Ian Murray, OpenMarket.org:
The bailout bill is now law, but it does little or nothing to solve the problems government created. As long as they persist, the financial markets will be at serious risk. In the end, we may need to bailout the bailout.
Which is cool, because from there we can bailout the bailout bailout until it’s time to bailout that bailout of the bailout bailout…
[M]ore Government cannot be the answer to a government-created problem. The fact is that short-sighted government policies distorted the market in the first place. Bankers were certainly to blame for responding to these signals from government in the hope of a quick buck, but at its base, much of the problem was caused by government.
Yeah? Well then somebody should wrap a bi-partisan-looking fruit basket in copies of the Wall Street Journal and have it delivered to McCain headquarters, stat.
Personally, I think a balance needed to be struck; the possibilities of an actual Depression were too high to ignore. So the “bailout” is not so much an issue with me (a necessary short term evil) as is the refusal by many to name the causes behind the original crisis, and to promise that those causes will be addressed and the folly that spawned them not repeated.
At any rate, the Competitive Enterprise institute has put together a list of their “top twelve articles, stories and papers that” they believe demonstrates how government — and not the free market or “deregulation” — was to blame for the credit crisis.
For my part, they had me a hello.
(h/t Cord Blomquist)
Maybe we can cut out the middleman and just let the government fund the housing directly.
Obama has experience with that, you know.
McCain is just a placeholder for not having a Baracky Chavez socialist revolution in your neighborhood. He’s like one of those pillars or whatever you can’t knock down or the roof will fall on your little head. Hopefully the heroic piece of shit will just stand there for awhile after the election and then fall over of his own accord.
At minimum, I e-mail Mav’s campaign daily about this subject. They give a set of categories to put the e-mail under; I choose “event”…
Then in the body of the note, I specify the upcoming event as “McCain losing the election unless…”
But I don’t necessarily lead with that snark, I mean, I’d really like them to get them to read the suggestion.
I don’t do O’Reilley, but did you follow the link from Insty yesterday?
If Frank had been in studio, there would have been a “Hey, congressman, bet you never expected to see your own beating heart, didja?” moment right there.
Pundits have hosted these incumbent assholes for decades. And aside from being talking heads, they aren’t ignorant as a rule. O’Reilley struck me as being scared and angry because he’s scared… and he knows the whole story, and exactly what part Barney Frank played (is playing, actually) in the disaster. Maybe there’s a little guilt there, too; O’Reilley has made a living parading these louts, and he’s known, deep down, that they should have been taken to task for reals instead of allowing themselves to innoculate by going on pundit shows.
The greatest economic crime in history is turned into a low-rated reality show.
“How was your day Barney?”
“Oh, I fwucked up de ecwonomy, then I cwovered it up with a bwig fwat bwill.”
“Sounds stressful. Let me rub your shoulders.”
What’s depressing is that the most prominent shot that’s been taken at any of this was O’Reilly bitchslapping Barney Frank. It would have been nice if he could have refrained from screaming for 45 seconds or so and actually held Barney’s feet to the fire.
I think it’s and stretch to blame the banks. They didn’t collude to keep short term rates at or around 1%. The “carry trade” is one of the oldest tricks in the books. This whole damn mess was promulgated by the government, period. To see the same fucking clowns who got us into this mess slapping each other on the back over “solving” it makes want to strangle every one of them. Starting with Barney Frank.
I’m with you Utah. O’Reilly is a blowhard but he’s the only one that seems to want to call these people out totally. Called Barney a coward and Barney called him stupid. It was like Clash of the Titans starring Jm J Bullock and Dom DeLouise.
I just hate how Democrats want to renegotiate principal balances for people and subsidize their loser asses living in a house they couldn’t afford in the first place while non-scummy people have to work and pay taxes and rent. Welfare queens the lot of them.
I’d call Barney Frank a cocksucker, but…well, you know.
I would call McCain a heroic cocksucker and I sure hope to when he’s president. I will a lot verbally abuse him then. It will be fun.
Well, if we’re still planning on holding some truths to be self-evident, like all men are equal, I’ll be expecting to lower the principal on my mortgage, though I’ve accidentally paid it on time for the past 10 years.
My net worth is based on what I own and what I owe. So win.
Name any real Republican leader since Newt Gingrich. They all sit back and let the radio pundits do all their dirty work and yuk it up on the Hill, take our money and tell us to like it or lump it.
I like that Mr. Coburn guy. And also John Warner who’s going to retire and die. I think he’s a good role model.
A good role model for the other senators I mean. Not for me.
I don’t want to, but lately I do. and that just makes me more annoyed with him.
This was like opening your reserve ‘chute skydiving. You can wait until you’re on the ground to repack the main.
Then there’s Tancredo, though I haven’t heard much from him on this. Someone should check and see if he’s locked in the cloak room.
Well, if we’re still planning on holding some truths to be self-evident, like all men are equal, I’ll be expecting to lower the principal on my mortgage, though I’ve accidentally paid it on time for the past 10 years.
Believe it or not, writing down part of the principle was something you could negotiate with a bank before this law passed. It just happened more often with a $20,000,000 mortgage than a $200,000.
I used to love Dr. Coburn (he’s one of my senators), but I’m not voting or supporting him again after his vote for the bailout. I think it was unnecessary precisely because it’s impossible to bailout this problem. Which means it’s a power grab built on hysteria. I had hoped Dr. Coburn would be more principled than to fall for that. :(
oh. I knew principal looked funny but I ate a big lunch with NG at Mexican and I was sort of feeling kind of lethargic about it.
Most of my feelings about the failout are more about the faggy way they loaded it up the second time around.
stupid Democrats
You got me happy. Harvard of the Midwest my ass.
I was talking about my misspelling and not yours happy. I guess it was my lame attempt at humor. I’m sweating again.
I’m heartened though by a vague sense I have that Republicans will behave more better if they are ever in the majority again. At least for real I don’t think they will spend much time looking into the media to gaze on their pretty reflections. They will know who to listen to next time I think.
oh. no. I got you, al. Not lame. I smiled. Which NG thinks it’s weird when I do that but that’s just her and she has to be nice to me cause I know things.
but that’s just her and she has to be nice to me cause I know things.
So it’s like a McCain/Frank relationship without the extra appendages?
You’re halfway there.
I don’t get how Citigroup hasn’t bought enough shit that they need to be getting all litigious about Wachovia. They don’t have a surfeit of dignity, these Citigroup people.
I guess when Abu Dhabi found out how tough it was to get a ports deal here, they decided to buy all the banks instead.
The correct word in this case is “principal.” You were right, happyfeet.
Yeah, they only write the rules.
Frank and Dodd (et al; everyone but Ron Paul, pretty much) are just shepherds for lobbyist-written and exec-turned-regulator-turned-exec-turned-regulator-approved bills that create the “loopholes”/incentives/etc. that cause the arcanely arbitrageable bubbles we’re later bound, by all the same people, to bail out, again and again and again.
They’re corrupt, sure, but they don’t know what the hell they’re doing besides staying paid.
“Push this button, Maverick. You too, O.”
“What does it do?”
“Funds your campaigns.”
“We go on ‘3.’ 1….”
oh. Good. I was thinking the other way looked funny too. I had carnitas enchiladas cause I’d already blown the day with the babka.
Well played, psycho…
This isn’t just about houses and mortgages. Short-term loan freezes are what’s going on to tear shit up. Part of that has to do with houses, in that they’re what funds were loading up on. What we’re bailing out is really the short-term paper.
It looks kinda like those chapters in Atlas Shrugged where the economy first started breaking down….
“What we’re bailing out is really the short-term paper.”
If you can point me at anything in the bill just signed that addresses changing existing accounting practices away from funneling bad paper directly into Federal responsibility, I’ll feel somewhat better…
… because I know asking to see the “and on the second Tuesday of October 2008, will sieze the records and arrest Congressmen Frank, Meeks, Waters….” is just talking crazy.
Won’t see either, though. This “bailout” just gives media a script device to irrevocably link the Republicans to complete and utter ownership of the crash.
