Official — Economic Crash Not Computers' Fault

itwbennett writes "A 2-year government investigation has found what we pretty much all knew to be true: High speed trading systems were not the cause of the 2008 economic crash. 'The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire,' according to a leaked copy of the report's conclusions revealed in the New York Times."

Comments

Funny

[burtosis]

That's just what my computer model said too...

Economic Collapse due to Class War

[spun]

The rich are waging class war against the rest of us, and transferring wealth from the average person to themselves through fraud and coercion.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[burtosis]

Never assign malice when simple greed and stupidity will do.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[Schadrach]

Err, isn't that what OP was doing? Assuming simple greed?

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[royallthefourth]

What's more, our institutions are arranged in such a way that this is the natural outcome. The state has colluded with business since the beginning of the United States; this is how the colony projects were formed. George Washington was the richest man on the continent at the time of the revolution. It is only natural that he (and others like him) set up a system that makes sense from their perspective.

At one point or another, the common man needs to set up a state that works for his interests. Eventually working Americans will grow tired of working to enrich others while they suffer from illiteracy and treatable diseases. They will seize control of the state and industrial structures and finally determine their own future.
The biggest questions are when this will occur and will they have a plan for what to do after it happens, or will it succumb to demagoguery?

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[spun]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[martas]

Of course they are. Nash equilibrium, dude -- remember that "they" don't act according to a single will, they compete with each other. It's a "tragedy of the commons" situation, where "they" will suck "us" dry until there's nothing left to suck, and then everything will collapse. Though that's probably not so bad for "them" -- I'm sure Shanghai ain't such a bad place to live, if you have the money.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[spun]

To set up a state that protects the interests of the common man, he would need to rebel violently, because the current owning class will not give up their privilege easily. Violent rebellions almost always lead to tyranny, as the most ruthless are best able to take advantage of the chaos of violent rebellion. For example, see every single violent revolution except ours.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[Hatta]

Greed is malice.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[roman_mir]

Well yes, and all of those rich people who are doing that, they are found in Washington DC.

The class warfare is one of the last attempts of a failed government, that has spent everything it could and couldn't, to divert attention from themselves. When an empire falls apart it starts class warfare, and its started by the government, who divert the attention from themselves.

Without government creating monopolies, there wouldn't be such huge disparities and differences between the 'rich' and the 'poor' (and by the way, the 'poor' in USA are not the same as 'poor' in Bangladesh.)

The monopolies that government creates end up enriching some people beyond believe, while destroying the competition and market and driving capital and jobs away, all while the government is getting bigger and bigger, promising to spend ever more, much more than the economy has to provide.

Eventually the government's only 'solution' is to PRINT and BORROW and as long as they can borrow they will, but they will absolutely not stop printing until it's Zimbabwe.

Don't be fooled, gov't is destroying your life, it is destroying your money, it is destroying your ability to buy anything, it is taking away your food and energy by printing the money and creating all the inflation in the middle of a financial crisis that is structural in nature and the government has structured it.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[royallthefourth]

If you are suggesting that the United States hasn't caused incredible brutality, you are quite wrong. If any African slaves were still around, they would tell you so. The Indians can certainly still testify to it, and might do so here, if they had running water and consistent electricity on the reservation. Pro-business dictators in Latin America and the Middle East (installed by the United States) have caused more suffering than the worst of Stalin's purges.

Even so, modern day communists still seek to avoid the failings of someone like Stalin while building upon his successes. Liberal democracy makes no such attempts; it's just business as usual for centuries.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

Arguably, if that greed is causing an economic collapse, it's stupidity, too.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[Hatta]

Indeed. Consider this. The economic losses to banks alone from the Financial crisis are estimated at 4 trillion. Total property crime in 2009 adds up to 15 billion

That's less than half a percent! When you look at it this way, it's not disproportionate to suggest that the entire law enforcement budget of the United States be spent on bringing these criminals to justice. Yet, in most cases the people responsible for crashing the entire economy get million dollar bonuses for it.

Honestly, the only way I can interpret this is that it's intentional. Our system is not intended to provide justice at all. It exists only to protect the wealthy. We have no justice system in the US, we have an exploitation system.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[spun]

You put the cart before the horse. Government is just a tool, like a gun. It can be used for good or for evil. Tools do not have motivations of their own. They do what their owners make them do. We own our own government, but we have let it slip out of our control.

Monopolies exist outside of government creation and control. Natural monopoly is only one case where the free market fails. When it does, we need another mechanism. The free market will not stay free on its own. The rich will use their wealth to control and dominate the market, with r without government. In fact, it is easier for them to dominate the market without government regulations.

Our government is a democratic republic. It is hard for the wealthy to maintain control over it. They would rather it simply not exist, or failing that, that it do nothing to protect you, the cattle, from them, the owners. Government is not the problem, the rich controlling the government is the problem.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[Lord Ender]

What? If anything, it was the opposite. The Rich were transferring money to the poor so that they could buy houses they could not afford. Once the bubble that caused burst, the poor lost their houses (which they couldn't afford in the first place) and the rich lost their money (foreclosing on underwater mortgages == losing money!).

Of course, the rich had bet everything (including the deposits in your bank accounts) on those mortgages. This is when the government decided to give your childrens' money to the rich to prevent the crash from becoming a collapse. But the government's action is the result of the crash, not the cause of it.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[zn0k]

But that isn't all you ask of your government - in that demand is implicit that not only it be somehow feasible that you go from poor to rich, but also that it be feasible on a reasonable scale. Otherwise your condition could be fulfilled by only one out of all Americans in a generation being able to make that leap, which is a position that strikes me as unreasonable.

