Wall Street has found a new way to make money from the mortgage mess
Immortalist
The New York Times reports Wall Street has found a new way to make
money from the mortgage mess as millions of Americans struggle to hold
on to their homes. Vulture funds are buying billions of dollars’ worth
of discounted home loans and then, in what might seem an act of
charity, the funds are helping homeowners by reducing the size of the
loans. But as part of these deals, the mortgages are being refinanced
through lenders that work with government agencies like the Federal
Housing Administration. This enables the vulture funds to pocket
sizable profits by reselling new, government-insured loans to other
federal agencies, which then bundle the mortgages into securities for
sale to investors.While homeowners save money, the arrangement shifts
nearly all the risk for the loans to the federal government–and,
ultimately, taxpayers.
Nickname unavailable
yep, change we can believe in, its reagans 8th term in office, thanks
geithner, summers, sperling, rubin, rhomer, bernanke, obama.
turtoni
massive scams. And let's say that isn't true, that then becomes a
point to which they invade everything god damn thing that can't be
nailed down.
This is just common sense. Who's going to look after your stuff better
than yourself? Your big brother?
Let them play mother and protect the weak and lay down some
*important* and complex rules but otherwise i'd rather keep them out
of things.
Funny to think the democrates or liberals or whatever you want to call
them appear to be the most controling scary organization you could
think of; giving birth to things like our "friends" the lawyers
because of THEIR actions. You dig back into any project and there's
some government, mafia type head, giving the nod to go ahead and do
something fucking stupid.
Rod Speed
> The more the government gets involved in ANYTHING the more we'll see massive scams.
Just another of your pathetic little drug crazed fantasys.
> And let's say that isn't true, that then becomes a point to which
> they invade everything god damn thing that can't be nailed down.
Just another of your pathetic little drug crazed fantasys.
> This is just common sense. Who's going to look after
> your stuff better than yourself? Your big brother?
Just another of your pathetic little drug crazed fantasys.
> Let them play mother and protect the weak and lay down some *important*
> and complex rules but otherwise i'd rather keep them out of things.
You're always welcome to fuck off to Somalia if you believe they do things better there.
> Funny to think the democrates or liberals or whatever you want to call them
> appear to be the most controling scary organization you could think of; giving
> birth to things like our "friends" the lawyers because of THEIR actions.
Just another of your pathetic little drug crazed fantasys.
> You dig back into any project and there's some government, mafia
> type head, giving the nod to go ahead and do something fucking stupid.
You're always welcome to fuck off to Somalia if you believe they do things better there.
ZerkonXXXX
> Vulture Funds Make Millions Off Gov’t-Backed Home Loans
>
> The New York Times reports Wall Street has found a new way
============================================
February 14, 2007 -- On Thursday 15 February a high court judge in London
will rule whether a vulture fund can extract more than $40m from Zambia
for a debt which it bought for less than $4m.
....
... companies which buy up the debt of poor nations cheaply when it is
about to be written off and then sue for the full value of the debt plus
interest - which might be ten times what they paid for it.
.....
In 1979 the Romanian government lent Zambia money to buy Romanian
tractors. Zambia was unable to keep up the payments and in 1999 Romania
and Zambia negotiated to liquidate the debt for $3m.
Before the deal could be finalised one of DAI's (Debt Advisory
International) vulture funds stepped in and bought the debt from Romania
for less than $4m. They are now suing the Zambian government for the
original debt plus interest which they calculate at over $40m and they
expect to win.
.....
The vulture funds raise most of their money through legal actions in US
courts. Those actions against foreign governments can be stayed by the
word of the US President and that is where lobbying and political
influence becomes important.
Debt Advisory International are very generous to their lobbyists in
Washington. They have been paying $240,000 a year to the lobby firm
Greenberg Traurig - although recently they jumped ship to another firm
after Greenberg Traurig's top lobbyist was put in jail.
http://www.gregpalast.com/vulture-fund-threat-to-third-world/
==================================================
Fred Weiss
> Vulture Funds Make Millions Off Gov’t-Backed Home Loans
>... the mortgages are being refinanced
> through lenders that work with government agencies like the Federal
> Housing Administration....While homeowners save money, the arrangement shifts
> nearly all the risk for the loans to the federal government–and, ultimately, taxpayers.
What planet are you on?
This is precisely what was going on before. Nothing has changed.
What do you think led to the housing bubble (and subsequent crash)?
The gov't distorted the market then, is continuing to do so now, and
will need to into the indefinite future to avoid a depression.
It doesn't matter what form the "rescue" efforts take. It will cost
taxpayers trillions of dollars.
What do you suggest, that we let the housing market find its own price
equilibrium without gov't subsidies - even if that means house prices
drop another 50%?
The day of reckoning is merely being delayed.
Why do you think the dollar is crashing and gold is soaring?
Do you think Obama and his Wrecking Crew have a clue?
Fred Weiss
Nickname unavailable
crap alert:
here is the real truth on unregulated free markets.
unregulated free markets are prone to manipulation, then collapse:I
don’t see why the aluminum price has gotten so high, There’s plenty of
supply around and demand is still quiet. There’s a disconnect between
the price and reality
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=aWV.KDO7Zzqs
Aluminum Bubble Concerns Mount as Surplus May Add 29% (Update3)
By Millie Munshi and Anna Stablum
Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Warehouses holding enough aluminum to build
69,000 Boeing 747 jumbo jets are why Peter Sorrentino says the most
abundant metallic element in the earth’s crust is too expensive.
“I don’t see why the aluminum price has gotten so high,” said
Sorrentino, who helps manage $13.8 billion at Huntington Asset
Advisors in Cincinnati. “There’s plenty of supply around and demand is
still quiet. There’s a disconnect between the price and reality.”
Barclays Capital forecasts that the global surplus in aluminum will
increase 29 percent to 1.63 million metric tons next year as the
biggest annual price increase since 1994 spurs producers to increase
output. Emirates Aluminium Co. will start the world’s biggest smelter
in April, and a plant part-owned by Norsk Hydro ASA in Qatar fires up
next month.
This year’s 32 percent rally in aluminum and the 46 percent jump in
the S&P GSCI index of commodities is prompting concerns of a bubble in
the making. China, the biggest aluminum producer, is at risk from an
absence of consumer demand from trading partners, said Bill Gross, who
runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management
Co. Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson said on
Nov. 13 that oil prices aren’t supported by market fundamentals.
Investors are “chasing commodities” and there is a risk of bubbles
emerging, Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who
predicted the global financial crisis, said on Nov. 20 in a speech in
Lisbon.
China Starts Plants
Aluminum, which settled at $2,037 in London trading today, will
average $1,885 next year on the London Metal Exchange, according to
the median in a Bloomberg New survey of 24 analysts. Stockpiles
monitored by the LME almost doubled to 4.6 million tons this year,
more than Western Europe’s production.
A typical 747 uses about 66 tons of aluminum alloy, according to
Boeing. The company has delivered at least 1,416 of the jets in its
history.
China will make 18 percent more metal next year, leading an 8.9
percent global expansion and contributing to a surplus equal to more
than three months of North American demand, Barclays Capital
estimates. Global output increased more than 12 percent since April,
International Aluminium Institute data show.
New smelters are coming on line. The Emirates Aluminium project,
covering more than two square miles in Abu Dhabi, is scheduled to pour
its first metal in April and will eventually make 1.4 million tons a
year. The Qatalum project between Hydro and Qatar Petroleum will have
an initial capacity of 585,000 tons, churning out metal from two
buildings each longer than 10 football fields.
Price Slump
Five consecutive gains in average annual prices through 2007, the
longest-ever winning streak on the LME, encouraged companies to expand
supply. Last year’s 38.8 million tons was 67 percent more than in
1999, the aluminum institute’s data show.
As production outstripped demand, prices slumped 62 percent in seven
months from a record $3,380.15 in July 2008. That drop and the worst
global recession since World War II led to a shutdown of capacity.
“Production cuts have only been temporary,” Michael Widmer, head of
metals research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in London, said in a
report earlier this month. “Looking at recent announcements of
production restarts and the current project pipeline, we are concerned
that the aluminum market may remain structurally weak.”
Gross, Tillerson, Bernanke
In March, 7.3 million tons of capacity was offline, or 19 percent of
2008 production, Barclays estimated. Now, China is reversing 3.5
million tons of cuts and starting another million tons of new
capacity, according to the bank.
China is “gearing up for export that doesn’t find an end consumer,”
Pimco’s Gross said. The “systemic risk” of new asset bubbles in global
economies and markets is rising, he wrote in his December investment
outlook posted on the firm’s Web site Nov. 19. Exxon’s Tillerson said
he couldn’t explain current oil prices because they no longer
reflected supply and demand.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Nov. 16 that it’s “not
obvious” U.S. asset prices are out of line and indicated the central
bank’s extended period of near-zero interest rates may persist amid
economic “headwinds.”
Some excess aluminum will be absorbed by China, said Jorge Vazquez,
vice president at the aluminum unit of Harbor Intelligence in Laredo,
Texas. Harbor forecasts demand will outstrip supply by 380,000 tons
next year and prices will average $2,700, the second-highest estimate
in the Bloomberg survey of 2010 prices. Harbor said in April that
aluminum would reach $1,984 by the end of the year.
‘Money Flow Game’
China’s economy will expand 9.5 percent next year, according to the
median of 21 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. That’s faster than this
year’s estimated 8.3 percent and more than three times the anticipated
2.6 percent pace in the U.S.
“I’m leaning on the bullish side,” said William O’Neill, a partner at
Logic Advisors in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. “There’s also just a
desire for hard assets right now and all of the industrial metals are
going to benefit from that. It’s very much a money-flow game right
now, and not necessarily one based on fundamentals.”
Commodities will likely attract a record $60 billion this year as
investors seek to diversify their assets, Barclays said Nov. 19.
That’s helped stoke prices for everything from copper to zinc. Lead
added 141 percent this year as stockpiles tripled and copper rose 126
percent as inventory expanded 25 percent.
Copper Surplus
Copper production will outpace demand by 344,000 tons this year and
210,000 tons next year, Barclays estimates. Refined copper imports by
China, the world’s largest consumer, slumped 40 percent last month,
according to customs office data today.
Aluminum demand will grow 8.2 percent next year, Barclays estimates.
Premiums for metal, a gauge of demand, are already increasing in
Europe, the U.S. and Japan, according to London- based researcher
Brook Hunt & Associates Ltd. The 2010 average aluminum price of $1,885
forecast in the Bloomberg survey would still be 14 percent higher than
this year’s average of $1,650.
That recovery is a relief to United Co. Rusal, Alcoa Inc. and Rio
Tinto Group. Alcoa, based in New York, will earn 63 cents a share next
year, compared with a 2009 loss of 75.5 cents, according to the median
of eight analyst forecasts compiled by Bloomberg. The company last
week said it would idle two smelters in Italy, increasing the amount
of curtailed capacity to 24 percent of its total.
Improving Profits
Improving profits and rising output may coincide with a release of
stockpiles onto the market. As much as 75 percent of the warehoused
metal monitored by the LME is tied to transactions that may unwind,
according to London-based research group CRU. The proportion may drop
closer to 50 percent of the total next year, CRU estimates.
“This is a financial-market driven move at the moment rather than a
fabricator and manufacturers’ move, so it is very dangerous to call a
top,” said Sean Corrigan, the chief investment officer of Diapason
Commodities Management SA in Lausanne, Switzerland. “Once this
momentum has exhausted itself, the background picture is not that
positive.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Anna Stablum in London at
astab...@bloomberg.net; Millie Munshi in New York at
mmun...@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: November 23, 2009 16:55 EST
Nickname unavailable
crap alert:
here is the real truth of unregulated free markets.
Werner
> On Nov 24, 8:12 am, Fred Weiss <fredwe...@papertig.com> wrote:
>
>
> > Do you think Obama and his Wrecking Crew have a clue?
>
> > Fred Weiss
>
> crap alert:
> here is the real truth of unregulated free markets.
>
> unregulated free markets are prone to manipulation, then collapse:I
> don’t see why the aluminum price has gotten so high, There’s plenty of
> supply around and demand is still quiet. There’s a disconnect between
> the price and reality
>
The point you keep missing is that the market IS regulated, not free.
It's regulated to privatize profit and socialize loss.
Aluminum prices are high because people seek safety in hard assets
like aluminum, gold, oil, anything but cash.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlDNMB6wYmI&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfuiNjvH9_c&NR=1&feature=fvwp
“The idea that you can fix a period of excess borrowing and excess
consumption by more borrowing and more consumption to me is just
ludicrous,”
Jim Rogers, an American
investment guru
"...government and the banking system have deliberately created
financial bubbles to shore up the economy, engender profits, and
maintain tax revenues."
http://www.rense.com/general85/chall.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h2x7R8pxUs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt4VLX96VLM
The same people who complained about the widening wealth gap now
think
the new money printing and borrowing is such a wonderful and
necessary
policy forget it helps the rich the most. The policies are
intended
to
avoid depressing asset prices which has the effect of
shrinking the
wealth gap. Who owns most of the assets if not the
wealthy? How do
you
stop asset price deflation? By inflation. Who
suffers most from
inflation? Poor people. Who benefits most from
inflation? Rich people
who own assets.
Evidently change we can
believe in is no change. The rich get richer
and the poor get poorer
by government policy, just like always.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtllmgvoT_g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nU3fNh-PRk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfoToPyae0s&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSqhrHIfJV0&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Anarcissie
<6fbf7dd8-ee34-440b...@g31g2000vbr.googl
egroups.com>,
Werner <whet...@mac.com> wrote:
> On Nov 24, 9:31 am, Nickname unavailable <Vide...@tcq.net> wrote:
> > On Nov 24, 8:12 am, Fred Weiss <fredwe...@papertig.com> wrote:
> >
> >...
> >
> > > Do you think Obama and his Wrecking Crew have a clue?
> >
> > > Fred Weiss
> >
> > crap alert:
> > here is the real truth of unregulated free markets.
> >
> > unregulated free markets are prone to manipulation, then collapse:I
> > don’t see why the aluminum price has gotten so high, There’s plenty of
> > supply around and demand is still quiet. There’s a disconnect between
> > the price and reality
> > ...
> The point you keep missing is that the market IS regulated, not free.
> It's regulated to privatize profit and socialize loss. ...
It seems to me that the U.S. ruling class doesn't have
that secure a grasp of things. The policies of Obama
are pretty much the policies of Bush 2, Clinton, Bush
1 and Reagan, going back to the 1980s. Imperialism is
being sustained by funny money. That can only go on
for so long and, as the man said, "Things that can't
go on forever, don't." The r.c. are skating on thin
ice now, and it's starting to crack, but they don't
know what to do except skate faster.
Unlike Fred, I do think Obama and his "wrecking crew"
have a clue, but they know they have to follow
orders, and in any case it's quite possible there is no
fix, except putting off the day of reckoning as long
as possible. Meanwhile I take it the r.c. are moving
gold or whatever to the Cayman Islands.
Michael Coburn
> On Nov 23, 9:35 pm, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Vulture Funds Make Millions Off Gov’t-Backed Home Loans
>
>>... the mortgages are being refinanced
>> through lenders that work with government agencies like the Federal
>> Housing Administration....While homeowners save money, the arrangement
>> shifts nearly all the risk for the loans to the federal government–and,
>> ultimately, taxpayers.
>
> What planet are you on?
>
> This is precisely what was going on before. Nothing has changed.
And you are a lying pig in that you want us to believe that the CRA and
Acorn caused the housing bubble. Here is a little challenge for you,
lying pig:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_frm/
thread/1315d44bb94d73eb/63de9449b0672f29?lnk=gst&q=caused+the+housing
+bubble#63de9449b0672f29 -------------------------------
"Clinton's CRA and Fannie Mae cause the Europe's Housing Bubble"
------------------------------------------------------------
And frogs cause warts.
> What do you think led to the housing bubble (and subsequent crash)?
Total uncontrolled greed on the part of the "financial sector" cause it,
imbecile.
> The gov't distorted the market then, is continuing to do so now, and
> will need to into the indefinite future to avoid a depression.
Government FAILED and allowed the Republican thieves to do essentially
the same thing they did in the 1920's. The thieves created more credit
than the world could swallow in pursuit of their fascist ideology.
> It doesn't matter what form the "rescue" efforts take. It will cost
> taxpayers trillions of dollars.
Yes. And the only question of any import is "Which taxpayers are going
to pay?". Should we make the people who caused it pay, or should we
saddle the people who didn't cause it? More importantly: Who has the
stolen money and how can we use monetary and fiscal policy to redress the
thievery?
