Political Matrix

[Josquin des Prez]

The problem is the misunderstanding and misrepresentation by some conservative commentators.  Neo-Nazi's, Skin Heads, and the Klu-Klux Klan consider themselves extreme right-wing.  Indeed all of the these groups are VIOLENTLY anti-communists, anti-Jewish, anti-immigration and anti-big government.  Most members of the Klu-Klux Klan are Republicans including the infamous David Duke. 

Ku Klux Klan

"Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as The Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present right-wing organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy and nationalism."

When the organism is threatened, it is customary for some of the most violent elements of a race to act as anti-bodies to clear out any foreign contaminants. In order to suppress those tendencies, white people have opted to neutralize their entire immune system, which is leading to the complete annihilation of the race. I guess there is no way we are ever going to hurt anybody once we're gone extinct. That appears to be the general idea. On a related note,  the fact The Birth of a Nation was actually a really good film must really sting a lot of liberals. I wonder how they go around teaching that in film schools.

[Teresa]

Does that mean feminism doesn't mind gay porn?

Most (not all) feminists are against all forms of porn.

http://www.youtube.com/v/9CL-nHdMFSc

Anti-pornography movement

"People involved in the anti-pornography movement include religious groups, feminists, ex-porn stars, psychologists, and individuals who feel that pornography plays a major role in the breakdown of marriages and relationships."

[oabmarcus]

Really? It seems to me the only people who have been "hurt" are people like you.

[kishnevi]

The problem is the misunderstanding and misrepresentation by some conservative commentators.  Neo-Nazi's, Skin Heads, and the Klu-Klux Klan consider themselves extreme right-wing.  Indeed all of the these groups are VIOLENTLY anti-communists, anti-Jewish, anti-immigration and anti-big government.  Most members of the Klu-Klux Klan are Republicans including the infamous David Duke. 

Ku Klux Klan

"Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as The Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present right-wing organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy and nationalism."

The groups you mention are against individualism:   they aim for a collective that has complete control over the individual.  They merely have a different collective in mind (the race or the nation).   They are therefore philosophically no different from the communists.

Conservatism has two sources that are in conflict with each other--authoritarianism and libertarianism.    The Republican Party adheres in general to the authoritarian model, with lip service to the libertarian for the sake of getting votes.  The Democrats, like the Greens, aksi adhere to the authoritariian model.   They may honestly consider themselves leftist and liberal, but they are not; so no mainstream party defends individualism.

[jowcol]

On a related note,  the fact The Birth of a Nation was actually a really good film must really sting a lot of liberals. I wonder how they go around teaching that in film schools.

Similarly to how they teach about Triumph of the Will.  One can critique a film in terms of style and technique independently of content or message.  This film, for example, was able to address the different threads separately.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonderful,_Horrible_Life_of_Leni_Riefenstahl

For D.W. Griffith-- I'd say his masterwork was the next film Intolerance, which, as it may disappoint some, was actually AGAINST intolterance.

[jowcol]

When the organism is threatened, it is customary for some of the most violent elements of a race to act as anti-bodies to clear out any foreign contaminants. In order to suppress those tendencies, white people have opted to neutralize their entire immune system, which is leading to the complete annihilation of the race. I guess there is no way we are ever going to hurt anybody once we're gone extinct.

Or perhaps the "white race" more desperately needs to be saved from the likes of this...

[Josquin des Prez]

Or perhaps the "white race" more desperately needs to be saved from the likes of this...

We'll talk about this once whites becomes a minority in their own countries.

[jowcol]

We'll talk about this once whites becomes a minority in their own countries.

*cue ominous music*

Da-da-Daaaaaa!

[oabmarcus]

If things were that bad, people would simply stop investing, or invest only with people they know personally and trust.  IOW, the market would grind to a halt until honesty returned.

Yes, except it actually happened. Ever heard of the stock market crash? People didn't just "stop" investing, the economy grind to a halt. People lost their jobs, savings, and basically left with nothing.

I didn't say the companies should not be disclose information.  I said people should not automatically take such information at face value.  And again, if you can't get the degree o information you want, you won't invest.

YOU wouldn't, you are savvy, you are a financial wiz. But, shouldn't we protect people who aren't as savvy as you? What about institutional investors, they are susceptible to lies too. If someone lied to you, how would you know that they are lying? Stuff like this happens all the time. And you are saying it's not the fault of the people who are telling the lie (doing the unlawful thing), but the people who on the other hand trusted these so called professionals.

And if it was a family member, I would lay the blame for my relative's problem squarely where it should belong--with my relative, for being stupid.  No one would force him to invest that way--in fact, every source you read tells you to diversify.  If he couldn't follow that advice, that's his problem not mine. Which is why you need to do as much homework as possible--and if you still don't trust them, don't invest (or at least don't invest very much).

