The massive fuel burned it's major element in the explosion, explosion. The remaining quantities burned for 10 minutes after impact, impact.
Milk is spilt though, people are dead, government is happy, war is meant to be everlasting, freedom is slavery, history is malleable. Time to stock up ammo, not argue details, details.:-)
It's not ONE policy, it's and entire system. Joe Sixpack pays for the maintenance of the FCC via taxes. He also pays for countless other regulatory agencies that also hurt the economy more than help.
Maybe were not for the tax and regulatory burden we'd see more Joe Sixpacks saving for some 20 years to take a loan out and start his enterprise.
The argument that lowering the barrier to enter the market is insignificant does not hold in reality. Check out the wikipedia article. Especially the telecom section. Its crazy.
businesses are hurting them because capitalism ISN'T working as designed...
It certainly isn't. Try lifting all regulations and removing the government's visible hand and invisible foot from the market and then Capitalism will work as designed.
The cellular marketplace is not free in the US. Ever heard of the FCC? Burn it, and competition will flourish. Despite the natural intuitive notion nowadays that 'the government needs to step in and DO something' it actually needs to step out.
Somalia has no government, and the cheapest cell rates in the world.
My god, I've posted this exact same thing just seconds ago. Geez.
That was more than enough to get them to indulge in the 'liquor' you blame for this hangover
But they didn't! Why do you keep insisting they did? Look it up. Until late 2007, neither Fannie nor Freddie were in the subprime mortgage market. But at that point, they had no choice but to get involved; had they not started buying up those mortgages, MBSs would've started failing, and the investors would've run for the hills, taking the housing market it along with it, resulting in an even more dramatic collapse.
The fact is, it was the regular banking institutions that were so deeply embedded in the subprime market. No, really, look it up, it's true. The market failed, and it was the pure private institutions that really screwed it up (have you already forgotten about IndyMac and Bear Stearns??), because the US government let them by not regulating the market appropriately. It was a classic market failure. Which is what happens when you let the free market charge ahead unimpeded.
Now, that's not to say Fannie and Freddie don't have their problems. But being involved in the subprime market was *not* one of them.
Uh... Because they failed? and now the Fed is paying for their losses?
What year are we in today? How much in debt F&F ate in? You can't just say the patient is dead today, but he was fine last night and just cover your nose. You blame 'rampant greed' for the crisis, then tell me with a straight face that Fannie and Freddie were doing fine on greed until they just couldn't watch. Make up your mind.
You say the market has failed, but the market IS tampered with in the first place. Blaming the symptoms is no cure for a disease. If regulation is the thing you think keeps your 'greed' in check, worry about better solutions to monetary policy, even if you don't buy the 'gold standard BS'. Don't try to pass law that says 'bad mortgages shall not be issue' because that's just naive.
the guarantee that bad decisions bring failure, and they will bear the consequences.
That requires these organizations to successfully gauge risk. The problem is that the nature of the secondary mortgage market was such that investors believed they were insulated from that risk, either through poor statistical thinking (the idea that a bunch of high-risk mortgages collected together makes for a low-risk investment... a correct idea, if the risks are independant... a terrible, terrible idea if they're not), or through genuine misinformation or misdirection because of the level of abstraction in some of those derivative instruments.
Genuine misinformation or misdirection! Good, follow that line of though. It'll lead to governmental regulation of the money supply.
But seriously. No, it has nothing to do with accurately assessing risk. Personal responsibility does not include being able to shout "But it's not my fault! He lied about his income! It was a perfectly fine investment!". The market doesn't really care whether you flip coins for taking loans or you pore over documents with a team of experts. If decision turn out to be bad you fail.
What percentage of the private mortgage market IndyBank and Bear Sterns represent? And what percentage of the mortgage GSEs does Freddie and Fannie represent?
This blind ideology is actually called economics.