Another fantasy? I want states that currently have open party primaries to change to closed. I’d like to vote for a Republican next time around, not the guy Democrats thought they could beat easiest.
The correct word in this case is “principal.â€Â
Leave it to me to be right and still look like an idiot. It’s a gift. Kinda like Joe Biden except with the “right” thing.
#38 the narrative must be converted to how deregulation was not the fly in the ointment of civilization, because that would result in the
archaic ‘Supply Siders’ getting sucked into their own sphincters
where the outside is now the inside, and they are the true ‘insiders’.
I think you are mixing a few metaphors. Maybe you can just skip the fancy anal sphincter metaphors and just explain in plain English how capitalism caused this situation.
Meanwhile, add Barney Frank’s love partner to the list people getting rich off of their Democratic party patronage jobs at Fannie and Freddie, (and who will never see their names in MSM print).
Semanticleo, we don’t blame working people, douchebag. We blame Bawney Fucking Fwank.
What else creates jobs is drilling the energies up from under the ground.
Methane. With your big hard cock.
Drilling is a lot satisfying if you do it right.
Cleo is blaming businesses for making jobs and wants demand-side economics, I guess.
I bet Paulson drives like a Cadillac or something. Something with leather seats I bet.
I blame taxpayers. If alla taxpayers stopped with the paying of taxes, we wouldn’t be in this mess!
Didn’t Goldberg’s book suggest that many regulations are just a way that large concerns use government to eliminate smaller competitors?
Comment by Semanticleo on 10/3 @ 5:27 pm #
Do you speak English?
Inquiring minds want to know.
“We must stop Regulation because it works…………….”
Yea having 57 varieties of gasoline really works good. Having ethanol mandates really works good. Making banks loan to loser really works good.
“Comment by Semanticleo on 10/3 @ 5:50 pm #
I tried to make it simple for you, Alpo. Did I succeed?”
I don’t know, maybe if you tried English.
mandating sales of carbon credits to create new, controlled, buy-it-because-you’re-required markets works really good.
Capitalism actually does like regulations. In fact, they are built right in to the concept from the get go. The primary regulation is called going out of business after making poor business decisions, whether on account of bankruptcy or just loss of market share to competition. Once we eliminate that regulation, we have eliminated capitalism.
@ Comment by dre on 10/3 @ 6:01 pm #
If that’s true, it’s a damn effective technique. Raising the cost of entry keeps competitors out as well.
“……imagine a world free of crime.”
Ahh, the “New Communist Man”.
Or the “New Aryan Man”
Or the “New Obama Man”
The reactionary leftist ideal.
Good luck with that.
I’m heartened though by a vague sense I have that Republicans will behave more better if they are ever in the majority again
The republican rep I voted for says republicans lost majority in 2006 because of the unhappiness with Bush and the war.
I hate the clueless, bailout voting,George Radanovich now.
Does Semenstain ever make a lick of sense?
Apparently, its PRE-traumatic stress disorder is acting up again.
This was like opening your reserve ‘chute skydiving. You can wait until you’re on the ground to repack the main.
We really don’t need to be talking about chute-packing in a thread that mentions Barney Frank. I mean, really…
Whatevs. Here’s what I know: I’m in NY, the State itself is going bankrupt and so’s the US. My folks won’t leave and they’re old, so I gotta hang tight. This is gonna suck ass.
I’m not blaming deregulation b/c that’s exactly what NY state needed this whole time after being cornholed with taxes and fees and eurosocialism. The Gov is asking everybody to cut everything but I’m betting we’ll just get more taxes.
What needs regulation is government. Who the Hell is supposed to be the watchdog there and how do I smack them with a rolled-up newspaper and rub their noses in this shit?
So Cleo, most of this shit was caused from folks cooking the books at Fannie and Freddie trying to get bonuses and keep the ball rolling, fraud on an Enron level. How come nobody is demanding an investigation, do you think?
What needs regulation is government.
Bravo !
Does Tommy Lee Jones play W, cleo, and does he get decapitated at the end?
#42
If you don’t know, just say -I don’t know-. ’cause all this up in your face shit about whatever it is your babbling about just makes you look, you know, dumb.
– Semidork – as is usual you are simply parroting something you heard in the Libturd talking points.
– There are, at last count, no less than 75,000 pages of business and trade “regulations”. The problem is the “regulations” can cut both ways, and they can be “gamed” to set a certain outcome, and they were all these years since the Clinton admin, when additional “regulations” were voted in by the Dem-asses that took all the controls off the housing market lending ptactices, inch by inch over the years.
– Every attempt at correcting the bullshit “regulations” was shot down by the “compassionate” party. You guys need givaways, or you’d never be able to get elected.
– So cut out the shit. Just because McOld
Fart is too much of a fucking wimp to call the Left on their crap doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t know the score. Ok?
What needs regulation is government.
Bravo !
Agree, but I’m afraid we’re entering a phase where most believe that the government is this great frictionless machine that can spit out goodies like trillion-dollar bailouts, trillion-dollar retirement schemes and trillion-dollar healthcare boondoggles without adversely affection so much as the flit of a butterfly’s wings. We’re going to pay dearly for this fantasy.
As Ace put it: “Why is it I fucking know the exact time Sarah Palin had amniotic fluid leakage and I’m just finding this out now?”
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,432501,00.html
Why is that, Cleo?
“How come nobody is demanding an investigation, do you think?’
Careful, someone here might think you’re a serious guy…………
“…shit, farts and crap…”
– You can always tell anyplace the Democrats have been.
>>We’re going to pay dearly for this fantasy.
No shit. Even Lehrer did a doubletake during Obama’s answer to the bailout and what he has to cut back on. Here, we’re talking about something even VT Socialist Bernie fkn Sanders gets – that food and heating is genuinely an issue – and he’s talking about education reform.
Understand this and understand it well semen, you try, you just try and get your marxist program going and I will hunt you down and break you in two.
“How come nobody is demanding an investigation, do you think?”
– Oh don’t worry coloncleaner, its coming. This mess isn’t going to be straightened out for at least a year, maybe more, and you can bet you little Marxist ass there will be investigations, lots of investigations, and some of them won’t be run by the perps.
– Count on it douchenozzle.
This is the thing that’s killing me. McCain pretty much lost whatever remaining independent votes he was hoping to receive by getting this passed without striking the earmarks. If McCain isn’t willing to come out and smack O! in the face for lying about his connections to FMFM then I might as well vote for the libertarians despite their complete denial of the need for military action to defend liberty.
The inmates are officially running the asylum.
I might as well give away all my comic books you gonna make me do stupid homework all the time.
I could see voting Libertarian if we were in a parliamentary system where we build coalition governments and that, but we’re a first past the post system and its way late to get a groundswell going.
Mark Steyn is a friggin’ genius:
“I hadn’t seen her for awhile, not since the halfwits at the McCain campaign walled her up in the witness protection program and permitted visitations only by selected poobahs of the Metamucil networks.
HAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!
via Lucianne.co
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/joe-drill-palin-2178636-mccain-biden
“…What the American taxpayer gets for the Emir of Delaware‘s frequent-flyer miles…”
HAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!!
This bailout sucks. The end.
“What we’re bailing out is really the short-term paper”.
Good idea, I’ll short term papers too, as a protest. Damn college kids.
“Biden was doing his best to turn in a decent karaoke version of Lloyd Bentsen, but, unfortunately, Palin declined to play Dan Quayle. That left Joe sounding like an ancient pol being generically vice-presidential. Sarah, at her best, sounded like the citizen-politician this country’s founders intended. She hasn’t voted 397 times against this or that in the U.S. Senate, because she’s been running a state, and a town, and a commercial fishing operation. She’s a doer, not a talker, which is why so many of my fellow professional talkers disdain her.”
“Comment by cynn on 10/3 @ 7:56 pm #
This bailout sucks. The end.”
Agreed.
A wise commenter the other day pointed out that “regulation” means different things to conservatives and progressives. The thought is worth revisiting.
