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Of course, those banks hired the lobbyists to tell government which laws to pass, right?Imply hell! let me say it straight out. The banks did what the government told them to do. The fault is the government's. No matter how you try to pass it off on the banks whose only blame is trying not to lose too much money with low interest toxic loans. If there is another crisis in the making, look to our politicians in Washington, D.C., not to the banks.What point do you imagine you (and grandma) are making here?
Are you implying private banks weren't behind more than 84% of sub prime mortgages in 2006?
"Even this morning, November 22, 2011, a seemingly smart guy like Joe Kernan was saying on CNBCs Squawkbox, 'When the losses at Fannie and Freddie reach $200 billion how can the deniers say that Fannie and Freddie were enablers for a lot of the housing crisis. When it gets up to that levels, how can they say that they were only into sub-prime late, and they were only in it a little bit?'
"The reason that people can say that is because it is true.
"The $200 billion was a mere drop in the ocean of derivatives which in 2007 amounted to three times the size of the entire global economy."
Lest We Forget: Why We Had A Financial Crisis - Forbes
Its not as though Congress woke up one morning and thought to itself, 'Lets abolish the Glass-Steagall Act!
Still waiting for the tiniest bit of proof that this repeal had anything to do with the real estate buubble or the crash.
Before capitalism, the poor starved on a regular basis. They had no healthcare, no clothing, no food, no television, no cell phones, no central heating, no air conditioning, no nothing. The poor live like kings compared to how they lived before capitalism.
Okay, there is a dangerous double-edge sword at play here. Global trade has, in point of fact, increased the real wage in developing countries. Global trade has also, in point of fact, set up sweatshops so terrible that the workers leap from windows.
So my answer is I don't know. I want that real wage increased. Global trade is a good path to world peace. Little girls making Nike shoes is why I don't buy Nikes.
We need not trade with nations that enslave people. C'mon, be fair, Nike didn't open up a plant in Sudan. That being said, I don't know how to implement global trade without recognizing the sovereignty of foreign nations over their own people. Maybe, just maybe, as these other nations go through many of the pains we went through, these other countries will go through those pains more quickly and with less pain overall than we experienced. Maybe we can try to set a good example?
Nicely said.Before capitalism, the poor starved on a regular basis. They had no healthcare, no clothing, no food, no television, no cell phones, no central heating, no air conditioning, no nothing. The poor live like kings compared to how they lived before capitalism.
You must be fond of the idea that civilization started about 100 years ago and beforehand people were savage animals who had no direction until capitalism baptized them. You've regularly advocate learning about history but have opted for a white washed history that paints the modern era as the only leap forward in human civilization.
Given your level of knowledge about the world, your viewpoint on capitalism is accurate and I am wrong. But there's a big difference between what you perceive to know about the world and how the facts bear. We have no hope of knowing all the facts but your amnesia of history permits the view that capitalism has saved the world.
If you want to maintain your perceptions, I suggest you never look at history because you will be shaken. The phrase "there's nothing new under the sun" was true when Solomon wrote it in 700BC and still is. But you would only agree if you actually knew the facts of history, the Hellenic Age, the Dynasties in Asia, on and on and on.
In fact, during the years before the US Civil War, there was no capitalism without slavery; they were one and the same thing.Not in any intelligent manner. Slavery was evil, but it was not the back bone of the industrial rise in capitalism. Once the agrarian era was over, and it became obvious that the concept of capital is the excessive production of labor had been totally wrong, capitalism was born. Then we realized it needed regulation. It is the only economic system which makes the most people and nations prosperous.I am, sadly, able to believe that. As painful as it is to review this chapter in our history, and recognize that much of the wealth we enjoy today was built on those early unspeakable bonds and investments, does this reflect an inherent flaw in Capitalism?I think that's correct if you consider slaves as unpaid labor only.
According to a MOOC I just finished, slaves also served as capital in bond markets on both sides of the Atlantic.