No, you're describing laissez faire capitalism, which is one economic theory (preferred by my favorite whipping boy, libertarianism), but it most certainly does *not* embody the entirety of "economics". Meanwhile, the pragmatic folks out there realize that, yup, some people screwed up, but it's better to prevent the failure of Fannie and Freddie than to trigger a depression, partly due to domestic wealth destruction, but worse yet, because of international wealth destruction causing the withdrawl of investment funds, resulting in a massive credit crunch and an economic meltdown.
And trust me, it would. Really. The sheer amount of money tied up in mortgage backed securities is enormous. Allowing that amount of wealth to simply evaporate would cause incalculable damage to the US economy, in all probability thrusting it into a new depression. Thanks, but no thanks.
On the bright side, I can at least be happy that the US isn't so ideologically blinded to be willing to sacrifice the US (and probably world) economies because of blind adherence to an ideology.
The 'sort of' private institution status you so lightly mention is the MOST important incentive real private enterprise has to be conservative: the guarantee that bad decisions bring failure, and they will bear the consequences.
That was more than enough to get them to indulge in the 'liquor' you blame for this hangover and J.P. Morgan didn't, because greed is not blind at all. If this 'blind greed' prejudice of yours held in reality, it is the very visible hand of government that puts the blinds around their eyes.
This blind ideology is actually called economics. You either let the market correct itself and people who are responsible be responsible, or you get the Fed to pump it full of money, inflating the money supply so the bill is just going to get split amongst more heads. The sacrifice to the US economy is done, the choice is to who pays the bill and bureaucrats have made the choice; "not us".
Oh bullshit. You may not be able to predict, a priori, which loans will fail, but it's trivial to set some basic guidelines. Hell, I can do it!
1) Outlaw liar loans, requiring real documentation of income before issuing a mortgage.
2) Outlaw negative amortization and interest-only loans. If you don't plan to pay back the mortgage, you shouldn't own the property.
3) Outlaw "creative" incentives to encourage purchases, such as the seller paying the down payment for the purchaser. This just encourages people getting into loans they can't afford.
See, basic, common-sense rules that would've gone a *long* way to curtailing the clusterfuck that we're seeing today.
So you can! Well done!:-)
The thing is, not you or anyone can predict the other certain unwanted consequences of these proposed simple rules. Just like no one had an idea that organized crime and violence would be the outcome of the Prohibition. Government wasn't smart then, and it isn't now.
Here's a piece of common sense; There is no free lunch.
P.S.: I never called you ignorant, and even if you would to call me crazy, that has nothing to do with the discussion and would be promptly ignored.
Hey, nobody is saying Russia is a teddy bear. I like the US much better!:)
the act of Congress that gave Bush the discretionary authority to invade Iraq, cited approximately 20 factors. High among them and comprising several separate factors was not direct evidence of WMD's, but non-compliance of the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease fire, including access for weapons inspectors. Hussein flip-flopping on inspector access was a weekly news topic in 2002. Other forms of non-compliance included violation of the agreed-upon no-fly zones, refusal to return material stolen from Kuwait in 1990, and firing on coalition aircraft. In addition to that, there was the 1993 assassination attempt against Bush Sr, past use of chemical weapons both against the Iranians and the Kurds, Iraqi support of Hamas, the fact that Iraq was a dictatorship (remember those people cheering in the streets in 2003? They may not like us, but they hated Sadaam more), and Congress'es and Clinton's 1998 resolution that made regime change an official US policy.
Yea, many people call me names, do things I wouldn't like them to do and refuse to grant access to my weapons inspectors but if I punch them in the face or shoot them I'm still wrong. The fact that there were 20 factors but not just the one that justifies going to WAR - being attacked - only magnifies the fact that they were looking for a reason and came back with 20 excuses.
By the way, the Congress giving Bush discretion as to whether or not go to war was illegal;
US Constitution Article 1 Section 8 The Congress shall have power
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
As to the 'down-with-dictatorships' argument, well, that's sort of.... bullshit. In that case fellas, you better ready up for 100 years of warfare, cause there are where that one came from. Saudi Arabia and China comes to mind. Don't worry about the Russians, they'll be busy liberating all regions around Russia that have a Russian citizen living in it.:)
And, if so many people hated Saddam, how come American soldiers are still getting killed over there? This was has been on for FIVE years. Don't you think that if the rebels were just a bunch of disgruntled beneficiaries from the former regime would have been ratted out and squashed by now?