Few people in America are actually asking for everyone to make the same, and for the government to redistribute wealth in that fashion. They're just asking that it be easier for a poor person to make the leap to rich when investing an adequate amount of effort to do so.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[spun]

Of course I believe that a poor person can become rich with hard work, determination, and a large amount of luck. Our society is not organized in such a way that there are high paying jobs for everyone who works hard. Plenty of people work very hard all their lives and can not rise out of poverty. The problem is institutional, not one of human laziness. It is intellectually lazy and dishonest to blame the poor for their plight. The poor are poor because the rich profit more when people have fewer options. A poor, desperate, hungry man will do things a secure man would never do, and he will do it for less money.

Hard work and determination mean very little in our system of crony capitalism. If you do not have rich friends and a wealthy background, the chances of you, or your children, or even your grandchildren rising out of poverty are fairly slim.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[roman_mir]

Monopolies exist outside of government creation and control

- maybe you want to think about this before you type another one like that.

Monopolies are government creations. The natural monopolies, such as if you own the original of Mona Lisa, that's not a government creation, that's real. But natural monopolies are far and between, while government has created and subsidized and protected and stimulated and bailed out and protected and created tax loopholes for and regulated for all of the really important monopolies of today, anything from AT&T, to the military industrial complex monopolies, to food production monopolies - the agricultural, the processing, the communications and the financial monopolies.

Think about FDIC, think about what that means - removing risk from lending to certain banks.

Think about Freddie/Fannie and what that means - removing risk from lending mortgages and then selling the 'securitized' debt around in SIVs.

Think about 0-1% interest - taking huge loans from government at almost 0% interest and buying gov't debt and "making" the spread, thus in one shot - propping up more gov't spending and displaying 'record' profits.

The utilities - energy department. When Carter established it, it had this agenda to get USA off foreign oil. Ok, how did that work out? But what happened to all the 'energy producing' companies that are dealing with the gov't?

The monopolies, they are what government loves, they are what government wants, they are what pays the government officials to be reelected. It's a symbiotic relationship between politicians and monopolies, and they are parasites on the back of the society and economy that does not need them, suffers and suffocates because of them.

You are saying: government is not the problem, the rich controlling it are the problem.

But how did that happen? Who are these 'rich'? They are rich, because they are at the helm of the government, taking in the free money and KILLING competition with government power.

They are the rich, and they are the government, because the people do not care, right? People do not care to stop the government from destroying the free market.

Because the people, average people, they NEED the competition and free market. Because average people need prices to go DOWN, but monopolies do not allow that.

Prices must go down. You are hearing that the gov't right now is telling you that the economy is improving. Do not believe a single word, it's a gigantic lie.

An improving economy would mean more economic activity, and that only means more production and the result of that would be savings and reduction of trade deficit. The trade deficit is not reducing, the jobs are not appearing, the prices are not falling. Falling prices are brought to you by a working economy, by an economy that is becoming more efficient due to more efficient allocation of resources, and it's never planned, it just happens by the market forces, that choose for the falling prices.

The government destroys the economy, takes away your purchasing power by printing money and causing prices to go up, at the same time it regulates the free market away to keep its monopolies running without any threat of competition, and this again causes prices to go up. The gov't also provides money.

Gov't gives money, gives out loans to students, securitizes all these risky assets and loans and all this money is printed, given out with no interest, no backing, no reserves of any kind, no production to back it up.

The US Fed is counterfeiting US Federal Reserve Notes (which are not dollars, dollars are coins, that are minted by US Treasury, that's the extent to which the gov't is allowed to 'create' money).

The Federal Reserve is supposed to be this 'independent' entity, so that if the gov't starts spending too much, it can SHUT DOWN the printing press. Of-course the Congress will NEVER prevent the Fed from printing more money, because it will never stop from pr

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[dgatwood]

I am sure that the fact that it is still possible for a person to grow up poor and with determination and hard work become rich is something that you either do not believe in or something that you do not believe happens.

It happens occasionally, but it is exceptionally rare. What actually happens, in practice, is that someone born into the middle class becomes upper middle class by moving to an area with a higher cost of living, then working for a while, and finally retiring somewhere with a lower cost of living. Work in California. Retire in Tennessee.

The number of children born below the poverty line (the definition of poor) who work hard and "become rich" is essentially zero, with the exception of lottery winners, and even those folks are rarely rich for very long.

The reason for this is twofold. First, the poor have to spend nearly all of their income just to get by. This leaves no realistic opportunity for the sorts of "I started a company and made it big" stories because there's not enough capital or access to capital to make that happen.

Second, because the poor live hand to mouth, they generally do not understand how to manage finances, so in the rare occasions when they come into a large sum of money (lottery, inheritance, etc.), they tend to blow through it very quickly instead of saving it and living on the interest. They also fail to keep enough money aside to pay their taxes, and end up losing their shirts. This same mindset leads to racking up colossal debt, which only exacerbates the problem.

Those two factors can be overcome, but only through proper education. Unfortunately, our education systems do not teach money management (except perhaps in an MBA program or something), and thus the only opportunity for kids to learn it is from their parents. When the parents don't know how to manage their money, the kids don't learn it. As a result, the vast majority of the working poor (along with the vast majority of their descendants) are basically doomed to a life of barely breaking even.

Even scholarships merely promote them from working poor to working middle class, but the tendency to burn through all their income usually follows them, and although they are in some sense better off, there's not much room for further advancement beyond that point except in subsequent generations through marrying someone with a better grip on money management.

It's like a treadmill. The poor keep walking on it because they started out going just fast enough to keep up. The middle class often start out going faster than the treadmill, walk off the front, and keep walking.

Short of outside interference (e.g. a better education system, marrying someone in a higher social class, etc.), there is no real opportunity to break this cycle. Thus, no matter how hard the poor work, they almost never get ahead, and even when they do, there are limits to how far ahead they are likely to get.

