Bailout bill

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It's bad enough that they bailed out the automakers as well. I would have let them fold and go under. Not like Ford will use the money to build in the States, they already made note that they are re-tooling the factories in Mexico to expand there.

Nice way for tax dollars to go into a failing automakers pocket just so they can outsource more labor at our expense. It would be different if Ford made a decent car, but honestly, Ford would be on the bottom of my list in cars I would rather drive as well as purchase.

[Vihta]

http://www.2020hindsight.org/2008/10...wn-looks-like/

[Vehicle]

I'm like five posts from the bottom of this thread and my brain hurts so I'm gonna write rather than read.

My, albeit, limited understanding of this crisis boils down to this:

Bad loans were given out to people who couldn't afford them -> Investment firms sold these to other firms under the guise that they were secure when they weren't -> Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (I include the Mae/c because I'm tired of people talking about them like they're people) failed and are bailed out -> A company, similar to Freddie Mac, Leehman Brothers fails and assumes it will get government help, it doesn't -> No confidence in the market -> Freezing of assets -> Even less confidence in the market because huge firms won't trade with eachother -> Stock market plummits

Now, while there are innumerable amounts of fingers to point at an innumerable amount of people: the issue effects millions (if not billions) of people and can't be left alone for the "free market" to figure out.

This is especially true because, as Jerome points out, less regulation is not no regulation and so the government will always have it's hand in the preverbial cookie jar, even if there is a metaphorical pit viper at the bottom.

The issue I take with your point of view Jerome (as a note, you know a shit ton more than me so it's hard to argue against your points when I don't understand them entirely) is that you think there is some panacea somewhere, there isn't.

This isn't specifically an American issue, and especially considering the force of globilization, it has far reaching reprecussions in most markets as we all saw yesterday.

So then you would think if you fix the American market the others will also recover, or at least that's the stand point I'm going to assume, but how do you do that?

Free market economics? This is hardly a viable option because of the huge amount of dollars/jobs/retirement plans/homes that would be lost from the average person, who, in my opinion, is the victim here.

Yes, it's true people took on loans they couldn't afford and then defaulted on them. But lenders knew these people couldn't afford these loans and gave them out anyway. That's like me giving you a bottle of rat poison, telling you it isn't, and then blaming you when you drink it and die.

Now the bailout package: total bullshit. Kind of a general consensus on this one so I'm not gonna get into it but it's a sort of band-aid on a stab wound reactionary tendancy typical of our government so that's that.

So in the long run I think we're going to see a recession that we haven't seen since the Great Depression (also a consensus on this one) but I also don't think this is a bad thing. People need to re-learn what their parents told them years ago: "don't live outside of your means." If you don't have the money, don't spend it. If you can't get a mortgage or a loan, tough shit. I've been applying for student loans for the past three years and get rejected like 80 percent of the time, welcome to my life of shitty credit and no co-signer.

I dunno, I think this thread is a lot of brow beating idealogical dribble to be honest. It's not actually applicable in any way shape or form. Yes, capitalism does breed greed. Power curropts, and absolute power curropts absolutely (or whatever the saying is,) we all get it.

But to say this is all the governments fault is a ridiculous statement based on a tunnel-vision point of view. So what some people have been saying this is going to happen for a long time? Perfectly intelligent people also said that Y2K would cause a global meltdown and it didn't, I'm just saying people say a lot of things.

In conclusion: Ron Paul isn't Nostradamus.

Disclaimer: if anything I said here is outrightly untrue it's because I'm just a journalism major with a political science minor who has trouble keeping a positive balance in my checking account. So get over it.

[Jerome Scuggs]

Free market economics? This is hardly a viable option because of the huge amount of dollars/jobs/retirement plans/homes that would be lost from the average person, who, in my opinion, is the victim here.

If it's not a viable option, then there is no true solution, and we will continue playing catch-up to old problems which will only get worse, create bigger problems - and eventually the whole thing will collapse, and when it does - then perhaps I will suggest a viable option.

You're not arguing that the free market got us here, you're only arguing it won't solve anything. I'm arguing that the government got us here, and the government will not solve anything. This issue extends deeper than the current crisis, and so looking for a short-term band-aid will not be any sort of true solution - in this case, "viable" and "solution" are mutually exclusive.

[Capital Knockers]

Yes, it's true people took on loans they couldn't afford and then defaulted on them. But lenders knew these people couldn't afford these loans and gave them out anyway. That's like me giving you a bottle of rat poison, telling you it isn't, and then blaming you when you drink it and die.