If it means to have people who made bad decisions take responsibility for them, I say let the economy implode. Which it wouldn't by the way.
Again, I'll happily ignore the rest, I've heard the same or similar from the likes of you before, so I'm not sure why you're even trying.
Oh, what's not to like in a good spirited and polite argument.:)
Summarizing, if you want to blame easy credit, don't be vague and call it 'market alcoholism' but point the finger at the source of it.
I did. Bad regulation. If the government had instituted rules which disallowed banks from issuing bad loans, none of this would've happened.
Listen to what you're saying. If the government knew a bad loan from a good one, Fannie and Freddie wouldn't have failed. And they were BANKS not Congressmen. Now, you propose to apply the resources of this endless pool of wisdom - government - to loans from all other private banks as well? Forgive for not cheering with excitement at that proposal.
Alternatively, they could've outlawed the secondary mortgage market, but I'm not educated enough to determine if that's a good idea or not (...)
I agree. I'm not educated enough to determine it either. And that is my point. NOBODY is smart enough to determine the outcomes of such regulations or write some theoretical 'good' ones. Even Nobel laureate economists are wrong from time to time.
(...) (my gut says it isn't, since that would cause large amounts of mortgage funding to essentially evaporate, but there's something to be said for the idea that not everyone deserves to own a home).
Actually no. Everybody deserves a home, being homeless must suck. Thing is, when you make some need - however deserved - a right, that means someone else must work for it, if the beneficiary can't afford it. And that, in principle, is nothing but slavery. To fine ideals and good sentiments, but slavery nonetheless.
Absolutely they were. It was only at the tail-end of 2k7 that the GSEs really started getting involved in the subprime market, and that was out of necessity, not desire. But when you hold nearly 80% of all mortgages (after the various banks and investors started pulling out), and the GSEs can no longer raise funds to support their guarantees because the market has turned, increasing defaults while drying up the availability of funds, it's hardly surprisingly that Fannie and Freddie went under.
Out of necessity but not of desire? They were forced to make bad investments? Not so much to blame on rampant greed, but rampant selfless in this case, huh? Weird....
The rest of your post is the usual "gold standard" BS. And if you believe in that crap, there's little left to discuss.:)
I do support the gold standard and free banking, which is not perfect system by a longshot, but under which this and other bubble-like debacles would simply not be possible precisely because of greed and self-interest. I find it strange you would call simply believing in it to be bullshit. You do know that the Constitution pretty much institutes it? I wouldn't take the Founders to be idiots, seeing that the rest of it is quite shrewdly construed.
Summarizing, if you want to blame easy credit, don't be vague and call it 'market alcoholism' but point the finger at the source of it. If you want to make an honest argument, that is.
In fact, my understanding is that Fanny and Freddie were far better than the private investment firms and banks
Were they? Well, I guess your argument is sound except for the multi-trillion dollar debt that is now to be monetized by the Fed and divvied up by the American taxpayers.
I disagree with you. You basically use 'availability of large amounts of free capital' and 'cheap capital' quips without checking into their cause, which is not the operation of a free market, but the operation of a central bank emitting fiat currency at a low, low, low interest. Regulation just doesn't get bigger that that.
And the calling the homeowners stupid is disingenuous. They were given false signals, interest rates were artificially low, housing prices were affected, hell you might have acted similarly if put in a position to decide based on that data. You can't put the responsibility on them any more than you can hold them responsible for the low savings rate in America. People are just acting on their own interests, but the system is tampered and if you fiddle the source code too much, bad bugs rear their head. I've taken the metaphor too far here, but this is/. after all.:-P
No prob on the offtopic, I'm probably gonna get downmodded for it too... Mods on/. have been unforgiving lately.:-P
So... those financial bubbles are the result of unsustainable malinvestment caused by distorting intervention in the market's signaling systems like prices, interest rates and availability of credit.
