Phoenix Gold Phorum

welcome to a good foreign policy, and awful economics

Worse economics than now?

Completely worse. He doesn't even have a cluse how bad his economic policies are going to be for America.

And since when has Appeasement ever been a good foreign policy?

We Are SCREWED !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Francious70 wrote:Completely worse. He doesn't even have a cluse how bad his economic policies are going to be for America.

And since when has Appeasement ever been a good foreign policy?

Its not appeasement, not even close. It actually listening to other side, and not taking on the view of either your with us or fuck you. Barack will actually be level headed and not the "texas cowboy" and the neo cons will finally not be jamming preemptive warfare down a presidents throat who can't think for himself.


THe economy is in trouble though IMO. If you study the first thing about capitalism you do not redistribute the wealth.

What barak will do with the economy is redistribute the wealth soem more. THis will have a positive affect for the people getting the money from the govt. But the affect of takign the money away from the top producers will hurt america in the long run by shrinking the economy.

Instead of redistirbuting the wealth (just like how the economic stimulus checks really got the economy going ) why doesn't the government instead invest the money in small businesses? That way people can have jobs to earn money instead of a $600 dollar check that most people used to pay off debts and bills.

But the affect of takign the money away from the top producers will hurt america in the long run by shrinking the economy.

Well giving them money i.e. Wall Street buyout doesn't seem to help because they just waste it on stupid shit.

dwnrodeo wrote:Instead of redistirbuting the wealth (just like how the economic stimulus checks really got the economy going ) why doesn't the government instead invest the money in small businesses? That way people can have jobs to earn money instead of a $600 dollar check that most people used to pay off debts and bills.

But the affect of takign the money away from the top producers will hurt america in the long run by shrinking the economy.

Well giving them money i.e. Wall Street buyout doesn't seem to help because they just waste it on stupid shit.

Govt should not invest in small bus. and it should have not done the bail out either. The bail out is just more Govt interference in free markets. They bailed out failed companies. Yes, some banks would have failed but others would have prospered and filled their spots. Simple actually. One thign the govt shodul have done is spent the $ in other ways. In the face of great economic drought or depression the Govt must deficit spend to stimulate the economy. The great depression happened because the Govt at that time refused to deficit spend. Bailing out the people that Fed up ala the banks, is a way to fix it but morally wrong IMO. They should have spent what will be close to the 1 trillion on rebuilding the infostructure of this country, and education. Half the nation roads, highways, bridges, ect ect ect are in dyer need of help. You want to talk about a way to kill two birds with one stone. Look at history programs like that work....how do you think FDR brought back the country. Our education system sucks. It is failing children all across the nation (but that had to do with parents IMO, but the schools need to be fixed).Spend the money on education, ramp up the youth for the next generation, and create thousands of jobs int he process.

brandon....good job on your homework. couldn't have said it any better

The bail out is just more Govt interference in free markets. They bailed out failed companies. Yes, some banks would have failed but others would have prospered and filled their spots.

I totally agree! That is part of a free market economy, if the banks/businesses can't make it then they deserve to fail! I would love it if I screwed up in my job and someone gave me a ton of money to fix it!

So laissez faire free market economics has nothing to do with the current economic shituation? Corporate greed caused this fuckup, and you think relaxing the government intervention even further will improve things?

Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with the bailout either. But I certainly don't think making the economy any less regulated would improve things. Greedy businesses already have plenty of room to screw you over... they don't need any more chances to dig their hooks into your wallets. People are greedy... you think they get rich by giving money away to less fortunate people? Of course not. Big business isn't going anywhere. Small business is fucked though... so much for that trickle down effect.

I agree with Brandon though. Improve education and infrastructure. Not only does that create lots of jobs in the short term, but in the long term the next generation will be more educated and capable of competing globally. The world is changing, and being uneducated simply isn't going to be an option in the future... unless you want your kids to be a janitor for a Chinese engineering firm. The rest of the world has been maturing, but it seems to me like North America (Canada included) has been going backwards over the last decade. People are becoming more religious, xenophobic, and downright scared... we are de-evolving.