> What do you suggest, that we let the housing market find its own price
> equilibrium without gov't subsidies - even if that means house prices
> drop another 50%?
The correct solution is currency devaluation and a much more progressive
tax code.
> The day of reckoning is merely being delayed.
Yes. It will be delayed until the Democrats grow a spine and take the
proper actions to arrest the continued theft. It starts with this:
> Why do you think the dollar is crashing and gold is soaring?
Because it is necessary. And fighting it is stooooooooooooopid. WAGES
_MUST_ rise. That means a devaluation of the money. And morons are going
to buy gold and so there is going to be a gold bubble before housing
prices stabilize. In sane times housing was _THE_ hedge against
inflation.
> Do you think Obama and his Wrecking Crew have a clue?
Good question! Any attempt henceforth to "make nice with the
Republicans" will be the end of the Democratic party and the end of any
real representative government in America. Such actions will ensure a
return to Republican fascism.
--
"Those are my opinions and you can't have em" -- Bart Simpson
ta
> In article
> <6fbf7dd8-ee34-440b-93ae-8c868bb5a...@g31g2000vbr.googl
> egroups.com>,
Whose orders do you think Obama and co. are following?
Rod Speed
> Werner <whet...@mac.com> wrote
>> Nickname unavailable <Vide...@tcq.net> wrote
>>> Fred Weiss <fredwe...@papertig.com> wrote
>>>> Do you think Obama and his Wrecking Crew have a clue?
>>> � crap alert:
>>> � here is the real truth of unregulated free markets.
>>> unregulated free markets are prone to manipulation, then collapse:I
>>> don’t see why the aluminum price has gotten so high, There’s
>>> plenty of supply around and demand is still quiet. There’s a
>>> disconnect between the price and reality
>> The point you keep missing is that the market IS regulated, not free.
>> It's regulated to privatize profit and socialize loss. ...
> It seems to me that the U.S. ruling class
No such animal.
> doesn't have that secure a grasp of things.
No 'class' ever does, stupid.
> The policies of Obama are pretty much the policies of Bush 2,
> Clinton, Bush 1 and Reagan, going back to the 1980s.
There are significant differences in the policys of that group.
> Imperialism
You wouldnt know what real imperialism was if it bit you on your lard arse.
Slick was never into anything like imperialism.
> is being sustained by funny money.
You wouldnt know what funny money was if it bit you on your lard arse.
> That can only go on for so long
Easy to claim. Have fun actually substantiating that claim.
> and, as the man said, "Things that can't go on forever, don't."
Talk about a circular claim...
> The r.c.
No such animal.
> are skating on thin ice now, and it's starting to crack,
> but they don't know what to do except skate faster.
We'll handle it fine, just like we did the last time.
> Unlike Fred, I do think Obama and his "wrecking crew"
> have a clue, but they know they have to follow orders,
Yeah, yeah, its those damned jews conspiring in smoke filled rooms to shaft us all...
> and in any case it's quite possible there is no fix, except
> putting off the day of reckoning as long as possible.
Fools ran the same line during the great depression.
> Meanwhile I take it the r.c.
No such animal.
> are moving gold or whatever to the Cayman Islands.
Those with the gold or whatever aint that stupid. Gates and Buffet and Brin certainly aint doing anything like that.
*Anarcissie*
The people I call the ruling class. Extremely wealthy people
who are active in politics, heads of corporations and other
big, important institutions, political and military leaders, that
sort of thing. If these people have a consensus about
something -- the recent bailouts, for example, or endless
imperial war -- it just happens regardless of the unpopularity
of the actions and policies among the common folk.
John Stafford
Michael Coburn <mik...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:12:04 -0800, Fred Weiss wrote:
> > What do you think led to the housing bubble (and subsequent crash)?
>
> Total uncontrolled greed on the part of the "financial sector" cause it,
> imbecile.
Indeed - fraudulent financial inventions, derivatives which the banks
knew were becoming worthless and which went from bank to bank with grace
periods that were eventually not long enough until CRASH!
ta
Well, I would suggest that Obama is not taking orders from the ruling
class; rather, he is *part* of the ruling class. The political system
is the tool by which the ruling class achieves its ends, and so as a
matter of necessity, those who participate in it, are very much a part
of that class, despite some token gestures to the contrary.
Rod Speed
> ta <paddle...@gmail.com> wrote
>> Anarcissie <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote
>>> Werner <whetz...@mac.com> wrote
>>>>>> Do you think Obama and his Wrecking Crew have a clue?
>>>>> crap alert:
>>>>> here is the real truth of unregulated free markets.
>>>>> unregulated free markets are prone to manipulation, then
>>>>> collapse:I don�t see why the aluminum price has gotten so high,
>>>>> There�s plenty of supply around and demand is still quiet.
>>>>> There�s a disconnect between the price and reality
>>>> The point you keep missing is that the market IS regulated,
>>>> not free. It's regulated to privatize profit and socialize loss. ...
>>> It seems to me that the U.S. ruling class doesn't have
>>> that secure a grasp of things. The policies of Obama
>>> are pretty much the policies of Bush 2, Clinton, Bush
>>> 1 and Reagan, going back to the 1980s. Imperialism is
>>> being sustained by funny money. That can only go on
>>> for so long and, as the man said, "Things that can't
>>> go on forever, don't." The r.c. are skating on thin
>>> ice now, and it's starting to crack, but they don't
>>> know what to do except skate faster.
>>> Unlike Fred, I do think Obama and his "wrecking crew"
>>> have a clue, but they know they have to follow orders,
>> Whose orders do you think Obama and co. are following?
> The people I call the ruling class.
No such animal.
> Extremely wealthy people who are active in politics, heads
> of corporations and other big, important institutions, political
> and military leaders, that sort of thing.
None of those get to give Obummer any orders, fool.
> If these people have a consensus about something
They never ever do, fool.
> -- the recent bailouts, for example,
There was never ever any consensus on that, fool.
> or endless imperial war
There was never ever any consensus on that, fool.
> -- it just happens regardless of the unpopularity
> of the actions and policies among the common folk.
Only in your pathetic little drug crazed pig ignorant fantasyland.
What in fact happened was that in the runnup to WW2, the common folk didnt
want the US to be involved in the stupid europeans ripping each others throats out
very enthusiastically indeed again, and it took Pearl Harbor to change their minds.
Absolutely NOTHING to do with what any 'extremely wealthy people
who are active in politics, heads of corporations and other big, important
institutions, political and military leaders, that sort of thing' wanted.
And it was the fools completely imploding the entire world financial
system, AGAIN, that got Obummer elected in the first place.
It certainly aint 'extremely wealthy people who are active in
politics, heads of corporations and other big, important institutions,
political and military leaders, that sort of thing' that have seen the
demoprats attempt to put a bomb under the health care funding
system in the US for the last 50 years either.
Rod Speed
> Michael Coburn <mik...@verizon.net> wrote
>> Fred Weiss wrote
>>> What do you think led to the housing bubble (and subsequent crash)?
>> Total uncontrolled greed on the part of the "financial sector" cause it, imbecile.
> Indeed - fraudulent financial inventions,
Not fraudulent, just stupid. It was completely stupid to give bundled securitized
mortgages AAA ratings that they didnt even come close to qualifying for with
a housing bubble and the stupid US non recourse mortgage system.
> derivatives which the banks knew were becoming worthless
Like hell they did. They were actually stupid enough to believe that they werent.
> and which went from bank to bank with grace periods that were eventually not long enough
That didnt happen either.
> until CRASH!
What actually happened is that the housing bubble burst, and bubbles
ALWAYS do, and that was what brought the whole thing undone, AGAIN.
*Anarcissie*
> In article <heh74s02...@news7.newsguy.com>,
I would say the deliberate policy of credit inflation
on the part of the FRB under Bubbles Greenspan.
In capitalism, big money has to find somewhere to
go, and so bubbles were created in the real estate,
equities, commodities and collectibles markets,
because most of the funny credit money went to
the rich, and these are the sorts of things the rich
buy with it. Unlike paper money, which would have
caused more general inflation, credit can simply
vanish overnight, as it did once people began to
distrust the durability of the bubble prices.
Now these markets are being reinflated with even
funnier funny money.
Nickname unavailable
> In article
> <6fbf7dd8-ee34-440b-93ae-8c868bb5a...@g31g2000vbr.googl
> egroups.com>,
>
>
>
the caymans are now being forced into taxing the wealthy. so they
must look for another rat hole to hide the loot.
Nickname unavailable
well said.
Nickname unavailable
> In article <heh74s02...@news7.newsguy.com>,
totally unregulated, and they were free to do as they pleased.
*Anarcissie*
> On Nov 24, 3:25 pm, "*Anarcissie*" <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Nov 24, 1:58 pm, ta <paddle...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Nov 24, 12:47 pm, Anarcissie <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Werner <whetz...@mac.com> wrote:
> > > > > On Nov 24, 9:31 am, Nickname unavailable <Vide...@tcq.net> wrote:
> > > > > > On Nov 24, 8:12 am, Fred Weiss <fredwe...@papertig.com> wrote:
> > > > > > > Do you think Obama and his Wrecking Crew have a clue?
Same difference. It's called being a member of the
team. Sure, Mr. O is in and of the ruling class. But
this position was won only by showing over a
considerable period of time that he understood
and could be trusted to perform the tasks of pursuing
ruling-class interests.
I think it is sort of fascinating the way the whole
Obama as a far-out liberal, prog, leftist,
business was put over. In fact the folk are still
reverberating with its echoes -- you have the
frothing wing of the Republican party still calling
this cautious, conservative, faithful servant of
the established order a "socialist". Well, I
understand the John Birch society called
Senator Robert Taft a socialist, back in the
day. I think he once voted for public housing
or something.
Les Cargill
> Vulture Funds Make Millions Off Gov�t-Backed Home Loans
>
> The New York Times reports Wall Street has found a new way to make
> money from the mortgage mess as millions of Americans struggle to hold
> of discounted home loans and then, in what might seem an act of
> charity, the funds are helping homeowners by reducing the size of the
> loans. But as part of these deals, the mortgages are being refinanced
> through lenders that work with government agencies like the Federal
> Housing Administration. This enables the vulture funds to pocket
> sizable profits by reselling new, government-insured loans to other
> federal agencies, which then bundle the mortgages into securities for
> sale to investors.While homeowners save money, the arrangement shifts
> ultimately, taxpayers.
>
> http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/23/headlines#3
That is how this is supposed to work. This was clearly
predicted by multiple people during the discussiono
surrounding TARP. That is how markets reprice
goods.
--
Les Cargill
Les Cargill
>
>> ... the mortgages are being refinanced
>> through lenders that work with government agencies like the Federal
>> Housing Administration....While homeowners save money, the arrangement shifts
>
> What planet are you on?
>
> This is precisely what was going on before. Nothing has changed.
>
> What do you think led to the housing bubble (and subsequent crash)?
>
> The gov't distorted the market then, is continuing to do so now, and
> will need to into the indefinite future to avoid a depression.
>
Nah. Housing will simply be "undervalued" ( in terms of the last decade
) for about ten years. This is exactly what happened in Texas after
the S&L crash.
> It doesn't matter what form the "rescue" efforts take. It will cost
> taxpayers trillions of dollars.
>
Not really, no. There will be no transfer from taxpayers to
these debts - the debts will either be justified by GDP
growth, or people will stop lending the government money. Taxpayers
will pay *some* of the interest charges.
> What do you suggest, that we let the housing market find its own price
> equilibrium without gov't subsidies - even if that means house prices
> drop another 50%?
>
There are people who own homes now who had grandparents who
forgot how that worked. It's literally been 60 or 70 years now.
> The day of reckoning is merely being delayed.
>
But this is always true. If we go back to John Law in France,
same thing.
> Why do you think the dollar is crashing and gold is soaring?
>
It is? No, I don't think it is. I'm not diving for the graph,
but the dollar's been on slow steady decrease in value since
Nixon took us off the gold standard. Te goldbugs
are Apocolypse-minded, and that's really all there is to it.
If anything, the value of gold is a measure of uncertainty.
> Do you think Obama and his Wrecking Crew have a clue?
>
Yes, yes I do. They pretty much know exactly what they're
doing - the same that's been done now for close to 100 years.
> Fred Weiss
--
Les Cargill
Fred Weiss
> And you are a lying pig in that you want us to believe that the CRA and
> Acorn caused the housing bubble.
I didn't say anything about CRA or Acorn.
The far more fundamental issue was that the gov't through Fannie Mae
and the Fed, etc. kept interest rates/mortgages rates artificially
low. But, yes, in various ways they encouraged people who were
marginal at best to get mortgages. CRA and Acorn were part of the
scheme. That in fact is the very mandate of the various Federal
housing programs. It still is. That's why I said nothings changed.
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
> That is how this is supposed to work. This was clearly
> predicted by multiple people during the discussiono
> surrounding TARP. That is how markets reprice
> goods.
Exactly, right.
The gov't in fact is actively repackaging so-called "toxic loans" and
putting them up for sale.
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
> Fred Weiss wrote:
> > Do you think Obama and his Wrecking Crew have a clue?
>
> Yes, yes I do. They pretty much know exactly what they're
> doing - the same that's been done now for close to 100 years.
Of course that's not exactly encouraging. :-)
Fred Weiss
ta
What is also fascinating is how the naive, misguided "liberals" keep
finding ways to vote against their own interests.
I guess as we move further and further to the right -- which is the
natural progression of things for empires -- "conservative" is the new
"liberal". I suppose in a short while Joe Lieberman will be elected as
the democratic president, and the right will predictably paint him as
a "socialist".
Les Cargill
Well, they're still trying to keep interest rates down because
that best serves investors. Nothing has been learned.
--
Les Cargill
Les Cargill
> On Nov 24, 6:59 pm, Les Cargill <lcargil...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Immortalist wrote:
>
>> That is how this is supposed to work. This was clearly
>> predicted by multiple people during the discussiono
>> surrounding TARP. That is how markets reprice
>> goods.
>
> Exactly, right.
>
> The gov't in fact is actively repackaging so-called "toxic loans" and
> putting them up for sale.
>
> Fred Weiss
But they're only toxic if they're underwater. Does anybody
know whether they're underwater or not? No. All
they can do is say "well, they're kinda sellin....."
"The road goes on forever and the party never ends" -
Robert Earl Keen.
--
Les Cargill
James A. Donald
<reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Vulture Funds Make Millions Off Gov’t-Backed Home Loans
>
> The New York Times reports Wall Street has found a new way to make
> money from the mortgage mess as millions of Americans struggle to hold
> on to their homes. Vulture funds are buying billions of dollars’ worth
> of discounted home loans and then, in what might seem an act of
> charity, the funds are helping homeowners by reducing the size of the
> loans. But as part of these deals, the mortgages are being refinanced
> through lenders that work with government agencies like the Federal
> Housing Administration. This enables the vulture funds to pocket
> sizable profits by reselling new, government-insured loans to other
> federal agencies, which then bundle the mortgages into securities for
> sale to investors.While homeowners save money, the arrangement shifts
> nearly all the risk for the loans to the federal government–and,
> ultimately, taxpayers.
>
> http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/23/headlines#3
Sounds to me more like villainous government handing out free money to
voting blocks, which is how we got into this mess in the beginning,
than villainous wall street.
James A. Donald
On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:31:44 -0800 (PST), Nickname
unavailable
> unregulated free markets are prone to manipulation,
> then collapse:I don’t see why the aluminum price has
> gotten so high, There’s plenty of supply around and
> demand is still quiet. There’s a disconnect between
> the price and reality
>
> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=aW
China, Chinese, and lots of random people and countries
are stockpiling materials that have a reasonable value
to weight ratio, as a precaution against the collapse of
the dollar - primarily gold, but also silver, copper,
and aluminum
It is not that the value of aluminum is unreal, though
it may be, it is that the value of bits of paper spoiled
with ink is unreal, and as a result, the price of all
commodities is rising relative to bits of paper spoiled
with ink.
Demon Buddha
> Vulture Funds Make Millions Off Gov�t-Backed Home Loans
>
> The New York Times reports Wall Street has found a new way to make
> money from the mortgage mess as millions of Americans struggle to hold
> of discounted home loans and then, in what might seem an act of
> charity, the funds are helping homeowners by reducing the size of the
> loans. But as part of these deals, the mortgages are being refinanced
> through lenders that work with government agencies like the Federal
> Housing Administration. This enables the vulture funds to pocket
> sizable profits by reselling new, government-insured loans to other
> federal agencies, which then bundle the mortgages into securities for
> sale to investors.While homeowners save money, the arrangement shifts
> ultimately, taxpayers.
