Slashdot Mirror
Text Comments Out In YouTube "National Discussion" of Health Care
theodp writes "While the White House has invited the nation to Join the National Online Discussion on Health Care Reform, it is currently only accepting 20-30 second YouTube video responses — text comments have been disabled. Which raises a question: Should a video camera be the price of admission for participating in an open government discussion, especially when issues may hit those with lower incomes the hardest? BTW, the response-to-date has been underwhelming — 101 video responses and counting — and is certainly a mixed-bag, including a one-finger salute, a talking butt, a woman "Showing my Apples", and other off-topic rants and unrelated videos."
So fucking what if text comments are disabled in this stunt? It's not as if people don't have plenty of other avenues to express themselves, such as writing and/or calling their elected representatives, or even you know vote for them.
This is a nice excuse to get this onto slashdot, but this just isn't news for nerds or stuff that matters.
It sounds to me like the administration is looking for raw material they can put into commercials to run in districts that oppose Obama's plans.
I.e,. this might be a huge casting call in disguise.
I'm fairly skeptical these days when Obama says he wants to involve the general population in a discussion. His modus operandi became evident when he ignored the highly voted Internet town hall topic of legalizing marijuana. It appears that at least sometimes, he's only pretending to take the general citizenry's views into account, even when he's saying otherwise.
Apparently it's not working.
Have you ever looked at the comment section of a YouTube video? I wouldn't want a low-level staffer to spend half a second wading through that pile of drooling morons. Posting a video at least requires minimal effort.
From TFA:
If I were the staff member in charge of wading through the discussion, I wouldn't want to have to use Youtube's craptastic comment system either.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Yuk. I don't like doing video. Text is more efficient and searchable. Bad Obama.
They wouldn't let competing viewpoints even by ad time on ABC prior to or after the "special." It's a lot easier to win a debate limited to one side.
You can open up your favorite video editing software and just put some slides of text. No camera involved.
Looks to me like a computer is the greatest part of that admission price. The camera (assuming the computer didn't come with one) is just an extra fee.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
MS Paint and Windows Movie Maker.
Say it in 24 bit color, baby!
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Yes, as a technical question it's now easy for everyone to communicate with their public officials! But what exactly are these officials supposed to do with ten thousand poor-quality comments? Institute a Slashdot-style moderate system? A digg-style voting system? (Obama did actually try that last one.) Develop a new version of spam filter that is some sort of "shitty comment with no useful content" filter? It seems what they're trying here is exactly what the submitter criticizes, a "barrier to entry" filter, with the hope that people who bother to make a video about their idea at least have an idea they've thought through for 5 minutes. Looks like that may have failed, too, but I can't blame them for trying.
In a different context, Gerhard Fischer pointed out in 1996 something similar about the internet not being a magical solution for education:
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I often hear (on NPR, usually) politicians calling for a "national discussion" or a "national debate" on some topic.
Exactly what is a "national discussion/debate"?
It seems to me like things usually work out this way: news organizations cover some topic, congress and the President start discussing it, lobbyists come onto the scene, and in the end the Congress either (a) sells us out to lobbyists, or (b) makes a completely irrational piece of legislation.
So is calling for a "national discussion/debate" really just an attempt to dress, as democratic, a decision which the common citizen has no capacity to influence? That is, like what happens with so-called "town-hall meetings"?
Surely it raises another question: Should internet access be the price of admission for participating in an open government discussion, especially when issues may hit those with lower incomes the hardest?
If you're going to restrict discussion to those with access to the web it doesn't seem a giant leap to expect them to have a cheap and cheerful webcam.
If your opinion is so valuable then write a letter and mail it to the President or your elected representative.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Video Camera's aren't the barrier of entry, owning a computer/mobile device that has internet access is. Even if they did allow text comments I still need blow a few hundred bucks on a cellphone contract or a computer. Requiring video just makes sorting through the responses easier. And it doesn't prevent you from participating in government. You can still call your local congressmen/senator for a few cents on a pay phone.
A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
Given the average IQ level of YouTube commenters, they should have blocked responses altogether and provided a URL to a forum on whitehouse.gov. That would at least eliminate the morons who can't read carefully.
Don't worry, he won't listen to those video replies either!
Color me trolled.
Look, this is plainly a compromise that tries to cull wheat from chaff. Don't believe me? Go look at any major American newspaper website. Pick any random story and dive into the comments. Now, take note of the insults, the extremely partisan rhetoric (from all sides), the bad grammar, the incredible misunderstandings of the entire point, and, yeah, even hopes that one or the other subjects go die.
It's simply much easier for anyone to click reply and type out, "HURR DURRR UR A FAGGG." Sure, you can do the same with with a web camera -- and apparently some folks are doing so -- but I bet there are going to be much less to go through than if everyone could pop a comment under the story.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
And nothing of value was lost...
In the democratic system, and people and general. But lately I've taken the stance that while some individuals may be smart, people as a whole are panicy and stupid. This whole "Open Government" thing, while honourable, is beginning to look like a futile attempt.
... only from Facebook users via their Facebook site. The link is on the referenced page.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
A video camera, computer, internet connection and YouTube account?
No sig for you!!
Am I the only person who's concerned that the Whitehouse has been allowed to be the moderator of such discussions?
After all, the administration has a political agenda, and therefore an incentive to bias the discussions on any particular topic of debate. Deciding details such as the length and form of submissions can be a powerful device for controlling the topic and direction of debate. At that point, it's a rather useless vehicle for arguing a side that the administration doesn't want advanced.
I think we can tolerate the absence of people who can afford computers and not cellphone cameras.
The libraries near me are full of poor people using internet connected computers. My cell phone has a camera, but it doesn't do video and the only way to get images off of it is to pay absurd data transfer rates. Many people I see only have pay as you gocell phones with no camera capabilities. I think you might be a little disconnected from the realities of the lower class and their access to video cameras.
A good idea. Otherwise half the comments would be idiots callling Obama a ni**er.
If video responses with their "price of admission" were this bad, can you imagine how inane and disgustingly unintelligent text comments would be? Their video limitation was a good idea IMO.
Should a video camera be the price of admission for participating in an open government discussion, especially when issues may hit those with lower incomes the hardest?
Yes. I think we can tolerate the absence of people who can afford computers and not cellphone cameras.
And only land-owners should have the right to vote?
I know people that can afford a computer (at the public library), but who can not afford a cell phone (regular monthly expenses).
Should a video camera be the price of admission for participating in an open government discussion, especially when issues may hit those with lower incomes the hardest?
Since we're talking about health care I can safely say that, in this case, the lower income people are the very people this initiative is supposed to help. It is the rich and possibly the middle class who will have to pay, against their will (through higher taxes), in order to pay for health insurance for others. Those with lower incomes get to sit back and watch the government and/or the rich people pay for everything for them. That is how things work when a Democrat is in office. Daddy gov't will help them by using the money from other people.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
a third world country called the United States.
Yours In Books,
Kilgore Trout
...and such was the case with the "one-finger salute" video. That intellectual powerhouse thinks Obama somehow snuck into the White House even though he is a Kenyan citizen, and mourns the loss of the Pontiac Firebird.
I think I'll cry.
> The "Nobel Prize winner" myth: Every school child will have access to a Nobel Prize winner
In some ways yes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn8PNMTSlwo
Plenty of other lectures/talks from MIT, Stanford, and other universities around the world are available online.
> it is doubtful that Nobel Prize winners will look forward to getting a few thousand e-mail messages a day.
I'm sure Feynman isn't too worried about that :).
FWIW, you can learn a lot from people without sending email to them, or communicating with them.
Raising the technical bar weeds out the sincere from the rest.
At least that was the idea until the talking butt came along.
You are the person who invented sending four line comments in powerpoints aren't you. Now we have your ID we are going to hunt you to the ends of the internet. You can't run and you can't hide. Our advance team is in Montréal already. They will be arriving at your home soon. Stay there so that at least you die surrounded by the things you know.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Ok, so am I the only person on slashdot who thinks slashdot's "ask slashdot" system is by far the best way to solicit responses from people on a mass scale (not sarcastic)? So far the government's attempt at getting "public input" has been ignorant of the better options... have you seen their open government website (http://mixedink.com/OpenGov/)? You can't even post more than a page for a draft on what you think should be done about something. There's a huge god damn difference between "I think you should do X" and "I think you should do X and this is how because I know I can't trust you to do it right".
