(no subject)

[caraig]

Banks give America the bird.

I hope someone out there -- besides these CEOs -- are glad that the banks got this money. Because right now I could chew through beryllium steel. What an arrogant industry!

Once again, any industry that can crush our economy, and then have the gall to tell us to go screw ourselves when we ask what they're doing with our money, deserves to be regulated to within an inch of their profit margins.

More CEOs need to be cold-cocked in their company gyms, apparently. I'd really like it if someone made these institutions, you know, a little more responsible to the people they're sucking money from.

Comments

[sodon.livejournal.com]

Or maybe we can leave banks to run (and fail) their own businesses and simply count on our elected officials to not sign away $700 billion of our future.

You have no idea how frustrating it is, as a young person 6 months away from beginning his life in earnest (i.e. post-college) to watch my government throw away my future like it is doing. Not to mention how the bad economy seems to be giving every elected official an excuse to raise taxes - again, signing away my future.

You don't raise taxes when people need to be rebuilding their savings, and you don't throw us nearly $1 trillion into debt.

[caraig.livejournal.com]

Oh, I fully agree. I am not at all hapy with Congress, in particular my senator: Harry Reid. I'm still unhappily surprised that despite all the tons of input Congress has gotten, they still went through with the bailout. As someone who has been gainfully fully employed only one year out of the past seven, I do not like my government essentially putting me in debt to an arrogant industry, either.

Fortunately, it seems like Congress is noticing this selfish arrogance on the part of the banks as well, and seems to be holding back the remaining 350 billion until the finance industry makes an accounting of itself. We shall see,

[sodon.livejournal.com]

The only thing I disagree with is regulating the banks, mostly because with its track record, I highly doubt goverment regulation will benefit anyone but the government. Which is, incidently, one of the big reasons I support small government.

The banks have been practicing bad business for years now. As a result, they are going under. Recessions are painful for everybody, but regulation won't stop it. Recessions are as inevitable as every other ebb and flow of life. Government intervention is not only pointless, but I think we will find in the coming years that it makes it quite a bit worse.

This next part isn't in response to you. It's just come to mind now that we're on the subject. But what bugs me is that everytime things get a little bit difficult, the public willingly throws away their freedoms and their children's futures for piece of mind today. Not only can the government not stop something like a recession, but by giving them more control (say, letting them buy controlling stakes in our banks and other major industries), we pretty much guarantee even more difficult times in the future. Although maybe not for a few generations. Yeah, I'm starting to wonder how great the legacy I'm inheriting really is.

Don't let socialist Europe fool you either. They've been riding the coattails of America's economic wonders for years. Now they're suffering the crunch like us. They're going to expound the failures of free market capitalism, but it was free market capitalism that brought them the last decade or so of prosperity.

/endrant

[caraig.livejournal.com]

On the point of no need for regulation, I would partly disagree. It was a lack of any sort of oversight which allowed the lending institutions to trade in sub-prime mortgages, and built up the market for them because they were traded and divided and shared. While I would agree that simply letting them fail would normally be punishment enough, the fact is that their industry is so tied into the lifeblood of so many other critical industries -- including health care/health insurance! -- such that oversight is needed. Shenanigans like this trading in shares of subprime mortgages, and encouraging same, should never have gotten off the ground. And many, many economists (not the actual traders/sellers) have said as much. Brad Hicks has a great essay on that, I'm not sure where it is at the moment, though.

What the world has had since the Bretton Woods agreement has not really been free-market capitalism. In particular, Europe is in a crunch directly because of the Bretton Woods agreement which eventually tied their currency to ours when the US dropped the gold standard in 1971.

Frankly, I don't believe pure socialism is a viable solution. I also don't believe that free-market capitalism is, either. AS long as there are people willing to play the Prisoner's Dilemma to their advantage, and where the typical psychological profile of a CEO is that of 'sociopath,' then we need both oversight and regulations. Ideally, I want to see a system where fiscal conservatives and social liberals work together to run a smart, sane, effective country. But considering the vitriol thrown from both sides at the other, that's not happening anytime soon.

[sodon.livejournal.com]

Well, like I said. The problem with government interference is it tends to benefit the government more than anyone else. For example: sub-prime mortgages, which were propped up by the government and supported by politicians with financial interests in the successes of places like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

It wasn't just free market capitalism that created this situation.

[sodon.livejournal.com]

So, it's to say it's all very complex. I don't thing total free market works. Companies will pay people next to nothing if they can get away with it. There needs to be some regulation. Probably bad loans should be restricted too. I guess, right now, I am just feeling way too skeptical about my government to feel confident that they would have helped, or will help, if given the chance.

For that matter, I don't think the problem in Congress is conservatives (of which few are truly elected, whatever their ticket) and liberals not getting along, but a unanimous interest in our government in lining their pockets with money. See FM&FM note about.