Ultimately, the only way to fix this is for schools to instill financial responsibility in children from a young age. However, this isn't in the best interests of the folks at the top, who require a steady flow of willing consumers in order to maintain their artificial inequality. As such, this isn't likely to every happen unless we get a truly progressive government (which we don't have now and haven't had in my lifetime).

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[spun]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly :

A natural monopoly arises where the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, has an overwhelming cost advantage over other actual and potential competitors. This tends to be the case in industries where capital costs predominate, creating economies of scale that are large in relation to the size of the market, and hence high barriers to entry; examples include public utilities such as water services and electricity. It is very expensive to build transmission networks (water/gas pipelines, electricity and telephone lines); therefore, it is unlikely that a potential competitor would be willing to make the capital investment needed to even enter the monopolist's market.

The reason we do not have more economic activity is that the rich will not invest in American business. Why would they, there is no demand for more products because people are too poor. The rich will gain a greater profit by investing in countries with poor labor, workplace safety, and environmental laws. They can exploit poor countries much more easily than rich countries.

The Fed is controlled by rich banking families, not by the government. It is a "quasi-governmental agency," meaning it is entirely a tool of the rich. Again, government is not the problem, the rich are.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[Maxo-Texas]

In other 1st world countries, parents income has a 10% effect on their offspring's income.
In the U.S. it is 50%.

In the US it used to be 3 generations from bottom to top to bottom- now it's 5.

Instead of letting people earn money on merit, we have paris hilton's and george bush's leading the nation because their parents were rich. Think about how similar paris and george were.

The children of actors get first shot at all the acting jobs- not because they are good- but because their parents were actors. The CEO's share the same private schools as kinds and refer to playing with other ceo's when they were children.

In the long run- it's bad for the country as a whole to allow rich idiot children to take over the nation because they are friends with each other.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[jgtg32a]

There's a subtle difference and if you look at the rest of his they will help reinforce my point. A greedy person will screw someone over for a buck no doubt for the sake of having the buck, but OP is saying that the rich are screwing people over simply for the sake of not allowing the average person have anything.
His other statement:

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1969586&cid=35023076

>>They do not care about net profitability. They care about power and control, which comes from wealth inequality. They want the poor to be very, desperately poor and thus easier to control. Overall, their tactics might make our society poorer, but they only care about relative wealth, not absolute wealth. If there were a way to make everyone on the planet 1,000 times richer than the richest man alive today, say the invention of true nano-asemblers, the wealthy sociopaths would fight it tooth and nail. They do not want everyone to be fabulously wealthy. They want to be wealthy, while everyone else is poor.

Ok I have no clue how to quote properly and I'm not 100% certain that link works properly

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[roman_mir]

Don't patronize me, don't need to. Obviously there are some natural monopolies, but that's not what we are talking about, is it?

Well, I am not talking about the natural monopolies, I am talking about all the monopolies that are not natural, and their nature is found in the halls of the government offices, where they are pumped up with money and privilege and where they are protected from the market forces, protected from any competition, where they get their preferable tax treatments, where they get the government contracts.

And who gets the government contracts? Well, it's not 'natural' monopolies that get them, that's for sure.

Government created all of the monopolies that matter, that's my point. All monopolies that actually MATTER.
--

When you say: the rich will not invest in American business.

Let me tell you something. I will not invest in American business. I am not rich, but I would NOT invest in American business. I refuse to invest in American business. I am investing into a business that is on a different continent right now because there are possibilities, because there is nearly NO government intervention compared to USA, because it is POSSIBLE to do business.

Do you know which freedom really matters at the end? The freedom to do business and to make your living. Because all other freedoms, they are really inconsequential if this one freedom is absent. Because what good is just 'freedom of speech' - so you can complain about how the government is killing the society by killing the economy? Great. Now what? How about freedom of doing business? That's the one that matters, that's the one that separates a society that ALLOWS upward mobility, from the one that only TALKS about it.

The rich are not investing in America. Why should they invest in America? Should it be out of some patriotic duty to do so? OK, but see how America is treating its patriots - those who are actually fighting in combat for America. It's not pretty.

Really, you know when people will START investing in America again? When America stops destroying the savers.

Do you know what an investment is? It is first of all a saving. It is a saving. Capital is savings. America today says: fuck you if you save. If you save you are a piece of shit, you must be SPENDING instead.

It's all about spending. Where is the respect for the saver? No respect for the saver. The saver gets to suck the Fed's cock. That's all. Suck Fed's cock.

The Fed is growing its cock by printing all these dollars, so that the saver sees the value of his savings disappear, so he can SUCK that ever growing COCK of INFLATION.

Also you know when the rich will start investing in America again? When America wakes up and turns back to the free market - system that PREFERS BUSINESS.

OK? You cannot expect anybody to invest into your system, if your system rejects the idea of capital savings and investment in principle.

If your system destroys the currency and destroys the savings and does not allow business to grow just by competing with OTHER BUSINESS instead of competing with GOVERNMENT and government regulations.

How about removing the road blocks that are on the way of anybody who maybe would want to start a business? All of those regulations.

It's much easier to do business in China today than in USA, that's the freaking sad thing. You will say: China is 'slave labor'. Sure, that's because they are slaving away, subsidizing the US consumer with both, money and products.

Let the prices fall.
Let the labor prices fall.
Get rid of regulations that are preventing businesses from normal work and force businesses to do something they do not need to do - compete with government, fight government every step of the way.
Stop printing money, but this of-course means stop government spending.

