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Originally posted by rue:
That was the Bush administration line, which Ron Paul seems only too happy to parrot. But most average people didn't FEEL it was true. What they knew was that they were working harder, working longer hours, just to edge backwards over time.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Ron Paul is an idiot, bent on warping facts to meet his ideology...

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Many Americans today are asking themselves how the economy got to be in such a bad spot. For years they thought the economy was booming, growth was up, job numbers and productivity were increasing. Yet now we find ourselves in what is shaping up to be one of the most severe economic downturns since the Great Depression. Unfortunately, the government's preferred solution to the crisis is the very thing that got us into this mess in the first place: government intervention.

Ever since the 1930s, the federal government has involved itself deeply in housing policy and developed numerous programs to encourage homebuilding and homeownership.

Government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were able to obtain a monopoly position in the mortgage market, especially the mortgage-backed securities market, because of the advantages bestowed upon them by the federal government.

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Laws passed by Congress such as the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to make loans to previously underserved segments of their communities, thus forcing banks to lend to people who normally would be rejected as bad credit risks.

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These governmental measures, combined with the Federal Reserve's loose monetary policy, led to an unsustainable housing boom.

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The key measure by which the Fed caused this boom was through the manipulation of interest rates, and the open market operations that accompany this lowering. When interest rates are lowered to below what the market rate would normally be, as the Federal Reserve has done numerous times throughout this decade, it becomes much cheaper to borrow money. Longer-term and more capital-intensive projects, projects that would be unprofitable at a high interest rate, suddenly become profitable. Because the boom comes about from an increase in the supply of money and not from demand from consumers, the result is malinvestment, a misallocation of resources into sectors in which there is insufficient demand. In this case, this manifested itself in overbuilding in real estate. When builders realize they have overbuilt and have too many houses to sell, too many apartments to rent, or too much commercial real estate to lease, they seek to recoup as much of their money as possible, even if it means lowering prices drastically. This lowering of prices brings the economy back into balance, equalizing supply and demand. This economic adjustment means, however that there are some winners -- in this case, those who can again find affordable housing without the need for creative mortgage products, and some losers -- builders and other sectors connected to real estate that suffer setbacks.

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The government doesn't like this, however, and undertakes measures to keep prices artificially inflated. This was why the Great Depression was as long and drawn out in this country as it was.

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I am afraid that policymakers today have not learned the lesson that prices must adjust to economic reality.

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The bailout of Fannie and Freddie, the purchase of AIG, and the latest multi-hundred billion dollar Treasury scheme all have one thing in common: They seek to prevent the liquidation of bad debt and worthless assets at market prices, and instead try to prop up those markets and keep those assets trading at prices far in excess of what any buyer would be willing to pay.Additionally, the government's actions encourage moral hazard of the worst sort. Now that the precedent has been set, the likelihood of financial institutions to engage in riskier investment schemes is increased, because they now know that an investment position so overextended as to threaten the stability of the financial system will result in a government bailout and purchase of worthless, illiquid assets.Using trillions of dollars of taxpayer money to purchase illusory short-term security, the government is actually ensuring even greater instability in the financial system in the long term.

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The solution to the problem is to end government meddling in the market.

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Government intervention leads to distortions in the market, and government reacts to each distortion by enacting new laws and regulations, which create their own distortions, and so on ad infinitum.It is time this process is put to an end. But the government cannot just sit back idly and let the bust occur. It must actively roll back stifling laws and regulations that allowed the boom to form in the first place.

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balance and drastically decrease the size of the federal budget, and reduce onerous regulations on banks and credit unions that lead to structural rigidity in the financial sector.

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Until the big-government apologists realize the error of their ways, and until vocal free-market advocates act in a manner which buttresses their rhetoric, I am afraid we are headed for a rough ride.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Wow... that's not true.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
"Deregulation" was bullshit, because it was still regulated and only appeared to be deregulated from certain angles.

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I just laugh when I think that the Liberals preach the word of Darwinism and survival of the fittest as being how we got to where we are today, but every policy they enforce, whether it fiscal or social, seems to work in direct contrast with Survival of the Fittest.

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Originally posted by citizen:
A lot of stuff...

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I just laugh when I think that the Liberals preach the word of Darwinism and survival of the fittest as being how we got to where we are today, but every policy they enforce, whether it fiscal or social, seems to work in direct contrast with Survival of the Fittest.

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It's funny how people who really want to see something as funny can twist it into something that doesn't even resemble itself.

Perhaps you just don't want to see the arguments of these "liberals" so you choose not to understand them. It's easier to think your opposition is wrong if you never bother to listen to them.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Many of these sociatal wins weren't met until after the date you place the fall of the American Economy.

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Let us condemn the many infringements on our personal liberties, personal wealth, and the previous truth that you had to work hard to survive, in all of those years combined, and hopefully in the future do it in some place not as benign and impotent as an obscure chatroom on the outskirts of the Verse.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
It just seems to me to be counter intuitive to the way things have gone on this planet the last few million years or so.... Maybe I'm wrong...

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Surely it goes at least back to Carter though.

