So great depressions are just the cost of doing business? We should just take our medicine? Let the credit markets freeze and our monetary system fail because we’ll all be morally better for it?
I’ve never understood this particular criticism. What does geographical location have to do with judgement? If anything, I think people who are removed from the situation (i.e., not in a position to profit either way from what the market does) can see it more clearly.
Also, why do conservatives seem to worship the free market? True, there is a sort of natural selection going on, with companies that can’t hack it going bankrupt, but wouldn’t you rather that the companies were cautious and took a hit that was survivable, rather than going all in and possibly collapsing and costing some people their retirement funds and such?
Your tone suggests that you still believe the Great Depression was caused by some sort of ‘libertarian’ framework. As opposed to government meddling in the form of increased taxation, restrictions on foreign trade, monetary contraction, restrictions on banking, and misallocation of resources to make-work schemes.
If you truly believe that, there probably isn’t enough bandwidth on this board to convince you otherwise.
As for the current situation, it’s worth pointing out that our monetary system is one of fiat money dictated to its citizens by the GOVERNMENT, who REGULATES who can, or cannot issue loans by restricting entrants via GOVERNMENT-issued charters. No other system of tender (such as gold) is allowed by the GOVERNMENT.
Banks are allowed by the GOVERNMENT to lend far in excess of their GOVERNMENT-backed deposits in a fractional-reserve banking system sanctioned by the GOVERNMENT. As Murray Rothbard would point out, this in itself is a brazen legal fraud on it’s face. But it is allowed by the GOVERNMENT.
The final chapters have yet to be written in this financial saga. But many would argue that the GOVERNMENT, by means of its confusing stop-start-stop-start signals on who it would save with GOVERNMENT intervention (Bear Stearns) who it would not (Lehman Brothers) and half-baked promises of GOVERNMENT ‘bailouts’ (Paulson’s testimony to Congress in early October) sent such bizarre signals to the market, that it would have been foolish for any large bank to do anything but wait until the GOVERNMENT got it’s act together and spoke more coherently about what GOVERNMENT action was coming, and with what additional GOVERNMENT strings or additional REGULATION. Chairman Kovacevich of Wells Fargo was particularly incensed at being told by the GOVERNMENT that he had to take the GOVERNMENT’s money (actually, ours) along with additional GOVERNMENT oversight, since he believes he is running a reasonably healthy bank on his own. And he’s probably right.
It will be interesting to see how the GOVERNMENT insistence on lending standards in the UK plays out over time. As we have seen with Fannie and Freddie, getting the GOVERNMENT involved in the business of what-should-be-dispassionate credit decisions is a bad call. They don’t know what they’re doing, and they are invariably subject to political considerations. That’s what the UK GOVERNMENT is about to do; tell banks how much to lend, and to whom. Let’s watch.
I think there may be something wrong with your keyboard.
Fair enough. Maybe I should have said that people wouldn’t make reckless decisions with other people’s money while chasing short term bonuses or stock gains. Or maybe people who take reckless chances would be the only ones to suffer without endangering everyone else.
I don’t care what label he or anyone else places on him. His actions are not those of a libertarian. Could you explain what you meant by the Fed “removing all rules and reserve requirements that prevented exactly that?”
I guess I don’t quite understand the parameters of this debate, and this post encapsulates it, really.
In what alternate universe were ANY of the assumptions made in this thread true? When and where was the U.S. financial system lacking in “regulation”? It’s one of the most regulated industries on the planet. What “libertarians,” leaving aside anarchists, don’t want ANY regulation of the financial industry?
And where’s the equivalence between “years of theory and practice of economics” and libertarianism? I mean, folks do know economics is not wholly populated by libertarians, right?
This thread strikes me as being one of the most egregious recent SDMB cases of pounding the crap out of a straw man. “Libertarians” did not create the American banking and financial system, weren’t running it, didn’t cause the fiscal crisis, and won’t be cleaning it up. Blaming “libertarians” for this, or asserting that a libertarian philosophy would be somehow damaged by it, is absurd.
Yeah, Greenspan was no true libertarian.
In its naive (popular?) form, probably the last one. But in its slightly more nuanced form, such a failure should either a) be expected as part of taking risks or b) induce some kind of tit-for-tat strategy where we, with our awesome market power, get back at those bastards. I leave it as an exercise for the reader whether either of those apply in this case. 
Oh, bullshit. Libertarian philosophy has held sway in the Republican Party for years. No, the party hasn’t practiced"true libertarianism" (which would have quickly gotten them thrown out of office) but the philosophy has manifested itself in deregulation, deregulation, deregulation. (Or in the case of the mortgage-backed securities, non-regulation.)
Well, here’s where the philosophy, even in a small dose, leads us.
Absolutely. Her Holiness Ayn has given us free markets and free choices. We are free to roam about the country. Homeless. But libertarians are not to blame.
Of course not, he has admitted that he was mistaken in some of his assumptions. No true libertarian ever admits mistakes.
There’s always more idiots to replace them. Plus there comes opportunities where one can score great chunks of wealth and screw the rest of the company, country, and more.
The Republican Party? In the UNITED STATES? Are you serious? Do you actually believe the GOP’s press releases?
The Republican Party has been openly, strongly, and unabashedly interventionist; they’re about as libertarian as Fidel Castro. From 2000 to 2006, controlling both the executive and legislative branches, they spent like drunken sailors and expanded government power by leaps and bounds. As near as I can tell, they not only don’t stand for libertarianism, they don’t really stand for ANYTHING.
Agreed.
Yes. If only government officials would come and give us homes, and wealth, and jobs, we would all be better.