>
> http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/23/headlines#3
Holy shit - there's a kind of genius in this - not to mention something
of brass balls... or just a really strong understanding of just how
ignorant and complacent John Q. Public really is.
Notice no mention of the SEC, DoJ, FTC, etc. having anything to day
about any of this. So much for Obama and his big-mouth offerings of
"change". Oh yeah, change... how yummy. I would not give a damn about
those who will take it in the neck in all of this except that I am not
really in much of a mood to have to shoot people from NJ coming down
here to WV looking for food, or people, to eat.
How very interesting this is all getting.
Rod Speed
In fact Obummer is a socialist in a number
of areas like health care and bailing out GM.
Rod Speed
Corse it is. We only got 1 great depression in the last 100
years, there were lots of them in the 100 years before 1929.
And we werent stupid enough to go for mindless tarrif wars this time
the clowns completely imploded the entire world financial system either.
Rod Speed
> --
> On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:31:44 -0800 (PST), Nickname
> unavailable
>> unregulated free markets are prone to manipulation,
>> then collapse:I don't see why the aluminum price has
>> gotten so high, There's plenty of supply around and
>> demand is still quiet. There's a disconnect between
>> the price and reality
>>
>> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=aWV.KDO7Zzqs
> China, Chinese, and lots of random people and countries
> are stockpiling materials that have a reasonable value
> to weight ratio, as a precaution against the collapse of
> the dollar - primarily gold, but also silver, copper,
> and aluminum
Only china is doing that significantly, essentially because they
are the only ones with enough spare money to do that with.
> It is not that the value of aluminum is unreal, though
> it may be, it is that the value of bits of paper spoiled
> with ink is unreal, and as a result, the price of all
> commodities is rising relative to bits of paper spoiled
> with ink.
You'll end up completely blind if you dont watch out child.
They dont bother to print much of the money anymore, child.
Rod Speed
> On Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:35:50 -0800 (PST), Immortalist
> <reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Vulture Funds Make Millions Off Gov't-Backed Home Loans
>>
>> The New York Times reports Wall Street has found a new way to make
>> money from the mortgage mess as millions of Americans struggle to
>> hold on to their homes. Vulture funds are buying billions of
>> dollars' worth of discounted home loans and then, in what might seem
>> an act of charity, the funds are helping homeowners by reducing the
>> size of the loans. But as part of these deals, the mortgages are
>> being refinanced through lenders that work with government agencies
>> like the Federal Housing Administration. This enables the vulture
>> funds to pocket sizable profits by reselling new, government-insured
>> loans to other federal agencies, which then bundle the mortgages
>> into securities for sale to investors.While homeowners save money,
>> the arrangement shifts nearly all the risk for the loans to the
>>
>> http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/23/headlines#3
> Sounds to me more like villainous government handing out free money to
> voting blocks, which is how we got into this mess in the beginning,
> than villainous wall street.
You can keep repeating that lie till you are blue in the face if you like, it stays a lie.
Michael Coburn
Now all you have to do is explain how Fannie Mae caused the European
housing bubble.
Sorry liars: The financial bubble behind the housing bubble was caused by
self interested freeder Friedman and Hayek worshipers. Those "agents"
that the freeder sees as the archangels of the fake capitalism they
worship. It was "every thief for himself, and Katy bar the door".
James A. Donald
> The far more fundamental issue was that the gov't
> through Fannie Mae and the Fed, etc. kept interest
> rates/mortgages rates artificially low. But, yes, in
> various ways they encouraged people who were marginal
> at best to get mortgages. CRA and Acorn were part of
> the scheme. That in fact is the very mandate of the
> various Federal housing programs. It still is. That's
> why I said nothings changed.
Indeed, the no money down mortgages are still being
allocated substantially on the basis of race, though of
course, to make it politically acceptable, there is some
free money for everyone.
(Nominally they are three percent down, but in practice
the three percent often gets absorbed into various fees,
so the borrower buys the house no money down, which
means that people are apt to buy houses without worrying
about price or their ability to make the payments.)
As Milton Friedman observed, when you buy something for
yourself with your own money, you look for good stuff at
a good price. When you buy something for yourself with
someone else's money, you look for good stuff but do not
worry about price, and when you buy something for
someone else with someone else's money, you do not worry
whether it is any good or whether the price is
reasonable - hence the failure of every single
government intervention in the economy.
turtoni
Plus the fact that they lowered the standards for lending.
Bad credit? No problem! Here's your 200K+
Rod Speed
> Fred Weiss wrote
>> The far more fundamental issue was that the gov't
>> through Fannie Mae and the Fed, etc. kept interest
>> rates/mortgages rates artificially low. But, yes, in
>> various ways they encouraged people who were marginal
>> at best to get mortgages. CRA and Acorn were part of
>> the scheme. That in fact is the very mandate of the
>> various Federal housing programs. It still is. That's
>> why I said nothings changed.
> Indeed, the no money down mortgages are still
> being allocated substantially on the basis of race,
Just another of your bare faced lies, you silly little flagrantly racist pathological liar.
> though of course, to make it politically acceptable,
> there is some free money for everyone.
Just another of your bare faced lies, you silly little flagrantly racist pathological liar.
> (Nominally they are three percent down, but in practice
> the three percent often gets absorbed into various fees,
> so the borrower buys the house no money down, which
> means that people are apt to buy houses without worrying
> about price or their ability to make the payments.)
Just another of your bare faced lies, you silly little flagrantly racist pathological liar.
> As Milton Friedman observed, when you buy something for yourself
> with your own money, you look for good stuff at a good price.
And when you plan to flip real estate, ALL you care about is the up
front cost of the loan, you silly little flagrantly racist pathological liar.
> When you buy something for yourself with someone else's
> money, you look for good stuff but do not worry about price,
Just another of your bare faced lies, you silly little flagrantly racist pathological liar.
> and when you buy something for someone else with someone else's money,
> you do not worry whether it is any good or whether the price is reasonable
Just another of your bare faced lies, you silly little flagrantly racist pathological liar.
> - hence the failure of every single government intervention in the economy.
Have fun explaining how come NOT ONE of the canadian or australian
retail banks imploded spectacularly or even needed to be bailed out by
govt, you silly little flagrantly racist pathological liar.
James A. Donald
> Now all you have to do is explain how Fannie Mae
> caused the European housing bubble.
Politicians have been making easy money loans to voter
blocks in all countries, Finland being a notorious
example.
Australia had a smaller crisis because of the
comparative fiscal probity of the Howard government -
not that they were angels, just less bad than most.
James A. Donald
>
> Bad credit? No problem! Here's your 200K+
While everyone got lower standards of lending, it is clear that
standards of lending were way lower for people of certain races.
Michael Coburn
> On Nov 23, 9:35 pm, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Vulture Funds Make Millions Off Gov’t-Backed Home Loans
>
>>... the mortgages are being refinanced
>> through lenders that work with government agencies like the Federal
>> Housing Administration....While homeowners save money, the arrangement
>> shifts nearly all the risk for the loans to the federal government–and,
>> ultimately, taxpayers.
>
> What planet are you on?
>
> This is precisely what was going on before. Nothing has changed.
>
> What do you think led to the housing bubble (and subsequent crash)?
The financial bubble, of which housing was the poster child and chief
facilitator, was caused by unbridled greed in the unregulated
securitization market. The people selling mortgages were getting rich
with no downside risk. The US government, CRA, Acorn, nor Fannie Mae had
any connection at all to the European housing bubble. The only common
denominator was the free market financial thieves themselves. When one
looks for _CAUSE_ one must find what is common to all the symptoms.
> The gov't distorted the market then, is continuing to do so now, and
> will need to into the indefinite future to avoid a depression.
No, lying pig. The government failed to regulate the market and now must
intervene by devaluing the dollar in order to avoid a depression. I just
wish they would get on with it and make sure that the people on the
bottom get a proper share of the new money. But they aren't doing that
and can't do it because the people have been brainwashed by 30 years of
_YOUR_ brand of false economics.
> It doesn't matter what form the "rescue" efforts take. It will cost
> taxpayers trillions of dollars.
The usual Republican whining about taxes while whining about inflation
also. The larcenous stupidity never stops.
> What do you suggest, that we let the housing market find its own price
> equilibrium without gov't subsidies - even if that means house prices
> drop another 50%?
And this is a real tell.... The major objective of all Republicans is
the destruction of Obama and Democrats. The same jerk offs that screech
about the free market are now on the side of government intervention.
For the Republicans it is always about defeating Democrats and about
their own wallets. The "economy", the country, and all else can go tits
up and none of it matters. What matters s "Obama hate".
> The day of reckoning is merely being delayed.
>
> Why do you think the dollar is crashing and gold is soaring?
>
> Do you think Obama and his Wrecking Crew have a clue?
>
> Fred Weiss
The market is merely catching up with the reality that was imposed on it
by the Republican thieves. The dollar must fall. And all the people
who stole dollars in the bubble are trading dollars for whatever they can
find. Raising interest rates will not do anything but bring on a
depression. If you want to have a dollar at all then what needs to be
raised is taxes on the rich. For it is taxation that gives fiat money
its value.
Michael Coburn
Let me make this clear for you, Fred. Fannie Mae _DID_NOT_CAUSE the
European housing bubble. The _CAUSE_ of the financial bubble world wide
was the financial "industry" itself. It was caused by the individual
greed that is worshiped by the typical Republican, and Libertarian
freepers. Financial institutions must have government regulation and/or
full transparency or the same bubble and crash roller coaster will
continue to happen. The deregulation of the American financial sector
caused the world wide bubble because the dollar is the world's "reserve
currency". There are no real "floating exchange rates" and no real
"decoupling". And until that decoupling happens and true floating rates
and tariffs return there will be no safe haven for honest people and
honest governments.
Michael Coburn
Low interest rates serve the economy as a whole. High interest rates
simply reward people who hoard money. You and other freepers tend to
believe that interest rates should be used to control credit because that
is what supports your freeper religion. Government intervention and high
rates of taxation on the very rich can resolve the problem without
punishing the common people. That was the proper solution in 1979 and it
is the proper solution now.
Michael Coburn
> Immortalist wrote:
>> Vulture Funds Make Millions Off Gov’t-Backed Home Loans
>>
>> The New York Times reports Wall Street has found a new way to make
>> money from the mortgage mess as millions of Americans struggle to hold
>> on to their homes. Vulture funds are buying billions of dollars’ worth
>> of discounted home loans and then, in what might seem an act of
>> charity, the funds are helping homeowners by reducing the size of the
>> loans. But as part of these deals, the mortgages are being refinanced
>> through lenders that work with government agencies like the Federal
>> Housing Administration. This enables the vulture funds to pocket
>> sizable profits by reselling new, government-insured loans to other
>> federal agencies, which then bundle the mortgages into securities for
>> sale to investors.While homeowners save money, the arrangement shifts
>> nearly all the risk for the loans to the federal government–and,
>> ultimately, taxpayers.
>>
>> http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/23/headlines#3
>
>
> That is how this is supposed to work. This was clearly predicted by
> multiple people during the discussiono surrounding TARP. That is how
> markets reprice goods.
If since the "taxpayers" do not have jobs and cannot pay then the dollar
will have to be devalued by printing more dollars. This is not rocket
science. It is unfortunate that in accomplishing this necessary task,
the rich assholes that caused the problem will get richer. Lots of
stimulus checks and increased unemployment benefits would have been a
much better way to go.
Michael Coburn
Government is busy rewarding the rich as it always does.
Michael Coburn
> Fred Weiss wrote:
>> On Nov 24, 6:59 pm, Les Cargill <lcargil...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>> Immortalist wrote:
>>>> Vulture Funds Make Millions Off Gov’t-Backed Home Loans
>>
>>> That is how this is supposed to work. This was clearly predicted by
>>> multiple people during the discussiono surrounding TARP. That is how
>>> markets reprice goods.
>>
>> Exactly, right.
>>
>> The gov't in fact is actively repackaging so-called "toxic loans" and
>> putting them up for sale.
>>
>> Fred Weiss
>
>
> But they're only toxic if they're underwater. Does anybody know whether
> they're underwater or not? No. All they can do is say "well, they're
> kinda sellin....."
>
>
> "The road goes on forever and the party never ends" - Robert Earl Keen.
Value is, in the real economic world, always tied tied to labor. Only
when the common working people can afford to purchase the homes will the
homes not be "underwater". A much better way to achieve that end is to
increase wages as denominated in dollars.
Rod Speed
> turtoni wrote
>> Plus the fact that they lowered the standards for lending.
>> Bad credit? No problem! Here's your 200K+
> While everyone got lower standards of lending,
Funny that.
> it is clear that standards of lending were way lower for people of certain races.
Just another of your pathological flagrantly racist lies.
Rod Speed
> Michael Coburn <mik...@verizon.net> wrote
>> Now all you have to do is explain how Fannie
>> Mae caused the European housing bubble.
> Politicians have been making easy money loans to voter blocks in all countries,
Another flagrantly racist pathological lie.
And that aint Fannie Mae anyway.
> Finland being a notorious example.
> Australia had a smaller crisis because of the
> comparative fiscal probity of the Howard government -
> not that they were angels, just less bad than most.
They had MUCH more racially selective loans than the US did, you silly little pathological liar.
Rod Speed
> On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:11:49 -0800, Fred Weiss wrote:
>
>> On Nov 24, 1:03 pm, Michael Coburn <mik...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>>> And you are a lying pig in that you want us to believe that the CRA
>>> and Acorn caused the housing bubble.
>>
>> I didn't say anything about CRA or Acorn.
>>
>> The far more fundamental issue was that the gov't through Fannie Mae
>> and the Fed, etc. kept interest rates/mortgages rates artificially
>> low. But, yes, in various ways they encouraged people who were
>> marginal at best to get mortgages. CRA and Acorn were part of the
>> scheme. That in fact is the very mandate of the various Federal
>> housing programs. It still is. That's why I said nothings changed.
> Let me make this clear for you, Fred. Fannie Mae
> _DID_NOT_CAUSE the European housing bubble.
Correct.
> The _CAUSE_ of the financial bubble world wide was the financial "industry" itself.
Thats very arguable. You can make a case for the bubbles being due to too low interest rates.
> It was caused by the individual greed that is worshiped
> by the typical Republican, and Libertarian freepers.
The GFC was, the bubble that preceeded it wasnt.
> Financial institutions must have government regulation and/or full transparency
> or the same bubble and crash roller coaster will continue to happen.
They continue to happen anyway. The point about adequate regulation
is that we dont see banks imploding completely when they happen.
Not one of the canadian or australian retail banks imploded
spectacularly or even needed to be bailed out by govt, and they
both have much bigger banks per capita than the US does too.
> The deregulation of the American financial sector caused the world wide bubble
Nope, it caused the GFC, not the bubble.
> because the dollar is the world's "reserve currency".
Utterly mangled all over again. It wasnt the world's reserve
currency in the great depression and that happened anyway.
> There are no real "floating exchange rates" and no real "decoupling".
Completely and utterly mindlessly pig ignorantly silly.
> And until that decoupling happens and true floating rates
Thats what we have now with most currencys.
> and tariffs return
Taint gunna happen, dinosaur.
> there will be no safe haven for honest people and honest governments.
There wasnt even when we had tariffs, fool.
Rod Speed
> Les Cargill wrote
>> Fred Weiss wrote
>>>> And you are a lying pig in that you want us to believe
>>>> that the CRA and Acorn caused the housing bubble.
>>> I didn't say anything about CRA or Acorn.
>>> The far more fundamental issue was that the gov't through Fannie
>>> Mae and the Fed, etc. kept interest rates/mortgages rates artificially
>>> low. But, yes, in various ways they encouraged people who were
>>> marginal at best to get mortgages. CRA and Acorn were part of the
>>> scheme. That in fact is the very mandate of the various Federal
>>> housing programs. It still is. That's why I said nothings changed.
>> Well, they're still trying to keep interest rates down because
>> that best serves investors. Nothing has been learned.
> Low interest rates serve the economy as a whole.
Not when they are too low and produce bubbles as a result of being too low.
> High interest rates simply reward people who hoard money.
They also encourage saving. Hardly anyone is stupid enough to save
when interest rates are derisory and lower than the inflation rate.
> You and other freepers tend to believe that interest rates should be used
> to control credit because that is what supports your freeper religion.
Corse you dont have any tariff religion yourself, eh ?
> Government intervention and high rates of taxation on the very rich can resolve the problem
Like hell they can, essentially because its so easy for the very rich to avoid that taxation.
> without punishing the common people.
Taxation aint about punishing anyone, fool.
> That was the proper solution in 1979 and it is the proper solution now.
Only in your pathetic little dinosaur fantasyland.
