Quote :

"What are your reasons for believing the part in bold? You open a bank. I deposit 100 dollars. The government says that you can now legally loan out somewhere between 800 and 1000 dollars and charge interest on it. Doesn't that seem wrong to you? Doesn't it kind of seem like the banks are profiting off of...well, nothing, except the backing of the government?"

I think you misunderstood me, because that's what I'm saying. Loaning out money that they didn't have is part of what got us into this mess. If you're going to loan out $1,000, you should have closer to $1,000 on hand.

Quote :

"I like the idea of people voluntarily coming together and doing things for each other, and I think that human nature will guide them to do that. I like the idea that people can choose to not participate in these collectivist activities and live the shitty life that it would entail."

I'm not sure I follow you here. You like the idea of people coming together, but you think that those collectivist ideas would make for a shitty life?

Quote :

"yes, and there's no reason we couldn't get rid of our reliance on fossil fuels if every one would just grow wings overnight."

Well that's just cynical. There are lots of successful government programs. Yes, there's waste that needs to be eliminated, and no, they don't turn a profit, but they're not supposed to. They do what they're supposed to - we do have clean water, (mostly) safe food, a highway system, the internet, safer workplaces, etc.

I guess my issue there is that there's no goddamn reason to buy a $1,000 toilet seat, yet nobody gets held accountable. Again I'd attribute this to decreased ability to participate in our democracy - maybe that and a combination of complacency, but that's to be expected when your actions at the polls don't make a difference either way. To me, it's a matter of whether you believe those kinds of things are worth fighting against, or whether you should just say to hell with it and scrap the whole thing altogether. I'm sure whatever military contractor who lobbied Congress for its contract probably enjoyed their profit off that toilet seat, though.

How does Europe (well, ok, not all of Europe) stay successful with intense government regulation? Germany and the Scandinavian nations in particular have been riding out the global recession pretty well. I don't buy the argument that it only works there because everyone's ethnically/culturally homogeneous.

[Edited on October 17, 2011 at 10:51 PM. Reason : ]

10/17/2011 10:29:49 PM

Quote :

"Why though? Because that's the way it is?"

did you ever hear about those thousand dollar toilet seats? what about those 300 dollar hammers? i rest my fucking case. government ALWAYS makes things more expensive.

Quote :

"There's no reason we couldn't take advantage of that if the program was actually managed worth a damn. "

yes, and there's no reason we couldn't get rid of our reliance on fossil fuels if every one would just grow wings overnight.

10/17/2011 10:30:10 PM

Quote :

"I think you misunderstood me, because that's what I'm saying. Loaning out money that they didn't have is part of what got us into this mess. If you're going to loan out $1,000, you should have closer to $1,000 on hand."

That's great news, then. You're opposed to fractional reserve banking, which is a banking system defined by reserve requirements. Anything other than 100% reserve requirement could be considered fractional, though history suggests that banking with higher reserve requirements (60%-100%) works fine for the most part. Read about current reserve requirements here: http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm

As you can see, they're really low.

What does that mean for the economy, though? The easy credit part is obvious, banks can pyramid debt. Seems good at first glance since we can promote investment, except we lose a lot of market discipline in that move; credit ends up going towards more risky ventures (or just consumption) than it would have in a full reserve system. Most recently, things like housing, education, and health care costs have all far outpaced core inflation. What do they all have in common? Easy credit went towards riskier ventures.

Compounded on this problem where private banks can create all this debt, which effectively becomes money in the economy since the debt can be sold on the market, is the creation of the Federal Reserve system. We had central banks before it in the U.S., but none took hold like the Fed. The invention of the Federal Reserve was rooted in one goal: to have a lender of last resort. To make it so, if the primary dealers (the banks that are permitted, arbitrarily it seems, to participate in the Fed) were to bite off more than they could chew, they'd be backstopped by a central bank. From 1913 forward, we have had a banking cartel. They have wreaked havoc on the economy, seemingly without remorse, and extracted wealth to varying degrees at different times.

You can see how the implications of a system like this are troubling. We have an elaborate system with good money consistently chasing after bad. That's where the inefficiency comes in. You get people going to school for jobs that aren't in demand. You get inflated demand and bubbles. That's what Austrian economics calls the business cycle. Unsustainable demand fueled by credit ("the boom") drives up prices, then prices crash and we have "the bust".