Okay, there is a dangerous double-edge sword at play here. Global trade has, in point of fact, increased the real wage in developing countries. Global trade has also, in point of fact, set up sweatshops so terrible that the workers leap from windows.
So my answer is I don't know. I want that real wage increased. Global trade is a good path to world peace. Little girls making Nike shoes is why I don't buy Nikes.
We need not trade with nations that enslave people. C'mon, be fair, Nike didn't open up a plant in Sudan. That being said, I don't know how to implement global trade without recognizing the sovereignty of foreign nations over their own people. Maybe, just maybe, as these other nations go through many of the pains we went through, these other countries will go through those pains more quickly and with less pain overall than we experienced. Maybe we can try to set a good example?
The relevant question then is what is the engine that actuates systemic denial and violation of the most basic rights? I think it's evident that there is systemic violations day in and day out across the globe. Some areas worse than others but no place is immune.
As I gather you assert regulated capitalism is a relative good given our place in history. I might be on board with that as it generates wealth, undoubtedly. But doesn't wealth accumulate despite regulation? And when one becomes so wealthy, isn't that the engine behind systemic violations? That capital is set above the rights of human beings in order to make more capital/generate wealth in the vicious cycle of wealth accumulation?
Wages have "increased" relative to the fact that many subsistence farmers have been forcibly moved from arable land so that big agro-business can utilize it and export as capitalism holds: comparative advantage. Thus the locals have re-located to the hills as in Haiti and to the slums and favelas near the city. Since they no longer feed themselves through crops, they need employment. And as a result of its opening up at the behest of capitalist enterprises, employment and wages have increased. I would hardly understand this as a genuine rise in real wages when wages don't include the conditions under which one works.
Today, some are arguing the next, new caste system in the capitalist US involves the mass incarceration of millions of superfluous young people currently residing in prisons.I am, sadly, able to believe that. As painful as it is to review this chapter in our history, and recognize that much of the wealth we enjoy today was built on those early unspeakable bonds and investments, does this reflect an inherent flaw in Capitalism? Or do we need some other qualifier such as "integrated" "regulated" "fair" to disambiguate a system that treats humans as capital from the system that we have today?I think that's correct if you consider slaves as unpaid labor only.
According to a MOOC I just finished, slaves also served as capital in bond markets on both sides of the Atlantic.
Today compared to two centuries ago is improvement. However, I don't think we've reached the qualifier "fair." Countless millions are systematically denied basic rights, including the right to exist domestically (homeless, propertyless) and all over the globe (often at the behest of US and the West in general for the sake of open markets for western corporations). Would you agree?
"The Clinton Administration, and the Democrats, both pushed banks to make bad loans. They were very very open about it."Imply hell! let me say it straight out. The banks did what the government told them to do. The fault is the government's. No matter how you try to pass it off on the banks whose only blame is trying not to lose too much money with low interest toxic loans. If there is another crisis in the making, look to our politicians in Washington, D.C., not to the banks.
Wow. You must be privy to secret meetings between lots politicians and loan officers.
You must have 20/20 hearing.
Any proof or is this more bloviating on your part?
We have provided proof dozens of times in this thread alone. Possibly hundreds of times throughout the forum.
The Clinton Administration, and the Democrats, both pushed banks to make bad loans. They were very very open about it. They even had public announcements of their success in forcing banks to make bad loans, and even openly admitted the default rate would be higher on these bad loans.
[ame=http://youtu.be/PEoqKYCMDmc]1998: Andrew Cuomo admits Forcing Banks to Make Affirmative Action Loans - YouTube[/ame]
Andrew Cuomo, praising the actions of the Federal Government forcing banks to make bad loans, that he admits will have a higher risk, and a higher default rate. 1998.
I have on my computer right now, a court document, of a lawsuit by Acorn, against a bank to make more sub-prime loans. The document includes the name Barack Obama.
This claim that we have been saying over and over, is a well established documented fact.