Rod Speed
> On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:59:06 -0500, Les Cargill wrote:
>
>> Immortalist wrote:
>>> Vulture Funds Make Millions Off Gov't-Backed Home Loans
>>>
>>> The New York Times reports Wall Street has found a new way to make
>>> money from the mortgage mess as millions of Americans struggle to
>>> hold on to their homes. Vulture funds are buying billions of
>>> dollars' worth of discounted home loans and then, in what might
>>> seem an act of charity, the funds are helping homeowners by
>>> reducing the size of the loans. But as part of these deals, the
>>> mortgages are being refinanced through lenders that work with
>>> government agencies like the Federal Housing Administration. This
>>> enables the vulture funds to pocket sizable profits by reselling
>>> new, government-insured loans to other federal agencies, which then
>>> bundle the mortgages into securities for sale to investors.While
>>> homeowners save money, the arrangement shifts nearly all the risk
>>>
>>> http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/23/headlines#3
>>
>>
>> That is how this is supposed to work. This was clearly predicted by
>> multiple people during the discussiono surrounding TARP. That is how
>> markets reprice goods.
> If since the "taxpayers" do not have jobs
They always do. Currently 89.8% do.
> and cannot pay
They always can. Currently 89.8% can.
> then the dollar will have to be devalued by printing more dollars.
No one bothers to print them anymore, dinosaur.
> This is not rocket science.
Too much for a dinosaur tho.
> It is unfortunate that in accomplishing this necessary task,
> the rich assholes that caused the problem will get richer.
Beats another great depression or worse, dinosaur.
> Lots of stimulus checks and increased unemployment
> benefits would have been a much better way to go.
Wrong if we had got another great depression or worse.
*Anarcissie*
Only if the wage dollars actually represent value.
If they're being devalued by funny credit money
which is constantly inflating real estate prices then
the increased wages will just be eaten up by
the inflation and we will be back where we
started, except for those who are worse off
because they were holding cash or currency-
denominated securities or entitlements.
Funny credit money effectively reduces the
price of labor.
James A. Donald
> Let me make this clear for you, Fred. Fannie Mae
> _DID_NOT_CAUSE the European housing bubble. The
> _CAUSE_ of the financial bubble world wide was the
> financial "industry" itself.
The cause of the crisis is that loans that were
fraudulently rated AAA are not being repaid.
These loans were not made to billionaires, but to
ordinary people, and in America, great majority of the
loans that are not being repaid were made to Mexicans
and Blacks. Quite obviously, these were political loans,
the result of a government policy of easy money and of
including those who were formerly excluded due
improvidence, disinclination to save, and disinclination
to pay their debts - of lending to no good black bums
and no good white bums, but especially to black bums and
Mexican wetbacks.
In the case of Finland, a lot of these loans were made
to billionaires, but even in Finland, the biggest
problem is loans to ordinary middle class Finns. In
most of the world, the problem is loans improperly made
to ordinary people, and in America, primarily loans
improperly made to Blacks and Mexicans.
Rod Speed
> Les Cargill wrote
>> Fred Weiss wrote
>>>> Immortalist wrote
>>>>> Vulture Funds Make Millions Off Gov't-Backed Home Loans
>>>> That is how this is supposed to work. This was clearly predicted by
>>>> multiple people during the discussiono surrounding TARP. That is
>>>> how markets reprice goods.
>>> Exactly, right.
>>> The gov't in fact is actively repackaging so-called "toxic loans" and putting them up for sale.
>> But they're only toxic if they're underwater. Does anybody know
>> whether they're underwater or not? No. All they can do is say "well,
>> they're kinda sellin....."
>> "The road goes on forever and the party never ends" - Robert Earl Keen.
> Value is, in the real economic world, always tied tied to labor.
Wrong, as always.
> Only when the common working people can afford to
> purchase the homes will the homes not be "underwater".
The modern reality is that they always can.
> A much better way to achieve that end is to increase wages as denominated in dollars.
Wrong, as always.
John Stafford
> [... snip the entirely predictable lies ...]
Fred W is such a picture-perfect cliche that I have to believe he's a
paid agent or a 'bot.
James A. Donald
wrote:
> Value is, in the real economic world, always tied tied to labor.
Marxist nonsense.
If labor produced value, why are some countries poor and others's
rich?
If labor and resources produce value, why is Africa and Brazil poor.
What produces value is labor and resources brought together by
entrepreneurship.
Rod Speed
> Michael Coburn <mik...@verizon.net> wrote
>> Let me make this clear for you, Fred. Fannie Mae
>> _DID_NOT_CAUSE the European housing bubble. The
>> _CAUSE_ of the financial bubble world wide was the
>> financial "industry" itself.
> The cause of the crisis is that loans that were
> fraudulently rated AAA are not being repaid.
Another pig ignorant lie. Even now the default rate isnt all that high.
The real problem is that the bulk of those with surplus money
arent allowed to put that money into securitys rated at what
those bundled securitized mortgages qualify for rating wise now.
> These loans were not made to billionaires, but to ordinary
> people, and in America, great majority of the loans that
> are not being repaid were made to Mexicans and Blacks.
Another bare faced flagrantly racist lie.
> Quite obviously, these were political loans, the result
> of a government policy of easy money and of including
> those who were formerly excluded due improvidence,
> disinclination to save, and disinclination to pay their debts
> - of lending to no good black bums and no good white
> bums, but especially to black bums and Mexican wetbacks.
Another bare faced flagrantly racist lie.
> In the case of Finland, a lot of these loans were
> made to billionaires, but even in Finland, the biggest
> problem is loans to ordinary middle class Finns.
That aint what completely imploded the entire world financial system, fool.
> In most of the world, the problem is loans improperly
> made to ordinary people, and in America, primarily
> loans improperly made to Blacks and Mexicans.
Another bare faced flagrantly racist lie.
Michael Coburn
> On Nov 25, 11:47 am, Michael Coburn <mik...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:07:52 -0500, Les Cargill wrote:
>> > Fred Weiss wrote:
>> >> On Nov 24, 6:59 pm, Les Cargill <lcargil...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> >>> Immortalist wrote:
>> >>>> Vulture Funds Make Millions Off Gov’t-Backed Home Loans
>>
>> >>> That is how this is supposed to work. This was clearly predicted by
>> >>> multiple people during the discussiono surrounding TARP. That is
>> >>> how markets reprice goods.
>>
>> >> Exactly, right.
>>
>> >> The gov't in fact is actively repackaging so-called "toxic loans"
>> >> and putting them up for sale.
>>
>> >> Fred Weiss
>>
>> > But they're only toxic if they're underwater. Does anybody know
>> > whether they're underwater or not? No. All they can do is say "well,
>> > they're kinda sellin....."
>>
>> > "The road goes on forever and the party never ends" - Robert Earl
>> > Keen.
>>
>> Value is, in the real economic world, always tied tied to labor. Only
>> when the common working people can afford to purchase the homes will
>> the homes not be "underwater". A much better way to achieve that end
>> is to increase wages as denominated in dollars.
>
> Only if the wage dollars actually represent value.
Let us look at the problem I wish to resolve as opposed to _any_
religious beliefs concerning "value".
> If they're being
> devalued by funny credit money which is constantly inflating real estate
> prices then the increased wages will just be eaten up by the inflation
> and we will be back where we started, except for those who are worse off
> because they were holding cash or currency- denominated securities or
> entitlements.
When one wishes to hide the truth the sentences become long.
> Funny credit money effectively reduces the price of labor.
Returning to my original proposition, ("Only
when the common working people can afford to purchase the homes will the
homes not be "underwater. A much better way to achieve that end is to
increase wages as denominated in dollars") we will observe that the home
prices are denominated in dollars of BOOK VALUE on the books of the
thieving banks. If we incite and control "wage push" inflation (increase
in the general price level _CAUSED_ by rising wages), then the level of
wages (and all commodities) will approach the _ALREADY_INFLATED_ book
_*PRICE*_ if the houses.
Why is this so difficult for you to comprehend?
Michael Coburn
> On 25 Nov 2009 16:47:35 GMT, Michael Coburn <mik...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> Value is, in the real economic world, always tied tied to labor.
>
> Marxist nonsense.
>
> If labor produced value, why are some countries poor and others's rich?
I did not claim that labor produces value, liar. But some countries are
more wealth than others due to natural resource versus population. A
country with much naturally occurring bounty presents its people with
wealth not produced by labor at all.
> If labor and resources produce value, why is Africa and Brazil poor.
In most cases the non-wealth of a nation is due to both overpopulation in
relation to the natural resources and to lack of decent government.
> What produces value is labor and resources brought together by
> entrepreneurship.
The value of the American Pacific Northwest was not produced by
entrepreneurs, idiot. The tribes had so much wealth that they had big
parties and gave stuff away as an indication of social status.
This does not mean that entrepreneurs don't produce value. They most
certainly do.
http://www.greatervoice.org/essays/LaborTheoryOfCost.php
*Anarcissie*
I think you were on the right track. Money has to represent
value, and value is produced by labor. I think the main
religious belief in this discussion is your faith in inflation,
worthy of the free-silver advocates of yesteryear.
> > If they're being
> > devalued by funny credit money which is constantly inflating real estate
> > prices then the increased wages will just be eaten up by the inflation
> > and we will be back where we started, except for those who are worse off
> > because they were holding cash or currency- denominated securities or
> > entitlements.
>
> When one wishes to hide the truth the sentences become long.
Do you want me to parse or diagram the sentence for
you? Far from hiding the truth it seems to me that it
states it plainly, but I may be able to break it down
further if your reading skills are all that limited.
> > Funny credit money effectively reduces the price of labor.
>
> Returning to my original proposition, ("Only
> when the common working people can afford to purchase the homes will the
> homes not be "underwater. A much better way to achieve that end is to
> increase wages as denominated in dollars") we will observe that the home
> prices are denominated in dollars of BOOK VALUE on the books of the
> thieving banks. If we incite and control "wage push" inflation (increase
> in the general price level _CAUSED_ by rising wages), then the level of
> wages (and all commodities) will approach the _ALREADY_INFLATED_ book
> _*PRICE*_ if the houses.
>
> Why is this so difficult for you to comprehend?
Obviously, you will not achieve the end ("common working
people can afford to purchase the homes") if, at the same
time you're inflating their wages, you cause the credit money
to be inflated so that the price of housing rises. It is true
that general inflation will reduce existing debts by transferring
value from holders of cash and currency-denominated
equities and entitlements to debtors, but the underlying
problem will obviously continue to exist. In fact, with easy
credit and everyone anticipating strong inflation, I'd say the
differential between wages and real estate prices will
increase, since real estate will be seen as an inflation
shelter.
However, inflation, by wiping out savings and other
small holdings, _will_ serve to make people more
dependent on the government and on capitalists, so if
your aim is a more authoritarian economy and state,
you _are_ on the right track.
Michael Coburn
> On Nov 25, 3:56 pm, Michael Coburn <mik...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:05:57 -0800, *Anarcissie* wrote:
> > >
I had previously written:
> > >> Value is, in the real economic world, always tied to
> > >> labor. Only when the common working people can afford to
> > >> purchase the homes will the homes not be "underwater". A
> > >> much better way to achieve that end is to increase wages
> > >> as denominated in dollars.
> > > Only if the wage dollars actually represent value.
The preceding statement is simply wrong in the context of what
is proposed.
> > Let us look at the problem I wish to resolve as opposed to
> > _any_ religious beliefs concerning "value".
> I think you were on the right track. Money has to represent
> value, and value is produced by labor. I think the main
> religious belief in this discussion is your faith in inflation,
> worthy of the free-silver advocates of yesteryear.
The facts I present have nothing to do with "faith" in anything
at all.
> > > If they're being devalued by funny credit money which is
> > > constantly inflating real estate prices then the increased
> > > wages will just be eaten up by the inflation and we will be
> > > back where we started, except for those who are worse off
> > > because they were holding cash or currency- denominated
> > > securities or entitlements.
> > When one wishes to hide the truth the sentences become long.
>
> Do you want me to parse or diagram the sentence for
> you? Far from hiding the truth it seems to me that it
> states it plainly, but I may be able to break it down
> further if your reading skills are all that limited.
Allow me:
"If _they're_ (wages) being devalued by funny credit money
which is constantly inflating real estate prices"
This statement tells us that asset price inflation that is _NOT_
caused by wage rate inflation will be detrimental to wage
earners, i.e. that such inflation will "devalue" labor. This is
a fact.
"then the increased wages"
That are utterly missing in the case of inflation not _CAUSED_ by
wage increases
"will just be eaten up by the inflation and we will be back where
we started"
Is an internal false conclusion based on a false assumption of
cause of the inflation.
"except for those who are worse off because they were holding
cash or currency- denominated securities or entitlements."
Is yet another totally incorrect assertion concerning anything
other than _MONEY_ itself. Because owned assets other than money
and fixed rate notes such as mortgages and T-Bills will all
track the inflation. The DOW is currently rising and so too is
the price of oil and gold.
Unfortunately, the inflation is being caused by handing out money
to banks and rich people and _NOT_ by increased wages that result
from stimulative efforts at the bottom of the economy.
> > > Funny credit money effectively reduces the price of labor.
Not if FIAT money is handed out to those who are seeking jobs and to
those who are wage earners. Not of wage inflation is the _CAUSE_ of the
inflation.
> > Returning to my original proposition, ("Only when the common
> > working people can afford to purchase the homes will the
> > homes not be "underwater. A much better way to achieve that
> > end is to increase wages as denominated in dollars") we will
> > observe that the home prices are denominated in dollars of
> > BOOK VALUE on the books of the thieving banks. If we incite
> > and control "wage push" inflation (increase in the general
> > price level _CAUSED_ by rising wages), then the level of
> > wages (and all commodities) will approach the
> > _ALREADY_INFLATED_ book _*PRICE*_ if the houses.
> > Why is this so difficult for you to comprehend?
> Obviously, you will not achieve the end ("common working people
> can afford to purchase the homes") if, at the same time you're
> inflating their wages, you cause the credit money to be
> inflated so that the price of housing rises.
But, moron...... The IMMEDIATE OBJECTIVE is to increase the
_*MARKET*_ price of the houses such that the market price is
equivalent to the book price of the overpriiced bubble houses.
_AFTER_ that is achieved then we can stop WAGE stimulus and ramp up
interest rates.
> It is true that
> general inflation will reduce existing debts by transferring
> value from holders of cash and currency-denominated equities
> and entitlements to debtors, but the underlying problem will
> obviously continue to exist.
NO. It _WON'T_ continue to exist unless the stimulus checks (or
unemployment checks) are continued past the point at which the
dollar has been sufficiently adjusted in value (as compared to
labor and houses) and/or interest rates are left too low for too long
> In fact, with easy credit and
> everyone anticipating strong inflation, I'd say the
> differential between wages and real estate prices will
> increase, since real estate will be seen as an inflation
> shelter.
I think you are getting around to understanding the proposition.
> However, inflation, by wiping out savings and other small
> holdings, _will_ serve to make people more dependent on the
> government and on capitalists, so if your aim is a more
> authoritarian economy and state, you _are_ on the right track.
I will readily admit that messing about with stimulus and dollar
devaluation has its downside. But the current situation DEMANDS
such action.
Rod Speed
> Fred Weiss wrote
>> [... snip the entirely predictable lies ...]
> Fred W is such a picture-perfect cliche that I have to believe he's a paid agent or a 'bot.
Just another utterly mindless conspiracy theory.
He actually is that stupid. So stupid that it doesnt even realise how everyone can see right thru his lies.
Rod Speed
> James A. Donald wrote
>> Michael Coburn <mik...@verizon.net> wrote
>>> Value is, in the real economic world, always tied to labor.
>> Marxist nonsense.
Indeed.
>> If labor produced value, why are some countries poor and others's rich?
> I did not claim that labor produces value, liar. But some countries
> are more wealth than others due to natural resource versus population.
Have fun explaining Switzerland and Danemark.
> A country with much naturally occurring bounty presents
> its people with wealth not produced by labor at all.
So much for your original stupid claim.
>> If labor and resources produce value, why is Africa and Brazil poor.
> In most cases the non-wealth of a nation is due to both
> overpopulation in relation to the natural resources and
> to lack of decent government.
So much for your original stupid claim.
>> What produces value is labor and resources brought together by entrepreneurship.
> The value of the American Pacific Northwest was not produced by
> entrepreneurs, idiot. The tribes had so much wealth that they had
> big parties and gave stuff away as an indication of social status.
> This does not mean that entrepreneurs don't produce value. They most certainly do.
> http://www.greatervoice.org/essays/LaborTheoryOfCost.php
Just another completely mindless steaming turd.