A conservative sees the purpose of regulation as keeping the machine running efficiently and smoothly. Progressives take the machine for granted, and see regulation as a way to force it to produce the results they want.
Unfortunately, what progressives want is to siphon off resources and power for their own benefit, however much they may disguise that as concern for their clients. The result is that progressive-inspired “regulations” not only interfere with the smooth and efficient running of the machine, they very often prevent it from operating at all.
Either version can be and often is gamed for the benefit of the unscrupulous. Progressive-inspired “regulation” is most attractive, because its purpose is the diversion of resources; the avaricious need only tweak it a bit to channel the diversion their way (see “Franklin Raines”, “Tony Rezko”, et. al.)
What always amuses me, in a black sort of way, about Semanticleo’s position is this: “the rich” have more and closer access to Government than anybody else, particularly “the poor”. (As Jack Vance once pointed out, in that statement you can hear, if you listen closely, the tolling of the sad solemn bell of Inevitability. And before you fall for a too-restrictive definition of “the rich”, recall that Joey Ratzinger is a pauper, owning not even a pair of underwear.) If Government controls a lot of resources, “the rich” have a huge incentive to game it. The solution, according to Semanticleo, is to put Government in control of even more of society’s resources…
Regards,
Ric
Ric: You seem to claim that progressives rig the regulatory system to achieve either/or: an outcome that is in accordance with their pie in the sky aspirations; or they are callously manipulating the system to set themselves up as benefactors. Then you go on to suggest that such a construct is wide open to abuse.
So, do you claim that the same wayward progressives are always the only ones feeding off these shaky regulatory systems? It’s instructive that you and yours only cite “the rich” on my side when you know damn well your own Wall Street cohort and their unbridled greed have played a significant if not instant role in this economic collapse.
Bridled greed is even scarier I think.
Somebody’s wearing a sparkly zing pin on their lapel tonight. Maybe we shouldn’t ought’a, but let’s bust open some whiskey and watah, hmm?
Excellent point Ric,
I hope that after reading your post. Semanticleo will realize that if the rich more access to the government than the poor, how will making the government larger and more intrusive result in greater fairness. At best it can only achieve a bread and circuses lifestyle, but can never eliminate the existence of the patricians and the plebs. Even under the farce of totalitarian communism there was the workers and the apparatchicks…
Thanks for provoking a little thought, Bro…
thor,
Maybe we shouldn’t ought’a, but let’s bust open some whiskey and watah…
Is this a line from an old blues song, or original material? “Cuz it sounds a bit familiar, ‘Cus…
That Wall St. cohort is you and me and everybody with a 401k. Not the top hat Monopoly dude and Uncle Scrooge McDuck.
It seems clear to me from reading Ric’s comments, (and I would concur with this inasmuch as I am correct in my interpretation) that no, bad actors are bad actors regardless of political affiliation. The point is that regulation provides a means by which bad actors can secure an ill-gotten competitive advantage. I quoted P.J. O’Rourke in another thread, but I think it deserves another go:
“When buying and selling is regulated, the first thing to be bought and sold is the regulator.”
urthshu: Then why the compulsion to assign blame? Who the fuck cares? We’re all frogs in the pot.
b/c there is some blame to be assigned, to accept. What I’m saying is that it doesn’t do to say ‘cohort’ this and ‘party’ that. Names and people I’d accept.
Malaclypse: I am simply suggesting that building a swimming pool doesn’t prevent others from pissing in it.
urthshu: So you’re the Rona Barrett of the blogs.
Rona Barrett? WTF? I’m like zaphod…just a guy, you know.
It appears that the even more progressive Europeans are in an even bigger financial mess than we are.
European banks have turned out to be deeper in debt than their US counterparts.
In fact the bailout of AIG was to save their asses.
“We now know that it was French finance minister Christine Lagarde who begged Mr Paulson to save the US insurer AIG last week. AIG had written $300 billion in credit protection for European banks, admitting that it was for “regulatory capital relief rather than risk mitigation”. In other words, it was underpinning a disguised extension of credit leverage. Its collapse would have set off a lending crunch across Europe as banking capital sank below water level.”
Yes. Been following that off and on. There’s been suicides, shipping is failing. Ireland bailed out their banks before we did.
cynn, assigning blame is a byproduct, an unavoidable inefficiency. You’re right, we shouldn’t be concentrating on that — but we cannot identify the causes of the debacle and the necessary steps to avoid another one without considering the steps that brought us to this point, and that will inevitably lead to who took those steps.
Are you aware of the concept of entropy? Work is done by a flow of energy from “hot” to “cold”, from concentrated to dispersed. Once the energy is dispersed it is no longer concentrated, no longer available for us to draw power from its flow; once the water is at the bottom of the hill, it won’t turn the turbine any more. “Entropy” is a measure of that dispersal. It is inevitable; it is part of the process. It has implications surprising to those who learn about it first. Most of the fuel the car uses is to transport its own bulk and mass. Your negligible (in comparison) size barely figures in the equation. That, too, is a form of entropy. It is possible to minimize it; we call the result efficiency; but it is inherent in everything we do.
In the same way, every real process has good and bad byproducts, and eliminating the bad ones distorts the process just as much as twisting the good ones does. In this case, you would like to eliminate the blame-calling and concentrate on the necessary measures to fix the problem; but we cannot know what measures to take until we know what actions have been taken, and trying to deflect blame from those who took wrong action inevitably conceals what those actions were, eliminating even the possibility of determining what to do now. Yes, there are and will be those who dwell lasciviously on name-calling. Think of them as the exhaust of an engine — it’s possible to muffle the racket a bit, but the gases must escape or the car doesn’t go, and there’s a long road ahead.
Your #100 sits right on the point of insight; can you take a step farther? Which is better on a hot summer afternoon, a pool requiring effort and expense to keep the water clean, or ensuring that nobody pisses in the pool by not having one?
Regards,
Ric
This was the first I’d heard that things were happening in Europe.
Now I wonder what is happening in Asia, especially Japan and India.
China we would never really know, they hide all bad and play up any good or just lie if it’s all bad.
Maybe “Chicagobagmanchurian” (h/t SarahW) is more descriptive than I thought.
I wonder if SarahW is ok-feeling… quiet today kind of.
– I have just one thing to add:
“Drill behbeh Drill!!!!
– Knock the crap out of oil prices and watch the value of the dollar and the US economy soar.
happyfeet,
Can you clue me in to what is up with the names “CasSarahW”, “SarahW” (not in orange letters) as opposed to the normal “SarahW” in orange letters. Did someone sockpuppet her?
– The Democrats, driven by their anti-American Left loons, are on an economic suicide march, and I refuse to join them quietly.
Agreed, BBH.
Also need to hang a few of the miscreants who got us to this point.
Frank and Dodd would be a good start.
oh. That’s all our SarahW. CasSarahW is just a play on Cassandra and sometimes she just forgets the orangey. I think someone puppeted her maybe a little bit ago but it was to no real effect. That might have been someone else.
Reverting upthread somewhat, I repeat: Either [conservative or progressive regulation] can be and often is gamed for the benefit of the unscrupulous. I simply think the progressive version is easier to abuse in ways that damage the system most severely.
A crooked conservative politician has to be aware of his corruption. (He may justify it as being by right — “nobility” and similar concepts — but intent to game the system is part of the concept.) Robert Heinlein pointed out that such an individual must without fail do two things: keep his own depredations down, lest he suck so much out that it falls down; and keep watch on others, lest their thievery destroy what they all live on. In contrast, the utterly honest progressive can hand over the whole treasury to the first beggar with a good sob story, and feel only the satisfaction that accompanies broad generosity. The resulting collapse isn’t his fault; he’s done nothing wrong.
Regards,
Ric
For days now c-leo has been humping regulation, obviously a sign that s/he understands the talking point but not the problem.
For Example, I asked this c-leo person a few days ago to please cite any regulation or lack of regulation that would have prevented sub-prime securities from receiving Triple A and A rating, and today (just like everyday since I asked that basic question about the “crisis” and how regulation worked within the financial system), cleo has been unable to come-up with an answer, showing a distinct level of ignorance of the issue that s/he is endlessly rattling on about.