Again, you are being unrealistic. Not everyone think the way you do. There are people who tend to trust strangers, and there are people who are naturally suspicious. Your view on law making is pretty harsh on the "weak". By your line of reasoning, we should get rid of other laws. Right, murder? Why didn't you defend yourself with a gun? Theft? why didn't you look after your stuff better? Tough luck right?

As it is, with TARP and the rest, I'm paying for their mistakes without having any mortgate related investment.  Not even one of my own--the one on our house was paid off several years ago.

That I can understand. I too am very angry about using tax payer's money to bail out wall street banks. But, bailout is not wrong in principle. It is how it was used that was totally unacceptable. Let's take the AIG bailout, they paid out those CDSs 100 cents on the dollar. And sorry, that's just not right. The truth is that the people who are in charge of making those decisions, be it Paulson, or Geitner. Are part of the Wall Street Club, they are just helping out their buddies. So, of course the first thing in their mind is to give them 100c ents on the dollar for every piece of crap AIG owns. So, the real question is why are the people we elected into office. Obama and company, so corporatist? and if so, we should challenge him, and vote him out of the office. 

[oabmarcus]

Taxpayers should be thankful for TARP.  Over half the money spent has already been recovered, and the government has collected over $25 billion in dividends and interest on top of that.  Not only will all of the TARP funds spent be recovered over time, but the taxpayers will realize a net gain, all of which will all be used to pay down the debt (a little item the evil Republicans slipped into the financial regulation bill).  And TARP prevented true economic catastrophe.  It's one of the better bailouts yet devised as far as I'm concerned.  BTW, just over half of TARP was spent, so it was cheaper than advertised.  How often can you say that about a government program?

how do you feel about Elizabeth Warren then?

[oabmarcus]

It was wrong because it was a bailout, using imaginary money (that's what government spending now is, because of the deficit). 

To an economist (which I am one). There is nothing intrinsically "right' or "wrong". We economists don't discuss morals, not because we are terrible human beings. But, because under our frame of thinking, problem solving. We must make decisions based only on it's practical result.
For instance, bailing out people who have made mistakes is wrong, that's common sense right? you don't bail me out if i overspent and can't pay back my debts, right? but on a macro level, it's a different matter. Everything is related, and to economists, if bailing out them meaning -100 damage, and as opposed to -200 damage for not bailing them out. We will proceed with the lesser of the two evils.

To be paid back with equally imaginary money thanks to the deficit and the stimulus. Did you realize the US money supply, because of all that happened, more than doubled?  Which means at some point either the money supply will have to be purposely shrunk or inflation will strike rather savagely, increasing prices either gradually or suddenly by about 100 percent.

do you have evidence for that? I look at CPI for inflation data, and the last time I checked there was no visible signs of inflation. Frankly, Fed can print as much money as they want. It won't really impact us that much, unless China stops buying our treasury bills. Which is unlikely if they want to keep their currency peg.

[drogulus]

This isn't necessarily the case.  The fact is that most people who created and packaged the deals disclosed what they perceived were realistic prospects for the loans, and the security tranches were specifically structured to meet those perceptions.  It's also worth noting that the security originators were required to assume ownership of the unsecured tranches, which contributed significantly to the substantial losses at some of the shops (eg, Merrill, Lehman).  Part of the irony here is that, at least early on, the firms wanted to own those tranches because they had the highest potential yield.

A big part of the problem comes down to the silly thinking that took hold across the industry; some of the underlying assumptions about asset valuation and growth were simply faulty.  Horribly, horribly faulty.  That's one of the reasons that option ARMs grew so rapidly right near the end; people were so confident in valuation growth that they were willing to accept negative amortization on even piggyback product (ie, 100%+ financing).  (Many people on the "ground level" at originators and servicers started raising red flags when option ARMs started filling the pipeline.)  And then there was the opacity of the product that some mortgage brokers provided.  Better due diligence should have been undertaken, of course, but believe it or not, the diligence that did occur was being signed off on through official processes.  None of this is to say that fraud or other malfeasance did not occur - some most certainly did - but rather that much of what happened was not the result of an intentional attempt to mislead.  Greed and stupidity took over. 

     Very interesting, Todd. This tracks with everything I've seen. While there's always some dishonesty involved, most of the explanation for these bubbles has to do with the psychology of markets. We've seen these events happen periodically over the centuries and they always are accompanied by a foolish disregard for the fact that what goes up comes down. A kind of utopian optimism grips everyone except a few who seem to be immune, and who are not listened to because they don't understand that this time it's different, this time the market will go up forever.