And christ, a good portion of the responses on the open government website are off topic or unreadable/rambling. Almost 100% of it is rhetoric, or calls for expanding upon current ineffective government resources via the means of existing ineffective government resources.
Just as intellectual as the rest of the farce known as politics. The only difference is that the professionals wear fancy suits and genuinely think they are saying something insightful.
I think we can tolerate the absence of people who can afford computers and not cellphone cameras.
And only land-owners should have the right to vote?
I'm guessing just like me, he missed the fact that this was about voting.
Oh wait, I still don't see it - care to point out where it says that this was going to be used for voting?
Just as intellectual as the rest of the farce known as politics. The only difference is that the professionals wear fancy suits and genuinely think they are saying something insightful.
Sounds a lot like slashdot to me.
Sewage Treatment Facilities - "Our duty is clear."
You sir are an ignorant bastard. I think we can tolerate the absence of stupid elitist slashdot posters that don't understand what a quality cell phone with video + internet data plan costs compared to entry level PC's and dial up internet so prevalent in most low income households.
My dad is a lawyer, as are many politicians. He said the most important thing involved in winning a case (or arguement) is setting the context of that arguement.
Basically with the video responses they are trying to get around the problem that both might be absolutely right. When both sides are absolutely right it is the correct time for rhetoric, emotioned arguement.
As text responses just invite flamewars and shouting matches. One person on a decent connection could post several replies a minute in a text-based system and make their opinion seem more reflective of the population. Granted, video responses aren't a great deal better; but by limiting it to that they can at least give everyone a (semi) equal opportunity to post.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Where in this discussion so far did someone suggest otherwise?
Hm... maybe if they run a spell check on all comments and use the result as a spam filter. The comment only gets read if the spell check is minimally satisfied.
I picked up a used cellphone with a camera in it for $20 off Craigslist. And I'm an ignorant bastard, so you see how easy it is.
This is simply not a serious barrier comparable to e.g. owning land which separates people into demographics (landowners vs renters) having legitimate and distinctly separate policy interests. Not being able to produce a video in order to comment on a stupid Obama Youtube stunt doesn't really place you into a protected minority. Youtube is a private entity, and private entities are free to discriminate. And a direct societal benefit is gained by discriminating against the wider class of people unwilling to produce a video- like myself, with better things to do. It cuts down on the number of responses from ignorant bastards like me, who would just show up and post something similar to the GP.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have worked very well.
A video camera for a computer is a lot cheaper than having to have a computer in the first place.
No surprises there. I have seen some beleaguered web board admins replace their web boards with a blogroll community. Instead of accepting comments, they would accept trackback URLS where people would respond on their own blogs. Upping the cost in effort to respond greatly reduced the amount noise, but it also greatly reduced the overall number of responses. The web is a medium of short attention spans.
There are better ways to poll people. Youtube comments will only give you a cross section of youtube users.......not a group representative of most of America. No reason to spend tax payer money in this economy to pay people to read peanut gallery quality comments.
If you actually watch many of those videos, it is easy to see that the vast majority of them are people asking, "How can this benefit me?? (Or my sister, or my uncle, or...)"
Very few have been asking the hard questions, like "What part of the Constitutional gives you authority to do this?"
For someone who is supposed to be a "Constitutional scholar", Obama does not seem to have much understanding of it.
Sitting in front of a computer in your underwear is NOT a fancy suit. Yes, it's fancier than a birthday suit, but it's still not fancy.
Did you even finish reading the post you replied to? Or did you stop reading at "Bush administration?" GP never condemned criticizing Obama, and actually did some criticizing him/herself.
I thought I was going to have to offer this correction. You beat me to it. Someone please mod Curien's comment up!
Spekkio Master of War
There is a place down the street I can go and pay a few dollars and sit down at a computer which has a webcam and post a video on youtube.
If someone can not afford to take a bus to an internet cafe.. then, I certainly feel sorry for them.. but if they are that down on their luck.. maybe the government should just fly them all to washington to hear their comments?
The Obama administration is far, far better than any Bush administration.
I agree. They are much, much better liars. Listening to Bush lie was boring. It was obvious. It insulted my intelligence. While Obama's lies are grandiose. They are eloquent. They take at least 10-15 seconds to parse through before the waaaait-a-minute moment. It's a pleasure. We are very fortunate to have a much more skillful entertainer in the White House.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Wait, they put out a call on YouTube and they expected anything other than this as a response? It's *YouTube*, wtf did they expect? Have they never read the comments section on any random video on the site?
"In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death."
Yes but at least the Republican senators were willing to voice their opinions in the most eloquent manner they could.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
That would be a good argument for banning the video comments as well. There could easily be some other motivation at work here (besides callous indifference to the lower classes) for disabling text comments. Probably a stupid one. Maybe they figure they'll be buried in comments and forced to pick and choose and introduce a bias if they want to make the page look flashy and interesting.
Seriously, who cares. I wonder what's up with this dude sometimes, but in terms of signal to noise in Obama stories (a real problem), this story is pure noise.
His modus operandi became evident when he ignored the highly voted Internet town hall topic of legalizing marijuana.
Or perhaps, he is just waiting for the right time to take up the topic. Just because he hasn't legalized weed in the first few months of his presidency does not mean he is ignoring the issue. Don't you suppose that, while anti-drug laws are pointless and archaic, they are SLIGHLTLY less important making sure that the economy doesn't implode further, getting out of the Iraq war, winning the Afghanistan war, Dealing with North Korean nuclear proliferation issues, and drafting national healthcare reform? Perhaps? Maybe?
I know a right wing nut who insists that Obama is a failure as a president because he hasn't SINGLE HANDEDLY FIXED THE LARGEST AND MOST COMPLICATED ECONOMY in the world yet. Let's get some perspective here. There are only so many hours in the day, and only so much the president can do. Just because he hasn't willed weed laws away with sheer psychic might (remember the president can't draft laws, just stamp yes or no on it.) doesn't mean he is ignoring things.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
In response to your concern over responses from people with lower incomes: I think this is rather unfounded given that webcams go for as little as $10-20. That is certainly minute compared to the cost of the computer and the internet connection itself.
see a Text Widget
This isn't a vote. This is an informal RFC that's going to be largely disregarded just like everything else.
All of these policies have one net effect, accelerating the pace of moving american jobs off shore. Adding additional taxes as well as
government imposed energy price increases destroys our ability to compete in the market.
this string of celebrity deaths is clearly a backhanded tactic by barrack obama to pass universal health care.
could you please point out a couple of instances of Obama lying?
Wasn't bush-era science policy anti-clowning?
I send morse code messages with a series of white and black engineering diagram files.
"Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism"
I remember that one....
Those people kneeling behind their cars with razor blades look pretty silly now.
Promises of financial "transparency", yet his actions regarding this are more of the same Bush policy. Banks still get to lie about their solvency, GS, JPM, and others still have their hand right in the taxpayers wallet via the treasury. Bailout Nation continues.
Ending the war in Iraq. Still no exit strategy. More money being spent, more people being sent over.
The elephant in the room is of-course this: in the time of the largest US economic meltdown, in the time when the government must do one thing - cut spending and shrink to cut costs and stop printing money, in this time how is this reform going to be paid for? One most likely possibility is of-course the printing press.
You can't handle the truth.
It's about having a voice in the government.
The pattern so far is to pass complex pieces of legislation along strictly partisan lines so quickly that Congress can't read it and the public can't react to it. The last thing the administration wants is real public comment on this.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Note the voting pattern of Hispanics, Asian-Americans, etc. These non-Black minorities serve as a measurement of African-American racism against Whites (and other non-Black folks). Neither Barack Hussein Obama nor John McCain is Hispanic or Asian. So, Hispanics and Asian-Americans used only non-racial criteria in selecting a candidate and, hence, serve as the reference by which we detect a racist voting pattern. Only about 65% of Hispanics and Asian-Americans supported Obama. In other words, a maximum of 65% support by any ethnic or racial group for either McCain or Obama is not racist and, hence, is acceptable. (A maximum of 65% for McCain is okay. So, European-American support at 55% for McCain is well below this threshold and, hence, is not racist.)