Without the A to AAA rating there is no demand for these securities. Zero, just like now… now that they are listed as “junk”.
The rest is simple; no demand- no predatory lenders, no lenders- no loans, no loans- no collapse, no collapse- no bailout.
Cleo, you won’t find the answer to my question on any of your favorite advocacy sites, this one will require that you think for yourself.
Here is a hint: the answer ain’t more regulation.
“Also need to hang a few of the miscreants who got us to this point.”
– Agreed. But as Ric so e;oquently stated, while we’re replacing the busted muffler, and water corrupted fuel, and leaky rings, and poor health testing and lack of maintainable, we need to identify the cause’s and put in safeguards to avoid those same mistakes again.
– Compassion is a wonderful thing when you can afford it.
Thank you hf.
So many weird names and on so many threads lately.
Nice lady that SarahW. I too hope she is well.
– We covered “regulation” up page. The Left needs to give any glib knockoff talking point they can jury-rig to protect their give-away’s.
– Only the worst parasites, indigents, slackers, and inept in our society, want real full blown Socialism. But the Lefts ideology is so universally rejected in the US that give-aways are the only cards they have. Class warfare, appeals to compassion, all part of the same kettle of fish.
“The Left needs to give any glib knockoff talking point…”
Barney Frank is refellating the bubble. That won’t become a gay lib knockoff talking point I’m thinking.
– The entire Fed income/corporate tax system is redistribution of wealth. The trick is how far you push it. Classically I recall some historian claiming anything greater than 43% across the board in aggregate rings the civil war bell.
– With this bailout added to the cost of war, the question now is; How close are we to that percentage?
– Has anyone checked the minute hand on the doomsday clock lately?
No, BBH, you are railing against the wrong thing. cynn will simply dismiss you as “hating the poor”, and no progress is made.
What to properly rail against?
Consider for a moment the European Convention on Human Rights. It is full of what progressives are pleased to call “positive rights”, as opposed to “negative” ones like free speech. One “positive right” is the “right to nutrition”.
Everybody has a right to decent food, eh? It’s kind. It’s generous. Anybody who argues against it obviously wants poor people to starve. Horrid vile cruel people…
But what if the farmer doesn’t agree? What if the fellow who grows the food thinks he and his family ought to have first pick?
Well, clearly that farmer is a villain, trying to starve the poor people. Equally clearly, we need a third party to enforce the right — to declare the farmer a villain, punish him by taking the food away (and other measures, as indicated), and provide the food to the starving. But by doing so we have created a rich person. Our third party controls the food supply, and resource control is what “rich” is all about. Yeah, yeah, it’s a colorless bureaucrat who draws only a salary — but remember Joey’s underwear. The Church has been wrestling with the problem for a millenium and a half, and I don’t think any honest Jesuit (most of them are) would argue that they’ve really come up with a totally satisfactory answer.
It is the basic contradiction of socialism, and it can’t be eliminated. The farmer is a worker; by fundamental Marxist principle, he is entitled to the fruits of his labor. But the moment he asserts that right, he is and must be declared a villain — he is withholding food from the hungry! Pure eeevile! And, of course, since he is evil, it is simple justice to punish him by taking the food away, and purely Good to deliver it to the hungry. That conflict is inherent and cannot be reconciled.
Similarly, socialism is egalist, levelling; The Rich Must Be Brought Low. But the agency that declares the farmer evil and takes his food for the benefit of the hungry controls the food; it is therefore rich, excuses and misdirections notwithstanding. And, being human, it is certain to respond to the same impulse that led the farmer to feed his family first — they are, after all, Doing Good; there is no reason for them to suffer from it; thou shalt not bind the mouths of the kine that tread out the grain. So sometimes little by little, sometimes in great fell swoops, the agency for Doing Good becomes the Stürmableitung, in control of every aspect of production and enjoying every minute of it. Rich. Specific instances should occur to you immediately…
I don’t know how to break into that worldview, but I do know that anything that can be caricatured as “wanting people to starve” will be, and will accomplish nothing but the reverse of what you want.
Regards,
Ric
cynn
shut up you ignorant slut and take cleo with you
What? You think that “greed” is something NEW? That Wall Street “cohorts” invented it?
IT IS THE HUMAN CONDITION…it is NATURE and our moral “nurture”, from the moment we wake in the morning until we hit the pillow at night is always a struggle with our nature.
AND THE MORE LAWS YOU PASS THE LESS MORALS YOU HAVE.
You know what? Fuck the Republican Party up the arse.
I’ve spent upwards of twenty-five years donating money and time to get Republicans elected. I can’t see the fucking difference.
The Republican Party in Congress just passed a bailout of millionaires and accomplices to fraud — against the will of the electorate.
I’m voting Democrat from now on. If we’re gonna’ have socialism, I want my piece of the fucking pie.
I guess the fucking liberals were right.
I’m about as mad as I’ve ever been at the Federal government.
JeffY
I’m not happy about the “bail out” but if the government is buying assets at a discount and later the government makes back the money they spent, is that a handout?
If there is a forest fire due to mismanagement of the forest, do you allow it ALL to burn down to make a point?
Darleen, I love ya’. I really do. You have always impressed me, and I respect the hell out of you. But I’m fed up, darlin’.
The way I see it, if the investors don’t take a loss, then it’s a handout. If the fraudsters don’t go to jail, it’s a handout. If businesses can get so large that we all have to pay to keep them afloat, then the liberals are right: there’s no difference between government and big business. Both get to tax us at their whim. But big business gets to tax us without giving us representation.
I’m a Democrat now. Then again, what’s the difference?
The problem Darleen is that people sense that all this money won’t change a damn thing, and I think they are right.
Lending models have changed and that means that they have changed for main street.
Make no mistake, this bailout was about picking winners and losers, and it’s been decided that Goldman Sachs is a necessary counter weight to J.P. Morgan.
The Juice will enjoy all this from the Pen.
Damn, that dude was very guilty.
Yes. And this is just what liberals have been saying for decades. I never believed it, until now. Republicans are just socialists who want welfare for big business. Democrats are just socialists who want welfare for identity groups. It’s all socialist.
If Wall St. millionaires can force taxpayers to cover their losses, then I want my fucking piece of the pie, too.
I’m voting Straight Democrat from now on. Straight.
Fuck the Republican Party.
JeffY
This is about the liquidity … I don’t care about speculators, I do care about my retired inlaws conservative portfolio, I don’t care about the mortgage “bundlers”, I care about the small and medium businesses that had their line of credit based on their accounts receivable frozen, I don’t care about ‘big business’ – they have the resources to weather it, I do care about the people who played by the rules and now are losing a job, losing a business, losing their insurance, losing their equity because the oil that keeps the engine of the economy going has been drained from it.
I’ve always be a PRAGMATIC conservative. Do WHAT WORKS, then get in there and fix it. Maybe some Republicans need to be culled from the herd, but the whole Democrat herd is hunkered down on pork mountain and you’re going to join ’em? To watch as other conservatives are punished?
My husband and I bought our house Feb 2007 … and had to practically beat off the brokers who were trying to talk us into ARMs. We even terminated a contract with one who implied we were stupid for insisting on a 30 year fixed. We are no spring chickens so I can see how that might have effected the young and delirious with a “home of their own” dangled in front of them. I have sympathy for them and for me who has lost a ton of equity…but the speculators who bought 3, 4, 5 houses with no money down, no income verification THEY are as much thieves as any bank.
Don’t allow the whole forest to burn when you are just trying to cull the dead wood and the parasitical undergrowth.
“Similarly, socialism is egalist, levelling; The Rich Must Be Brought Low”
That is the tenet that they profess. It’s a marketing tool. The marketers for the most part know it is just that. “Boob bait for the Bubbas” would be the new way of saying it. It is of course only a means to an end, and is a lie which is also true depending on the definitions.