To give the mortgage crisis as an example, both Freddie and Fannie had special ties and treatment by the government that led them to purchase very risky subprime loans that regular market-bound enterprises wouldn't touch with a 20-foot pole.
I'm reading this paper right now about some common myths about free trade and markets. Pretty interesting read it you got the time to kill.
Well, what Russia did is small potatoes compared to what America's foreign policy has been for quite some time. They have attacked a country without provocation and have been occupying it for the past 5 years.
I think if the US set the example returning to a non-interventionist foreign policy and eliminating all barriers to trade it would export democracy and freedom much more effectively than the armed forces and the CIA ever did.
I really don't think SpaceX is strapped for cash. Even if they did, I'm sure Musk would just put his own money into it, hell bent on making it work such as he is.
I'm very anxious for their next launch, I'm afraid I've become some of a fanboy, sadly.:-D
Havn't we been doing that for hundreds of years, and that's why we are in this mess... might have to take lots of wacky ideas before we come up with a safe agreeable solution that may help.
Human generated greenhouse gas emissions account for 3% of the total. The other 97% is from natural sources, such as forest fires and decomposing animals.
To spell it out for you: 'no we haven't', but 'yes, we've been had':-)
Slashdot Mirror
hit by thousands of tons of falling debris
Really? Where did you get that from? The building did look fine before crashing.
Check the other WTC buildings that were REALLY hit by thousands of tons of debris, they're not hard to find with a Google search
The WTC 7 fell just like other two towers because of a fire. And the Empire state building was hit by a military bomber and did not fall.
You think paper, wood and fabric burns hotter than jet fuel? Omg, why do I even bother????...
The massive fuel burned it's major element in the explosion, explosion. The remaining quantities burned for 10 minutes after impact, impact.
Milk is spilt though, people are dead, government is happy, war is meant to be everlasting, freedom is slavery, history is malleable. Time to stock up ammo, not argue details, details. :-)
It's not ONE policy, it's and entire system. Joe Sixpack pays for the maintenance of the FCC via taxes. He also pays for countless other regulatory agencies that also hurt the economy more than help.
Maybe were not for the tax and regulatory burden we'd see more Joe Sixpacks saving for some 20 years to take a loan out and start his enterprise.
The argument that lowering the barrier to enter the market is insignificant does not hold in reality. Check out the wikipedia article. Especially the telecom section. Its crazy.
if Slavery was working as "designed" you wouldn't have enough idle time in the day to post to slashdot to complain about it.
There, fixed that for you. :)
businesses are hurting them because capitalism ISN'T working as designed...
It certainly isn't. Try lifting all regulations and removing the government's visible hand and invisible foot from the market and then Capitalism will work as designed.
The cellular marketplace is not free in the US. Ever heard of the FCC? Burn it, and competition will flourish. Despite the natural intuitive notion nowadays that 'the government needs to step in and DO something' it actually needs to step out.
Somalia has no government, and the cheapest cell rates in the world.
My god, I've posted this exact same thing just seconds ago. Geez.
End the FCC and the sharks will be bleeding each other to provide you with the cheapest and best service.
Somalia has no government and one of the cheapest per minute wireless rates in the world.
Oh, he earned his millions by the creed that prices should reflect the costs of production and not what price the market will pay for it?
He should mind his own business and department store instead of putting his price setting nose where it doesn't belong.
Orion is a spacecraft, Falcon 9 is a rocket. Did you mean something like 'can Orion be transported to orbit on the F9?'.
The important point being that they don't spend other people money failing. :-)
Man, they almost got to orbit on their second test. I'd like to fail like that every once in a while. :-)
That was more than enough to get them to indulge in the 'liquor' you blame for this hangover
But they didn't! Why do you keep insisting they did? Look it up. Until late 2007, neither Fannie nor Freddie were in the subprime mortgage market. But at that point, they had no choice but to get involved; had they not started buying up those mortgages, MBSs would've started failing, and the investors would've run for the hills, taking the housing market it along with it, resulting in an even more dramatic collapse.
