Who cares what Bush is thinking... CONGRESS wields the power. in the end, all bush has to do is sign the dotted line and accept public praise or ridicule depending on the public perception.

Congress is the one who should be thinking. :yep:

I say... put some of these big lending company CEOs in prison. let them do a little "thinking".

i can trace this whole mess to loaning TONS of money to people who were not qualified for loans.

Remember these slogans from the recent years?

"No money down! No interest for 24 months!!!"

"Zero Interest! zero downpayment! No Social Security Number Required!!!"

"No Social Security Number! Se Habla Espanol!!"

give me a break...

loaning out tons of money to unqualified borrowers gets you into this mess.

NO BAIL OUT PACKAGE.... HOLD BIG BUSINESS CEOS AND LENDERS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS!!!!

I'm a little confused on the first one, do you mean directly linked to all commercial output, or only industrial output? What about banks?

Next I assume you mean by going back on the gold standard or something. I'd be for that:yep:

And you're right to a degree about self-regulating markets. They do need some regulation to prevent fraud and ensure workers' and consumers' safety, but how much? I would argue for as little as possible.

Clarify just a bit more, please.

But more than that, hold the State accountable for requiring them to do this by law, and by providing fiscal incentives (i.e. bailouts for failed venture)

Community Reinvestment Act.....
http://www.ffiec.gov/cra/

the FMs were created by the State.....
http://www.creativeinvest.com/fnma/

Well I know this may come as a disappointment for some here but I am positioned rather well to ride out whatever happens. I have no debt, everything i own i own outright, nearly all of my savings is tied up in property and schools like the one I teach at historically do quite well in hard times when people need the edge that job training provides to compete for work.

Meanwhile I'm seeing signs that the market actually had the money to bail themselves out instead of relying on the government to wipe their noses for them.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle4844255.ece

and oil falls another $10 bucks a barrel.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...show_article=1

:hmm:

I meant directly linked to commercial output in general. And that comprises also industrial production. But nowadays most financial istitutions push products which in no way are linked to real goods or services. Speculative products whose values are arbitrary. They are totally separated from the real economy and they are one of the reasons of this crisis.

As great as that would be I don't think we will ever go back to gold standard.

Yes the issue is always how much does the government intervene in markets.
Let me start by saying that I'm contrary to government coming to the rescue of institutions that brought their own downfall (and here in italy we have a great example of that, our government has been financing our Alitalia air company for over a decade, a company that was completely broke, losing 2 million € per day).
The point is that government has a responsability towards society to regulate markets, establish a series of checks, controls, and in general a supervising authority that can take action against Corporations/financial istitutions that don't play by the rules. But rules must be made, and regulatory bodies are not to be controlled by those it is supposed to control and supervise.

This practice came into play because greed and the inability of the human mind to form mental visual representations of high numbers led to falure of banker's sense of responsibilities. And this human nature exactly is the casue why as a safeguard against such human failures certain rules that make avoidance of such pratcice mandatory, are needed. This is the minimum of regulation, that is needed. nobody talks of 5-years-plans and the bstate governing the economy (although he does with plenty of subsidies, custom taxes, lobbyistic clinch between politics and economics, laws talired for certain businesses' desires - the market is far less unregulated as many propagators of the ultra-liberal market-philosophy are ready to admit. The enthusiasm for globalization also has stopped to shoot fireworks every Friday, it seems, and so more calls for protectionistic measures are to be heared on both sides of the Atlantic.

Egoism is part of human nature, and it becomes the more tempting the less obvious the dmage is, and when the mind behind it is iunable to realise what one hundred thisuand means, then I can tell you as a psychologist that this mind also is unable to imagine what one hundred billion means. and if that difference is not to be seen, and the irelevance of it is taken for granted, then do not be surprised if nobody thinks bad about taking the money with both hands without having a bad consacience, and always wanting more. eno9ugh ex.-bankers have admitted in interviews and newspaper essay that they were acting like being in a drugged state, that it was like an ego trip to handle those numbers - and not being aware of what they mean.

the market does not regulate all things all by itself. If their are no rules of civilisation, it brings out the worst in man: egoism, selfishness, greedl, brutality, and it leads to from healhty competiton to lethal rivalry, and finaly monopoly. Once monopoles are established, the monopolist has the community by its balls. like you need traffic rules to regulkate traffic, and need them the more the more dense traffic has become, you need rules of reuglation for economic business and financial traffic as well - and an auhtority monitoring commitment to these rules, and sanctionising those who violate them, like traffic cops.

that poses a new problem - who should do that? In Germany, we have had banks that came into trouble, and having been run by a board od directors that all were no bankers, but politicians. but only few politicians are finacial experts, most vpoicing their opinions on the issue are not. Non-political experts need to win experience and knowledge, but at the same time they should not be friends with the banking systems, and should have no close ties to it, so that they can keep their independence.