Today, some are arguing the next, new caste system in the capitalist US involves the mass incarceration of millions of superfluous young people currently residing in prisons.I am, sadly, able to believe that. As painful as it is to review this chapter in our history, and recognize that much of the wealth we enjoy today was built on those early unspeakable bonds and investments, does this reflect an inherent flaw in Capitalism? Or do we need some other qualifier such as "integrated" "regulated" "fair" to disambiguate a system that treats humans as capital from the system that we have today?
Today compared to two centuries ago is improvement. However, I don't think we've reached the qualifier "fair." Countless millions are systematically denied basic rights, including the right to exist domestically (homeless, propertyless) and all over the globe (often at the behest of US and the West in general for the sake of open markets for western corporations). Would you agree?
One-third of black men are likely to spend time locked up before being permanently relegated to a lifetime of second-class citizenship.
Michelle Alexander explains it better than I can:
"Professor Alexander, who is black, knew that African-Americans were overrepresented in prison, though she resisted the idea that this was anything more than unequal implementation of colorblind laws.
"But her work as director of the American Civil Liberties Unions Racial Justice Project in Northern California, she said, opened her eyes to the extent of the lifelong exclusion many offenders face, including job discrimination, elimination from juries and voter rolls, and even disqualification from food stamps, public housing and student loans.
'Its easy to be completely unaware that this vast new system of racial and social control has emerged,' she said. 'Unlike in Jim Crow days, there were no "Whites Only" signs. This system is out of sight, out of mind.'
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/books/michelle-alexanders-new-jim-crow-raises-drug-law-debates.html?pagewanted=all
Before capitalism, the poor starved on a regular basis. They had no healthcare, no clothing, no food, no television, no cell phones, no central heating, no air conditioning, no nothing. The poor live like kings compared to how they lived before capitalism.
You must be fond of the idea that civilization started about 100 years ago and beforehand people were savage animals who had no direction until capitalism baptized them. You've regularly advocate learning about history but have opted for a white washed history that paints the modern era as the only leap forward in human civilization.
Given your level of knowledge about the world, your viewpoint on capitalism is accurate and I am wrong. But there's a big difference between what you perceive to know about the world and how the facts bear. We have no hope of knowing all the facts but your amnesia of history permits the view that capitalism has saved the world.
If you want to maintain your perceptions, I suggest you never look at history because you will be shaken. The phrase "there's nothing new under the sun" was true when Solomon wrote it in 700BC and still is. But you would only agree if you actually knew the facts of history, the Hellenic Age, the Dynasties in Asia, on and on and on.
Nicely said.Before capitalism, the poor starved on a regular basis. They had no healthcare, no clothing, no food, no television, no cell phones, no central heating, no air conditioning, no nothing. The poor live like kings compared to how they lived before capitalism.
You must be fond of the idea that civilization started about 100 years ago and beforehand people were savage animals who had no direction until capitalism baptized them. You've regularly advocate learning about history but have opted for a white washed history that paints the modern era as the only leap forward in human civilization.
Given your level of knowledge about the world, your viewpoint on capitalism is accurate and I am wrong. But there's a big difference between what you perceive to know about the world and how the facts bear. We have no hope of knowing all the facts but your amnesia of history permits the view that capitalism has saved the world.
If you want to maintain your perceptions, I suggest you never look at history because you will be shaken. The phrase "there's nothing new under the sun" was true when Solomon wrote it in 700BC and still is. But you would only agree if you actually knew the facts of history, the Hellenic Age, the Dynasties in Asia, on and on and on.
And your solution is to continue dismantling democracy in favor of a financial oligarchy like Italy under Monti or Greece under Papademos? Can you even tell us your definition "free market"? Is it a market free of government regulation or one free of hedge fund regulation?What point do you imagine you (and grandma) are making here?LOL. So the Clinton administration coerced banks into lowering their lending standards so more people could buy homes and flooded the banks with endless virtually zero interest loans to fund it. Then the banks lowered them, but it wasn't because of that, it was because of some Marxist talking point.
