Crash and burn = total economic collapse. No more 401Ks. No more statements breaking down their investment and wealth portfolio. No man's land. Apocoloypse. Total catastrophe.
We eat babies as well.
Well if you're going to abort them anyway, that's just being practical. :whiste:
And I'm saying in that case, the rich will be far better prepared to weather the storm than the average person. They have walled compounds guarded by private security, mercenaries and the US military. They have bunkers stocked with a lifetime supply of food and water. Generators, fuel, solar panels, etc. If they're going to push the system to collapse, they're at least going to prepare for when it does, and their resources until that point far exceed the average persons'.
They must have seized brains behind that iron curtain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvPe2lBVmaA&NR=1
You know that Adam Smith was a big fan of bank regulations, right?
We created a situation that allowed Wall St. to fuck us over, yes. That doesn't change the fact that they were the ones that made the decision to do it. You can understand how a kid's upbringing may have created the conditions that pushed him towards being a criminal, you can accept our society's complicity, and you can work to change that. You still throw him in jail.
Again how did wall street fuck you over? Black van in the middle of the night dragged you to 1 new york plaza and Hank Paulson forced you to sign a mortgage note?
PokerGuy on the Westboro Baptist Church protesting dead soldiers' funerals:
PokerGuy on people protesting Wall Street:
ARREST THEM ALL.
Not sure if you missed the news about that worldwide financial crisis, but it affected everyone, even those without mortgages.
Really? I'm still not hearing you explain how exactly it's totally because of Wall street?
PokerGuy on the Westboro Baptist Church protesting dead soldiers' funerals:
PokerGuy on people protesting Wall Street:
ARREST THEM ALL.
Nobody claimed it was TOTALLY because of Wall St. In fact, had you read my previous post more carefully you would have seen that.
I'm not sure if you're trying to be deliberately obtuse here or what.
Im just trying to point out the absurdity of camping at Wall and Broad with the premise of "punishing" the people solely responsible for what in reality was a cascading failure of a complex system.
Between deregulation of lending standards, gov't mandate to provide financing to people that had no business buying real estate, no capitalization requirement for bond insurers, unchecked leverage in OTC derivatives, no personal responsibility in financing assets n times your income, rating agencies unable to determine the extent of the fat tail etc. etc. Camping out in the financial district because wall street made you foreclose your house is the same as terrirsts attacking us because they hate our freedom. Same ignorant nonsense, opposite side of the isle.
If you don't like what wall street has done, then feel free to support the Tea Party who oppose the bailouts in the first place.
No it isn't, that's an attempt at false equivalence.
Saying the terrorists hate us for our freedom is simply idiots saying something incorrect to make themselves feel better. Blaming Wall St. for this situation is completely correct. Who do you think pushed for the deregulation of lending standards? Who do you think chose to push their leverage that far? etc? etc? Just because there are other parties that also contributed to the meltdown does not in any way absolve those banks of their complicity in it. If you are arguing that they should add a few more stops on the protest route that's perfectly fine, but those banks knew exactly what they were doing.
In fact that's why in my original post I mentioned society's role in this meltdown. As I said before however, just because we might share some guilt in a kid becoming a criminal, you still punish that kid.
Presumably all those that benefitted form it - lenders to increase volume, sponsors to increase volume, people with subprime credit to get in on the housing, politicians representing district with predominantly low income/subprime districts, lefties as it fits their agenda of lifting low income, righties as it fits their agenda of laissez faire policy, anyone that owned real estate at the time ... and the list goes on and on.
Singling out one party in a complex game theory outcome is simply just fitting someone's narrative. That's why the analogy above is actually rather fitting, both of them are attempts boil down very complex issues into easily digestible black & white talking points.
Presumably all those that benefitted form it - lenders to increase volume, sponsors to increase volume, people with subprime credit to get in on the housing, politicians representing district with predominantly low income/subprime districts, lefties as it fits their agenda of lifting low income, righties as it fits their agenda of laissez faire policy, anyone that owned real estate at the time ... and the list goes on and on.
Singling out one party in a complex game theory outcome is simply just fitting someone's narrative. That's why the analogy above is actually rather fitting, both of them are attempts boil down very complex issues into easily digestible black & white talking points.
No, it's not fitting. One describes something that is a simple falsehood, (terrorists don't hate us for our freedom) and one describes something that is correct, but incomplete.
Go look at the legislation that caused this catastrophic deregulation and look at what groups lobbied for it. You will find that far and away those contributors were the banks. Did you think that the subprime credit score lobby was somehow influencing bill passage? The banks were far and away the largest contributor to the meltdown. No CRA, no politician representing a poor district, the banks. They lobbied for deregulation and then abused it when they got what they wanted.
Well if you wanna get technical, starting in the mid 90s FNMA and FHLMC had a mandate of what % of their portfolio had to be subprime (combined they two entities are 40% of the secondary market) and after 96 it included mandate for "specially affordable loans".
Protesting Wall St. is perfectly legitimate in this situation. Period.
It's idiotic and pointless and can not possibly result in anything useful. I guess the good part is that those idiots are over there wasting their time instead of doing something else stupid instead.
It's idiotic and pointless and can not possibly result in anything useful. I guess the good part is that those idiots are over there wasting their time instead of doing something else stupid instead.
The purpose of protesting is to draw attention to an issue. The fact that we are discussing it means that it did exactly that. Mission accomplished.