#OccupyWallStreet

[Scylla]

@Budget_Player_Cadet

Scylla, two things.

1. Sweden is not an isolated case in Europe. Britain has, among other benefits for the citizenry, an incredibly effective government-run health-care system. From what I hear, France also has things pretty good. My home country of Germany has a centralized health-care system, guaranteed paid vacation, and incredible social programs, and we actually were one of the first countries to surge out of the recession–we’re doing just dandy. So it’s not just Sweden. It’s most of the countries in Europe that qualify as “First-world”.

France is in incredibly deep shit. Iirc their debt is 25 times their tax receipts. While it’s true Germany is doing well, you guys are probably the real villains (albeit unintentionally) in the current European debacle.
To oversimify: your export economy benefits from the lower Euro damaged by the likes of Greece and Spain and France, helping your exports. For them, the euro is higher than an Independant currency would allow making exports And recovery difficult. Your country is getting rich by making other countries poor.

2. People have addressed your statement that “there was no demand” and you have yet to reply to any of them.There may have been lowered demand, but the banks were still refusing small businesses business loans. There have been several cites for this posted in the last few posts.

It’s true. Lending standards tightened. That’s easy enough to see in the last chart I posted. The question is what does this mean? Unfortunately, I don’t think we are goo g to be able to prove that as a rule that they tightened to such an extent that loans that should have been made, even in the declining demand were not.

On the other hand, we are not going to be able to prove that the tightening standards did not effect demand, either.

What I can offer are some general guidelines, that, I think most bank officers, market analysts and economists familiar with such things would tend to agree with. I’ll happily discuss the following, but I have no idea where I would find cites, so this is on me:

Credit demand and lending standards are probably not connected the way one would at first think: insofar as they are connected, it appears that demand for credit actually drives lending standards inversely. Whether this a true relationship, or if they are moving independently but in concert to the economic environment would require a regression analysis, and I am unaware of any such study.

So, in other words lending standards tend to ease in response to demand for credit and tend to tighten as demand drops.

My previous cite gives a quarter by quarter analysis of both these measures and if you stare at it for a while I think you would see what I am describing.

That all may be moot for you. The fact the banks tightened when they were given money to lend may be damning enough. Their universal answer to this was “our appetite for risk has diminished.”

This is interesting, as they still tended to invest the money in a risky fashion, IMO.

This suggests they really don’t know why they raised their lending standards, or else that they did so simply so they could “show” their boards and investors that they were being more prudent in a cost less way, I.E. raising the price of a product that had low demand at any price.

[Zeriel]

@Scylla

That all may be moot for you. The fact the banks tightened when they were given money to lend may be damning enough. Their universal answer to this was “our appetite for risk has diminished.”

This is interesting, as they still tended to invest the money in a risky fashion, IMO.

This suggests they really don’t know why they raised their lending standards, or else that they did so simply so they could “show” their boards and investors that they were being more prudent in a cost less way, I.E. raising the price of a product that had low demand at any price.

This right here is the issue.

Honestly, sometimes I wonder at the abject long-range stupidity of most of the business and finance worlds. The quoted exchange with Henry Ford II really cuts to the heart of what’s wrong with modern business, IMHO. If you are using money as anything other than a way of putting points on the scoreboard–that is, if you want to keep buying newer and more awesome things–then at some point you have to realize that the 1% cannot generate enough demand by themselves to sustain economic growth (and by extension, technological and aesthetic progress in the quality and types of stuff available). It’s simply not possible. No matter how much money they have, the chance of someone designing an iPhone or a Ford Mustang or a Sandy Bridge CPU is much lower when there’s a market of 4,000 people who might buy it rather than 40,000,000–those 4,000 are never going to pay enough per-unit to justify the development effort compared to targeting a product to the 40,000,000.

To my way of thinking, the only thing worse than the inherent riskiness of the financial instrument market is the inherent uselessness/short-sightedness of it. To the extent that those instruments are utilized to realize investment gains by non-financial players, they can eventually generate useful production, but to the extent that they are ways for the financial sector to carve off a larger percentage of GDP for itself, they are basically trading real production for vague promises instead.

[RTFirefly]

@Zeriel

to the extent that they are ways for the financial sector to carve off a larger percentage of GDP for itself, they are basically trading real production for vague promises instead.

*I have squandered my resistance
For a pocket full of mumbles such are promises
*

[gonzomax]

MF Global shows that high risk bankers are still willing to risk the investment bank itself chasing big paychecks. Huge transactions provide huge paychecks, whether the deal is safe or not. Nothing has changed in the ego driven world of bankers. That is why we need to regulate these assholes very strictly. Ego and greed are a terrible combination in banking. There is nothing special about bankers.
On small scale, the bankers don’t want risk. It is too damn much work to provide loans to companies. It is far more lucrative to get in enormous transactions where a percentage of the action will make agents wealthy.