The world is globalizing... the people who learn to adapt to take advantage of that will be way ahead of the game. We should look towards evolution. Manufacturing seems to be a dying industry in North America, so why would we keep pumping money into it, when it is eventually doomed to fail? It seems to be too little too late... if we wanted to stay as a manufacturing nation, we shouldn't have shipped our jobs overseas in the first place. Since the chance to do that has long since passed, we should instead train our next generation so that they will be the forefront of the new globalized industry.

So laissez faire free market economics has nothing to do with the current economic shituation? Corporate greed caused this fuckup, and you think relaxing the government intervention even further will improve things?

By goverment intervention do you mean the printing of more money, deflation of the american dollar, and basically bailing out banks because they gave loans to people who couldn't pay them? In my opinion, the less that the government gets involved in the less they can screw up. You keep getting more and more government intervention and pretty soon you go from capitalism to socialism.

The less the government meddles with the way the business is run the better. The last thing I need is some bureaucrat telling me who I can and cannot hire and who I can and cannot make loans to.

You have to assume the person running the business knows that business a bit better than the government.

But the icing on the cake is becoming indentured servants. That's the way we're headed, just like Europe.

dwnrodeo wrote:By goverment intervention do you mean the printing of more money, deflation of the american dollar, and basically bailing out banks because they gave loans to people who couldn't pay them? In my opinion, the less that the government gets involved in the less they can screw up. You keep getting more and more government intervention and pretty soon you go from capitalism to socialism.

I told you, I don't support the bailout ("printing of money"). However, I will say that your currency hasn't devalued much, in fact it has remained pretty stable while other currencies are in a freefall. The Canadian dollar for example is now worth some 80 cents on the dollar, when it was par up until very recently. In fact, many people have stopped investing in stocks, and have put their money into American currency, because it's the only thing NOT dropping right now.

No, by government intervention, I mean things like ensuring that criminal business practices remain illegal. Without ANY government intervention (as you guys are saying, less is better), many businesses would do some insanely bad stuff. Hell, I agree with you that these banks who sold mortgages to people who blatantly couldn't afford them should be shot out of a cannon. That kind of hasn't happened here in Canada, because our government made lending practices much stricter than yours. So SOME government economic controls are definitely for the better. Corporate excess and greed has been coming to a head ever since that ENRON sham a few years ago. Since then I have very little faith that some businesses actually do what is best for the economy, and would instead sink the whole ship to make a buck if they could.

Unfortunately letting these banks fall on their face isn't an option. Our society is no longer built in such a way that free market can truly rule. If that happened, banks poor decisions would cause their customers to lose their money. Oops, sorry, you chose the wrong bank and we lost all your money. Too bad. If all of these banks fell on their faces, the economy would have come to a screeching halt, which would have been devastating. So I believe your government is doing the right thing by keeping credit rolling and banks afloat, but bailing out other non economic companies seems to be extreme.

Many of these banks had nothing to do with the economic collapse as well, yet they are still suffering. This is because the shady places that sold these subprimes rebundled the debt into packages, which they sold to other banks and investors, downplaying the risk of the investment extraordinarily. Should the banks who only purchased these bogus investments fail as well? Should it only be limited to the businesses who were doing the subprime lending in the first place?

And what's wrong with socialism anyways? Socialism seems to be the new "communism". Some blanket term used to denounce any idea people don't agree with. HERR THATS DUM CUZ ITS COMMUNERST. Lame strawman argument! Who here has lived in a Socialist democratic country?

Top 5 countries to live in, according to the UN:
1. Iceland
2. Norway
3. Australia
4. Canada
5. Ireland

Iceland and Norway are some of the most socialist countries, yet they top the list, while the US has fallen to #12 over recent years. I've lived in Sweden, Germany and Holland. I gotta say, in some ways socialism is very nice. Sure, you don't get to have a bigger house and car than your neighbor, but if that's all you've got going on in life, then you live a very shallow existence. You can find happiness in many other areas than just material wealth, and this is something you could learn from other socialist countries.

PS I'm not trying to flame anyone here... just a little tongue in cheek, devils advocate, and silly debate between friends. Please read my posts in this thread with a grain of salt

Francious70 wrote:The less the government meddles with the way the business is run the better. The last thing I need is some bureaucrat telling me who I can and cannot hire and who I can and cannot make loans to.

You have to assume the person running the business knows that business a bit better than the government.

But the icing on the cake is becoming indentured servants. That's the way we're headed, just like Europe.

