"More accurately, the negative effects of govt programs which have fostered dependency which has in turn caused the proliferation of social pathologies including poverty and low educational achievement"
There was a time when govt didnt help the poor. What are the differences between those periods?
Personally, I know we have had poverty since before these programs. My gut says it was probably worse then.
Then we will have the counter argument that saying that you cant trade on it under you could have known about it will unfairly advantage those "close" to the announcement place.
Note, I am *not* saying this was OK. I think it was very wrong. Just predicting the future.
"Banks can't force you to take a mortgage against your will."
Never said otherwise. What I am saying is that the lender had choice in the matter. The lender has more control over the mortgage than the homeowner.
"Home owners have perfect information, control, and complete data about their financial situation."
True, for their situation. ( I could quibble about the "perfect", bonuses, layoffs, etc, but substantially, yeah ).
"Part of the problem with the crisis was that lenders didn't get that information or weren't even supposed to use it as a matter of public policy"
I went for a home loan in roughly that time frame, and I was asked for all that information. My rates were set based on that information. I have heard the claim that lenders were not to ask these things, but I have seen nothing to substantiate that. ( do you have information to the contrary? ) So, as far as I can ascertain, they had a perfect right to ask and expect that data.
I see the same behaviour on the part of some lenders also. They were quite prepared to profit from these transactions. I think that is what sets me off about this, is that the lenders had a better, aggregate view of what was going on, and the totality of risk that was being entertained that ordinary home owners just could not have had, in general. They could evaluate ( and have to deal with ) their own risk taking, but but could nto know how much even their immediate neighbors were taking on in terms of risk, leave alone a bigger picture above that.
But I agree, those lenders should have failed. And the home owners should have been foreclosed.
TARP was proposed by Paulson and backed by Bush. Bush signed it on Oct 3 2008. Provisions on how the money was to be spent were part of the bill. I do note that there was an initial 250 billion then another block of 100 billion, as authorized by the president ( which I seem to find as authorized in october of 2008. ). and a third block, authorized ( well, not vetoed ) on January 15, 2009. I show those dates during Bush's administration. With Bush knowing either McCain or Obama would be in office next. I dont know, but if the first and second blocks were not spent, why would the third block have been allowed to go forward?
"If you need "analytic data" to figure out whether you can afford a mortgage payment, you should lose your right to engage in any kind of financial transactions. A fixed 30 year mortgage isn't hard to figure out, and if you can't afford it, you don't take it. And if someone tries to sell you anything else and you don't understand what they are selling you, you don't buy it either. I mean, have we become a country where the default assumption is that everybody is an idiot?"
It is very easy to say all that, but life is a bit more nuanced than that. You expect to have some raises and better opportunities before the rates reset on adjustable mortgages. And if all the above is true ( and it basically is, except for human want/greed ), then how much more true is it for the lender? They didn't have to loan the money. So, still, the first and foremost finger gets pointed at the lender.
"Furthermore, the lenders would have paid the price for their errors: they would have lost money on the bad loans. Instead, the administration first shoved billions in the hands of lenders who made poor decisions, and then shoved billions more in the hands of home owners who made poor decisions."
Except the lenders who made the decisions sold those loans on down the river, and the loans were all cut up into CDOs 7 ways from Sunday. So the decision makers would rarely have paid the price ( except those deciding the buy the loans from the originators ). So, since those companies demonstrably did not understand the instruments they were selling/buying, don't they deserve blame?
Bear in mind, I am not arguing that homeowners deserve no blame. But that the lenders should get a large share of that blame.
"I point the finger first and foremost at the home owners who bought homes they couldn't afford"
But not first and foremost at the lending organizations that had the analytic data to show that these prospective home owners ( all hyped up by the lenders about how this is a great rate, and real estate agents talking about how now is the time, the market seemed to be always going up, etc ) would not be able to afford said loan. And didn't do their due diligence in looking at the prospective home owner's income and debts....
There was moral hazard alright. And those home owners deserve to have a finger pointed at them. But not first and foremost.
Then, enemy cracks comm links, cant maneuver the drones, control mother ship is helpless and gets shot down ( by it's own drones potentially ). Enemy lands drones either where they like, or crash them into targets of their choosing.
Actually, it sounds to me as though he expects that only a percentage of the population would avail themselves of this. They would not bother reproducing, removing such from the gene pool, if the tendency is genetic.
Exactly. And we have been doing that in support of a country they feel ( I am not commenting on the right/wrong of it, I think Israel is a complicated issue, and I would feel threatened in their place ) should not be there.
"Bullshit. If you want to build a bigger bomb, you just go ahead and build it."
