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Author Topic: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression  (Read 15036 times)

PRobb

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Jay Kadis wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 12:16

"We don't need no regulation,
We don't need no trade controls...
No dark protests in the boardroom
Hey! Congress! Leave Wall Street alone!"

I have to disagree with that. I think lack of regulation was a major cause of the current crisis. Too little regulation is just as dangerous as too much.
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Steve Hudson

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PRobb wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 16:44

Jay Kadis wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 12:16

"We don't need no regulation,
We don't need no trade controls...
No dark protests in the boardroom
Hey! Congress! Leave Wall Street alone!"

I have to disagree with that. I think lack of regulation was a major cause of the current crisis. Too little regulation is just as dangerous as too much.


Methinks Jay was being sarcastic...
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Hallams

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Deregulation = Let the fox guard the chickens.index.php/fa/9985/0/
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Chris Hallam.
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danickstr

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 I think I have made it abundantly clear that I am in the liberal camp, but this one is a good save by the government.

The alternative is not knowing if the bank will have your money tomorrow.  This crisis was on par with the great depression, as far as real dollar values.

The events that lead to this collapse of financial confidence are the classic ones:

People much smarter than the regulators find a way to "exploit" the system, using decietful practices.

You cannot out-regulate these people, because they are smarter than the regulators, and infinitely creative.

What you have to do is punish them as much as possible, which is what Bernanke did, to a degree.  He picked three, Lehman Brothers, AIG and Merrill, and handed them their asses in varying degrees.

That is all he can do without risking your and my banks failing on a domino scale.

Then you clean up the mess and curse the smart people for dicking with us.

And you wait for them to do it again.

It is kind of like ants.

You try to keep ants out of your house, and eventually they find a way in.

That is how the minds of these slick-haired 25-65 year-old money masters are always working the system.  Looking for that new way to outsmart the government employee-created rules.

They succeed and they make 50 million dollar bonuses.  Their scheme succeeds for them and the rest of us fail, and they may lose their jobs, and destroy millions of people's investments, but they don't care.

Blame them.  Not Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson.

Not even GW Bush,  Those guys are not smart enough to stop these money speed freaks.

Not even close.


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tom eaton

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All this... but healthcare for everyone, why that'd be socialism!!

It hurts my head to think that we're all essentially paying for the salaries, perks and bonuses of the VERY wealthy.

A democracy might have some room for morality, but capitalism certainly does not.

McCain will not have to sell one of his houses, and that's the way it will always be.

RSettee

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Here's my two cents and this is the best advice that you'll hear regarding this: people are way overextended on credit and that's caused this. Ever wonder how so and so can possibly afford what they're driving or living in? It's because they're nowhere near paying it off. Factor in credit for deadbeats/ bankrupcies--which are high interest loans--and they're finding out that they're not paying off hardly any principal. And bingo bango, that's why people are walking away from credit and loans and mortgages in record numbers.....because they've got nothing to lose, anyways. They have no collateral, no equity, and the banks and credit institutions are finding out how fun it is when you realize that your debts are worth more than your possessions, when you drive your car off the lot, and trying to sell used furniture and TV's and things like that.

Businesses like GM are hurting, because they banked on hiring and manufacturing like there was no tomorrow. Guess what? Tomorrow came. And they're seeing what is happening when they were banking on someone taking out their third car, when they can barely afford the first or second. I see people in the neighbourhood with a new car every year and I say, "my fucking god are you hung up on vanity. NONE of us in this neighborhood is anything past working class people".

Who gets squeezed? Us. The middle class, which is quickly disappearing. You only win if you're at the top or the bottom. If you're on social welfare, you never had anything to lose, because you were never putting anything into the economy anyways. If you're at the top, you're getting a corporate bailout. Even mid level businesses are feeling the sting....those that are worried about only taking out what they can pay off, they're finding out that they don't like the numbers anyways, so they're just walking away from it. The rest of us have to work hard days for our hard earned things, while we pay taxes and subsidize everyone that's going under that took a gamble or were overextended. For every working class Joe that only spends what they need to get by, there's someone flaunting the fact that they can take out extreme amounts of credit, and pretending to live better than they actually could. They're just one firing, one paycheque away from being out on the street. If you realized how many people are living just this close to the edge, you'd have realized just how truly screwed this economy was meant to be in the first place.

