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Post by Hellfury on Sept 29, 2008 16:35:23 GMT -5
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Post by PenguinDude on Sept 29, 2008 16:39:29 GMT -5
RON-PAUL! REVOLUTION! GIVE US BACK OUR CONSTITUTION!
That is all. Great victory for us all.
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Post by kostka malpa on Sept 29, 2008 16:41:51 GMT -5
The dow dropped 777 I was hoping for 666 so the fundies woudl declare the end times.
I find it funny that Pelosi pissed off Republicans enough to vote against then Representive CockLisp the BoyPimper tries to grandstand on it. I hope they all die in a fire.
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Post by Hellfury on Sept 29, 2008 16:51:47 GMT -5
The song "The Final Countdown" is now playing in your head.
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Post by syaireba on Sept 29, 2008 16:54:24 GMT -5
Did the Russians and/or Chinese build the railgun in space yet?
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Post by PenguinDude on Sept 29, 2008 17:00:43 GMT -5
Space Elevators?
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Post by kostka malpa on Sept 29, 2008 17:03:33 GMT -5
When is Moore's Law supposed to kick in?
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takedown275
Ye Olde King of OT
Too smart for his own damn good
%\1\%
Posts: 674
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Post by takedown275 on Sept 29, 2008 17:18:06 GMT -5
RON-PAUL! REVOLUTION! GIVE US BACK OUR CONSTITUTION! That is all. Great victory for us all. Victory for all? No one wins as a result of this, least of all the average citizen. I hope, for your sake, that most of your tutition isn't privately funded. |
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Post by Just Lorek on Sept 29, 2008 19:54:04 GMT -5
I think that America really needs a good kick to the genitals. Take away some of that sense of entitlement and all that.
I do believe that we need a serious, painful market correction to bring things back to where they should be. Yeah, it's going to hurt, but give it a few years and we'll be fiscally healthier than before. That said, this is from a guy who's bitter about living in an $800 a month apartment while pretty much all of his friends live in homes in the suburbs (thanks to his fiancee's debt).
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Post by kostka malpa on Sept 29, 2008 20:00:54 GMT -5
Iorek, is that you singing from the basement on the free credit report commercial?
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Post by McMMMNNNMMM on Sept 29, 2008 20:12:31 GMT -5
Shit's goin down.
I am disappointed that there was no bailout. Would of slowed the death spiral and it's not my money being spent..
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Post by bigchris1313 on Sept 29, 2008 21:22:04 GMT -5
Market Implosion imminent in 10... 9... 8...
Say goodbye to your 401ks. Ciao!
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Post by PenguinDude on Sept 29, 2008 21:48:52 GMT -5
Takedown, we either take a hit now, or we risk total collapse later.
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Post by bigchris1313 on Sept 30, 2008 0:27:50 GMT -5
Takedown, we either risk collapse now or our children pay for our fuck up when we actually give them a nation to inherit. Fixed your typo (however awkwardly). |
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Post by bigchris1313 on Sept 30, 2008 0:55:10 GMT -5
PD, I too was once a ideological college Sophomore, in the truest sense of the word, with a hard-on for Ayn Rand and anything even resembling her philosophy. I held, and still hold, libertarianism as the ideal political system. But slowly but surely, as I matured into the Super Senior you see today, I was hardened by the rampant realism, perhaps cynicism, that long ago infected the American Politics and International Relations wings of CMC's government department. I stopped getting angry at social security and corporate welfare; I stopped taking umbrage at the thievery I know to be income tax. If you impose an unnecessary moral system on behavior, you are going to handicap yourself. And as much as I hate to admit it, a few centuries back the nation states of Europe found out that the best way to run a state was to steal from the people (read: income tax) for their own good.
And guess what? It works. Income tax is remarkably effective at raising capital for the nation state. The government then takes that money and spends it on, for lack of a better term, stuff. And while we often hear about how often that stuff is fucked up beyond all repair, most of the time, it works. Governments are remarkably effective at serving their populations. Unfortunately, while I think people are capable of running their own affairs for the most part, the vast majority of the population does not have the time, desire, or intellectual acumen to rule on complicated policy issues. 536 elected officials have enough difficulty doing so. But these 536 guys manage to decide on the issues that 90%+ of the population isn't capable of working out. And, as in many other nation states, most notably liberal democracies, they're often right.
So back to that stolen tax money. These guys get to decide how to spend it. They fortunately have high level policy analysis from groups on all sides, as supplied by staffers and lobbyists. And while they often spend it on projects for their own people, that's the price of doing business right now. For the most part, though, they do their job: they figure out how to spend money on behalf of the nation state in order to further the national interest.
Right now, there's good evidence that the national interest is tending towards, say, credit markets that have enough liquidity for capital to actually allow the economy to work. Without banks to allocate capital, nothing happens: you need capital to do anything. Businesses don't run on cash reserves; they borrow money at lower rates than the rates they will return on their investments. If we don't have decent liquidity in our credit markets, how are we going to do business? Right now, that's the best evidence I've seen for why we should bother with this admittedly immoral bailout.
Do drawbacks exist? Absolutely. Does this mean that Wall Street will eventually try something crazy with the expectation that they will get bailed out again? Sure. That's absolutely a risk. And, while I hate having to say this, we can help mitigate that risk via more vigorous oversight. And I can't promise that Wall Street won't fuck up again in 20 years. But I think that's a risk we're stuck taking.
Right now, as best I can tell, the markets, which like it or not rely on consumer confidence in the 21st century, are shitting themselves. At the individual level, the quality of life for you and I will be worse if banks have liquidity problems. At the state level, the relative power of the U.S. will diminish if banks have liquidity problems. Will we have to pay a huge amount of cash for this? Yes. Is it still the best, if not only, solution to the credit drought? As far as I can tell, yes.
Is it immoral? Absolutely. But in the modern era, when we've established that the most efficient system is to steal money from the citizenry to enact national policy for the greater good, I see us having no choice but to pass this fucking bill.
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