Stop overstating the "ownership" is nationalization thing. Those agreements have the government selling off their investments as soon as possible. They were always seen as a short term stop-gap measure to prevent the economy from imploding. And if it does implode, we'll have bigger problems than the feds owning shares in J.P. Morgan.
Yes, let's trumpet the most base qualities in humans and declare them to be the standard for business. What right should we have to expect ethical behavior since there is no one to enforce it or that the entity isn't human, merely run by humans?
Tell you what, let's make a list of the worst excesses of human behavior and pass it around to companies to use as a cheat-sheet. Business School Product should always aim high.
Right. The "market" isn't fair in the sense that fairness is some sort of balm spread over anyone who plays by the rules. The market is a fairly blunt instrument that, left uncontrolled, allows all sorts of deformities to arise.
A free market requires transparency, but Wall Street spent the last 20 years constructing very non-transparent investment "vehicles" that their rocket scientists couldn't understand. And the market is now correcting for this, but it is not doing it in fair manner. It doesn't have a soul, a conscience, a fairness meter.
It isn't the government. It is Islam and the "culture" it inspires. Don't forget those nice, kind people who want the man dead for blasphemy have no problem with shipping opium to the rest of the kafir.
No, the housing crisis was largely the result of above the board legal activity, that was the problem. There plenty of blame to go around, let's assign it:
1) American People: those saints who decided it would be wonderful to flip houses, get second mortgages, get mortgages they couldn't afford, take the equity out their houses and piss it off.
2) The government: created Fannie Mae in the Depression as a response to the gutting of the housing markets. They created Freddie Mac in the 1970's. They also gave these two institutions a virtual monopoly in securitizing loans...which they proceeded to do in wild abandon starting in the 1980s.
3) The government again: they (in the guise of deregulation) thought the Depression era restrictions on Commercial and Investment Banks was soooo Depression, the U.S. needed a modern banking system.
4) The Banks: they found they could get in on the housing crisis by making bad loans, creating way over-leveraged "assets", making their books opaque so that than even banks don't now trust each other.
5) The insurance companies who though credit default swaps were just like house and life insurance. They were wrong...in a very leveraged way.
6) The Federal Reserve: kept the interest rates waaay too low for waaay too long.
7) Foreign countries and institutions that thought it would be better to get in on the feeding frenzy rather than keeping their powder dry.
The list goes on. The problem due to shady or illegal deals was minor. It was all there in black and white.
So, you've been drinking the alien kool-aid, eh? It might also be the race that makes it here is the meanest bunch of mothers who managed to beat all rivals and it is their will to power that caused them to go out and conquer other civilizations.
Are you blind? The Democrats orchestrated their 60 percent because the Republicans were orchestrating roughly 40 percent. What happened was they got their counts wrong. The idea (for both Parties) was that by giving minimal approval to the plan, they could all raise their minimal approval as a fig leaf. And if it worked, they'd both claim victory "for the American People". Grow up.
Well, it isn't entirely the government's fault, Federal Reserve or otherwise.
Who was buying McMansions? Who was flipping houses? Who was refinancing their mortgages to take the equity out of their properties? Who was signing for credit they knew they couldn't pay back?
That's right, the sainted American People. Surely they were enabled by our dumb government policies. Fannie Mae is one of the main employers of former Democrat congressional staff members, so it isn't entirely a Republican problem either. But it was the American people who were too dumb to stop living beyond their means and now they're complaining "The Devil Made us do It".
My own view was that WWII and the Depression helped spawn the current "Look, I'm stupid so I'm cool" attitude in the U.S. After WWII, the nation had just come out of unimaginable horror (not nearly as traumatic as the Europeans or the Chinese or others went through) and the Depression. WWII built up U.S. industry. After the war, that industry had to do something and there was a recession after the war since all that industry producing had no market. The U.S. moved toward consumerism which could lap up all that capacity and the G.I. Bill put a lot of service men in College and so created an educated work force.
That work force wanted the best for their kids. That gave the U.S. the pampered Me generations of the 1960's and 1970's. These generations weren't willing to work hard because they never had to. Science grew on trees for them. But worse, Science was seen as anathema to the Peace, Love, and Pass the LSD. And so was spawned Education schools in which method over substance was promoted. Johnny and Mary couldn't learn because Johnny and Mary needed a shot of self-esteem in the rear first.
Now we have Johnny and Mary, who were never given a sense for the thrill of science, procreating Johnny and Mary Version 2.0. These Versions are even further lost to Science. And the Me generations with no true feeling for science are teaching John and Mary Version 2.0. The poor kneebiters are sunk.