Only this will have investors back in America.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[spun]

Good point, but the downfall of the rich has always been hubris. They do not see peasants as real people. They do not believe they are capable of uprising. History would seem to prove them wrong, but one privilege of being rich is that you simply do not have to pay attention to things that prove you wrong.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[spun]

The rich did not eat the losses, the losses were farmed out to small investors while the big trading houses got a bailout. This recession was not even a speedbump to the ultra wealthy. Look at the bonuses, the Dow Jones, the income disparity: the rich were not hurt at all by this recession, they profited from it.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[JonySuede]

yes they have go read about the Honduras 30 years long civil war started by Dole, Chiquita and the CIA
and read about the killing of syndicalist by coca-cola
and the toxic waste dumped by Shell
and the never-ending Colombian narcowar
and the oppression of millions by the Saudi regime in the middle east

Those things are all a direct result of the continuation of the Monroe doctrine

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[CaptainLard]

Not trying to trivialize the past 3 years or anything but how much of that $4 trillion was lost by schmuks like us who put actual dollars that we earned into banks and how much was due to Bear Stearns etc. leveraging their assests 35-1 on crappy mortgages? And how much was due to the bubble and arguably never even existed in the first place? I don't think you can make a straight comparison between bank dollars lost and burglary. Maybe a better comparison would be number lives ruined. Even with all of the foreclosures where a great many people were legitimately ruined, a lot of those loans were given to people with crappy credit and no assets so whats another bankruptcy to them? One of the issues might be that most people can’t even grasp a number like $4 trillion dollars so it sounds fake seems like its happening far away. But if Joe Shmoe got his car stolen down the street you can easily relate and start demanding more police patrols.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[Pinky's Brain]

The people who didn't save or think of the future kept the economy going for the last thirty years ... you couldn't have saved without them.

3 decades of prosperity build on NOTHING but increasing debt.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[Dunbal]

I agree. I was trading that day and notice the Japanese Yen plummeting long before the market collapsed. IMO there was an astounding move out of the US dollar towards the Japanese yen which was the setup for the crash. The yen hit bottom about 10-15 minutes before the Dow and S&P 500 slid off the scale. I just couldn't stop laughing at all the excuses that were put forward the next day to "explain" it, none of which even mentioned Forex. Funnily enough we're still at 83 yen/dollar (from 93) over a year later - not because the yen is so good, but because the dollar is losing value like crazy (and the Euro along with it). But hey, blame it on "computer error" or "jp morgan" or whomever. Either way the magic bubble keeps inflating more and more - we broke 12,000 this week thanks to the Fed's money printing policy. So we'll have real nice stock prices, but in a few years Americans won't be able to afford to import anything or travel overseas. One way or another this abscess will find a way to drain - just don't be standing next to it when it does.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[Pinky's Brain]

50 years ago that would have allowed you to comfortably raise a family on a single income, with plenty of time to spend with your kids ...

Pushing everyone without the talent to rise to the top 10% into poverty will end up with most of the citizens into the US confined in ghetto's while the few remaining rich live it up in the majority of the country which they own outright ... a new feudalism, except this time they don't need any peasants any more because robots can do the farming.

Is that really the future you want to see?

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[dgatwood]

No, because it is similarly not the parents' fault that they were not taught money management as children; it was their parents' fault, which in turn was their parents' fault, and so on up the line. Ultimately, the real fault lies so far back in history that it really doesn't matter whose fault it is.

Also, a fair part of the blame rests on companies that extend insane amounts of credit. If you cannot possibly pay it back with a decade of wage garnishment and living hand to mouth, it is more credit than you can afford. The fact that you can afford a minimum payment that covers the interest is uninteresting and irrelevant.

Credit agencies should be reporting how much debt each person has, and what their total credit is. If that number is out of whack with their income, credit card companies and loan companies should not extend credit at any price. It shouldn't be about charging more money to cover your risk. It should be about doing what is best for the customer, which sometimes means saying no.

Now to be clear, I'm not saying that thirty year mortgages should be banned; there are somewhat valid uses for them---mainly to spread payments out over a longer time so that you can live more comfortably. However, if you can't afford the ten, you should not be allowed to take out the thirty, either.

In short, there's more than enough blame to go around. As such, we as a society have an obligation to help---not by programs like welfare, but by programs that teach people how to manage their money. It is a skill that can be learned like any other, but only if we as a society are willing to teach it.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I am sure that the fact that it is still possible for a person to grow up poor and with determination and hard work become rich is something that you either do not believe in or something that you do not believe happens.

Oh, it happens, it just doesn't happen very often. And a hell of a lot less often than it used to. The game is increasingly rigged, and if you don't see that, you're just one of the legions of useful suckers.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[spun]

Okay, whatever, but the question is, were the ultra rich hurt in any way by the recession? I do not believe they were, and if they make money primarily from investments, then not only were they not hurt, they made out like bandits. Where is the stock market today, and where was it when Obama took office?

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[Dishevel]

You are missing the point. If you are poor and want to be rich. Do not work hard for someone else. Work harder for YOURSELF.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[Culture20]

The fact that the rich are still rich or richer and the poor are even poorer.

Poorer than what? Poorer than the poor a decade ago? Poorer than the richest king just two hundred years ago? A lot of the "poor" in the US today have cell phones, heat, food, television, access to computers, education, free libraries, some have their own transportation, and for those who don't, transportation costs are reasonably low for purchasing bus fare.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[gstoddart]

Hard work is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to create wealth. Plenty of lazy rich people inherit money without working for it

Inheriting it is NOT creating wealth, it's just a transfer of existing wealth. The guy who sold pet rocks? That's creating wealth.

And, yes, hard work doesn't guarantee you wealth either.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[Dripdry]

I was just in conversation with a former judge from Michigan, and he said that it's really true: The courts are NOT here to protect us, nor were they ever really. He explained that we gained ground in the 60s and 70s, but that's been lost. His current outlook is VERY pessimistic about the future of the legal system, but he also spent an entire career as a liberal judge in Michigan trying to hold back the tide.

So, all you Slashdotters: You're right! Now what do we do about it?

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[troll -1]

At one point or another, the common man needs to set up a state that works for his interests. Eventually working Americans will grow tired of working to enrich others while they suffer from illiteracy and treatable diseases. They will seize control of the state and industrial structures and finally determine their own future.