The fact is, it was the regular banking institutions that were so deeply embedded in the subprime market. No, really, look it up, it's true. The market failed, and it was the pure private institutions that really screwed it up (have you already forgotten about IndyMac and Bear Stearns??), because the US government let them by not regulating the market appropriately. It was a classic market failure. Which is what happens when you let the free market charge ahead unimpeded.
Now, that's not to say Fannie and Freddie don't have their problems. But being involved in the subprime market was *not* one of them.
Uh... Because they failed? and now the Fed is paying for their losses?
What year are we in today? How much in debt F&F ate in? You can't just say the patient is dead today, but he was fine last night and just cover your nose. You blame 'rampant greed' for the crisis, then tell me with a straight face that Fannie and Freddie were doing fine on greed until they just couldn't watch. Make up your mind.
You say the market has failed, but the market IS tampered with in the first place. Blaming the symptoms is no cure for a disease. If regulation is the thing you think keeps your 'greed' in check, worry about better solutions to monetary policy, even if you don't buy the 'gold standard BS'. Don't try to pass law that says 'bad mortgages shall not be issue' because that's just naive.
the guarantee that bad decisions bring failure, and they will bear the consequences.
That requires these organizations to successfully gauge risk. The problem is that the nature of the secondary mortgage market was such that investors believed they were insulated from that risk, either through poor statistical thinking (the idea that a bunch of high-risk mortgages collected together makes for a low-risk investment... a correct idea, if the risks are independant... a terrible, terrible idea if they're not), or through genuine misinformation or misdirection because of the level of abstraction in some of those derivative instruments.
Genuine misinformation or misdirection! Good, follow that line of though. It'll lead to governmental regulation of the money supply.
But seriously. No, it has nothing to do with accurately assessing risk. Personal responsibility does not include being able to shout "But it's not my fault! He lied about his income! It was a perfectly fine investment!". The market doesn't really care whether you flip coins for taking loans or you pore over documents with a team of experts. If decision turn out to be bad you fail.
What percentage of the private mortgage market IndyBank and Bear Sterns represent? And what percentage of the mortgage GSEs does Freddie and Fannie represent?
This blind ideology is actually called economics.
No, you're describing laissez faire capitalism, which is one economic theory (preferred by my favorite whipping boy, libertarianism), but it most certainly does *not* embody the entirety of "economics". Meanwhile, the pragmatic folks out there realize that, yup, some people screwed up, but it's better to prevent the failure of Fannie and Freddie than to trigger a depression, partly due to domestic wealth destruction, but worse yet, because of international wealth destruction causing the withdrawl of investment funds, resulting in a massive credit crunch and an economic meltdown.
Now, you may be co
We're doomed. :)
And trust me, it would. Really. The sheer amount of money tied up in mortgage backed securities is enormous. Allowing that amount of wealth to simply evaporate would cause incalculable damage to the US economy, in all probability thrusting it into a new depression. Thanks, but no thanks. On the bright side, I can at least be happy that the US isn't so ideologically blinded to be willing to sacrifice the US (and probably world) economies because of blind adherence to an ideology.
The 'sort of' private institution status you so lightly mention is the MOST important incentive real private enterprise has to be conservative: the guarantee that bad decisions bring failure, and they will bear the consequences.
That was more than enough to get them to indulge in the 'liquor' you blame for this hangover and J.P. Morgan didn't, because greed is not blind at all. If this 'blind greed' prejudice of yours held in reality, it is the very visible hand of government that puts the blinds around their eyes.
This blind ideology is actually called economics. You either let the market correct itself and people who are responsible be responsible, or you get the Fed to pump it full of money, inflating the money supply so the bill is just going to get split amongst more heads. The sacrifice to the US economy is done, the choice is to who pays the bill and bureaucrats have made the choice; "not us".
Oh bullshit. You may not be able to predict, a priori, which loans will fail, but it's trivial to set some basic guidelines. Hell, I can do it!
1) Outlaw liar loans, requiring real documentation of income before issuing a mortgage.