Actually, comrade, banks are owned by everyone who owns mutual funds. Teacher pension accounts hold them. The evil 1% actually largely have their wealth tied up in the businesses that made them wealthy. Your grandmother probably owns part of the banks.
Are you implying private banks weren't behind more than 84% of sub prime mortgages in 2006?
Bill left in 2001, remember, Comrade?
The richest 1% of the evil 1% own Wall Street banks, and they're instigating the next crisis as we speak. Maybe you can outsource Goldman Sachs?
LOL, every time government controls free markets it makes things worse. Then you find that a reason for MORE control over markets. See Einstein's definition of insanity.
You obviously don't understand the study, and your link to an opinion piece did not improve your credibility. Opinion pieces, left or right are nothing more than an expression relative to their particulary skewing of the data. What the study clearly and empirically offered to those who understand studies, is that 1 to 1.7 new jobs are created for every job offshored. It does not mean THE EXACT JOB OR EVEN THE EXACT INDUSTRY. That is the whole point of statistics, to show the TRENDS, not individual and specific jobs or persons. If you read further in another study you will note that regardless of the individual, new jobs in the same industry tends to lose no more than 3% of their wage. I personally believe the loss of 3% or even 10% of one wage justifies the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the 3rd world. Further, when I see a relatively poor person in the US, and dare to look at the abject destitute in the 3rd world, I believe that destitute person deserves his job much more than the elite automaker work force in the US or any part of the industrial world.Yes, I would like the minimum wage to go up, but we have really not discussed that issue. I have posted the link 4 or 5 times in the last few days, but here it is again. That you did not notice it speaks to your choosing not to read about facts.Offshoring creates as many U.S. jobs as it kills, study says"More specifically, the researchers found that increasing offshore jobs by 1 percent is linked to a 1.72 percent increase in overall U.S. employment of native workers, though they describe the effect as neutral overall because the 0.72 percent difference is too small to be statistically significant. Offshoring also tends to push native U.S. workers toward more complex jobs, while offshore workers tend to specialize in less-skilled employment."Can you provide that study?
Does that study say that the entire history of outsourcing (1970s onward) has created more jobs then were lost? Or does the study only speak to 2007 onward? The difference is huge.
In the most recent crisis millions of medium-high wage jobs were lost and fewer of higher wage jobs recovered. Instead, low wage jobs came back replacing the high paying jobs. Didn't you say you wanted higher wage jobs?
Okay, now that is a fantastic point. Global Trade does create US jobs, but not so directly. Jobs that were lost are just not coming back, and it is difficult for people to abandon their whole way of life (Detroit?).
I think we need to be very specific in the qualifiers of our claims.
Some basic questions:
Does outsourcing offset the job loss by creating an equal or greater number of the same jobs as those outsourced?
Does Global Trade, as an umbrella term that includes the freedom to outsource, provide new opportunities for job growth?
We have to make sure we carefully examine the data presented in any article attempting to answer such questions. here is an article advocating careful examination of the data:
Ralph Gomory: Does Outsourcing Create Jobs?
While this sounds impressive, it is probably wise to take a hard look at the data before attempting to reduce unemployment in the U.S. by advocating more outsourcing.What the article to which I link lacks is an assessment of other business opportunities opened up as we participate more in the Global Marketplace. There are secondary and tertiary effects that few of these articles cover. The effects are not the benefits of the profit margin of an outsourcing company but new companies that spring up in response to Global Demand. Participating in the Global Marketplace need not be a "race to the bottom", unless we stay committed to competing for labor in the industries of our yesteryear.
Androw and I have both posted undeniable proof. I guess you don't bother to read posts except your own. It does not require being privy to secret meetings, it is all shown in studies, NOT OPINION PIECES WRITTEN BY LEFT WING EXTREMIST WEB SITES.Imply hell! let me say it straight out. The banks did what the government told them to do. The fault is the government's. No matter how you try to pass it off on the banks whose only blame is trying not to lose too much money with low interest toxic loans. If there is another crisis in the making, look to our politicians in Washington, D.C., not to the banks.What point do you imagine you (and grandma) are making here?