Quote :

"I'm not sure I follow you here. You like the idea of people coming together, but you think that those collectivist ideas would make for a shitty life?"

No, I'm saying that the collectivist activities are great and are necessary for progress. Collaboration is fundamental, I just don't believe in forced collaboration.

[Edited on October 17, 2011 at 11:10 PM. Reason : ]

10/17/2011 11:05:44 PM

Refresh my memory, are you a gold standard kind of guy?

10/17/2011 11:12:23 PM

Quote :

"Ian shut the fuck up I have zero patience to argue with you over fucking minutiae."

I like how this statement is followed with an argument about the minutiae in question.

Gotta hand it to you, though, today I saw my first example of the silly anti-protest media bias you keep claiming to predominate. TIME has pictures and quotes from six protesters. It lists their occupations: one wine salesman, one "actress-grad student," two social workers (one of whom talks about how she's marched in pretty much every protest she's been able to find since the 60s), an organic farmer, and a yoga teacher. If I were gonna try to paint you lot as a bunch of hippie buffoons, I could hardly do worse. Well, I might try to replace the less-activist social worker with with someone who writes for "High Times" magazine.

---

The argument that OWS has no focus isn't very meaningful...yet. The Tea Party was pretty amorphous for a while before it finally settled on "no taxes and everything Obama wants is bad." Eventually they'll pick up a couple of competent spokespeople around which something more concrete can form.

Their biggest problem, as I see it, is money. Supposedly they're raising a decent chunk of change, and good for them. Unfortunately for the movement, they're spending a large portion of that on food, sleeping bags, and sanitation for the park. That's laudable but it doesn't fund campaigns. I think there's a critical moment when the protests will have peaked in their ability to attract press, at which point those involve should go back home so they can funnel the proceeds into a structure that can actually effect change. But -- again, unfortunately for them -- there's no leadership to decide when to do that, and their money is currently handled by a hodgepodge of volunteers who won't disclose their books.

Of course, that's just their biggest structural problem. The potential still looms for things to spiral out of control. You get that many people sleeping outside with little or no oversight, sooner or later things will go tits up. Assaults, robberies, destruction of property -- all it takes is a fringe element to do these things, and the public sympathy for OWS can evaporate like that.

10/17/2011 11:14:35 PM

Good, they don't rate any sympathy.

10/17/2011 11:21:47 PM

Quote :

"You open a bank. I deposit 100 dollars. The government says that you can now legally loan out somewhere between 800 and 1000 dollars"

This is factually incorrect. For a bank to lend out $900 it must have had $1000 deposited into it. Otherwise, when the people the bank loaned the money to came and withdrew it or spent it, the bank would not have it and be declared insolvent. What the law means is that for every $900 lent out the bank must keep $100 in reserve somewhere. It doesn't mean a bank can skip the step of having depositors.

While it is true that every loan usually starts life as a deposit (I lent you $900 by marking up your account rather than handing you cash), they don't usually stay that way for more than at most a few days and a bank must balance input and output at the end of every day.

10/17/2011 11:32:58 PM

Quote :

"You get that many people sleeping outside with little or no oversight, sooner or later things will go tits up. Assaults, robberies, destruction of property"

You get that many banks merging together with little or no oversight, sooner or later things will go tits up.


But honestly, I think I would really just like to see these happen, and then we can all go back to thinking we have a voice in our democracy and arguing about whether or not married faggots should be able to have abortions or not.

1) Re-instate Glass Steagal. Banks need adult supervision, or they fuck us all.
2) Strip corporations of "personhood." Does this even need to be argued?
3) Let the Bush Tax Cuts expire already
4) Campaign Finance Reform. We seriously need to make sure candidates represent us, not their sponsers
5) Bankers need Fiduciary Responsibility. Lawyers have it, Doctors have it, Engineers have it, Architects have it. Bankers need to have it. When it is profitable for your financial advisor to sell you inflated dogshit for his/her own short term gain, there's a problem.

[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 12:18 AM. Reason : ]

10/18/2011 12:17:03 AM

I kinda have a problem with ending corporate personhood actually. I mean, let's say you work for a company as a mid-level employee, and you get stock options. Or maybe you work for a co-op, and the employees are the owners. Which is all well and good in theory, until someone higher up the chain commits fraud or something, and then you're personally liable for it as a shareholder.

