Another viewer of "Money as Debt" that has fallen for the deceptive lies that is packaged among the truth.
Debt is not a problem per se. Claims that you can't repay all loans because there isn't enough money is false. It is a complete misconception of how money flows, neglecting to take into account that banks themselves also buy services and products, invest in stuff and occasionally deal with bad investments.
Sure, if banks were to just sit on all money they get from interest, then it would indeed be troublesome. But that is a basic result of bad money circulation which would only hurt the banks in the long run.
What is dangerous is bad debt as in bad investments. As long as most debt is in solid investments, debt is not bad. Of course, most people have a misconception of what good investments are. A luxury house is not a good investment. It is a consumption item. Same with an SUV for most people. A smaller house however is an investment as it makes your life much better at a good cost/benefit ratio, allowing you the ability to work somewhere. Same with a smaller car that allows you to be more efficent at transporting yourself and your family around. Credit Card debt and other smaller debts are pretty much bad all around except for the occasional emergency.
What I think the grandparent wants to say is that even though the goverment was wrong in its regulations, the market should be able to route around such damage. The interesting discussion is why the market wasn't able to handle the situation adequatly.
Personally, I am of a very strong opinion that the main fault in the current system is lack of transparency. It is far too easy for companies to hide bad and insecure assets which is highly negative for the market that is supposed to make informed decisions regarding the value of those companies.
Which is the whole point of working and creating more efficent factories so you need less kids to support you. Of course, that only works when you
* Are actually concerned about increasing efficency and not about how to best fool other consumers into buying vanity toys and consumption services. * Allow ordinary workers to get a decent share of the products produced. * Actually have workers and the country save and invest in improvements.
how much money did Sir Tim Berners-Lee give up when he made HTTP and HTML free?
A lot possibly. And that is the problem with monopoly laws (copyright/patents/etc) in general. He would have earned lots of money at the expense of the rest of society getting poorer.
The main problem with monopoly laws is that they provide too much reward to those who are successful. Sounds strange? Actually, it is pretty simple.
These monopoly laws are implemented to sustain business ideas where there is a higher up front cost and far smaller marginal cost. This leads to high marginal profits and therefore an extremly high incentive to come up with hit successes.
I am not saying that success shouldn't be rewarded, but that it is rewarded disproportionally big. This is why advertising (a.k.a. consumer deception) is such a big part of the music/movie/pharmaceutical industries. The marginal profits in those industries is just very big.
In that case don't display a damned lock when there is an unsigned certificate. Really how much of an idiot do you have to be to not be able to see that simple solution?
And yes, it really is true idiocy to treat an unsigned certificate transmission worse than a plain text transmission. Point Haired Boss worthy material.
"Social healthcare is prominent unconstitutional issue"
On the other hand, life is listed among the unalienable rights of man in the declaration of independence.
In general I find the declaration of independance a far more well written document than the constitution, because it describes what a goverment should be.
The constitution is simply one attempt to lay a framework that tries to keep the goverment in line with the declaration of independance. This isn't to say that the constitution isn't an important document. It represent the basic law of the country.
However, I do find modern day constitution worship somewhat ironic. The law is not always right, and the constitution is no different.
I think what Obama really radiates is a non black-and-white worldview.
Some may say that it is him being a politician (which doesn't make sense considering that many politicans like to paint the world in black and white). Some may say that it is a weakness of his, causing him to do "stupid things" like agreeing with his opponent on occasion.
However, the end result is that you get the appearance of someone who actually tries to understand an issue before making a decision. And that is what real intelligence is about. Not being closeminded, but still being able to make a choice when needed.
Is Obama faking it, possible, but I doubt it. It is not something that is easily faked. There are quite a few things that I don't agree with Obama on, but questioning that part of him is not one of them.
If you want to attack him, it is easier to go after him for voting politically instead of what he actually thinks is best, because there is probably a lot of truth in that. But then again, most politicians do. It is just that Obama has tried to stand up against that, which is coming back to bite him in the ass.