Sure, or buy it. Problem is, excepting nuclear bombs, even a sustained barrage just doesn't kill as many people as you might think it does.
"The question isn't 6 bullets and 20 people, but rather 6k bullets and 20 people, wondering if after the first couple hundred bullets into each person should the commander be reprimanded for simply wasting ammunition."
Except it is 6 and 20 writ large. You dont have enough bullets/ bombs to eradicate them all.
"Assad has a large enough army and is well supplied enough to hunt down and wipe out each of these rebel groups with vastly superior and overwhelming military force."
They why hasn't he? From where I sit, it looks like he wants to get rid of "the rebels".
"The real problem is that these groups are being supported and supplied with weapons and technical support from other countries"
OK.
"why not a few canisters of chemical weapons too? It would be stupid to say that these other countries don't have access to chemical weapons and the knowledge in terms of how to build and deploy them"
You may be right on shipping them. They likely do have them.
"The only reason why you use chemical weapons in a situation like this is either because you are mentally unbalanced"
Or desperate
" (in which case.... why did the Obama administration"
Only the Obama administration? I hardly think so. The issues in the middle east go back past Eisenhower.
"and other governments help him out for so many decades?) or if you want to engage mass casualties where killing some of your own supporters and even loyal soldiers will be killed to deliver that final death blow."
I would expect they would keep the loyal soldiers out of the area. And try to gas areas where they believe there are many rebels and few supporters.
"You nor anybody else suggesting Assad has done this has given a rational explanation for why his soldiers or officers actually conducted this attack."
He wants them dead, disarmed, deactivated or otherwise out of the way. The conflict there has been open since march of 2011, and there have been internal issues ( not everyone is happy with Assad, nor his father ) going back to the coup d'etat that installed his father. He ( and his opposition ) sees what has happened in neighboring Arab states, with their leaders being removed/deposed/etc and he wants to avoid that. His opposition believes there is no better time to engage in uprisings.
"Certainly it wasn't to increase body counts, as the victims of the Dresden fire bombing campaign [wikipedia.org] can amply account for."
Certainly it was. And Dresden is an example of what I speak of. In spite of a bombing campaign that Assad *could not* accomplish many lived. It looks like about 25k people were killed from a population of about 350k+. I would expect the survivors were rather unhappy with the English/Allies after that.
"Assad is certainly capable of conducting such a bombing campaign against a civilian population he they cared, thus chemical weapons simply aren't needed."
He could conduct a bombing campaign. He could not accomplish something like Dresden. Not even close. Assuming he could, the international outcry would be just as great, and his ability to deny that it happened and that he was responsible would be next to impossible. Gas kills people, but it doesn't leave as much photographic evidence ( bodies would be there, of course, but the craters wouldn't ).
Syria has access to jet fighter-bombers, artillery cannons, and a whole range of explosives of a modern military at their disposal. If the goal was simply to kill a bunch of people, there were literally dozens of ways to get that accomplished without resorting to the "weapons of mass destruction".
The problem is that the explosives route doesn't command territory, and it doesn't have a high enough body count. It's like the "you have 6 bullets, I have 20 people" equation. You will kill the 6 ( maybe ), but the remaining 14 will get you. Of course, you have to have a mad enough "20". Weapons like gas add to the body count and add to the terror in the minds of the opponents, and might be able to take out the "20".
I'm not sure why sparing a moment to think about consequences is a bad thing.
There is a human cost ( probably not born by you ) to this change. What are those people going to do? That is not to say we should not do this, but we should be aware of what is going on. It wont be unalloyed Pollyanna.
We already have pretty high unemployment, and taxi and truck drivers, by and large, are not the pinnacle of "retrain for tech jobs" sorts.
That is great if it works. I worry that these interesting things they will be doing will not be something they get paid for. Also, with these people out of their usual work, they will be going after jobs they otherwise wouldn't, increasing downward pressure on wages, and increasing welfare expenditures ( hopefully just in the short term, but... )
Slashdot Mirror
You have free will.
What makes you think God is complaining?
"More accurately, the negative effects of govt programs which have fostered dependency which has in turn caused the proliferation of social pathologies including poverty and low educational achievement"
There was a time when govt didnt help the poor.
What are the differences between those periods?
Personally, I know we have had poverty since before these programs. My gut says it was probably worse then.
The machine is much more complex than it should be...
I would say blame us ( US citizens ) fully, for we, as a society, are allowing it.
Then we will have the counter argument that saying that you cant trade on it under you could have known about it will unfairly advantage those "close" to the announcement place.
Note, I am *not* saying this was OK. I think it was very wrong. Just predicting the future.
