Let’s play “One of these things is not like the other’!
How can all these things be true at the same time in the same universe?
– The biggest banks in the world are revealed to have manipulated the critically important LIBOR rate for years for their own financial benefit.
– JP Morgan Chase is belatedly discovered to have lost $5.8 billion — up from the original $2 billion estimate — in risky derivatives trading that it supposedly did not dabble in. The trades were allegedly hidden both from regulators and from top executives.
– Jon Corzine and MF Global announce that they have lost $40 billion — including $1.6 billion of clients’ money that by law should never have been put at risk. The money may never be recovered.
– Russell Wasendorf, founder of PFGBest, is arrested for fraud for having lost more than $200 million in clients’ money that again by law should never have been put at risk. Again, the money may never be recovered.
– The financial system is overregulated.
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362 comments Add your comment
Kamchak ~ Thug from the Steppes
July 14th, 2012
10:24 pm
In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.
Goldman’s sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation’s premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.
Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.
Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month McClatchy investigation has found that Goldman’s failure to disclose that it made secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws.
Not a Neal Boortz Redneck
July 14th, 2012
10:29 pm
Kamchak, I read the Goldman Abacus MBS prospectus. They warned the investors about all the risks multiple times.
I side with GS. Their defense is legally airtight.
getalife
July 14th, 2012
10:37 pm
Allow me to retort.
They control too much of our gdp, too much revenue from taxes and own corrupt congress.
They have rigged the game so bad, it will take a new generation to change these facts because the me generation is worried about the Kardasians.
So, there is no use whining about it.
dbm
July 14th, 2012
10:39 pm
Keep Up the Good Fight!
July 14th, 2012
7:26 pm
There was already heavy government regulation in 1929.
In addition, Herbert Hoover made the crash much worse by “doing something”, namely propping up wages and prices, which tended to make people, goods, and services unaffordable, and therefore unmarketable.
barking frog
July 14th, 2012
10:39 pm
doggone/ga
if you have money you
must pay. you left something out.
flagboy?
July 14th, 2012
10:43 pm
AIG and the like bought all the crap Sachs, etc. were peddling. Sachs put enough legit mortgages in with the awful ones in mortgage bond packages (. . . things like mortgages where someone only had to declare what their income was rather than prove it) to get to an average that Moody’s and S&P used to determine AAA bond ratings.
I don’t see how Goldman Sachs is to blame. What they were doing was greedy and disgusting considering who got duped in the end (all of us. . . even as your neighbor left his/her 150K house to move into a 500K house). . . but to say Goldman promoted them as AAA is false. It wasn’t their job to rate them.
dbm
July 14th, 2012
10:48 pm
To address this question properly, we would need to do a lot of deeper digging to answer questions such as
What can we trust more to keep things clean, government, or the vigilance people would exercise if they didn’t assume government was taking care of it?
To what extent are such frauds and blunders best addressed by government managing things in an effort to prevent them, and to what extent are they, like most murders, best addressed by proesecution after the fact? (Dictatorships tend to be more effective in stopping ordinary crime. Is that an example of good regulation we should emulate?)
What, exactly, led to these frauds and blunders and made them possible?
What role did existing government regulations and interferences play?
dbm
July 14th, 2012
10:52 pm
A specific example I heard about on NPR is the large number of government regulations that required people to use these ratings, which artificially increased the power and significance of the ratings.
Oscar
July 14th, 2012
10:52 pm
What role did existing government regulations and interferences play?
___
None.
dbm
July 14th, 2012
10:53 pm
Sorry, in my 10:48 “proesecution” should be “prosecution”.
Oscar
July 14th, 2012
10:54 pm
What can we trust more to keep things clean, government, or the vigilance people would exercise if they didn’t assume government was taking care of it?
________
What a ridiculous question.
dbm
July 14th, 2012
10:56 pm
Oscar
July 14th, 2012
10:52 pm
Have you checked all the existing government regulations and interferences and their complex interactions with the market to make sure of this? How much time did you spend doing this? Are you sure you aren’t being too glib?
dbm
July 14th, 2012
10:59 pm
Oscar
July 14th, 2012
10:54 pm
When government enters a field it tends to preempt it, eliminating the possibility of nongovernmental approaches.
Government approaches tend to be vulnerable to politicization and corruption.
