4 ms·

I agree completely! Spend money encouraging innovation and solving tomorrows problems, not keeping the existing oligarchies on life support. Congress should b

I agree completely! Spend money encouraging innovation and solving tomorrows problems, not keeping the existing oligarchies on life support. Congress should be considering investments and negotiating term sheets like VCs (but they won't).

newt0311 18y ago
Wrong. Congress shouldn't be investing at all. Seriously, the returns when congress invests and when private investors invest are so drastically far apart that I am continuously left wondering how congress can convince voters to let it continue.
- DaniFong 18y ago
  Well, there is one way around that; let congress invest in VC's with historically high returns, but don't let them place the onerous restrictions on the money that usually surrounds public funds (labor laws, oversight, documentation through the ying-yang), instead merely restricting to an area of investment.
  - newt0311 18y ago
    Better option: Reduce taxes so that money can be invested by the people who earned it. Radical huh.
    - DaniFong 18y ago
      You'd also have to reduce qualified investor laws. And honestly, reducing taxes even further in this crises doesn't strike me as a reasonable way to handle a global credit crunch...
      - newt0311 18y ago
        You don't need to be a qualified investor to invest in the general economy. Banks, mutual funds, and a dozen other easily accessible instruments willingly do that for you. As for reduced taxes, I would argue that it seems like the ideal way to combat a global credit crunch. The government has the lowest cost of capital and the lowest default rate (at least the US govt. does). Thus it would be more efficient to leave the extra capital with private citizens and use deficit spending. Of course it would even more efficient to just not have the federal govt. spend as much but then its not like hell is about to freeze over anytime soon.
  - aswanson 18y ago
    The problem with historically high returns is the usual past performance no is no guarantee blah, blah, blah... And when VCs get flush with cash they just seem to fund dumb stuff on a grander scale: http://web.archive.org/web/20000510152036/http://www.pixelon.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20000510152036/http://www.pixelon... Too random a process to predict or control.

newt0311 18y ago

Wrong. Congress shouldn't be investing at all. Seriously, the returns when congress invests and when private investors invest are so drastically far apart that I am continuously left wondering how congress can convince voters to let it continue.

DaniFong 18y ago
Well, there is one way around that; let congress invest in VC's with historically high returns, but don't let them place the onerous restrictions on the money that usually surrounds public funds (labor laws, oversight, documentation through the ying-yang), instead merely restricting to an area of investment.
- newt0311 18y ago
  Better option: Reduce taxes so that money can be invested by the people who earned it. Radical huh.
  - DaniFong 18y ago
    You'd also have to reduce qualified investor laws. And honestly, reducing taxes even further in this crises doesn't strike me as a reasonable way to handle a global credit crunch...
    - newt0311 18y ago
      You don't need to be a qualified investor to invest in the general economy. Banks, mutual funds, and a dozen other easily accessible instruments willingly do that for you. As for reduced taxes, I would argue that it seems like the ideal way to combat a global credit crunch. The government has the lowest cost of capital and the lowest default rate (at least the US govt. does). Thus it would be more efficient to leave the extra capital with private citizens and use deficit spending. Of course it would even more efficient to just not have the federal govt. spend as much but then its not like hell is about to freeze over anytime soon.
- aswanson 18y ago
  The problem with historically high returns is the usual past performance no is no guarantee blah, blah, blah... And when VCs get flush with cash they just seem to fund dumb stuff on a grander scale: http://web.archive.org/web/20000510152036/http://www.pixelon.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20000510152036/http://www.pixelon... Too random a process to predict or control.