Political Matrix

[oabmarcus]

Well I don't think I agree with your conclusion. The government did start out with good intentions, modeled after the 'new deal', and they have to act withing the bounds of the public sphere. And the people simply did not see the bubble, they simply saw the house market expanding, living that 'American dream'.  I mean, for me, the main lesson is that one should not act out of a populist attitude, but rather be concerned with the overall good of the economy, but of course this would most likely lead to them not being reelected, and hence the cycle.

But, I don't think we should just blame everything on the "bubble". There is a property bubble in China right now, and what is their government doing? Aggressively implementing lending restrictions, cracking down on speculation, increasing reserve ratio at banks, etc... Our government, yes, the one that was bought and paid for by the rich, ignore everything. Greenspan, who I believe would agree 100% with Franco, believed in deregulation, he was ultimately responsible for the bubble. Not the poor people who didn't understand their loan agreements.

[Philoctetes]

But, I don't think we should just blame everything on the "bubble". There is a property bubble in China right now, and what is their government doing? Aggressively implementing lending restrictions, cracking down on speculation, increasing reserve ratio at banks, etc... Our government, yes, the one that was bought and paid for by the rich, ignore everything. Greenspan, who I believe would agree 100% with Franco, believed in deregulation, he was ultimately responsible for the bubble. Not all those poor people who didn't understand their loan agreements.

Well Greenspan is an assclown.

Well China I think is a very different situation from ours. I mean their GDP is insane, and their economy is more stable, seemingly. I've not really looked into their situation in depth.

[Franco]

Unfortunately the idea of little regulation is long past.  We have allowed government interventions for so long, over 100 years, in the market that now there is no turning back, and yes, we are stuck now with government moving the economy like a pinball careening from bubble to bust. 

If one were so inclined he could read the history of government intervention in the market in the two decades before the "Great Depression" and see how banking laws and regulations set the table for the massive numbers of bank failures.  Which then led to more government intervention with the New Deal (which btw did not solve unemployment, WWII did that) - then the Great Society - and so on.

Sadly, that train has long left the station.

[oabmarcus]

Unfortunately the idea of little regulation is long past.  We have allowed government interventions for so long, over 100 years, in the market that now there is no turning back, and yes, we are stuck now with government moving the economy like a pinball careening from bubble to bust. 

If one were so inclined he could read the history of government intervention in the market in the two decades before the "Great Depression" and see how banking laws and regulations set the table for the massive numbers of bank failures.  Which then led to more government intervention with the New Deal (which btw did not solve unemployment, WWII did that) - then the Great Society - and so on.

Sadly, that train has long left the station.

give me one example of any country in the world. Whose economy is robust right now because of a lack of regulation, go.

[Daverz]

The lending industry is one of the most regulated, but if lenders are told to produce loans to low income people by government regulators, they are encouraged to let people claiming incomes they cannot document buy homes they cannot afford and write the loans anyway.

So the banks were forced to lend money to people they knew could not pay back the loans?  Riiiight...

[oabmarcus]

So the banks were forced to lend money to people they knew could not pay back the loans?  Riiiight...

Exactly, believe or not, there were strong demand (from institutional investors, hedge funds, etc...) on MBS and later CDOs. But, there was only a fixed number of mortgages. Guys like Lewis Ranieri made a killing buying and selling mortgage backed bonds, so of course, when existing mortgages ran out, there was a huge financial incentive for him to lobby the government to pass laws to create more shitty mortgages for him to trade and profit from.

[Philoctetes]

So the banks were forced to lend money to people they knew could not pay back the loans?  Riiiight...

Well forced is a strong term, coerced is a better one. Though I explained this in part in an earlier post.

[knight66]

I do not believe in giving up ANY of my freedoms to feel safer.  Give me liberty or give me death.

Well; which is it to be?

NB you have already given up lots of your freedoms. Let us know when the hemlock goes on to brew.

Mike

[kishnevi]

I am perfectly aware of who pressured Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac to lower the lending standards, the democrats. But, do you know who pressure these democratic senators to lower the lending standards? Want to take a guess? Wall street bond traders! Yep, those people who first came up with mortgae backed securities needs more crappy Mortgages to sell to their customers, so they lobbied the politicians hard to ease the lending standards. EVERYTHING, and remember everything, came from the Wall Street, the rich run this country, don't ever forget that.
Your argument has been used countless times, as a talking point FOR deregulation. Well, let's construct a thought experiment. Let's peel off some of the government regulations we have right now, and let's see where we would end up:

1) It's a law that people who have insider information inside a company can't trade their stocks without disclosure to SEC first. Let's take that away. Suppose I own company XYZ, for which you are also a share holder. Your entire pension consisted of investment in this single stock. Well, I also happen to be a crook, I knew that my XYZ is nothing but a fraud. I faked my financial statements, reported high earnings(actual earning=0), but everything has been a sham. Knowing this (being the only one), i sold all my holding of the XYZ company and profited enormously, I fled the country to live on some remote island. Your life savings are decimated, XYZ stock goes to 0.

government? or no government? you decide

let's peel off more regulations, let's say publicly traded companies don't even have to disclose their financial statements to the public.

