bren1 and msmith537, your latest posts are inappopriate for Great Debates. Drop the personal insults or you’ll both get official warnings.
I appologize for calling **bren1 **a “Wall Street insider”
And, really, less than $30,000/yr.? Must get internet stamps.
I think the real and true danger involved, is that they are allowed to enter into our government, because they are only working for they and their cronies best interests, and not what is good for the country. There have been hundreds of Former Goldman Boys in our government alone in years past, much less those of other Wall Street firms.
It should be made illegal for any head of Wall Street or Major corporation to be allowed to come into politics, because the conflict of interest is to great where they will serve their cronies over what is best for the American Public.
But since these Bankers own our government, good luck changing that.
But we’re not talking politics in general, we’re talking about people who are involved in setting economic policy. Your choice consists of academics and people who have dealt with in on Wall Street. We laughed at Cain, rightly, for getting his economic advice from some low level ML guy. Is that what you want? I think 100% academics won’t be good either.
Sure you have to keep an eye on them, and the actual politicians should set the goals, but excluding the people who have successfully played in this game from running it is not going to work very well.
Well, having these “successful” people set economic policy has not been playing out too well though, has it? Perhaps, the rest of the country does not matter?
They don’t seem to be doing to good a job for the whole country, though, I must admit, the big firms on Wall Street, the Big Corporations and the criminal politicians don’t seem to be phased by it and are living the good life.
What is taking place is not working for the majority of American’s so either we hope the system collapses, the criminals in DC are put behind bars, or a coalition of countries comes in and charges our Federal Regime with Financial Terrorism plus the War crimes they have been committing for the past 30+ years.
Because, Frankly, I don’t think the system is fixable since the Fox’s control the hen house and they are not going to relinquish their power.
They only control it because we let them. The ruling party in America is the Apathy Party. The power remains in our hands, and the Forces of Darkness know it, that’s why they murdered ACORN, that’s why they work so hard to limit the power of the vote.
You gotta love democracy, or you won’t be able to stand it. You love her, so you marry her anyway, even though you know she’s always a little nuts and sometimes all the way nuts.
No worse than the politicians. Wall Street of course wanted to be free of regulations, just like your kid doesn’t want a curfew. The politicians are the ones who let them escape the regulations, and look what happened. When it did, would you rather have had the non-Wall Street Republicans set the response to the crash in 2008 or the oh-so-Wall Street Paulsen? Sure we should have attached strings to the bailout, but the experts did a better job than the “let 'em fail” crowd.
And if it makes you less gloomy, in Silicon Valley the tech companies are hiring like crazy and the financial services companies are laying people off.
30+ years? Now I certainly agree that a bunch of people who cut corners and deliberately wrote loans that had a high probability of being defaulted on should go to the slammer. But lets also blame the voters stupid enough to swallow the “let us do anything and we’ll never hurt you” line and the “maximizing our profit is good for the country” line. And the “only socialists believe in regulation” line.
If our Federal Regime had practiced more financial terrorism (from the point of view of the banks) we’d be a lot better off.
It is true that “we let them” if you consider the options to not letting them involve violence? There are no other options since they have all other avenues covered.
The Federal Government is corrupt beyond belief because of special interests and the revolving door that exists between the Financial and Business Sector.
Since they are corrupt, it also not unreasonable to assume they will launch smear tactics against anyone or group that tries to take that power away from them via the media.
The power of voting in this country is backed by the $$$ and not by the voices of the people as it should be. Take a look at the Wall Street firms that donate to the presidential campaigns and it is quite clear that they do not care if it is a “Democrat” or “Republican” as long as they get their men in to do their bidding.
They hedge their bets by donating to both “sides” of the political spectrum.
In reality, they are both sides of the same coin.
They also play the divide and conquer game, on both sides acting as if they stand for something different than what their actions entail.
On Obama’s side, he portrays himself or at least it is attributed to him, that he is for wealth distribution, taxing the rich, free healthcare for everyone and ending corruption in the government and on Wall Street.
On the Republican side, they act like they are the party of personal responsibility, smaller government, and making your own success by the strap of your boots.
The reality is that Obama is in bed with these special interests and his actions, not words tell who is exactly the masters that bought him. Like GE, Wall Street, where half his team is former Wall Street people, and the big Pharma and Insurance Companies.
The Republican side would not know personal responsibility is if it bit them in the backside. They scream for smaller government when it comes to helping your own country men, but have no problem with trillion dollar wars to enrich the Military Industrial Complex, the Bankers funding it and the Corporations providing for it, and all of us paying for it.
Where is the “Personal Responsibility” involved when you can buy politicians or better yet install Wall Street and Corporate Politicians to do your bidding, which puts you at an advantage over everyone else?
What should have happened to the Banks is they should have been broken up with the CEO’s sent packing with no Bonus or Parachutes. If your to Big to Fail and a danger to the country, then logic says you are to big to exist. Break them up into smaller entities, and bail each one out accordingly, because the bailouts were for the sake of the country, correct?
Looks to me like the Bankster Politicians had their ducks in a row with all impediments to their looting eliminated.
In 1994, Brooksley Born tried to regulative derivatives, well before the financial crisis we know of today.
The Bankersters told her and Summers who is boss.
Now if 13 common citizens walked into Summers office and demanded he stop something, they would be at best thrown out by security, and at worst thrown in jail. That is, unless, you are above everyone else and have more representation than every other American.
You can still have competent economic advisers to run the nation, but there is too much of a conflict of interest for those advisers to come form huge Mega Corporations or Banks that can easily tailor laws and regulations to their benefit in order to stifle off competition.
Well, one thing learned for many American’s out of this debacle is to never trust the Government, its Financial and Business Institutions since it is quite clear, they are after their own interests, rather than what is best for the country.
Just don’t expect to call me nor the millions of other American’s when were under attack to protect the “government”
All trust is lost, and what happens when all trust is lost in a country further down the road?
Of course the opinion is justified. These people didn’t acquire such a huge percentage of the nation’s wealth by honest dealing.
It was to a large extent the unholy alliance between the real estate racket and the lending racket that came close to bringing down the world economy. Property being priced far beyond its true value, and lenders putting up vaporbucks at “teaser” rates to make buyers think they could afford their McMansions. Then the whole casino of credit default swaps.
In the world of high finance, the only objective is to accumulate as much wealth as you can, no matter who you cheat. The only moral good is to suck as much as you can from everyone else. If they aren’t as rich as you they’re losers, little people,suckers.
They’ve ended up owning not only the lion’s share of the world’s wealth, but also the lion’s share of the world’s governments. When government is owned by the wealthy it is incapable of governing for the benefit of most of the population. When that happens - surprise, surprise - there’s a collapse. That’s where we are.
I think there are goods reasons to split banks to prevent the kinds of things they’ve been doing, And I already gave my opinion about where some CEOs should be parked. But this never would have made it through Congress, and in any case the brink of a depression was not the time to do it. There were some things not quite so extreme that could have been done without new laws that would have helped and been practical. Complain about those.
Where are you going to find them, besides academia? Now, if they were prevented from going back to work for their banks for five years or something, they might be a bit more independent. And there is something to be said for putting people in charge of big money who have experience in international finance.
The Fed has done some innovative things to try to ease the crisis. Remember what Perry said about Bernanke. If you’ve made that moron mad at you, you must be doing something right.
The banks are in it to increase their profits. Where the stupidity comes in is when Republicans act like this will help the country or create jobs. So I trust the banks - to do what is good for them. Period.