[elucidator]

@Scylla

…It’s true. Lending standards tightened. That’s easy enough to see in the last chart I posted. The question is what does this mean? Unfortunately, I don’t think we are goo g to be able to prove that as a rule that they tightened to such an extent that loans that should have been made, even in the declining demand were not.

On the other hand, we are not going to be able to prove that the tightening standards did not effect demand, either.

What I can offer are some general guidelines, that, I think most bank officers, market analysts and economists familiar with such things would tend to agree with. I’ll happily discuss the following, but I have no idea where I would find cites, so this is on me:

Credit demand and lending standards are probably not connected the way one would at first think: insofar as they are connected, it appears that demand for credit actually drives lending standards inversely. Whether this a true relationship, or if they are moving independently but in concert to the economic environment would require a regression analysis, and I am unaware of any such study.

So, in other words lending standards tend to ease in response to demand for credit and tend to tighten as demand drops.

My previous cite gives a quarter by quarter analysis of both these measures and if you stare at it for a while I think you would see what I am describing.

That all may be moot for you. The fact the banks tightened when they were given money to lend may be damning enough. Their universal answer to this was “our appetite for risk has diminished.”

This is interesting, as they still tended to invest the money in a risky fashion, IMO.

This suggests they really don’t know why they raised their lending standards, or else that they did so simply so they could “show” their boards and investors that they were being more prudent in a cost less way, I.E. raising the price of a product that had low demand at any price.

Or, alternatively, it could be just as I and several others said it was. That the country’s financial leaders begged them on bended knee to come to the aid of their country, and even supplied them the money to do it with. But the Lord helps those who help themselves, and help themselves they did. With our money, I hasten to remind.

It wasn’t “impossible” to lend the money, they didn’t do it because they didn’t want to. They did it for money. They have no God but the Dollar Almighty, they are citizens of no country worthy of the name. When they place their hands over their hearts and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, they are lying through their teeth, they have no such allegiances.

And Scylla retreats to the Citadel of Ambiguity, the vast fortress of the unprovable. “Well, we’ll never know, it can’t the proven, no studies have been done, really, nobody knows…Maybe you guys are right, but, darn it! We’ll just never know, damn shame about that, shucks…”.

Damn, Scylla. If stubborn were electricity, they could attach cables to your ears and power the whole state of Pennsylvania.

[Mr.Svinlesha]

*If stubborn were electricity, they could attach cables to your ears and power the whole state of Pennsylvania. *

Heheh. Good enough to steal, that is.

[Scylla]

@elucidator

Or, alternatively, it could be just as I and several others said it was. That the country’s financial leaders begged them on bended knee to come to the aid of their country, and even supplied them the money to do it with. But the Lord helps those who help themselves, and help themselves they did. With our money, I hasten to remind.

And I have asked you 5 or 6 times at least to support this viewpoint, and received nothing but evasions.

It wasn’t “impossible” to lend the money, they didn’t do it because they didn’t want to.

So you say. I have presented evidence to the contrary in terms of statistics from the Fed. I have asked you to support and you have failed spectacularly to do so.

You say their we’re tons of people demanding money, legitimate loans that the banks should make but didn’t?
Prove it. For the 6th or the 7th time show me this demand you keep talking about.

[elucidator]

@Mr.Svinlesha

…Heheh. Good enough to steal, that is.

Oh, crap, I didn’t steal it from you, did I? I wouldn’t know, I’ve got as much short-term memory as a carton of cottage cheese…

[Scylla]

@Mr.Svinlesha

*If stubborn were electricity, they could attach cables to your ears and power the whole state of Pennsylvania. *

Heheh. Good enough to steal, that is.

Wtf? In all my years on this board I have never seen anybody work so hard to avoid supporting their argument, to avoid even making an argument, as Elucidator has just done.

If you don’t want to take him to task for this empty rhetoric, that is your choice.

However, considering how you just attempted to excoriate me and all conservatives for downplaying instances of hypocrisy on our side and emphasizing those on the other, it seems ironic and hypocritical to me in the extreme that you would encourage such pathetic debating techniques.

:rolleyes:

[elucidator]

Shit, what’s yours? If, as you seem to insist, there was no demand for credit, then there was no credit freeze to solve, no? But there was, you said so yourself, when you accepted that the narrative outlined by Mr Lewis and Mr Goldfarb was, and I quote, “factual”.

**Arty **offered you several cites, you got him on ignore? Hell, here I was, giving you credit for the good sense to recognize the facts and retreat, when you don’t even have that!