The “useful idiots” are a step up and don’t really believe, but are also deceived that they will be the leaders pets. They will be, but these leaders eat their pets.
The socialist leaders are always slave masters. Socialism is State Slavery. Always.
When the private ownership of slaves was abolished the Party of slavery found a new more comprehensive form to champion. Called Socialism, Fascism, or Communism it matters not. All are the same as the rulers of the State own all others.
Here we still have title to ourselves but the State has a lien and it is growing.
This is what I see and try to fight as I can. I despise leftist political monstrosities that wish to make my child and grandchild their slaves with all my heart and soul.
I have contempt for the mewling “useful idiot”, think they are elite, class in the academy, media and government. When the flames finally reach their toes as they of fed to the leaders they may come to realize their error, may, or may not.
Sorry for the rant but some days after listening to the like of Frank, and now Rangle lecture me on ethics and morality I can’t help it.
Darleen, I’m gonna’ keep coming to these conservative blogs. I am a conservative.
$10,000 per family is being transferred to incompetent businesses, to save incompetent institutional investors, to maintain the buy/sell positions of individual investors who failed in their corporate governance and investment decisions. IF I have to pay them, then I want those assholes to may me, damn it.
I’m voting straight Democrat until the Republican Party ceases to exist. I’ve been stabbed in the back by the RNC and congressional Republicans for the last fucking time. The last fucking time.
Jeff Y,
I think there will be a new party- The Nationalist- and their ranks will be full of non-racist patriots.
Watch for it.
JeffY
Tell me how you would craft it to save the liquidity so the COMPETENT businesses, along with their COMPETENT employees and their employees’ service-on-time-mortgages do NOT get burned down with the incompetent ones?
And how will another conservative party come about when talk radio is shut down, conservative media is shuttered and conservative voices on the net are silenced?
Victor
The Dems will just stand and applaud Republicans burning down their own house, because it only helps them.
How I self-identify
Before I’m a Republican, I’m a conservative
Before I’m a conservative, I’m an American
JeffY,
You sound pissed and it’s understandable. You might try keeping your powder dry and using your vote as leverage. For example, telling your representatives that you will only vote for those whose names are attached to the demand for a immediate and full investigation of Fannie Mae and all its accomplices.
If you vote straight Dem, you’ll be giving credibility to someone like Joe Biden who thinks that telling the American people that he’s doing well now, with his senator’s salary, that afforded him a beautiful home, illustrates how he knows exactly how you’re feeling.
And it cuts every way too. Where is Newt’s online petition asking for a the full investigation? He seems to think his drilling petition had some effect on the situation. C’mon Newt, get off the couch with Nancy and get the Fannie Mae petition going. Why not?
Because the enemy of the people I used to think were my friend should get my full and undivided support…
JD @ #68
Actually, we do have regulation of the government. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, it bacame a “living document.”
This election of 2008 could serve as an object lesson to the power of an involved, invigorated electorate.
Or we’ll allow the Congress to pass November 4th largely unscathed. And we’ll elect a President who is unabashedly intent on redistribution of wealth in pursuit of a socialist utopia.
On the flip side we could take a mighty swipe at the entrenched incumbent culture. At this stage in the game, it simply doesn’t matter which party is in the majority. The Republicans are almost all incumbent and just two years out of majority AND still can’t bring themselves to name names and stand up against the Dems on conservative principles. They have just had enough members cross the aisle to enable the Dems to not only socialize the economy, but in doing so also allowed enough “blue dog” democrats to vote “nay” to have cover for when it’s time to blame the Republicans for the collapse.
We don’t have a conservative choice for President. But there is no question that one candidate loves this country and one that wants to reshape it to collectivist utopia. One has picked a VP that will probably make a great president in 2012.
2008. It’s about choices. Nobody said they were GREAT choices, but they are there.
But we must take out Congress before they take us out. We cannot waste November.
Jeff Y —
Actually, you have been part of the problem ever since you accepted the phrase “corporate welfare”. You have simply come to your epiphany too late to benefit from it. Others have been there before you and skimmed off all the cream.
The bankers and financiers were told, required by law, to implement a scheme that didn’t work, that could not work because it violated the fundamental principles of the system it was based on. They then observed the people who mandated the scheme being congratulated effusively for their unmitigated Goodness, and using that adulation as a lever to install their relatives, friends, dependents, and clients in positions where they could (and did) make the situation worse by siphoning off the benefits. So they came to the same conclusion you have, for the same reasons, and the only real difference is that they were already nearby the Money River and had buckets to hand.
Pharoah told them to make bricks without straw, and was congratulated for his wisdom in finding a new source of fodder for the milk cows that fed the children. Now the building has fallen down, and it is time to whip the slaves for shoddy work; the lash will fall most gently on those who bribed the barn managers, and consequently obtained enough feed to keep their getaway horses in good health; the people who maintained the system by executing anyone who said it wouldn’t work get new, better-paying jobs; and you and I get to clear the mud and rubble away on a half-pound of millet and a glass of water per day, and every time we uncover another body we’ll get another lecture on how incompetent we are as builders. You have volunteered to join the overseers, but they have plenty already, so applications are not being accepted. Sorry.
Regards,
Ric
Jeff Y-
If its just about getting a piece of the pie, why would you then choose to be a Dem loser? You should become a Wall St. ‘fat cat’ if thats the way you see it.
For those who think that ‘the rich’ haven’t been taxed enough, there’s this. When you Robin Hood the economy, taking from the rich to give to the poor, you wind up with less rich people and the system that you created, which is NOT capitalism, fails, everybody loses.
Urthshu,
NY state is simply a microcosm of our entire national economy. Since the theory of globalism took hold in the 90’s, we have allowed an ever larger portion of our economy be dedicated to services until it has reached todays balance where we have a 70/30 services/manufacturing distribution. Just as we thought that it was OK to get our energy from outside sources, so too did we think that we could always get along relying on someone else to make our goods; even to the absurd point of relying on foreign sources for some of the sub-components of our defense systems-especially electronic. But we were trying to keep wages ever spiraling up, and keep costs down; and business liked it because it broke the grip of the unions, who had been squeezing ever increasing percentages of profits out of industry for years. Indeed, we wring our hands and cry about the death of the auto industry in Detroit-istan; but no one wants to face the hard fact that the industry became non-competetive the very day the UAW mandated that even if you swept the floor you had to make 50,000/yr.-in 1982-all in te name of the dignity of labor which is a code word for communism…
While it is a good lever on inflationary pressures, as well as for competition, to have a large variety of goods and services available from outside sources, the bottom line is it would be better overall if our economic balance was closer to 50/50; we would all be better off if we made more goods at home. Folks will just have to accept the fact that if this is our goal, then we can’t expect folks that build cars and washing machines to be paid like doctors…
It is the basic contradiction of socialism, and it can’t be eliminated. The farmer is a worker; by fundamental Marxist principle, he is entitled to the fruits of his labor. But the moment he asserts that right, he is and must be declared a villain  he is withholding food from the hungry! Pure eeevile! And, of course, since he is evil, it is simple justice to punish him by taking the food away, and purely Good to deliver it to the hungry. That conflict is inherent and cannot be reconciled.
Spot on, Ric. I also like to point out that what the government calls surplus the farmer calls seed corn, and feeding it to the needy today doesn’t bode well tomorrow.
Responding to Victor:
>>I think there will be a new party- The Nationalist- and their ranks will be full of non-racist patriots.
Unfortunately, I think this is too optimistic. If the European political changes are anything to go by, their recent experiences indicate a rise in nativist, racially-charged neofascist politics in response to PC-laden nonresponsiveness from their leaders. What we need to guard against is both the far Left and the far Right b/c they both seek scapegoats, if for no other reason.
What a load of falcated shit. And this economy has fallen face down in it.
I have $5 dollars says you’ve never set foot in a real factory, much less performed honest labor in one. You are clueless of which you speak, and it’s obvious, friend.
Bob Reed –
I’m OK with the ‘dignity of labor’ concept as long as they’re saying ‘hey, work is great and everybody should do that rather than collect welfare.’
but yeah, I get you.