In a little known, but true addendum, Dark Energy is what happens when the Klieg lights are turned on a congress-critter. Their mouth instinctively opens and Dark Energy spews out clouding what would have been a clear path to any solution. Treasury and Fed and other administration officials are similarly affected.
It was once thought that Dark Energy could be ignored if the Klieg lights could somehow be shut off. Alas, it is not so. We are all doomed to suffer from its influence when campaigning for the election in 2012 commences on Nov. 8, 2008.
Bullshit. Ever write a mathematics paper? You won't be doing that anytime soon in html (or some variant) and you are just plain not in mathematics if you attempt it in Word. The only system is (La)TeX and it generally produces.pdfs.
Re:Well, they haven't collided yet..
on
LHC Success!
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, I'm with you bro, if they were to circulate SUVs in opposing directions in ring, then we'd have an even bigger chance of something going wrong.
While I agree with your sentiments, there's nothing stopping from M$ claiming their docuthingy conforms to ISO standard Blah-Wooffle-Beetle-Bam. Anyone who must approve a docuthingy with an ISO standard restriction will simply see M$, see the ISO standard M$ points to which conveniently has M$ in name lest they care not to look further than that, and will mark the inviting checkbox that indicates said docuthingy meets the restriction.
For M$, a win is a win no matter who they had rape to get it.
Would you like some alum to put on those Rice Crispies or should we just shoot you and put you out our misery right now?
Demographics is certainly something to be reckoned with. It isn't a law that can be repealed. Not enough people to support the old might mean that the youngsters won't be using up the environment (greenhouse gases, maybe you've heard of them). Then again, enough bright young people might mean they find a way to not use up all the environment. Not really Demographics, is it?
Hyperinflation in Russia was caused by Capitalism, you seem to imply. The previous 70 odd years of totally destroying the moral fiber of a people had nothing to do with it, we presume. Capitalism doesn't spring immaculately conceived from any premordial substrate, it requires years of preparation (like Democracy for one, rule of law, functioning markets, civility, etc.) and it doesn't guarantee its own survival. Hyperinflation might be the future of Western cultures, but you still have not stated any serious cause and effect, so we can dismiss this claim of yours.
The chemist selling birth control, feminists, and capitalists...yadda, yadda, yadda, see previous paragraphs.
The aftermath of the second world war brought many things. Health care before WWII wasn't something to be proud of. Not that it is afterward but it is significantly better than before. Care to visit a dentist before WWII. You'd have your tail between your legs in no time. What is malignant about the current social order? It has its warts, so did it before WWII.
Could you please explain precisely what is happening...errr...beyond bellyaching that somehow the current situation isn't what you'd like it to be? And what is that, now you have your chance to explain it to us?
You seem to believe that if one part of the U.S. government knows something, that all parts know it. First, because of the inane Church rules, there was a wall between CIA and FBI and CIA couldn't track people within the U.S. Yeah, you probably don't believe that but then most of us couldn't believe the government was that stupid not to allow information on criminal activity to cross agency lines.
Then you also have to think that because some people at CIA believe something, that they can get the rest of the government to believe it too. You forget agency turf and to what extent its keepers will go to protect it.
Not only that, it is not very likely any administration wants to be seen as dropping the ball and allowing a terrorist attack. The idea that Bush or anyone else would think to do this doesn't take into account modern politics where the threat of a gaff leads our politicians to test the public opinion to tell the politicians what they believe that week.
I saw the video link, it might be helpful to you to be accurate and precise with what the owner said when you report. The owner said the firefighters had come to him and said they couldn't sustain the effort needed to control the fire and that they should pull "it". The "it" referred to the effort to control the fire, not pull the building down. The firefighters were admitting what they were doing was ineffective and they couldn't sustain the effort. They concluded there was nothing they could do so they told the owner they'd pull out the effort spent on the building.
The abutment of that clip with the building collapsing is misleading as is the whole clip. It is just someone's effort for 15 minutes of fame and nimrods like you help him...pathetic...
Slashdot Mirror
Errr...you do realize there's a difference among the Judicial, Legislative, and Executive branches of government. Here's a clue, this is a court case.
Gerry
Stop overstating the "ownership" is nationalization thing. Those agreements have the government selling off their investments as soon as possible. They were always seen as a short term stop-gap measure to prevent the economy from imploding. And if it does implode, we'll have bigger problems than the feds owning shares in J.P. Morgan.