What you're talking about is redistribution of the wealth by force. Historically the American economy has outperformed all others because it embraces laissez faire capitalism that allows people to accumulate wealth. Having failed in the old Soviet Union, been abandoned by the Chinese, and having caused stagnation throughout Central and South America, the idea of taking from the rich and giving to the poor still persists among those who choose to ignore history. Redistribution of the wealth has _never_ worked as an economic policy. It prohibits economic growth which means the poor just get poorer. This is the kind of thing Hugo Chavez does. You're all gonna end up like Venezuela if you're not careful.

Google for Geni Coefficient before you assume that wealth disparity is historically more disproportionate today than it's ever been or that the gap is any wider in the US than it is anywhere else.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[fishexe]

You are missing the point. If you are poor and want to be rich. Do not work hard for someone else. Work harder for YOURSELF.

Yeah, because we all have the opportunity to be self-employed in this bold America of ours.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[fishexe]

As far as getting a job, the most important thing you get out of professional school is your connections. The second most important thing you get out of it is a credential that qualifies you for a class of jobs. The third most important thing you get out of it is actual training in the subject matter of your profession. I still prefer this situation over the prior state where it was impossible to tell whether doctors were qualified or hacks in advance of receiving treatment, but there still has got to be a better way to organize professional education.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[Antisyzygy]

I just find it mind boggling that one of the hardest degrees to get, the one that requires preliminary examinations, thesis, dissertation, oral defense, oral examination, all at the whims of crotchety old faculty members, meanwhile contributing something new and unknown to the collective knowledge of society also gets paid about the same as a MS and less than a Doctor when they get out. Im not saying med/pharma school is easy, but once you are out you get to ride the gravy train. I know my fair share of doctors/pharmacists that have no business as one (i.e. they did it for the money not because they liked the work) that make in excess of 120,000 a year. Faculty in my department make somewhere around 80,000.00 and are leaps and bounds more brilliant than 80-90 percent of medical doctors. Then again, I guess they have tenure.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[SETIGuy]

I am sure that the fact that it is still possible for a person to grow up poor and with determination and hard work become rich is something that you either do not believe in or something that you do not believe happens.

It's not belief or disbelief. It's evidence. It happens very very rarely that a poor person becomes rich. And when it does happen, it is even more rarely due to determination and hard work. A poor person has no money to spend on education. To a poor person determination and hard work still mean a minimum wage job.

But of course, that's inherent in the capitalistic system. Capitalism is a system where you can become wealthy on the determination and hard work of others. Personal determination and hard work won't make you wealthy, they'll make your boss's boss wealthy.

And once wealth has been achieved, wealth breeds wealth. Once you're in the investor class, you pay other people to make money for you off of the labor of others.

If you a born into a poor family, the ways in which you can become rich are very limited.

1) You can have or develop a rare talent that is valuable. You can become a famous musician, singer, or athlete. But the problem with rare talents is that they are rare. I could never become a singer or professional wide receiver, regardless of the quality of the person who attempted to train me. I do have natural talents. But if I had been born into a poor family or even a lower middle class family, I would have never become a research physicist, because the resources I needed in order to become one would have been missing. And if I hadn't started on this path at about age nine, it would have been out of reach. You know what to the smart poor kids in an inner city Headstart program? They get ignored, because they don't need attention every second. That pretty much continues into elementary school and beyond. They learn pretty early that it doesn't pay to be smart.

2) You can marry into a wealthy family. This is a lot harder than you might think because the wealthy segregate themselves from the poor. So again, this option is reserved for the rich.

3) Be in the right place at the right time. Also hard if you're poor. But if you're already rich you can buy your way through business school and get an executive position at a start up and make millions for doing very little.

Along with the lack of upward mobility, there's little downward mobility. If you're Donald Trump, you can cancel a billion dollars in debt through bankruptcy, not have a penny to your name, and the next day walk into a bank to ask for a $10 million dollar loan, and they'll give it to you. Because you're a member or the rich club, even though you're poor. If you're poor, the same bank will charge you $50 a month in fees because you aren't maintaining a $15K combined balance. That is, if they let your shabby ass through the door in the first place.

But as I've said, I'm reasonably rich. I come from an upper middle class family. I married into an upper middle class family. I don't personally know any billionaires, but I do know people with 7 to 8 figure net worth, and I've met people with 9 figure net worth. What they all have in common is significant inherited wealth, with the exception of one person who was in the right place at the right time to earn millions on a job that should have paid $50k/yr. Now that he's earned millions and eluded the SEC, he can get jobs that pay in the millions. (Actually he had significant inherited wealth, too). All these people come from upper class or upper middle class backgrounds. I don't know any wealthy people who were once poor. Do you?

There's a reason Thomas Jefferson thought inherited wealth was dangerous to the Republic. There's a reason Adam Smith thought the idea of inherited wealth was absurd other than as a means to care for dependents who could not earn money on their own.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[spun]

40-50 years ago, people could support a family on one income. The average person still did not make enough to really save, though. They worked hard, but no harder than people today work. The average person got the same government benefits in the sixties as they do now. They sued just as much.

The average person today does not look for government handouts. being on the dole still carries a huge social stigma. People are born knowing that to prove your worth to others, you contribute. It is in our genes. Non-cooperators got shunned. Nearly everyone wants to contribute, but no one wants to be taken advantage of.

I know it is easier to blame the poor for their problems than to admit the system is unfair. When you admit the system is unfair, you have to look at how it was, just possibly, unfair in your favor. Then you have to question the myth you tell yourself: that you got ahead because you are superior. You can not go on believing that you were better than other people, rather than privileged or lucky.

Personal responsibility is certainly a good moral value, and should be taught, but you may also want to teach your children not to be doormats of the rich and powerful. Sometimes when something goes wrong, it is because a criminal is taking advantage of you, not because you screwed up. Sometimes the way to take responsibility for a situation is to stick up for yourself, and to fight those who would enslave you.

