Comments (8) Jump to Comments Form

1. 

   jimbo90036 said, about 1 year ago

   Waxman’s Oversight Committee asks tough questions to former Lehman CEO. I suspect if Republicans were in charge, there would be no hearing.

2. 

   TheGreatSatan said, about 1 year ago

   “I suspect if Republicans were in charge, there would be no hearing.”

   Last time I checked Barney Frank (a Democrat and the one in charge of overseeing these companies) wouldn’t even admit there was a crisis until only a couple of months ago.

   Oh yeah wait a minute! The Republicans were the ones warning about this problem for years now!

   Kinda blows your whole statement out of the water no?

3. 

   Sparkadelic said, about 1 year ago

   Are those the same Republicans that were in control of Congress from 1994-2007 and did nothing but deregulate and impede oversight of Wall Street at every opportunity, or are you talking about the Republicans like John McCain who were hip deep in the deregulation and subsequent collapse of the savings and loan industry, but learned nothing from their mistakes back in the 1980s? Or maybe you’re referring to the Republicans in Congress who have set all time records for obstructionism in opposing reform efforts since losing majority control in the 2006 elections?
   Sorry, Satan - you’re not gong to get away with trying to blame the minority party for the actions of the majority by proposing the fiction that the republicans were warning that the sky was falling but they couldn’t do anything about it even though they controlled Congress and the White House. Pure fiction, and you (and everyone else) knows it.

4. 

   TheGreatSatan said, about 1 year ago

   “Are those the same Republicans that were in control of Congress from 1994-2007 and did nothing but deregulate and impede oversight of Wall Street at every opportunity”

   Right off the bat you’ve shown me that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how Congress even works! The Republicans didn’t have an overwhelming majority to pass any bills that they wanted….the Democrats fought them every step of the way on this problem. I liked how you dodged the fact that Barney Frank was in charge of the regulation by the way.

   “Sorry, Satan - you’re not gong to get away with trying to blame the minority party for the actions of the majority by proposing the fiction that the republicans were warning that the sky was falling”

   (Sigh) Fiction?

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

   ONCE AGAIN, you have provided no proof of what you are saying.

   The problem goes way beyond just the early 2000’s though but being a liberal you know nothing about history or how it effects the present. You believe that everything bad that has ever happened is solely because of Bush and the Republicans when in fact it is almost entirely the Democrats fault for this crisis to begin with going waaaay back to the 1930’s.

   Read ConservativeBob’s post on this comic and lets see what kind of bull you can come up with to counter it, no one else on this board has yet to do so:

   http://gocomics.com/johnsherffius/2008/10/02/

   P.S. Until you offer any significant proof with links from credible sources you will lose an argument with me everytime.

5. 

   Dale Hopson said, about 1 year ago

   Satan, the Republicans have been warning us? Which ones? Not McCain or Bush who last month stated things were just fine with the economy ( Bush called it “an adjustment on Wall Street” ).

6. 

   motivemagus said, about 1 year ago

   TGS, I’ve responded here and there on multiple occasions. Let me tackle just a bit here:

   “Most theories” about the Great Depression are not about government interference, as CBob asserts, unless you have a limited reading list. Most think it was due to a free-flowing boom-and-bust, of the style that goes back centuries, coupled with an overheated market which was outpacing anyone’s ability to manage it. There are exceptions, of course; history isn’t much of a science. Most seem to think that Hoover’s efforts focused on doing things that still avoided sufficient government intervention, and that this failed. Some few think that what really saved the economy was WWII.
   CBob ignores or underestimates the fact that the derivatives market was one of the critical triggers for this crisis – which was for the most part wholly unregulated, by the efforts of Senator Gramm (McCain’s “former” economic advisor, still being put forward as a potential Treasury Secretary pick if McCain pulls it out). I strongly recommend reading http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true&pli=1 Note that no one needed to “force” banks to offer subprimes (and 75% of them weren’t covered by this law anyway), they thought they could make money and weasel out of – excuse me, “manage down” – the risk through the use of derivatives.
   Blaming FDR for the past 80 years is as absurd as blaming Bush for the past 80 years. (That’s eighty, not eight.) Both parties made a choice to attempt to manage the economy, simply using different methods. Republicans formerly liked tight money and high interest rates (which is favorable to lenders rather than the indebted) until Reagan came along and started using debt-based financing to enlarge the government (after 40 years of criticizing big government. Nice job, Ronnie). What one can look at is (a) the increase in the national debt, which everyone agrees is bad for the country long-term, and (b) policies regarding control or lack thereof of the market. Clearly Bush has driven (a) up the wazoo through Iraq, and (b) he and the Republicans who dominated Congress for most of the past eight years (and really for the four before that, too, thanks to the scandalmongering) have had a settled policy of cutting taxes for the wealthy and deregulating Wall Street. This shouldn’t be controversial; it’s known as “trickle-down” and the free market. Some felt this would enable positive new things, e.g., banks could diversify, which seemed like a good thing to both parties at the time, and largely still does. But at the same time new approaches to financing emerged which were not well understood and in many cases turned out to be foolish or deceptive (e.g., Enron). Both parties generally agree that Wall Street has come up with some new and mighty complex things, and they turn out not to have worked. Even Streeters are saying they should get some more regulation in.
   If you assume that people follow the money wherever it goes, it all makes sense. The question of freemarket-vs-regulation, to my mind, is how much suffering you want people to take before the market corrects. To me and to many others, at least some degree of regulation is necessary. You may disagree, but you are in the minority.

7. 

   TheGreatSatan said, about 1 year ago

   ““Most theories” about the Great Depression are not about government interference, as CBob asserts, unless you have a limited reading list.”

   Actually, the most cited reason is the creation of the Federal Reserve (ie: Government interference.) Trying to blame greed doesn’t work on the Great Depression like it barely works on the Subprime Crisis. Like Bob was saying, those companies wouldn’t of been allowed to do such predatory lending if the government didn’t make it possible in the first place!

   “This shouldn’t be controversial; it’s known as “trickle-down” and the free market. Some felt this would enable positive new things, e.g., banks could diversify, which seemed like a good thing to both parties at the time, and largely still does. But at the same time new approaches to financing emerged which were not well understood and in many cases turned out to be foolish or deceptive”

   These “new approaches to financing” you’re talking about is SUBPRIME MORTGAGES! The trickle down system works just fine if you actually let it trickle down instead of giving people things they can’t afford. The government foolishly thinks it can control the economy, and historically everytime they get involved things turn out for the worst.

   “The question of freemarket-vs-regulation, to my mind, is how much suffering you want people to take before the market corrects. To me and to many others, at least some degree of regulation is necessary. You may disagree, but you are in the minority”

   My opposition to that statement is that if you constantly push off a decline or even a drop then eventually it is going to be too big to handle. Sometimes you have to let things get bad before it can be fixed and made good again. We are holding off something bad but not changing the practices that led to it going under in the first place. That is not going to help anything, we are going to be facing a crisis every couple of years only to contain it and let it grow stronger. I may be in the minority on this, but that doesn’t make the majority right about it.

8. 

   motivemagus said, about 1 year ago

   Dialogue at last!
   
   TGS, I’m not referring to subprime mortgages as new financial instruments – they’re not new, just being overused. It’s the derivatives, which are really new and not well understood and not at all regulated.

   “Trickle-down” has pretty much been entirely discredited. During the entire Reagan administration the gap between rich and poor widened, as it did during the Bush administration, in terms of real income. That’s probably why you didn’t hear anyone using those terms in the past few years, despite the fact that they were following precisely that logic.

   As for the last point, I expected you would disagree with me here, which is why I wrote it the way I did. I think some restraints are better than whole-hog boom-and-bust economics 19th-century style. I understand your point that occasionally you need to beat someone over the head to make the point, but in this case the people getting beat up the worst are the middle class – certainly not the rich who brought it on. I doubt seriously most of them will even be inconvenienced, let alone imprisoned.

   And, hey, as a psychologist, I gotta say – greed often works as an explanation, but in this case: you get what you measure. When you reward people for making money all out of proportion to the risk, they take bigger risks. Not too difficult. They thought they could reduce or eliminate the risk through derivatives, and they were wrong.