If African-Americans were not racist, then at most 65% of them would have supported Obama. At that level of support, McCain would have won the presidential race.
At this point, African-American supremacists (and apologists) claim that African-Americans voted for Obama because he (1) is a member of the Democratic party and (2) supports its ideals. That claim is an outright lie. Look at the exit-polling data for the Democratic primaries. Consider the case of North Carolina. Again, about 95% of African-Americans voted for him and against Hillary Clinton. Both Clinton and Obama are Democrats, and their official political positions on the campaign trail were nearly identical. Yet, 95% of African-Americans voted for Obama and against Hillary Clinton. Why? African-Americans supported Obama due solely to the color of his skin.
Here is the bottom line. Barack Hussein Obama does not represent mainstream America. He won the election due to the racist voting pattern exhibited by African-Americans.
African-Americans have established that expressing "racial pride" by voting on the basis of skin color is 100% acceptable. Neither the "Wall Street Journal" nor the "New York Times" complained about this racist behavior. Therefore, in future elections, please feel free to express your racial pride by voting on the basis of skin color. Feel free to vote for the non-Black candidates and against the Black candidates if you are not African-American. You need not defend your actions in any way. Voting on the basis of skin color is quite acceptable by today's moral standard.
I think you might be a little disconnected from the realities of the lower class and their access to video cameras.
I immediately found a crappy one for $12. It would certainly be good enough for this.
I found another one that's even crappier but will still let you upload short videos to YouTube for only $4.
Either will let you participate in the "national discussion". It's a matter of style I guess.
When even disabling text comments on a YouTube video sparks talk of social injustice, we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to find it.
bleh... I'll stop... I am sure you'll want to jump in and divert attention from what I said to some way of saying that "but look at what the crazy evil stupid Republicans are doing." After all, it's Sunday night. And Timothy posted this one with what I can only suspect was a bucket of pop corn ready at his side.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Wasn't bush-era science policy anti-clowning?
That was great. Absolutely brilliant! /hatoff
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The notion of a "town hall" at the Federal level is bunk. The comments or pithy videos selected will likely be produced or pushed by interested parties anyway, so the notion that poor people are being disenfranchised is irrelevant, since all citizens lack franchise in the propaganda state.
The government that the Democratic majority and presidency is practicing is the type of behavior that is common in the legislatures of states like New York. The "leadership" provides plums in the form of committee assignments, jobs for relatives and cash in exchange for voting as ordered. If you don't follow the leader, you lose the privileges.
This obviously isn't a phenomenon unique to democrats, but it is especially effective since 2/3 branches of government and soon all three will be controlled by the same people.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
You are the person who invented sending four line comments in powerpoints aren't you.
Yes. And he also invented the hold button. Take him down!
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Pay as you go... Oh, except for the stimulus($700B), and the budget ($400B), and oh yes, health care ($600B-$1.5T). But other than those we want a balanced budget.
-------
...the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth--then shut up.
Robert A. Heinlein--Stranger In A Strange Land.
Read a history book, kid. (yes, I recognize your 5-digits)
What if your Congressman's office refused to read all non-digitally signed emails? From our geek point of view, that would be great. From 98% of society though, maybe 1 or 2 percent would figure out how to use PGP/GPG and be bothered to use it properly. That cuts people out of representative government. While it is true that the Executive branch is not meant to be representative, it is asking for input, but only from the middle and upper class, and only the technically savvy (apples aside).
only way to get images off of it is to pay absurd data transfer rates.
Stop using verizon! Srsly! Those people are a bunch of prison rapists.
Our video response is 7 minutes long. Any chance we can get an exception?
- Stealth Dave
Evil is as eval("does");
You think libraries let you plug in Webcams and install drivers and talk and record video on site?
Either will let you participate in the "national discussion".
Not unless you own your own computer they won't.
When even disabling text comments on a YouTube video sparks talk of social injustice, we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to find it.
There is serious inequality when it comes to being listened to by politician, but this is a pretty minor instance of that. I merely object to people who don't have any idea how hard this can be for many people spouting off based upon their preconceptions and ignorance of the difficulties many people face.
you make a good point about Toyota jobs in the US. your conclusion as to the reason (unionization) is totally unsupported, but at least the question is interesting, and is something not talked enough about.
on the financial situation, though, you're way, way off. the "Fannie Mae regulation" you're thinking of wasn't a Fannie Mae regulation - otherwise it wouldn't have applied to other banks. you're presumably thinking of the CRA, which did apply to other banks, but wasn't designed either to put banks at the crazy risk they put themselves in (it contained explicit language against such behavior) or to support securitization of the loans (enabled by a later amendment). the numbers on CRA default rates, compared to the "general population" also doesn't support putting much blame there.
the notion that there is some idealized money supply inherently consistent with a given level of economic activity is laughably naive. you set monetary policy as a tool to achieve a given end; the current economic level is context for that activity. i've not seen (but would be quite interested in seeing) any serious, quantitive analysis of the Fed's handling of money supply that makes a strong case that they could have avoided the housing bubble without serious consequences (like astronomical inflation).
and no, of course greed is not new. but we've spent 20+ years disassembling the regulatory structure designed to keep our greed in check, which had worked very well for about 50 years before that. greed drove the disassembly, of course, coupled with a religious devotion to a particularly warped conception of the free market and crypto corporatism.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Obama's plan is bullshit and the Democrats have no real motive to pass real health care reform.
It sounds to me like the administration is looking for raw material they can put into commercials to run in districts that oppose Obama's plans.
Particularly with the 20-30 second requirement. Who can say anything other than "great plan, Mr. President" in just 20 to 30 seconds? I'd love to add my two cents, but I don't think I could squeeze it into less than a few minutes. Well, let's see...
"This healthcare plan sucks."
Well, that was easier than I expected. I had a lot more to say, but when I write, I try to write things so that the audience can understand what I am saying, and sometimes you know you just can't say anything.
I think we'd be a lot better off to pass a law that medical providers must present the cost of any service or treatment in advance. Any time I ask for prices in advance, I find great deals, like the oral surgery I once needed. I got an x-ray, some time with the doctor when he discussed what he was going to do, then the actual surgery on another day which involved at least 30 minutes of work by the doctor and a couple of assistants, plus some pain drugs, and a follow-up appointment a week later just to make sure it was healing correctly. Total cost: $300
Compare that to some lab work I had done recently which I didn't check the price of because the government was paying for it. (I would have simply not bothered otherwise, which isn't to say it wasn't a real problem, just that long-term chronic fatigue isn't something anyone can afford to investigate without insurance.) I had some blood drawn for some tests, a chest x-ray, and an EKG. Some time later I got a letter in the mail indicating that the government paid $1200 for those services. I was only there for ten minutes. X-rays are just photographic film and an x-ray tube, and an EKG isn't that complex either, both technologies have been around at least a hundred years. ...but the real kicker was that they charged $50 for a venipuncture.
Insurance is just a band-aid. The problem is that people spend without knowing how much, because they accept medical services without asking about the cost, assuming the intake person in the E.R. can even give you any answers. Insurance puts the costs up-front, and to keep premuims low, insurance companies force doctors to not waste so much money, but they also allow people to seek medical care when they really don't need it since it won't cost very much and they've already paid for it anyway, and that raises the costs back to what they would have been anyway. The end result is that your monthy premium costs more than oral surgery and it doesn't even come with a dental plan.
Despite my intense hatred for libertarians, I really think this is one issue where the free market can do a lot of good, if only the rules are changed so that the free market has some means by which to affect people's decisions. Passing a law that requires people to buy insurance only gives them a half-ass solution that was already available to them anyway, and it removes the solution of simply buying insurance for extreme situations and using the "shop around for a lower price" solution for more common needs, which is always going to be cheaper than buying insurance for everything.