I went on the Mrs. Baird’s tour once and saw how they made the breads. After the tour they gave us all a slice of bread and we ate it and then we all got back on the bus. I think the Bimbo people bought them out quite awhile ago.
What we need to guard against is both the far Left and the far Right
Have you read Goldberg’s book, urthshu?
He would argue that we need to guard against fascism, regardless of what it calls itself.
Bob Reed, you ought to unpack and reexamine statements like:
These sorts of statements tend to cause me to believe you do not understand economics at all, let alone well enough to be making recommendations as to how “we” ought to proceed.
– Well thor-boy, I spent over 45 years in factories of one sort or another, in every level of the work force from stockboy to President, and you’re full of shit.
– I have zero respect for rapacious management that seek to exploit the workers, and run away from them the instant they gain a smidgen of political clout, but I have equal disdain for the thugs and scam artists that prey on the work force in the name of faux solidarity.
– Its dog eat dog out there thor-boy, just a matter of which brand of poison you decide to drink. Taking sides in some ridiculously sanctimonious bullshit way just brands you as naive’.
SBP –
Yes, I have a copy and have read it. I know what you’re saying, but I’m sure you know that a far Right version of fascism also exists, even if only to say that they call themselves Right and are not in essence.
It can be argued but I do not intend to get into that argument. If you don’t agree, that’s cool by me.
You must not have been awake for 45-years, much like your days here.
So, I guess you’re in agreement with me, BBH, just admit it.
C’mon, BBH, contradict yourself and defend what that low-IQ maggot said.
– thor-boy, if you actually believe any of the crap you write on here, you’re working at mentality level of a six year old child.
– The working term is “A pox on both their houses”. There’s your start. Maybe, if you have the facilities, you can grow from there.
– Your feeble attempts to silence others is yet another sign of immaturity.
we have allowed an ever larger portion of our economy be dedicated to services
If by this you mean that the government, environmental wackos and NIMBYs have actively prevented other forms of enterprise such as extractive resource development (that’d be drilling, mining, logging, etc) and manufacturing then yes by all means, we have allowed this to happen.
I could tell you were an old salty prejudice pretzel long ago from your myopia.
Admit it, old factory hand, there have been good moments bad for both unions and management, there’s examples of good unions and good management versus others, and there’s good and bad policies within each, as well.
Organized labor understood labor better than Henry Ford and both, at times, benefited. Say it or you’re a weather-beaten liar.
– Of course there is good and bad on both sides. No one that has the experience of being in the trenches would be stupid enough to say otherwise.
– Which is exactly the point junior. That is precisely why making sweeping generalizations, such as the sort all young inexperienced turks like yourself are given too, are so short sighted, and dumb. An experienced individual has been around the block enough to know you take every case on its own merits. Blind anger, impulsive obedience, and a lack of balanced introspective, just gets your young ass in a world of trouble.
– Apparently the whole message I gave you went right over your head once again.
Oh, and here’s one of the community organizers Obama worked with (Ms. Augustine-Herron) describing the difficulty of ‘retraining’ those who work in manufacturing.
What you-thinks, Thomas D, is worth as much as the fluids on the floor of the factory bathroom, you insulting pussy-ass cocksucker.
You are the American idiot.
I’m beginning to picture thor as Sally Field up on a table screaming “union,” and then ringing a bell as he’s escorted out the door — to the applause of folks on the other side of the screen who’d just paid $4.00 for popcorn.
Bad breakfast burrito, I suspect.
I have $5 dollars says you’ve never set foot in a real factory, much less performed honest labor in one. You are clueless of which you speak, and it’s obvious, friend.
I have $10 that says you can’t name three benefits the union has given the working man.
Sharon Stone wanted to botox her kid’s stinky feet. You guys should call your mothers. Tell her you love her.
Thor is invaluable. A text version of the pictures Zombie takes reminding us all in every thread how the left views the world and all in it.
Thank you thor. You are a lighthouse showing the dangerous shallow waters lie.
showing where
Way to address the quoted material loserboy. The SSDI quip hit a little too close to the truth, did it?
Sorry, thor, as many have valiantly tried to tell you here, pushing buttons is just not what it’s cracked up to be by your teachers, peers, and employment counselors. They seemed to have envisioned eternal infanthood as a viable economic possibility – you have my condolences.
[…] us the Iron Heel; Edward Bellamy gave us the parable of the water tank; so leave it to Ric Locke to explain a few sticking points in the narrative of a capitalist dystopia / seemless socialist Utopia, by providing us with the […]
– One of the remarkably wonderful things about life I’ve found through the years, is that every time you think you have your finger on the pulse of “truth”. you get hit by another Mac truck of epithany.
– Makes it all very worthwhile.
Bah, thor. Anybody who doesn’t understand that unions contributed to American prosperity is an idiot who doesn’t grok history — and anybody who doesn’t understand that unions, today, are closed guilds designed to maximize their own profits and political power with minimum contribution isn’t paying attention. Things do not stay the same over time, expecting them to is stupidity, and claiming that they have when they clearly have not is the mark of a fool.
You brought up Henry Ford, so let’s hark back to him — not the poisonous, embittered, embattled old man of the Thirties, fighting (as he saw it) for his life and willing to go to any extreme to do so, but the optomistic, forward-looking fellow who set up shop in Dearborn and announced that workers should, in general, be paid as much as possible, so that they could afford to buy the cars they built.
Union organizers of the day saw the problem as one of power — employers had power, and the appropriate response was to set up an offsetting power structure. The problem with that is the same as with any power structure: it is a magnet for people who want power and don’t care how they get it, or what the putative point of the structure might be. So suppose, instead, an alternate Universe in which Walter Reuther had seen the problem in terms of ownership.
In that Universe, Reuther might well have set up a Workers Investment Corporation, which collected dues from its membership and used the funds to buy stock in manufacturing companies. The Henry Ford of 1910 – 1919 would almost certainly have gone along; indeed, he tried to set up something like that on his own, later when it was too late, and came within inches of losing control of the company when Reuther, Sloan & Co. bought up the stock after the Crash.
There were plenty of models around at the time. (Few people are aware that the Fraternal Associations — Shriners, Odd Fellows, and the like — were primarily mutual investment vehicles designed to provide loan collateral and retirement income to their members, with the social functions we know today entirely secondary.) The factory owners and Wall Street movers and shakers would have tried to game the system, but that is an obvious matter for regulation, with the advantage that such regulations would make sense in capitalist terms and would be hard to oppose on reasonable grounds.
Now, after most of a century of constant regular purchases, the Workers Investment Associations would own American industry, or would certainly be majority stockholders in the bulk of it, with seats on the Boards and first dibs on any and all profits. Would workers have accepted the concept of taking modest wages now, with further income derived from the profits/dividends on Company stocks and deferred income in the form of “nest egg” retirement plans? They wouldn’t if that deal were offered by the Company, and they would be right to reject it — but I’m talking about an investment vehicle managed by and for the workers. The workers are supposed to own the means of production, are they not?
Regards,
Ric
Workers of the World, unite! – heh, the slavery resulting from “Organised Labor”.
…and anybody who doesn’t understand that unions, today, are closed guilds designed to maximize their own profits and political power with minimum contribution isn’t paying attention.
There’s good Evolution, then there’s bad Evolution – the kind that produces extinction – no?
“I have $5 dollars says you’ve never set foot in a real factory, much less performed honest labor in one. You are clueless of which you speak, and it’s obvious, friend.”
Hey, thor, over here.
I enlisted in the Marines in 1980. There were two recurring themes: Southern kids following in dad’s/uncle’s footsteps, or unemployed steel and auto workers from the rust belt.
My bunkie at graduation was a twenty three year old native of Flint, Michigan. He was a third generation UAW guy. And his last year of working three shifts a week instead of five, he was paid for four shifts a week, because it was “fair”. He was a nice guy. Awfully hard to get motivated, though.
