Private sector experts like the ones in banking and finances. You will get the sane thing. You can not allow industries to watch themselves.
Well…
The SEC missed finding any wrong doing with Bernie Madoff at least twice (maybe more, depends what I read) despite some glaring warning signs and people pointing out to the SEC precisely where they should look.
Anecdotally I can describe any number of visits to the DMV with lines a mile long, two windows open and DMV employees visibly chatting to each other seemingly about nothing and doing nothing.
Yes, and all those private sector wizards decided that Madoff was a good guy to give their money to. I’d call that one a wash.
And I can go on all day describing shitty products and services from private business. I was not asking for evidence that public employees can suck, but that they suck any more than private employees.
So, do you think things will be cheaper when he sends the troops to Afghanistan instead? It doesn’t look like there’s going to be much reduction of active-duty folks any time soon given 21,000 people have been sent to Afghanistan recently.
Companies in the private sector couldn’t access the inner workings of Madoff in the same way the SEC could have.
Markopoulos gave Madoff to the SEC on a silver platter and they screwed it up in every way possible.
The fact that Alan Greenspan, who managed the stock and flow of fiat money at artificially low interest rates for several years, is a fan of Ayn Rand means nothing.
The fact that a Federal Reserve exists at all, which is decoupled from a commodity standard, means that Alan Greenspan’s own job was about as far from a libertarian monetary system as one can get.
Don’t feel bad. It’s a common error for a beginner. Try again.
Do you feel public defenders (in general) are just as competent as private defense attorneys (in general)?
I emphasize “general” because of the inevitable one-off anecdotes, “well I know of bad public defense attorneys and I know bad private attorneys therefore…”
Well done. Orwell would be impressed.
Yeah, it IS cheaper because the troops would have to be sent to Afghanistan regardless. Just having troops in Afghanistan is cheaper than having them both in Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan is where they should have been all along.
I’m not doubting that the SEC screwed the pooch. I’m questioning why investors would say, “Gee, we have zero clue how he’s making all this money… Seems like a great bet! How much money can I give you, Mr. Madoff?”
Ruminator: You know full well that there’s a fundamental difference between the job of a public defender and a defense attorney. A defense attorney has the luxury of turning away work, for example. We could find counter examples, too, of course: in general, do you think policemen are just as competent as private security guards?
When they have the same amount to spend on their cases, yeah, pretty much.
You like that one, huh? I agree it’s pretty good, even if I do say so myself. I should have been a political advisor…or a lawyer.
The luxury of declining work is not relevant IMO. I was just comparing pure lawyer IQ which is unaffected by any work you are forced to take on. Your stress level may be affected by handling unwanted cases but not the raw IQ.
I can see that you and Diogenes believe the case work itself defines the quality of the attorney. I disagree.
I think IQ has a poor correlation to job performance. To put it as simply as I can, an attorney who knows how to argue well isn’t by automatically a smart person.
Job performance is the best indicator of job performance. If I were to choose an attorney to represent me, I’d choose a private attorney any day of the week, because they aren’t going to be dealing with perhaps dozens of clients at any given time. Besides, there’s a damn fair chance that your defense attorney started out as a public defender. I believe our esteemed colleague, Bricker, took that path.
I’m also not convinced that public defenders are dumping grounds for those who barely graduated from law school. Of course many lawyers would be attracted to the higher salaries of private practice, but then we lead down the path of saying that tax attorneys are smarter because they earn more money than criminal attorneys.
So, again, do you think security guards are better than cops?
But that’s an unfair comparison as well since cops and security guards have very different jobs. How about cops vs PI’s? Not that cops or firefighters are exactly what is generally meant by civil servants.
I think that, as a general rule, talent follows the dollars. While stable, civil servants, especially in the technical fields, make less than their comparably skilled counterparts in the private sector.
-XT
I noted Greenspan’s fondness of Ayn Rand to establish his decidedly strong Libertarian leanings (he was very fond of her).
Greenspan was criticized by Libertarian types for not being Libertarian enough which he rightly answered was due to the realities of the system he worked in. He had to make compromises. Nature of the game.
Nevertheless he pushed for freeing the markets from what he viewed as onerous government intervention in line with his Libertarian leanings. He did not have control of everything nor was he a dictator and he had to deal with the system as it was but he was powerful in his role and pushed as much as he could with a Libertarian mindset in mind. His contributions to the current mess was not inconsiderable.
To imply he had no role in all this is disingenuous in the extreme. Once again people like you seem content to ignore the spectacular collapse of the economy as a result of all this. Your unfailing belief that the markets know best, are rational and sort themselves out flies smack in the face of an all too stark reality. As I noted even Greenspan, in as close to a mea culpa as such a man is ever likely to get, admitted the error in this thinking.
I know, common error for a beginner to miss this. Don’t feel bad. Most Libertarians have these blinders on. More a faith thing akin to religion that absolutely nothing will shake no matter how much it stares you in the face.
Sure he can, at least in the eyes of this fiscal conservative. He can make good on his campaign promise of “net spending cuts.”
I’ll grant the idea that the deficit this year is stimulus; but I’d like some idea how he intends to reach a balanced budget in 2011 and 2012, when every expert says the economy will have rebounded. His own buget numbers show he plans on running deficits for every single year of his administration, all of them bigger than anything even Bush did.
I think it is worth noting that the budget deficits Obama has to run are a direct result of dealing with the mess Bush left him.
Bush squandered a budget surplus and, till now, Bush managed to run up the largest deficits in American history (during years of supposed economic health and “growth”). And this from the party of fiscal responsibility.
People keep glossing over the fact that most people think the best route out of the current economic mess is government spending. Lots and lots of it. Sure there is disagreement on how the money should be spent but even if McCain was in office we’d be seeing the same deficit spending (albeit he’d be spending in different ways likely with more tax cuts for the rich as a start).
Bush made the fucking bed, now Obama has to sleep in it. The economic mess is real and profound. If you have a better solution than merely saying Obama sucks I am all ears.
Does anyone else think this is a wasted opportunity to kill the security theatre? You could make it cheaper and better, at the same time.