Les Cargill
> On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:01:59 -0500, Les Cargill wrote:
>
>> Fred Weiss wrote:
>>> On Nov 24, 1:03 pm, Michael Coburn <mik...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> And you are a lying pig in that you want us to believe that the CRA
>>>> and Acorn caused the housing bubble.
>>> I didn't say anything about CRA or Acorn.
>>>
>>> The far more fundamental issue was that the gov't through Fannie Mae
>>> and the Fed, etc. kept interest rates/mortgages rates artificially low.
>>> But, yes, in various ways they encouraged people who were marginal at
>>> best to get mortgages. CRA and Acorn were part of the scheme. That in
>>> fact is the very mandate of the various Federal housing programs. It
>>> still is. That's why I said nothings changed.
>>>
>>> Fred Weiss
>>>
>>>
>> Well, they're still trying to keep interest rates down because that best
>> serves investors. Nothing has been learned.
>
> Low interest rates serve the economy as a whole.
No they don't. That's the problem. Clinton started that shibboleth
and we still haven't recovered. Listen: when the risk premium is not
compensated for in interest rates, it must be made up for elsewhere.
"Elsewhere" means principally *IN RENTS*. You are soaking
in it, right now. Rents.
Oh, trust me - this is *coming* back. And in spades.
> High interest rates
> simply reward people who hoard money.
No, they just punish various forms of arbitrage. People
who hard money aren't interested in returns. *BY DEFINITION*.
Micheal, please, please...
> You and other freepers
Look. I am not a fscking freeper. Get that out of your head *right
fscking now*. I am no the only person whose posts you read who can
actually follow the gosh darned transfer function mathematics
underlying the history of the last 20 years.
If the error bar of the estimates of where risk is is covered by
interest, then the system is convergent and stable. If not, it is
in the fscking *WIND*. You sow the wind, and you reap the whirlwind.
The error bars ( basically grounded in money supply error) *start*
at 3% for basic essential measurement noise. It goes up from there.
that is the natural, inevitable noise floor of the process. It's
as much like an artifact of thermodynamics as anything else.
Interest rates act as a negative feedback leg on the entirety of the
insanity of biology expressed in the form of financial transactions.
> tend to
> believe that interest rates should be used to control credit because that
> is what supports your freeper religion.
See above.
> Government intervention and high
> rates of taxation on the very rich can resolve the problem without
> punishing the common people.
No, they can't. Were you there in the '70s? '80s? We had high interest
rates because uncertainty was much, much greater than it is now.
> That was the proper solution in 1979 and it
> is the proper solution now.
>
If you can make it to '82, Bruce releases "Nebraska".
--
Les Cargill
Les Cargill
> On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:07:52 -0500, Les Cargill wrote:
>
>> Fred Weiss wrote:
>>> On Nov 24, 6:59 pm, Les Cargill <lcargil...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>>> Immortalist wrote:
>>>>> Vulture Funds Make Millions Off Gov’t-Backed Home Loans
>>>> That is how this is supposed to work. This was clearly predicted by
>>>> multiple people during the discussiono surrounding TARP. That is how
>>>> markets reprice goods.
>>> Exactly, right.
>>>
>>> The gov't in fact is actively repackaging so-called "toxic loans" and
>>> putting them up for sale.
>>>
>>> Fred Weiss
>>
>> But they're only toxic if they're underwater. Does anybody know whether
>> they're underwater or not? No. All they can do is say "well, they're
>> kinda sellin....."
>>
>>
>> "The road goes on forever and the party never ends" - Robert Earl Keen.
>
> Value is, in the real economic world, always tied tied to labor.
Only for Communists. For real people, value is where we find it.
> Only
> when the common working people can afford to purchase the homes will the
> homes not be "underwater". A much better way to achieve that end is to
> increase wages as denominated in dollars.
>
I suppose if one thinks real hard, the tide may be abated. But I don't
bet on it.
People have been trained: the way to better oneself is not to do
better, but to find the one who does better and stop him. The more
you measure, the more you get this.
When this pattern emerges as the clear winner under any economic
system, we must allow that it's in the substrate underlying them,
and nothing economic can solve this problem.
--
Les Cargill
Michael Coburn
> Michael Coburn wrote:
>> On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:07:52 -0500, Les Cargill wrote:
>>
>>> Fred Weiss wrote:
>>>> On Nov 24, 6:59 pm, Les Cargill <lcargil...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>>>> Immortalist wrote:
>>>>>> Vulture Funds Make Millions Off Gov’t-Backed Home Loans
>>>>> That is how this is supposed to work. This was clearly predicted by
>>>>> multiple people during the discussiono surrounding TARP. That is how
>>>>> markets reprice goods.
>>>> Exactly, right.
>>>>
>>>> The gov't in fact is actively repackaging so-called "toxic loans" and
>>>> putting them up for sale.
>>>>
>>>> Fred Weiss
>>>
>>> But they're only toxic if they're underwater. Does anybody know
>>> whether they're underwater or not? No. All they can do is say "well,
>>> they're kinda sellin....."
>>>
>>>
>>> "The road goes on forever and the party never ends" - Robert Earl
>>> Keen.
>>
>> Value is, in the real economic world, always tied tied to labor.
>
> Only for Communists. For real people, value is where we find it.
But the question arises as to what you will do to attain that which you
value. You can use force or kill for it. Or you can trade for it. And
no matter what you do in an honest and "righteous" world, you will be
trading labor or the fruits thereof for that which you desire. When you
trade money you are trading potential labor or potential "rights" to
something that was produced by labor. You cannot trade "rights" to
nature because you do not own nature. Ergo you are trading the rights to
the labor of others that you have gained by your own contribution to the
society.
>> Only
>> when the common working people can afford to purchase the homes will
>> the homes not be "underwater". A much better way to achieve that end
>> is to increase wages as denominated in dollars.
>>
>>
> I suppose if one thinks real hard, the tide may be abated. But I don't
> bet on it.
>
> People have been trained: the way to better oneself is not to do better,
> but to find the one who does better and stop him. The more you measure,
> the more you get this.
Ah yes... the rightarded "envy pony". That's the fav.....
> When this pattern emerges as the clear winner under any economic system,
> we must allow that it's in the substrate underlying them, and nothing
> economic can solve this problem.
The people who gained from the bubble have all the money. That money
must be devalued to balance the scales. There is no other way to reclaim
it.
Michael Coburn
> Michael Coburn wrote:
>> On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:01:59 -0500, Les Cargill wrote:
>>
>>> Fred Weiss wrote:
>>>> On Nov 24, 1:03 pm, Michael Coburn <mik...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> And you are a lying pig in that you want us to believe that the CRA
>>>>> and Acorn caused the housing bubble.
>>>> I didn't say anything about CRA or Acorn.
>>>>
>>>> The far more fundamental issue was that the gov't through Fannie Mae
>>>> and the Fed, etc. kept interest rates/mortgages rates artificially
>>>> low. But, yes, in various ways they encouraged people who were
>>>> marginal at best to get mortgages. CRA and Acorn were part of the
>>>> scheme. That in fact is the very mandate of the various Federal
>>>> housing programs. It still is. That's why I said nothings changed.
>>>>
>>>> Fred Weiss
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Well, they're still trying to keep interest rates down because that
>>> best serves investors. Nothing has been learned.
>>
>> Low interest rates serve the economy as a whole.
>
> No they don't. That's the problem. Clinton started that shibboleth and
> we still haven't recovered. Listen: when the risk premium is not
> compensated for in interest rates, it must be made up for elsewhere.
>
> "Elsewhere" means principally *IN RENTS*. You are soaking in it, right
> now. Rents.
>
> Oh, trust me - this is *coming* back. And in spades.
In classical economics and in Georgist economics and, perhaps, even in
Austrian economics, _INTEREST_ is the return to capital. Where we part
ways is in our definition of _capital_. To me "capital" is the fruit of
labor not consumed by used in further production. Money is OBVIOUSLY not
capital if it can be conjured up from thin air as it has been in
"securitization".
As to Clinton, it is actually Greenspan and regulation AGAIN. What
should have happened is that margin requirements should have been
tightened in the stock markets to curtail so much speculation. And I am
not going to go into the other crap like the 1997 tax cuts for the rich.
>> High interest rates
>> simply reward people who hoard money.
>
> No, they just punish various forms of arbitrage. People who hard money
> aren't interested in returns. *BY DEFINITION*.
That is true. They are interested in the power it gives them to control
others. The same as the land rentiers. Interest as paid to fiat money
is nothing more that _rent_.
> Micheal, please, please...
>
>> You and other freepers
>
> Look. I am not a fscking freeper. Get that out of your head *right
> fscking now*. I am no the only person whose posts you read who can
> actually follow the gosh darned transfer function mathematics underlying
> the history of the last 20 years.
>
> If the error bar of the estimates of where risk is is covered by
> interest, then the system is convergent and stable. If not, it is in the
> fscking *WIND*. You sow the wind, and you reap the whirlwind.
>
> The error bars ( basically grounded in money supply error) *start* at 3%
> for basic essential measurement noise. It goes up from there. that is
> the natural, inevitable noise floor of the process. It's as much like an
> artifact of thermodynamics as anything else.
>
> Interest rates act as a negative feedback leg on the entirety of the
> insanity of biology expressed in the form of financial transactions.
And every bit of that goes right out the window when money is created by
gamblers for the sake of gamblers and then the FED runs in and buys all
the "chips" and "chits" with bank money that trades at par with fiat
money. The common people have been defrauded by the gamblers and the Fed
and by the Bush Republicans.... AGAIN.
>> tend to
>> believe that interest rates should be used to control credit because
>> that is what supports your freeper religion.
>
> See above.
It won't wash in the current situation.
>> Government intervention and high
>> rates of taxation on the very rich can resolve the problem without
>> punishing the common people.
>
> No, they can't. Were you there in the '70s? '80s? We had high interest
> rates because uncertainty was much, much greater than it is now.
NO! We had high interest rates because the stinking government blew
money into the economy without reclaiming it with taxation. And it was
Kennedy and Johnson that started it with that *!!%#^@* tax cut in 1964.
The situation was just made worse by Vietnam and the WOP, but had the tax
code remained unchanged we would not have had the inflation that
necessitated the Volcker destruction of the economy.
>> That was the proper solution in 1979 and it is the proper solution now.
>>
>>
>
> If you can make it to '82, Bruce releases "Nebraska".
--
Rod Speed
> Les Cargill wrote
>> Michael Coburn wrote
>>>> Fred Weiss wrote:
>>>>> Les Cargill <lcargil...@comcast.net> wrote
>>>>>> Immortalist wrote
>>>>>>> Vulture Funds Make Millions Off Gov't-Backed Home Loans
>>>>>> That is how this is supposed to work. This was clearly predicted
>>>>>> by multiple people during the discussiono surrounding TARP. That
>>>>>> is how markets reprice goods.
>>>>> Exactly, right.
>>>>> The gov't in fact is actively repackaging so-called "toxic loans"
>>>>> and putting them up for sale.
>>>> But they're only toxic if they're underwater. Does anybody know
>>>> whether they're underwater or not? No. All they can do is say
>>>> "well, they're kinda sellin....."
>>>> "The road goes on forever and the party never ends" - Robert Earl Keen.
>>> Value is, in the real economic world, always tied tied to labor.
>> Only for Communists. For real people, value is where we find it.
> But the question arises as to what you will do to attain that which you value.
You can just discover it.
> You can use force or kill for it. Or you can trade for it.
You can just discover it.
> And no matter what you do in an honest and "righteous" world, you
> will be trading labor or the fruits thereof for that which you desire.
Wrong, most obviously when you discover that there is some gold on land that you own.
> When you trade money you are trading potential labor or
> potential "rights" to something that was produced by labor.
Wrong, as always.
> You cannot trade "rights" to nature because you do not own nature.
You dont need to own nature to own whats on your land.
> Ergo you are trading the rights to the labor of others that
> you have gained by your own contribution to the society.
MIndlessly silly with the gold/oil that you discover on your land.
>>> Only when the common working people can afford to purchase the
>>> homes will the homes not be "underwater". A much better way to
>>> achieve that end is to increase wages as denominated in dollars.
>> I suppose if one thinks real hard, the tide may be abated. But I don't bet on it.
>> People have been trained: the way to better oneself is not to do
>> better, but to find the one who does better and stop him. The more
>> you measure, the more you get this.
> Ah yes... the rightarded "envy pony". That's the fav.....
>> When this pattern emerges as the clear winner under any economic
>> system, we must allow that it's in the substrate underlying them,
>> and nothing economic can solve this problem.
> The people who gained from the bubble have all the money.
Nope, just some of it.
> That money must be devalued to balance the scales.
Wrong, as always.
> There is no other way to reclaim it.
Wrong, as always. You can tax it off them, stupid.
Fred Weiss
> Michael Coburn wrote:
> > Low interest rates serve the economy as a whole.
> ... Listen: when the risk premium is not
> compensated for in interest rates, it must be made up for elsewhere.
Such as in this instance massive debt in the furious gov't printing of
(fiat) money.
That's what I think the decline of the dollar and the rise in gold
(and other commodities) is telling us.
You downplay the importance of that in a previous email, perhaps
because you are reading too much Paul Krugman. :-)
> Oh, trust me - this is *coming* back. And in spades.
Truckloads.
You got that right.
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
> Michael Coburn wrote:
> > Value is, in the real economic world, always tied tied to labor.
>
> Only for Communists. For real people, value is where we find it.
And what people are willing to pay for it. How much labor went into it
is totally irrelevant.
But the "labor theory of value" is not a small error. It has led to
the destruction of whole economies. But I'm not telling you anything
you don't know.
Coburn is in a delusional time warp as most leftists are these days.
> > Only
> > when the common working people can afford to purchase the homes will the
> > homes not be "underwater". A much better way to achieve that end is to
> > increase wages as denominated in dollars.
>
> I suppose if one thinks real hard, the tide may be abated. But I don't
> bet on it.
Neither wishing - or fiat money - will make it so.
If we could increase wages by the stroke of a pen, we could all be
rich tomorrow.
Such is the delusional fantasy world of leftists. It usually ends in
concentration camps.
The source of wealth is production and labor is only a small (and ever
lower) component of that. I think you take that view too far as we
have argued in other threads. But that's another subject.
Happy Thanksgiving, Les.
Fred Weiss
Les Cargill
No real argument there - but that's a thing of cultural decline. It's
massive rent seeking, which people rationalize away as "production".
What I don't see is any gross ... normative ( as in regulatory ) way
to make people have a deeper understanding that you have to be
productive. That you have to actually earn it.
Please note that in my view, both Al Gore and Abe Greenberg reap
huge unearned windfalls by playing the system, and not necessarily
earning it per se.
But it gets harder to *earn* as our collective productivity rises,
which provides higher standards of living. So that's the paradox.
And trying to build systems to subsidize consumption, especially in
the context of electoral politics, is all but impossible.
One small thing is the Frontline "The Card Game" this week, where
Chris Dodd is brutally frank about the realities of regulating
credit cards.
> As to Clinton, it is actually Greenspan and regulation AGAIN.
I merely used Clinton as a time marker, although he wasn't all that
fearful of the results. Again, I'm trended towards recognizing that
the line of evolution here is something more persistent than who
sits in the Oval Office - that there ain't that much of a change from
Reagan to Bush41 to Clinton to Bush43 to Obama.
> What
> should have happened is that margin requirements should have been
> tightened in the stock markets to curtail so much speculation. And I am
> not going to go into the other crap like the 1997 tax cuts for the rich.
>
But higher interest rates would assign the real costs where they came
from. Higher securitization requirements merely encourage Leviathan.
All they can do is control the gates of the "dam". Where I disagree with
you is that I predict that we will not see idle interest harvesting
displacing actual production - that the rates of production will stay
very high, by Schumpeterian habit. But the interest rates act as a tax
on arbitrage and damp out wild swings, leading to increased stability.
Prices will adjust to the new cost structure. But it'll keep the punters
out of meddling with what are highly technocratic and idiosyncratic
systems. Right now, people are loading up 401k dollars that go into
funds that *play in the commodities markets*.
I'm somewhat in trouble here, because up to a point, arbitrage is
massively efficient, so long as true pros do it. But when the
peanut gallery gets involved ( witness the price of oil jump a
few years back ), things get weird.
> The common people have been defrauded by the gamblers and the Fed
> and by the Bush Republicans.... AGAIN.
>
I'm not defending the Bushies - some of the better writers out there now
are coming forth with just how pernicious all this really has been. But
under Mr. O, it's... more of the same. It's "body count economics".
And assuming there really was deflation in the wind, there is a
path through the mess that says Bush did the right thing, overall.