Please explain why my question is ridiculous.
getalife
July 14th, 2012
11:04 pm
They have the gop, the cons and corporate media making excuses and bowing down.
You have to look at their rise to power and look at the people helping them to end it.
This problem will be around until the people had enough.
getalife
July 14th, 2012
11:18 pm
We need their steady revenue coming in to fund government so it complicated but will need a new revenue stream if you break up the big banks.
It would help to go back to making things in our country to not rely on their revenue.
Oscar
July 14th, 2012
11:20 pm
Please explain why my question is ridiculous.
________
Because
1. it is based on the premise that people fail to exercise viligence because they rely on the geovernment to “take care of it”
2. It implies that if we did away with government oversight and police then there would no longer be any crime.
Those will do for starters, but there are additional reasons for my comment.
dbm
July 14th, 2012
11:50 pm
Oscar
July 14th, 2012
11:20 pm
I am not saying people fail to exercise vigilance. I am saying they exercise less vigilance. I am also saying there is much less chance for any company, existing or new, to profit by helping people to exercise vigilance.
I am implying the exact opposite of “if we did away with … police then there would no longer be any crime”. I am suggesting we consider a police type approach rather than a prior-restraint approach in which the government manages things.
Oscar
July 15th, 2012
12:14 am
dbm
Were you in favor of repealing Glass-Steagall?
dbm
July 15th, 2012
12:39 am
Oscar,
I am more interested in clarifying basic principles than in evaluating particular pieces of legislation, so I do not know enough offhand about Glass-Steagall to have a position on it. Perhaps if you ask me a question framed in terms of basic principles, I can give you an answer.
Oscar
July 15th, 2012
12:44 am
It’s getting pretty late and I’m tired. Maybe another time.
Oscar
July 15th, 2012
1:25 am
I will make one comment. Glass-Steagall prevented commercial banks from investing and buying and selling stocks in their own account. That was repealed and the banks Jay mentioned in his article loss big money in doing just that. I call Glass-Stegall a regulation of bank activity. Much like your policy state approach. Had that regulation, or law stayed in place those losses would not have occurred.
We are not using the terms in the same way.
You seem to be speaking of regulation as management of day to day banking. I don’t see the government doing that and that is not what I mean by bank regulation.
Restaurants have rules about how they keep food. Inspectors come by and inspect and give them a grade. I don’t call that management of restaurants, I call it a policy activity.
If they fail to follow the rules, you don’t get sick because of the inspectors failure to spot something, you get sick because the restaurant didn’t follow the rules. Same with banks.
Some of the things the banks did that caused the meltdown were not even illegal. But they should have been. That means the losses occurred because of the lack of certain laws that should have been in place to regulate their activity. In your terms, that would be a police type approach and not a management approach.
US builds criminal cases in interest rate-fixing scandal
July 15th, 2012
6:34 am
As regulators ramp up their global investigation into the manipulation of interest rates, the Justice Department has identified potential criminal wrongdoing by big banks and individuals at the center of the scandal.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48187483/ns/business-us_business/t/us-builds-criminal-cases-interest-rate-fixing-scandal/
Tthe Journey
July 15th, 2012
6:58 am
Let the church say Amen!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SNqrZYfaho
Jack
July 15th, 2012
7:20 am
Bank critics should band together and open their own bank. Bookman for CEO.
Rightwing Troll
July 15th, 2012
7:30 am
So what’s worse… having a hoodie wearing teenager point his bag of skittles at you and take your wallet, or a suave Armani wearing banker type point a warm smile at you and take EVERYTHING?
GB
July 15th, 2012
7:45 am
The answer is quite simple. Humans and human institutions are imperfect. Regulations and regulators are no guarantee that the regulated will behave properly, ethically, legally.
This is not an argument against regulation. It is, however, a fact that needs to be kept in mind when there are calls for more regulation after something bad happens. In situations like the ones described there is already plenty of government regulation. Often the regulators have failed to do their jobs. More regulations will not necessarily lead to better outcomes.
stands for decibels
July 15th, 2012
7:54 am
having a hoodie wearing teenager point his bag of skittles at you and take your wallet, or a suave Armani wearing banker type point a warm smile at you and take EVERYTHING?
Perhaps it’s time for Americans to stand their ground against the banksters.
carlosgvv
July 15th, 2012
7:55 am
When you go to the polls to vote this fall, your choice will be between two Wall Street sponsored candidates.
