Yeah, you can say that, but at the same time this whole “we refuse to actually be pinned down to the point where we actually say anything.” attitude is a bunch of bullshit.
That’s the most official thing I can find from them.
They have a manifesto, a bank account, and a webpage newspaper.
Fuck that. That’s as official as it gets.
Because there is no official. So even if you declare it so, it does not represent the movement. Liar.
Close enough unless you lick my balls.
The really stupid thing about this is that he’s been like this all thread. And yet, even in the next door thread on the 1%, he’s being his usual self.
I think this thread must have killed his dog, and we just never knew.
I didn’t bring my microscope.
How do you use that with your tongue?
Nonsense. Here the debate seems to be centered firmly around an area in which I posess singular expertise., Elsewhere I’m just another asshole with an opinion.
What an odd description. Not the asshole part, which is true enough if modest, like saying World War II was loud. The singular expertise part. You have clearly stated herein that you knew nothing whatever about the causes of the recent debacle, didn’t hear word one about it. What foxes, what henhouse? There were chickens? Really? And they are all gone?
Youi know fuck all about the OWS movement. I’ve been there or at least the local version thereof. Many of these people are my friends of long standing. And their children. And mine. And saints preserve us all, grandkids. I have some smattering of knowledge about these people. You only know what you saw on TV. Once again, to steal from the Master, its not your ignorance that is frightening, its what you know for sure and for certain that just ain’t so.
And as to your expertise: what is it, perzackly? It may be intense expertise, but it must be very narrow. As mentioned above, you were pitching hay in a burning barn and somehow, never noticed. So, what is it that you know so much about that you haven’t enough room to know much of anythng else?
Unfortunately, you haven’t provided much proof of that other than assertion.
Especially, to riff on what '**luci **said, some of what you’ve asserted is that no one had enough expertise to predict the goings-on.
So you were in business school at the peak of the tech bubble. Wow! A 20 year old!
Once again, bullshit.
Although I guess you’re just going to say you were double majoring in business, or you were invited to audit courses at Sloan in between mentoring the post-grad engineering students, or Drucker identified your business acumen while you were still in grade school and granted you special dispensation to make pronouncements based on your personal feelings and outrage.
Or you’ll just say you were talking about the “other” tech bubble.
Luce plays games with words, not facts.
Do you really want to get on the “Scylla was in the securities industry therefore he Should have predicted 2008” bandwagon?
Frankly, I think that’s stupid Even for a guy smoking weed all day in a run down trailer in Texas
There is plenty of room to say “if you couldn’t predict a major event with wide-reaching implications in your own field, maybe you don’t have the expertise you think you do.”
Maybe no one does, for that matter.
No, its not about “you should have known”. Its about your statement that you had no idea, no clue, not your area of expertise, which area remains rather ill-defined. We know that is massive, and focused like a laser, with the resources of your vast intellect. It seems you know, and knew, everything else, but not this.
The question isn’t whether or not you predicted, but whether you were even aware. You claim total innocence, which is, of course, total ignorance. That’s the part I find hard to square with your claims of vast expertise. I figure if you are going to beat me about the head and shoulders with your copious expanses of knowledge, you ought to at least be willing to offer some substantiation. Thus far, all such questions are met with contemptuous evasion.
You seem to be under the impression that our respect for your brilliance is well-nigh universal, such that you are in a position to brush aside any such questions. Given that for ten years now, you have been spectacularly wrong on just about every major issue, I find that dubious.
Did anyone have a clue? Well, perhaps, according to this:
(Aside: this is how you “cite”. You offer the location and significance, so that your reader can verfiy your claims. And offer excerpts so that specific claims can be substantiated. What you don’t do is say “Its in there, somewhere. Google it, and good luck!”. That is, to use the technical term, “bullshit”…)
Be warned: the cite has a modestly complimentary reference to your own Betty Noyer, Paul Krugman, the Chipmonk from Mensa. And the somewhat amusing factoid that George Soros totally stepped on his dick this time.
But you never heard any of this? Not a clue, not a hint, nada damn thing. OK, then, thats possible. But if that is true, then your claims of an expertise so vast and all encompassing that you can use it as your personal trump card are open to question. Questions that you evade with obnoxious contempt, as if honest debate were beneath your dignity.
You really should stick to domestic comedy, it is your strongest suit. Further, it offers a glimpse of your humanity, allowing us to imagine that you are not, in fact, an ego-obsessed constipated robot who cares more about winning an argument than discovering the truth.