Sadly, there are times when nothing you could possibly do will make any difference. For example, the White Citizens Councils used the free market to destroy the lives of minorities who tried to stand up for their rights. They ensured that no one would do business with any "uppity" minorities. Those minorities could not have avoided that situation through any other choice but sitting down and shutting up. Is that what you tell your children to do when someone bullies them?

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[definate]

Please. Stop.

You're obviously talking about something you don't understand. My guess is you model these people in your mind as evil villains, hatching plans, stroking kittens in their laps, and doing all sorts of dastardly deeds.

They're not.

These are very large, very complicated "systems" of people, with various incentives, and different ideas on how things should work. The result of everyones ideas, biases, actions, result in the system we have.

If you investigated most of the people you find fault with, you'd find they did not act deceptively, they did not break any laws, they merely acted in a way which in hindsight was bad, but given the context was entirely rational.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[SETIGuy]

Let's make some Tea Partiers mad by posting what some famous patriots thought. Are those exploding heads I hear?

"...no man ought to own more property than needed for his livelihood; the rest, by right, belong to the state." -Benjamin Franklin

"The descent of property of every kind therefore to all children, or to all the brothers and sisters, or other relations in equal degree, is a politic measure and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise." --Thomas Jefferson

"An enormous Proportion of Property vested in a few Individuals is dangerous to the Rights, and destructive of the Common Happiness of Mankind; and therefore any free State hath a Right by its Laws to discourage the Possession of such Property." -Proposed inclusion to the Pennsylvania constitution, 1776.

"I shall now proceed to the plan I have to propose, which is, To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property: And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age. " ... " Various methods [exist for funding these payments], but that which appears to be the best is at the moment that property is passing by the death of one person to the possession of another. In this case, the bequeather gives nothing: the receiver pays nothing. The only matter to him is that the monopoly of natural inheritance, to which there never was a right, begins to cease in his person. A generous man would not wish it to continue, and a just man will rejoice to see it abolished." - Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice

``If ever our people become so sordid as to feel that all that counts is moneyed prosperity, ignoble well-being, effortless ease and comfort, then this nation shall perish, as it will deserve to perish, from the earth.'' ...[Wealth should only be] ``the foundation on which to build the real life, the life of spiritual and moral effort and achievement.'' -Theodore Roosevelt, Republican, speaking in favor of inheritance taxes.

``The transmission from generation to generation of vast fortunes by will, inheritance or gift is not consistent with the ideals and sentiments of the American people." ... ``Inherited economic power is as inconsistent with the ideals of this generation as inherited political power was inconsistent with the ideals of the generation which established our Government.'' -Franklin Roosevelt, Democrat, speaking in favor of inheritance taxes.

How times have changed. Today it would be hard to find a member of either party that would speak in favor of inheritance taxes. I wonder what TR would think we deserve now.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[fishexe]

I know my fair share of doctors/pharmacists that have no business as one (i.e. they did it for the money not because they liked the work) that make in excess of 120,000 a year. Faculty in my department make somewhere around 80,000.00 and are leaps and bounds more brilliant than 80-90 percent of medical doctors. Then again, I guess they have tenure.

Yeah, I was basically told, when considering Grad School in my preferred field of academia, by professors who had tenure in the field, that if I could think of anything else I'd rather do with my life, to do that instead, but if I was so passionate about studying and contributing to the world's knowledge that it's all I could aspire to, to go ahead and shoot for a PhD. You pretty much have to love it, so hopefully that's what compensates those faculty, moreso than having tenure. I hear that a fair proportion of six-figure-earning professionals spend most of their time feeling miserable, the result of choosing a career primarily based on earning potential rather than zeal for the type of work.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[tehcyder]

Don't be a stupid twat, not everyone can be an entrepreneur, in any society some people will have to do the lower end jobs, until the day robots do everything.

Re:Economic Collapse due to Class War

[phlinn]

Actually, that's not true. Inflation adjusted income are up.

Makes sense.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I mean, the problems largely stem from scuzzy bankers and brokers buying and selling what they knew was garbage, along with problems with the fed's lousy idea of what an interest rate is, etc.

It's like finding out that the Minnesota bridge collapse wasn't the fault of computers either. No big deal.

Re:Makes sense.

[UnknowingFool]

And people ignoring history. Everyone from investors to banks to insurance companies were betting on housing markets never falling. Anyone who has studied housing markets know they have periods of downturn and growth. All markets are cyclical. When housing fell, everyone panicked and realized that they were invested into the trillions into a market worth substantially less.

Re:Makes sense.

[dkleinsc]

Actually, only complete morons were betting that the housing market never fell. The smart evil bastards that make up most of Wall Street knew the market would collapse, but were doing their best to ensure that when it did so they'd lose nothing.

For instance, Goldman Sachs would buy credit default swaps from AIG, which meant that they could never lose money on buying up a bad loan (because AIG was going to be left paying the piper if it did). Now, in order to get a good rate from AIG, Goldman also made those investments look much better than they were, so AIG was thinking "those suckers, we're never going to have to pay a claim on this". And of course Too Big To Fail meant that if the shit really hit the fan, they could be assured that Uncle Sam would be the one holding the bag.

And to compound the problem, the individuals at those companies knew that they were never going to be personally liable for any of it. So the manager at AIG was happy to sell credit default swaps and make big bonuses - the worst that could possibly happen is he would get fired after making big bucks.

Re:Makes sense.

[need4mospd]

My question, now that we have this report, where are the prosecutions? Surely it's found that certain individuals or corporations share responsibility in creating the situation that caused economic downturn, right? There are mentions of fraud dozens of times throughout the report. Fraud is a crime last I checked. People should be going to jail en masse, from the greedy loan officer that forged paperwork to the upper management that did nothing while supervising it, all the way up to the previous and current Secretary of Treasury if necessary.