2) Say my company ABC, a legit publicly traded company. Is hemorrhaging money this whole year, but I am not obligated by law to disclose the actual profitability of my company. For my sake (I own shares in the company), i tell the people on the outside that the company is doing great, we are making more money than ever,  come and invest in our stock, etc.... you also happen to be an investor, you hold x amount of ABC stocks. One day, knowing the company is rapidly falling off a cliff, i rapidly sell off all of my shares, the price of ABC tumbles to 0, the company files for bankruptcy, your pension is gone.

in a "free" system such as the one you suggest, how does an investor from the outside, e.g YOU, prevent something like this to happen? You tell me.

Well, first off, the investor would follow one of the prime rules of investment: diversify.  Don't out all one's eggs in the same basket.   If you invest in ten companies, one may go bust and you lose one tenth of your money.  But you'll keep nine tenths of the rest.

And do his own research, don't trust the company's propaganda.

In other words, if you are foolish enough to trust all your money to one company, too bad.  Your folly does not require me to come help you.  (Of course, there would be no rule to say that I shouldn't help you--if I choose to do so.)

The same sort of view informs the libertarian attitude on the "War on Drugs".  First, it's battling human nature.  Second,  anyone who wants to should be free to use drugs.  If they want to ruin their lives, or are foolish enough to risk ruining their lives,  that's their choice, and it must be allowed.  But, on the other hand, there should be no expectation that because they have ruined their lives,  I should help them--no welfare.  Again,  it must be my choice whether or not their situation (or the situation of spouses and children dependent on them) warrants me helping them as an individual.

But notice that your examples would all involve fraud by the company management, meaning the busted stockholders could sue them for their losses or they could be criminally prosecuted, depending on the exact circumstances.  This without any intervention from government regulation.

Regulation works only if there would be an iron wall by which regulators and regulatees could be divided forever.  But unfortunately the pool of potential regulators is also the same as the people work in the business that is regulated.  No one else has the requisite knowledge that is needed if regulation is to have any chance of working.

Instead what you have is a nexus of business and regulators--FDA and Big Pharma, for instance, operating hand in hand, usually to the benefit of Big Pharma.

[Teresa]

Your "Progressive" agenda is nothing but an effort to force your wacky religion on EVERYONE.

I have no agenda, I have deeply held progressive ideas that I believe will make society better with all of my heart.  And since I believe in FULL DEMOCRACY, then improving society has to be voted in by a majority of the people.  As Mick Jagger said "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need" If one gives just because of a few obsticals one is NOT very dedicated to their beliefs

This may be the most hilariously ironic statement I've seen all year!

Did you watch Josquin des Prez's YouTube?  it was the goofiest, sexist and most anti-woman diatribe I have every watched, it proves to everyone that he gets his goofy ideas unintelligent people.

Her thread on "Progressives" already made quite clear that she supports totalitarianism as long as it's justified by pretty rhetoric.

This is a bald face lie, as it does not.  You need to learn how to read.  I am for complete democracy (one person, one vote) with no corrupting influences of corporations. 

All of my political positions are pro-people, pro-decency and pro-freedom.  Universal Social Security, Guaranteed right to a job, Living Wages, Universal Health Care, Affordable Housing, etc. 

Platform of the Greens/Green Party USA

Here is a chart showing The Real Difference between Democrats, Republicans and the Green Party.

(bet she loved "the Workers' Paradise").

You would loose that bet, for one thing, the Soviet Union was never a Worker's Paradise, as I have proven before it was STATE CAPITALISM, they just exchanged one set of exploiters (the Tzars) for another.  See  "The Origin of Russian Communism (FIU, 1960, 1948, 1937), p. 128. CAPITALISM - SOVIET UNION; EXPLOITATION; SOVIET UNION - STATE CAPITALISM 20021015"   Here is a quote: "Soviet Russia is a country of state capitalism which is capable of exploitation no less than private capitalism."

Indeed from a historical perspective the only places that had real communism were the short-lived Paris Commune and the hippy communes in Arizona.  The Soviet Union, China, North Korea and Cuba are all frauds, using communist promises as a ruse to exploit citizens.  When citizens of the Soviet Union complained that this is not what was promised, they replied it would not work until the whole world was communist.  BULL-CRAP, it was a ruse to instill a totalitarian government and enslave it's people pure and simple.  Evil leaders do this all the time, such as the capitalists revolutions in South American which brought awful totalitarian regimes.   That is why maintaining democracy is so important.   

[Teresa]

Well; which is it to be?

NB you have already given up lots of your freedoms. Let us know when the hemlock goes on to brew.

Mike

I have NEVER voted to give up any of our freedoms.  Some were taken away by the misnamed "Patriot Act" which every American patriot was against.  The Government is using terrorism as an excuse to take away more and more of our freedoms.   

Guess I need to keep that hemlock handy.

[kishnevi]

All of my political positions are pro-people, pro-decency and pro-freedom.  Universal Social Security, Guaranteed right to job, Living Wages, Universal Health Care, Affordable Housing, etc. 