RRSP's took a tumble with high risk returns. I wouldn't be surprised if everyone pulled their investments out of banks, just like in the 1930's, to risk not losing all their money.

I blame the government, credit, and the average pretender, that needed huge fancy things they couldn't pay for, that helped to create the illusion that there was really that economy in the first place. In the old days, you had layaway--you slowly paid it off, then you got it. Nowadays, you have it right away, and then you're not happy with it because it's not 2008's car or whatever lame ass excuse for taking out more credit. I hope very much that the credit companies have a severe crackdown on people that can't and haven't paid off their credit, and take a good hard analysis of who they think WON'T be able to pay in the future. And all that overextended credit has left people without the ability to pay for hardly anything else, creating a nosedive in the rest of the sub economy.

That's not the end of it--mass automation and technological advances have put good citizens out of jobs. Quality decreased for quantity, and once that happened, people have their MP3's and cheap Asian imported sweatshop labour items and wonder where, something somehow, went wrong.

And then the government thinks dropping 8 bill into the LHC is a great idea or a non existent war. Excuse me? Have you fucking seen the homeless in your own streets? Have you seen the recession that is going on these days? Fix what you have before you start looking at vanity shit. Hell, no wonder the average person is so hung up on vanity, it's because the government that's created Nero's biggest fiddle to fuck around while Rome is burning.

It's with this sort of information and insight that I think I could do a hell of a lot better than most in office. But I don't care about the power, only about fixing the current problems and have no interest in politics. To me, you've gotta stop promising more jobs, because most of those jobs are lower paying, minimum wage ones. Be realistic. People are getting laid off left and right (I got laid off last year, even). This whole economy has to take a 360 degree turn and it's going to take a long time to reverse and it's not going to be a pretty sight. It's going to be to the point where people will have to find their own way and be self sustenant and where the term "survival of the fittest" will come in, because I speculate that with the (necessary) crackdown on credit, and the realization that alot of companies will have to lay off more and more people, that there will be a "do or die" mentality, by default. There just won't be the monetary resources for people looking "to make it" or live overly extravagantly without creating their own way, instead of being maxed out to the hilt on credit.
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danickstr

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that;s true Ryan.  Most people do overextend on credit cards, and they were happy to take the shady bank loan with no down on their house.  I had applied for a loan about a year and a half ago, and I was shocked to find out how sloppy the whole thing was.

I felt like I was in the skit with Eddie Murphy, where he poses as "Mr. White"  and the bank just opens the drawer and starts handing over bundles of hundreds, saying, "don't worry, just pay it back when you can".


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Nick Dellos - MCPE  

Food for thought for the future:              http://http://www.kurzweilai.net/" target="_blank">http://www.kurzweilai.net/www.physorg.com

jonathan jetter

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this is robbery writ large.  communism under the guise of protection and security.

it boggles my mind that people are not out in the streets reclaiming their liberty by force.
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RSettee

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jonathan jetter wrote on Sat, 20 September 2008 18:03

this is robbery writ large.  communism under the guise of protection and security.

it boggles my mind that people are not out in the streets reclaiming their liberty by force.


Great point--ultimately, this sort of protection has more in common with Communism and Socialism. It's nice if you need it....but when a big majority of your biggest companies are losing money and need that sort of protection, you have to wonder what type of system the Capitalist society really runs. Really, it's Communism for the Capitalists that are in trouble....and if you think of it, if those companies go under, they can't pay back their loans anyways, and then there's many more jobs axed, as well.

Now THAT's what you call truly fucked.
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MDM,

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lack of regulation???

damn right there is!

it's called NOT enforcing the law and the constitution..

but you don't need a government building full of people to figure that out.. any ordinary person who's studied law and the constitution should do..
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jonathan jetter

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RSettee wrote on Sat, 20 September 2008 20:41

jonathan jetter wrote on Sat, 20 September 2008 18:03

this is robbery writ large.  communism under the guise of protection and security.

it boggles my mind that people are not out in the streets reclaiming their liberty by force.