Are you implying private banks weren't behind more than 84% of sub prime mortgages in 2006?
Wow. You must be privy to secret meetings between lots politicians and loan officers.
You must have 20/20 hearing.
Any proof or is this more bloviating on your part?
Another stupid response!different problems stupid!how did 4% of american homes being in foreclosure bring down the economy of iceland?
oh yeah, dns! What an intelligent response!
Sub-prime loans <3% of the crash.
And you call "stupid"?
Whew!
of the economic, political, and regulatory environment characteristic of the early- to mid-2000’s (the “dog”.
Lest We Forget: Why We Had A Financial Crisis - ForbesNeither party is going to bite the hand that feeds them, and the politicians can't stand success, they wouldn't have a point to run on.But are there any valid and sound arguments the Democrats will serve Wall Street any less obediently than Bush did?
"Financial reform didnt work. Banks today are bigger and more opaque than ever, and they continue to trade in derivatives in many of the same ways they did before the crash, but on a larger scale and with precisely the same unknown risks.
"Ignoring warning signs has inevitable consequences. We ignored them before and we saw what happened.
"We can say this with virtual certainty: if we continue as now and ignore them again, the great white shark of a global financial meltdown will gobble up the meager economic recovery and make 2008 look like a hiccup."
Big Banks and Derivatives: Why Another Financial Crisis Is Inevitable - Forbes
"Many actors obviously played a role in this story.
"Some of the actors were in the public sector and some of them were in the private sector.
"But the public sector agencies were acting at behest of the private sector.
"Its not as though Congress woke up one morning and thought to itself, 'Lets abolish the Glass-Steagall Act!' Or the SEC spontaneously happened to have the bright idea of relaxing capital requirements on the investment banks. Or the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency of its own accord abruptly had the idea of preempting state laws protecting borrowers.
"These agencies of government were being strenuously lobbied to do the very things that would benefit the financial sector and their managers and traders.
"And behind it all, was the drive for short-term profits."
Maybe we can all agree to blame the lobbyists?
A few years ago, ahead of the present crisis, the Bank of England and the FSA commenced a series of seminars with financial firms, exploring their stress-testing practices. The first meeting of that group sticks in my mind. We had asked firms to tell us the sorts of stress which they routinely used for their stress-tests.
A quick survey suggested these were very modest stresses. We asked why. Perhaps disaster myopia disappointing, but perhaps unsurprising? Or network externalities we understood how difficult these were to capture?
No. There was a much simpler explanation according to one of those present. There was absolutely no incentive for individuals or teams to run severe stress tests and show these to management. First, because if there were such a severe shock, they would very likely lose their bonus and possibly their jobs.
Second, because in that event the authorities would have to step-in anyway to save a bank and others suffering a similar plight.
All of the other assembled bankers began subjecting their shoes to intense scrutiny. The unspoken words had been spoken. The officials in the room were aghast.
Did banks not understand that the official sector would not underwrite banks mismanaging their risks?
Yet history now tells us that the unnamed banker was spot-on. His was a brilliant articulation of the internal and external incentive problem within banks.
I HOPE that the US government entities which CHOSE to have no down payment loans given to people with little or no credit will remember that they will repeat the housing crash. When you talk about the evils of 100 years ago, before the government started to mind the store, OHSA, and our labor laws which have made unions passé, you make zero sense.Context, quote from earlier post: "A successful economic system revolves around the truism, "man has an unlimited desire for wealth." If it doesn't, it fails, MISERABLY."
Then onto the subject of "truisms"I choose to discuss the here and now. It doesn't matter what happened 100 years ago. Our government has taken over the role of the unions as to OSHA in spite of some failures, including coal mine disasters.If we look at the coal industry in the late 19th and early twentieth century, paying their employees in company scrip, forcing employees to do business with the infamous company stores, abolishing all competition for commodities needed by the employees,
does such a scenario to your mind follow the model of Capitalism or Feudalism...or some other model?