Gerry
"but it should be remembered that MS was once the scrappy, cheap alternative to Big Blue and the proprietary Unix club"
Wby?
Gerry
Yes, let's trumpet the most base qualities in humans and declare them to be the standard for business. What right should we have to expect ethical behavior since there is no one to enforce it or that the entity isn't human, merely run by humans?
Tell you what, let's make a list of the worst excesses of human behavior and pass it around to companies to use as a cheat-sheet. Business School Product should always aim high.
Gerry
Right. The "market" isn't fair in the sense that fairness is some sort of balm spread over anyone who plays by the rules. The market is a fairly blunt instrument that, left uncontrolled, allows all sorts of deformities to arise.
A free market requires transparency, but Wall Street spent the last 20 years constructing very non-transparent investment "vehicles" that their rocket scientists couldn't understand. And the market is now correcting for this, but it is not doing it in fair manner. It doesn't have a soul, a conscience, a fairness meter.
Gerry
It isn't the government. It is Islam and the "culture" it inspires. Don't forget those nice, kind people who want the man dead for blasphemy have no problem with shipping opium to the rest of the kafir.
Gerry
No, the housing crisis was largely the result of above the board legal activity, that was the problem. There plenty of blame to go around, let's assign it:
1) American People: those saints who decided it would be wonderful to flip houses, get second mortgages, get mortgages they couldn't afford, take the equity out their houses and piss it off.
2) The government: created Fannie Mae in the Depression as a response to the gutting of the housing markets. They created Freddie Mac in the 1970's. They also gave these two institutions a virtual monopoly in securitizing loans...which they proceeded to do in wild abandon starting in the 1980s.
3) The government again: they (in the guise of deregulation) thought the Depression era restrictions on Commercial and Investment Banks was soooo Depression, the U.S. needed a modern banking system.
4) The Banks: they found they could get in on the housing crisis by making bad loans, creating way over-leveraged "assets", making their books opaque so that than even banks don't now trust each other.
5) The insurance companies who though credit default swaps were just like house and life insurance. They were wrong...in a very leveraged way.
6) The Federal Reserve: kept the interest rates waaay too low for waaay too long.
7) Foreign countries and institutions that thought it would be better to get in on the feeding frenzy rather than keeping their powder dry.
The list goes on. The problem due to shady or illegal deals was minor. It was all there in black and white.
So, you've been drinking the alien kool-aid, eh? It might also be the race that makes it here is the meanest bunch of mothers who managed to beat all rivals and it is their will to power that caused them to go out and conquer other civilizations.
Gerry
Are you blind? The Democrats orchestrated their 60 percent because the Republicans were orchestrating roughly 40 percent. What happened was they got their counts wrong. The idea (for both Parties) was that by giving minimal approval to the plan, they could all raise their minimal approval as a fig leaf. And if it worked, they'd both claim victory "for the American People". Grow up.
Gerry
Well, it isn't entirely the government's fault, Federal Reserve or otherwise.
Who was buying McMansions? Who was flipping houses? Who was refinancing their mortgages to take the equity out of their properties? Who was signing for credit they knew they couldn't pay back?
That's right, the sainted American People. Surely they were enabled by our dumb government policies. Fannie Mae is one of the main employers of former Democrat congressional staff members, so it isn't entirely a Republican problem either. But it was the American people who were too dumb to stop living beyond their means and now they're complaining "The Devil Made us do It".
Gerry
The U.S. is spending about 10 Billion a month, not a year.
Gerry
Let's not bring Bugs Bunny into this.
Gerry
My own view was that WWII and the Depression helped spawn the current "Look, I'm stupid so I'm cool" attitude in the U.S. After WWII, the nation had just come out of unimaginable horror (not nearly as traumatic as the Europeans or the Chinese or others went through) and the Depression. WWII built up U.S. industry. After the war, that industry had to do something and there was a recession after the war since all that industry producing had no market. The U.S. moved toward consumerism which could lap up all that capacity and the G.I. Bill put a lot of service men in College and so created an educated work force.
That work force wanted the best for their kids. That gave the U.S. the pampered Me generations of the 1960's and 1970's. These generations weren't willing to work hard because they never had to. Science grew on trees for them. But worse, Science was seen as anathema to the Peace, Love, and Pass the LSD. And so was spawned Education schools in which method over substance was promoted. Johnny and Mary couldn't learn because Johnny and Mary needed a shot of self-esteem in the rear first.
Now we have Johnny and Mary, who were never given a sense for the thrill of science, procreating Johnny and Mary Version 2.0. These Versions are even further lost to Science. And the Me generations with no true feeling for science are teaching John and Mary Version 2.0. The poor kneebiters are sunk.