We definitely need ways to make the actual decision-makers accountable for their actions, but I'm not convinced that ending corporate personhood is a feasible one.

10/18/2011 12:30:30 AM

Or even necessary. A corporation is an association of people, anyway.

The only legitimate gripes these douchebags have are (1) undue corporate political influence, and (2) the complaint championed by Warren Buffett regarding overall tax rates of the very rich (though I don't care for his proposed solution).

10/18/2011 12:48:11 AM

The income disparity between the lower and upper class (or even middle and upper class) isn't a legitimate gripe?

10/18/2011 12:58:17 AM

1% of the population owns 99% of the bootstraps

10/18/2011 1:06:23 AM

Quote :

"I'll continue beating the dead horse that is the Federal Reserve + the Fractional Reserve Banking system until you have no choice but to get informed. "

Maybe one of the times you beat on it you'll fuck up and accidentally learn something, and then you'll stop beating.

"End the Fed" nuts (a) don't understand inflation, mostly working off of a completely inadequate heterodox definition of it stemming from Austrian "economics" [if it can be called economics]; (b) are even more irrational than anti-gun nuts. In order for anti-gun nuts to be as over the top as you people, they'd have to argue that every discharge of a firearm necessarily kills an innocent person, and to do so with a straight face while claiming the rest of us "don't understand ballistics".


[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 11:40 AM. Reason : .]

10/18/2011 11:37:19 AM

And, in typical fashion, you contribute nothing of value or substance. Stick to chit chat where you actually are smarter than the average poster.

10/18/2011 11:47:33 AM

lmao whatever dude, keep never reading anything of worth on the very subject you continue to dribble on and on and on about. It's not my desire or responsibility to provide you with the education you deny yourself, I have better shit to do. But if you are ever curious why people legitimately disagree with you, you should check up on it. That's MY horse to beat: insisting that people read their own intellectual tradition as a prerequisite to pontificating about it

10/18/2011 11:52:08 AM

Man, I tried to go the Farmers Market here in SLC on Saturday, and Occupy SLC had taken over the whole damn square and appeared to have scared the Farmers Market away Only thing left was the stand selling Thai Tea. God bless the Asians, nothing phases them.

In all seriousness though, the whole Occupy movement has already been a massive success. It's managed to completely shift the national political debate from the debt to fixing the inequality in our society. Not bad for a bunch of dirty jobless hippies with no real message.

Hell, they actually got Eric Cantor to mention "income inequality". That's like getting a Muslim to say something nice about Israel.

[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 12:35 PM. Reason : :]

10/18/2011 12:26:55 PM

^ Good point, the protesters have always maintained that they just want to start a dialogue and now that they have they are showing some sway in the topics of discussion. The political debates are going to start focusing more and more on addressing the Occupy Together protesters' demands because they generally do represent the majority of voters.

10/18/2011 1:49:05 PM

http://rt.com/usa/news/professor-cornel-west-people-037/

I like this guy

10/18/2011 3:41:43 PM

I don't see income inequality as a problem in itself. It's quite conceivable that you could have a great deal of income inequality while still having rising standard of living across the board. The "wealth gap" isn't the problem, it's what drives the wealth gap. If people are getting filthy rich because they invented a product that improves life for most or all people, then I'm fine with that. If people are getting filthy rich because they're getting bailed out (they are and you supported this, Shrike), then that's wrong and it should be stopped immediately.

We don't have a steadily rising standard of living in this country. In fact, our standard of living is going down. In every area where the government has tried "stimulus," we get out of control prices. There is no recovery. There will be no recovery until we say enough is enough and allow greed to be curtailed by loss.

This movement needs to be about dismantling corporatism, not anger towards the 1%, whoever they may be. We don't want to tear down the Steve Jobs' of the world; they improve our lives. We want to destroy the war profiteers, the bankers, the politicians that give away our money to them, and the justice system that enforces unjust laws.

10/18/2011 3:51:53 PM

West is an evil racist

10/18/2011 4:04:28 PM

^^It's really sad that false equivalence is all your ilk have left to support your incoherent views. Also, Steve Jobs was a pot smoking progressive Democrat who supported Barack Obama. He got fucked by corporate America until they literally begged him to come back so he could save their asses. He wasn't one of you. He would be donating money to OWS if were alive today. Don't use his name to support your intellectually disingenuous bullshit.