By the bye, you probably want to walk back that shit about the OWS being Marxists. That is a perfect diamond, ignorance and bias in its crystalline form.
'Luce:
What exactly is our thesis here?
I have claimed that I didn’t know the world was going to come to an end in 2008.
I have also claimed to know a fair amount about finance and securities.
I share these characteristics with Warren Buffet, Bernanke, Greenspan, Barney Frank, and pretty much the rest of the investment community with a few notable exceptions.
You brought this up like twenty pages ago, so it must be important to you. What exactly is your theis based on this?
'Luce:
Oh, and since you finally remembered how to cite, why don’t you dig one up on how the demand for loans increased in '08 and '09.?
Lordy, not that tired chestnut?
Y’know, I didn’t have a counterargument to that when someone pulled it on me ca. 1996, before there was an Internet as we know it.
Now we all know that, sure, maybe half of Americans have a bit of mutual fund in a 401(k), but most Americans who own stock own very little stock, and most companies are owned or controlled by the rich.
I can’t speak for 'luci but I have some strong opinions here myself.
Ultimately it boils down to this: Given that it’s been proven, by the events of 2008, that the smartest players in the financial industry can’t predict, mitigate, or avoid disaster as a group, why is it that the industry keeps doing risky things with gigantic piles of money? And why do we, as a nation, keep allowing them to do so?
IMNSHO, it’s immoral and frankly stupid to play with unsecured financial instruments, yet the financial industry as a whole keeps doing it.
Which is also ultimately the big difference, in my mind, between the subprime crash and the CDS crash–home mortgages are inherently secured instruments, with the value of the house itself functioning as a hedge. Meanwhile, default swaps (especially naked swaps) were generally unsecured by anything other than a network of interlocking other swaps–it literally couldn’t be otherwise, the value of the CDS market was significantly higher than the value of the bonds being gambled on by that market.
Hey its alternate Scylla! Glad you showed up, the guy who uses your name has been behaving like a total dickosaurus. Take him in hand, won’t you? So to speak.
But that’s not what you’re claiming. You are claiming definitive expertise, to the effect that you can sneer at disagreements with lofty contempt.
The original question, lost in your barrage of smoke and mirrors, had less to do with you and more to do with the industry at large. To witless: if nobody knew anything about this shit, thats one thing, that does not necessarily imply complicity or corruption. But if they didn’t, and you didn’t, then why should your opinion be taken to have value?
Even if we could trust the good intentions of the finance industry, we couldn’t reasonably trust their competence.
That was the issue. You want to make it about you? Silly question, of course you do. Well, the same questions apply. You didn’t know, OK, a lot of people missed the sound of the train whistle as they picniced on the tracks. Humans being what they are, some of them did know but cashed their checks anyway.
You wield your expertise like a +10 Battle Axe of the Goddamn Golgotha, used to dice rocks and dragons. You’re not claiming that you know “a fair amount”, you are claming definitive expertise, so we should shut the fuck up, sit and your feet and take notes.
If you were determined to make an argument, you would probably do pretty well. You are determined to win it, and it fucks you all up.
'Luce
I’m reading your shit, and I literally find you too fucking obtuse and full of shit to muster a response.
Don’t trust me. Don’t trust the investment industry. Nobody wants you too. Nobody cares.
If you wish to insist that demand for loans was up in 2008-2009 than you need to provide a fucking cite that shows that, especially when I say it wasn’t, and I say that I work in the industry and when I provide a fucking cite to the Fed’s own survey supporting what I say.
This bullshit didn’t play 15 pages ago, and it doesn’t play now. If you dispute my facts get better facts. otherwise take your bullshit innuendo and stick it up your ass, m’kay?
I don’t know. I don’t think we should. Like I said on about page 4 or so of this thread, I think “too big to fail” is a bad thing. I have no problem with financial institutions taking big risk and committing financial suicide if they are dumb enough to do so. I simply have a problem with them being so big they bring the economy down with them.
It’s too big a net and a blanket your throwing there.
Even an unsecured CDS has the full faith and credit of the issuer supporting it. A CDS simply means you have a third party covering a bet. That CDS is as good or as bad as the credit of that third party. I really have no problem with these, either.
Anyway, I’m going to call bullshit on your last sentence.
“the value of the CDS market was significantly higher than the value of the bonds being gambled on by that market”
Cite please.