Platform of the Greens/Green Party USA

Teresa--for all those goodies, someone has to pay for them.  So who pays for them?

And who decides which job is guaranteed to you? Suppose a total incompetent is hired?  Are you just stuck with him forever?

And since those people will have no choice except to pay for them, or take the job offered them, or hire the person assigned to them, then they have lost their freedom, haven't they?  If the government can tell me how to run my business or do my job or decide for me which societal goals (I'd pick universal health care and education as the most important ones myself, but other people can and do differ) are the most important, then how am I free?

Your ideals are nice and compassionate, and in the abstract I agree with them--probably everyone here would agree with them to some degree--but to put them in practice as government policy is the reverse of freedom.

[Teresa]

I took the test after all but I repeat: these tests do oversimplify. For example: I answered "neutral" for the question about minimum wages. It depends on whether there is a Basic Income system or not.

Without Basic Income I want minimum wages up
With Basic Income I want minimum wages kept as they are or down a little bit.

Just one example how things are linked together, something that these gallups tend to ignore.


Economic score: -5.16
Social score: -5.22

Your score pegs you as economically leftist and socially libertarian.

Economic leftists mostly support strict economic controls and programs to assure that the poor are elevated to a higher position in society.

Social libertarians generally believe that the government should not judge morality, and are generally against the illegalization of things that do not directly affect other people in a negative way. Many strong social libertarians may also be social progressives, favoring legislation to correct what they see as socially backwards governmental regulation, although some simply wish for the government to make little judgment on social matters.

We were not as close as I thought we would be. 
My economic score was -8.65 yours -5.16
My social score was -6.09 yours -5.22

You were pegged as economically leftist I was pegged as economically socialist

We were both pegged as socially libertarian.

[Teresa]

Teresa--for all those goodies, someone has to pay for them.  So who pays for them?

And who decides which job is guaranteed to you? Suppose a total incompetent is hired?  Are you just stuck with him forever?

And since those people will have no choice except to pay for them, or take the job offered them, or hire the person assigned to them, then they have lost their freedom, haven't they?  If the government can tell me how to run my business or do my job or decide for me which societal goals (I'd pick universal health care and education as the most important ones myself, but other people can and do differ) are the most important, then how am I free?

Your ideals are nice and compassionate, and in the abstract I agree with them--probably everyone here would agree with them to some degree--but to put them in practice as government policy is the reverse of freedom.

Logic has to be used in matching a person to a job.  First the if job seeker knows what kind of job they want that should be what should be offered.  If the job seeker does not know there are aptitude and job interest tests they can take to determine what job is their perfect match. 

If a person is incompetent, they either need training or were chosen for a job incompatible to then.  At any rate they should NEVER be thrown out on the street.  Either they should be put in the right job for them or given the required training. 

I would rather pay to guarantee basic human rights of which a job is perhaps the most basic of all, than the corporate welfare we pay for now.  And I am 100% sure most Americans agree. 

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 23.

• Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
  
• Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
  
• Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
  
• Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
  

Having all BASIC human rights meet is the CORNERSTONE of freedom!

[Bulldog]

Logic has to be used in matching a person to a job.  First the if job seeker knows what kind of job they want that should be what should be offered. 

I love that logic - give them what they want; then everybody's happy.

[knight66]

I think I will be a brain surgeon for a change. I have not ever done it, but I fancy trying it.

I am thinking of specialising in lobotomies. I know, I know, too late for some here you will claim; but a second lobotomy can work wonders.

Mike

[Teresa]

Candidate for dumbest paragraphs yet posted on this forum.

Oh contraire, one of the most intelligent posts yet!  Well written and explains my feelings to a tee, I am very proud to have authored it!

As a woman I resent the fact that we are viewed as baby-making machines.  Indeed I look forward to the day when babies never grow in our bellies but are grown in laboratories from our removed egg and sperm cells. 

IMHO since men cannot bear children they should have NO opinion one way or the other on abortion, it is a woman's issue NOT a man's issue.  Men are ONLY sperm donors and all the work of producing a viable human being is completely in the wombs of women.  If would be different if Men could get pregnant but they cannot not!

We can already combine egg and sperm in a petri dish, all is needed is an artificial uterus to grow a human being outside of the body. 

Will artificial wombs mean the end of pregnancy?

Will the real forum totalitarian please stand up?

Well you must look somewhere else, as it is not me.  I believe in direct democracy, one person one vote with not corporate involvement. 

Yes, and freedom is about freedom to.  You've got it completely wrong.

No you only have one half of the equation.  It is just as much about freedom from as it is freedom to.  For example you DO NOT have freedom to yell FIRE in a crowded theater.   

[Todd]

I am very proud to have authored it!

I figured as much.  That's all I need to know.

[Philoctetes]

@ Teresa

Actually, you do have the freedom to yell fire at the movies.

[Todd]

I think I will be a brain surgeon for a change.

Good call.  I'm torn between being a rock star and a brothel quality control inspector.  How could I get such gigs?  (Oh, wait, I think both are filthy.)