You keep missing the point, dude (or dude-ess?). Libertarianism is not an actor. It doesn’t ‘do’ anything. Therefore there is nobody to blame. Except yourself, if you are homeless and an able-bodied, reasonably lucid adult.
Today’s candidates running for government office actually want you to blame something. Anything. Even if your target of blame is nothing except your own free choices (‘libertarianism’) and is therefore nonsensical.
Because once they harness that anger, however nonsensical and misplaced, they can run on a platform of ‘fixing it’. And ‘doing something’.
Then they have it made. Because you just tossed them the keys to more and more power and intervention in your life.
Listen, we are about as likely to get to true libertarianism in this country as we are to true communism. Ain’t gonna happen. But the needle can be pushed in one direction or the other. This crisis is a manifestation of pushing the needle much farther to the libertarian side. Full stop.
Fannie and Freddie are a sideshow which the libertarians are throwing up now to distract from the real causes: 1) The repeal of Glass Steagall, 2) the failure to regulate CDS, MBS and other exotic securitization instruments, 3) the corruption of credit rating agencies, 4) the failure to clamp down on absurd lending practices most of which occurred with non-GSE loans*. These are all examples of a failure to regulate or actual deregulation.
And yes, the Clinton admin deserves some blame. But their errors were again in pushing the needle towards a more “libertarian-style” banking sector.
No; that’s what libertarianism really is like, given power. When you take people with the attitude that “greed is good and screw the consequences, there is no morality but profit, the weak deserve what they get”, and give them control of a government, of COURSE they will use it to loot and control everyone else. They treated government as an extension of business - they treat everything that way - and the way libertarians treat business is “grab what you can for yourself, and screw everyone you can”. They even tried to turn Iraq into a libertarian fantasyland by force, denationalised everything they could and removing the Iraqi government’s ability to control it’s own trade and borders. And insisting that all reconstruction be done by private investment, until it turned out that there weren’t many people interested in investing in a war zone ( they expected a vast influx of corporations and wealth, turning Iraq almost immediately into a wealthy capitalist mecca ).
Sure they spent the government’s money like water - but that’s not their money, and wasting other people’s money is no problem for libertarians. Sure, they tried to take away people rights; but in the utterly selfish worldview of libertarianism, other people’s rights don’t matter. Yes, they didn’t follow any libertarian manifesto, but neither have the communists acted like communists are “supposed” to do when given power. They may not have acted like libertarians are supposed to do; but they did act like they can be expected to do.
The standard libertarian strawman. No one is calling for that; we are calling for the government to keep the capitalists from running wild, taking the country down for profit, and to prevent people from starving or dying of disease.
Libertarianism is a philosophy of utter selfishness, and of contempt for the weak. As you are just now demonstrating. So yes, you can blame it for producing the behavior it does, just as as a philosophy that calls for the deaths of unbelievers can be blamed when it’s followers kill unbelievers, or just as the followers of a racist political movement oppress or kill people by race, that political movement can be blamed.
Libertarianism is pretty much The Party of Evil, like something out of a fantasy novel. Of selfishness and ruthlessness and amorality raised to ideals. Not flaws to be overcome or hidden, but virtues to be admired.
Libertarianism isn’t about free choice; it’s about letting the more powerful and ruthless exploit or crush those who are less so, and about sneering at the unfortunate.
And you and yours want to turn society into neofeudalism. A society where the wealthy are all powerful, where the powerful owe nothing to the less powerful and ride them under, and where the unfortunate are left to die. A society where there is no freedom save for the rich and powerful.
Agreed. It is a vile “philosophy”. And for the record, I’ve thought so since I was in college and first introduced to it. There are real political philosophies that are not based on the soft core porn fantasy fictions of a chain smoking narcissist. Show me a part of the world without government, and I’ll show you a Hobbesian hell-hole.
According to this point of view, all Libertarians just up and vanished, like a fart in the wind. Responsible for nothing. I still say Libertarianism stinks and its adherents are retarded.
I think we’ve reached the point here where both parties in this debate are obviously saying something - whatever it is - that is completely incomprehensible to the other side.
Because it’s clear the last three posters have no clue what libertarian banking even means. Or libertarianism at all, for that matter.
You keep thinking some ‘system’ did ‘something’ to cause all of the recent problems in the financial sector. Then you put a ‘libertarianism’ label on the ‘system’, blame that, fold your arms in satisfaction and throw out a few bits of name-calling, for good measure.
Whatever. I guess finding an opponent and demonizing it, even if you make absolutely no sense whatsoever, is part of human nature.
Gosh, I’m sorry, but this is roughly equivalent to saying “this is what Belgians are really like, given power.”
Who in Bush’s administration, in in the Republican congressional leadership, was a libertarian? I count… let me see… zero. George W. Bush is an evangelical conservative who never showed the slightest interest in either economic or social libertarianism in his entire life. Most of the folks in Congress are standard porkbarrel messengers. Dick Cheney’s just an evil bastard who’d happily be Beria if Stalin was in power. Where’s the libertarianism?
Libertarians have never been a significant political power in the modern United States. They’re a tiny fringe group. Blaming these problems on them is like blaming Marxists. I’m not saying I want Ayn Rand’s caped fans in power. Christ, no. What I’m saying is they AREN’T in power. Never have been.
Wow, you’re giving them way more credit than I would. You actually believe there was a plan to turn Iraq into something? That’s way better than what I thought was going on, which was just a monumental clusterfuck and general looting.
Beyond this you just rant and rave. I suppose if you’re chosen to redefine “libertarian” as “evangelical Christian conservatives and opportunistic dorks of no real political stripe,” you can do that, but it’s not actually the definition most Anglophones use, you know.