That, and I am questing the statement that possible extra content created would be worth the cost to society.
Because lets face it, the cost of copyright and IP in general to scoeity in general is huge. These are artifical monopolies we are talking about, that work to do everything from preventing poor people to watch something that can be copied at no cost, to annoy customers (copy protections), to make it more difficult to reuse of intellectual material (an often ignored fact), to create wasteful lawsuits (especially when it comes to patents), and at worst to prevent vital medicine from being distributed to people who need it. All of this because capitalism uses a way of distributing resources that doesn't work well with high up front cost but inifintly duplicable items.
I am not saying that copyright and IP should be completly abolished, nor am I saying that capitalism is wrong. My point is just that you have to be very careful with such laws and at the moment it is very obvious that many countries are on the side of too much laws directed at the wrong people. This is increasingly leading to decreasing respect for the system and will end up costing a lot.
Well, when you have people who are willing to translate (a.k.a. fansub) for free, and most people (atleast those who watch lots of anime) seems to prefer original japanese voice, then it isn't that strange that it is a tough market.
Of course, at the same time you have people selling bottled water that basically is no different than the water you can get directly from the tap. So it isn't that easy to predict where there is a market.
claiming that 750,000 American jobs have been lost to piracy
Overexaggerated number for sure, but jobs may very well have been lost because of piracy. But, so what? Let me formulate the matters in another light.
750,000 American jobs would have been wasted if piracy hadn't existed to combat the inherent inefficencies in the copyright and IP systems.
Jobs are good if they actually produce something useful to society. Otherwise they are just a big waste, and do little more than shuffle resources around because the current system don't have a better way to allocate it.
Even if more actual intellectual property were produced with stronger IP laws, it still isn't sure that it would be a better idea. The real value of IP isn't how much is produced, but how much is produced times how well spread it is among the population. Also, that total value has to be balanced against the cost of producing it.
Say that 700,000 more jobs would be created. That is a multi billion cost. And what would be the gain. More tv? More music? More movies? It isn't like there is a lack of choice right now.
You know what? I am tired of typing the same thing over and over again and people like you ignoring the plain truth about something
That is because it is you who are spewing the ordinary conservative think tank propaganda. I guess "plain truth" is new speak for "poltical agenda".
I have looked up the CRA (from various directions), and your so called facts simply don't hold up. There is no evidence of the CRA forcing bad loans.
No, the real reason is some banks acting completly irresonpsible. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being the worst, and other banks sponoring them, because of an "implicit guarantee" that wasn't there (stated in big capitalized letters on the title page of their paper). Now those idiots and those who invested in them should pay the price instead of the US goverment bailing them out.
That's just silly. You can't expect an entire industry to dry up and quit altogether because the government places requirements.
Actually, that is exactly what I expect. If goverment places unrealistic expections that makes it impossible for you to do business in an area, you stop making business in that area until the goverment gives up. Making unprofitable business is idiocy. Failure to the above is a failure of the market.
Of course, the reality is that CRA isn't really that bad of a regulation. CRA doesn't force bankers to lend out money. It simply forces them to actually look at each application individually on merit instead of using wide discriminatory measures. In fact, the CRA specifically says that an institutions CRA's activities should be undertaken in a safe and sound manner.
It is just a political lie thought up by republican think tanks to redirect blame on the 1995 Clinton CRA change. So the whole issue is moot.
This problem isn't just because the government got in the middle of a market. It is because of their inaction and faulty solutions too.
True. I think the goverment has been very lax on the use of derivatives and lending practices.
They sat on their hands watching energy costs skyrocket which took all the excess that these people who failed on their loans should have been using to apply to their mortgages.