     It's also interesting to compare the syndrome to the mirror image of Doomerism. Both rely on a very selective reading of empirical data and project trends out into the future as though no other trends existed or ever will.

[Philoctetes]

Which is unlikely if they want to keep their currency peg.

Well bad news then, apparently China is switching the Yuan to a basket of currencies instead of simply just pegging it to the dollar. 

[oabmarcus]

Well bad news then, apparently China is switching the Yuan to a basket of currencies instead of simply just pegging it to the dollar. 

still, they have way too much foreign reserves. If I were China, i would just buy stuff like gold, oil fields, invest money in the developing countries (as opposed to buying U.S treasuries). But, you have to remember, even if they do all that, they still have a massive of amount of dollar in their bank left.
What China is doing is really raping their own people. RMB is worth so much more, and because they won't give up the edge in manufacturing. They are depriving their people of the rights to buy cheaper foreign goods. Which is not a good thing. People will behave irresponsibly with money in China. They have already done so. They have speculated in real estate so much that it has become a bubble; built buildings and cities with no practical use and people; over indulging on crap that's over-price. the result is that inflation is soaring in China.

[kishnevi]

To an economist (which I am one). There is nothing intrinsically "right' or "wrong". We economists don't discuss morals, not because we are terrible human beings. But, because under our frame of thinking, problem solving. We must make decisions based only on it's practical result.

That's where we differ.   The morality/immorality/amorality is part and parcel of a practical result.   To refuse to consider the moral implications of an action is itself an act with moral implications and practical results. 

For instance, bailing out people who have made mistakes is wrong, that's common sense right? you don't bail me out if i overspent and can't pay back my debts, right? but on a macro level, it's a different matter. Everything is related, and to economists, if bailing out them meaning -100 damage, and as opposed to -200 damage for not bailing them out. We will proceed with the lesser of the two evils.

Encouraging them to enage in risky activity again.  And again, since morality is inextricably woven into all decision making, the immorality of bailing out people may outweight any strictly economic damage.

do you have evidence for that? I look at CPI for inflation data, and the last time I checked there was no visible signs of inflation. Frankly, Fed can print as much money as they want. It won't really impact us that much, unless China stops buying our treasury bills. Which is unlikely if they want to keep their currency peg.

As I understand the situation, inflation hasn't hit because most of the money isn't actually in circulation; the various banks are keeping it on deposit with the Fed instead of actually making loans with it, etc.  But I do know that plenty of the things I buy weekly at the grocery, etc. have gone up in price at least a little bit over the last year.

Also, you may not be aware of easy it is for the gov't to manipulate the CPI by changing the items in the basket of goods they use to calculate it.   I work for a major department store.  During the 90s , a woman would come in once a month and check some items to see what the prices were, and if any prices had changed;  this was part of the research involved in determining the CPI.   One of those items was a basic Nike running shoe, retail $40--probably their cheapest running shoe.  At one point, Nike replaced this shoe with a new, updated version--almost exactly the same, except for colors and a few details.  In doing so, they raised the price to $45.  Next month, the woman appeared and checked, not the price of the replacement Nike, but the price of the running shoe we carried under our own private label, which had a retail of $30.   By this little adjustment, the basket of goods, instead of going up by $5 if it had been honestly done, went down by $10.  The decision to switch items had quite obviously been made somewhere higher up in the bureaucratic chain of command.  And they never went back to the Nike, I might add.

[kishnevi]

Yes, except it actually happened. Ever heard of the stock market crash? People didn't just "stop" investing, the economy grind to a halt. People lost their jobs, savings, and basically left with nothing.

Yes.  But it was made worse by government intervention (for clarity's sake, I'm referring to the Hoover administration, not Roosevelt).
But there were actually a lot of people who did not lose their jobs, and were not left withn nothing.  Not every bank in the country failed, and plenty of businesses stayed open.

YOU wouldn't, you are savvy, you are a financial wiz. But, shouldn't we protect people who aren't as savvy as you? What about institutional investors, they are susceptible to lies too. If someone lied to you, how would you know that they are lying? Stuff like this happens all the time.

Why should we protect them?  It's like windstorm insurance: because I choose to live in a state that is particularly exposed to hurricanes,  should you pay to repair my house if it gets damaged by a hurricane?
Not being savvy about investing is not a reason to protect people from their mistakes.  It's a reason for them to learn about how to invest, or not to invest until they do so.
And if you take a risk, then you have to take the results if the risk become reality.  Not me, or anyone else who is not a party to the transaction.  By protecting them, you are telling them they don't really need to get savvy about investing, because you will cover their losses if there are any losses.