If anyone is old enough to remember the Oil Embargo, Texas was changed forever after 60 Minutes broadcast their story of the Texas/Oklahoma boom. We had a huge summer of discontent in 1976; literally thousands of people from rust belt towns descended on the Lone Star State and then ended up living on welfare in the slums of Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston after they figured out that Texas was an open shop state and you worked the job, not the clock. I will admit to prejudice here; my dad was saddled with an “assistant” that required more baby sitting than my youngest sibling, and it took almost six months to get rid of him.
When we moved to Utah in ’92 I signed up with a temp agency and ended up working fifty in five at a local table manufacturing outfit. I started sweeping floors and running parts. Then assembly (the tables at that time were vacuum molded plastic assembled over a screwed/glued poplar/luan plywood frame), then into the wood shop.
At three months, still working shifts as a contract employee, I worked with the production engineer in the redesign of the wood shop area layout. We redesigned the storage, workspace, and the dust collector system. That last was at my insistence because I was able to prove via ICBO standards that what we had was already deficient AND that increasing capacity would make the next expansion (growth company – you should see them now). We executed the plan over two sixteen hour shifts on a weekend. The Engineer left after he watched me lay out the table, mod rack, and track spots and drill the first anchors. Four people moved, reanchored, and calibrated the saws, planers, shapers, band saws, t-nutting presses, and their associated feed/outfeed mechanisms. We had a sheet metal contractor in simultaneously replacing the eight inch ducts with 12″ and once he understood my plan, he and his guy were able to work without interruption for the day it took them to do their thing.
Went back to work the following Monday, and worked an eight. And an eight the day after that. And until I left the outfit, the wood shop worked eight because we buried the assembly side of the plant every time the bell rang. Those that needed the time (from the wood shop) were welcome to work in Trim or Recovery (trying to save poorly executed tables) or any other department that needed help and was still running when we got finished.
They offered to buy my contract at the fifth month, but I was already in process to join up with my first Utah survey outfit. They would hire me at double my pay as a contract, with better benefits… but that would have been less than they were paying to the contract outfit. So I counter offered, they said no, and we parted friends. The PE is one of my neighbors still.
And then they found somebody else, and went on to have a fine future.
Nothing wrong with factory work. But it shouldn’t be expected to pay much if all you do is hang quarter panels. The decades’ worth of coddling UAW and the Steel Workers should have killed at least one of the big three by now; I am frankly surprised that GM is still kicking; they are paying some significant percentage of their payroll to people who show up and sit in rooms off the production floors. Their jobs are gone, but under union rulz they still get paid. One of my daughter’s friends has a father back east who does that for a living.
I’m not damning Unions here, thor. I’m damning decades of overreach and poorly thought out policies. It’s not nearly just our congress who shouldn’t be trusted. There’s plenty of that wealth to spread on that account. Or loss. It’s so hard to tell any more.
– There is, however, a system that carries with it the distribution of both wealth and responsibility. Ford came close to it, but too late as Ric enumerated.
– The modern model of it is embodied in companies like Lincoln Electric. Entire geberations of families have enjoyed prosperity, continuous emplyment, ownership, and yes distributed responsibilities.
– Our founding fore fathers utilized the principles and ingrained them into our form of government. probably as a result of disdain for the European “Royalty” model they flrd from, joined with a sense of pragmatism, a healthy understanding of human nature, and a desire for real self determination and freedom.
– Ric can explain it far better than I. Maybe we can prevail on him to elucidate it further. I know the principles, but lack the prose.
– As in all human enterprise, incentive is not without its share of problems, but thats not the point. Its that overall the trend would be to self suffiency and efficiency. Even the most belligerent among us does not generally act to his or her own detriment, other than the most extreme of cases, and those will always exist in any system or society.
– You might call “incentive” Socialism without the utopia.
Because the enemy of the people I used to think were my friend should get my full and undivided support…
JeffY, congrats, you are now officially a useful idiot.
Moving on…
I keep hearing that we are sliding towards more socialism, but to me it’s starting to look like the further consolidation of fascism. National media, check. Banking, check. Next, ENERGY!!
OK, McCain gets elected, we become socialist. Obama gets elected, we become fascist. That sound like the rock and the hard place we find ourselves between?
Look, Ric, you seem like a nice enough guy, and a thinker-type, but don’t empty your swelled head as if your quoting fuckin’ Jesus H. Christ himself. You’re wrong. Game as you are in debate you don’t have much past passing knowledge concerning the topic markets and bonds.
Example:
Yours is a invalid statement, Ric. Just like your prior explanations of the “market,” a “market” which you seem to know nothing about outside of empty words in a dictionary. You don’t know how the system works nor how the assets are/were traded within the system, specifically the ones that caused the problems.
They do, and workers are the majority shareholders in many of today’s companies. RBC DainRauscher, Goldman Sachs, ever hear of ’em? Employees own the majority of stock, it’s called equity sharing. Your platitudes painting one side as good and the other as bad don’t work. BTW, Henry Ford didn’t hire goons to beat people up for no reason. He couldn’t win the war of ideas fair and square.
I’m hoping for McCain, at least Palin gives us a chance for a future.
Biden is nothing but a placeholder expected to do exactly nothing. Have we heard anything about what an Obama cabinet might look like? I’m thinking alot of the left/MSM doesn’t even want to think about that. And any guesses as to what types would follow on after an Obama administration?
You don’t know how the system works nor how the assets are/were traded within the system, specifically the ones that caused the problems.
and you do? Then why don’t you actually try and give an explanation to back up your empty assertions?
Have we heard anything about what an Obama cabinet might look like?
Have you heard what a McCain cabinet might look like? There is considerable overlap in the two I’m betting.
– Equity sharing is a start, but it falls far short of a true “shared responsibility” system. You’re still at the mercy of a handful of power brokers who’s main objective is to line their own nests.
– True ownership gives a real voice in the company operations to every employee. Without that, as an employee, you still have no power over your destiny. Unions cannot give you that. All they can do is try to force managements hand, and in most cases its just a fight over the crumbs.
– True employee ownership obviates the need for unions.
Baracky won’t win. No way. His media is floundering already. They’ve taken so many issues off the table they’re left having to do 8-minute interviews with scientology morons who are incapable of original thought.
Uh huh, thor. There is no forest, only trees, right?
Therefore the right thing to do is denounce Goldman, Sachs & Co. as “rich capitalists and regard the funds they’ve collected as a piggy-bank to raid at will to support social programs, right?
Regards,
Ric
Coming up next on NPR we will respectfully interview an abjectly drooling idiot oh and also Daniel Schorr says Governor Palin is teh stoopid. Stay with us.
– In an ownership system, with the vast majority of the citizenry gainfully, and responsibly employed, the outliers would be easily covered by volunteer charitable organizations.
– There would be little or no need for “welfare programs”, and it would be the kiss of death foe any sort of Socialism.
– So expect Socialists in general to fight to the death against any sort of incentive based initiative. Ditto all unions.
– That isn’t the Fascism they both envisioned.
Thor quotes Ric:
The bankers and financiers were told, required by law, to implement a scheme that didn’t work, that could not work because it violated the fundamental principles of the system it was based on.
Then says:
Yours is a invalid statement
What is invalid?
I think nishis most annoying habit is arguing by assertion, now thor has added it to his bevy of annoyance.
You need to spend some time with Ann Coulter thor. She will fill you in.
The mortgage securities are/were priced initially by the underwriter then in the market. That’s the “fundamental principles of the system.”
There market at work is the problem. The origination loans, though you could make the case that they were misrepresented, are not the problem. Everything has a market price, and in this case that’s what sets the yield.
If you understood the imperfections of the market you’d get it. This narractive would move away from simple platitudes and into specifics.
“If you understood the imperfections of the market you’d get it. This narractive would move away from simple platitudes and into specifics.”
– You are certainly right that “no one knows” what the breaking point of collateral to credit ratio actually is, but at this point what we do know is that 1 to 100 (Fannie & Freddie), an 1 to 48 (market to market), and 1 to ~38 (direct floating credit), do not work.