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Many of these sociatal wins weren't met until after the date you place the fall of the American Economy.
What? I'm not sure I put a definite date on anything, and my look at it the 'fall' of the modern American economy would be the real start of deregulation, that is the 80's.

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If you're referring to the New Deal, and when the US became an economic powerhouse, then it wasn't until after the second world war that the US became number one. The US political, economic and military mastery of the second half of the 20th century is much more about the damage brought on everyone else by the First and Second World Wars, rather than any sort of American "exceptionalism". Regardless, my point was you can't blame regulation for making the US economy less competitive, when it went too number one during the New Deal structures, and it's actually been losing competitiveness under Regeanite Deregulation. Seems disingenuous to me.

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Let us condemn the many infringements on our personal liberties, personal wealth, and the previous truth that you had to work hard to survive, in all of those years combined, and hopefully in the future do it in some place not as benign and impotent as an obscure chatroom on the outskirts of the Verse.

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I think everything is a balance. Living with no regulatory structure means that you can 'conceptually' do anything, because there's no law saying you can't, but in reality you can do a lot less because there's big corporations with more clout, invested in preventing anyone else carving out a share for themselves, who also are unconstrained.

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Point is, regulation means everyone is on the same playing field.

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Even though you don't have the market clout of a corporation, regulation means that both you and the corporation have to compete on you're economic wits, they can't freeze you out because they're bigger and stronger than you. Too much regulation is as bad as no regulation, because then the corporation can use it's much greater political clout to regulate you out of the market, but that's not an argument for no regulation, that's an argument to get the balance right. There's too extremes, too much, and not enough, somewhere in the middle is where we need to be.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
It just seems to me to be counter intuitive to the way things have gone on this planet the last few million years or so.... Maybe I'm wrong...

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Social policy is aimed at how we should structure civilisation, Darwinian Survival of the Fittest and Evolution, are how the natural world works.

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How human dominance has worked, is not survival of the fittest.

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We are not the fittest species. We are weak with few natural weapons. We are dominant because we are intelligent, and stepped outside of survival of the fittest.

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We changed our world so that survival of the fittest no longer applies to us. That is what civilisation is. Civilisation is not the natural world, by definition. It isn't supposed to be, and we sure as hell don't want it to be. Civilisation is a construct that allows us to take control of the natural world, and it's what has allowed us to prevent survival of the fittest putting us in a lions belly.

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As I said, we as a species are successful not because we are fittest, but because we're smart enough to make survival of the fittest not apply any more.

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That is survival of the fittest, but it's survival of the fittest on OUR terms, not natures.

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We use the construct of civilisation so that we don't have to play by natures rules, and that is why we have been successful.

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Given the purpose of civilisation, and the reasons for our dominance, it is actually social Darwinism that is disingenuous.

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Originally posted by citizen:
PS.
The New Deal was enacted in 1933, forty or fifty years would be 70's-80's.

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My bad... for some reason I was thinking you said WWII or the end of WWII. I stand corrected on this point. I had you about a half-full decade ahead. But you're even getting closer to my timeline with that one....

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

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Originally posted by citizen:
I think Signym's point was that Ron Paul's solution for preventing the current economic situation is actually what caused it in the first place, so that his economic policies would do much more harm than good. That the bailouts are being done now, because people with Ron Paul's economic ideology got their way back then.

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
I suspect we'll discover the veracity of this opinion over the next ten years or so, one way or another.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yep...

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Hoover was one of the most able men to be elected as President and also one of the unluckiest. He was inaugurated on 4 March 1929. Seven months later the Stock Market crashed. The new President was a believer in self-reliance and self-help and was loathe to see government intervention in economic affairs. He sought to encourage expansion through a tax cut and by urging business to expand. Spending measures passed by Congress that threatened a balanced budget were rejected. As the ranks of the unemployed swelled, Hoover's popularity plummeted. Soup kitchens became common sights. Many factories became desolate sites. The production index fell to its lowest point in the country's history

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When he first took over the presidency, Roosevelt had the backing of many segments of society -- not only the general public but bankers and businessmen. The depression affected everyone. Business was hurt badly; government borrowing was far more acceptable to the business community than higher taxes. Such was the attitude until 1936, when bankers and businessmen began to change their views. As recovery began to take effect, the deficit was not considered necessary. Even though he did not favor greater debt, Roosevelt had his priorities. Convinced that deficits were temporary and not a permanent fact of fiscal life, he was exultant about the pump-priming consequences of spending.

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By 1937, the depression had eased somewhat and FDR sought to balance the budget by cutting government spending. But in the fall and winter of 1937-38, conditions worsened again, partly because of these cuts, and FDR had to seek additional funds to meet the crisis. The depression didn’t actually end until the beginning of World War II when the defense economy put the unemployed who were not called to military service back to work.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Don't twist my words by using other words I agree with Cit.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Tell me where it's all gotten us now though? Things may not have been envisioned at the New Deal's conception the way they've turned out today, but it was one of the many stepping stones that got us all to this point.

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Who watches the Watchers Cit? How is the Government, mine, yours, and countless other countries Governments automatically any better than mob bosses that took a cut (whether voluntarily or involuntarily) and protected their neighborhoods? Larger, sure.... but better....? In the long run.......?