[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 4:25 PM. Reason : :]

10/18/2011 4:17:24 PM

Actually, Steve Jobs would not be donating anything to anyone, he was anti-charity.

Also d357r0y3r is dead on in his explanation what the movement is fundamentally about.

10/18/2011 4:25:01 PM

Quote :

"It's really sad that false equivalence is all your ilk have left to support your incoherent views. Also, Steve Jobs was a pot smoking progressive Democrat who support Barack Obama. He got fucked by corporate America until they literally begged him to come back so he could save their asses. He wasn't one of you. He would be donating money to OWS if were alive today. Don't use his name to support your intellectually disingenuous bullshit."

Steve Jobs' political and drug choices are not the point.

The point is that he got filthy rich by providing value to consumers. Not by schwindling it from the middle class.

Wallstreet and the other financial institutions got ultra-rich by whoring up the economy using dubious financial and economic techniques. When those techniques ultimately failed, the tax payers bailed them out and they got to keep their profits while we got a figurative dick in the ass.

[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 4:30 PM. Reason : 0]

10/18/2011 4:29:55 PM

we didn't just get a dick in the ass, we're now being lent back our own money with interest. shit's pretty gangsta, when you think about it.

10/18/2011 4:42:48 PM

^^Yeah, but the bailouts weren't the problem, they were a necessary action that was the end result of all that bad bank behavior you mentioned. Without the bailouts, that figurative dick in the ass would have been a jack hammer, and the people responsible would still have kept their profits (actually most of them got away with their bags of money well before the bailouts were even discussed).

The behavior that caused it all was motivated by a trend of deregulation, out of whack incentive structure, and absolutely no fear of reprisal. It all comes back to "trickle down economics", the theory that if we let the top 1% accumulate unlimited wealth, eventually prosperity will rain down on all of us. Instead, we ended up with an all new class of aristocracy who control all the wealth, and use it to gain power in politics so they can keep it that way. The wealth gap absolutely is the problem because sound economic policy (progressive taxation, infrastructure investment, universal access to health care and education, strict rules governing finance, etc...) that actually promotes a strong middle class would never allow 450 people to have more wealth combined than 150 million others in the same country.

[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 5:07 PM. Reason : :]

10/18/2011 4:59:31 PM

What will happen to Steve Job's wealth?

10/18/2011 5:04:35 PM

I think an even bigger problem is that the deregulation was sold to the American public as a means of competing with third world countries which pretty much endorse slave-labor. It's been a race to the bottom ever since 1980.

To think of where this nation might be if it weren't for the Iran-Contra affair

10/18/2011 5:05:10 PM

Multinational corporations have been able to pit governments against one-another for 30 years now and have fled to countries with minimal human rights standards to increase their bottom line. Unless there is some united effort to raise worker rights across the globe, then we can continue to watch the American middle class evaporate.

10/18/2011 5:08:01 PM

Necessary is debatable. Necessary to delay the inevitable? Yes. We will never know what the best solution would have been.

And saying it was because of deregulation alone is misleading. There were several government regulations and acts that significantly contributed to the cluster fuck of bad loans/toxic assets.

And no, I don't know what the solution is. But I have a suspicion that injecting more debt in to the economy to "stimulate" it isn't the answer. Nor is it a good a idea to increase the risk for businesses to grow.

10/18/2011 5:10:47 PM

the guy fawkes masks are really driving the point home.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/66259.html

ahahahaha...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/18/obama-passes-meeting-occupy-activists/

ahaha x2



[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 5:18 PM. Reason : -]

10/18/2011 5:11:49 PM

Yeah, JesusHChrist is right, Reagan and Bush I effectively destroying the manufacturing industry in the United States by encouraging out sourcing was a big part of it. Of course, it all comes back to helping the rich increase their bottom line. My dad saw this first hand. When he first started working at his company, a multinational corporation that builds security hardware, they did the entire process from A to Z. From metal fab all the way to finally assembly. By the time he retired, they got basically the entire lock housing and all the mechanical parts from China, already plated and finished. Basically all the plant in Winston Salem, NC did was slap their name on it and put it in a box.