Any questions?
Thomas Heyward Jr.
July 15th, 2012
8:03 am
Your only choice between two wall-street bankers?
.
Maybe to a trained-seal or sheep zombie.
.
Smart people know that there are many choices.
JamVet
July 15th, 2012
8:08 am
And even if you count the average intelligence of a government worker as being only a quarter of a regular person…..that still leaves them four times ahead of our average Republican blogger.
Who often lament a lack of “smart people” and superior intelligence in others but seldom, if ever, demonstrate any of their own. At least that I have ever seen on this forum.
Which explains how the eight year reign of George W. Bush came to be.
And Jack you pansified, soft-on-crime types should start your own organization.
Oh that’s right, you already have!
It’s call the neoconservative movement!
dbm
July 15th, 2012
8:24 am
Oscar
July 15th, 2012
1:25 am
Jay probably shouldn’t have asked such a vague question.
carlosgvv
July 15th, 2012
8:25 am
Thomas Heward, Jr – 8:03
Since you are so smart, and I am just a “trained-seal and sheep zombie” please enlighten me as to which candidates are not sponsored by Wall Street.
dbm
July 15th, 2012
8:30 am
There are lots of murders committed for reasons relating to money. Should we start tightly regulating and inspecting people’s personal and household finances in an effort to prevent such murders?
There are lots of murders committed for reasons relating to romantic and sexual relationships and jealousies. Should we start tightly regulating and inspecting romantic and sexual relationships and jealousies in an effort to prevent such murders?
Or should we concentrate on prosecuting murders after the fact?
Thomas Heyward Jr.
July 15th, 2012
8:34 am
carlosgv.\
.
Ron Paul or Gary Johnson ..to name only a few.
Furthermore…….you have a choice to NOT vote.
The less of two evils is still evil.
.
“When buying and selling are controlled by regulators, the first things to be bought and sold are regulators.” -P.J. O’Rourke
stands for decibels
July 15th, 2012
8:35 am
one of these things is not like the other. Commentary by David Grohl and the Cookie Monster.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=KwF9U9tbXN8
stands for decibels
July 15th, 2012
8:38 am
you have a choice to NOT vote.
Sounds like the aspirin-for-birth-control argument, only not realistic.
stands for decibels
July 15th, 2012
8:38 am
…not AS realistic. jeez.
dbm
July 15th, 2012
8:49 am
I’ve seen a comment that government regulations force banks into a sort of cartel and tend to prevent the offering of true alternatives to the consumer. There’s probably a lot of truth to that.
dbm
July 15th, 2012
8:55 am
Oscar
July 15th, 2012
1:25 am
Can you describe more precisely the exact nature, source, status, and purpose of the money you describe the banks as using “in their own account”?
JamVet
July 15th, 2012
9:01 am
“When buying and selling are controlled by regulators, the first things to be bought and sold are regulators.” -P.J. O’Rourke
I understand the corrupting influence of buying off our elected representatives. Yet, the quasi-fascist rightists are the fanatics who posit for such a corporatocracy.
And this quote is yet more proof that the would-be anarchists have given up on and given into these banksters and corporate criminals.
They hate Uncle Sam/our American system of governance/law enforcement officers/authority figures to the point that they now actually pull for the criminals.
Cuz they sure as hell don’t ever say boo about ANY of these white collar crimes…
JamVet
July 15th, 2012
9:04 am
Ron Paul or Gary Johnson ..to name only a few.
Let’s see all of these other many names.
This should be interesting…
TaxPayer
July 15th, 2012
9:06 am
The conned aren’t really pulling that old line about eliminating laws based on the fact that some people break the laws, are they. After all, laws would not be broken if there were none.
Old Dawg
July 15th, 2012
9:09 am
David Brooks from the NY Times said it best: They’re brats!
Either we find a way to solve the issue of Wall Street and the banking community or it will destroy everything we know.
JamVet
July 15th, 2012
9:19 am
Old Dawg, good analogy.
They are brats.
Hey Uncle Sam! You think you are going to make US adhere to the rule of law and act like ethical, responsible citizens??
I don’t think so!
We’ve got the entire Washington establishment in our pocket!