So in the long run I think we're going to see a recession that we haven't seen since the Great Depression (also a consensus on this one) but I also don't think this is a bad thing. People need to re-learn what their parents told them years ago: "don't live outside of your means." If you don't have the money, don't spend it. If you can't get a mortgage or a loan, tough shit. I've been applying for student loans for the past three years and get rejected like 80 percent of the time, welcome to my life of shitty credit and no co-signer.

If someone gives you a bottle of rat poison, says it isn't poison, and you drink it before doing the research and confirming things - then yes, you're to blame for your death. Honestly, I'm pretty sure everyone here knows not to trust banks, lawyers, or sales-people.

I agree completely with the second part.

[Zeebu]

http://www.kitco.com/ind/Katz/images/oct062008_1.gif

i dont understand economics all that well, but this graph looks cool

[Vehicle]

In your opinion there may be no solution other than free-market economics but that's your opinion based on your anarchic standpoint.

The idea that by eliminating regulation entirely the market will eventually figure itself out, in my opinion, is ridiculous. People have been working within the system for their own means, if you eliminate the system what you have left is a huge power grab between a few organizations largely responsible for the collapse we've seen in recent days. In my opinion, that's more human nature than anything.

Take, for example, the conglomorization and deregulation of media over the past 10 years. While it's not entirely the same, the parallels are striking. You originally had all these small dailies and radio stations etc. that were fairing well enough, and then the FCC decides to say that a radio station can also own the local television station and newspaper. This leads to organizations like ClearChannel and people, like Rubert Murdoch, who go around buying up everything in site simply because they can.

Now, in a psuedo-free market model, these huge organizations, commonly referred to as the Big 6, will hold onto these companies only if they're profitable and thus eliminating said organizations overhead.

The end result: there are now, arguably, three major dailies (WSJ, NYT, USA Today) and really only four television sources for news (NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX) and their affiliated networks. Then ClearChannel who owns something like 80 percent of the radio airwaves.

Now, as a movie a recently saw noted, during the 2004 election the GE chairman, GE owns NBC or whoever owns GE owns NBC, comes into the press room at NBC and demanded that they call the election for Bush. (This is allegedly on tape and when a Congressional oversight commitee asked for the tape they were denied.)

I'm digressing. The point I'm making here is this: free-markets encourage conglomorization and the aggregation of resources, regardless of what vertical you're talking about.

So if you lift all of the restrictions on the market and eliminate all of the government oversight you'll end up with a select few people who control the majority of the resources and they'll be the ones who call the shots, for better or for worse.

To me, this sounds similar to where we are now.

My solution is that I don't have a solution. I would have preferred that whatever bailout we had went in a bottom-up fashion. IE: turning all these bad mortgages into manageable ones so that not every defaults on them and some confidence is restored into the market.

But I'm not nearly well versed enough on this topic to argue that this is the most viable solution so I'm not even going to try.

I'm just asking you to consider what might happen if things didn't go exactly as you predicted them to.

[Epinephrine]

Jerome, yet again we disagree on perspective.

Here's an analogy. It's like blaming the existence of automobiles for car accidents, and saying that it doesn't matter that the car had no seat belts, a car is bad no matter what, even if seat belts would have made a difference. It's ignoring all the good that cars give to the world, and simply saying 'well if there were no cars, then tens of thousands of people wouldn't die every year from car accidents. We don't need more air bags or seat belts, we need to get rid of cars altogether, and all walk'. While it is technically TRUE, I believe it ignores the reality of everything.

You believe, because of your anarchist views that government is always and inherently flawed. Yet I have never seen you show conclusively how a world without government would work. Your only examples are 'well people lived without government for thousands of years, so it worked', but then again we both know that's a stupid example. What you have never shown and never will show is how a complex modern society can exist without some complex institutional and organizational force such as government. Perhaps you think one giant business that everyone owns stocks in could run the world, but then I would argue that would just be another form of government.

What you also cannot show is exactly how the current regulated free market system with national central banks is also critically flawed. You point towards various examples here and there of things not working. Well I can point to various examples here and there of things working right, such as the last 50 years being the absolute most prosperous in all of human history and that any country worth their salt has adapted the central banking system and ditched the gold standard (a Western concept to begin with).

Finally, you choose not to acknowledge that we cannot change the current system so easily without major upheaval. Obviously we cannot just abandon all governments and central banks and have that as 'the solution'.

Because of all that, no matter how much you point out things going wrong, you don't actually have any solutions to anything. You can sure point out things that went wrong, and many of those things I completely agree with you, but you offer absolutely no realistic solutions whatsoever.

