Give us an example of a country that has a free market in banking, then, and we’ll judge such a system’s value based on that.
Other than the fact tha my mother’s side of the family have been farmers/ranchers for at least 4-5 generations, and my Uncle is currently raising cattle in West Texas, and I spent many summers on the farm helping raise peanuts, corn, wheat, and cattle (even helped deliver a few of the critters) - nope, not a bit. I do know the small farmers/ranchers get next to no Federal help however, yet somehow survive. They don’t prosper by any means, but they rarely complain, and never once have I heard them even think of asking for subsidies.
I don’t envision raising 60,000 head of cattle as being a small operation - sounds morel like some high-end rancher problems to me.
Depends on where you live I suppose. Also, watch the not-so-veiled personal attacks, friend.
They may not ask for them, but they’re most likely getting them. Where do the tens of billions of dollars authorized through the U.S. Farm Bill go each year – the people who ask for them? Nope: those subsidies are artificially propping up crop and meat prices for all producers (many of whom, as you’re aware, operate on legitimately razor-thin margins).
I’m not saying that the subsidies are right or wrong, but I do think it’s terribly hypocritical for farmers and ranchers to denounce entitlement spending when they are dependent on government subsidies as well.
See post #29.
Many, many banks failed throughout our history. The difference between banks failing then and now is that regulated banks fail somewhat less frequently, depositors are protected, and this protection reduces runs and thus reduces the chance that healthy banks will fail.
I tend to look down on grounded, cautious and unimaginative people. Not because they are bad people, nothing wrong with any of that, but because they are boring. But it has its places, there are situations where those are sterling virtues. Banking leaps to mind. Banking should be boring.
Salesmen, however, salesmen have to be different. They have to be risk takers, entrepreneurial, go-getters. And I think a big part of what has happened is that the salesmen are more powerful than the bean counters. When banks started selling more securities, they needed more salesmen. The more money they made on selling, the more powerful the salesmen became.
The salesmen were behind the movement to free up the creative potential of banking, to loosen the outmoded restrictions that kept banking so dull and normal, to liberate the full vigor of capitalism in the new age! To swim in the deep water with the big fish. The new bankers craved and coveted that huge mass of American money frozen by stiff and unyielding regulations. So the salesmen went to the Congressmen, and lo! it was done.
And here we are.
I like Lizzy Warren’s cure. Of course, shes not the only one, but she’ll do for symbolism. Like the way she thinks, just in case you get the idea its only because she’s so hot. Time to turn it back down from 11 to around 3. Time for banking to be dull. There’s plenty of places for the risk taker to go, where the action is. The bank shouldn’t be one of them.
Problemo. A whole class of people have arisen, people who make a very good living at this, and people who expect to. Young folks who have spent years borrowing money to go the most resume-impressive schools, sacrificing the best years of their lives to buy a ticket to the fast lane, Beemers and condos, upscale organic foods grown by people who can’t afford to eat them.
They are not going to like this idea. The people who employ them are not going to like this idea. And I regret that. If we get our way, a lot of them are going to lose their jobs. We can probably use a lot of them as inspectors, keeping the industry honest. But civil service wages, civil service futures. Calm security. Minivans. Boxed wine. Iceberg lettuce.
But I think it has to be done.
elucidator - they don’t have to lose theirs jobs. The mistake was the effective repeal of Glass Steagal with the Gramm-Leach-Biley act. While driven by the Republicans, the House was all for it. When it got to the Senate, the Democrats wised up. Sadly, Clinton signed it.
Commercial and Investment banks should be kept separated. I would fully support making them split up again (like we made auditors spin off their consultant arms at one point - though they are bringing them back).
OK, so what you say is that if this separation occurs, none of those big financial whorehouses will shrink? How is that possible?
Doubtful. There is too much money in investing, trading, etc. What I do NOT like is having to prop up a investment firm, because if they fail the bank goes under.
It was easy to let Lehman die - they were not tied to anything else. Letting AIG go under, however, would have cause far more ripples. Rip them apart, and the next time a gambler loses it all - it will be easier to let the weak fall. Our mistake was allowing the consolidation to create entities “too big to fail.”
Look at who died in the fire - Lehman (single line of business), Countrywide Credit (single line of business). AIG, Wells Fargo, Bank of America - well, we couldn’t let THOSE go under.
Rip 'em apart and let them sink or swim on their own.
Independent truckers, the kind they were figuring on for the rally, already buy their own diesel. (Not gas. There are probably some big trucks on the road that use gasoline, just like there are some that use natural gas for fuel. But not many.) I95 is always busy and filled with trucks, and the NE corridor from DC to Boston densely packed with them. If the rally had actually been supported by a decent percentage of truckers, they could have easily shut things down. Instead it got the support it should have, from the real RWNJs that let talk radio hosts do their thinking for them.
I hope I’m not the only one who at first read that as “Lizzy Borden’s.” (Massachusetts is Massachusetts.)
Until every single trucker was arrested and a state trooper drove his truck onto the shoulder.
The shoulder is only so wide. Even 10s of thousands of trucks trying to screw with traffic would be extremely disruptive. Just closing one lane out in the middle of no where can create a line of traffic 5 miles long. (And I wish I was exaggerating.) Shut down 2 out of 3 lanes on 495 in thousands of places at once? The cops would have cleared things out eventually, but it would not have been quick.
The reason nothing like that happened is because the percentage of truckers that are that crazy is the same as the rest of the population. They can be noisy, and cause problems, but there are not generally enough of them to be more than a nuisance. Unless some idiots elect them to Congress anyway.
Of course they buy their own gas/diesel, kind of my point. They buy it to work, to generate money, not to make some political point. If the people who cooked up this scheme wanted it to work, they would have had to at least pay for the fuel wasted in deadheading someplace where no cargo is waiting. Not to mention the unpaid time off.
Not to mention the rigs impounded, and then confiscated to cover the fines for a plethora of or torts and offenses.
No more calls; we have a winner!
Well, they’re denouncing the Senate bill for one. No surprise, I suppose:
In case you needed a reminder of just how delusional these folks are:
Umm, the Republicans did fight. And they got their asses handed to them.
Last week Rush Limbaugh was ranting that Republican budget-compromisers were about to “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”
No, Rush. They snatched defeat from the jaws of disaster.
Fuck you too, buddy.