Even worse, when some rightfully outraged Americans take their god given right to protest and seek a redress of MASSIVE grievances by saying “Enough is enough!!”, we have an entire political party that goes batshiite crazy and indicts them for speaking out against these crimes and injustice!
ON OUR BEHALF!!
You are fools if you think we are ever going to accede to anything or give up one iota of the consolidated, massive power that we have amassed.
Let the working Republicans eat cake…
dbm
July 15th, 2012
9:20 am
TaxPayer
July 15th, 2012
9:06 am
There are a lot of murders. To what extent, if any, does this mean we need more laws to prevent murder? To what extent, if any, does this mean we need better enforcement of the laws we have? To what extent does this mean we have to live with pursuing murderers after the fact (and a few of us have to die with it)?
Thomas Heyward Jr.
July 15th, 2012
9:25 am
JamVet
.
“Cuz they sure as hell don’t ever say boo about ANY of these white collar crimes…”
.
Saying boo is only something the ruling sociopathes consider punishment.
.
A true anarcho/capitalist considers the “air dance” the only reasonable punishment……..and the true anarch/capitalist knows that until we see Jon Corzine do it…………the beatings will continue until morale improves.
.
And to name a few more………Virgil Goode of the Constitutional Party ..along with Jill Stein of the watermelon..I meant the Green party are not Banker wh*res.
dbm
July 15th, 2012
9:26 am
Government regulation and interference work in two ways to create “cozy” relationships between business and government.
They force businessmen to curry favor with legislators and regulators who have power over them.
They create opportunities for misuse of government power to benefit particular businessmen, companies, or groups of such.
The more complicated and pervasive government power over business, and the effects of such power, become, the harder it is to sort out which of these is which.
Oscar
July 15th, 2012
9:31 am
dbm
July 15th, 2012
8:55 am
________
The money they use to buy the securities come from the deposits made by their customers. Since FDIC protects these account holders from losses up to $250,000 these losses are basically covered by the US government, through FDIC.
Banks only hold a limited amount of money deposited with them in reserve. They major portion is loaned out or used as other investments by the banks, as in buying securities in their own names.
A lot of the the money went to fund mortgages, bad mortgages. Govt. had to bail them out or see the banks fail, and then they would have had to bail out the individual investors through FDIC.
Interesting, but scary and complex.
Thomas Heyward Jr.
July 15th, 2012
9:31 am
dbm——
.
You might as well argue with a squash.
A progresive’s answer to everything..be it a pimple upon your azz, poison ivey in your backyard, to EVEN the globes climate…………………is to hire more gubmint workers.
.
In their utopian ideal…….if you are a weirdo that doesn’t already work for the gubmint………….then one should be assigned to you.
.
True.
marko
July 15th, 2012
9:33 am
Why are international banks allowed to gamble with funds insured by US taxpayers? Imagine what the poor little fellows would do if they weren’t so severely overregulated.
At tad off topic,but Mitt says he’ll only share two years of tax returns with us. Really, where do people get the idea that they can demand the Mitt’s of world show us their papers. You just don’t treat a guy like The Mittster that way. You’d think he was a Guatemalan lawnmower jockey or something. There’s a curtain between first class and coach, and they don’t show their papers to anybody.
JamVet
July 15th, 2012
9:42 am
They force businessmen to curry favor with legislators and regulators who have power over them.
So the answer is to effectively remove legislators and regulators who any significant power over them and this will eliminate/minimize the problem?
Isn’t his exactly what has been happening since the Powell Memorandum of 1971? And escalated to a huge extent by Reagan, Clinton, Bush et al.
“Let the free market police itself”?
Great, we just got horrifically burned by letting the Wall Street banksters/casino capitalists and mega-corporation foxes guard the American henhouse and NOT ONE of those men went to jail.
BTW, do you agree or not that there is rampant corproate crime in America?
And dbm, how do you advocate cracking down on this staggering and devastating (to the Middle class, anyway) corroboratory?
Kamchak ~ Thug from the Steppes
July 15th, 2012
9:43 am
Kamchak, I read the Goldman Abacus MBS prospectus. They warned the investors about all the risks multiple times.
I side with GS. Their defense is legally airtight.
Was it the standard — investment are not guaranteed and subject to loss, if you want guarantees put it in a federally insured bank — kinda warning.