As for Obama's fucked up idea of requiring insruance to cover pre-existing conditions, how about we do something sane like require insurance to cover post-existing conditions? If I get cancer while I have medical insurance, it will pay for my treatments, but only as long as I continue to pay the premiums. Imagine if homeowners insurance worked that way. One day your house burns down, which causes you to miss a few days of work, so your boss fires you because he's a prick, and now you can no longer pay your homeowner's insurance. Well, too bad, now they're no longer going to pay the contractors rebuilding your house.
It's retarded. Any illness that occurs when someone has coverage should be covered, no matter how long the treatments take. Insurance companies want it
Here's Matt Taibbi on your claim that "Fannie Mae regulation REQUIRED banks to loan . . .":
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/06/18/the-greatest-non-apology-of-all-time/#comment-881
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/06/18/the-greatest-non-apology-of-all-time/#comment-883
> And only land-owners should have the right to vote
Yes. It's better than being a tenant on the land your forefathers conquered, and brings back good old ideals like Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Property.
It absolutely *stuns* me, I mean jaw drops, cannot move holy shit WTFOMGBBQ that still to this day after millions of man hours dedicated to and billions of pages written dissecting each and every micrometer of the global mess that is known as the financial meltdown. That there are *still* individuals such as yourself so self assured in your absolute delusion drooling "freddie and fannie forced to give loans" even makes sense, let alone was what brought the entire worlds economy to its knees.
Truly you are an intellectual giant. To somehow miss the entirety of the worlds press output and conclusions in dissecting the cause of the crash and manage to attribute it to a few US home mortgages that were given due to some legislation in the 90's takes some *serious* mental horsepower.
Here's the cause of the financial meltdown for you in easy to digest pieces.
1. Banks begin selling mortgages directly to investors.
2. This makes banks a huge amount of money, and so they start handing out mortgages willy nilly so they can sell even more, even to people who they would *never* have lent to before. But now they don't care AS THEY DON"T OWN THE MORTGAGES. -- see that's the bit where they *chose* to give out the crap mortgages. But of course now they try and blame it on the government so corporate lick-spittle dimwits would sell themselves down the river to protect said banks.
3. They package these BAD mortgages up as AAA rated mortgages with the complicity of criminally fradulent ratings agencies.
4. They sell these corrupt mortgage package on to investors rated AAA when in fact they should be rated -ZZZ GTFO.
5. Investors then on sell them, sometimes even *back* to the banks, the packages stop representing any sort of true wealth at all and become fake paper wealth, only held up by the stupidity of huge investment firms and financial institutions.
5. A few people default on their mortgages...investors suddenly realize that their AAA rated mortgages actually are mixed up with extremely high risk mortgages as well.
6. Investors shit themselves and sell them ASAP.
7. A couple of mammoth financial institutions take big hits.
8. AIG insures said institutions...except AIG actually doesn't actually have any money to give them.
9. Banks, financial "institutions" and half of wall street are stuck with a few trillion dollars worth of "toxic" assets, that is packages that are so extraordinarily complicated and recursive that noone knows who actually owns what and how much is real wealth and how much is fake ponzi bullshit scheme wealth.
10. Dimwits somehow blame all this on some ridiculous 1990's legislation that doesn't even GOVERN 70% of the institutions at the top of the problem.
11. Thieves in said institutions use the ensuing shit fight by useful idiots blaming the "over entitled poor people" to stage the biggest plundering of a public treasury in the history of the world.
12. Occasional dimwits continue to blame the government - in some sort of bizarro world NOT for their lack of regulation in order to prevent such an enormous pyramid scheme from being concocted in the first place...but for somehow *forcing* these institutions to fraudulently package shit mortgages that they *chose* to give out as AAA rated investments, making trillions of dollars profit by doing so and trying to pass them along before it all fell apart as is typical of any ponzi scheme.
13. Give it up and learn FFS.
That said the Federal Reserve bears alot of responsibility for the low cost of money making credit to easy to get for the large firms. Of course the fact that the VERY SAME large firms make up the majority of the seats on the Federal Reserve makes blaming the government even stupider.
Except of course for giving the Federal Reserve that sort of power in the first place. Which is a call for more regulation...not less.
... like 20 to 30 second sound bites. They might as well look for ideas at an open mike poetry night.
Maybe it's never occurred to you, but some people really ARE not having it as easy as you do, financially speaking. Some people have to justify their spendings and only buy what's necessary.
I have a computer - that IS a necessity in today's world. I don't have a cell phone with a camera; it's not necessary.
I'm really curious why you think that the fact I spent part of my limited funds on one thing should mean I'll have funds left over for another thing. If anything, you'd expect I'd be able to afford a camera phone more easily if I did NOT have a computer.
Home ownership went from 20% to 30% in 10 years. The deregulation only eased the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks. Mortgages were ALWAYS secularized... well, at LEAST since the 80s. The propaganda campaign that is being pushed out is only convincing those who want to find the excuse with "capitalists" in the first place. Frankly, it's not convincing many of them, either. It doesn't sit right with anyone who has half a brain for a simple reason: it confuses cause and effect. The line about preventing the bubble by causing higher inflation was funny. Thanks for the laugh. Let's see... what have I not covered yet? I suppose that if you believe that the FED cannot keep money consistent with the level of economic activity, then you are gonna have to support disbanding it (because it was formed under the premise that it could and would do just that). Greed doesn't need to be kept in check. Fraud needs to be kept in check. Greed drives progress as long as fraud is kept in check. This government seems to be doing the opposite (allowing fraud to run rampant and engaging in it on its own while trying to keep the greed in check). Oh, yeah... he is not supporting the unions... right.... democratic party... unions are the largest donors.... first rule of any investigation is follow the money.... blah, blah, blah... let's ignore the obvious because we have no "proof"... right. whatever. we substituted an administration that was selling an obvious big lie for an administration that is trying to get away with a subtle bigger lie.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
lol. had to correct myself on this one. spell checkers are funny sometimes. secularized mortgages... there is an irony somewhere in that one. securitized is what i meant, of course.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The bubble wasn't caused by "deregulation."
There were a number of factors, but I'll say this: Mortgages were financed primarily through a financial instrument known as a mortgage backed security. Who were the biggest buyers of mortgage backed securities? Foreign central banks. China, Japan, Russia.
So whatever you do, you can't blame any of the current problems on the free market. Central bankers doing a bad job at investing other people's money is not a failure of the free market.
I have a lot of skepticism that there was anything we could have done to prevent the current crisis. The real bubble wasn't in housing, the real bubble was in the foreign demand for safe US Dollar based assets. It is precisely the job of investment banks to fill demands like that. If there wasn't a housing bubble, there would have been a bubble in something else.
June 29-2009:
Dear Senator/Congressperson,
Can I depend on you to ardently advocate for, and support the president's Proposed Health Care Plan as I do?
Listed hereunder, are some points that I have outlined, which (to my mind), needs special attention.
* Ensure that SINGLE PAYER representation are at the table during these discussions.
* Ensure that all doctors in general practice are paid relatively equal, regardless of whether he/she is attending to a patient with Medicaid or Medicare insurance.
* Ensure that all patients have the option to choose their own preferred Hospital/Primary Care Physician.
* Ensure that all patients have access to Dental Care (fillings, extractions, cleaning/oral hygiene, and capping loose or missing fillings).
* Ensure that all patients have access to pain management, massage therapy, drug and substance abuse counseling, medication adherence counseling, and blood tests (including HIV Viral Load monitoring).
* Ensure access to maternity care, pre-natal care, post-natal care, pre-abortion counseling, and post abortion counseling.
* Ensure that all doctors accept all patients that are insured or not insured, as a humanitarian gesture, and not simply an emergency consultation, with a prescription issued that the patient cannot afford to fill.
FINALLY:
Health Care is not something that has to be considered, or encouraged.
Health Care is something that ALL societies in this modern era MUST provide for EVERY citizen!
Sincerely,
Please Go To congress.org
You think libraries let you plug in Webcams and install drivers and talk and record video on site?
