Found Proof: CNNfn, CNBC, RW Commentators ARE Stupid

I came across RW Financial Pundit Donald L. Luskin's Web Blog called, "The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid," and when I clicked the About the Author link, I found this;

Education
Attended Yale in 1973-1974; dropped out to rejoin the real world as soon as possible
<http://www.poorandstupid.com/about.asp>

No wonder the economy is so screwed up, this guy, who dropped out of Yale after his Freshman year, and is now all over the Cable "News" channels and the Financial Rags, is teaching everyone who will listen, how to Lie, Cheat and Steal to get ahead.

Now he's posting stupid Crap on a Web Blog like this:

<http://poorandstupid.com/2003_04_06_chronArchive.asp>

And this guy is teaching RWer's about Finance? :wtf:

Yes, this is from 2003, but it was the first thing I read on the page Google linked to.

"Luskin is a stalker" :D

He writes about his lips, the way he breathes, etc.

Creepy. :scared:

I didn't even have to click on it, he has on of those obnoxious ads that change pictures about every 1/2 second.:freak:

... hard as it is to imagine. Something can gain 150% of its original value, but it can't lose more than 100% of its original value.

As the currency value approaches zero, its loss in value approaches 100%. By definition, currency is denominated in positive numbers only, even if that amount is an exceedingly small number. Once the currency reaches a value of zero, it becomes valueless. It can't be 50% less than valueless.

See, this is a common tactic used buy RW Pundits. He's not 100% wrong, but he's not right either, so when they yell, "ARE YOU TELLING ME I'M WRONG?" at the LW counter-pundit, He or she usually says well...no, not compleatly...eeewwwaaahh(sound of whimpering and fear). So then they go on yelling for the next 5 minutes, and cut to commercial.

But, Yes It IS possible for a Currency to lose 150% of it's value. It happens in times of "Hyper Inflation" like we had at the start of the Iraq War in 2003. I think Argentina had an inflation rate over 1000% back in the 1970's.

See, what he did here is take a single sentience from the NY Times, completely out of context and with nothing to compare it to, you just DON'T do that, when you're talking about Currency. 150% as compared to What? The U.S. Dollar? He IS right that a Currency can't lose 150% of it's value, if you are comparing it to it's SELF, but that wasn't what the NY Times was talking about.

What the Times was talking about is that it lost 150% of it value against OTHER Currencies. Here is a simplified example:

Let's say that, when the U.S. Invaded Iraq the value of the U.S. Dollar and the Iraqi Dinar were equal (they were not, but we will say they were for simplicity). So, let's say, a cup of Coffee cost $1.00 and 1.00 Dinar on March 19, 2003. Now the U.S. starts blowing shit up in Iraq, the stores are all looted and the city is under lock down.

SO now, it's a LOT more difficult to get the Coffee beans to make the Coffee, so now, the price of a cup of Coffee goes up.

I don't know if you remember this, but one of the BIG Mistake the War Planners made was, when they sent all that CASH over there to get the Iraqi economy going, all they sent was $100.00 Bills, nothing smaller, so what happened. Our Solders are passing out $100.00 Dollar bills and are buying cups of coffee with $100.00 bills, but their was NO Change!

So what happened to the price of Coffee? They can't give you change, and you don't want the old Dinars with Saddam's face on them, so a cup of Coffee now costs $100.00. How much is the Old Dinar worth, pretty much NOTHIN'.

It's simple screw ups like that that really caused some Major problems, but for the RW Pundit, it's just a LOT easier to ridicule the Facts from the NY Times, than it is to write ALL of what I just wrote.

(and like I said, the Dollar and the Dinar did NOT start out equal, so any actual numbers will not match, But the Part about only having $100's Bills IS TRUE)

... and a currency cannot lose more than 100% of its value. Period.

You say it yourself. $100 for a cup of coffee means that the dinar is worth nothing. That means the currency is valueless, as I said. In that instance, it loses all its value (100% of its baseline value), not 150% of its value.

I'm not defending the other instances of idiocy of this faux pundit, but in this instance, mathematical rules say he's right. The NYT's writer probably meant that the dinar had been devalued by two-thirds due to inflation occurring because of the influx of foreign currency. It's a common mistake, especially for the math-challenged (which probably takes in a great many reporters).

Cheers.

because I'm really bad at math and didn't want to post some thing that was wrong, mathematically.

But,my point was, is that the RW Pundit took one tiny bit of the article, and then Completely change the Meaning of what the NY Times was saying. They where talking about Inflation versus the Dollar, but the pundit flipped it around into an unrelated mathematical impossibility.

I'll try to do a bit of math, but like I said, I may not come up with the right mathematical answer.

Let's say lunch is $5.00 today and you have a 100% inflation rate. Tommarrow, Lunch will cost $10.00, Why, because of 100% inflation, your Money is worth 100% less than it was worth yesterday. Now if you had 150% inflation, today's Lunch would cost $15.00. See, with hyper inflation you can have more than 100%. Now if you have 1000% inflation, the lunch that cost $5.00 before, would now cost $500.00, which means, when talking about what the NY Times was talking about, you money has lost 1000% of it's value.

Hopefully my numbers are right, but what I'm saying is that the RW Pundit is comparing Apples and Oranges.

Inflation rates, which are always positive by their nature,

and fractional Mathematics, which could be positive or negative,

but, like you said, never less than zero.

The key to the RW argument is to confuse people enough that they say,"Yeah, what ever you say." It's also very easy for them to, instead of explaning the difference between regular Math and the way math is used in economics, just saying "he's lying, don't believe what he's telling you."