[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 5:26 PM. Reason : :]

10/18/2011 5:20:56 PM

Quote :

"Yeah, but the bailouts weren't the problem, they were a necessary action that was the end result of all that bad bank behavior you mentioned. Without the bailouts, that figurative dick in the ass would have been a jack hammer, and the people responsible would still have kept their profits (actually most of them got away with their bags of money well before the bailouts were even discussed). "

The bailouts weren't the problem, but the bonuses paid directly from bailout money were?

Nothing you say here is presented with any evidence. When this shit was going down, I was saying, "What the fuck? Why are bank CEOs getting billion dollar bonuses when they got bailed out?" If we were going to bail out the banks, we should have nationalized them (like Iceland) and gutted the entire infrastructure. Instead, we've been continuously bailing out what I refer to as zombie banks.

Quote :

"The behavior that caused it all was motivated by a trend of deregulation, out of whack incentive structure, and absolutely no fear of reprisal."

"Deregulation" is a cop out; it allows you to avoid talking specifics. I mentioned it in detail on the last page, but over 50,000 regulations were added in the Bush years. The Clinton years saw plenty of regulations added as well. The mantra was "increase home ownership at whatever the cost." The government was pushing it, the Fed was pushing it, and the banks were more than happy to go along with it when they realized they could sell toxic loans in secondary markets.

It's absurd to think that the same government responsible for engineering the crisis was simultaneously capable of effectively regulating the market. The government/Fed was providing the spiked punch, and the banks predictably ran with it and got wasted. The real problem came about when the government solution was to pay for the party damage with public money, which you supported.

Anyone else find it hilarious that the people bitching about outsourcing are the same ones demanding a higher minimum wage?

[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 5:38 PM. Reason : ]

10/18/2011 5:38:28 PM

The problem is that we need to raise the global human rights standard. as long as their are countries that effectively endorse slave-labor, we'll never be able to compete with them.

Quote :

""Deregulation" is a cop out; it allows you to avoid talking specifics. I mentioned it in detail on the last page, but over 50,000 regulations were added in the Bush years. The Clinton years saw plenty of regulations added as well. "

Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Is that specific enough for you? It killed the Glass-Steagal Act and allowed the derivative market to run amok. It's an endless game of cat and mouse. Many of the components of FDR's New Deal have been eroded over the years, and as a result we've experienced the greatest gap between top earners and those on the bottom rungs of society. Once we get rid of Social Security, it'll pretty much be game over for the middle class. Those with everything will always look for ways to maximize profits, and the democratic system has to continue to find ways to stop that from happening when it impedes on human rights. It's a necessary check on run-away capitalism.

Quote :

"The mantra was "increase home ownership at whatever the cost." The government was pushing it, the Fed was pushing it, and the banks were more than happy to go along with it when they realized they could sell toxic loans in secondary markets."

This is a failure of Urban design. People need to live in homes, or else they're forced to live like this (this is my hometown, by the way -- the city, not the hooverville):





So unless you want to see an increase of Favelas, Slums, Shantytowns, Hoovervilles, Squatter settlements, whatever you want to call them, you need effective urban design that can accommodate low-income earners into acceptable living conditions so that they can re-assimilate into mainstream society and become productive members.

Of course, the reason why the US government allowed banks to get into the home-mortgage fiasco is because we as a nation wanted to avoid this:






We have allowed developers and banks to get into the game of privatizing public housing for profit, and the results have been abhorrent. And as an added insult, the same people who were giving out predatory loans to bottom (mostly uneducated) earners now own the homes and property that those fraudulent loans rested on. Which means they will now be able to sell those homes/properties again in the future for an even greater profit. That's disgusting.

Unless we start designing places for the lowest earners of society to live properly, it will continue to drag everyone down. The failure of our government to adequately provide housing (the failure of project housing, specifically) led to the "mantra of home ownership" which inflated a bubble that was never going to last.