Of course not! Libraries will, if this kind of government participation becomes actually worthwhile, will install their own webcams and set them up for easy use by their patrons. Free of charge, because that's how they roll.
Remember his promise not to hire any lobbyists? One review I found shows that 30 out of 267 nominees or appointments had been lobbyists. If that's not a lie, I don't know what is.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/sl_20090321_4967.php
He even came up with some sort of waiver policy because after he won the election, he suddenly decided that we just absolutely had to have lobbyists. Not to mention the need for tax cheats to run Treasury, a governor lax on border issues to run Homeland, an RIAA lawyer into justice, etc.
Also, if a swindle can be a lie.. let's not forget the most expensive lie in recent memory. "The stimulus will create jobs." Well, maybe. No one ever really explained how, especially when a lot of the money went to community groups and pork barrel spending (remember how he also said he'd refuse to sign bills with pork in them?). So then the official story became "the stimulus will create or retain jobs." That's not what we were sold, and it's impossible to measure.
You think libraries let you plug in Webcams and install drivers and talk and record video on site?
Of course not! Libraries will, if this kind of government participation becomes actually worthwhile, will install their own webcams and set them up for easy use by their patrons. Free of charge, because that's how they roll.
Maybe in your city. In my city, libraries get shut down because there's not enough money to keep them open and pay the teachers unions at the same time.
But I washed these underpants specially, and they even *bend*! How much fancier can you get?
This is somewhat OK, but one of your points is grossly understated and you're missing one. The 'oh the banks are greedy and everything is their fault' is a very popular line these days, and certainly they have their share of responsibility.
#0: A lot of people who can't afford expensive mortgages buy them. This happened before #1 and was, indeed, at the behest of the Federal government (both Clinton and Bush). Fur further information: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/business/19cisneros.html?scp=8&sq=federal%20housing%20clinton&st=cse. I don't know about you, but even if the Feds decide that the national rate of home ownership should be closer to 75-85% as opposed to 50% (to say nothing of why such a number should be arrived at by fiat rather than by, I don't know, what people can afford), and even if banks then begin falling all over themselves taking advantage of government policy that both enables and encourages them to begin (at best) foolish or (at worst) predatory practices, this still required buy-in from untold numbers of individual, real, human beings, who looked at their mortgage like most people look at their credit cards these days: free money! Nobody held a gun to their heads, and obviously a huge squadron of trained, pushy mortgage brokers can have a field day with a chunk of the population that suddenly has access to large dollar amounts and isn't familiar with how everything is going to work 1, 2, or 10 years from when they sign the papers -- but the idea of living according to your means isn't a new one, or even a difficult one.
#7: 'A few people default on their mortgages.'
A year ago, there were 500,000 foreclosures in the two months alone -- (source). It's interesting that you would choose a word like 'few' to play down the impact of the average, everyday joe in this equation. It's as if you feel more comfortable blaming banks and businesspeople (oh noes! they make money so they are evil!) even though you've got quite a few other facts in order here. Don't get me wrong - I'd be happy to line up some of these mortgage brokers or the execs who issued the AAA bond ratings and do terrible things to them, but the government opened the door for all of this to happen. Your description of banks issuing bad mortgages because they don't own them is not really accurate. If the banks actually had no exposure to these mortgages, then WaMu and Countrywide wouldn't have gone under. They 'chose' to give out crap mortgages because the government (via Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac) was guaranteeing quite a lot of them. If the market establishes that half of Americans can afford homes and half can't, and then somebody in Washington decides that that number should be 75%, then you are fairly rapidly entering the area where somebody is going to be issuing a mortgage to somebody who can't afford it. No bank in their right mind would do that in a free market -- and even in our market, some banks went hog-wild with the false sense of security and the thought of collecting interest from so many new mortgages, while other banks still got into the deep end but realized a little sooner that you can't wave a magic wand and cause nearly a hundred million people who previously couldn't afford a mortgage to afford one.
The Government waved that wand and so the blame in this picture is theirs in that they opened the door, but it took a lot of self-important bankers and brokers to complete the disaster. It does seem ironic that 'more government regulation' is somehow the answer.
Sincerely,
A dimwit
You're forgetting what was going on because of your list and why the politicians (from Clinton to Bush) were so reluctant to do anything to stop it. The securitization process, rightly or wrongly, allowed more people than ever to buy a house. To step out in front of the gravy train would have been political suicide. Whoever attempted to stop it would have been demonized as hating the poor. They also would have lost their lobby money from the housing industry. A double whammy.
There is actually a crazy guy on YouTube who continued posting videos even while he was homeless.
Ok, this is such simple economics that the fact that most of the people are not getting is almost sad. The fact the media is reporting what they are told without a modicum of analysis is even sadder. It's a complete bankruptcy of main stream media as an institution, as far as I am concerned. It's just too simple to get it so wrong.
There is a certain level of economic activity at any one time. Let's call it X(t) (t is the variable indicating the point in time). Economic activity is based on exchange. It requires tokens that are used to negotiate exchange. Those tokens are called "money". Let's call the number of tokens in circulation at time t, M(t). Let's say some time passes. Let's say that time is d (short for delta). The economic activity is now X(t+d).
If M(t+d)=M(t)*X(t+d)/X(t), then you have equilibrium. If M(t+d)>M(t)*X(t+d)/X(t), you get inflation (because M(t+d)/X(t+d)>M(t)/X(t)). How is it that the entire population of COMMUNICATION MAJORS cannot communicate this is beyond me. Let's not pretend that this is high math either -- this is grade 7 (or grade 6 if you actually bother to study in school). Now, once inflationary condition exists (ie, M(t+d)/X(t+d)>M(t)/X(t)), the prices of SOME products will go up.
By keeping the interest rate too low, the FED made borrowing too cheap and thereby created the inflationary condition. So why did the general price levels stayed flat while housing went up? Because the money was pushed in the direction of the housing industry. How do you do that? By lending money to those who cannot afford the mortgages. Why would banks engage in such self-destructive behavior? Did they lack foresight? No. They know how to mind the money. They were penalized for not lending to "low income borrowers". To avoid the penalties they had to invent new types of mortgages that were much riskier (that's what lending to those who can't afford it means -- taking higher risk). Of course, they knew that those mortgages were risky and didn't want to keep them on the books. So they sold them off in bonds. Mind you, selling mortgages off in bonds is nothing new. But if someone just forced you to buy junk and you have a store which sells stuff, you'll try to sell off that junk in your store.... apparently that makes you evil and greedy... I am not sure why. It seems to me that those who forced you to buy that junk are the ones at fault.
All the arguments that only a small percentage of mortgages were made to low income borrowers are incredibly deceptive. In general having a 5% shortage creates a 20% or higher jump in price. So as more and more new people entered the housing market, the prices went up faster than the number of people in the market.
Anyone who thinks that FED was not intentionally creating an inflationary policy is either lying or clueless. I remember how as far back as 2002 it was clear that the government was already lending money at a rate lower than the rate at which it was investing it. So it was already investing money at a loss just to keep this lending spree going.
It was done to postpone a recession. A recession which was supposed to happen after the dot com bust and never did. Anyone who was around technology in the 90's should remember that everyone talked about analogy of 7 years of biblical famine that were supposed to happen after the dot com bubble would finally burst. But it never happened. Why? Because the government tried to put it off by creating the housing bubble. And now they are desperately trying to blame middlemen for doing essentially what they are supposed to be doing. With all kinds of nonsense stories about excessively high salaries on Wall Street, etc. As if that's new. The creation and the burst of this bubble is squarely on the shoulder of those who tried to do economic planing -- to "ease the pain of the poor".
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Yea, and it would have been horrible if Bush had been demonized for anything. I mean, imagine if the American public hadn't liked his policies!
Bush and Clinton both pushed the absolutely corrosive 'home ownership investment' meme that is still floating around and is absolutely idiotic. Investing in houses is like investing in cars...if you have a lot of money, it might be a good idea to buy ones other than the one you use, refurbish and store them, and then sell them when the price goes up. Or Ming vases, or expensive art, or whatever.
