion into its banks and India devoting $15 billion to infrastructure projects.

"China and India are no longer committed to open-ended dollar buying," Stephen S. Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, warned clients yesterday. "At the margin this shift is negative for the dollar and for U.S. real interest rates."

As the big players begin to invest dollars domestically, the U.S. government is becoming more dependent on smaller nations, like Singapore and Korea, which may be quicker to sell off Treasurys and could demand higher interest rates, said Sung Won Sohn, chief economic officer at Wells Fargo Bank.

"The U.S. government will always be able to raise money -- well, at least in the foreseeable future," he said. "The question is, what will you have to pay and who will you get it from?"

The U.S. dependence on foreign capital concerns economists on both ends of the political spectrum. In a speech this March, Lawrence H. Summers, a Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration and now the president of Harvard University, warned of "a kind of global balance of financial terror," in which the economic well-being of the United States depends on the actions of foreign governments.

"There is surely something off about the world's greatest power being the world's greatest debtor," he said. "In order to finance prevailing levels of consumption and investment, must the United States be as dependent as it is on the discretionary acts of what are inevitably political entities in other countries?"

Desmond Lachman, an international economist at the American Enterprise Institute, writing for the conservative Web site Tech Central Station, cautioned that foreign central banks "now have considerable ability to disrupt U.S. financial markets by simply deciding to refrain from buying further U.S. government paper."

Patterson said that is not likely, comparing the situation to "a Texas standoff with two cowboys. . . . If Asia stops buying, the market will get wind of it very quickly, and they will rush out the door. And Asia will be hurt very badly."

To John Williamson, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics, that is cold comfort. The Chinese and Japanese central banks may maintain their huge reserves for defensive reasons, he said, but a smaller player, like Brazil or Singapore, could try to unload its dollar reserves, triggering a global sell-off. Like a mouse in a circus, even a bit player could cause the elephants to stampede.

"It's absolutely true that it wouldn't be in the interest of the world to do it, but any one country might think, 'I'll beat the crowd and diversify first,' " he warned. "I think that's the more likely scenario."




Not that this should really be news to anyone.  Not that I think that Bush or Kerry would help the situation.  But I bet those wacky libertarians could.

I read the title.  Sorry, I'm an American.   I can careless what other people think of me.  

Karaya

[deSelys]

It's 'I can't (or I couldn't) care less'...

[lazs2]

deselys.... only the part about "hot" in hot coffee is the "good product" part.

If you order hot coffee and it is at least hot then it is at least half a truthfully advertised product.   If you order hot coffe and get lukewarm drek then it is a bad product and false advertising.

Oh.... and when one person worked we had cars that needed tuneups every 7 thou and lube jobs every 2 and only about 10% had airconditioning or a stereo (or even a radio)

nobody had cable TV or cell phones or computers and a 60 amp service in a home was more than enough to power all your toys....  We drank water right out of the tap that was worse than comes out now.  

lazs

[deSelys]

Lazs...I was just making cheap humor.

I wasn't trying to insult you by implying that you were truly enjoying Mc-Do 'food'

[Bodhi]

Originally posted by J_A_B
Redtop--

By you own admission you're two cars and a house in debt...that is a LOT of debt if the stuff you bought was anywhere near typical in price.

You say that both you AND your wife are working to maintain your lifestyle.


What exactly is so great about that?

Two spouses working and deep in debt doesn't seem so great to me.  Not when I can remember my mother not having to work at all, ever (the woman never even held a driver's license), and dad having no trouble whatsoever paying off the house (paid it off before they even owned it for 5 years) and buying a nice new car with cash every few years.

And we weren't rich.  Dad worked at US Steel...the sort of job which has given way to minimum-wage Wal-Mart jobs in this "so good" economy we have nowdays.  



J_A_B

So, you should vote democrat.  Maybe they can set up a cushy subsidy fund to make it so youy do not have to work either...

[J_A_B]

"How can yu sue a company for making a good product? "\

Good product huh?  

Do you know what third degree burns are?  Also known as full-thickness burns, or basically burning the skin off.  

You think it's acceptable to have that happen to you and require SKIN GRAFTING just because of a spilled cup of coffee?  Have you seen photos of that woman's injury?  It was BAD.  You think it's normal to spend a week or more in the hospital because of a spilled cup of coffee?   Have any of you suffered third-degree burns before?  Those of you who have know how indredibly painful and serious such an injury is.  

No, that's not "good product".  That's a dangerous problem.

If you feel that suffering those sorts of injuries over a spilled cup of coffee is normal or acceptable....then well, that only proves Nash's point.    


Bodhi--

Thanks for calling me a liberal.  It's a nice change from being called a conservative since the latter is what people usually call me.

J_A_B

[J_A_B]

Lazs--while none of that stuff was around in 1960...

Consider that 100 years ago, people routinely worked 14 to 16-hour days....childen as young as 12 often held factory jobs.

For what?

Horse-and-buggy, no electricity, usually no refrigeration, horrible pollution, 0 job security, and no medical care to speak of.


Your argument can go both ways Lazs.  


J_A_B

[john9001]

granny's lawyer should have sued the car company for not providing a cup holder, thereby forcing her to place the cup dangerously between her legs, where's nader when you need him?