2) Outlaw negative amortization and interest-only loans. If you don't plan to pay back the mortgage, you shouldn't own the property.
3) Outlaw "creative" incentives to encourage purchases, such as the seller paying the down payment for the purchaser. This just encourages people getting into loans they can't afford.
See, basic, common-sense rules that would've gone a *long* way to curtailing the clusterfuck that we're seeing today.
So you can! Well done! :-)
The thing is, not you or anyone can predict the other certain unwanted consequences of these proposed simple rules. Just like no one had an idea that organized crime and violence would be the outcome of the Prohibition. Government wasn't smart then, and it isn't now.
Here's a piece of common sense; There is no free lunch.
P.S.: I never called you ignorant, and even if you would to call me crazy, that has nothing to do with the discussion and would be promptly ignored.
Hey, nobody is saying Russia is a teddy bear. I like the US much better! :)
the act of Congress that gave Bush the discretionary authority to invade Iraq, cited approximately 20 factors. High among them and comprising several separate factors was not direct evidence of WMD's, but non-compliance of the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease fire, including access for weapons inspectors. Hussein flip-flopping on inspector access was a weekly news topic in 2002. Other forms of non-compliance included violation of the agreed-upon no-fly zones, refusal to return material stolen from Kuwait in 1990, and firing on coalition aircraft. In addition to that, there was the 1993 assassination attempt against Bush Sr, past use of chemical weapons both against the Iranians and the Kurds, Iraqi support of Hamas, the fact that Iraq was a dictatorship (remember those people cheering in the streets in 2003? They may not like us, but they hated Sadaam more), and Congress'es and Clinton's 1998 resolution that made regime change an official US policy.
Yea, many people call me names, do things I wouldn't like them to do and refuse to grant access to my weapons inspectors but if I punch them in the face or shoot them I'm still wrong. The fact that there were 20 factors but not just the one that justifies going to WAR - being attacked - only magnifies the fact that they were looking for a reason and came back with 20 excuses.
By the way, the Congress giving Bush discretion as to whether or not go to war was illegal;
US Constitution Article 1 Section 8 The Congress shall have power
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
As to the 'down-with-dictatorships' argument, well, that's sort of.... bullshit. In that case fellas, you better ready up for 100 years of warfare, cause there are where that one came from. Saudi Arabia and China comes to mind. Don't worry about the Russians, they'll be busy liberating all regions around Russia that have a Russian citizen living in it. :)
And, if so many people hated Saddam, how come American soldiers are still getting killed over there? This was has been on for FIVE years. Don't you think that if the rebels were just a bunch of disgruntled beneficiaries from the former regime would have been ratted out and squashed by now?
Or let the economy implode. You pick.
If it means to have people who made bad decisions take responsibility for them, I say let the economy implode. Which it wouldn't by the way.
Again, I'll happily ignore the rest, I've heard the same or similar from the likes of you before, so I'm not sure why you're even trying.
Oh, what's not to like in a good spirited and polite argument. :)
Summarizing, if you want to blame easy credit, don't be vague and call it 'market alcoholism' but point the finger at the source of it.
I did. Bad regulation. If the government had instituted rules which disallowed banks from issuing bad loans, none of this would've happened.
Listen to what you're saying. If the government knew a bad loan from a good one, Fannie and Freddie wouldn't have failed. And they were BANKS not Congressmen. Now, you propose to apply the resources of this endless pool of wisdom - government - to loans from all other private banks as well? Forgive for not cheering with excitement at that proposal.
Alternatively, they could've outlawed the secondary mortgage market, but I'm not educated enough to determine if that's a good idea or not (...)
I agree. I'm not educated enough to determine it either. And that is my point. NOBODY is smart enough to determine the outcomes of such regulations or write some theoretical 'good' ones. Even Nobel laureate economists are wrong from time to time.
(...) (my gut says it isn't, since that would cause large amounts of mortgage funding to essentially evaporate, but there's something to be said for the idea that not everyone deserves to own a home).