Gerry
The crusades where at the beginning of the second millenium. Islamic empires didn't start to atrophy until the 15th-16th centuries.
Gerry
In a little known, but true addendum, Dark Energy is what happens when the Klieg lights are turned on a congress-critter. Their mouth instinctively opens and Dark Energy spews out clouding what would have been a clear path to any solution. Treasury and Fed and other administration officials are similarly affected.
It was once thought that Dark Energy could be ignored if the Klieg lights could somehow be shut off. Alas, it is not so. We are all doomed to suffer from its influence when campaigning for the election in 2012 commences on Nov. 8, 2008.
Gerry
Turtles all the way down...clearly.
Gerry
Bullshit. Ever write a mathematics paper? You won't be doing that anytime soon in html (or some variant) and you are just plain not in mathematics if you attempt it in Word. The only system is (La)TeX and it generally produces .pdfs.
Yeah, I'm with you bro, if they were to circulate SUVs in opposing directions in ring, then we'd have an even bigger chance of something going wrong.
Gerry
Whoosh...
Gerry
While I agree with your sentiments, there's nothing stopping from M$ claiming their docuthingy conforms to ISO standard Blah-Wooffle-Beetle-Bam. Anyone who must approve a docuthingy with an ISO standard restriction will simply see M$, see the ISO standard M$ points to which conveniently has M$ in name lest they care not to look further than that, and will mark the inviting checkbox that indicates said docuthingy meets the restriction.
For M$, a win is a win no matter who they had rape to get it.
Gerry
Would you like some alum to put on those Rice Crispies or should we just shoot you and put you out our misery right now?
Demographics is certainly something to be reckoned with. It isn't a law that can be repealed. Not enough people to support the old might mean that the youngsters won't be using up the environment (greenhouse gases, maybe you've heard of them). Then again, enough bright young people might mean they find a way to not use up all the environment. Not really Demographics, is it?
Hyperinflation in Russia was caused by Capitalism, you seem to imply. The previous 70 odd years of totally destroying the moral fiber of a people had nothing to do with it, we presume. Capitalism doesn't spring immaculately conceived from any premordial substrate, it requires years of preparation (like Democracy for one, rule of law, functioning markets, civility, etc.) and it doesn't guarantee its own survival. Hyperinflation might be the future of Western cultures, but you still have not stated any serious cause and effect, so we can dismiss this claim of yours.
The chemist selling birth control, feminists, and capitalists...yadda, yadda, yadda, see previous paragraphs.
The aftermath of the second world war brought many things. Health care before WWII wasn't something to be proud of. Not that it is afterward but it is significantly better than before. Care to visit a dentist before WWII. You'd have your tail between your legs in no time. What is malignant about the current social order? It has its warts, so did it before WWII.
Could you please explain precisely what is happening...errr...beyond bellyaching that somehow the current situation isn't what you'd like it to be? And what is that, now you have your chance to explain it to us?
Gerry
The Iraq War cost several 100's of billions of dollars. How is that turning a profit?
Gerry
You seem to believe that if one part of the U.S. government knows something, that all parts know it. First, because of the inane Church rules, there was a wall between CIA and FBI and CIA couldn't track people within the U.S. Yeah, you probably don't believe that but then most of us couldn't believe the government was that stupid not to allow information on criminal activity to cross agency lines.
Then you also have to think that because some people at CIA believe something, that they can get the rest of the government to believe it too. You forget agency turf and to what extent its keepers will go to protect it.
Not only that, it is not very likely any administration wants to be seen as dropping the ball and allowing a terrorist attack. The idea that Bush or anyone else would think to do this doesn't take into account modern politics where the threat of a gaff leads our politicians to test the public opinion to tell the politicians what they believe that week.
Gerry
And he'd have to be a pretty stupid businessman to claim in public that he'd caused the collapse of his own building.
Gerry
I saw the video link, it might be helpful to you to be accurate and precise with what the owner said when you report. The owner said the firefighters had come to him and said they couldn't sustain the effort needed to control the fire and that they should pull "it". The "it" referred to the effort to control the fire, not pull the building down. The firefighters were admitting what they were doing was ineffective and they couldn't sustain the effort. They concluded there was nothing they could do so they told the owner they'd pull out the effort spent on the building.
The abutment of that clip with the building collapsing is misleading as is the whole clip. It is just someone's effort for 15 minutes of fame and nimrods like you help him...pathetic...
Gerry