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Haha... now that's funny. I agree with a lot of your views on deregulation, but as a very large and all-encompassing statement, this is priceless to think that you actually believe that is true. Looks good on a piece of paper, but doesn't work in the much-less-than-perfect-world we live in.

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Things just don't work right, at all, on that big a scale, ever.... There is just too much money to be made and greed, envy, gluttony and lust change the game EVERY time so even things that start out with purely benevolent intentions end up with blackened hearts that will never be satiated by any stimulus until they are disposed of. Maybe it's just the Human Condition...

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Dur...

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Wow... I just believe that our intelligence makes us the fittest. What you're saying here REALLY sounds Christian Cit.

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It's also what's allowed us to create this more often than not shitty world and perpetuate it to infinity or destruction. Dem's aren't going to fix that. Go ahead and hate Reps because of the environment, but the real Conservatives actually fought for animal and ecological protection in the 70's and before.

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Now you just sound like a self-loathing Narcissus here.

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Sounds like we've gotten so good at Surviving and being the Fittest, that we truly earn the title of the Fittest that Survived, being that we are the ones who won the challenge round in Survival of the Fittest.

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We were successful many generations ago in civilization. I'm talking when there were so many less of us and we were at a balance with nature and different "tribes" had a different way of viewing life and living.

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I get it Cit. You Love Big Brother.

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You also don't believe in Darwinism at a (Human) social level (Hey kiddies.... disingenuous means lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; falsely or hypocritically ingenuous; insincere)

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
Unfortunately, there's no end to our ability to rationalize the "facts" to fit our favored narrative. It's kind of ironic really, that while the real differences tend to be in our core values (e.g. security and fairness vs. liberty and justice), the arguments tend to be over how to interpret practical outcomes. Like we're looking for proof that our values "perform" better. And I don't know about the rest of you, but that's really not the important thing with me. For example, I'd rather have a free society than a prosperous one, assuming such a choice had to be made - whereas others might say they'd rather have a society that was secure even if it sacrificed prosperity....

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What I am speaking about here, in a more concise and easy to understand way is that every dime the Liberal way of thinking spends, and in many cases never earned, is to help people who can't help themselves. It just seems to me to be counter intuitive to the way things have gone on this planet the last few million years or so.... Maybe I'm wrong...

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Unfortunately, there's no end to our ability to rationalize the "facts" to fit our favored narrative.

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I'd rather have a free society than a prosperous one

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For example, I'd rather have a free society than a prosperous one, assuming such a choice had to be made - whereas others might say they'd rather have a society that was secure even if it sacrificed prosperity....

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Reminds me of a joke I heard once Sarge....


Written on a bathroom stall.....

"God is Dead" ~Nietzsche

Written right below.....

"Nietzsche is Dead" ~God

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

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For years they thought the economy was booming, growth was up, job numbers and productivity were increasing.

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For years they thought the economy was booming

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I'd rather have a free society than a prosperous one

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They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Ben Franklin.

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EVERY gorram one thought that.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
That is a very valid question AR, and one that doesn't have an easy answer.

Basically, all I'm doing is pointing out the irrefutable truth that we as a human society are changing the way the game has been played for millions or more years, and in only the last 100 years or so have we become so successful and made such staggering leaps and bounds at it.

Who am I to say this is not the next step of evolution? It would be one that never took place on this grand a scale as we've ever learned about on a text book.

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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EVERY gorram one thought that.

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Yes Saddam "had" WMD. But we didn't invade because of WMD that he "had" up to 1990. SO everyone rought Saddam has WMD in 2002. except me. So, not "everyone" was as abyssmally stupid as you were.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Sarge, if you're now making the choice between freedom (capitalism) and prosperity, it sounds like you've given up on the idea of capitalism being the road to prosperity.

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Originally posted by citizen:
of course that applies to you as much as any one.

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I don't believe getting rid of all regulations will make us free in any meaningful sense.

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You seem to see freedom as no one telling you you can't do something, I see freedom as being able to do something.

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
I've noticed that difference in perspective before. But it seems like a distortion of the concept.

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Originally posted by citizen:
So I'd say the concept of freedom being just having no laws barring you from something, is the distortion, because freedom is supposed to be something you have, not something you're told you're allowed.

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
Well, you have the "freedom" to say that I suppose. But as far as the political concept of freedom is concerned, it's mostly understood in the sense of being free from constraint. The ability to do something is as separate issue from the political freedom to do so.

Regardless, the two concepts are different and clarity would suggest we use different words for them.

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Originally posted by citizen:
Actually I think the concept of political freedom includes the idea of stopping anyone taking it away or constraining it. It's not just the government that can prevent you doing something.

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Originally posted by citizen:
I mean that if you recognise you need rules and laws to prevent government from passing laws to take away a freedom, then you also need laws to prevent people other than governments taking your freedom. That the only threat to freedom isn't a tyrannical government, so removing all laws won't mean everyone is free. It'll mean a small group has 100% freedom, while everyone else has 0%. But there'll still be no laws.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Rapo: A billion flies eat shit. Feel free to count yourself among them.

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It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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