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Originally posted by startroop:
There! He said it!

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But what of the cruelties generated in human attempts at Socialist societies? Do they demonstrate that Socialism is bad?

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Originally posted by rue:
None of the above !
Anyway, insofar as it is capitalist the same things happen, only more slowly. Wealth accumulates, the economy needs to exploit to cheaper labor sources, poverty is exported. I think as far as 'inevitable consequences' of socialism, however, Sweden and similar countries are a good indication that the end reult of socialism is not necessarily bad.

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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But what of the cruelties generated in human attempts at Socialist societies? Do they demonstrate that Socialism is bad?

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Needs some thought as to what they demonstrate, exactly. I guess it's like fetal development... a million ways to go wrong, only afew ways to go right.

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Maybe the answer is never to create centralized postions of power in the first place. No CEOs, CIOs, CFOs. No Presidents. No Boards of Very Important People.

Just a thought.

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Originally posted by rue:
"You can look at the expansionist militarism and corporatism of recent western history and see it as a condemnation of capitalism. Others of us see it as just the opposite."

Do you mean that the expansionist militarism and corporatism of recent western history be seen as a commendation of capitalism ?

Or that the expansionist militarism and corporatism of recent western history be seen as a condemnation of socialism ?

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:

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Originally posted by rue:
None of the above !
Anyway, insofar as it is capitalist the same things happen, only more slowly. Wealth accumulates, the economy needs to exploit to cheaper labor sources, poverty is exported. I think as far as 'inevitable consequences' of socialism, however, Sweden and similar countries are a good indication that the end reult of socialism is not necessarily bad.

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Sweden is not a socialist country. It's a monarchy for a start, a parliamentary democracy, and has a market economy. It also has a strong trade union movement and a comprehensive welfare system.

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Originally posted by rue:
I know this is a 'thing' of yours, but recent history doesn't support your idea at all.

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The three biggest failures - AIG, Citigroup and BankofAmerica, were all conglomerate commercial/investment/insurance purveyors formed after the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the passage of the Financial Services Modernization Act (which deregulated banking even more), the approval of CDS and naked CDS, etc.

They knew, in fact everyone in finance knew, that the raison d'etre of these places and products was a lack of regulation. Did they get MORE careful ? MORE dubious ?

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
Shall I take it then, that you would view a move by our market economy into areas of stronger trade union involvement and more comprehensive welfare systems to NOT be any kind of move towards "socialism"?

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piecemeal deregulation is a game of pulling the supports out from underneath the current foundation.

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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piecemeal deregulation is a game of pulling the supports out from underneath the current foundation.

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Bull

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Suddenly, thanks to this financial seal of approval, banks had a way to turn their shittiest mortgages and other financial waste into investment-grade paper and sell them to institutional investors like pensions and insurance companies, which were forced by regulators to keep their portfolios as safe as possible. Because CDOs offered higher rates of return than truly safe products like Treasury bills, it was a win-win: Banks made a fortune selling CDOs, and big investors made much more holding them. The problem was, none of this was based on reality.

“The banks knew they were selling crap,” says a London-based trader from one of the bailed-out companies. To get AAA ratings, the CDOs relied not on their actual underlying assets but on crazy mathematical formulas that the banks cooked up to make the investments look safer than they really were. “They had some back room somewhere where a bunch of Indian guys who’d been doing nothing but math for God knows how many years would come up with some kind of model saying that this or that combination of debtors would only default once every 10,000 years,” says one young trader who sold CDOs for a major investment bank. “It was nuts.”
Now that even the crappiest mortgages could be sold to conservative investors, the CDOs spurred a massive explosion of irresponsible and predatory lending. In fact, there was such a crush to underwrite CDOs that it became hard to find enough subprime mortgages

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The very next year, Gramm compounded the problem by writing a sweeping new law called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that made it impossible to regulate credit swaps as either gambling or securities.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:

Sweden is not a socialist country. It's a monarchy for a start, a parliamentary democracy, and has a market economy. It also has a strong trade union movement and a comprehensive welfare system.

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Hello,

Human beings being social animals, I think we will always eventually form into large organizations.

And large organizations being unmanageable by committee (particularly if a swift decision is ever called for) there will eventually be a few people charged with responsibility over the many.

How could this possibly be avoided?

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
The bad horrible depression has to be allowed to happen. We have to see if people recover from it. And then we have to see if they learn from it, before capitalism can be properly branded.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
Shall I take it then, that you would view a move by our market economy into areas of stronger trade union involvement and more comprehensive welfare systems to NOT be any kind of move towards "socialism"?

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Correct.

Socialism is a term thrown around in the US to engender panic about any changes which involve things like universal healthcare, higher taxes, or trade union activity. Plenty of free market economies have those traits, they just operate differently to the US, but they're not socialist states.

It's a bit like, "Oh, no, universal healthcare, next they'll be sending us to gulags" Not so much a leap, as a rocket into space.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
I was in the middle of stuff and didn't have time for more.

Here's the REAL deal: Investment bankers pushed for YEARS to get deregulation. Thanks to Phil Gramm and the SEC, they got it. When it came to capitalization, they got a buy-off from the SEC to leverage themselves out to the hilt (2004). When it came to collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) the investment bankers convinced the rating firms (Moodys, S&P) that since the combined debts would never actually default, they were AAA-grade paper.