So, what would you have us believe? That Mr Bernanke and Mr Paulson moved Heaven and earth to fix a desperate problem that did not exist? But, once again, you have already accepted the narrative of *Too Big to Fail *as being factual. And that is most definitely part of the narrative, in fact, it is the punch line!

Either it existed, or it didn’t. If it didn’t, then Mr Paulson and Mr Bernanke were delusional or colossally stupid. You want to offer that argument, go right ahead. If you like, I’ll copy Arty’s cites and pretend they’re mine. Fuck him, I have no shame.

[Zeriel]

@Scylla

So you say. I have presented evidence to the contrary in terms of statistics from the Fed. I have asked you to support and you have failed spectacularly to do so.

You say their we’re tons of people demanding money, legitimate loans that the banks should make but didn’t?
Prove it. For the 6th or the 7th time show me this demand you keep talking about.

I tend to agree with a statement made by a claimed financial expert, quoted below, who’s apparently been in the business a long time.

The fact the banks tightened when they were given money to lend may be damning enough.

[Scylla]

Blah blah blah.

Show me how my Fed cite was wrong and there was actually huge demand for credit.

[Scylla]

@Zeriel

I tend to agree with a statement made by a claimed financial expert, quoted below, who’s apparently been in the business a long time.

Shrug. You can condemn them based on that. I have no problem with that.

That’s different than claiming there was this huge market for credit that the banks failed to respond to.

[Mr.Svinlesha]

Scylla:

*Wtf? In all my years on this board I have never seen anybody work so hard to avoid supporting their argument, to avoid even making an argument, as Elucidator has just done.

If you don’t want to take him to task for this empty rhetoric, that is your choice.

However, considering how you just attempted to excoriate me and all conservatives for downplaying instances of hypocrisy on our side and emphasizing those on the other, it seems ironic and hypocritical to me in the extreme that you would encourage such pathetic debating techniques.

:rolleyes:*

Hey, you’re the one wasting time debating him, not me. I don’t even know what the two of you are on about – and I don’t have the time and energy to go back 5 pages and try to figure it out. Something about banks lending money, or not lending money, for some reason…?

But I think he’s funny as hell, I can’t help that. I just do.

Even though he is from Texas.

[Zeriel]

@Scylla

Blah blah blah.

Show me how my Fed cite was wrong and there was actually huge demand for credit.

There doesn’t have to be huge demand for credit, though, to prove **elucidator’s **point as I understand it. There just has to be a move by the banks to diminish the amount of credit granted relative to demand–that is, to give out fewer loans than are wanted and of reasonable risk. That statistic isn’t going to be easy to come up with a solid cite for, since there aren’t a lot of stats on the number of loan requests that are rejected at some point in the process, and there CAN’T even be stats on the number of people who look at a revised lending standards document online and say “Aw, fuck that” and don’t even apply.

It’s my own contention that the actions of the banks in A) tightening lending standards significantly while B) using bailout funds to play the securities market in the short term (notably more risky than consumer loans, but also notably more profitable) is a good indicator that the banks used the bailout money in bad faith–pushing for profits in the now rather than shoring up their long-term portfolios. Presuming of course that the bailout was intended to help get the entire economy moving again, rather than just the financial sector.

[elucidator]

Hey, let’s throw him a bone! We don’t really have a working definition of “huge”, so we can slough that off, say that it isn’t proven that there was a “huge” demand for credit, because we don’t know what “huge” means. When I’ve heard the word applied to me personally, I’ve always been pleased, but modesty forbids any further revelation.

So, OK. What we got is the banks were craven, greedy and unpatriotic. But there was not necessarily a “huge” demand for credit. So those OWS protestors who are bitching about what slime the bankers are, are correct and on point, but those who are insisting there was a “huge” demand for credit may not be. After all, we’ll never know, etc. etc.

So, there you go, Scylla! You may now proceed to your victory boogie dance! No need to thank me.

[Scylla]

Still no cite.
What a surprise.

[elucidator]

Arty offered you cites. Best I can tell, you ignored them. Would you like me to cut and paste them, claim them for my own? No prob, Bob.

[Scylla]

@elucidator

Arty offered you cites. Best I can tell, you ignored them. Would you like me to cut and paste them, claim them for my own? No prob, Bob.

Yes please. Show me the one that says that the demand for credit increased.

[RTFirefly]

@elucidator

Arty offered you cites. Best I can tell, you ignored them. Would you like me to cut and paste them, claim them for my own? No prob, Bob.

Go right ahead. He won’t respond to 'em unless they’re in a post of someone not named RTFirefly. I figure I can help him make himself look even stupider than usual by not responding to piles of evidence, but you’re welcome to do what you can to save him from that fate.