My view is that with proper oversight and proper management, then the current mess never would have happened. Like how America dropped the ball on New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, it dropped the ball on the current crisis. I blame BAD government, more than anything for this mess that we have now. Badly run government in the USA of course. Here in Canada we're getting dragged down with you guys, but we never had subprime mortgages and our government has pulled in surpluses for a decade.

[Capital Knockers]

My view is that with proper oversight and proper management, then the current mess never would have happened. Like how America dropped the ball on New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, it dropped the ball on the current crisis. I blame BAD government, more than anything for this mess that we have now. Badly run government in the USA of course. Here in Canada we're getting dragged down with you guys, but we never had subprime mortgages and our government has pulled in surpluses for a decade.

Assholes keeping us down - we could of bought our 4th fighter jet by now.

[Jerome Scuggs]

Jerome, yet again we disagree on perspective.

Here's an analogy. It's like blaming the existence of automobiles for car accidents, and saying that it doesn't matter that the car had no seat belts, a car is bad no matter what, even if seat belts would have made a difference. It's ignoring all the good that cars give to the world, and simply saying 'well if there were no cars, then tens of thousands of people wouldn't die every year from car accidents. We don't need more air bags or seat belts, we need to get rid of cars altogether, and all walk'. While it is technically TRUE, I believe it ignores the reality of everything.

No, it's like blaming the government for forcing a "government-approved" car onto consumers that Consumer Reports subsequently find below par - or the government subsidizing auto industries when they fail to innovate.

You believe, because of your anarchist views that government is always and inherently flawed. Yet I have never seen you show conclusively how a world without government would work. Your only examples are 'well people lived without government for thousands of years, so it worked', but then again we both know that's a stupid example. What you have never shown and never will show is how a complex modern society can exist without some complex institutional and organizational force such as government. Perhaps you think one giant business that everyone owns stocks in could run the world, but then I would argue that would just be another form of government.

No, my anarchist view is because I believe government is inherently flawed - because I have never seen how a government would work.

Yet I see that despite of government, society did indeed continue to function - often times when governments had failed. Ironically enough I see this here, in America - where we decided to throw off British rule because the Americans were doing well enough thank you, so could you not tax us?

Of course, I didn't exist 200 years ago and so in true form, the government made a bad decision - by forming.

I understand that you think that society is too complex and organized in order to be left alone to society - and so you want a few hundred individuals to make decisions concerning millions more is by developing a "complex and organizational system".

And as the government keeps realizing it cannot comprehend these complexities created by society, not government - it has to expand power, and expand authority. The inevitable result is always the opposite of what government ideals are.

Yeah, the last 50 years were great - and so all of history is thus refuted. You do realize that this cycle - of "ideal governments" turning into authoritarian regimes - has occured before? Many times? With different ideals, and different rhetoric - but a pretty consistent outcome?

I understand that society is governed by complex organizational forces. I speak of them almost daily in these posts. You might hear it in many forms - "spontaneous order", "unintended consequences", "unpredictable events" - these are all things that I use to challenge government ideals because they are derived from the axiom that society is incredibly, nearly infinitely, complex.

My argument is that society's complex organizational forces are superior than artificial government institutions.

For the past two weeks the government has been trying to win out against these spontaneous forces, the "free market". As it stands, the Dow Jones is below 10,000. The Federal Reserve's organizing is piss-poor.

I just watched Bernanke announce his moves today - he stated the lesson he learned from the Great Depression was not that governments intervened - but that they did not intervene fast enough.

Your entire system is resting on the hope that your organizational forces aren't too late. I can only hope the hope and faith in your system is well-founded.

What you also cannot show is exactly how the current regulated free market system with national central banks is also critically flawed.

What you cannot show is how the boom/bust cycle, and the "depth" and intensity of the recessions/depressions have been reduced. What you cannot show is how "stagflation", "inflationary recession", and other such weird terms do not ever occur before 1913. What you cannot show is how it is the central bank's manipulation of interest rates - a critical component of their function - does not distort market equilibrium and push supply/demand out of touch with actual market supplies and demands.

You point towards various examples here and there of things not working. Well I can point to various examples here and there of things working right, such as the last 50 years being the absolute most prosperous in all of human history

...

I've written many an explanation as to how, specifically, the Federal Reserve engineered the boom and why that boom is the reason we are now facing a bust.

In a sense, government did in fact create the boom - because America's industries were placed in high demand after world war 2. Why? Well, let's just say government intervention had very, very intended consequences on a majority of the world's economic and civilian infrastructures. And our government did indeed fufill their promise of fuckin' everyone else up, while sparing our glorious nation.