Actually no. Everybody deserves a home, being homeless must suck. Thing is, when you make some need - however deserved - a right, that means someone else must work for it, if the beneficiary can't afford it. And that, in principle, is nothing but slavery. To fine ideals and good sentiments, but slavery nonetheless.
Absolutely they were. It was only at the tail-end of 2k7 that the GSEs really started getting involved in the subprime market, and that was out of necessity, not desire. But when you hold nearly 80% of all mortgages (after the various banks and investors started pulling out), and the GSEs can no longer raise funds to support their guarantees because the market has turned, increasing defaults while drying up the availability of funds, it's hardly surprisingly that Fannie and Freddie went under.
Out of necessity but not of desire? They were forced to make bad investments? Not so much to blame on rampant greed, but rampant selfless in this case, huh? Weird....
The rest of your post is the usual "gold standard" BS. And if you believe in that crap, there's little left to discuss. :)
I do support the gold standard and free banking, which is not perfect system by a longshot, but under which this and other bubble-like debacles would simply not be possible precisely because of greed and self-interest. I find it strange you would call simply believing in it to be bullshit. You do know that the Constitution pretty much institutes it? I wouldn't take the Founders to be idiots, seeing that the rest of it is quite shrewdly construed.
Summarizing, if you want to blame easy credit, don't be vague and call it 'market alcoholism' but point the finger at the source of it. If you want to make an honest argument, that is.
My god, what is this? The friggin inquisition? You can't criticize global warming without getting modded Troll. Holies....
In fact, my understanding is that Fanny and Freddie were far better than the private investment firms and banks
Were they? Well, I guess your argument is sound except for the multi-trillion dollar debt that is now to be monetized by the Fed and divvied up by the American taxpayers.
I disagree with you. You basically use 'availability of large amounts of free capital' and 'cheap capital' quips without checking into their cause, which is not the operation of a free market, but the operation of a central bank emitting fiat currency at a low, low, low interest. Regulation just doesn't get bigger that that.
And the calling the homeowners stupid is disingenuous. They were given false signals, interest rates were artificially low, housing prices were affected, hell you might have acted similarly if put in a position to decide based on that data. You can't put the responsibility on them any more than you can hold them responsible for the low savings rate in America. People are just acting on their own interests, but the system is tampered and if you fiddle the source code too much, bad bugs rear their head. I've taken the metaphor too far here, but this is /. after all. :-P
Oh, the patent is only valid when powered by tidal or wave power? How unusual.
No prob on the offtopic, I'm probably gonna get downmodded for it too... Mods on /. have been unforgiving lately. :-P
So... those financial bubbles are the result of unsustainable malinvestment caused by distorting intervention in the market's signaling systems like prices, interest rates and availability of credit.
To give the mortgage crisis as an example, both Freddie and Fannie had special ties and treatment by the government that led them to purchase very risky subprime loans that regular market-bound enterprises wouldn't touch with a 20-foot pole.
I'm reading this paper right now about some common myths about free trade and markets. Pretty interesting read it you got the time to kill.
Well, what Russia did is small potatoes compared to what America's foreign policy has been for quite some time. They have attacked a country without provocation and have been occupying it for the past 5 years.
I think if the US set the example returning to a non-interventionist foreign policy and eliminating all barriers to trade it would export democracy and freedom much more effectively than the armed forces and the CIA ever did.
I really don't think SpaceX is strapped for cash. Even if they did, I'm sure Musk would just put his own money into it, hell bent on making it work such as he is.
I'm very anxious for their next launch, I'm afraid I've become some of a fanboy, sadly. :-D
Man, if SpaceX gets even just the Falcon 1 in orbit successfully soon they're gonna make big bucks. Seriously big.
I hope they succeed.
Havn't we been doing that for hundreds of years, and that's why we are in this mess... might have to take lots of wacky ideas before we come up with a safe agreeable solution that may help.
Human generated greenhouse gas emissions account for 3% of the total. The other 97% is from natural sources, such as forest fires and decomposing animals.
To spell it out for you: 'no we haven't', but 'yes, we've been had' :-)