Great point--ultimately, this sort of protection has more in common with Communism and Socialism. It's nice if you need it....but when a big majority of your biggest companies are losing money and need that sort of protection, you have to wonder what type of system the Capitalist society really runs. Really, it's Communism for the Capitalists that are in trouble....and if you think of it, if those companies go under, they can't pay back their loans anyways, and then there's many more jobs axed, as well.

Now THAT's what you call truly fucked.


yeah.  

i think it's important for everyone to realize that this bailout package is an extremely socialistic solution-  collective, public responsibility for the failures of private corporations.  that is an extremely dangerous road to go down.  it has NOTHING to do with principles of liberty, freedom, or capitalism.  

the scope of the problem is as huge as it is because of the LACK of competition, the public-private hybrid companies Fannie and Freddie, a market where some companies are coddled and favored while others are left to fend for themselves in a "free" market.  the problems we're seeing are born out of socialist origins.

things got as severe as they did because in 2004 the SEC exempted 5 firms from the normally required limits on debt-to-capital ratios, allowing these firms to leverage at much greater amounts than normally possible.

those 5 firms:  Bear Stearns, Lehman, Merrill, Goldman, and Morgan.
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Hank Alrich

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danickstr wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 18:02

 I think I have made it abundantly clear that I am in the liberal camp, but this one is a good save by the government.

The alternative is not knowing if the bank will have your money tomorrow.  This crisis was on par with the great depression, as far as real dollar values.

The events that lead to this collapse of financial confidence are the classic ones:

People much smarter than the regulators find a way to "exploit" the system, using decietful practices.

You cannot out-regulate these people, because they are smarter than the regulators, and infinitely creative.

What you have to do is punish them as much as possible, which is what Bernanke did, to a degree.  He picked three, Lehman Brothers, AIG and Merrill, and handed them their asses in varying degrees.

That is all he can do without risking your and my banks failing on a domino scale.

Then you clean up the mess and curse the smart people for dicking with us.

And you wait for them to do it again.

It is kind of like ants.

You try to keep ants out of your house, and eventually they find a way in.

That is how the minds of these slick-haired 25-65 year-old money masters are always working the system.  Looking for that new way to outsmart the government employee-created rules.

They succeed and they make 50 million dollar bonuses.  Their scheme succeeds for them and the rest of us fail, and they may lose their jobs, and destroy millions of people's investments, but they don't care.

Blame them.  Not Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson.

Not even GW Bush,  Those guys are not smart enough to stop these money speed freaks.

Not even close.





Oh,yeah? Much of this mess is directly attributable to Fed Reserve manipulation of the money supply to put way too much of it in circulation, to keep the good times a' rollin'. Paulson was an aide to Erlichman in the Nixon admin. I'm not willing to think he's grown a lot on integrity since then.

This isn't about saving your money in the bank. It's about saving the asses of the fat cats. And in the long run, the gov coughing up a trillion-plus bucks to "save the world economy" is going to devalue your money plenty. Further, there is nothing in this "rescue" that addresses the sickness of greed and deceit that has run us rampantly into this morass of "investments" at the monster banks and the rest of their Wallstreet hog buddies.

You might want to check out a little something that's up with this rescue bill...

http://blog.kirchhof.com/?p=119

grantis

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Quote:

things got as severe as they did because in 2004 the SEC exempted 5 firms from the normally required limits on debt-to-capital ratios, allowing these firms to leverage at much greater amounts than normally possible.

those 5 firms: Bear Stearns, Lehman, Merrill, Goldman, and Morgan.


After reading up on this quite a bit (I'm a financial market noob), this has struck me in a good way, and I'll tell you why...

If those are the only firms that were granted exemption, then we've neared rock bottom right?  It can only get better from here.
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Grant Craig
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cerberus

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grant richard wrote on Sun, 21 September 2008 00:28

we've neared rock bottom right? It can only get better from here.
where did you say you were from? remember:
when you siphon gasoline, don't swallow.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/09/19/nashville.gas/index.html

jeff dinces

cerberus

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"the house of cards was much bigger, and it started to stretch beyond just wall street
in the sense of the effects of failure. So when one card started to go,
we were worried about the whole deck coming down."    bush

what a bum note. oops, my elbow.

Radiohead - House Of Cards (Live at 93 Feet East)

jeff dinces
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