Or was it a full disclosure –We know this AAA rated investment product of ours is crap. We know because we bribed the ratings agency. Not only that, we’re making massive bets against our very own product in secret default swap markets and we are not ever gonna disclose these bets and SHUT UP! — kind of warning?
Thomas Heyward Jr.
July 15th, 2012
9:44 am
Paraphrasing a good progressive bank puppet ———
.
We have to collaspe the rotten bankster/government system first………to see whats in it.
Kamchak ~ Thug from the Steppes
July 15th, 2012
9:48 am
A progresive’s answer to everything..be it a pimple upon your azz, poison ivey in your backyard, to EVEN the globes climate…………………is to hire more gubmint workers.
Maybe, if we had more “gubmint workers”, they could have stopped that Predator drone attack on that wedding in Wisconsin.
You know, that Predator drone attack that you were so kind to tell us about.
Tool.
JamVet
July 15th, 2012
9:48 am
Zooks, redact my last to read corroboratory to corporatocracy. (A word absolutely loathed by corporatist Republicans.)
Chris
July 15th, 2012
9:55 am
Obama has proven having more regulations mean absolutely nothing, when the President chooses not to enforce the laws he’s constitutionally sworn to uphold.
carlosgvv
July 15th, 2012
9:59 am
Thomas Hewyard, Jr – 9:25
What are you talking about?
WHAT IN THE WORLD are you talking about????????
Kamchak ~ Thug from the Steppes
July 15th, 2012
10:04 am
For those of you that haven’t read the story that Tommy Jr. was punked into sharing with us: (really Tommy, the clue was right there at the top of the page — “NEVER TRUE, ALWAYS ACCURATE”)
After a three months of investigations, the CIA now admits that a NATO Predator drone flew off course on July 10 of this year and mistakenly launched a missile strike on a wedding reception being held in Pamperin Park in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
CIA investigators report that the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which was flying missions as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, misidentified the Miller-Peterson wedding celebrants for Taliban insurgents and launched an attack, killing six and wounding 17.
[...]
“This completely ruined my wedding,” the recently married Melissa Peterson-Miller told investigators. “First, the flowers were all wrong, then Rodney [Stevens, one of the groomsmen who was injured in the attack] threw up on the cheese tray at the rehearsal dinner last night, and now this!”
The incident report reveals that the drone pilot believed the targets on the ground appeared to be militants wielding weapons and firing them into the air in an act of aggression. It turns out, the guests were merely conducting a “raise the roof” dance move as part of the DJ’s appeal for support and “a little energy” while the wedding party arrived to take their seats at the head table.
Union
July 15th, 2012
10:05 am
we have the irs.. they cannot enforce rules on anything but honest people.. we have a medicaid / medicare system that is ripe with fraud.. we have finra/sec that cannot do its job… even when continuously warned of bad investors..
dont think its a matter of funding.. its a matter of leadership.. when mary schapiro took over the sec.. she promised to clean things up.. she spent the first part of her tenure going after insurance companies.. trying to regulate an already regulated line of business.. all the while looking the other way while bernie madoff was taking peoples retirement and investments to the cleaners..
we call for the heads of “wall street” types.. and rightly so.. when are we going to start making the federal agencies more responsible for their ineptitude?
JamVet
July 15th, 2012
10:06 am
I believe it will take one more really good attempt by the depraved men who run these American mega-corporations to try and destroy capitalism like they did back in September 2008 before the Purity Test gang will finally wake up.
And even then it is debatable if they would. Their stupor seems that great.
And likely too late, anyway…
To paraphrase the Wizard, “Pay no mind to the men behind that giant American flag at 10 Wall Street.”
TaxPayer
July 15th, 2012
10:39 am
So dbm and Thomas apparently are in favor of just getting rid of the laws based on the fact that some people will always break the laws and therefore what good are they? And Thomas accuses others of living in Utopia. Anyway, what would this lawless land look like? Stand your ground and the faster draw wins. Or the biggest weapon wins. How about hand grenades at ten paces…
ragnar danneskjold
July 15th, 2012
10:41 am
A comic essay, as if the Fed has ever lacked sufficient oversight authority. The flaw of those who fawn over government oversight for ideological reasons is that the presence of overlords gives us trillions of dollars of losses in such brilliant schemes as ObamaCare and Solyndra. At least Chase lost its own money, instead of taxpayer dollars.