– We just spent 750 billion tax dollars learning that lesson, and we still don’t have the answer.
– Prudence, and a healthy attitude of self preservation. would seem to dictate we start small on those ratios and inch our way upwards slowly, wouldn’t you say?
If you understood the imperfections of the market you’d get it. This narractive would move away from simple platitudes and into specifics.
Don’t let others misunderstanding stop you from getting to specifics thor. let us have the illuminating revelations that everyone here feels you studiously avoid posting.
Yes, I would. I’d also say that we didn’t need to gift $700-billion. We should have looked for a market solution. But that’s not Bush’s style. His deficit budgets have left us with no rainy day money to take care of these unexpected problems.
Reaganomics is dead. Lowering taxes and running deficits as a method of stimulating the economy was always a stupid idea and always will be. That’s how history will be written.
Well, except when numbers are involved.
Lowering taxes and running deficits as a method of stimulating the economy was always a stupid idea and always will be.
Great! Lets lower taxes and eliminate government largess. Both proven winners for business.
“Yes, I would. I’d also say that we didn’t need to gift $700-billion. We should have looked for a market solution.”
– This diametric thinking is why I generally refuse to argue with an indoctrinated Lefty on economics.
– You start off exactly right understanding that “incentive”, and a reasonable establishment of a credit line at some workable prudent level, is the one and only thing that powers the private sector.
– Then you spin off into the Liberal dogma on “Reagonomics”, driven by your single minded hate for anything that interferes with your nannystatism.
– You loathe anything that threatens your pork barrels. You’re not against the war because it involves human suffering, you’re against it because it drains welfare dollars.
– Minimum taxation, coupled with lowered government spending, set at just a few percent above a balanced budget is the “credit” in the governmental sector, the same incentive alive and well in a healthy private sector.
– That you sit there and advocate the one, understanding what primes the pump, and turn right around and deplore exactly the same engine in the enterprise of governance shows your ideological blinders.
Thor is, or used to be, employed in what we laughingly refer to as the “finance industry”. As such, he has seen first hand the intricate deals and machinations, and dealt one-on-one with the people who perform them; and, based on that experience, he tells us that they’re all scumbags and swindlers, lying us and to one another about what they’re up to and how it all works.
And he’s right. It’s a tissue of lies, swindles, and fabrications, given credibility and gravity by the use of big words and obfuscation. But he’s forgotten this picture. See that? It’s a desert island in space, ninety-three million miles from any source of positive input, surrounded by nothing and subject to the slings and arrows of outrageous meteorites. The thin scum of organic contamination on its surface is trivial, irrelevant. It’s also us.
Gold, we hear, is valuable. Why is that? It’s dirt. You dig it out of the ground, somewhere on that blue-tinted sphere. What makes it different from sandstone, or shale, or nematodes for that matter? Get yourself a shovel…
“Wealth”, “prosperity”, and “money” are all lies we tell one another. When Company A wants to borrow money and bank B says “here’s your check”, both of them are fully aware that it’s a lie. The bank doesn’t have that money; that check is as rubber as a Superball. But they, and the rest of the system, agree to support the lie. A deposits the check back in the bank, which solemnly registers the increment in funds; when A writes a check for a new machine or a worker’s wages, the bank will honor it with another lie because that money doesn’t have any real existence. Furthermore, the bank registers that deposit as an increase in the amount available to “back up” loans, and based on that can loan even more to C, D, and E, and even consumers. Every penny of it is a lie, a pure fabrication with no basis in reality.
What makes it work is the mutual agreement among all parties (some, many, of whom are ignorant of just what they’re agreeing to) to play the game, to treat the lies as truth, to shuffle things around fast enough and cover their missteps with enough obfuscation to keep it from all falling down.Yeah, we’re gonna pay it back, they say. And they will — with more lies. There are a myriad possible failure points, any one of which could bring the whole system down around our ears.
What did fail was a fundamental failure in the system: it tried to incorporate people who wouldn’t go along with the system of lies, who not only weren’t willing to claim that they’d pay it all back, they considered the responsibility of paying it back to be somebody else’s problem. It could have happened anywhere in the system. This is where it did happen, and arguing about which of the lying swindles is the one that failed misses the point.
Regards,
Ric
Ric, that was awesome.
Maybe, BBH, I have confidence in the creative swindlers who created these “toxic” securities to create a “market” anti-septic.
While you load up on political theory labels and drool Reaganisms just realize a balanced budget was always correct, and whatever tax is required to balance the budget is the lowest tax in the long run, because interest paid on them bonds that finance a budget deficit get expensive with time.
It’s called a false economy. Reagan was a economic numbnut. “Fools” is how history will peg Bush and Reagan.
Hide, run, shield your eyes, BBH, I don’t care. I’m more the capitalist. You’re more the poseur.
It’s like when you get a membership at Bally’s you think you’re just paying monthly dues but it’s actually a finance agreement at a ridiculous stupid interest rate. If you’re smart what you do is you go to their website and just pay the whole thing off. But it’s these finance agreements what they sell, not fitness. Also you have to worry about staph infections.
Rather than adjust the tax to match the budget how’sabout we adjust the budget to minimize the taxes?
– Thats interesting thor.
– You understand fully that a “balanced budget” in the private sector. in other words zero growth, would bring the entire financial system to a standstill (see 2008 money market crash/Congressional bailout bill).
– But then you find the exact same idea unworkably wrong in the tax revenues/government spending system.
– Actually, since its a basically forced form of wealth redistribution, the tax system needs more help in terms of “credit” (think overspending ratios) than the private sector does.
– But I’ll leave it to you to ponder why.
Ric –
Am I out of line by proposing that the system depends on voluntary acknowledgement of value and obligation… and the corollary being that once a player abandons that convention, the system fails?
I think the government stopped worrying about value sometime back in the seventies. It’s about the only way I can frame the issue and half way understand it.
If you go back to the birth of the CRA and then follow the timeline that business and government danced down afterward, I see a dedicated effort on the part of business to turn the bad faith of government back on itself.
All the money in the world couldn’t protect producers from the vandals of Washington. But it could buy defense by favor, and by depth… and it worked, because the business folks believed the value existed, where the congresscritters were just gaming another asset in their path to power.
“Rather than adjust the tax to match the budget how’sabout we adjust the budget to minimize the taxes?”
Oh, now that’s just crazy talk.
/sarcasm; the bitter, bitter kind.
Gold, we hear, is valuable. Why is that? It’s dirt. You dig it out of the ground, somewhere on that blue-tinted sphere. What makes it different from sandstone, or shale, or nematodes for that matter? Get yourself a shovel…
To be fair, gold does have valuable properties, tensile strength and purdyness being the main ones.
Shale has value if it’s got oil in it. You can barely keep copper wires in the conduit these days, what with thieves knocking out traffic signals for blocks.
Checks are honored due to the fact they theoretically can be replaced with something of equal value. Property, wages of labor, commodities, whatever.
In this case, due to the concept of subprime loans, the lines of equal value became blurred, and through bundling became invisible, resulting in instability and a corruption rich environment.
Somehow I think our new “rescue bill” will fall short in correcting the problem.
Zero growth? Excuse me? Commercial paper and t-bills are not what we’re talking about. But a 90-day ever-revolving line of debt is still debt, it’s simply a different market. You balance your payments annually, interest expenses included.
“…But a 90-day ever-revolving line of debt is still debt.”
– Yes, yes it is, and for instance in the case of FMFM, the collateral to debt ration finally approached effectively 0 to 100 on millions of mortgages, thereby transforming that market into a super-high leveeaged short term loan base, and to use Rics analogy, a market wherein the lendee was refusing to honor the “lie”, simply because he or she could not. This was becoming true as well to a lessor extent in the credit card market.
– BTW, I absolutely agree the bailout wasn’t the way to go, at least not in that form. As a number of wiser heads on the hill pointed out, the gov. could have extended the insurance of said loans at a fraction of the 700 billion, and avoided much of the risk they incur if they end up buying bad debt paper.