"Banks can't force you to take a mortgage against your will."
Never said otherwise. What I am saying is that the lender had choice in the matter.
The lender has more control over the mortgage than the homeowner.
"Home owners have perfect information, control, and complete data about their financial situation."
True, for their situation. ( I could quibble about the "perfect", bonuses, layoffs, etc, but substantially, yeah ).
"Part of the problem with the crisis was that lenders didn't get that information or weren't even supposed to use it as a matter of public policy"
I went for a home loan in roughly that time frame, and I was asked for all that information. My rates were set based on that information.
I have heard the claim that lenders were not to ask these things, but I have seen nothing to substantiate that. ( do you have information to the contrary? )
So, as far as I can ascertain, they had a perfect right to ask and expect that data.
Sort of agree, sure.
I see the same behaviour on the part of some lenders also.
They were quite prepared to profit from these transactions.
I think that is what sets me off about this, is that the lenders had a better, aggregate view of what was going on, and the totality of risk that was being entertained that ordinary home owners just could not have had, in general. They could evaluate ( and have to deal with ) their own risk taking, but but could nto know how much even their immediate neighbors were taking on in terms of risk, leave alone a bigger picture above that.
But I agree, those lenders should have failed. And the home owners should have been foreclosed.
TARP was proposed by Paulson and backed by Bush.
Bush signed it on Oct 3 2008.
Provisions on how the money was to be spent were part of the bill.
I do note that there was an initial 250 billion
then another block of 100 billion, as authorized by the president ( which I seem to find as authorized in october of 2008. ).
and a third block, authorized ( well, not vetoed ) on January 15, 2009.
I show those dates during Bush's administration. With Bush knowing either McCain or Obama would be in office next.
I dont know, but if the first and second blocks were not spent, why would the third block have been allowed to go forward?
"The borrowers are adults;"
Yes, and so are the people doing the loan origination.
" if they want a house and they borrow money for it, it's their responsibility to pay it back."
Yes, quite true.
"The people lending the money don't "control" the situation,"
They do control the situation, more than any other actor involved.
"they are simply offering a deal in hopes of making a profit, and sometimes they make a bad estimate of the risk"
But the home owners ( with less data ) cant make a bad estimate of the risk?
"If this had been a Republican president, the press would be up in arms about his crony capitalism."
TARP was instituted by a Republican president.
"If you need "analytic data" to figure out whether you can afford a mortgage payment, you should lose your right to engage in any kind of financial transactions. A fixed 30 year mortgage isn't hard to figure out, and if you can't afford it, you don't take it. And if someone tries to sell you anything else and you don't understand what they are selling you, you don't buy it either. I mean, have we become a country where the default assumption is that everybody is an idiot?"
It is very easy to say all that, but life is a bit more nuanced than that. You expect to have some raises and better opportunities before the rates reset on adjustable mortgages.
And if all the above is true ( and it basically is, except for human want/greed ), then how much more true is it for the lender? They didn't have to loan the money. So, still, the first and foremost finger gets pointed at the lender.
"Furthermore, the lenders would have paid the price for their errors: they would have lost money on the bad loans. Instead, the administration first shoved billions in the hands of lenders who made poor decisions, and then shoved billions more in the hands of home owners who made poor decisions."
Except the lenders who made the decisions sold those loans on down the river, and the loans were all cut up into CDOs 7 ways from Sunday. So the decision makers would rarely have paid the price ( except those deciding the buy the loans from the originators ). So, since those companies demonstrably did not understand the instruments they were selling/buying, don't they deserve blame?
Bear in mind, I am not arguing that homeowners deserve no blame. But that the lenders should get a large share of that blame.
"I point the finger first and foremost at the home owners who bought homes they couldn't afford"
But not first and foremost at the lending organizations that had the analytic data to show that these prospective home owners ( all hyped up by the lenders about how this is a great rate, and real estate agents talking about how now is the time, the market seemed to be always going up, etc ) would not be able to afford said loan. And didn't do their due diligence in looking at the prospective home owner's income and debts....
There was moral hazard alright. And those home owners deserve to have a finger pointed at them. But not first and foremost.
Then, enemy cracks comm links, cant maneuver the drones, control mother ship is helpless and gets shot down ( by it's own drones potentially ).
Enemy lands drones either where they like, or crash them into targets of their choosing.
Actually, it sounds to me as though he expects that only a percentage of the population would avail themselves of this.
They would not bother reproducing, removing such from the gene pool, if the tendency is genetic.
I have a 99 Safari, the GMC stablemate to the Astro, and I do the same with it.