Kamchak ~ Thug from the Steppes
July 15th, 2012
10:51 am
And our resident Ayn Randroid shows up and labels this a “comic essay.”
Talk about irony….
Fred ™
July 15th, 2012
10:52 am
When faced with irrefutable evidence of the fallacy of the fantasyland created by the drug controlled mind of Ayn Rand that Ragsie so espouses what does he do?
He blames the Gov’t. How typical.
Fred ™
July 15th, 2012
10:59 am
Thomas
July 14th, 2012
7:46 pm
Perhaps a more informative article would have included the ineptititude of federal gov’t workers as well.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Here is the typical Republican (and Ragsie) response. Well they we only crooks because the Gov’t wasn’t smart enough to catch them.
Don’t the simple minded deluded fools relize that it is THEIR MONEY TOO that is being stolen? Do they think the super rich are going to give them half for supporting the blatant theft?
What is WRONG with these people? Do they just like the feel of urine on their heads and dripping though their hair down to their faces? Is THAT why they allow themselves to be peed on and then just though hoops like a circus dog to “explain” it away and “blame” Obama?
Just damn.
TaxPayer
July 15th, 2012
11:01 am
Contrary to unpopular belief, Chase is not really a person and Chase does not have a stash of his or her own billions sitting around to gamble with.
Fred ™
July 15th, 2012
11:17 am
axPayer
July 15th, 2012
11:01 am
Contrary to unpopular belief, Chase is not really a person and Chase does not have a stash of his or her own billions sitting around to gamble with.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Just like the Government and that socialist Kenyan Oblaba.
There I got the deluded right wing response to your post out of the way lol.
Although, unlike Gov’t, no one from the banks has ever been held accountable for the great bank scam thefts. Quite the opposite, they have all been handsomely rewarded.
Mighty Righty
July 15th, 2012
11:22 am
According to Obama, our financial system is upside down. Wealth comes from the bottom. Who knew? This admission by Obama explains his illogical statements. His economic ignorance explains his unique view that wealth is generated by poor people. Poor people do the hiring! No wonder he has increased the number of poor, the number on food stamps, the number on welefare. His weird belief clears up his statement the other day of how bad employment numbers were a step in the right direction. High unemployment is actualy his goal to improve the economy and he thinks it is working. .He is running adds to increase the number of people getting food stamps and has eliminated the need to prove a need for food stamps. Just go sign up. Everything is free. The logical conclusion of this new economics is that once everyone is out of work the economy will be completely recovered and we will have achieved 100% unemployment and our GNP will soar. Utopia at last! The slogan under Obamanisim is, “The he-l with our children, just keep borrowing from China and give me four more years. After that, who cares”
Hootinanny Yum Yum
July 15th, 2012
11:24 am
Do we need more regulation or enforcement of existing regulations?
Thomas
July 15th, 2012
11:26 am
Fred/Taxpayer
Quite a leap their crouching tigers. Did you boys in, your adrenaline rush, miss the part where I said “Perhaps a MORE (emphasis added) informative article….
Too infer that the writer of the above is against any and all Fed regulation is, at best, rather immature. I have a strong dislike of WStreet for many reasons.
getalife
July 15th, 2012
11:39 am
Bottom line, we need their revenue to fund government but we do not need another global collapse so the answer is balance.
It is a not my way or the highway issue.
Mighty Righty
July 15th, 2012
11:48 am
ONE
For the last two hundred years
Which country has been the most economicaly successful country,
Which country has the highest standard of living,.
Which country has had the best health care,
Which country has been the most popular destination for the worlds poor,,
Which country has the freeist citizens,
Which country has the best standard of living for its poor,
Which country has been the most generous with its wealth?
That would be the United States under Capitalism.
TWO
During the same period which countries mudered its citizens, disarrned them and used military force make them to comply with a poltical system that resulted in their enslavement poverty, starvation, poor health care, and the deaths of million?.
That would be Socialist, Fascist, Nazi, Communist, Marxist countries.
Which system does Obama admire and want to “fundamentally” force change to the citizens of our country?
That would be number two.
Vote for capitalism and freedom this November. It may be our last chance to avoid “fundamental change.”
getalife
July 15th, 2012
11:55 am
Ooops.
It is not my way or the highway issue.
The libor scandal will see some prosecutions and added regulations like the collapse but the banks will still rule the world.
