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Nothing To Fear But Fearlessness Itself?
theodp writes "In a post last August, Robert X. Cringely voiced fears that Goldman Sachs and others were not so much evil as 'clueless about the implications of their work,' leaving it up to the government to fix any mess they leave behind. 'But what if government runs out of options,' worried Cringely. 'Our economic policy doesn't imagine it, nor does our foreign policy, because superpowers don't acknowledge weakness.' And now his fears are echoed in a WSJ opinion piece by Peggy Noonan titled 'We're Governed by Callous Children.' She writes, 'We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists — they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened. They don't even notice.' With apologies to FDR, do we have nothing to fear but fearlessness itself?"
I've recently read on another forum that California is also hampered by a large negative balance of payment between it and the federal government
"Last year, Californians sent nearly $20 billion more to Washington in federal taxes than the state received back in federal spending. The state’s 1998 deficit of $19.4 billion marked the largest such imbalance for any single state in the history of the nation, eclipsing the previous record of $14.3 billion, set also by California in 1997"
So it seems California is bankrolling the federal level even while going bankrupt itself.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
It's funny how that didn't happen in the 1800s. We had all kinds of parties in Congress, like the Anti Masonic, Nullifier, Whig, Conservative, Law and Order, American, Free Soil, Greenback, Labor, Populist, Liberal Republican, and so on.
Today's Congress has none of them. Not one. What's changed? The Lie. "Don't vote third party," is the lie. Third parties won seats in Congress in the past and most-certainly can win seats today.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
As the context is discussion of the Republican Party, I mean the American definition of "social conservative". Mostly the "religious nuts" you mention: anti-feminist, pro-death-penalty, against the teaching of evolution, against sex education in the schools, against legal recognition of same-sex marriages, supporting censorship of "indecent" material, and usually in favor of state establishment of religion as long as it's Christianity. The old "Moral Majority" and the "Christian Coalition" would be the exemplars.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
America is a Republic. So No to the first question.
In the second question you seem to miss the Electoral College in both fact and concept. The President is elected by a group that may vote as they please (not necessarily as they were expected to vote by those that elected them). This non direct coupling applies to all levels of government --once elected they may chose to do things much differently then you believed they would when you voted for them. So a yes as to vote, but at best a maybe on 'does who I voted for actually do as I expected him/her to, once in office' --the implied part of the second question.
These sort of yes/no questions are rarely productive, except to frame the answer in a way the questioner wants.
Example: "Have you stopped beating your wife? Answer yes or no. --either way you answer you confess to being a wife beater.
For most people political issues ARE emotional issues. This is possibly regrettable, but one should learn to deal with reality, if you want to change that reality into your own personal version.
If Sarah Palin is both a nitwit, and smarter then most people, then is she not of above average intelligence and therefore as qualified as anyone (and apparently more qualified then most) to have an opine? Just asking --it's rhetorical --and intentionally side steps Palin's actual value or lack thereof.
And here is the 1999 New York Times article matter-of-factly reporting on Fannie Mae easing credit to aid mortgage lending:
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
And who controlled congress during the Bush spending spree before the Democrats took over congress? Who controlled congress during the reductions in deficit in the 50s-80s? It's right here. The Democrats controlled both branches of congress right up until Reagan took the presidency and the Republicans took the senate. You can't have it both ways: you can't blame the president when it was Bush in the white house and then blame the Republicans in congress when it was Clinton who was president.
But, since you trotted out the same argument you always hear, here is the data that shows that on average, the deficit is reduced under democratic control of congress as well as under democratic presidents. The correlation just isn't as strong. The bottom line is that, statistically, Democratic party governments do a better job at reducing the deficit!
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Because it did. This was the inevitable result of upping the FDIC insurance to an unwarranted 100k back in the early 80s, Greenspan's incompetent policy of being easy in good times and even easier in terrible times. Combined with tax rates on short term investments which are and were far too low to discourage irresponsible short term trading.
Not to mention policies in place which coddle and encourage incompetent business practices to flourish without the need to worry about failing.
