If the KKK wants to march down Main Street spewing their hate speech, I don’t have a problem with it. Their speech doesn’t infringe on anyone else’s rights. If they want to take off their sheets and go as the Tea Party, same principle, same speeches. They can piss and moan about how they hate this group or that group, doesn’t bother me. It’s when they want to do something about their hate is where they cross the line.
When a business opens the doors to the public, it means all the public. It’s wrong in and of itself for them to decide that they don’t want to serve people based on race or whatever. Refusing to serve certain people does infringe on the rights of others. We’ve been there and done that. We don’t need to go back to the days where blacks had to worry about where they might find a bite to eat or fill their cars when traveling through the south. It was wrong and a perfectly legitimate use of government to put an end to it.
We need to stop pretending that libertarianism is a legitimate philosophy. It’s a convenient skirt for racists to hide behind. It’s a pseudo-intellectual refuge for those that want to justify their aversion to paying taxes. Ron Paul is perfect example of libertarians- he’s nothing but a hateful old man who put out racist garbage in his newsletters for years but refuses to accept responsibility for it. Any time we spend discussing Ron Paul or any aspect of libertarianism is time wasted.
Because that only applies to state practices and the intent and scope of the CRA went way beyond state actions, because, so did the problems it was meant to address.
N.B.: This is not about constitutional interpretation. Paul is arguing against what he regards as essentially unacceptable degrees of government intrusion into private life; and such, to him and to Libertarians generally, are not unnacceptable because they violate any Constitution, but for far more elemental reasons to which constitutions and laws are irrelevant.
And “values” supposedly underly any law.
In this particular instance, Lind’s values-argument is, “The American experiment is an experiment in creating and maintaining a democratic republic, not a minimal state.” On that most important point, Lind is right and any Libertarian/libertarian who claims to believe otherwise is wrong.
As I noted in one of the other threads on this MB (hard to remember which, since there are so many), there is a certain Survivalist element that is attracted to libertarianism. This type of person sees conspiracy theories around every corner. Ron Paul seems to have attracted his fair share of this type, and has at least dabbled in it himself from time to time. This is a good example. And it’s one of the reasons, if not the key reason, that his popularity has a distinct threashold beyond which he cannot go any further.
FYI – In 2008 I was working in the Risk Management dept of Citi Bank in NYC specifically dedicated to Securitization and Credit Risk under AIRB Basel II. If there is one thing I can provide educated opinion on, it is this. If you don’t understand what the 52 percent of loans given to low-to moderate-income families” in the secondary market means I’ll be happy to elaborate.
And again, the same article you cited says clearly:
Read that again: one quarter of the portfolio!!!
I rest my case.
For the purpose of this off-tangent discussion I’ll only say that it is proven beyond doubt –well, at least in my mind – that Government has created a very dangerous playground by enacting the law that is against normal market rule (i.e. people who should not get loan were able to get it under administrative law).
Which brings me to a more general claim – that all this talk about “free market” sorting itself out is a red herring because the market has been so badly messed up with over last 30-40 years by the Government (i.e. laws, limits, disclosure requirements etc.) that the only benefit to the “economy” are the people who print those laws and implement them in various industries.
It has become a never ending game of a constant patching of the unintended consequences of the last round of market controlling laws
The government did not force Citi or any other bank to make loans to low-income borrowers, nor did it force Citi or any other bank to purchase portfolios of those loans to securitize them. They did it on their own because, for a brief period of time, they were making money hand over fist because there was a housing bubble.
Um…the percentage of all subprime loans that F&F owned declined during the bubble. Why would their 25% be the decisive factor and not the 75% owned by private sector banks?
septimus, this is totally inappropriate for Great Debates. You can insult people’s intelligence and call them trolls if you are posting in the Pit, but you cannot do it in any other forum. I’m giving you a formal warning for this post. Don’t do it again.
Why limit it to the last 40 years? Damn Teddy Roosevelt and his trust-busting. I say we lost the real America when the country passed laws that prevented one company from running everything in our lives! Stupid liberal interference in the markets…
I met quite a few of those, at monthly parties a (now deceased) Libertarian friend of mine used to throw. One (this was back in the Clinton Admin) was convinced the FBI blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Courthouse to provide a pretext for cracking down on dissidents.
You could start by dropping the assumption that a given set of public policies are necessarily based on any “philosophical system.” It all results from haggling-in-the-bazaar, and that’s the way a republican system is supposed to work. Philosophies come into it to the extent that the horse-traders have philosophies, as distinct from interests; many do. But, just as a given public policy is in effect the vector sum of several interests in conflict, so it might also be the vector sum of several philosophies in conflict.
Ah, the game of who can come up with more damning assessment of Libertarian ideology. Okay, let me see… how to win this game… who do I choose as the ultimate symbol that puts a final nail in a coffin… got it - I’m going to up this and say that Hitler was a secret Libertarian (aside from earlier concluded fact that he was a Muslim b/c once he said something approving of Islam; so, I’m sure he said something approving of Libertarian views).
Because they’ve been thought of as ubber-safe investment considering that they are Government Sponsored Entities.
While I agree that private sector played a role in contributing to the crisis, the fact is - US Government acted as a guarantor and Feds as money printer for GSE’s and that is main driver for investors who did not ask for securitization details. Neither did GSE’s.
GSE’s were playing “market” game but were absolutely different player than the rest - they had taxpayer backing. So, for Paulson, it only made sense that if you’re rescuing one player for a given deed, you cannot punish others for the same deed.
Ultimately, politicians concocted the game and GSE’s put the game into reality b/c they were extension of politics. It’s actually funny to read that Fannie Mae had lobbyists – it’s like having your left hand filling in your pocket with cash and right hand spending it and then you claim I had no idea what was going on.
I agree. We make a distinction between expressing racist messages and taking racist actions for the reasons you give.
The consensus of our society has been that while some messages are offensive, the cost of restricting the right to speak is higher than the benefit of preventing offensive speech. So when people say offensive things, we tough it out and use our right to speak to argue against their message.
There is no similar consensus about racist actions. Obviously, libertarians take the view that the cost of restricting the right of property is higher than the benefit of preventing racial discrimination. But this is not the view of most people.
We have a majoritarian political system. As long as the majority of people place a higher value on restricting racial discrimination than on unlimited property rights, we’re going to have laws that prohibit racial discrimination in public places.
So were the private bank securities. The ratings agencies were giving them AAA ratings.
All of the banks ended up with taxpayer backing, so the fact that the GSEs had explicit backing doesn’t matter. What’s compelling is that private banks were responsible for the bulk of the subprime lending, private banks were engaged in massive amounts of risky subprime lending before the GSEs were, and the only reason the GSEs upped their involvement was because they were getting their clocks cleaned by the private banks’ earnings and the CEOs felt they needed to step their game up.
So your beliefs are just that, your beliefs. They’re contrary to the facts. If you’re going to persist in your interpretation, then I’m going to think that you’re either foolish or dishonest (or both). And the subprime bubble has nothing to do with this thread anyway, so I don’t know why you’d even bring it up.
I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that argument. The libertarian line of thinking would be that the best way to maintain a democratic republic, is to have a more minimal state. By giving special treatment to a group you undermine one of the key features of a democratic republic, that is everyone is equal.
Most public policy favors/benefits some groups over others, it can’t be helped. This isn’t a democratic republic where everyone is equal if private-sector Jim Crow persists, and that fact was a fair target for public policy.
Now, you, not so fast; plus it’s other way around.
So, one more thing has left to make your argument into form of art - Ron Paul ancestors are from Germany… Hitler is from Germany… and they both worked with Kevin Bacon… therefore, Ron Paul is not only Libertarian and racist and all of the above… he is also Nazi. Which means Libertarians are Nazis who preach taqiya.
Christ, the damned Constitution had explicitly racist notions of who was and who wasn’t a person. Eighty years later, it gets fixed to some degree. Another eighty years later, the racism implicit in those “solutions” needs fixing. When is it, exactly, that we should have stopped fixing the racist parts of the original Constitution?
Today, we realize that laws intended to place all races, religions, and sexes on equal footing in terms of employment, housing, and other rights do not recognize that people may be legally discriminated against due to their sexual orientation. Most people around here would say that it is wrong to have a law that forbids some discrimination, but not other types – but Ron Paul opposes that, of course.
What is the logic of having laws that make discrimination against race illegal, but also allow for discrimination against sexual orientation? How on earth does that make sense?
– that Government has created a very dangerous playground by enacting the law that is against normal market rule (i.e. people who should not get loan were able to get it under administrative law).