Greenspan is a follower of Ayn Rand. You did know that, didn’t you?
Do you contend that markets are more regulated today than they were seven years ago? How about the environment?
Sure I do. I’d like some other Libertarians (or even libertarians) who have been high-ranking in this Administration. I’ll even spot you one – Gale Norton. But those are really the only two I can think of (and even they didn’t do much in the way of promoting libertarianism). gonzomax seems to think there is a libertarian conspiracy afoot. I’d just like to know what he’s thinking of.
I’d say both the markets and the environment are about as regulated today as they were pre-Bush. I can think of no major deregulation efforts undertaken by Bush. If I’m wrong, please let me know in what ways.
Oh lord, Gale Norton is such a disaster.
That said, I am not sure if you are thinking of the right metric to judge regulation. Even if no regulations have been revoked or created, you can take a look at how frequently regulations have been enforced and how often penalties have been applied. Looking at regulation outcomes is going to be a lot more informative than looking only at laws. I am going to try to do some digging.
I happen to think she was a disaster, too – she could have accomplished so much more! But I think we probably disagree in that area.
“Deregulation” is actually repealing regulations. Of course, gonzo said “nonregulation” so I don’t know what he means.
Lehman bros is the next domino. Who is going to buy their debt .
Renob ,if we made sure that mortgages were held to a higher standard this mess would not have happened. To allow zero down, fake assessments,fake earnings to become part of the process is wrong. Regulation could have easily prevented this.
You want to argue semantics. The neocons are Libertarians in jack boots.
A little personal responsibility would have solved this, too. We bought a house two years ago. We could have easily chosen an ARM. We educated ourselves on the pros and cons and decided on a fixed-rate mortgage. People who took ARMs (and the companies that pushed them agressively) are paying for their mistakes. Unfortunately, some in government want to bail them out. I say let the market work as it is supposed to work – punish those who made bad choices. That is the best regulation. It still preserves the option for those who use ARMs wisely (we’ve had friends who took ARMs and had no problems) while disciplining those who do not. Using heavy-handed regulation that treats everyone the same is a massive overreaction.
Really? Being in the libertarian wing of the party and a faithful reader of Cato Institute literature and Reason magazine, I have yet to see any evidence that libertarians have any warm feelings towards neocons. They’ve been at war with one another since at least the 1970s. The latest rift appeared with the 1997 Brooks and Kristol WSJ article on “national greatness conservatism.”
I didn’t get the hint of a conspiracy. It is pretty out in the open, and they were doing what they believed in. It screwed up the economy, sure, but it got screwed up for all the best reasons.
Off the top of my head, Clinton had a rule that when modifications were done to a coal-fired power plant, pollution reduction hardware had to be added. This got changed so that the modification that made the rule kick in would be pretty much tearing down the entire plant to rebuild. I’m sure I could come up with a ton more with minor effort. Christie Whitman didn’t resign for nothing, after all.
I think you have to include cutting the heart out of regulations on the books so that they are basically useless also. Much quieter than getting Congress to repeal something.
I deliberately did not mention the blockage of the California emissions standards recently since that could be considered as preventing new regulations, not deregulation. There is a lot of that also.
No, gonzo talked about the “Libertarians” in the Administration. As a libertarian myself, I’m just curious if there’d been some libertarian revolution that I missed. Most libertarians I know and read pretty much despise the Bush Administration.
I believe you are talking about the New Source Review issue. Allowing coal plants to do maintenance without having to install costly pollution devices seems pretty sensible to me. Also, the plan wouldn’t have allowed any new pollution. In fact, by removing roadblocks to plant updates, it would have likely helped pollution fighting efforts.
Like what?
Here’s a bit of doom’n’gloom from James Howard Kunstler (“Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle,” 3/17/08 entry):
You inspired me, though Lionel Bart’s lawyer will probably be calling…
o/`Who will buy this variable mortgage?
Such a debt you never did see.
Who will tie it up in red taaape
and bury it in bookkeeping?
There’s never been a loan so funny
it could not happen twice.
Where’s Uncle Sam with all the money?