It is, however, completely idiotic to pretend your actual home, or your actual car, is an investment. It is not. It is a purchase, one you can probably resell for roughly the same amount of money, but that's not an investment. Only in crazy-land does the value of houses necessarily increase. (The value of housing, relative to average income, has stayed roughly the same throughout human history, varying only slightly usually with advances in technology or new frontier. It has never just randomly risen and kept rising.)
That said, Clinton's push arguably made sense to push more people who could buy houses to buy houses. It's only when we got into 2002 or so and people who could not buy houses started buying houses because banks had invented loans to disguise the cost. (And, as the laws of supply and demand dictate, as demand went up, so did the cost.)
Which was not the 'fault' of Bush except in the general deregulation environment he'd set up, but where he actually should have stepped in was the whole 'massive reselling of loans so that originating banks no longer held the fucking risk, which gave them no inventive to actually make good loans', which is what blew everything up.
Stopping that would have stopped banks from making loans they suspected wouldn't get paid off. In fact, the #1 way to stop this from every happening again is to forbid, by law, banks making home loans (Or any sort of loans) that they intend to resell. Because that gives them a profit incentive to make dubious loans.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Truth! The White House is steadily becoming an irrelevant position it seems. Advisers, cabinet members, the legislature, and the supreme court make all of the real policy. The presidency is quickly becoming just a media figurehead to represent the policies of the U.S.
Sad really...
Wish I had mod points for this one. +1!
The nice thing about text comments is they can easily be written and read by the blind or the deaf. A system that allows only video/audio comments is immediately inaccessible to a significant portion of the population. See the Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508_of_the_Rehabilitation_Act
I'm with you on pretty much the whole post though I am concerned about Toyota as they locate in states where unions are nearly non-existent and impossible to start. (Looking at you, SC!) I hate seeing the death of unions in this country ...
Assuming one might convince people to care about the tenth amendment, it wouldn't be long before the 28th amendment was passed. They all ignore the tenth amendment on a regular basis, so I can't imagine anything but bipartisan support for repealing it, aside from having to put into words that they are repealing a portion of the bill of rights.
That's kind of the whole idea behind the idea that you have to support other people's rights even when you do not agree with them because if you don't then you'll eventually lose yours. Sure, violating a basic principle in just a few specific cases may not be the end of the world, but eventually there's a point at which a majority of people have an interest in one of those violations, at which point you'll never again see widespread support for that principle since too many people are enjoying its violation.
So, yes, that 20 to 30 seconds will get you absolutely nowhere. Congress has no interest in supporting the tenth amendment, the states have no interest in forcing them to do so, and the people don't care because, given a chance to draft a new constitution, few people would bother with renewing the tenth amendment anyway.
In fact, there's a fun thing Obama can do. Start an online discussion, google moderator style, about what the bill of rights should say if it were to be rewritten. I guarantee you that the tenth amendment would be replaced with "a man shalt not lie with another man" and the ninth would probably be replaced with something to protect the rights of Mother Earth. In fact, I'd be surprised if any of the current amendments, aside from a less ambiguous version of the right to bear arms, managed to make it onto the list. Everyone would be so concerned with what new laws they want that they wouldn't bother to preserve what we already have. ...and basically, that's our whole problem.
We're a species that has just recently evolved the ability to create large societies and so we're not very good at it. We can just barely understand how to make it work. By random chance, some of us are better at it than others, but the majority suck at it, and so a simple majority in favor of the wrong idea isn't difficult to come by. We might be better off if any law whatsoever required 90% approval to pass.
Oh, and the biggest hypocrisy of all is the attempt to blame the banking industry for the bubble created by Fannie Mae regulation. Yes, yes, I know... greed. It's new. They are trying greed for the first time. Before that there was none of it happening. The fact that Fannie Mae regulation REQUIRED banks to loan to less eligible borrows thus increasing the banks' exposure to risk is somehow swept under the rug. The fact that FED completely failed in its mission to keep monetary supply consistent with the level of economic activity is somehow conveniently overlooked when discussing what created the bubble. It was greed, greed, greed.... repeat after me... louder now!
Biggest crock of shit I have ever heard.
#1) Fannie and Freddie don't require banks to do anything. They only re-purchase loans that banks have already granted.
#2) At the height of the housing boom (2006), Fannie and Freddie held a mere 24% of the sub-prime lending market... banks themselves held the other 76%.
#3) Until just recently, Fannie and Freddie had failure rates of < 1% of their loans, i.e. the vast majority of their loans were being paid on-time. The recent increase in failures (up to near 3% now) is because the prime market (the majority of their loan portfolio) is suffering.
#4) Until just recently, Fannie and Freddie had loan losses of just $11B... they needed help because they are not required to hold as much capital in reserve as normal banks and thus did not have the necessary capital to absorb even such a small loss.
You want greed, you need to look at who held all the credit default swaps (CDS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDO), which is just a method to gamble on the future of the economy and falsely claim that it lowers overall risk. You'll find that commercial banks and reinsurance companies (AIG) held them all, despite repeated warnings from economists, academics, and intelligent investors such as Warren Buffet.
I checked out some of the video responses. The OP's description of the collection as "a mixed-bag, including a one-finger salute, a talking butt, a woman 'Showing my Apples', and other off-topic rants and unrelated videos" neglects to acknowledge that there ARE legitimate responses. That description also seems to suggest that the Obama administration is to blame for losers and sociopaths on YouTube (I always wondered who let them in!). If they were allowing text-based comments, they would probably be expected to read every last one of them. I'm guessing there would be a lot of them, and I wouldn't expect the quality of the responses to take a sudden leap when they only require half a second of forethought. It seems at some point that this turned into a discussion of dishonesty in the Obama administration. I don't see how that applies here. They're not exactly "pulling a fast one on us" by disabling comments. Most people would catch on when they try to reply and the form isn't there.
Welcome to Slashdot. Replace this text with your desired signature before replying to a story.
You do realize that the claim of "greed" is made against those reselling the mortgages. Those holding them weren't acting greedy -- just plain dumb.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
They 'chose' to give out crap mortgages because the government (via Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac) was guaranteeing quite a lot of them.
Yet somehow, the majority of Fannie and Freddie Mac loans are PRIME loans. Somehow, Fannie and Freddie Mac have suffered the least loses of any major mortgage holder. Somehow, Fannie and Freddie Mac are doing just fine, while major banking institutions have outright failed, while major re-insurers have required hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts.
Fannie and Freddie Mac did not purchase crappy mortgages. Plain and simple. At the height of the boom in 2006, they only held 24% of the subprime market... and that 24% was a small portion (< 10%) of their overall loan portfolio.
Fannie and Freddie Mac bought *some* subprime loans, but commercial banks bought and traded far more.
Both greedy and dumb. They resold many mortgages as well as holding many also. They needed the fraud to go on as long as possible so they could continue to make money.
Every major banker KNEW that the market would collapse, but they GAMBLED on the timing so they could make more money. JP Morgan is actually the only major bank to divest itself of most of its subprime loans (in Jan. 2007) and successfully play the timing game. The rest were too greedy to get out in time.
you're very confused. lunch is almost over, so just a few things.
the fed explicitly, intentionally creates an "inflationary condition", and always has. they're very clear on this point, and it's not an inherently bad thing. nobody disputes this. the question is over rates of inflation.
banks were not required to participate in CRA-fueled loans. plenty didn't, and still did quite well. further, CRA was explicitly designed to not require "new types of mortgages" - those grew up quite independent of CRA. you've demonstrated no link.
selling turd bricks doesn't make you "evil and greedy" - but selling turd bricks painted in gold while claiming that they're 24k solid might.
we did, in fact, have a substantial recession after the tech bubble. on paper, it lasted (i think) three quarters, but in the industries where the boom happened it was much longer (we don't have reliable numbers on industry-by-industry recessions).
your conclusion seems very much predicated on CRA being the cause of the housing bubble, or maybe setting interest rates wrong. there is no credible basis for either belief. i'd love to see a citation.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
more confusion. mortgages are not financed by mortgage-backed securities, at least not until pretty late on. instead, those provided the drive (in the form of appeal to greed) to write more and more mortgages, regardless of risk.