We all get worked up over pictures of oil covered birds in the marshes of Louisiana, yet we just sit here and take it when the leaders of our country rob us at gun point.

Re:Makes sense.

[C10H14N2]

Actually, the major problem was precisely the opposite. The banks and insurance companies -- even Fannie and Freddie -- were all betting that the housing markets WOULD fail. Freddie was churning billions in overnight short sells of their own paper daily, trying to make a profit riding down that failure. It was a race to see who could skim the most off the trades themselves until the paper was worthless. Anyone with the slightest bit of understanding of economics in general and the housing market could see that crash coming back in 2000. They had just created the financial instruments to profit, massively, off the inevitable crash. Even as the last sucker holding that worthless paper, there was still one last bet to call in and come out even money with credit default swaps. It wasn't a cycle people forgot to plan for. It was a market deliberately re-engineered to transfer a LOT of wealth VERY quickly on the highly anticipated downside of that cycle.

It was not an accident, much less willful ignorance. It was simply bare avarice.

Re:Makes sense.

[radtea]

And to compound the problem, the individuals at those companies knew that they were never going to be personally liable for any of it.

Which is what distinguishes the United States from a free market. In a free market, individuals are liable for their actions. Government interference in the free market in the form of legislation that shields individuals from the consequences of their actions in the form of the various Companies Acts that have been passed in the past 150 years, allows such people to hide behind the skirts of the Nanny State.

Given the absence of a free market in the US, there are only two consistent alternatives: to regulate the existing market further so that we get the benefits of the corporate form of social organization without so much of the downside, or to unregulate the market by abolishing the Companies Act and its successors, and return corporate property to its individual owners (the shareholders) while giving each owner and officer personal liability. Since the latter leads to a mess--this is simply a matter of historical fact--I personally favour further regulating the non-free market in which corporations exist.

Anyone who attempts to oppose the regulation of corporations on the basis of claims about "the free market" is guilty of a fundamental logical inconsistency, as no corporations would exist in a genuinely free market.

Ban human trading

[alvinrod]

There are a lot of complaints about automated trading on /., but at least the machines don't know how to be dishonest or cheat the system. Perhaps we should just leave trading to the machines and ban humans from participating. Something tells me that there would be fewer problems in the long run.

uh, credit crash, not "flash crash."

[swschrad]

the "flash crash" of fall 2010 was caused by robotraders.

the "credit crash" of fall 2008 was caused by greedy streetpunks passing crap paper around in the form of wispy visions of a bad translation of a murky photo of a dim shadow of the promise of someday showing a bad asset. and taking big bonuses every time the stinking pile came around for another rubber stamp.

the only possible report on cause could be "everybody failed as soon as this unregulated activity was allowed."

that's what published.

duh.

WTF?

[Sponge Bath]

Was this EVER a proposed cause of the global economic crisis put forth by any reputable source? At first I thought the article was talking about the flash crash last May. I was unaware anyone could look past the many obvious causes of the 2008 collapse and try to blame high speed trading.

What a joke

[nedlohs]

The full 576 page investigation, out this afternoon, was the product of extensive research and interviews with over seven hundred witnesses. But only six of the 10 commission members, all of them Democrats, have backed the final report.

Yeah, "extensive" research and interviews. Only of the very people who didn't see it coming of course, because the legion of people who predicted it in advance wouldn't have any idea as to the causes.

You can guarantee the answer will be "there was enough regulation" by the gazillion regulations that did exist at the time and we need a gazillion more. Rather than "maybe the Fed settings rates at almost 0% for so long wasn't such a wise idea, oh and maybe when banks are making million dollar loans to people with no income and no assets the regulators and ratings agencies should take a look-see (you know doing their jobs)".

And yes some things that weren't regulated should have been (if it looks like insurance and quacks like insurance then maybe is is insurance even if they call it a credit default swap).

High speed trading is completely irrelevant since this wasn't triggered by a sudden drop in the prices of things involved in high speed trading in the first damn place.

another gov't commission bs

[roman_mir]

You know, results of a government commission that was established to figure out the causes for the financial crisis of 2008 came out, and that commission was a charade, just like this one.

That commission "found" that the crisis was caused by lack of regulations, that low interest rates and Freddie/Fannie had nothing to do with the housing bubble, they "found" that the only thing that government did "wrong" was let the Lehman brothers fail and that the future crisis can only be avoided if there is more government regulations.

Lets start with this: I despise the governments.

The results of that commission were just as well known in advance as the results of the one from this story. Of-course a government commission will find that what is needed is more government and that whatever structural problems that are caused by government are not the real problems.

THIS IS THE SAME BULLSHIT.
IT IS BULLSHIT, DO NOT BELIEVE A SINGLE WORD THAT YOU ARE READING IN THE FABRICATED CONCLUSIONS OF THESE COMMISSIONS.

They are finding one thing: there is need for more government.

They are finding this other thing: whoever is in power cannot be blamed.

That's all.

Re:another gov't commission bs

[roman_mir]

I do despise corruption.

But the government is the only institution, among all other institutions, that has the ultimate power over people - it can jail and kill people.

OK? So I can hate corporations, whatever, but none of them have the legitimate power to kill you or me or to jail you or me.

So when it's government corruption, I really really really despise it, because what is the ultimate conclusion of that? It's terrible, it's the worst.

Government corruption must be treated with the most contempt out of all other kinds of corruption.

Re:another gov't commission bs

[Fantom42]

You know, results of a government commission that was established to figure out the causes for the financial crisis of 2008 came out, and that commission was a charade, just like this one.

That commission "found" that the crisis was caused by lack of regulations, that low interest rates and Freddie/Fannie had nothing to do with the housing bubble, they "found" that the only thing that government did "wrong" was let the Lehman brothers fail and that the future crisis can only be avoided if there is more government regulations.