[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 6:17 PM. Reason : ]

10/18/2011 5:48:11 PM

Quote :

"The bailouts weren't the problem, but the bonuses paid directly from bailout money were? Nothing you say here is presented with any evidence. When this shit was going down, I was saying, "What the fuck? Why are bank CEOs getting billion dollar bonuses when they got bailed out?" If we were going to bail out the banks, we should have nationalized them (like Iceland) and gutted the entire infrastructure. Instead, we've been continuously bailing out what I refer to as zombie banks. "

I'm not going to sit here and say that everything the government did, from the bailouts, to the stimulus and Wall Street reform was absolutely optimal. I've never said that. What you're getting into now is what would have been ideal vs. what was politically possibly. We weren't going to fix the entire problem with one piece of legislation. At the very least, Dodd-Frank introduced new government powers to facilitate "orderly liquidation", which effectively ends "too big to fail" and allays the fears over zombie banks (which by the way, Republicans want to repeal). Another TARP-esque capital injection shouldn't be necessary, because we can actually manage large bank bankruptcy's in a way that we simply couldn't in 2008 when Lehman went down and shocked the credit markets. The next step is getting rid of those billion dollar bonuses.

[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 6:04 PM. Reason : :]

10/18/2011 5:57:46 PM

Quote :

"The problem is that we need to raise the global human rights standard. as long as their are countries that effectively endorse slave-labor, we'll never be able to compete with them."

Yeah, and this is the part that you're not understanding. 10,000 years ago, the "global human rights standard" was complete shit. It wasn't government legislation that allowed the human race to escape this baseline level of poverty, it was economic growth. It was savings, investment, and capital. It was productive enterprise.

In your head, all we need is for every country in the world to enact legislation that requires a certain standard of living. Everyone must have access to this kind of food, and this amount. Everyone must have insurance. Everyone must have education. Everyone must have whatever. The problem is that in all of those cases, someone has to be the one to provide those goods or services. Someone has to do the work, and they have their price. So, the end result when you try to create "human rights standards" is that you get shortages, and no problems have really been solved.

Quote :

"Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Is that specific enough for you? It killed the Glass-Steagal Act and allowed the derivative market to run amok. It's an endless game of cat and mouse. Those with everything will always look for ways to maximize profits, and the democratic system has to continue to find ways to stop that from happening when it impedes on human rights. It's a necessary check on run-away capitalism."

I agree that killing Glass-Steagal Act was bad given what had happened, but the original legislation that established the FDIC was the real killer. Any legislation that aims to "control speculation" is guaranteed to be a load of horseshit. FDR, while being a progressive hero, actually guaranteed that we would get where we are today, he just made sure we wouldn't get there til long after he was dead. Thanks a lot, bro.

^^Why do people need to own homes? Have you not heard of apartments? Owning a home is a huge expense, and buying a home should be a huge decision preceded by a good deal of planning. The market will allocate resources. We don't need bureaucrats and politicians deciding what money goes where and to who.

Quote :

"Another TARP-esque capital injection shouldn't be necessary, because we can actually manage large bank bankruptcy's in a way that we simply couldn't in 2008 when Lehman went down and shocked the credit markets. The next step is getting rid of those billion dollar bonuses."

They only reason we haven't needed more TARP is because the Fed was pumping money. We will reach a point where there's another crisis - debt ceiling, quantitative easing, stimulus, etc. You know the drill, and something has to give. So, no, we're not in a better position than in 2008, we're in a much, much worse position. Europe is currently experiencing the same kind of shit storm that we will encounter in the next few years.

[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 6:10 PM. Reason : ]

10/18/2011 5:58:58 PM

Quote :

"Yeah, and this is the part that you're not understanding. 10,000 years ago, the "global human rights standard" was complete shit. It wasn't government legislation that allowed the human race to escape this baseline level of poverty, it was economic growth. It was savings, investment, and capital. It was productive enterprise. In your head, all we need is for every country in the world to enact legislation that requires a certain standard of living. Everyone must have access to this kind of food, and this amount. Everyone must have insurance. Everyone must have education. Everyone must have whatever. The problem is that in all of those cases, someone has to be the one to provide those goods or services. Someone has to do the work, and they have their price. So, the end result when you try to create "human rights standards" is that you get shortages, and no problems have really been solved."

You gotta stop assuming I'm the liberal caricature you have in your head. I'm not endorsing globalized socialism. I'm not anti capitalism. I'm pro democracy, pro evolution. We need to cross those "standard of living" bridges when we get there. We're currently at one of those crossroads.

Quote :

"Why do people need to own homes? Have you not heard of apartments? Owning a home is a huge expense, and buying a home should be a huge decision preceded by a good deal of planning. The market will allocate resources. We don't need bureaucrats and politicians deciding what money goes where and to who."

I promise you I know more about dwelling patterns than you do. I'm not endorsing home ownership. In fact, I HATE tract homes as they encourage suburban sprawl. But you cannot ignore societies responsibility to shelter its citizens (and that includes those at the bottom). I have, and always will, approach the need for shelter and urban development as a crisis of design, not bureaucracy.

[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 6:22 PM. Reason : ]

10/18/2011 6:11:28 PM

Quote :

"You gotta stop assuming I'm the liberal caricature you have in your head. I'm not endorsing globalized socialism. I'm not anti capitalism. I'm pro democracy, pro evolution. We need to cross those "standard of living" bridges when we get there. We're currently at one of those crossroads."

Alright. I'm emphasizing the importance of allowing the market to work.

Quote :

"I promise you I know more about dwelling patterns than you do. I'm not endorsing home ownership. In fact, I HATE tract homes as they encourage suburban sprawl. But you cannot ignore societies responsibility to shelter its citizens. I have, and always will, approach the need for shelter and urban development as a crisis of design, not bureaucracy."

I think you probably do. My problem lies more in the financing of homes, which blows up bubbles.

10/18/2011 6:22:15 PM

Both of those points are a reason to regulate banks, though.

They've been allowed to inflate bubbles for short-term gain, which manipulates markets, which keeps them from working as they were intended to work. So why are you against that?

[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 6:27 PM. Reason : i wasn't trying to be a dick, the home-ownership insuation just struck a nerve]

10/18/2011 6:26:06 PM

I'm not against regulating banks, especially when they get unlimited access to the public trough. I just happen to think that regulation isn't a permanent solution; we need to remove the government props that enable banks to get super-leveraged and not pay the full price when they overextend.

Do you think that banks should be able to borrow money at 0.25% and loan it out for 5-20% interest? That's what they can do at the Fed. It's obvious that low interest rates are part of the problem.

[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 6:29 PM. Reason : ]

10/18/2011 6:28:31 PM

Quote :

"They only reason we haven't needed more TARP is because the Fed was pumping money. We will reach a point where there's another crisis - debt ceiling, quantitative easing, stimulus, etc. You know the drill, and something has to give. So, no, we're not in a better position than in 2008, we're in a much, much worse position. Europe is currently experiencing the same kind of shit storm that we will encounter in the next few years. "

Regardless, if any of BofA, Citigroup, Goldman, Wells Fargo, etc..... are about to take it on the chin, we're just going to let them fall this time. That wasn't possible in 2008, or before Dodd-Frank. Also, not sure if you're keeping up with recent events, but Europe is pretty close to pulling itself out of that shit storm. So while our inbred congressman would rather bitch about "class warfare", abortion, and faggots marrying than work on fixing our economic problems, a bunch of countries that were engaged in perpetual war for the better part of a millennium have managed to collectively solve theirs.

[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 6:39 PM. Reason : :]

10/18/2011 6:36:25 PM

^^I am of the opinion that regulation needs to continuously evolve as a measure against market manipulation. It'll never end, in my opinion. Cat and mouse. Cops and robbers. Cowboys and Indians. Crips and bloods.

As to your point about the FED, I have no idea. No, I don't think banks should be able to usurp middle-class pensions and then lend it back to us at absurd interest levels. But I have a hard time falling in line with the "end the FED" arguments. I'm assuming that's your position on it, but I can't remember. I would think just making it more transparent and having oversight would make them more accountable, though. But I'm not versed enough in the topic to really have a strong opinion either way.

[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 6:42 PM. Reason : ]

10/18/2011 6:39:53 PM

Quote :

"Regardless, if any of BofA, Citigroup, Goldman, Wells Fargo, etc..... are about to take it on the chin, we're just going to let them fall this time. That wasn't possible in 2008, or before Dodd-Frank. Also, not sure if you're keeping up with recent events, but Europe is pretty close to pulling itself out of that shit storm. So while our inbred congressman would rather bitch about "class warfare", abortion, and faggots marrying than work on fixing our economic problems, a bunch of countries that were engaged in perpetual war for the better part of a millennium have managed to collectively solve theirs."