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
"Painting the war on drugs as mainly a backlash against the gains of the civil rights movement, Professor Forman writes, ignores the violent crime wave of the 1970s and minimizes the support among many African-Americans for get-tough measures.Today, some are arguing the next, new caste system in the capitalist US involves the mass incarceration of millions of superfluous young people currently residing in prisons.Today compared to two centuries ago is improvement. However, I don't think we've reached the qualifier "fair." Countless millions are systematically denied basic rights, including the right to exist domestically (homeless, propertyless) and all over the globe (often at the behest of US and the West in general for the sake of open markets for western corporations). Would you agree?
One-third of black men are likely to spend time locked up before being permanently relegated to a lifetime of second-class citizenship.
Michelle Alexander explains it better than I can:
"Professor Alexander, who is black, knew that African-Americans were overrepresented in prison, though she resisted the idea that this was anything more than unequal implementation of colorblind laws.
"But her work as director of the American Civil Liberties Unions Racial Justice Project in Northern California, she said, opened her eyes to the extent of the lifelong exclusion many offenders face, including job discrimination, elimination from juries and voter rolls, and even disqualification from food stamps, public housing and student loans.
'Its easy to be completely unaware that this vast new system of racial and social control has emerged,' she said. 'Unlike in Jim Crow days, there were no "Whites Only" signs. This system is out of sight, out of mind.'
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/books/michelle-alexanders-new-jim-crow-raises-drug-law-debates.html?pagewanted=all
I saw Michelle Alexander on Real Time. The question I wanted to ask her was how many non-violent criminals are convicted felons? Of the violent offenders, how many had been incarcerated on non-violent offenses before turning to violent crime? Specifically I am thinking of the War on Drugs and how enforcement of this new prohibition labels non-violent offenders on equal footing with violent offenders.
We cannot relent from the prosecution of violent crime. We can however take steps to mitigate the frequency of violent crime.
In fact, during the years before the US Civil War, there was no capitalism without slavery; they were one and the same thing.Not in any intelligent manner. Slavery was evil, but it was not the back bone of the industrial rise in capitalism. Once the agrarian era was over, and it became obvious that the concept of capital is the excessive production of labor had been totally wrong, capitalism was born. Then we realized it needed regulation. It is the only economic system which makes the most people and nations prosperous.I am, sadly, able to believe that. As painful as it is to review this chapter in our history, and recognize that much of the wealth we enjoy today was built on those early unspeakable bonds and investments, does this reflect an inherent flaw in Capitalism?
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/king-cottons-long-shadow/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
"In the 1830s, hundreds of millions of acres of conquered land were surveyed and put up for sale by the United States. This vast privatization of the public domain touched off one of the greatest economic booms in the history of the world up to that time..."
"Without slavery, however, the survey maps of the General Land Office would have remained a sort of science-fiction plan for a society that could never happen.
"Between 1820 and 1860 more than a million enslaved people were transported from the upper to the lower South, the vast majority by the venture-capitalist slave traders the slaves called 'soul drivers.'
"The first wave cleared the region for cultivation. 'Forests were literally dragged out by the roots,' the former slave John Parker remembered in 'His Promised Land.'
"Those who followed planted the fields in cotton, which they then protected, picked, packed and shipped from 'sunup to sundown' every day for the rest of their lives..."
"When the cotton crop came in short and sales failed to meet advanced payments, planters found themselves indebted to merchants and bankers.
"Slaves were sold to make up the difference.
"The mobility and salability of slaves meant they functioned as the primary form of collateral in the credit-and-cotton economy of the 19th century.
"It is not simply that the labor of enslaved people underwrote 19th-century capitalism.
"Enslaved people were the capital: four million people worth at least $3 billion in 1860, which was more than all the capital invested in railroads and factories in the United States combined.
"Seen in this light, the conventional distinction between slavery and capitalism fades into meaninglessness."