Lets start with this: I despise the governments.

The results of that commission were just as well known in advance as the results of the one from this story. Of-course a government commission will find that what is needed is more government and that whatever structural problems that are caused by government are not the real problems.

THIS IS THE SAME BULLSHIT.
IT IS BULLSHIT, DO NOT BELIEVE A SINGLE WORD THAT YOU ARE READING IN THE FABRICATED CONCLUSIONS OF THESE COMMISSIONS.

They are finding one thing: there is need for more government.

They are finding this other thing: whoever is in power cannot be blamed.

That's all.

Maybe you should try to read the report. It doesn't say what you are saying it does. The fact you were modded up is kinda sad.

If you "despise the governments" maybe you would prefer an independent journalist, Matt Taibbi, who corroborates most of the conclusions of his report in the independent analysis he provides in his book, "Griftopia."

They do not find that more government is needed. They did find that regulators both failed to act when it was within their power and failed to request more power when they needed it. There is a long list of examples just in the executive summary of both of these.

They do not find that the people in power are not to be blamed. Quite the opposite. They find that people in power were very much to blame.

I am so sick of the prevalent simple-minded "explanations" of this crisis. Read the report. What happened in 2008 is complicated and it is worth understanding. Blame is very widespread, but can also be pinpointed. There are actions which can be taken to prevent this from happening again. But first, it is necessay to understand what happened. This report does an extremely thorough job of explaining it.

It's no one's fault

[Jeremy Erwin]

Andrew Leonard says it's pretty much a waste of time.

I'm sure that committee members would have liked to assign blame; it's just that they didn't have the votes.

Nationalize the Banks

[Charliemopps]

Nationalize the Banks - before it gets any worse.
If this were happening to any other country on earth the State Department would be leaning heavily on them to nationalize their failing banks. It's happened hundreds of times in the past and will happen again. Now that it's us, we're just too damned proud to suck it up and do what needs to be done.

The crisis was a result of ...

[handy_vandal]

"'The crisis was the result of [human action] criminal behavior and [inaction] failure of law enforcement to do anything about it."

Blame?

[jc42]

The idea that "blame" could be assigned to a manufactured object with no mind or volition of its own is decidedly weird. Usually, when a machine is part of the cause of a disaster, the blame is assigned to the people who built and/or operated the machine. It makes no sense to blame the machine, since it had no choice in how it behaved.

Maybe the authors think that we've actually built an Artificial Intelligence and put it in charge of our financial system. If so, maybe we should replace them with one of those computers.

Is the OP Missing the Point?

[thepainguy]

I don't think anyone thinks HS trading was the culprit behind the mortgage mess.

Perhaps the OPer is confusing this with the flash crash.

In terms of the mortgage meltdown, HS trading wasn't a major problem, but flawed risk models certainly were complicit because they added to the general overconfidence.

Of Course Not.

[YetAnotherBob]

The "Crash of 2008" was the result of several simultaneous actions.

First, the overspending by the still relatively new Democratic Congress were not vetoed nearly enough by Mr. Bush.

Second, the real estate boom busted. Mr. Bush had warned of the coming collapse 4 years earlier, but Congress, both Republicans and Democrats were much too interested in claiming credit for the easy home loans to worry about something that was more than 3 months off.

Third, the relaxed accounting rules put in place during the Clinton Years had their final clash with reality. Reality won. Profits were nowhere near as high as investors were being told.

Fourth, the savings rate by Americans continued to decline, a trend that dated back to the Carter years, and is a result of tax policy. This resulted in under funded banks that relied mainly on loans to each other for collateral, as there were not enough depositors to provide the funds. Like paying one credit card with another, a point comes where you have to pay the piper. The long toll had gone on for years. Finally reaching a breaking point. Much of the banking system worldwide went down together. Full recovery still hasn't happened. Europe has several countries that are in deep financial trouble because of it. Several US States are hurting from this as well.

The US press of course blamed the President. That is after all a long time US tradition. Mr. Bush even got blamed for a hurricane or two. Stupid people believed it. New Orleans Mayor Levin for instance.

A coastal city that is 30 feet below sea level, with only a dirt levee between it and the ocean should expect storm flooding of epic proportions, say 30 feet or so. That is what happened. The Army Corps of Engineers had been warning of this since 1910. It happened. There was an interesting article in Scientific America about that in the late 1970's. It was not a question of if, only of when. The problem still isn't fixed, so it will happen again.

Now of course, Mr. Bush is no longer President, and Mr. Obama is getting blamed for the actions of others, including the weather. Well, he asked for the job. The blame comes with the territory.

So, it's all officially Obama's fault now. Really, it is lots of people's fault. Who benefited? Mr. Soros, and a few select others. Mr Buffet didn't do too badly either. Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Reid got a lot from it too. Mrs Pelosi has lost her throne as an aftereffect, but Mr. Reid managed to hang on, thanks to a hundred Million from Mr. Soros. The list goes on, but it is so much easier to just blame someone. It doesn't fix anything, but you might feel better for a while. That is really the take home lesson. We didn't fix anything, but we have blamed someone. They may or may not have had something to do with it.

Don't worry about Mr. Soros, he got 7 Billion of the Stimulus funds to develop an oil field in Brazil where the oil is contracted to go to China. Mr. Buffet made out well on the recent stock climb, so he's doing well too.

There are lots of interesting happenings on the other side of this political aisle too. Pick any famous Washington or Wall Street insider, and they are probably in it up to their necks. Some don;t even know they were partially at fault. After all, some very intelligent people are deliberately stupid. It's pride.

No matter what side you are on, you were probably betrayed. It is after all about money.

Obligatory

[igreaterthanu]

Well, I don't think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before and it has always been due to human error.