But like Clinton, a half-point ( 50 basis points ) of basal interest
rate would have damped out the wildness.
>>> tend to
>>> believe that interest rates should be used to control credit because
>>> that is what supports your freeper religion.
>> See above.
>
> It won't wash in the current situation.
>
I know. it's completely and totally politically impossible. And this
frustrates me a great deal. Wall Street holds everything hostage, and
dumps itself when they raise rates. So they use the cheap money to sell
out Main Street, because them people don't really wanna work anyway.
>>> Government intervention and high
>>> rates of taxation on the very rich can resolve the problem without
>>> punishing the common people.
>> No, they can't. Were you there in the '70s? '80s? We had high interest
>> rates because uncertainty was much, much greater than it is now.
>
> NO! We had high interest rates because the stinking government blew
> money into the economy without reclaiming it with taxation. And it was
> Kennedy and Johnson that started it with that *!!%#^@* tax cut in 1964.
> The situation was just made worse by Vietnam and the WOP, but had the tax
> code remained unchanged we would not have had the inflation that
> necessitated the Volcker destruction of the economy.
>
heh. I very seriously disagree! The uncertainty was the gloom from the
end of the 40s/50s/60s cheap oil era, caused by OPEC's reaction to the
'67 War. Sure, we had to cover the 'Nam debt, but there was a certain
amount of "constructive interference" from those two waves.
One thing Reagan did and did well was attack high oil prices, and that
caused a lot of what was "morning in America" ( because you still had
bloody high rates until ... '88 or so. )
>>> That was the proper solution in 1979 and it is the proper solution now.
>>>
>>>
>> If you can make it to '82, Bruce releases "Nebraska".
>
--
Les Cargill
Les Cargill
No, this isn't that. This is closer to Jerry Pournelle's "Iron Law".
It's based in the fallacy that a self-interested corporation will
misbehave, but a set of public-minded "white pants guys" ( like the
guy in "Grapes of Wrath") will not be tempted by self-interest.
What we see in fact is that higher levels of venality and bitterness
follow permanent government structures. A very colorful
example is Floyd Dominy in the Bureau of Reclamation, a (IMO)
great American, but one who had a very real hubris.
What I am talking about is Mandarinism - the ability to enforce
stability by rejecting change. All those rules of governance don't
change human nature.
>> When this pattern emerges as the clear winner under any economic system,
>> we must allow that it's in the substrate underlying them, and nothing
>> economic can solve this problem.
>
> The people who gained from the bubble have all the money. That money
> must be devalued to balance the scales. There is no other way to reclaim
> it.
>
But the money is simply waiting for a time when herd psychology swings
towards mania again. We're seeing a thawing of the "ice pack" now -
lending will begin soon.
This is key - no matter how carefully he manages himself, a figure
like Paulson is still suspect. We just have to kind of ignore all the
conflict of interest, and allow that only somebody with his resume
really has the chops for work like that.
I'm not knocking him *per se*, but ... it smacks of the fox
watching the henhouse. His actions are necessarily a compromise.
--
Les Cargill
Les Cargill
> On Nov 25, 11:33 pm, Les Cargill <lcargil...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Michael Coburn wrote:
>
>>> Value is, in the real economic world, always tied tied to labor.
>> Only for Communists. For real people, value is where we find it.
>
> And what people are willing to pay for it. How much labor went into it
> is totally irrelevant.
>
It's not entirely irrelevant - if there's too much labor
involved, you simply won't see it. But we have "meta labor" -
labor that goes into cost reducing things. The multipliers in value of
that are absolutely enormous.
> But the "labor theory of value" is not a small error. It has led to
> the destruction of whole economies. But I'm not telling you anything
> you don't know.
>
> Coburn is in a delusional time warp as most leftists are these days.
>
It's not his fault. There's a... schism. If I wanted to be dramatic,
I could compare it to the protestant Reformation. Krugman
calls it "saltwter"(Harvard) versus "freshwater"(Chicago) , a
polite sobriquet for "noble blueblood best and brightest" vs
"ignorant inbred Midwestern car salesmen."
We don't have *a* single story on what is a good rate of deficit
spending. And the political class, beginning with Reagan picked
and chose pieces of both stories as politically expedient. This
make sisolating factors much more difficult.
Bush ran up deficits like nobody since FDR. If you are a person
who pays attention, this is something like... treason. At least PJ
O'Rourke and John Derbyshire seem to agree. But that's partially
the beauty of electoral politics - reality does not conform to
the program, and the map is not the territory.
>>> Only
>>> when the common working people can afford to purchase the homes will the
>>> homes not be "underwater". A much better way to achieve that end is to
>>> increase wages as denominated in dollars.
>> I suppose if one thinks real hard, the tide may be abated. But I don't
>> bet on it.
>
> Neither wishing - or fiat money - will make it so.
>
The problem is that we actually *ran* the fiat money experiment
between Britain and America in the Great Depression. Fiat money
won that heat. Even Uncle Milton (Friedman) held that to be true.
> If we could increase wages by the stroke of a pen, we could all be
> rich tomorrow.
>
One school of thought says we are. And this was as much strokes of pens
as chainsaws or hydraulics.
> Such is the delusional fantasy world of leftists. It usually ends in
> concentration camps.
>
Not always. And it's the nihilism of the Anarchists, the Emma Goldman
types who really lead to camps or icepicks. The American Utopians
were in ways more extreme than the Russians, but very little actual
pogrom or bloodshed came of it ( modulo the Civil War).
> The source of wealth is production and labor is only a small (and ever
> lower) component of that. I think you take that view too far as we
> have argued in other threads. But that's another subject.
>
> Happy Thanksgiving, Les.
>
You too. Happy turkey day to everybody.
> Fred Weiss
--
Les Cargill
Michael Coburn
> On Nov 25, 11:33 pm, Les Cargill <lcargil...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Michael Coburn wrote:
>
>> > Value is, in the real economic world, always tied tied to labor.
>>
>> Only for Communists. For real people, value is where we find it.
>
> And what people are willing to pay for it. How much labor went into it
> is totally irrelevant.
And herein lies the "tie" to _real_ economics. The classical economists
erred in proclaiming value = cost. That was a huge and horrendous error.
http://GreaterVoice.org/essays/LaborTheoryOfCost.php
The problem for Republican and neoclassical thieves is in specifying
exactly how what one values is to be purchased. One of the most wonderful
dodges is in the incorrect stupidity munging of value itself with
"economic value". We all value our mothers very much. Yet they are not
for sale or trade. Only economic value should be considered in economic
discussions of value. We very much value many things, but what are we
willing to pay? And what could we _RIGHTFULLY_ pay but our own
earnings???? If we are to trade some physical thing or some "right" to
an item (or section of land) or the produce of the economy in general (as
a dollar is a claim on the economy). Then that which we will trade away
for the object of our desires is in fact, our _earned_ wealth. That is
the case so long as the trade is righteous. If we stole the stuff with
which to trade than again we are not talking about economics. We are
talking about force, fraud, religious crap, and fascism.
> But the "labor theory of value" is not a small error. It has led to the
> destruction of whole economies. But I'm not telling you anything you
> don't know.
Sure.. And it gets back to the stupid claim that value = cost. There
are a very great many things that are valued by most human beings and
indispensable to the human species that simply have no cost but are
allocated based on scarcity due to population. No labor/cost whatsoever
went into the creation of oil or land or gold or the atmosphere. Yet
these naturally occurring resources are infinitely valuable. Any liar
that claims that labor produced these desirable resources would have to
be an economist looking after the rentiers that pay for the economist's
livelihood. And such have been all the _professional_ economists
throughout time.
> Coburn is in a delusional time warp as most leftists are these days.
Coburn is not a "leftist". He is a liberal. You, OTOH, are a fascist.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html ------
Fascism [is] the complete opposite of…Marxian Socialism, the materialist
conception of history of human civilization can be explained simply
through the conflict of interests among the various social groups and by
the change and development in the means and instruments of production....
Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to
say, in actions influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect.
...
Fascism combats the whole complex system of democratic ideology, and
repudiates it, whether in its theoretical premises or in its practical
application. Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it
is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can
govern by means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the
immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind, which can
never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical
process such as universal suffrage....
---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> > Only
>> > when the common working people can afford to purchase the homes will
>> > the homes not be "underwater". A much better way to achieve that end
>> > is to increase wages as denominated in dollars.
>>
>> I suppose if one thinks real hard, the tide may be abated. But I don't
>> bet on it.
>
> Neither wishing - or fiat money - will make it so.
>
> If we could increase wages by the stroke of a pen, we could all be rich
> tomorrow.
And we can always lie and mischaracterize anything that the intelligent
people have to say and just tap tap tap, dance, dance, dance. It's the
Republican way.
> Such is the delusional fantasy world of leftists. It usually ends in
> concentration camps.
Boogerman, Booberman, Boogerman.
> The source of wealth is production and labor is only a small (and ever
> lower) component of that. I think you take that view too far as we have
> argued in other threads. But that's another subject.
If the source of wealth is production then please produce me a new
continent to develop. You can also replicate the vacant lot across the
street from my house. Warning: It will not serve if it is located in
Chicago.
Michael Coburn
> On Nov 25, 11:24 pm, Les Cargill <lcargil...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Michael Coburn wrote:
>
>> > Low interest rates serve the economy as a whole.
>
>> ... Listen: when the risk premium is not compensated for in interest
>> rates, it must be made up for elsewhere.
>
> Such as in this instance massive debt in the furious gov't printing of
> (fiat) money.
If government _PRINTS_ the money, lying moron, there is no debt.
Weiss is caught lying again. He is not even very talented. Not really
all that good of a Republican.
> That's what I think the decline of the dollar and the rise in gold (and
> other commodities) is telling us.
It is telling us that the real economy is adjusting to the destruction
caused by the lying pig Republicans since Reagan.
> You downplay the importance of that in a previous email, perhaps because
> you are reading too much Paul Krugman. :-)
Krugman has a much better handle on reality than most, so called,
economists.
>> Oh, trust me - this is *coming* back. And in spades.
>
> Truckloads.
>
> You got that right.
>
> Fred Weiss
Yup... A little bit of economic justice will go a long way. We need
massive handouts to the middle class if we are going to resurrect a
decent economy out of the Republican ruins.
James A. Donald
> price of labor.
Thereby "solving" the unemployment problem in a fashion that is not
quite as destructive as putting people to work on makework jobs.
However, putting people to work usefully is not easy. A critical
cofactor of useful employment is entrepreneurship - people who are
able to and willing arrange something useful for other people's labor.
Funny money that benefits insiders at the expense of outsiders is apt
to have a negative effect on entrepreneurship.
By and large, most new jobs come from new enterprises. We are seeing
curiously few new enterprises in the US, hence curiously few new jobs.
Thus a new equilibrium, full employment at reduced real wage levels,
is likely to be equilibrium at *greatly* reduced real wage levels -
that is to say, full employment will only set in *after* we have had
an unpleasant amount of inflation.
Another "solution" is to create lots of makework jobs and fund them
not by funny money, but by almost funny money - fund them by borrowing
from China, which is unsustainable in the long run - but the long run
is apt to be longer than two presidential terms.
Michael Coburn
It is NOT impossible. If it takes less work to produce the goods then
why is the work week still 40 hours? The answer, of course, is that the
rentier is stealing all the benefit of the productivity increases.
Trickle down, supply side economics is an utter failure.
> One small thing is the Frontline "The Card Game" this week, where Chris
> Dodd is brutally frank about the realities of regulating credit cards.
More sideshow crap.
>> As to Clinton, it is actually Greenspan and regulation AGAIN.
>
> I merely used Clinton as a time marker, although he wasn't all that
> fearful of the results. Again, I'm trended towards recognizing that the
> line of evolution here is something more persistent than who sits in the
> Oval Office - that there ain't that much of a change from Reagan to
> Bush41 to Clinton to Bush43 to Obama.
>
>> What
>> should have happened is that margin requirements should have been
>> tightened in the stock markets to curtail so much speculation. And I am
>> not going to go into the other crap like the 1997 tax cuts for the
>> rich.
>>
>>
> But higher interest rates would assign the real costs where they came
> from. Higher securitization requirements merely encourage Leviathan.
Bullshit and Boogerman.
Yet appropriate actual taxation will accomplish the same thing without
continually rewarding the idle rich and the rapists of the environment.
> Prices will adjust to the new cost structure. But it'll keep the punters
> out of meddling with what are highly technocratic and idiosyncratic
> systems. Right now, people are loading up 401k dollars that go into
> funds that *play in the commodities markets*.
>
> I'm somewhat in trouble here, because up to a point, arbitrage is
> massively efficient, so long as true pros do it. But when the peanut
> gallery gets involved ( witness the price of oil jump a few years back
> ), things get weird.
YOUR system created the mess.
>> The common people have been defrauded by the gamblers and the Fed and
>> by the Bush Republicans.... AGAIN.
>>
>>
> I'm not defending the Bushies - some of the better writers out there now
> are coming forth with just how pernicious all this really has been. But
> under Mr. O, it's... more of the same. It's "body count economics".
That is not actually true. It is campaign funds economics.
> And assuming there really was deflation in the wind, there is a path
> through the mess that says Bush did the right thing, overall. But like
> Clinton, a half-point ( 50 basis points ) of basal interest rate would
> have damped out the wildness.
What would have "dampened out the wildness" would have been NO MESSING
WITH THE TAX CODE OF 1993 except, perhaps, to add some new marginal rates
above $500K and especially above one to 5 million. Just to have left the
capital gains rate alone at 28% and no special crap for homes.
>>>> tend to
>>>> believe that interest rates should be used to control credit because
>>>> that is what supports your freeper religion.
>>> See above.
>>
>> It won't wash in the current situation.
>>
>>
> I know. it's completely and totally politically impossible. And this
> frustrates me a great deal. Wall Street holds everything hostage, and
> dumps itself when they raise rates. So they use the cheap money to sell
> out Main Street, because them people don't really wanna work anyway.
>
>
>>>> Government intervention and high
>>>> rates of taxation on the very rich can resolve the problem without
>>>> punishing the common people.
>>> No, they can't. Were you there in the '70s? '80s? We had high interest
>>> rates because uncertainty was much, much greater than it is now.
>>
>> NO! We had high interest rates because the stinking government blew
>> money into the economy without reclaiming it with taxation. And it was
>> Kennedy and Johnson that started it with that *!!%#^@* tax cut in 1964.
>> The situation was just made worse by Vietnam and the WOP, but had the
>> tax code remained unchanged we would not have had the inflation that
>> necessitated the Volcker destruction of the economy.
>>
>>
> heh. I very seriously disagree! The uncertainty was the gloom from the
> end of the 40s/50s/60s cheap oil era, caused by OPEC's reaction to the
> '67 War. Sure, we had to cover the 'Nam debt, but there was a certain
> amount of "constructive interference" from those two waves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_embargo_crisis#Yom_Kippur_War ------
On October 6, 1973, Syria and Egypt started the Yom Kippur War by
launching a military attack on Israeli occupied territories captured in
the 1967 Six Day War .[5] This new round in the Arab-Israeli conflict
triggered a crisis already in the making; the price of oil was going to
rise. The West could not continue to increase its energy consumption 5%
annually, while also paying low oil prices, and selling inflation-priced
goods to the petroleum producers in the developing Third World. This was
stressed by the Shah of Iran, whose nation was the world's second-largest
exporter of oil and the closest ally of the United States in the Middle
East at the time. "Of course [the world price of oil] is going to rise,"
the Shah told the New York Times in 1973. "Certainly! And how...; You
[Western nations] increased the price of wheat you sell us by 300%, and
the same for sugar and cement...; You buy our crude oil and sell it back
to us, refined as petrochemicals, at a hundred times the price you've
paid to us...; It's only fair that, from now on, you should pay more for
oil. Let's say ten times more."[6]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
> One thing Reagan did and did well was attack high oil prices, and that
> caused a lot of what was "morning in America" ( because you still had
> bloody high rates until ... '88 or so. )
Horseshit! Here's the picture of oil rates in nominal dollars. The
rates cratered as with the US economy in 1980-83 and continued to slide
because of non-OPEC production. At any rate, the boost to the US economy
was from decreasing interest rates and oil prices and NOT Republican tax
cuts for the rich. As non-OPEC nations developed their resources and the
FED cut interest rates the economy improved from the totally destroyed
state it was placed in by Volcker.
http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1947.gif
>>>> That was the proper solution in 1979 and it is the proper solution
>>>> now.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> If you can make it to '82, Bruce releases "Nebraska".
>>
--
James A. Donald
> natural resource versus population.