also, who the customers are doesn't really matter. the fact is that deregulation allowed financial houses to do this more and more. everyone involved was participating in open market operations. the fact that enough of the mortgage-backed securities were not in the hands of central banks can be trivially observed by the scope of the fallout we've seen since late 2008.
the logic of your argument (aside from factual errors) is predicated on the idea that "free market" is an absolute: you either have a perfectly free market, or there's no blame to be aimed at free market principles. that's a cop-out, and, more importantly, is entirely useless in policy discussions for dealing with the current issues.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
right, the early '80s, when we began a concerted effort to dismantle financial regulation that provided a very stable economy since the end of the Great Depression based on the ascendency of people with a religious devotion to simplistic Free Market ideas. the dismantling has been incremental, but began then and has continued (regardless of which party is in which seats) since.
greed doesn't drive progress, certainly not inherently and certainly not sustainably. i feel like i'm hearing '80s era "greed is good" rallying cries all over again. didn't we learn anything? greed drives short-term paper gains, but is not about production, and therefore not about sustainability or real growth. the dramatic unraveling we've seen over the last year of the greed-based paper gains over the preceding two decades or so has been amazingly illustrative.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
I wouldn't recommend sending in your 'true' opinion by video.
Search for "An open letter to Obama"
I don't know about you but I don't feel very comfortable with where our country is going. Do you really consider yourself too stupid to make your own decisions? Get the Federal Government OUT of your personal lives! Get active and get our system fixed to the way it was designed, not this bastardized socialist garbage that's ruining us.
I don't know what Obama's handler's name is but they should definitely call him Skippy, 'cause he's so smooooooth!
Amazing how people fall all over themselves when exposed to such eloquent excrement.
Man, I've lowered my standard for the kinds of people I respond to. Usually the ad hominems that include "learn to", "obviously", "think about it", etc. are precisely where I walk away from the conversation. The problem with this one is that otherwise reasonable people get excited enough that they step away from the rules of polite debate. I'll respond to you despite the "you are confused" vitriol. But honestly, my patience with these is wearing thin despite the fact that I am willing to give some leeway for the emotionally charged nature of this topic.
I didn't say that it was the rates or CRA. I said that the inflation was caused by lowered rates. And that is indisputable. Again, the rates were kept so artificially low that the government was (for a brief period of time) forced to lend at a loss. What the CRA did was make sure that the excess capital was soaked up by the housing industry and that the inflation would occur in that industry and not effect the rest of the economy. http://www.businessinsider.com/sorry-folks-the-cra-really-did-require-crap-lending-standards-2009-6 outlines the premise. And the Q&A afterwards address a number of one-variable arguments that this assertion causes.
As for "turd bricks" comment, "ticking bombs" is more appropriate, but more to the point, I have no problems with putting people who work for the rating agencies in jails for a very, very long time. They seem to be guilty of fraud. So does Kramer & Co., but it looks like the fraudsters are the ones who are not called out at all. I did mention in some of the previous comments that I think the current mood is the opposite of what is right -- ignore the fraud and punish the greed. While greed is perfectly fine if its moderated by strong punishment for fraud.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I believe this is the best write-up of the financial disaster I have ever read.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
As for your continued claim that "ideal monetary supply" is impossible. Well, duh! That's part of the point! The reason FED chair is appointed for such a long term is that he is supposed to be immune from political influence. So that his decisions would be based solely on an attempt to create a fiat currency that is as close as possible in availability as is needed by the current level of economic activity. This is done under the assumption that this careful planning can be as efficient as the commodity-backed negotiated currency but without influence by private interests. Naturally, you realize that such assumption is ludicrous in today's world. FED is heavily politicized and uses economic policy as the key to setting the rate rather than economic activity. Bubbles are much more limited with real money because one can't simply double the supply of a precious metal (for example). As for the "no one disputes" that inflationary policy is a good thing, that's just not true. The view that inflation is a form of taxation is becoming more and more prevalent.
Three quarters is not a recession adequate to correct for the scale of the dot com bubble. The myth that the business cycle is a cycle might be where the misunderstanding stems from. It's more of a e^(tx)sin(t) than sin(t) curve. With the e^(tx) peaks happening every time a new technology is introduced into the economy. The recession is supposed to get more severe if no new techs are introduced. And recovery is supposed to be very mild (because the uptick in the graph is too small). No major technological breakthroughs happened in the early 2k. The only thing that got economic activity going was the housing construction. Which of course had to crash in a major way because housing is not a new economic sector -- it doesn't stimulate further development of other techs and sectors.
Lastly, it's impossible to talk about causes without being wrong. It's only possible to talk about contributing influences. Because just as every action has multiple consequences, every event has multiple necessary contributing influences. Without acknowledging this, one can discredit every influencing factor as irrelevant. The litmus test for whether something may be a contributing influence or not is whether or not it was present before the event was set in motion. Were banks always greedy? Yes. Did rating agencies always lie? No. Was CRA heavily enforced in the 90's? No. Were banks always repackaging mortgages into bonds? Yes. Was FED rate lower before the bubble? No. The No's have a chance of contributing. The Yes's do not. The often repeated claim of lowered regulation may or may not be true. I am not certain, because I've also read the claim that Bush increased employment at regulatory agencies by 70% under the Republican Congress (the first 6 years). That doesn't seem like lower regulation. But, of course, it's a matter of what those regulators were doing. I can't say. But any blank statement that regulation was lowered better not originate from the same source as the one that discusses celebrities' breeding habits.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
That's not greed. That's trading. Holding volatile trading instruments is a normal part of trading. It's just how it's done. Those who assign blame for a disaster on normal behavior almost certainly are diverting attention from the actual causes of the disaster.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I have to admit I got a good chuckle about secularized mortgages, which thankfully can be defined.
secularized mortgage (n): A mortgage where the solvency and rating of said mortgage doesn't depend on pure faith that home prices will continue to rise.
In other words, they'd be a great idea.
I am officially gone from
That's not greed. That's trading. Holding volatile trading instruments is a normal part of trading. It's just how it's done. Those who assign blame for a disaster on normal behavior almost certainly are diverting attention from the actual causes of the disaster.
That is greed. Trading just happens to be a greed based occupation. Yes, holding volatile trading instruments *is* a part of trading, but falsifying the inherent risk on those instruments is *not*. Had the true risk been shown, banks would have had a hard time justifying immense subprime mortgage portfolios to their shareholders (not to mention the credit rating agencies).
Also, issuing reinsurance that is hundreds of multiples beyond your ability to repay those instruments is the likely epicenter of this disaster. The deregulation and lack of visibility/oversight around the secondary mortgage market (especially CDOs) are the most likely culprits.
Ok, this is such simple economics that the fact that most of the people are not getting is almost sad..
How is it that the entire population of COMMUNICATION MAJORS cannot communicate this is beyond me. Let's not pretend that this is high math either -- this is grade 7 (or grade 6 if you actually bother to study in school).
Anyone who thinks that FED was not intentionally creating an inflationary policy is either lying or clueless.
You are also clearly wrong when you said this:
The fact that Fannie Mae regulation REQUIRED banks to loan to less eligible borrows thus increasing the banks' exposure to risk is somehow swept under the rug.
And this:
Oh, and the biggest hypocrisy of all is the attempt to blame the banking industry for the bubble created by Fannie Mae regulation.
All your Fannie and Freddie talk can only lead to one conculsion, the CRA, aka the bill that created them.
I didn't say that it was the rates or CRA. I said that the inflation was caused by lowered rates.
Except you clearly did blame the CRA (aka Fannie and Freddie) for creating the bubble (see bolded portion of quote).
And one last contradiction:
Greed doesn't need to be kept in check. Fraud needs to be kept in check.
Followed by:
While greed is perfectly fine if its moderated by strong punishment for fraud.
So which is it? Moderated greed or greed doesn't need to be kept in check? You ARE clearly confused.
Not sure what had the "risk been shown" means. But as long as the rating agencies knew the rough amount of rotating balance of such instruments that any one bank had on hand, it became the rating agencies' job to calculate their own VAR. The fact that the rating agencies failed hardly makes it the banks' fault.