Of course, the energy prices skyrocked for two reasons. Oil is getting more expensive in general, and the dollar was getting weaker. The first part, the US goverment could do little about. The second part you can blame on both the american people in general for living above their means for 25 years and of course my favorite the US military complex, including the Iraq war that was the most insane economic decision since the Vietnam war. War is expensive. Even though some research may come out of it, that is simply the broken window fallacy. It would have been better to do that research without wasting money funneling it through military coorporations.
Unfortunately, some people like the idea of energy costing more
Like the market that demands energy like never before. All resource prices have been going up because of China and India. And as the energy market still is heavily dependent on oil and coal, that is no different.
and we never got to tomorrow except on paper
Yup. Houses has been overvalued for 20 years now because they were treated as investment objects, which is a bad idea. The only real investment part of a house is that it gives you somewhere to live.
The crash was inevitable. Of course, bad loaning practices didn't help ease the crash.
Well, it doesn't take a crystal ball to see what was going to happen next
Agreed
This has the hands of government all over it and stopping the normal remedy for bad debt does little but exaggerate the problems, at the hand of government.
The hand of the goverment over an irrational market that thinks with its penis (figurativly speaking). There is enough blame to go all around. Of course, the goverment isn't helping now, because the bailout plan is bad, creating moral hazard while not actually addressing the real issue which is overvalued property and a market built on money interdependencies in the form of derivatives that creates an unstable card house.
The companies, he said, took advantage of the perception on Wall Street that the government would stand behind them in a time of crisis,
"The certificates and payments of principal and interest on the certificates are not guaranteed by the united states, and do not constitute a debt or obligation of the united states or any of its agencies or instrumentalities other than Fannie Mae."
Just what kind of implicit goverment support is that. Are you telling me those working on wall street can't even read. Maybe that explains the financial crisis. And, no that isn't fine print. It is in big capitalized letters on Fannie Mae paper.
More than an example (since I have no access to bank loan records or to the private conversations of bankers), I'll just point out to you that dramatically expanding the subprime lending market was the whole purpose and effect of the Clinton's
All that is an example of is that bankers/investors didn't back away from business deals even if CRA forced them to also make bad deals. That is a market situation. If the choice is between accepting "one good and one bad deal" or "no deal", then a business man has a decision to make, and going with one good, one bad deal turned out to be a bad bet that he shouldn't have done. Free market theory has no problem dealing with situations like that.
What are you talking about???! The whole mortgage crisis was fueled by Fannie Mae's willingness to buy up low-income loans and automatically guarantee them with government money.
Then how come Fannie Mae paper specifically says:
"The certificates and payments of principal and interest on the certificates are not guaranteed by the united states, and do not constitute a debt or obligation of the united states or any of its agencies or instrumentalities other than Fannie Mae."
while the debt may be toxic - it still has VALUE and is thus potentially worth more than the money being printed to pay for it....
Actually, there is a good chance that a lot of it actually is valueless. If you think that they still have value because there is a house behind it all, then you are mistaken. When you are talking about bottom of the barrel CODs, you only money after the above layers get theirs, and with sinking house prices, even those above won't get all of theirs, leaving the bottom with nothing.
Obama doesn't have the black & white view on issues that most americans seem to have and that is refreshing. It is a trait that is very important in diplomatic situations, and guess what. The president is quite important when it comes to foreign relations. Actually, that is probably the one thing were he has a primary responsibility as a figurehead of the nation.
Of course they wanted it. You do know that bush would have vetoed it if it had included anything about limiting the bailout to bad debt owned by US companies before a specific date.
Now, foreign companies can simply sell their bad assets to US banks to get part of the bailout. US politicians show their corruption or incompetence again (don't know which one, but neither is better than the other). As I am not a US citizen I shouldn't complain though.
Thanks congress and senate - A thankful european citizen.
ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, how those government sponsored enterprises acted as ATMs
A lie. Fannie Mae specifically didn't have any US backing on the paper it gave out. And probably the same for Freddie Mac.
But don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.
and how Dems forced banks to lend to those with bad credit
I keep hearing this. Show me one example where a bank was forced to loan out money to someone and where they instead couldn't have said "fuck this I am not lending any more money with these kind of unprofitable regulations."
You don't live in a democracy. You live in a republic. This means that rather than bending to the tyranny of the majority every time, your representatives - that you elect - make the decision that's best for their constituents even if a majority of the constituents think it's a bad idea at the time
Incorrect.
The representatives make the decisions that
* Fits themselves. - In other words, decisions that serve the upper middle and upper class. And specifically decisions that may lead to a future money earning east somewhere. * Allows the to get elected and reelected - Meaning, decisions that serve the lobbyists that provide the money needed for fooling uneducated americans into voting for them.
The bailout is a necessary evil
No, it isn't. The bailout is the worst kind of financial intervention. There are far better ways to do it.
The bailout is basically a 700 billion loss that will go to those responsible for losing money in the first place. Talk about moral hazard.
And no, the taxpayer won't get the money back in the future. The tax payer will get stuck with bottom of the barrel CODs that are worth essentially nothing.
"According to Rothbard, government intervention delayed the markets adjustment and made the road to complete recovery more difficult."
And that is just the first one I could find. That proping up bad assets and preventing market adjustment delays recover from recessions isn't really a novel idea.
As always the free market causes good and bad times (making it a rather problematic thing, that would be better gotten rid of if it weren't for the efficencies it also introduces.), but goverment reactions can make the downturns more or less bad.
And the answer is no. The banks could have stopped lending out money at any time. That they didn't just goes to show that they were run by incapable people, who got into their positions by contacts and not skill.
You don't conduct unprofitable business. If the goverment "forces you", you simple stop doing business. It is as simple as that.
Slashdot Mirror
Another viewer of "Money as Debt" that has fallen for the deceptive lies that is packaged among the truth.
Debt is not a problem per se. Claims that you can't repay all loans because there isn't enough money is false. It is a complete misconception of how money flows, neglecting to take into account that banks themselves also buy services and products, invest in stuff and occasionally deal with bad investments.
Sure, if banks were to just sit on all money they get from interest, then it would indeed be troublesome. But that is a basic result of bad money circulation which would only hurt the banks in the long run.
What is dangerous is bad debt as in bad investments. As long as most debt is in solid investments, debt is not bad. Of course, most people have a misconception of what good investments are. A luxury house is not a good investment. It is a consumption item. Same with an SUV for most people. A smaller house however is an investment as it makes your life much better at a good cost/benefit ratio, allowing you the ability to work somewhere. Same with a smaller car that allows you to be more efficent at transporting yourself and your family around. Credit Card debt and other smaller debts are pretty much bad all around except for the occasional emergency.
What I think the grandparent wants to say is that even though the goverment was wrong in its regulations, the market should be able to route around such damage. The interesting discussion is why the market wasn't able to handle the situation adequatly.
Personally, I am of a very strong opinion that the main fault in the current system is lack of transparency. It is far too easy for companies to hide bad and insecure assets which is highly negative for the market that is supposed to make informed decisions regarding the value of those companies.
Which is the whole point of working and creating more efficent factories so you need less kids to support you. Of course, that only works when you
* Are actually concerned about increasing efficency and not about how to best fool other consumers into buying vanity toys and consumption services.
* Allow ordinary workers to get a decent share of the products produced.
* Actually have workers and the country save and invest in improvements.
how much money did Sir Tim Berners-Lee give up when he made HTTP and HTML free?
A lot possibly. And that is the problem with monopoly laws (copyright/patents/etc) in general. He would have earned lots of money at the expense of the rest of society getting poorer.
The main problem with monopoly laws is that they provide too much reward to those who are successful. Sounds strange? Actually, it is pretty simple.
These monopoly laws are implemented to sustain business ideas where there is a higher up front cost and far smaller marginal cost. This leads to high marginal profits and therefore an extremly high incentive to come up with hit successes.
I am not saying that success shouldn't be rewarded, but that it is rewarded disproportionally big. This is why advertising (a.k.a. consumer deception) is such a big part of the music/movie/pharmaceutical industries. The marginal profits in those industries is just very big.
In that case don't display a damned lock when there is an unsigned certificate. Really how much of an idiot do you have to be to not be able to see that simple solution?
And yes, it really is true idiocy to treat an unsigned certificate transmission worse than a plain text transmission. Point Haired Boss worthy material.
"Social healthcare is prominent unconstitutional issue"
On the other hand, life is listed among the unalienable rights of man in the declaration of independence.
In general I find the declaration of independance a far more well written document than the constitution, because it describes what a goverment should be.
The constitution is simply one attempt to lay a framework that tries to keep the goverment in line with the declaration of independance. This isn't to say that the constitution isn't an important document. It represent the basic law of the country.
However, I do find modern day constitution worship somewhat ironic. The law is not always right, and the constitution is no different.
I think what Obama really radiates is a non black-and-white worldview.
Some may say that it is him being a politician (which doesn't make sense considering that many politicans like to paint the world in black and white). Some may say that it is a weakness of his, causing him to do "stupid things" like agreeing with his opponent on occasion.
However, the end result is that you get the appearance of someone who actually tries to understand an issue before making a decision. And that is what real intelligence is about. Not being closeminded, but still being able to make a choice when needed.
Is Obama faking it, possible, but I doubt it. It is not something that is easily faked. There are quite a few things that I don't agree with Obama on, but questioning that part of him is not one of them.
If you want to attack him, it is easier to go after him for voting politically instead of what he actually thinks is best, because there is probably a lot of truth in that. But then again, most politicians do. It is just that Obama has tried to stand up against that, which is coming back to bite him in the ass.
That, and I am questing the statement that possible extra content created would be worth the cost to society.
Because lets face it, the cost of copyright and IP in general to scoeity in general is huge. These are artifical monopolies we are talking about, that work to do everything from preventing poor people to watch something that can be copied at no cost, to annoy customers (copy protections), to make it more difficult to reuse of intellectual material (an often ignored fact), to create wasteful lawsuits (especially when it comes to patents), and at worst to prevent vital medicine from being distributed to people who need it. All of this because capitalism uses a way of distributing resources that doesn't work well with high up front cost but inifintly duplicable items.
I am not saying that copyright and IP should be completly abolished, nor am I saying that capitalism is wrong. My point is just that you have to be very careful with such laws and at the moment it is very obvious that many countries are on the side of too much laws directed at the wrong people. This is increasingly leading to decreasing respect for the system and will end up costing a lot.
Thanks for correcting me. My mistake.
Well, when you have people who are willing to translate (a.k.a. fansub) for free, and most people (atleast those who watch lots of anime) seems to prefer original japanese voice, then it isn't that strange that it is a tough market.
Of course, at the same time you have people selling bottled water that basically is no different than the water you can get directly from the tap. So it isn't that easy to predict where there is a market.
Well, all real numbers are imaginary. I leave it up to you to figure out what that says about reality.
claiming that 750,000 American jobs have been lost to piracy
Overexaggerated number for sure, but jobs may very well have been lost because of piracy. But, so what? Let me formulate the matters in another light.
750,000 American jobs would have been wasted if piracy hadn't existed to combat the inherent inefficencies in the copyright and IP systems.
Jobs are good if they actually produce something useful to society. Otherwise they are just a big waste, and do little more than shuffle resources around because the current system don't have a better way to allocate it.
Even if more actual intellectual property were produced with stronger IP laws, it still isn't sure that it would be a better idea. The real value of IP isn't how much is produced, but how much is produced times how well spread it is among the population. Also, that total value has to be balanced against the cost of producing it.
Say that 700,000 more jobs would be created. That is a multi billion cost. And what would be the gain. More tv? More music? More movies? It isn't like there is a lack of choice right now.
Actually, as open source products are compliant by default they actually profit from this new regulation by not having to do anything.
You know what? I am tired of typing the same thing over and over again and people like you ignoring the plain truth about something
That is because it is you who are spewing the ordinary conservative think tank propaganda. I guess "plain truth" is new speak for "poltical agenda".
I have looked up the CRA (from various directions), and your so called facts simply don't hold up. There is no evidence of the CRA forcing bad loans.
No, the real reason is some banks acting completly irresonpsible. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being the worst, and other banks sponoring them, because of an "implicit guarantee" that wasn't there (stated in big capitalized letters on the title page of their paper). Now those idiots and those who invested in them should pay the price instead of the US goverment bailing them out.
That's just silly. You can't expect an entire industry to dry up and quit altogether because the government places requirements.
Actually, that is exactly what I expect. If goverment places unrealistic expections that makes it impossible for you to do business in an area, you stop making business in that area until the goverment gives up. Making unprofitable business is idiocy. Failure to the above is a failure of the market.
Of course, the reality is that CRA isn't really that bad of a regulation. CRA doesn't force bankers to lend out money. It simply forces them to actually look at each application individually on merit instead of using wide discriminatory measures. In fact, the CRA specifically says that an institutions CRA's activities should be undertaken in a safe and sound manner.
It is just a political lie thought up by republican think tanks to redirect blame on the 1995 Clinton CRA change. So the whole issue is moot.
This problem isn't just because the government got in the middle of a market. It is because of their inaction and faulty solutions too.
True. I think the goverment has been very lax on the use of derivatives and lending practices.
They sat on their hands watching energy costs skyrocket which took all the excess that these people who failed on their loans should have been using to apply to their mortgages.
Of course, the energy prices skyrocked for two reasons. Oil is getting more expensive in general, and the dollar was getting weaker. The first part, the US goverment could do little about. The second part you can blame on both the american people in general for living above their means for 25 years and of course my favorite the US military complex, including the Iraq war that was the most insane economic decision since the Vietnam war. War is expensive. Even though some research may come out of it, that is simply the broken window fallacy. It would have been better to do that research without wasting money funneling it through military coorporations.
Unfortunately, some people like the idea of energy costing more
Like the market that demands energy like never before. All resource prices have been going up because of China and India. And as the energy market still is heavily dependent on oil and coal, that is no different.
and we never got to tomorrow except on paper
Yup. Houses has been overvalued for 20 years now because they were treated as investment objects, which is a bad idea. The only real investment part of a house is that it gives you somewhere to live.
The crash was inevitable. Of course, bad loaning practices didn't help ease the crash.
Well, it doesn't take a crystal ball to see what was going to happen next
Agreed
This has the hands of government all over it and stopping the normal remedy for bad debt does little but exaggerate the problems, at the hand of government.
The hand of the goverment over an irrational market that thinks with its penis (figurativly speaking). There is enough blame to go all around. Of course, the goverment isn't helping now, because the bailout plan is bad, creating moral hazard while not actually addressing the real issue which is overvalued property and a market built on money interdependencies in the form of derivatives that creates an unstable card house.
The companies, he said, took advantage of the perception on Wall Street that the government would stand behind them in a time of crisis,
"The certificates and payments of principal and interest on the certificates are not guaranteed by the united states, and do not constitute a debt or obligation of the united states or any of its agencies or instrumentalities other than Fannie Mae."
Just what kind of implicit goverment support is that. Are you telling me those working on wall street can't even read. Maybe that explains the financial crisis. And, no that isn't fine print. It is in big capitalized letters on Fannie Mae paper.
More than an example (since I have no access to bank loan records or to the private conversations of bankers), I'll just point out to you that dramatically expanding the subprime lending market was the whole purpose and effect of the Clinton's
All that is an example of is that bankers/investors didn't back away from business deals even if CRA forced them to also make bad deals. That is a market situation. If the choice is between accepting "one good and one bad deal" or "no deal", then a business man has a decision to make, and going with one good, one bad deal turned out to be a bad bet that he shouldn't have done. Free market theory has no problem dealing with situations like that.
What are you talking about???! The whole mortgage crisis was fueled by Fannie Mae's willingness to buy up low-income loans and automatically guarantee them with government money.
Then how come Fannie Mae paper specifically says:
"The certificates and payments of principal and interest on the certificates are not guaranteed by the united states, and do not constitute a debt or obligation of the united states or any of its agencies or instrumentalities other than Fannie Mae."
And that is in big fat capitalized letters.
while the debt may be toxic - it still has VALUE and is thus potentially worth more than the money being printed to pay for it....
Actually, there is a good chance that a lot of it actually is valueless. If you think that they still have value because there is a house behind it all, then you are mistaken. When you are talking about bottom of the barrel CODs, you only money after the above layers get theirs, and with sinking house prices, even those above won't get all of theirs, leaving the bottom with nothing.
http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy/ if you are interested in understanding the basics.
Obama doesn't have the black & white view on issues that most americans seem to have and that is refreshing. It is a trait that is very important in diplomatic situations, and guess what. The president is quite important when it comes to foreign relations. Actually, that is probably the one thing were he has a primary responsibility as a figurehead of the nation.
Of course they wanted it. You do know that bush would have vetoed it if it had included anything about limiting the bailout to bad debt owned by US companies before a specific date.
Now, foreign companies can simply sell their bad assets to US banks to get part of the bailout. US politicians show their corruption or incompetence again (don't know which one, but neither is better than the other). As I am not a US citizen I shouldn't complain though.
Thanks congress and senate - A thankful european citizen.
No, free market capitalism is when private companies reap all the benefits and ordinary tax payers take all the risks.
Atleast that is what always seem to happen.
ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, how those government sponsored enterprises acted as ATMs
A lie. Fannie Mae specifically didn't have any US backing on the paper it gave out. And probably the same for Freddie Mac.
But don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.
and how Dems forced banks to lend to those with bad credit
I keep hearing this. Show me one example where a bank was forced to loan out money to someone and where they instead couldn't have said "fuck this I am not lending any more money with these kind of unprofitable regulations."
You don't live in a democracy. You live in a republic. This means that rather than bending to the tyranny of the majority every time, your representatives - that you elect - make the decision that's best for their constituents even if a majority of the constituents think it's a bad idea at the time
Incorrect.
The representatives make the decisions that
* Fits themselves. - In other words, decisions that serve the upper middle and upper class. And specifically decisions that may lead to a future money earning east somewhere.
* Allows the to get elected and reelected - Meaning, decisions that serve the lobbyists that provide the money needed for fooling uneducated americans into voting for them.
The bailout is a necessary evil
No, it isn't. The bailout is the worst kind of financial intervention. There are far better ways to do it.
The bailout is basically a 700 billion loss that will go to those responsible for losing money in the first place. Talk about moral hazard.
And no, the taxpayer won't get the money back in the future. The tax payer will get stuck with bottom of the barrel CODs that are worth essentially nothing.
Actually, what the goverment did was increase the length of the depression/recession/downturn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_Great_Depression
"According to Rothbard, government intervention delayed the markets adjustment and made the road to complete recovery more difficult."
And that is just the first one I could find. That proping up bad assets and preventing market adjustment delays recover from recessions isn't really a novel idea.
As always the free market causes good and bad times (making it a rather problematic thing, that would be better gotten rid of if it weren't for the efficencies it also introduces.), but goverment reactions can make the downturns more or less bad.
Did the goverment force at gunpoint?
And the answer is no. The banks could have stopped lending out money at any time. That they didn't just goes to show that they were run by incapable people, who got into their positions by contacts and not skill.
You don't conduct unprofitable business. If the goverment "forces you", you simple stop doing business. It is as simple as that.