Why then is Hong Kong, Switzerland, Taiwan, and
Singapore, with no natural resources, rich, while
Africa, with vast natural resources, is poor?
Why is North Korea poor and South Korea rich?
Why is Brazil, with probably the best ratio of natural
resources to population in the world, poor? The
population of Brazil is still below its pre-columbian
level.
Taiwan: no significant natural resources other than 8635
sq km of arable land, population 22,974,347, or 2660 per
square kilometer of arable land, GDP $31,100 per head
Brazil: vast natural resources plus 586,237 square
kilometers of arable land, population 169,872,85, or 29
per square kilometer of arable land, GDP $9,800 per
head.
Rod Speed
> Anarcissie wrote
>> Funny credit money effectively reduces the price of labor.
> Thereby "solving" the unemployment problem in a fashion that is not
> quite as destructive as putting people to work on makework jobs.
> However, putting people to work usefully is not easy.
> A critical cofactor of useful employment is entrepreneurship
Easy to claim. Have fun actually substantiating that claim.
> people who are able to and willing arrange something useful for other people's labor.
Thats not what entrepreneurship is about.
> Funny money that benefits insiders at the expense of outsiders
Just another of your silly little pig ignorant fantasys.
> is apt to have a negative effect on entrepreneurship.
Just another of your silly little pig ignorant fantasys.
> By and large, most new jobs come from new enterprises.
Just another of your silly little pig ignorant fantasys.
> We are seeing curiously few new enterprises in the US,
Just another of your silly little pig ignorant fantasys.
> hence curiously few new jobs.
Just another of your silly little pig ignorant fantasys.
> Thus a new equilibrium, full employment at reduced real wage levels,
> is likely to be equilibrium at *greatly* reduced real wage levels
Just another of your silly little pig ignorant fantasys.
> that is to say, full employment will only set in *after*
> we have had an unpleasant amount of inflation.
How odd that we didnt see that with the great depression.
> Another "solution" is to create lots of makework jobs and fund them
> not by funny money, but by almost funny money - fund them by
> borrowing from China, which is unsustainable in the long run
Just another of your silly little pig ignorant fantasys.
> - but the long run is apt to be longer than two presidential terms.
Just another of your silly little pig ignorant fantasys.
Rod Speed
> Les Cargill wrote
>> Michael Coburn wrote
>>> Les Cargill wrote
>>>> Michael Coburn wrote
>>>>>> Fred Weiss wrote
>>>>>>>> And you are a lying pig in that you want us to believe that the
>>>>>>>> CRA and Acorn caused the housing bubble.
>>>>>>> I didn't say anything about CRA or Acorn.
>>>>>>> The far more fundamental issue was that the gov't through Fannie
>>>>>>> Mae and the Fed, etc. kept interest rates/mortgages rates
>>>>>>> artificially low. But, yes, in various ways they encouraged
>>>>>>> people who were marginal at best to get mortgages. CRA and
>>>>>>> Acorn were part of the scheme. That in fact is the very mandate
>>>>>>> of the various Federal housing programs. It still is. That's
>>>>>>> why I said nothings changed.
>>>>>> Well, they're still trying to keep interest rates down because
Essentially because the unemployment rate bottomed at 4.x%
with an immense legal and illegal immigration rate, so we must
have found more to do at that higher level of productivity.
Just like we did when we ended up with only 5% of the workforce
employed in agriculture and when we automated all the phone exchanges
and the absolute vast bulk of accounts and statements etc etc etc.
> The answer, of course, is that the rentier is
> stealing all the benefit of the productivity increases.
Another lie. We got a tremendous benefit in increased living standards too.
> Trickle down, supply side economics is an utter failure.
Only in your pathetic little pig ignorant fantasyland.
Only in your pathetic little pig ignorant fantasyland.
>> Prices will adjust to the new cost structure. But it'll keep the
>> punters out of meddling with what are highly technocratic and
>> idiosyncratic systems. Right now, people are loading up 401k
>> dollars that go into funds that *play in the commodities markets*.
>> I'm somewhat in trouble here, because up to a point, arbitrage is
>> massively efficient, so long as true pros do it. But when the peanut
>> gallery gets involved ( witness the price of oil jump a few years
>> back ), things get weird.
> YOUR system created the mess.
Only in your pathetic little pig ignorant fantasyland.
>>> The common people have been defrauded by the gamblers
>>> and the Fed and by the Bush Republicans.... AGAIN.
>> I'm not defending the Bushies - some of the better writers out there
>> now are coming forth with just how pernicious all this really has
>> been. But under Mr. O, it's... more of the same. It's "body count
>> economics".
> That is not actually true. It is campaign funds economics.
Only in your pathetic little pig ignorant fantasyland.
>> And assuming there really was deflation in the wind, there is a path
>> through the mess that says Bush did the right thing, overall. But
>> like Clinton, a half-point ( 50 basis points ) of basal interest
>> rate would have damped out the wildness.
> What would have "dampened out the wildness" would have been NO
> MESSING WITH THE TAX CODE OF 1993 except, perhaps, to add
> some new marginal rates above $500K and especially above one to 5 million.
Only in your pathetic little pig ignorant fantasyland.
> Just to have left the capital gains rate alone at 28% and no special crap for homes.
Only in your pathetic little pig ignorant fantasyland.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_embargo_crisis#Yom_Kippur_War ------
> Horseshit!
You sig is sposed to be last, with a line with just -- on it in front of it.
> Here's the picture of oil rates in nominal dollars. The
> rates cratered as with the US economy in 1980-83
Only in your pathetic little pig ignorant fantasyland.
> and continued to slide because of non-OPEC production. At any rate,
> the boost to the US economy was from decreasing interest rates and
> oil prices and NOT Republican tax cuts for the rich. As non-OPEC nations
> developed their resources and the FED cut interest rates the economy
> improved from the totally destroyed state it was placed in by Volcker.
You wouldnt know what a real totally destroyed economy was if it bit you on your lard arse.
Fred Weiss
> The people who gained from the bubble have all the money. That money
> must be devalued to balance the scales. There is no other way to reclaim
> it.
Given your twisted and delusional views,I have no idea who you think
gained from it. But the ones you will primarily punish in such a
devaluation are the frugal and prudent - the ones who had the good
sense to sell into the bubble and/or to stay away from it. Why should
they be punished?
It is these people who can finance the recovery and who - because they
weren't swept up into the mania and have cash - will take advantage of
the bargains and start buying when prices have appropriately adjusted
to the new reality.
(I am not referrring here to those on the gov't take who in a free
market economy would not exist).
There is in fact a huge amount of cash sitting on the sidelines, much
of it in T-bills earning little or no interest, waiting to be invested
in more productive assets when people have confidence in the future of
the economy - a confidence which Obama and his Wrecking Crew are doing
everything in their power to undermine.
Fred Weiss
Michael Coburn
> On Nov 26, 12:03 am, Michael Coburn <mik...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> The people who gained from the bubble have all the money. That money
>> must be devalued to balance the scales. There is no other way to
>> reclaim it.
>
> Given your twisted and delusional views,I have no idea who you think
> gained from it.
I don't have "twisted and delusional views" liar. You should try looking
in a mirror. The people who gained from the Bush Bubble were the
Republican thieves in Wall Street.
> But the ones you will primarily punish in such a
> devaluation are the frugal and prudent - the ones who had the good sense
> to sell into the bubble and/or to stay away from it. Why should they be
> punished?
The frugal and the prudent are not the investors in the future. And all
they need do is pull that money out of their frugal mattresses and invest
it and they will be just fine.
> It is these people who can finance the recovery and who - because they
> weren't swept up into the mania and have cash - will take advantage of
> the bargains and start buying when prices have appropriately adjusted to
> the new reality.
They would do well to buy now, moron. That is how the devaluation
works. If people _KNOW_ the mattress money will be losing value they
will trade the money for an investment.
> (I am not referrring here to those on the gov't take who in a free
> market economy would not exist).
_YOU_ are delisional.
> There is in fact a huge amount of cash sitting on the sidelines, much of
> it in T-bills earning little or no interest, waiting to be invested in
> more productive assets when people have confidence in the future of the
> economy - a confidence which Obama and his Wrecking Crew are doing
> everything in their power to undermine.
Absolute, bone stupid.
Fred Weiss
> ...And it gets back to the stupid claim that value = cost.
That's not my claim so I don't know who you think you are arguing
against.
All one need do is consider objects which may have involved
considerable cost *but which no one wants*. Such objects may have
actual *negative* value. You may have to pay someone to dispose of it
for you.
> ...No labor/cost whatsoever
> went into the creation of oil or land or gold or the atmosphere. Yet
> these naturally occurring resources are infinitely valuable.
They are only valuable because someone wants them.
Once again I have no idea what point you think you are making. Since
much of what you do is raving, I doubt you actually really know
yourself.
They are not however "infinitely valuable". Their value in fact can
vary considerably depending on context.
Fred Weiss
Les Cargill
Habit and social signaling. "Looka how HAWRD AHM WORKIN!" This may
be declining - I don't see it like I used to.
> The answer, of course, is that the
> rentier is stealing all the benefit of the productivity increases.
> Trickle down, supply side economics is an utter failure.
>
Nah, I figure most of the benefits of productivity increase
accrue to most everybody, because retail is relentlessly
competitive. You just don't see wage increases - you see stuff
getting cheaper..
>> One small thing is the Frontline "The Card Game" this week, where Chris
>> Dodd is brutally frank about the realities of regulating credit cards.
>
> More sideshow crap.
>
Huh? See it first, then judge.
>>> As to Clinton, it is actually Greenspan and regulation AGAIN.
>> I merely used Clinton as a time marker, although he wasn't all that
>> fearful of the results. Again, I'm trended towards recognizing that the
>> line of evolution here is something more persistent than who sits in the
>> Oval Office - that there ain't that much of a change from Reagan to
>> Bush41 to Clinton to Bush43 to Obama.
>>
>>> What
>>> should have happened is that margin requirements should have been
>>> tightened in the stock markets to curtail so much speculation. And I am
>>> not going to go into the other crap like the 1997 tax cuts for the
>>> rich.
>>>
>>>
>> But higher interest rates would assign the real costs where they came
>> from. Higher securitization requirements merely encourage Leviathan.
>
> Bullshit and Boogerman.
>
Empirical *fact* and what would have worked. The drive behind low
interest rates is the pathological electoral fear of inflation. It
inflates equities, which creates a false sense of wealth. There
has to be a balance between bond/deposit returns and investment
returns, or people who really want the features of bond/deposit
investment will err into equities.
<snip>
>
> Yet appropriate actual taxation will accomplish the same thing without
> continually rewarding the idle rich and the rapists of the environment.
>
Not really. If taxation did not filter the velocity of money, it
would be different. it doesn't even *have* to now - just raising
taxes creates a morbid, reverse "halo effect" out of kneejerk
habit.
>> Prices will adjust to the new cost structure. But it'll keep the punters
>> out of meddling with what are highly technocratic and idiosyncratic
>> systems. Right now, people are loading up 401k dollars that go into
>> funds that *play in the commodities markets*.
>>
>> I'm somewhat in trouble here, because up to a point, arbitrage is
>> massively efficient, so long as true pros do it. But when the peanut
>> gallery gets involved ( witness the price of oil jump a few years back
>> ), things get weird.
>
> YOUR system created the mess.
>
YOUR interference in MY system amplified it into a crisis. Full stop.
>>> The common people have been defrauded by the gamblers and the Fed and
>>> by the Bush Republicans.... AGAIN.
>>>
>>>
>> I'm not defending the Bushies - some of the better writers out there now
>> are coming forth with just how pernicious all this really has been. But
>> under Mr. O, it's... more of the same. It's "body count economics".
>
> That is not actually true. It is campaign funds economics.
>
Nah. Dodd again.
http://connpolitics.tv/index.php/2009/09/18/dodd-you-can-t-buy-an-election
and more technically:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2383850/Does-Money-Buy-Elections
>> And assuming there really was deflation in the wind, there is a path
>> through the mess that says Bush did the right thing, overall. But like
>> Clinton, a half-point ( 50 basis points ) of basal interest rate would
>> have damped out the wildness.
>
> What would have "dampened out the wildness" would have been NO MESSING
> WITH THE TAX CODE OF 1993 except, perhaps, to add some new marginal rates
> above $500K and especially above one to 5 million. Just to have left the
> capital gains rate alone at 28% and no special crap for homes.
>
I actually... agree with that. I would not agree with that if we had
not developed a big ole deficit - but people like Krugman keep
rationalizing *that*, so....
So how much additional agricultural potential is there in the
Saudi desert? In the US? Does a pattern emerge? And now we have
actual risk to the flow of oil based on an almost total lack of
investment in refinery infrastructure since.
The buyer of oil *dictates the price*, not the supplier. It was
ever thus.
>> One thing Reagan did and did well was attack high oil prices, and that
>> caused a lot of what was "morning in America" ( because you still had
>> bloody high rates until ... '88 or so. )
>
> Horseshit! Here's the picture of oil rates in nominal dollars. The
> rates cratered as with the US economy in 1980-83 and continued to slide
> because of non-OPEC production. At any rate, the boost to the US economy
> was from decreasing interest rates and oil prices and NOT Republican tax
> cuts for the rich. As non-OPEC nations developed their resources and the
> FED cut interest rates the economy improved from the totally destroyed
> state it was placed in by Volcker.
>
> http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1947.gif
>
See that drop around 1983? THAT'S ME BLOODY POINT, you wanker. Jeebus.
>>>>> That was the proper solution in 1979 and it is the proper solution
>>>>> now.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> If you can make it to '82, Bruce releases "Nebraska".
>
>
>
>
>
Repeat after me: everything I (Micheal Coburn) decry about the state of
the economy is due to somebody, somewhere trying to implement some
Utopian vision.
--
Les Cargill
Les Cargill
> On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:05:57 -0800 (PST), "*Anarcissie*"
>> Funny credit money effectively reduces the
>> price of labor.
>
> Thereby "solving" the unemployment problem in a fashion that is not
> quite as destructive as putting people to work on makework jobs.
>
> However, putting people to work usefully is not easy. A critical
> cofactor of useful employment is entrepreneurship - people who are
> able to and willing arrange something useful for other people's labor.
> Funny money that benefits insiders at the expense of outsiders is apt
> to have a negative effect on entrepreneurship.
>
> By and large, most new jobs come from new enterprises. We are seeing
> curiously few new enterprises in the US, hence curiously few new jobs.
>
There's not much "curious" about it - I call it satiety. The population
is older, the mass media is fragmented ( leading to less and less
"hula hoop" consumption ), stuff is higher function and cheaper,
one can substitute easily assembled technology solutions to what
used to be expensive ( I added a $69 USB dongle last week which
enables me to watch HDTV from this computer and use it as a TiVO).
> Thus a new equilibrium, full employment at reduced real wage levels,
> is likely to be equilibrium at *greatly* reduced real wage levels -
> that is to say, full employment will only set in *after* we have had
> an unpleasant amount of inflation.
>
> Another "solution" is to create lots of makework jobs and fund them
> not by funny money, but by almost funny money - fund them by borrowing
> from China, which is unsustainable in the long run - but the long run
> is apt to be longer than two presidential terms.
>
All we have to do is get the Chinese to decouple the Yuan. Problem
solved. Any equilibrium 12 years out will have events rise which will
dramatically change it.
--
Les Cargill
Michael Coburn
> On Nov 26, 4:48 pm, Michael Coburn <mik...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> ...And it gets back to the stupid claim that value = cost.
>
> That's not my claim so I don't know who you think you are arguing
> against.
>
> All one need do is consider objects which may have involved considerable
> cost *but which no one wants*. Such objects may have actual *negative*
> value. You may have to pay someone to dispose of it for you.
I'm "arguing against" your abject stupidity. You are describing the
_cost_ of things as opposed to their value. Value, is as it has always
been and will remain, a market decision measured in what one person or a
large number of people would be willing to "give up" to attain the
desired item or result. The market value of things has nothing to do
with the labor needed to produce it. It has only to do with how much
labor or command of labor the buyer will be willing to trade for the item
or condition being "valued".
>> ...No labor/cost whatsoever
>> went into the creation of oil or land or gold or the atmosphere. Yet
>> these naturally occurring resources are infinitely valuable.
>
> They are only valuable because someone wants them.
NO SHIT!!!
Yet such resources are not an embodiment of labor. So obviously the value
of things is not equivalent to or dependent upon their labor content,
their cost.
> Once again I have no idea what point you think you are making. Since
> much of what you do is raving, I doubt you actually really know
> yourself.