So if you, as a business, want to make a loan to a person with no money and no chance of paying it back... basically throwing your money away... that is fine. I think any form of government would let you do something that stupid, if you really wanted to. But taking that debt, and selling it to another company claiming that the guy will pay it back... THAT's what's shady, and THAT's where I think the government should have stepped in, before this mess happened in the first place. In it's simplest, it is much like False Advertisement, and should be the kind of thing that would get you sued into oblivion, if not being outright illegal from the start.

The government is just a business anyways. Fuck, I'd be willing to bet you paid a lot more attention to them than any Coca Cola ads this last year. Elections are run like a marketing campaign... you sell yourself to your voters, and try to keep them happy by giving them what they want. Business intentions, just like government intentions, can get skewed into big problems for everybody. So assuming that business knows what's best implies that the government knows best as well... since they are just a business anyways.

And yeah, now that Obama is in, you will all become indentured servants. Hell, isn't Slavery what made America the powerful country it is in the first place???

Me

I grew up in the UK and I lived in Germany for 7 years, here in it-doesn't-get-much-more-egalitarian-Finland for 4.5 now....

stipud: you'll get the joke:
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1345479,00.jpg

edit: here's some more: http://www.spiegel.de/spam/0,1518,588307,00.html

And yes, I could have a nicer car... but it costs a fortune. And my marginal tax rate is over 40% (!!) - there's no point working hard here as there's little to be gained by it. It's extreme, but there you are. OTOH, my daughter attends a first-class kindergarten (private), with bilingual tuition, half-day, for around $200 / month, school food is free and reasonable. And the school's also bilingual. I have functional mass transit to work, on which I do something like 30k miles per year, and a functional health system where a recent personal minor operation was private and cost $1000. 2 weeks wait. Public would be $40 but a year's wait. (non-essential). Unemployment benefit is basic but exists; if you want wage-related you have to contribute. Crime is minimal, the biggest issue is that when they drop the price of alcohol, the amount of alcohol related deaths rises.
From here, the price of "socialism" isn't too high, thanks. Yeah, maybe I won't be rich like Gates, but wouldn't you rather have a life and a society where you can send your kids onto the metro on their own to school at the age of six?

Bret

stipud

PS I'm not trying to flame anyone here... just a little tongue in cheek, devils advocate, and silly debate between friends. Please read my posts in this thread with a grain of salt

Don't worry, we're merely having a debate here and how can you have a debate without different views?

stipud wrote:

Francious70 wrote:The less the government meddles with the way the business is run the better. The last thing I need is some bureaucrat telling me who I can and cannot hire and who I can and cannot make loans to.

You have to assume the person running the business knows that business a bit better than the government.

But the icing on the cake is becoming indentured servants. That's the way we're headed, just like Europe.

So if you, as a business, want to make a loan to a person with no money and no chance of paying it back... basically throwing your money away... that is fine. I think any form of government would let you do something that stupid, if you really wanted to. But taking that debt, and selling it to another company claiming that the guy will pay it back... THAT's what's shady, and THAT's where I think the government should have stepped in, before this mess happened in the first place. In it's simplest, it is much like False Advertisement, and should be the kind of thing that would get you sued into oblivion, if not being outright illegal from the start.

The government is just a business anyways. Fuck, I'd be willing to bet you paid a lot more attention to them than any Coca Cola ads this last year. Elections are run like a marketing campaign... you sell yourself to your voters, and try to keep them happy by giving them what they want. Business intentions, just like government intentions, can get skewed into big problems for everybody. So assuming that business knows what's best implies that the government knows best as well... since they are just a business anyways.

And yeah, now that Obama is in, you will all become indentured servants. Hell, isn't Slavery what made America the powerful country it is in the first place???

Some good points here. Something I want to point out though, the mortgage company's that originated the loans did not do so of their own accord. Our wonderful Congress MADE these companies approve these mortgages for people who have no business owning a home.

BUT, the mortgage companies knew these mortgages were a pile of shit, so they bundled them up and sold them off (a very shady move, but smart for that company none the less).

So the economic meltdown can be blamed on Congress just as much as the mortgage companies that approved the loans.

And as far as the government being a bigass company, I agree. I've thought this for years now. And THAT is part of what makes up servants to them, it's all about creating the dependency.

When was the last time you had to worry about your healthcare?? Gov't does it.