So both sides are right.
Kamchak ~ Thug from the Steppes
July 15th, 2012
11:57 am
Socialist, Fascist, Nazi, Communist, Marxist
All code words for “fear”.
Shorter Tighty Whitey: Be vewy vewy afwaid, cause I want you to be like me.
getalife
July 15th, 2012
12:02 pm
mr,
What a load of con bs.
Our President is a moderate capitalist like Clinton.
Give the lies a rest.
getalife
July 15th, 2012
12:09 pm
willard is busted on his bain lies and the gop are starting to turn on him.
Of course, Rahm told willard to stop whining.
Your thoughts mr?
JamVet
July 15th, 2012
12:10 pm
Notwithstanding that the inference that we have the best health care in the world is pretty delusional (outside of some sophist context), for a moment there I thought you were acknowledging the status of countries like Canada, Ireland, South Korea and Switzerland.
My bad.
Chuckle and guffaw…
We have the MOST EXPENSIVE healthcare in the world. BY FAR. But rank #37 out of 191 countries.
(Damn facts.)
190 more days
July 15th, 2012
12:13 pm
Oh Noes, the corporatocracy
190 more days
July 15th, 2012
12:19 pm
When you go for your brain surgery, will you go to the USA (37th best in the world) or one of the other 36 nations that are supposedly better that the USA?
Erwin's cat
July 15th, 2012
12:20 pm
Nothing that QEIII can’t fix
/snark/
Erwin's cat
July 15th, 2012
12:22 pm
or a good speech
Erwin's cat
July 15th, 2012
12:28 pm
Rahlm
JamVet
July 15th, 2012
12:41 pm
Corporatocracy -noun
Corporatocracy is an economic and political system that is controlled by corporations or corporate interests.
It arose from four trends: weak national parties and strong political representation of individual districts, the large U.S. military establishment after World War II, big corporate money financing election campaigns, and globalization tilting the balance away from workers.
The term was used by author John Perkins in his 2004 book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, where he described corporatocracy as a collective composed of corporations, banks, and governments.
The concept has been used in explanations of bank bailouts, excessive pay for CEOs, as well as complaints such as the exploitation of national treasuries, people, and natural resources. It has been used by critics of globalization, sometimes in conjunction with criticism of the World Bank[ or unfair lending practices, as well as criticism of free trade agreements.
And why nearly three fourths of Americans contend that corporations have too much control over our government and our lives.
Al Gore declared that Americans must ‘’stand up and say no” to ”Big Tobacco, Big Oil, the big polluters, the pharmaceutical companies, the HMOs.”
Indeed, 74% of those polled by BUSINESS WEEK agreed with the Veep’s remarks. Only 47% think that what’s good for business is good for most Americans, according to BUSINESS WEEK’s poll. And 66% think large profits are more important to big companies than developing safe, reliable, quality products for consumers.
And that was in 2000, I guarandamntee you that the sentiment is that much stronger now.
And in my estimation it is the single greatest threat to the republic and our given right as the sovereigns – the supreme and independent power or authority in government – in this nation.
Feel free to explain exactly how it is that we don’t have one.
Or don’t…(I am not holding my breath, because I have never seen the first truly cogent response to countermand ANY of this information)
But either way, wake up.
Corporations are not people, my friend…
Corporate statism or state corporatism is a political culture and a form of corporatism whose adherents hold that the corporate group is the basis of society and the state. The corporate group is typically comprised by political-economic power elites, for example those represented by the United States Chamber of Commerce or the American Enterprise Institute. In other countries, the corporate group may be a specific national or ethnic group.
And going back well over 200 years, many brilliant and courageous Americans have forecast this usurpation of our sovereignty by the monied interests as Jefferson called them.
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of the government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power, ~Benito Mussolini
Kamchak ~ Thug from the Steppes
July 15th, 2012
12:43 pm
“I am stuck on Band-Aid brand ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me!”
– Thomas Jefferson
Keep Up the Good Fight!
July 15th, 2012
1:10 pm
Looks to me like Mighty might have hacked into Scouts fear mail supply…… oh the quivvering.
carlosgvv
July 15th, 2012
1:14 pm
Mighty Righty
Please furnish evidence that Obama admires Socialist, Communist, Marxist, Facist and Nazi Countrys. Then furnish evidence that he wants to force a fundamental change on America.