And bam-. there you are again with the same old problem that democracy as well as feudal sytems are suffering from: beiong elected does not mean you are competent, being memkeber of the noble class does not mean you are competent or feel responsible.

I have no solution, but i would say the ones we tried did not work too well - on both sides of the atlantic, but for different reasons.

Maybe our civilisation simply has come too far already. Who says that it always refines and moves on and improves and becomes more developed, is that a natural law, a general trend that cannot be escaped? Certainly not.

Rgr that mate....no harm no foul :up:

We're doomed, aren't we?

All this financial breakdown remembers me of Tom Clancy's Debt of Honour.
A pity that we can't use the same solution Ryan devised in the story. :rotfl:

You are such a negative nancy SH. Fear not. We have survived worse times and we'll survive this one too.

I wouldn't ban speculation without some very convincing evidence. Speculation really gets a bum rap when it is actually a very productive force. What it should be called is "Futures Investment". Admittedly, the system is very complex, but basically it all comes down to buying something (a commodity, a part of a business, a product) before the market has a chance to establish the real price. This generates immediate income for businesses to reinvest.

Where the system falls down is in government. Complex finance laws make some of these trading practices illegal for people like you or me. Sometimes they require expensive licensures. Capital gains taxes are not equally applied amongst the rich and rest of us. I don't know about you, but I can't afford to hire a lawyer that can set up a safe channel for my capital gains to go into a Swiss bank tax-free. Everytime I trade, I am taxed, so my flexibility is limited, and so is my competitive ability in the futures market.

Also, any removal of speculative trading would put the U.S. at a huge competitive disadvantage, just in terms of investment capital alone.

But if you had fiat powers, you would do it right?



Agreed. The U.S. Government has also been guilty of bailing out corporations other than banks. It never ends well. It generates spikes of inflation and discourages competition as companies that should have fallen and broken into pieces are allowed to survive and maintain a significant market presence whether the consumer wants them or not. Unsustainable business models that are allowed to exist by the state are bad for everyone in the long run.


Well, that's the real trick isn't it.:D
Problem is, government is badly in need of some kind of regulation as well.

My favored method is constitutional law. The U.S. Constitution is a decent way of regulating government, except that it has been badly eroded by "interpretation"
Things over here aren't going to change much until they get so bad that there is some kind of major upheaval and a new constitution is written, hopefully by freedom-minded individuals.

A strong and limiting constitution can force the state to adhere only to its' assigned roles, and those roles need to focus on creating a fair trading environment. Without fraud, state subsidies, over-regulation, corporate taxation, property taxation, and inflationary problems caused by state overspending, competition wins out. Competition for jobs and consumers and products, and competition is what makes a powerful economy.

Of course, even if we did have such a constitution, it would eventually be eroded like the one we have now, I just think it would take a lot longer.

Who wants to bet a similar version of the bill will be passed in the next 10 days?

The market dropped 777 points, largest evah.

You're probably right but I hope not.

Or sometime in the not-so-diatant future. Followed an indeterminate time later by another bailout package:roll:

Of course, even if this works, they'll just find another statism-rampant sector of the economy to build a bubble in. Agriculture is looking good for now, with a history of subsidy and the ethanol-driven price surge......

Interesting article from CNN (of all places)

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/29/miron.bailout/

Things change...

The number of the beast, if that doesn't mean something.

No wait, that was a different number. :lol:

It seems many republican representatives fear the wrath of their voters. They already predicted on saturday that it would not find a majority - at least this time. But since the elections will not go away, and the ambitions of people stay the same - 50:50, Neal - at least they think a majority of their voters does not support the idea to pay for the banker's mistakes.

Both sides of the aisle are scared witless.

One of the things holding up this legislation is posturing to make sure that no one party or indivitual will stand out as the bad guy.

No one it seems is willing to step foward and be a leader.

I hope the deadlock continues. Read the CNN article i posted above.