So the government did their part - they hurt the competition, through innovation. That's as close to market-perfect as you'll get.

and that any country worth their salt has adapted the central banking system and ditched the gold standard (a Western concept to begin with).

You mean, any country worth their weight in massive debt. Governments can'y spend when the gold standard prevents massive, artificial inflation of currency. You'll notice the push for central banking comes not from economic need - but because governments needed money for war, and then money to prop up the artifical economic boom created because of the war.

The first recession America experienced was because of moves made by the (central) Bank of England. The next major one occurs after our War of 1812.

Finally, you choose not to acknowledge that we cannot change the current system so easily without major upheaval. Obviously we cannot just abandon all governments and central banks and have that as 'the solution'.

Then what is the solution? Not that mine is wrong - what's yours?

My view is that with proper oversight and proper management, then the current mess never would have happened. Like how America dropped the ball on New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, it dropped the ball on the current crisis. I blame BAD government, more than anything for this mess that we have now. Badly run government in the USA of course. Here in Canada we're getting dragged down with you guys, but we never had subprime mortgages and our government has pulled in surpluses for a decade.

Congratulations - you have the gift of hindsight. Were you criticizing FEMA before Katrina? Were you bragging about your lack of subprimes a year ago?

I'm looking ahead.

For instance: the FDIC raised the insurance on deposits to $250,000. They are taking a huge gamble that the Helicopter delivers on its promise, and banks do not continue to fail. Massive banks have taken the first hits - and the credit crisis might begin to hit smaller and less-survivable banks (if it hasn't already - who knows, the government hasn't even discussed it).

So what if the FDIC just winds up having to pay out more than twice what they would otherwise? How will our government afford that? We had to raise the national debt to pay for the last few weeks - is the government that sure they will not need to spend any more money?

Who knows? The government doesn't have a crystal ball. I see that as slightly problematic to its very function, if it is to "plan".

[Fluffz]

the government made a bad decision - by forming

So one one hand you value the decisions of individuals but on the other you reject the decision of individuals to create a government out of the lack thereof. How do u explain that. By your own logic there must have been a flaw in the system that lacked a government - that was then corrected by creating a government trough society's complex organizational forces.

[Galleleo]

In the end, to me its simple (and this is not aimed at Americans, but in general, because it happens everywhere). If you cannot afford it, you shouldn't be buying it. People taking out loans for a car, or a kitchen or whatever is just retarded. There are cheap ass cars to be gotten, cant afford a cheap ass car? Get a bicycle or whatever. Do you really need that 12.500 Euro kitchen? Get one for 1.000 if that is all you can afford.

Getting a mortgage to buy a house is unavoidable, or at least in the Dutch market (unless you are one of the very few lucky ones who can actually buy a house in cash). But you shouldn't be going for that 500.000 Euro house if all your paycheck supports is that 200.000 Euro house. This should be common sense.

Obviously, it is already too late for this. And you can try and blame banks and/or governments for all the incentives and shit, but in the end it is the human himself making the choice. Now obviously, following this reasoning I would have to say that we should let everyone go homeless who fucked himself over like this.

But in the end I still believe we should help people who are having bad times. I fuck up too and I ain't even close enough to fuck up on this kind of scale. Everyone makes mistakes and I feel that we shouldn't let people just sit on the street for it.

[kthx]

So one one hand you value the decissions of individuals but on the other you reject the decission of individuals to create a goverment out of the lack theroff. How do u explain that. By your own logic there must have been a flaw in the system that lacked a goverment - that was then corrected by creating a goverment trough society's complex organizational forces.

I am sure he thinks government fails because you went to a public school.

Hint of the Day: Cover your lack of intelligence by using the built in spell checker!

[Izor]

These people fucked up, and we're giving them more money.

Just who the fuck are 'we' you goddamn canadian? Stop throwing 'we' into the mix when you're parasites to our economy. AMERICAN taxpayers are giving these companies money.

Funny side note...I called up Wachovia today to report a lost debit card and told the guy not to bother making a new one seeing as how I was transferring my money to a bank that didnt fail. The customer service rep. seemed adamant that the bank indeed did not fail, so after explaining to him the piss poor shape they're in and how I dont feel comfortable giving people my money who managed it poorly in the past, I eventually had to tell him to shut up and just help me out because its none of his business what I do with my money...retarded companies

[Izor]

They are there to make their people happy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government

The primary duty of a government is to provide order and stability. Happiness is not a part of this. Even going with your random thoughts on what a government should do, allowing banks to give out these loans that no one can afford that leads to the economy now does not lead to happiness