It’s cheap at 1/10 the priiiiiiiice!
Who will bail this wonderful lender?
Such a fall their stock just did see!
Who will snap up all of their assets…
Oh, what am I to do?
To see my Dow so blue?
There must be someone who. will. buuuuy… o/`
Poppycock. I’m sick of hearing people say it’s my fault that with a credit score of 720 when we took out our original mortgage loan, and 785 when we refinanced, that it’s our fault that none of the lenders would offer us better terms. We had to buy the house with an interest-only first and adjustable rate second, and the best we were offered was a 7 year fixed when we refinanced. And that was at a terrible rate.
It’s not my fault that these thieves couldn’t care less whether or not I could pay the loan back, all they wanted was their ungodly interest, points and fees. Oh, and to turn around and sell my loan to another bank in a few months. See they weren’t concerned about repayment when they wrote the crapass loans, since they weren’t going to keep them anyway!
The point of the Fed intervention isn’t to cover losses. The point is to prevent a run on these financial companies, and the disastrous consequences that would result from that run. Maybe you won’t be personally affected by that, but most of the nation will be despite the fact that they didn’t have ARMs either.
I thought the domino theory was pretty much tossed out decades ago…
Oh, what the hell. We are ALL DOOMED…DOOMEDDOOMEDDOOMED!! :eek:
-XT
How much was the house? How much was your income? How come you took the loan if it was so bad? No one forced you to do anything.
http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/conserve/02.htm The efforts to put scrubbers on coal plants goes back to Carter. It was Clinton who had to take them to court to get compliance. So they got a deal that said any new plant had have scrubbers. The companies got a deal after Carter that if they did 30 % rebuilding of a plant or less they did not have to retrofit. Oddly all construction since that time has been less than 30 % . # rebuilds and you have a new plant and didn’t have to invest in scrubbers. The scrubbers are important. Emphysema cases are rampant around the plants. Breathing problems and illnesses are related to the plants.
The maintenance provisions are a scam, simply a way to avoid the cost of compliance. Even at the cost of the health of those who live in the vicinity.
What I paid for my house is really none of your business. Our income is well into 6 figures annually. We have no debt other than the house. Both of our vehicles are (and were at the time) paid off in full. We don’t carry any credit card debt. And we’d been house hunting for a year and a half and we wanted the damn house, which is all the reason we need.
A house was for sale, we wanted it, we could afford it (hell, we have enough savings that I could quit working for nearly 4 years and still make every house payment, every property tax payment, every insurance payment, buy gas and groceries, go out to dinner from time to time, buy new clothes periodically, pay all the utilities, and so on). Why shouldn’t we buy the house just because the greedyass thieves in the mortgage business were writing shitty loans?
I have a few questions for those with a solid understanding of macroeconomics. I know there are quite a few Economic majors on the board.
Based on what I have read about the Fed’s action to prevent the liquidation of Bear Stearns, it seems to be a necessary but desperate move that signals a much deeper problem than many realize about the stability of the U.S. financial market. The Fed is using approximately sixty percent of its reserves to guarantee mortgage backed securities. My understanding is that Bear Stearns’ debt to assets ratio was 28:1 (I don’t have a citation off hand).
Does the action today stretch the capacity of the Feds’ ability to bail out future financial crises? Is it possible for the Feds to go bankrupt? Is the U.S. heading for a complete financial meltdown: bankruptcy? Are lofty goals like universal healthcare a pipe dream at this point?
Today’s events have caused me to have an underlying feeling of dread. I know the current financial crisis has been ominously predicted, but actually watching it happen is pretty unsettling. It would only make sense to bail out the homeowners since foreclosures and plummeting property values are the fundamental cause of the instability. Agree or no bailout for homeowners?
With the search function currently disabled, I cannot find a recent thread I participated in that raised concerns with Bank of America and CitiBank. News reports of late also talk about Lehman Brothers , UBS and the European arm of the Carlyle Group are now shakey.
And if you believe this news item from Australia, even the FED is overdrawn.
Yeah, the bank domino theory went out of favor about 1929 or 1930.