It handles pretty good, for a huge blue brick.
Exactly. And we have been doing that in support of a country they feel ( I am not commenting on the right/wrong of it, I think Israel is a complicated issue, and I would feel threatened in their place ) should not be there.
"Bullshit. If you want to build a bigger bomb, you just go ahead and build it."
Sure, or buy it. Problem is, excepting nuclear bombs, even a sustained barrage just doesn't kill as many people as you might think it does.
"The question isn't 6 bullets and 20 people, but rather 6k bullets and 20 people, wondering if after the first couple hundred bullets into each person should the commander be reprimanded for simply wasting ammunition."
Except it is 6 and 20 writ large. You dont have enough bullets/ bombs to eradicate them all.
"Assad has a large enough army and is well supplied enough to hunt down and wipe out each of these rebel groups with vastly superior and overwhelming military force."
They why hasn't he? From where I sit, it looks like he wants to get rid of "the rebels".
"The real problem is that these groups are being supported and supplied with weapons and technical support from other countries"
OK.
"why not a few canisters of chemical weapons too? It would be stupid to say that these other countries don't have access to chemical weapons and the knowledge in terms of how to build and deploy them"
You may be right on shipping them. They likely do have them.
"The only reason why you use chemical weapons in a situation like this is either because you are mentally unbalanced"
Or desperate
" (in which case.... why did the Obama administration"
Only the Obama administration? I hardly think so. The issues in the middle east go back past Eisenhower.
"and other governments help him out for so many decades?) or if you want to engage mass casualties where killing some of your own supporters and even loyal soldiers will be killed to deliver that final death blow."
I would expect they would keep the loyal soldiers out of the area. And try to gas areas where they believe there are many rebels and few supporters.
"You nor anybody else suggesting Assad has done this has given a rational explanation for why his soldiers or officers actually conducted this attack."
He wants them dead, disarmed, deactivated or otherwise out of the way. The conflict there has been open since march of 2011, and there have been internal issues ( not everyone is happy with Assad, nor his father ) going back to the coup d'etat that installed his father. He ( and his opposition ) sees what has happened in neighboring Arab states, with their leaders being removed/deposed/etc and he wants to avoid that. His opposition believes there is no better time to engage in uprisings.
"Certainly it wasn't to increase body counts, as the victims of the Dresden fire bombing campaign [wikipedia.org] can amply account for."
Certainly it was. And Dresden is an example of what I speak of. In spite of a bombing campaign that Assad *could not* accomplish many lived.
It looks like about 25k people were killed from a population of about 350k+.
I would expect the survivors were rather unhappy with the English/Allies after that.
"Assad is certainly capable of conducting such a bombing campaign against a civilian population he they cared, thus chemical weapons simply aren't needed."
He could conduct a bombing campaign. He could not accomplish something like Dresden. Not even close.
Assuming he could, the international outcry would be just as great, and his ability to deny that it happened and that he was responsible would be next to impossible. Gas kills people, but it doesn't leave as much photographic evidence ( bodies would be there, of course, but the craters wouldn't ).
"Most of the middle east hates the US"
Why do they hate the US?
I have yet to read anything about mercenaries and imported religious fanatics.
Can you substantiate this?
Syria has access to jet fighter-bombers, artillery cannons, and a whole range of explosives of a modern military at their disposal. If the goal was simply to kill a bunch of people, there were literally dozens of ways to get that accomplished without resorting to the "weapons of mass destruction".
The problem is that the explosives route doesn't command territory, and it doesn't have a high enough body count.
It's like the "you have 6 bullets, I have 20 people" equation. You will kill the 6 ( maybe ), but the remaining 14 will get you.
Of course, you have to have a mad enough "20".
Weapons like gas add to the body count and add to the terror in the minds of the opponents, and might be able to take out the "20".
How is this? Taxes are at an all time low. Or can you show me how they are not?
I'm not sure why sparing a moment to think about consequences is a bad thing.
There is a human cost ( probably not born by you ) to this change. What are those people going to do?
That is not to say we should not do this, but we should be aware of what is going on. It wont be unalloyed Pollyanna.
We already have pretty high unemployment, and taxi and truck drivers, by and large, are not the pinnacle of "retrain for tech jobs" sorts.
That is great if it works. I worry that these interesting things they will be doing will not be something they get paid for.
Also, with these people out of their usual work, they will be going after jobs they otherwise wouldn't, increasing downward pressure on wages, and increasing welfare expenditures ( hopefully just in the short term, but... )
"all their drivers will be out on their asses"
Quite. What will they do for income then? Is that good?
The answer is obvious.... Drive faster!