And you are saying it's not the fault of the people who are telling the lie (doing the unlawful thing), but the people who on the other hand trusted these so called professionals.

That's not what I said (or at least, meant to say;  perhaps I wasn't clear enough).   Yes, it is the fault of the people who lied.  So they should be made to pay through criminal punishment or civil suits.  But it's also the fault of the person who did not invest wisely. 
It's not the fault of the taxpayer, the outside third party who had nothign to do with the matter.  So why should the taxpayer pay?

Again, you are being unrealistic. Not everyone think the way you do. There are people who tend to trust strangers, and there are people who are naturally suspicious. Your view on law making is pretty harsh on the "weak". By your line of reasoning, we should get rid of other laws. Right, murder? Why didn't you defend yourself with a gun? Theft? why didn't you look after your stuff better? Tough luck right?

Not at all.  What I am saying is that the results of taking a risk should remain with the people who took the risk.   
Say I invested in Lehman Bros. during the bubble, and lost heavily.  I'm the one who took the risk, so I should be the one to suffer--not an outside party (the taxpayer, in the case of the bailouts).  Otherwise I'm not really taking a risk, which means I won't stop to consider whether or not I'm taking too much risk.  I won't care, because I know the taxpayers will make me whole if I take the wrong decision.

That I can understand. I too am very angry about using tax payer's money to bail out wall street banks. But, bailout is not wrong in principle. It is how it was used that was totally unacceptable. Let's take the AIG bailout, they paid out those CDSs 100 cents on the dollar. And sorry, that's just not right. The truth is that the people who are in charge of making those decisions, be it Paulson, or Geitner. Are part of the Wall Street Club, they are just helping out their buddies. So, of course the first thing in their mind is to give them 100c ents on the dollar for every piece of crap AIG owns. So, the real question is why are the people we elected into office. Obama and company, so corporatist? and if so, we should challenge him, and vote him out of the office.

To which I will only respond with a couple of questions:  how would we determine what the correct amount is (or even if there was a correct amount), and who makes the decision.  And why should we only give a partial bailout?  If I'm bailing out to the tune of sixty cents on the dollar or whatever, why shouldn't I do it at a hundred cents to the dollar.

[Saul]

When the organism is threatened, it is customary for some of the most violent elements of a race to act as anti-bodies to clear out any foreign contaminants. In order to suppress those tendencies, white people have opted to neutralize their entire immune system, which is leading to the complete annihilation of the race. I guess there is no way we are ever going to hurt anybody once we're gone extinct. That appears to be the general idea. On a related note,  the fact The Birth of a Nation was actually a really good film must really sting a lot of liberals. I wonder how they go around teaching that in film schools.

There are two ways at looking at the 'Race' Issue.

From a biblical point of view, or from a secular point of view.

If you believe in the Bible and that the Human Being, Adam was created by God, then there is no room for 'Races' because all people can trace their origin to that very first human being.

From a secular point of view:

You believe that you came from the apes, and therefore you think that Whites have 'progressed' more then the Blacks who many scientists still believe that they are the 'missing link' of the Apes.

You  therefore must choose, what you believe in, the Bible and therefore you should consider all people regardless of their looks as your flesh and blood brothers and sisters who share an ancient historical father and mother.

Or you believe the 'scientists' who consider the human being as an accidental creature, who developed from an ape to a human being, and therefore choose to say that your 'race' is more developed from all other races.

This is the choice, and there is no way you can say that you believe in both, for they stand is complete opposition to each other.

[Scarpia]

From a secular point of view:

You believe that you came from the apes, and therefore you think that Whites have 'progressed' more then the Blacks who many scientists still believe that they are the 'missing link' of the Apes.

This is an absurd parody of any reasonable secular view.  I do not know of a single scientist who believes this.   In the first place, there is no clear scientific or genetic basis for the concept of race.  What difference do exist came into existence after humans evolved into their current state and dispersed thoughout the world.   No race is closer to the originating species than any other race.

[Philoctetes]

This is an absurd parody of any reasonable secular view.  I do not know of a single scientist who believes this.   In the first place, there is no clear scientific or genetic basis for the concept of race.  What difference do exist came into existence after humans evolved into their current state and dispersed thoughout the world.   No race is closer to the originating species than any other race.

God damnit!

[Saul]

This is an absurd parody of any reasonable secular view.  I do not know of a single scientist who believes this.   In the first place, there is no clear scientific or genetic basis for the concept of race.  What difference do exist came into existence after humans evolved into their current state and dispersed thoughout the world.   No race is closer to the originating species than any other race.

Read this article and be informed:

http://scienceblog.com/cms/americans-still-linking-blacks-apes-15428.html