Or in other words, if you look at all those things, it's not really too hard to see where business was having it's say. I'm not sure how anybody could seriously suggest that it's anybody else but leaders of industry that were pushing the hardest for those ill conceived ideas to be put into practice and throwing a hissy fit if the Fed even hinted that interest rates might go back where they belong.
"How is it that, with such easy access to information, people still think the crash had anything to do with business? "
More right wing lies.
As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.
Commentators say that's what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They've specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie's and Freddie's financial problems.
Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren't true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.
Subprime lending offered high-cost loans to the weakest borrowers during the housing boom that lasted from 2001 to 2007. Subprime lending was at its height vrom 2004 to 2006.
Federal Reserve Board data show that:
_ More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.
_ Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.
_ Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics.
In Slate, Daniel Gross, senior editor of Newsweek, lays out the right wing mantra on the financial crisis:
http://www.slate.com/id/2201641
On the Republican side of Congress, in the right-wing financial media (which is to say the financial media), and in certain parts of the op-ed-o-sphere, there's a consensus emerging that the whole mess should be laid at the feet of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the failed mortgage giants, and the Community Reinvestment Act, a law passed during the Carter administration. The CRA, which was amended in the 1990s and this decade, requires banks—which had a long, distinguished history of not making loans to minorities—to make more efforts to do so.
The thesis is laid out almost daily on the Wall Street Journal editorial page, in the National Review, and on the campaign trail. John McCain said yesterday, "Bad mortgages were being backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it was only a matter of time before a contagion of unsustainable debt began to spread." Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer provides an excellent example, writing that "much of this crisis was brought upon us by the good intentions of good people." He continues: "For decades, starting with Jimmy Carter's Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, there has been bipartisan agreement to use government power to expand homeownership to people who had been shut out for economic reasons or, sometimes, because of racial and ethnic discrimination. What could be a more worthy cause? But it led to tremendous pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—which in turn pressured banks and other lenders—to extend mortgages to people who were borrowing over their heads. That's called subprime lending. It lies at the root of our current calamity." The subtext: If only Congress didn't force banks to lend money to poor minorities, the Dow would be well on its way to 36,000. Or, as Fox Business Channel's Neil Cavuto put it, "I don't remember a clarion call that said: Fannie and Freddie are a disaster. Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster."
* * * * * * * *
The Community Reinvestment Act applies to depository banks. But many of the institutions that spurred the massive growth of the subprime market weren't regulated banks. They were outfits such as Argent and American Home Mortgage, which were generally not regulated by the Federal Reserve or other entities that monitored compliance with CRA. These institutions worked hand in glo
This crisis could have been prevented in 2005, via Republican-led
If only Republicans had controlled Congress and the White House in 2005.
No. First, the top 5 percent own more than half -- i.e., the majority -- of all wealth. Second, most of those stocks in middle-class retirement funds are not owned by those middle-class people, they're owned by the Wall Street financial services corporations, and so are controlled by the boards of those corporations. The account holders are customers, not owners.
Uh, no. The resources used for economic production -- land, natural resources, factories, money, ideas (copyrights and patents) -- all are privately owned and controlled.
I'm not "whining" about anything, I'm pointing out that a system of centralized power is good for those who have the power, and not for the rest of us.
But several things are stopping me from being ultra-rich. First, I cannot afford to waste my time collecting dollars: I have little desire to be rich. (Prosperous, yes, of course.) But more than that, as a person of strong ethical character I see few ways to accumulate large amounts of wealth that don't involve unethical behavior. Finally, to become rich in our society it's pretty much necessary to start that way -- the U.S. has very poor intergenerational class mobility.
What trouble? They provide no labor. They take some risk of not getting their money back, but so do people at the blackjack table. We don't consider them virtuous.
And they take more than a cut: in our capitalist system, the majority of the value created by labor is skimmed off by the investment class.
The U.S. GDP is about $14 trillion. Our workforce is about 150 million people. The average American worker creates about $93,000 worth of value a year. Do they receive a salary that reflects that? Nope. Most of that amount goes to interest, dividends, and rents paid to various investors, people who didn't do the work but reap the benefit -- and most of it goes to the aristocracy.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood