BAKER (R-LA): It is indeed a very troubling report, but it is a report of extraordinary importance not only to those who wish to own a home, but as to the taxpayers of this country who would pay the cost of the cleanup of an enterprise failure. The analysis makes clear that more resources must be brought to bear to ensure the highest standards of conduct are not only required, but more importantly, they are actually met.
WATERS (D-CA): Through nearly a dozen hearings where, frankly, we were trying to fix something that wasn't broke, Mr. Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and particularly at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines.
MEEKS (D-NY): As well as the fact that I'm just pissed off at OFHEO, because if it wasn't for you, I don't think that we'd be here in the first place, and now the problem that we have and that we're faced with is: maybe some individuals who wanted to do away with GSEs in the first place, you've given them an excuse to try to have this forum so that we can talk about it and maybe change the, uh, the direction and the mission of what the GSEs had, which they've done a tremendous job. There's been nothing that was indicated that's wrong, you know, with Fannie Mae! Freddie Mac has come up on its own. And the question that then presents is the competence that -- that -- that -- that your agency uh, uh, with reference to, uh, uh, deciding and regulating these GSEs. Uh, and so, uh, I wish I could sit here and say that I'm not upset with you, but I am very upset because, you know, what you do is give -- you know, maybe giving any reason to, as Mr. Gonzales said, to give someone a heart surgery when they really don't need it.
ROYCE (R-CA): In addition to our important oversight role in this committee, I hope that we will move swiftly to create a new regulatory structure for Fannie Mae, for Freddie Mac, and the federal home loan banks.
CLAY (D-MO): This hearing is about the political lynching of Franklin Raines.
FALCON (OFHEO Regulator to MEEKS (D-NY)): Sir, Congressman, OFHEO did not improperly apply accounting rules. Freddie Mac did. OFHEO did not fail to manage earnings properly. Freddie Mac did. So this isn't about the agency engaging in improper conduct. It's about Freddie Mac.
SHAYS (R-CT): Fannie Mae has manipulated, in my judgment, OFHEO for years -- and for OFHEO to finally come out with a report as strong as it is, tells me that's got to be the minimum, not the maximum.
FRANK (D-MA):...etcetera. Uh, I -- This -- You -- you -- you seem to me saying, "Well, these are areas which could raise safety and soundness problems." I don't see anything in your report that raises safety and soundness problems.
WATERS (D-CA): Under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines, everything in the 1992 has worked just fine. In fact, the GSEs have exceeded their housing goals. What we need to do today is to focus on the regulator, and this must be done in a manner so as not to impede their affordable housing mission, a mission that has seen innovation flourish from desktop underwriting to 100% loans.
MANZULLO (R-IL): Mr. Raines, 1.1 million bonus and a $526,000 salary. Jamie Gorelick, $779,000 bonus on a salary of 567,000. This is -- what you state on page 11 is nothing less than -- than staggering. The 1998 earnings per share number turned out to be $3.23 and 9.mills, a result that Fannie Mae met the EPS maximum payout goal right down to the penny. Fannie Mae understood the rules and simply chose not to follow them. If Fannie Mae had followed the practices, there wouldn't have been a bonus that year.
RAINES: Because banks don't -- there aren't any banks who only have multifamily and single-family loans. These assets are so riskless that their capital for holding them should be under 2%.
CLINTON: The responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was president to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
There is a lot more money in closed source software, than there ever has been in open source. Programmers have to be paid somehow, it's short sighted to think otherwise.
If your company is selling cars and one of your IT guys writes a patch that improves the power efficiency of your servers by 1% it is good for you. However, it will not pay for you to banch out into a software business to try to sell that patch to others. It is cheaper to give it away for free, thus your contribution creates value for others as well. The funny thing is that when other companies do the same, your company benefits as well. This creates a natural positive feedback of innovation that does not need money to increase exponentially. It does require that your company makes money at your primary business so you can pay your employees, however.
Except there is zero incentive for the company to give the patch away. They'd be better off retaining the patch to give themselves a competitive advantage. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense for software development costs to be shared by many companies, by paying another for software development and support.
Huffington Post drivel isn't going to cut it. This would have never happened if the government didn't show up and start encouraging lenders to make bad loans, by buying the bad loans with Fannie and Freddy. Market manipulation will bite you.
Open source software didn't drive the economy of the 90's, or the economy of the last few years. Forcing your ideological views on others through government is both stupid, and dangerous.
You're correct in that they weren't forced to make the loans. You're incorrect in that the free market caused the problem. When Fannie and Freddie stepped in and said we'll buy bad loans, people made them and sold them. This interference caused this problem.
I don't think a second software stack is the right answer. If I had a dollar for every time I've lost a server on boot, and had to pay five dollars for every time I've lost a server while it was actively running, I'd have more than a few dollars.
Why do you care so much that he makes a little bit of money for his effort? The stories he posts are usually on topic, interesting, and somewhat obscure. It's a shame the commentary is always clouded by the whiners. The people that continue to bitch about this really should just get over it already.
Given that Medicare is already the single largest unfunded liability (at $255,280 per household), is it really prudent to socialize healthcare at this time, creating an even larger liability?
No, but even if I would have, I wouldn't have received better service than I do in the US. I have excellent medical insurance, with a prescription drug plan, so I can receive medical care immediately and at no cost. Socialized medicine is a way to charge me more than I currently pay, so that people who are unwilling to take care of themselves don't have to. The only result to be had from socializing medicine will be increased expense and total government control of another vital industry. Do you really want the government to control your medical care, and have access to all those records?
You're right, it would be relatively easy to collect basic data. But that's not really the kind of surveillance that 1984 was talking about, was it? 1984 was about active surveillance of everyone, all the time. Watching what they're doing and saying, with who, and when. The example you cite, "Quick, can you Google Earth Joe the Plumber's house, and give me his address, telephone and the most likely schools that his kids go to? Damn, isn't that scary/easy?" is poor because the government isn't actually involved in any of those things, private industry publishes all that information, and it's generally useful. Having some information about your citizens, like an ID card, is probably necessary for society to function.
The book is about totalitarism; it is quite unclear if it is a socialist totalitarist
You know that IngSoc was newspeak for English Socialism, right? That doesn't seem too unclear. Orwell hated communism; both Animal Farm and 1984 were symbolic portrayals of communism. Big Brother and Goldstein represented Stalin and Trotsky. Orwell came to the conclusion that socialism would inevitably lead to totalitarianism, with huge government and the power in the hands of a few, the inner party. And he was right, take a look at China and the Former Soviet Union. Did you really miss Oceania's Ministry of Plenty, the planned economy? the rationing? Perhaps you needed it printed on the back of the book, since you apparently lack reading comprehension skills.
And I have traveled around Europe, extensively. I am somewhat unimpressed.
Barack "Spread the wealth around" Obama is a socialist, and if you believe that 1984 didn't have socialist overtones, you obviously didn't read the book.
Indeed. But they were still not working for the Government. Or well perhaps most of them were working for the government in a planned economy sort of way, but they were not "working for the government" in the way that civil servants are.
I'd agree with that. The point I was trying to make is that if the government can control your hours, wages, education, what you produce, who you work with, where it's sold or distributed, and for how much, they control you. The more control that is given to the government, the more power the government has, the more power the government has, the more power the government will use to retain that power. Without an Oceania sized government, 1984 surveillance isn't feasible. It would be too hard to hide the expense.
The shop keeper could have been said to represent someone outside the basic structure of the planned economy; if he hadn't really been an agent of the Thought Police. However the question remains about whether or not there are other shop keepers in Oceania who are not undercover agents.
Now that's a thinker. Presumably the goods that other shopkeepers would have to sell would have been produced by the government, with prices set by the government, with distribution tracked by the government. I tend to think of it like an inventory system for a company like Walmart, but instead of a mega corporation, the data is mined by the government. Also keep in mind that government used porn, pop culture, and the media, all things that they controlled, to regulate the behavior of the Proles.
Anyway that that entire debate is a digression. The point I was supposed to have made in my last post is that the Government can indeed conduct large scale surveillance, and subsequent control of the population, even if everyone isn't working for the Government. The best weapon for any regime wishing to manipulate and control its citizens is Ignorance. As you say; keep the people uneducated, and distracted, and their ability to resist or pose a serious threat is reduced.
The lack of education ensures that people are not fully aware of their rights; when people are not aware of their rights they do not know when said rights are removed or violated. Especially if they are, and are kept, ignorant of the decisions made by the government and the legislation, and reform, conducted by their representatives.
I'd have to agree with you here, it's not necessarily everyone working directly for the government, it's the massive government and the huge amount of control that the government has over the society that leads to the surveillance state. As William Pitt said in a speech to the UK House of Lords in 1770, "Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it", and because of the level of control the party had in 1984, the inner party effectively had unlimited power.
I'd also have to agree about education and ignorance. My contention is, though, that because the government has so much power and control over the society, both economically and socially, they're able to keep the populace ignorant. By controlling the media to keep the general population under control, and actively monitoring the outer party members, they're able to retain power. With a small government, it wouldn't be possible to sustain that sort of surveillance and control.
Absolutely that's what happened with social security. The social security funds have been repeatedly raided to grow government and offer other programs because of surpluses, and now we're stuck with a mammoth liability. It's currently projected that in less than 10 years social security is going to be in the red, and five years later, $100 Billion / year in the red, and climbing. By 2040, Social Security and Medicare combined are expected to consume 60% of income taxes collected. They're going to make the money spent on the war and on the bailout look like peanuts.
Put all that power (read money) in the hands of a few (congress) and you're going to get hosed.
To keep them in control was not difficult. A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumours and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous; but no attempt was made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party. It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.
If the Proles didn't work directly for the party, they were at least victims of a planned economy. Remember the part where Winston went to the Proles bar, and the old man complained that he can't get pints anymore, just liters or half-liters. Also, recall the inability to get razor blades and boots, because the rations weren't coming in.
I think the gist was that the Proles were kept uneducated and in poverty, but always given just enough to keep the party in power, and avoid revolution.
I seriously doubt that, since his question was about Obama's socialist programs, where he'll be "spreading the wealth around". I can't imagine he'd be particularly fond of English Socialism.
Why do the same people that constantly harp on 1984 surveillance continue to demand larger government with more widespread social programs? The government can't conduct 1984 style surveillance unless everyone works for, and is part of, the government.
Slashdot Mirror
BAKER (R-LA): It is indeed a very troubling report, but it is a report of extraordinary importance not only to those who wish to own a home, but as to the taxpayers of this country who would pay the cost of the cleanup of an enterprise failure. The analysis makes clear that more resources must be brought to bear to ensure the highest standards of conduct are not only required, but more importantly, they are actually met.
WATERS (D-CA): Through nearly a dozen hearings where, frankly, we were trying to fix something that wasn't broke, Mr. Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and particularly at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines.
MEEKS (D-NY): As well as the fact that I'm just pissed off at OFHEO, because if it wasn't for you, I don't think that we'd be here in the first place, and now the problem that we have and that we're faced with is: maybe some individuals who wanted to do away with GSEs in the first place, you've given them an excuse to try to have this forum so that we can talk about it and maybe change the, uh, the direction and the mission of what the GSEs had, which they've done a tremendous job. There's been nothing that was indicated that's wrong, you know, with Fannie Mae! Freddie Mac has come up on its own. And the question that then presents is the competence that -- that -- that -- that your agency uh, uh, with reference to, uh, uh, deciding and regulating these GSEs. Uh, and so, uh, I wish I could sit here and say that I'm not upset with you, but I am very upset because, you know, what you do is give -- you know, maybe giving any reason to, as Mr. Gonzales said, to give someone a heart surgery when they really don't need it.
ROYCE (R-CA): In addition to our important oversight role in this committee, I hope that we will move swiftly to create a new regulatory structure for Fannie Mae, for Freddie Mac, and the federal home loan banks.
CLAY (D-MO): This hearing is about the political lynching of Franklin Raines.
FALCON (OFHEO Regulator to MEEKS (D-NY)): Sir, Congressman, OFHEO did not improperly apply accounting rules. Freddie Mac did. OFHEO did not fail to manage earnings properly. Freddie Mac did. So this isn't about the agency engaging in improper conduct. It's about Freddie Mac.
SHAYS (R-CT): Fannie Mae has manipulated, in my judgment, OFHEO for years -- and for OFHEO to finally come out with a report as strong as it is, tells me that's got to be the minimum, not the maximum.
FRANK (D-MA): ...etcetera. Uh, I -- This -- You -- you -- you seem to me saying, "Well, these are areas which could raise safety and soundness problems." I don't see anything in your report that raises safety and soundness problems.
WATERS (D-CA): Under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines, everything in the 1992 has worked just fine. In fact, the GSEs have exceeded their housing goals. What we need to do today is to focus on the regulator, and this must be done in a manner so as not to impede their affordable housing mission, a mission that has seen innovation flourish from desktop underwriting to 100% loans.
MANZULLO (R-IL): Mr. Raines, 1.1 million bonus and a $526,000 salary. Jamie Gorelick, $779,000 bonus on a salary of 567,000. This is -- what you state on page 11 is nothing less than -- than staggering. The 1998 earnings per share number turned out to be $3.23 and 9.mills, a result that Fannie Mae met the EPS maximum payout goal right down to the penny. Fannie Mae understood the rules and simply chose not to follow them. If Fannie Mae had followed the practices, there wouldn't have been a bonus that year.
RAINES: Because banks don't -- there aren't any banks who only have multifamily and single-family loans. These assets are so riskless that their capital for holding them should be under 2%.
CLINTON: The responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was president to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Let's compare the Market Caps of open source companies with closed source companies:
Red Hat: $2.57B P/E: 35.05
Sun: $3.25B P/E: -
Novell: $1.55B P/E: -
Microsoft: $191.7B P/E: 11.37
Apple: $88.23B P/E: 18.53
Oracle: $88.71B P/E: 15.7
Symantec: $10.93B P/E: 17.35
SAP: $41.47B P/E: 17.64
Adobe: $13.53B P/E: 16.88
There is a lot more money in closed source software, than there ever has been in open source. Programmers have to be paid somehow, it's short sighted to think otherwise.
If your company is selling cars and one of your IT guys writes a patch that improves the power efficiency of your servers by 1% it is good for you. However, it will not pay for you to banch out into a software business to try to sell that patch to others. It is cheaper to give it away for free, thus your contribution creates value for others as well. The funny thing is that when other companies do the same, your company benefits as well. This creates a natural positive feedback of innovation that does not need money to increase exponentially. It does require that your company makes money at your primary business so you can pay your employees, however.
Except there is zero incentive for the company to give the patch away. They'd be better off retaining the patch to give themselves a competitive advantage. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense for software development costs to be shared by many companies, by paying another for software development and support.
Huffington Post drivel isn't going to cut it. This would have never happened if the government didn't show up and start encouraging lenders to make bad loans, by buying the bad loans with Fannie and Freddy. Market manipulation will bite you.
Open source software didn't drive the economy of the 90's, or the economy of the last few years. Forcing your ideological views on others through government is both stupid, and dangerous.
Until the government decided that the financial industry needed to make "affordable housing" loans to poor people that couldn't afford them, it did.
You're correct in that they weren't forced to make the loans. You're incorrect in that the free market caused the problem. When Fannie and Freddie stepped in and said we'll buy bad loans, people made them and sold them. This interference caused this problem.
If 95% of white's had voted for McCain, you wouldn't be shouting racism?
Your tinfoil hat is cutting off the circulation to your brain again.
although most people underestimated his support
The popular vote was 52 to 48%.
I don't think a second software stack is the right answer. If I had a dollar for every time I've lost a server on boot, and had to pay five dollars for every time I've lost a server while it was actively running, I'd have more than a few dollars.
When you're sure you don't need it to come back up.
Yet another reason why California should be cast into the sea.
Why do you care so much that he makes a little bit of money for his effort? The stories he posts are usually on topic, interesting, and somewhat obscure. It's a shame the commentary is always clouded by the whiners. The people that continue to bitch about this really should just get over it already.
Given that Medicare is already the single largest unfunded liability (at $255,280 per household), is it really prudent to socialize healthcare at this time, creating an even larger liability?
The Global Poverty Act and Health care?
Did you happen to need medical attention?
No, but even if I would have, I wouldn't have received better service than I do in the US. I have excellent medical insurance, with a prescription drug plan, so I can receive medical care immediately and at no cost. Socialized medicine is a way to charge me more than I currently pay, so that people who are unwilling to take care of themselves don't have to. The only result to be had from socializing medicine will be increased expense and total government control of another vital industry. Do you really want the government to control your medical care, and have access to all those records?
"As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents." -- George Orwell
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." -- from Animal Farm
Socialism leads to the concentration of power and corruption.
You're right, it would be relatively easy to collect basic data. But that's not really the kind of surveillance that 1984 was talking about, was it? 1984 was about active surveillance of everyone, all the time. Watching what they're doing and saying, with who, and when. The example you cite, "Quick, can you Google Earth Joe the Plumber's house, and give me his address, telephone and the most likely schools that his kids go to? Damn, isn't that scary/easy?" is poor because the government isn't actually involved in any of those things, private industry publishes all that information, and it's generally useful. Having some information about your citizens, like an ID card, is probably necessary for society to function.
The book is about totalitarism; it is quite unclear if it is a socialist totalitarist
You know that IngSoc was newspeak for English Socialism, right? That doesn't seem too unclear. Orwell hated communism; both Animal Farm and 1984 were symbolic portrayals of communism. Big Brother and Goldstein represented Stalin and Trotsky. Orwell came to the conclusion that socialism would inevitably lead to totalitarianism, with huge government and the power in the hands of a few, the inner party. And he was right, take a look at China and the Former Soviet Union. Did you really miss Oceania's Ministry of Plenty, the planned economy? the rationing? Perhaps you needed it printed on the back of the book, since you apparently lack reading comprehension skills.
And I have traveled around Europe, extensively. I am somewhat unimpressed.
Barack "Spread the wealth around" Obama is a socialist, and if you believe that 1984 didn't have socialist overtones, you obviously didn't read the book.
Indeed. But they were still not working for the Government. Or well perhaps most of them were working for the government in a planned economy sort of way, but they were not "working for the government" in the way that civil servants are.
I'd agree with that. The point I was trying to make is that if the government can control your hours, wages, education, what you produce, who you work with, where it's sold or distributed, and for how much, they control you. The more control that is given to the government, the more power the government has, the more power the government has, the more power the government will use to retain that power. Without an Oceania sized government, 1984 surveillance isn't feasible. It would be too hard to hide the expense.
The shop keeper could have been said to represent someone outside the basic structure of the planned economy; if he hadn't really been an agent of the Thought Police. However the question remains about whether or not there are other shop keepers in Oceania who are not undercover agents.
Now that's a thinker. Presumably the goods that other shopkeepers would have to sell would have been produced by the government, with prices set by the government, with distribution tracked by the government. I tend to think of it like an inventory system for a company like Walmart, but instead of a mega corporation, the data is mined by the government. Also keep in mind that government used porn, pop culture, and the media, all things that they controlled, to regulate the behavior of the Proles.
Anyway that that entire debate is a digression. The point I was supposed to have made in my last post is that the Government can indeed conduct large scale surveillance, and subsequent control of the population, even if everyone isn't working for the Government. The best weapon for any regime wishing to manipulate and control its citizens is Ignorance. As you say; keep the people uneducated, and distracted, and their ability to resist or pose a serious threat is reduced.
The lack of education ensures that people are not fully aware of their rights; when people are not aware of their rights they do not know when said rights are removed or violated. Especially if they are, and are kept, ignorant of the decisions made by the government and the legislation, and reform, conducted by their representatives.
I'd have to agree with you here, it's not necessarily everyone working directly for the government, it's the massive government and the huge amount of control that the government has over the society that leads to the surveillance state. As William Pitt said in a speech to the UK House of Lords in 1770, "Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it", and because of the level of control the party had in 1984, the inner party effectively had unlimited power.
I'd also have to agree about education and ignorance. My contention is, though, that because the government has so much power and control over the society, both economically and socially, they're able to keep the populace ignorant. By controlling the media to keep the general population under control, and actively monitoring the outer party members, they're able to retain power. With a small government, it wouldn't be possible to sustain that sort of surveillance and control.
Absolutely that's what happened with social security. The social security funds have been repeatedly raided to grow government and offer other programs because of surpluses, and now we're stuck with a mammoth liability. It's currently projected that in less than 10 years social security is going to be in the red, and five years later, $100 Billion / year in the red, and climbing. By 2040, Social Security and Medicare combined are expected to consume 60% of income taxes collected. They're going to make the money spent on the war and on the bailout look like peanuts.
Put all that power (read money) in the hands of a few (congress) and you're going to get hosed.
To keep them in control was not difficult. A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumours and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous; but no attempt was made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party. It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.
If the Proles didn't work directly for the party, they were at least victims of a planned economy. Remember the part where Winston went to the Proles bar, and the old man complained that he can't get pints anymore, just liters or half-liters. Also, recall the inability to get razor blades and boots, because the rations weren't coming in.
I think the gist was that the Proles were kept uneducated and in poverty, but always given just enough to keep the party in power, and avoid revolution.
He'd fit right in over at IngSoc.
I seriously doubt that, since his question was about Obama's socialist programs, where he'll be "spreading the wealth around". I can't imagine he'd be particularly fond of English Socialism.
Why do the same people that constantly harp on 1984 surveillance continue to demand larger government with more widespread social programs? The government can't conduct 1984 style surveillance unless everyone works for, and is part of, the government.
Being able to keep what you worked for isn't selfish. Believing that people who do work should be obligated to pay for things for you is greedy.