Whoa...are you keeping up with recent events? The Euro is fucked, man. This is not going to be good for any of the member states, and if you think their debt crisis is "solved," you're way off. Desperation is really beginning to set in over there.

Quote :

"^^I am of the opinion that regulation needs to continuously evolve as a measure against market manipulation. It'll never end, in my opinion. Cat and mouse. Cops and robbers. Cowboys and Indians. Crips and bloods."

So what happens when the government is completely in bed with the banks?

I hate to be a pessimist, but I don't think we have any chance in Hell of "getting the money out of politics". The banks have too much control.

Quote :

"As to your point about the FED, I have no idea. No, I don't think banks should be able to usurp middle-class pensions and then lend it back to us at absurd interest levels. But I have a hard time falling in line with the "end the FED" arguments. I'm assuming that's your position on it, but I can't remember. I would think just making it more transparent would make them more accountable, though. But I'm not versed enough in the topic to really have a strong opinion either way."

I do think we should abolish the Fed, because ultimately they are allowed to create money out of nothing. They'd be a lot better, in my book at least, if they actually kept interest rates at a reasonable level. This shit where we keep interest rates at 0% for years on end, continually blowing up various bubbles, has got to stop.

[Edited on October 18, 2011 at 6:46 PM. Reason : ]

10/18/2011 6:45:57 PM

Quote :

"At the very least, Dodd-Frank introduced new government powers to facilitate "orderly liquidation", which effectively ends "too big to fail""

bullshit. it enshrines that concept into law.

10/18/2011 6:48:47 PM

http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/10/18/some-tips-for-the-simpletons-of-occupy-wall-street/

10/18/2011 6:54:25 PM

^
Haha, what a smarmy little fuck.

10/18/2011 11:29:25 PM

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/19/rnc-says-dems-silent-as-anti-semitic-tone-emerges-at-occupy-wall-street/?test=latestnews

Quote :

""Where's the outrage?" Spicer said in the memo. "While protestors are seen spewing hate against Jewish Americans, President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and (Democratic National Committee) Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz have declared their support for the demonstrations. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Steve Israel even circulated a petition saying he's 'standing with' Occupy Wall Street."

Quote :

""Democrats were quick to single out any instances of perceived extremism among Tea Party supporters, but with Occupy Wall Street, they turn a blind eye," he said. "President Obama claimed last weekend that Martin Luther King would support the demonstrations. But surely Dr. King would have called out these ugly displays of bigotry.""

10/19/2011 4:36:42 PM

ocupieay dat waal skreeet

10/19/2011 10:39:22 PM

https://www.facebook.com/occupyjudaism

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/the_rnc_jumps_on_the_occupy_wall_street_is_anti-se.php

The right has been saying that the protests are anti-Semitic for a few days now, but the idea is really gaining momentum because of an ad put out by Bill Kristol and Gary Bauer’s Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), which calls on Obama and Pelosi to condemn Occupy Wall Street for anti-Semitism.

It’s true, there have been a few instances of protesters at Occupy Wall Street making anti-Semitic remarks and holding anti-Semitic signs, but even the Anti-Defamation League said that there is “no evidence that these incidents are widespread.”

“Thus far, however, anti-Semitism has not gained traction more broadly with the protestors, nor is it representative of the larger movement at this time,” the ADL said in a statement that condemned the instances of anti-Semitic remarks.

And Dan Sieradski, an OWS protester and spokesman for a group called Occupy Judaism that is trying to rally the Jewish community to the protests, told TPM that the anti-Semitic remarks were exceptions to the generally welcoming attitude the protesters have toward Jews. “There is anti-Semitism everywhere in the world, and no more here than anywhere else,” he said.

10/20/2011 2:12:21 AM

I mean...dude, even you should be able to see what's stupid about those quotes.

"There is pro-slavery sentiment everywhere in the world, and no more here than anywhere else."
-South Carolina, 1790

[Edited on October 20, 2011 at 2:16 AM. Reason : again, I don't think OWS is anti-semitic, but let's quit citing stupid things as evidence]

10/20/2011 2:16:23 AM

Greece is showing these hippies how it's done. Until skulls start getting smashed on the pavement nothing will change.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRmrxYvm7iY

[Edited on October 20, 2011 at 2:38 AM. Reason : .]

10/20/2011 2:30:32 AM