And I really don't know what "greed based occupation" means. I can assure you that the most poor people I know are much greedier than most rich people I know. That is if we are talking about greed as an emotion. But all a trader does is try to get as close as possible to being a market maker. Sometimes they end up holding, but in trading, the more you hold on hand the worse you are doing. They need to be flipping as soon as they can.
This repeated phrase "deregulation" sound pretty hollow at this point. I call bull shit. Anyone who wants to say "deregulation" has to say what specifically they are talking about. Which regulatory practices were abandoned and at what point in time. Otherwise, this statement is just repeated as a religious dogma.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I was half ready to head over there myself and make a video about the mental health care that the moderators on Slashdot need.
But the videos are too useful to the insurance companies, who will use them to diagnose conditions like MS, Parkinson's, diseases whose symptoms include jaundice, and other signs of serious illness or injury that are visually detectable so that they can deny you coverage under the new, improved "A public health option is off the table!" system.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
There is one very simple way to fix all of this, but you probably hate the idea:
Drop the insurance model entirely. The government pays for all medical care. It just pays. Not via insurance. Procedures have prices set by medical boards, and the government sends hospitals and doctors checks for that amount for doing them.
Actually, that's exactly what I would most like to see happen. (It could fit in a 30 second video too.) I just can't imagine our politicians discovering that that is the best thing to do, let alone implementing it without fucking it up for their own personal agendas. The republicans will complain that it's anti-business and doesn't allow people to choose their own coverage and the democrats will be upset that it doesn't do anything to protect the enviroment. (It seems like that is the only thing that democrats can motivate themselves about anymore.)
There's room for debate about what should be covered and how costs will be controlled, but when it comes to whether or not it should be automatic coverage for everyone paid from general taxes, it's just completely obvious that it should be. Everyone wants coverage, so we wouldn't be forcing anyone to pay for something they don't want, and insurance is about people with equal risk agreeing to pay eachother's bills, and if everyone has insurance from conception, then everyone starts with the same risk, and so paying everything directly from taxes makes sense. The only thing there is to debate is how to decide how much to pay for particular services, since we'd have to account for the fact that we're removing what little influence the free market had to begin with, but it's clear that total coverage for everyone is the best way to go.
I don't usually agree with libertarians, but since I can't really imagine our politicians seeing the light, I just think that something really simple they might be able to do without fucking it up is to make the cost of healthcare more transparent to people so that the free market can have some room to work. The current method of "we'll help you now without talking about money and in a month we'll send you a bill for whatever we decide to charge you" isn't the way to inexpensive health care. Like I said before with the $300 oral surgery example: You can get a good price if you look around for it right now. Just imagine how that would change if requiring everyone to mention costs up-front caused everyone to compare prices.
There is really no good reason why basic health care needs to be unaffordable without insurace. Sure, some things have to be expensive -- someone has to pay for that $1 million MRI machine -- but a lot of basic things are only expensive due to lack of competition.
Like the pharmacy that charges $10 for generic prescriptions regardless of which drug and pill count. Why charge less than $10 when insurance isn't going to care since the patient has a $10 co-pay anyway, and people will be so happy that it is only $10 they won't even consider the fact that they might be getting a dollar's worth of pills. When Wal-Mart shook things up by advertising their $4 prescriptions, Meijer decided to compete with that by offering certain very inexpensive prescriptions free of charge. One of my friends got one of those because his doctor told him that what he was getting was free at Meijer. It's amazing what a little competition can do.
I really don't see how a lot of people, you included, think that people get more medical treatment than they need thanks to insurance.
My own personal experience, actually. Like I was saying with the story about my visits to the E.R.:
The first time I went, I was expecting $300 or so (a figure a friend once mentioned about someone else's ER visit). If they would have told me right then that they'd rack up $1200 over several hours of doing very little, I would have just sat in the waiting room for a while to see what happens, being content to be near the hospital in case th
There are secession movements in Texas and Vermont, which intend to do just that.
That's interesting. I looked into both. The Vermont movement seems somewhat misguided. There are plenty of good reasons to seperate from the union, but the ones they state aren't all that convincing, and some of them are just enviromental nonsense and libertarian pornography. Still beats Texas, however, whose web page appears to be a sort of blog with no useful content whatsoever. No introduction, no index of content, just a bunch of seemingly only vaguely relevent blog entries.
The Vermont site linked to an article about a poll that shows that 20% of people in every state are in favor of their home state seperating from the union, or, well they were last year, but I can't imagine the number is any lower now. Once this CO2 law takes effect and no one can afford to heat their homes, I suspect it won't be long before that number reaches the 2/3 majority Vermont is looking for.
It really needs to happen. I can't recall the last time congress passed a useful law, save a few the current administration created to undo the damage from the last. ...and really, I'm not sure what it possibly could do that states can't do for themselves just as well. The euro is proof that independant nations can share common currency. Canada is proof that a passport isn't required to travel between different countries. As for disaster relief, countries help eachother out all the time. The only thing I can think of that we would lose is the money they create out of thin air when the money they're taking from the citizens of the states isn't sufficient, and it isn't as if we don't need to put an end to that anyway.
I'm going to have to do some research into why the original colonies felt the need to create a federal government in the first place. All I can recall is something about providing for the general welfare. I sure hope they didn't form a union with no idea what its purpose should be.
Well, let's see...
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The only part of that that sounds like a real reason is "provide for the common defence." The rest just sounds like a bunch of happy words.
So far the only insight I can find is in Wikipedia's article about the articles of confederation, which lists a few vague reasons for why the constitution was written to replace the articles of confederation. Apparently the states were fighting with eachother because one state would do something another state didn't like, and so they consequently decided they needed some way for the majority to tell the minority what to do.
Comically enough, I would have said that's all the federal government is good for. Do you want a certain law in another state, but the people of that state don't want it? Just get the other states together and say "we want this law, and there's more of us than there are of you, so what we want matters more than what the people who actually live in your state want." It works even if it's your home state that doesn't want the law. Just go tell on them to the federal government and they'll take care of it for you.
I think we can do without that.
You're right, EKG isn't complicated at all. I once built a rather simple one that used my computer as a display device. With that approach, I'm sure one could simply be a $100 USB device which works with a PC application and prints a permanent record from there, or just stores it electronically. Certainly that would reduce the per-patient cost to less than $1, plus the cost of those disposable electrodes, which is kind of up there as well. They really should just wash and sterilize reusable electrodes, but since doctors can charge whatever they like since no one asks about costs up-front, it's simply easier to use disposable electrodes and bill them to the patient. I looked into buying some for myself. In the end I just soldered some wires to coins and added some shampoo for conductivity and it worked well enought that I could see all of the details that doctors are interested in.
I do think you're right, that if it were all properly managed, waste due to overuse wouldn't really be a problem. Even though the two times I went to the hospital resulted in $2000 of expenses, nothing much really happened in either visit, and I really don't think it should have been more than $200. Both visits included very little face time with people, old technology like EKG and x-rays, generic medications, and there were a few blood tests, but I assume they were the "add three drops of this, stir, and see if it turns blue" type of test. ...and in both cases I think I would have been out of there with a lot less expense had a doctor simply asked a few more questions and said "this seems like nothing, but I can look into it further if you like," as both visits were more "I don't know what's happening" and less "I think something bad is happening."
I suppose they have to pay for the new hospital one way or another. I always get a kick out of how almost every business I visit is so much more wealthy than I am, like how Wal-Mart is covered with HDTVs that no one watches even though the average Wal-Mart customer cannot afford even one of those TVs. That new hospital, however, it really takes the cake. There are a couple of photos at the bottom of this page: http://www.reidhospital.org/about_reid/brief_history_of_reid/index.html
So, I agree, overuse wouldn't be a problem if it all weren't for the near-total lack of cost-control measures. There really isn't a good reason why anyone shouldn't be able to get an EKG for any minor chest pain they have because it really shouldn't cost that much anyway. I'm sure the machines sit idle most of the time anyway.