When was the last time you had to worry about your education?? Gov't does it.

When was the last time you had to defend yourself from Mongolian hordes?? Gov't does it.

This article that HoseHead posted is very good:
http://phoenixphorum.com//files/subprime_crisis_160.pdf

Blaming the government is a convenient excuse, but doesn't encapsulate it at all. I think everyone was at fault... the government and Federal Reserve, for making these loans possible. The businesses, for taking advantage of these shady loans, marketing it to people who couldn't afford it, and then selling it under false claims to other people ("securitizing"). And the people are at fault for getting into mortgages they can't afford... they should have known that it was too outrageous, but you can't really count on these people's education, or how they may have been deceived into buying the loans.

However, you did claim that you want LESS government intervention. In this case, the government took away controls that previously made these loans illegal. So with LESS government intervention, the businesses took advantage of a good way to make money, albeit a dangerous one. It's not like it was being forced down their throats. The government did not come into every business with guns pointed at the CEO, saying "GIVE MR. RAMIREZ THIS $500K HOUSE OR I'LL BUSSACAP!"

So if you think the government SHOULDN'T have allowed those loans to happen, that would have meant MORE government intervention, which contradicts your point that less is better

Good God you're good at spin.

Anyways, yes I agree with you that just about every player in this debacle is responsible. But I still don't think the business sector is as bad as you think. You're saying that business is greedy (and I will agree, to an extent) and that government is the consumers champion. I can't believe that.

If anything, the consumers are more responsible than anyone else for fraudulently taking out these loans. With no training and no discipline these people don't know that they can't afford their home payment.

But then you have to blame their parents for not educating them, and then you have to blame the government for the school system that everyone thinks will teach their child everything they need to know for life (yet couldn't educate themselves out of a paper bag)....

I have no idea where I was going with this anymore so screw it.

I hate people.

This isn't spin. We're in the no-spin zone. I have no political beliefs and everything you hear from me is 100% fact, just like Fox News.

This crisis is exactly why I promote well-funded education. If people are smart enough to not get into loans they can't afford in the first place, then this damage would have been minimized. Hell, if there were smart people in government, maybe it would have listened to the economic watchdogs and not make it legal to securitize subprime mortages like this in the first place. Or maybe they could have made it law to prove you can pay for a loan in order to get one?? Crazy thought, I know, but it's worked for almost every other country so far...

Businesses exist to make money. Plain and simple. The lengths they will go to get this money depends on their policy. Policy depends on the people in charge. If those in charge are asshats, then they will nickel and dime their way into profit, rather than counting on good business. Same thing goes for government... if the people in charge are asshats, then everyone gets fucked. I think governments, businesses and individual people are equally shitty...

On the whole, society is fucked. But yet, we do the best we can, through checks and balances. This way, the good and bad can average out. Good people, good businesses and good governments can all make our lives better. I do not however believe that anyone is looking out for anyone else's best interests... personal, business, government or otherwise. This is why I believe in a balanced ratio of control between the three of them. If any one were to get the remainder of power, it would corrupt them.

Obama 08tah!

stipud wrote:So laissez faire free market economics has nothing to do with the current economic shituation? Corporate greed caused this fuckup, and you think relaxing the government intervention even further will improve things?

Tom that is 50% true. The democrats (which I side with on most issues besides economy) thought that every one has the right to own a home, so tried to push through laws that allowed everyone to own a house even if they couldn't afford it. This is now coming to head, with people defaulting on their loans, causing the banks to be screwed. Now the financial crisis stems from these big banks to not have any revenue coming thus not having any capital. With no capital, that means no loans for businesses, thus having a massive negative affect on the economy.

The big banks I have no pitty for though. They bought up all of these subprime mortages in bundles, form the smaller banks that issued them. The kicker is they only looked at 20% of the laons to decided if it was a worthy deal. If I were at my job to only order 20% of the liquor, or do 20% of my inventory I would be fired.

bretti_kivi wrote: And my marginal tax rate is over 40% (!!) - there's no point working hard here as there's little to be gained by it.

Thats why socialism will never work as well as capitalism, until you can educate people that their contributions benefit society for the better. Yet you have to eliminate the lazy fucks who screw it up. I wish socialism could work but I jsut think people are to fucked for it to ever work.