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Suddenly, thanks to this financial seal of approval, banks had a way to turn their shittiest mortgages and other financial waste into investment-grade paper and sell them to institutional investors like pensions and insurance companies, which were forced by regulators to keep their portfolios as safe as possible. Because CDOs offered higher rates of return than truly safe products like Treasury bills, it was a win-win: Banks made a fortune selling CDOs, and big investors made much more holding them. The problem was, none of this was based on reality.

“The banks knew they were selling crap,” says a London-based trader from one of the bailed-out companies. To get AAA ratings, the CDOs relied not on their actual underlying assets but on crazy mathematical formulas that the banks cooked up to make the investments look safer than they really were. “They had some back room somewhere where a bunch of Indian guys who’d been doing nothing but math for God knows how many years would come up with some kind of model saying that this or that combination of debtors would only default once every 10,000 years,” says one young trader who sold CDOs for a major investment bank. “It was nuts.”
Now that even the crappiest mortgages could be sold to conservative investors, the CDOs spurred a massive explosion of irresponsible and predatory lending. In fact, there was such a crush to underwrite CDOs that it became hard to find enough subprime mortgages

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Then, the insurance companies (lie AIG) decided they could "underwrite" these CDOs by selling a form of insurance called Credit Default Swaps (CDSs)... thus,,, making more MONEY!!! WHEEEE!!!!

AIG went on a selling spree.

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The very next year, Gramm compounded the problem by writing a sweeping new law called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that made it impossible to regulate credit swaps as either gambling or securities.

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In addition, AIG London managed to convince EU regulators - who were about to rein it it- that it was going to be regulated by the Office of Thrift regulation and therefore not to be bothered. But the Office of Thrift Regulation was so underpowered that AIG wound up not being regulated at all.


EVERY STEP OF THE WAY, investment bankers, commercial bankers, insurances, mortgage machines... made decision after decision to loosen, evade, or avoid regulation, and to stuff money as fast as they could into complex, unregulated, dangerous investments.

This wasn't a mistake by financial interest lulled into complacency by past regulations and government insurances. The fuckers knew what they were doing, and I'm sick and tired of Sarge making excuses for those poor, defenseless, innocent pricks.

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

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Originally posted by SignyM:
This wasn't a mistake by financial interest lulled into complacency by past regulations and government insurances. The fuckers knew what they were doing, and I'm sick and tired of Sarge making excuses for those poor, defenseless, innocent pricks.

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Originally posted by SergeantX:

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Originally posted by SignyM:
This wasn't a mistake by financial interest lulled into complacency by past regulations and government insurances. The fuckers knew what they were doing, and I'm sick and tired of Sarge making excuses for those poor, defenseless, innocent pricks.

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I honestly have no idea what you're going on about here, but if that's what you think I was doing than either I'm a woefully poor communicator, or your reading comprehension could use some work.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:

"Was the Great Depression not enough?"


No. The Great Depression was an 'interfered with' crisis that resulted in things like bank deposits insured by the government, and other interventions. I have no idea what the country would look like today (or if even we'd have a country today) if the government had responded to the Depression with a great big 'caveat emptor' and gone on about its business. Since every economic crisis has been interfered with, I don't know 'what happens next' in a natural cycle. It may be something digustingly horrible. But I recognize that I can't say for sure.

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
The bottom line is, it's not necessarily the deregulation that's the culprit - it's WHAT is deregulated, and WHY, and WHO is behind it being deregulated. And from there, it's also a matter of HOW it's packaged and sold to an unwitting public. The issue isn't deregulation, but rather who stands to benefit from it, and what means they'll use to achieve those ends. It's not as if some politician just got it into his head to deregulate something (like Phil Gramm just deciding one day to deregulate the CDS market), and suddenly the markets noticed that there was a loophole in the rules now that could make them rich if they acted quickly. No, the deregulation is specifically DESIGNED BY SPECIAL INTERESTS with a specific goal of helping them get richer. And when one group gets richer, it's generally at the expense of another group, or several other groups, who end up poorer because of it.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
For anyone who wants to start their own thread, by all means, have at it. But I started this thread to express a specific point of view - that we are being fed this line of false outrage by the Government on purpose, so we don't get angry at them - THEY are the ones who did this, not A.I.G.

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Agree or not, but this business of changing the thread title is childish and takes away from the discussion at hand.

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You could make the same argument against stop signs, but I'm not out there campaigning for deregulating intersections.

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Yeah, the thread title stuff is getting ridiculous. I'd hope we could all agree to be adults and stop doing it.

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Originally posted by Kwicko:

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Yeah, the thread title stuff is getting ridiculous. I'd hope we could all agree to be adults and stop doing it.

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It seems to come in flurries. It was on EVERY thread in RWED for a while, and then it died down. Now it's back.

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I find it fascinating, in a sad kind of way, how you always manage to pin everything wrong on "the Dems" despite all evidence to the contrary.

Are you sure "Blame the Dems" isn't one of your core beliefs?

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I posted the list of A.I.G. benefactors for a reason

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it's vital to point out that Chris Dodd ( Democrat ) did indeed know about the bonus clause

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I'm sorry you tire of me pointing out some basic truths

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I'm talking everyday investors whose money was the fuel for all of the speculation and gambling. Why would anyone willingly play Russian Roulette with their life savings? Why would they hand their money over to those who were? Why would they have so much blind trust that their money was being managed responsibly?

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