I am making the point that value is _MEASURED_ in labor. That is _NOT_ a
claim that value is based on the labor content of any commodity or
desired condition. That silly crap is Ricardian and Marxian. In the
real world the past is the past. Things have value based on their
current and potential use or their ability to satisfy want. Nonetheless,
we are back to the same observation that the only thing you can
economically trade for any item you desire is a manifestation or a claim
on labor. Your supposed ownership of land/nature is a violation of
rights. And your ownership of an antique desk is not economically
significant. Trading land deeds or resource rights is like trading a
stolen car for that which you desire. The ECONOMIC value of all things
(including land and gold and oil and stock certificates and homes and
plows and buildings) is _measured_, as Smith proclaimed long ago, in the
_FUTURE_ labor commanded or forgone by possession of the item or
attainment of the condition of tenured use rights.
> They are not however "infinitely valuable". Their value in fact can vary
> considerably depending on context.
Generically speaking all nature is infinitely valuable. Without it, we
die. As the world continues to be more and more populated the value of
these _fixed_ (non producible) resources escalates. Yet these resources
have no cost, no labor content. Such resources are "valued" as the
amount of labor or fruits thereof that will be given up to an
"owner" (puke) of the resource so as to _ALLOW_ production on them.
Private ownership of such resources is a violation of natural rights.
*Anarcissie*
> On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:22:33 -0800, Fred Weiss wrote:
> > On Nov 26, 12:03 am, Michael Coburn <mik...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> >> The people who gained from the bubble have all the money. That money
> >> must be devalued to balance the scales. There is no other way to
> >> reclaim it.
>
> > Given your twisted and delusional views,I have no idea who you think
> > gained from it.
>
> I don't have "twisted and delusional views" liar. You should try looking
> in a mirror. The people who gained from the Bush Bubble were the
> Republican thieves in Wall Street.
>
> > But the ones you will primarily punish in such a
> > devaluation are the frugal and prudent - the ones who had the good sense
> > to sell into the bubble and/or to stay away from it. Why should they be
> > punished?
>
> The frugal and the prudent are not the investors in the future. And all
> they need do is pull that money out of their frugal mattresses and invest
> it and they will be just fine.
Invest it in what???
We have a financial and economic system deeply permeated
by bullshit. We have media dominated by people like Murdoch.
We see gigantic institutions disappearing or becoming basket
cases overnight. How are the frugal and prudent going to
decide what to invest in? They're going to be buying gold
bricks to hide under the bed.
Les Cargill
> On Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:31:45 -0800, Fred Weiss wrote:
>
> Sure.. And it gets back to the stupid claim that value = cost. There
> are a very great many things that are valued by most human beings and
> indispensable to the human species that simply have no cost but are
> allocated based on scarcity due to population. No labor/cost whatsoever
> went into the creation of oil or land or gold or the atmosphere. Yet
> these naturally occurring resources are infinitely valuable.
That's a mathematical non sequitur. There's no way to accurately value
them because there may not be an easily substitutable replacement, but
that's "undefined", not "infinite." Land itself has a pretty stable
price structure when people aren't inflating it willy nilly. If
land were "infinitely valuable", we'd be able to colonize
much of Nevada through some sort of geoengineering.
And the carbon offsets people are trying very hard to "value" the
atmosphere. Great deal of lunacy there, but so it goes.
<snip>
--
Les Cargill
*Anarcissie*
> Vulture Funds Make Millions Off Gov’t-Backed Home Loans
>
> money from the mortgage mess as millions of Americans struggle to hold
> on to their homes. Vulture funds are buying billions of dollars’ worth
> of discounted home loans and then, in what might seem an act of
> charity, the funds are helping homeowners by reducing the size of the
> loans. But as part of these deals, the mortgages are being refinanced
> through lenders that work with government agencies like the Federal
> Housing Administration. This enables the vulture funds to pocket
> sizable profits by reselling new, government-insured loans to other
> federal agencies, which then bundle the mortgages into securities for
> sale to investors.While homeowners save money, the arrangement shifts
> nearly all the risk for the loans to the federal government–and,
> ultimately, taxpayers.
>
> http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/23/headlines#3
Here is an extremely interesting aspect of this issue. Even
though it's a PDF and "long" by television, Usenet and Youtube
standards, I strongly suggest you all take a look at it.
http://hoanewsnetwork.com/media/files/downloads/articles/Underwater_and_Not_Walking_Away.pdf
Fred Weiss
> ... How are the frugal and prudent going to
> decide what to invest in? They're going to be buying gold
> bricks to hide under the bed.
That's precisely what they've been doing.
There would be more investment if the administration were acting to
encourage confidence. Instead they are doing the exact opposite,
whether in regard to threatened tax hikes or increased regulation or
socializing/destroying medicine, etc.
Fred Weiss
Michael Coburn
> On Nov 27, 4:31 am, Michael Coburn <mik...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:22:33 -0800, Fred Weiss wrote:
>> > On Nov 26, 12:03 am, Michael Coburn <mik...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>> >> The people who gained from the bubble have all the money. That
>> >> money must be devalued to balance the scales. There is no other way
>> >> to reclaim it.
>>
>> > Given your twisted and delusional views,I have no idea who you think
>> > gained from it.
>>
>> I don't have "twisted and delusional views" liar. You should try
>> looking in a mirror. The people who gained from the Bush Bubble were
>> the Republican thieves in Wall Street.
>>
>> > But the ones you will primarily punish in such a devaluation are the
>> > frugal and prudent - the ones who had the good sense to sell into the
>> > bubble and/or to stay away from it. Why should they be punished?
>>
>> The frugal and the prudent are not the investors in the future. And
>> all they need do is pull that money out of their frugal mattresses and
>> invest it and they will be just fine.
>
> Invest it in what???
At this point it is not a matter of genius selection of "which asset".
Mutual funds are fine. The _REAL_ investment at this point must be done
by government or by manipulation of the tax code to CAUSE fruitful and
beneficial investment.
> We have a financial and economic system deeply permeated by bullshit.
> We have media dominated by people like Murdoch. We see gigantic
> institutions disappearing or becoming basket cases overnight. How are
> the frugal and prudent going to decide what to invest in? They're going
> to be buying gold bricks to hide under the bed.
Modular nuclear power is the right place for investment. Unfortunately,
only government can manage this investment. Left to the free market too
many people will die.
Gutless Fuckwit
On Fri, 27 Nov 2009, Rod Speed thus shitith and pissith:
> Michael Coburn wrote
>>> Please note that in my view, both Al Gore and Abe Greenberg reap huge
>>> unearned windfalls by playing the system, and not necessarily
>>> earning it per se.
>
>>> But it gets harder to *earn* as our collective productivity rises,
>>> which provides higher standards of living. So that's the paradox.
>>> And trying to build systems to subsidize consumption, especially
>>> in the context of electoral politics, is all but impossible.
>
>> It is NOT impossible. If it takes less work to produce
>> the goods then why is the work week still 40 hours?
>
> Essentially because the unemployment rate bottomed at 4.x%
> with an immense legal and illegal immigration rate, so we must
> have found more to do at that higher level of productivity.
In your dreams.
> Just like we did when we ended up with only 5% of the workforce
> employed in agriculture and when we automated all the phone exchanges
> and the absolute vast bulk of accounts and statements etc etc etc.
You sure you ain't one of those commie-fascist rocket scientists?
>> The answer, of course, is that the rentier is
>> stealing all the benefit of the productivity increases.
>
> Another lie. We got a tremendous benefit in increased living standards too.
Take your choice among the following responses:
No one ever said anything even remotely resembling anything like that.
Just another of your pathetic little pig ignorant fantasys.
He's just another pig ignorant fool. No surprise that you 'think' that
the sun shines out of his arse.
Like hell it does.
Just another of your pathetic little pig ignorant fantasys.
Thanks for that completely superfluous proof that you have never ever had a
fucking clue about anything at all, ever.
Michael Coburn
That methodology/ideology empowers the reintier and disenfranchises the
producers. The acquisition of cheaper offshore goods destroys the
opportunities for productive people in the USA. While things are cheaper
due to massive borrowing and the sale of US assets, the American middle
class is being robbed and placed into indentured servitude to the rich.
>>> One small thing is the Frontline "The Card Game" this week, where
>>> Chris Dodd is brutally frank about the realities of regulating credit
>>> cards.
>>
>> More sideshow crap.
>>
>>
> Huh? See it first, then judge.
>
>>>> As to Clinton, it is actually Greenspan and regulation AGAIN.
>>> I merely used Clinton as a time marker, although he wasn't all that
>>> fearful of the results. Again, I'm trended towards recognizing that
>>> the line of evolution here is something more persistent than who sits
>>> in the Oval Office - that there ain't that much of a change from
>>> Reagan to Bush41 to Clinton to Bush43 to Obama.
>>>
>>>> What
>>>> should have happened is that margin requirements should have been
>>>> tightened in the stock markets to curtail so much speculation. And I
>>>> am not going to go into the other crap like the 1997 tax cuts for the
>>>> rich.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> But higher interest rates would assign the real costs where they came
>>> from. Higher securitization requirements merely encourage Leviathan.
>>
>> Bullshit and Boogerman.
>>
>>
> Empirical *fact* and what would have worked. The drive behind low
> interest rates is the pathological electoral fear of inflation.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The drive behind low interest rates is the same as the drive behind tax
cuts. We Republicans gotta blow them bubbles so the morons will keep us
in office.
> It
> inflates equities, which creates a false sense of wealth. There has to
> be a balance between bond/deposit returns and investment returns, or
> people who really want the features of bond/deposit investment will err
> into equities.
The bond/deposit returns are economic rent, pure and simple. The stupid
idea that people should draw interest for allowing someone to keep their
wealth safe from the bandits is ridiculous. It is a SERVICE that should
be paid for like any other service. If you sore your money in a "safe"
it should _LOSE_ value.
> <snip>
>>
>> Yet appropriate actual taxation will accomplish the same thing without
>> continually rewarding the idle rich and the rapists of the environment.
>>
>>
> Not really. If taxation did not filter the velocity of money, it would
> be different. it doesn't even *have* to now - just raising taxes creates
> a morbid, reverse "halo effect" out of kneejerk habit.
(sigh) The taxation of economic rent does not harm the real economy.
Even if the collected revenue are simply used to reduce the national debt
the taxation is a boon and a valid economic stimulus.
>>> Prices will adjust to the new cost structure. But it'll keep the
>>> punters out of meddling with what are highly technocratic and
>>> idiosyncratic systems. Right now, people are loading up 401k dollars
>>> that go into funds that *play in the commodities markets*.
>>>
>>> I'm somewhat in trouble here, because up to a point, arbitrage is
>>> massively efficient, so long as true pros do it. But when the peanut
>>> gallery gets involved ( witness the price of oil jump a few years back
>>> ), things get weird.
>>
>> YOUR system created the mess.
>>
>>
> YOUR interference in MY system amplified it into a crisis. Full stop.
More ridiculous tap dancing.
That crap about refineries is another rightarded lie. While there are
fewer refineries their capacity has been greatly expanded. And it is not
the refining capacity that is a problem. Poor refining capacity does not
increase the price of crude. Welcome to reality.
And I have NO CLUE as to what you _THINK_ you are hinting at with the
observation that the USA has more arable land than the Saudis. The
"pattern" that SHOULD emerge is that Saudi Arabia is going to be in deep
crap when they run out of crude and the WE must develop alternative
energy if we do not want to be very poor indeed.
> The buyer of oil *dictates the price*, not the supplier. It was ever
> thus.
That is very, very true. The rentier is always a price taker. Yet,
having control of the resource he still collects whatever rent there may
be and lives off of the labor of others.
>>> One thing Reagan did and did well was attack high oil prices, and that
>>> caused a lot of what was "morning in America" ( because you still had
>>> bloody high rates until ... '88 or so. )
>>
>> Horseshit! Here's the picture of oil rates in nominal dollars. The
>> rates cratered as with the US economy in 1980-83 and continued to slide
>> because of non-OPEC production. At any rate, the boost to the US
>> economy was from decreasing interest rates and oil prices and NOT
>> Republican tax cuts for the rich. As non-OPEC nations developed their
>> resources and the FED cut interest rates the economy improved from the
>> totally destroyed state it was placed in by Volcker.
>>
>> http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1947.gif
>>
>>
> See that drop around 1983? THAT'S ME BLOODY POINT, you wanker. Jeebus.
I see a lessening in the rate of decrease in oil prices beginning in
1983. So are you trying to tell us that tax cuts for the rich caused the
drop in oil prices???? Good luck on getting sane people to believe
that. My point in this entire discussion is that tax cuts for the rich
DID NOT cause economic growth as measured in GDP in the 80's. That tax
cuts for the rich _HAPPENED_ at the same time is coincidental only. The
only _real_ result of those tax cuts was debt.
>>>>>> That was the proper solution in 1979 and it is the proper solution
>>>>>> now.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> If you can make it to '82, Bruce releases "Nebraska".
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
> Repeat after me: everything I (Micheal Coburn) decry about the state of
> the economy is due to somebody, somewhere trying to implement some
> Utopian vision.
I have _NO_ idea what you might _think_ you are claiming.
Michael Coburn
But, Mr. Cargill.... The Chinese do not want to play nice. They will
not decouple the Yuan. So what we do, ya-see, is that we use import
tariffs to do what needs done. That is called, growing a set of balls
and pissing all over neoconimists and their asinine "comparative
advantage". Floating currencies _SHOULD_ take care of the problems and
allow "comparative advantage" to operate. In the _REAL_ wold we see that
this does not actually work.
Michael Coburn
> Michael Coburn wrote:
>> On Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:31:45 -0800, Fred Weiss wrote:
> <snip>
>>
>> Sure.. And it gets back to the stupid claim that value = cost. There
>> are a very great many things that are valued by most human beings and
>> indispensable to the human species that simply have no cost but are
>> allocated based on scarcity due to population. No labor/cost
>> whatsoever went into the creation of oil or land or gold or the
>> atmosphere. Yet these naturally occurring resources are infinitely
>> valuable.
>
> That's a mathematical non sequitur. There's no way to accurately value
> them because there may not be an easily substitutable replacement, but
> that's "undefined", not "infinite."
And your observation is a "nit". The resources are _fixed_. Whether you
want to use "infinite" or "undefined" as the description of value is not
germane. At least, not to me.
> Land itself has a pretty stable
> price structure when people aren't inflating it willy nilly.
MONEY is (in/de)flated. The actual _VALUE_ of natural resources varies
competing population. The AVERAGE value rises slowly as population rises
but clumping can cause faster and slower proximate increases.
> If land
> were "infinitely valuable", we'd be able to colonize much of Nevada
> through some sort of geoengineering.
That is absolutely true in that the effort needed to terraform the
dessert (labor and energy) would be drawn from all other competing
interests. This is the sort of crap into which Frank Knight invested
much of his lying abilities.
> And the carbon offsets people are trying very hard to "value" the
> atmosphere. Great deal of lunacy there, but so it goes.
The implementation is very flawed, but the concept is valid.
Rod Speed
> Les Cargill wrote
>> Michael Coburn wrote
>>> Sure.. And it gets back to the stupid claim that value = cost.
>>> There are a very great many things that are valued by most human
>>> beings and indispensable to the human species that simply have no
>>> cost but are allocated based on scarcity due to population. No
>>> labor/cost whatsoever went into the creation of oil or land or gold
>>> or the atmosphere. Yet these naturally occurring resources are
>>> infinitely valuable.
>> That's a mathematical non sequitur. There's no way to accurately
>> value them because there may not be an easily substitutable
>> replacement, but that's "undefined", not "infinite."
> And your observation is a "nit".
Never ever could bullshit its way out of a wet paper bag.
> The resources are _fixed_.
Like hell they are with many of them.
> Whether you want to use "infinite" or "undefined" as the
> description of value is not germane. At least, not to me.
Because you actually are that stupid/pig ignorant.
>> Land itself has a pretty stable price structure when people aren't inflating it willy nilly.
> MONEY is (in/de)flated. The actual _VALUE_ of natural resources varies
> competing population. The AVERAGE value rises slowly as population rises
Utterly mangled all over again.
> but clumping can cause faster and slower proximate increases.
Waffle.
>> If land were "infinitely valuable", we'd be able to colonize
>> much of Nevada through some sort of geoengineering.
> That is absolutely true in that the effort needed to terraform the dessert
> (labor and energy) would be drawn from all other competing interests.
Not necessarily.
> This is the sort of crap into which Frank Knight invested much of his lying abilities.
>> And the carbon offsets people are trying very hard to "value"
>> the atmosphere. Great deal of lunacy there, but so it goes.
> The implementation is very flawed, but the concept is valid.
Nope.