If you can’t do that, then please stop spouting such “compassionate conservative” nonsense here as you will be called out to prove it every time and you will wind up looking like an idiot every time.
Willie
July 15th, 2012
1:16 pm
Jay thinks he is clever when he is only a fool. Structural regulation…like banks that have federally insured deposits may not trade in securities don’t take up much space. Disasters like Dodd Frank regulate everything and solve nothing. Little minds like Jay’s think that MORE regulation…lots of little rules… is the soluton. Common sense structure is the right solution.
While Jay is an over exposed idiot, Obama is a marxist who is desperately trying to either sieze or destroy the country if he does not get his way. His blast from this weekend that “we need a economy that creates wealth from the bottom up” is about as marxist as you can get. Marxism is the ONLY economic system that thinks that wealth is connected to class. Marxism has utterly failed. It failed to create equality. It failed to create economic growth or prosperty. It has only been successful in creating misery and slavery. Why would anyone pursue such a system?
killerj
July 15th, 2012
1:16 pm
So the money just vanishes…………..?,somebody has a pocket full of change.
getalife
July 15th, 2012
1:28 pm
Prove it willie.
Doggone/GA
July 15th, 2012
1:34 pm
“So the money just vanishes…………..?,somebody has a pocket full of change”
Sure. If there was no fraud, it’s in the pockets of whoever bet better than the losers. If there is fraud, it’s in the pockets of the “losers”
Skeptic
July 15th, 2012
1:45 pm
Just keep blasting those “guvmint workers.” Freeze their salaries for a third year in a row. It won’t be long till you get what you pay for.
Doggone/GA
July 15th, 2012
1:54 pm
” It won’t be long till you get what you pay for.”
Which will then be used as proof that “government is the problem”
Thomas
July 15th, 2012
2:11 pm
I get all of the above but if fascism doesn’t work why don’t more folks go get an SBA loan and prove the system wrong v. blogging what doesn’t work?
Fred ™
July 15th, 2012
2:13 pm
Thomas
July 15th, 2012
2:11 pm
I get all of the above but if fascism doesn’t work why don’t more folks go get an SBA loan and prove the system wrong v. blogging what doesn’t work?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Right.The banks are just GIVING money away right now right Thomas? How much did they give you?
Fred ™
July 15th, 2012
2:29 pm
All I hear is my computer fans running.
Thanks Thomas, thta’s what I thought. Just more nonsense and hyperbole from the right.
Why you folks defend stupidity like this I’ll never figure out, but when you do it totally destroys your credibility.
dbm
July 15th, 2012
2:45 pm
Oscar
July 15th, 2012
9:31 am
On one level, what we have here is a technical question of how to draw the line between appropriate investments of the depositor money entrusted to the banks and overly risky ones that should not be permitted. If a government bailout was “required”, that strongly suggests the investments were too risky, although we would need to dig further than I have seen in this thread to get a solid proof.
On another level, this raises the question of whether banks should have more flexibility to offer different kinds of accounts with different degrees of risk, with the riskier accounts having a chance for a bigger payoff to the depositor. There should of course be clear communication about the differences in this case.
dbm
July 15th, 2012
2:52 pm
JamVet
July 15th, 2012
9:42 am
I agree that we need good laws defining and forbidding fraud and embezzlement, and proper enforcement of those laws.
It would be a lot easier to achieve this if
- We did not have statism-caused entanglement between business and government as I mentioned in an earlier post.
- More people were better at defining the issues involved.
dbm
July 15th, 2012
2:56 pm
TaxPayer
July 15th, 2012
10:39 am
Please actually read my posts.
Tundra Dude
July 15th, 2012
2:58 pm
Republicans will fix it…..or not.
House Republicans Try to Create the World’s Worst Criminogenic Environment
Wm. K. Black (former S&L investigator)
(snipped)
If you wanted to reproduce the conditions that led to the Great Recession in 2007,
the easiest way would be the plan unveiled last week by House Republicans:
gut the regulators who are supposed to keep the worst business practices in check.
http://bit.ly/LpzSrP
dbm
July 15th, 2012
3:03 pm
JamVet
July 15th, 2012
12:41 pm
We probably do have corporatocracy to some extent. The real question is, what really causes this and how do we get away from it?