US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4048

On June 15 2016 03:49 m4ini wrote:


Nah he wouldn't have to reload more often, you just take multiple pistols with you. On top, you can get extended mags.

You're right with the damage though - a rifle is certainly deadlier. Everyone trying to argue that it isn't, is a deliberate liar. Especially in packed crowds where a single round can and will easily hit and penetrate multiple people, whereas a pistol won't.

Goldman Sachs Finally Admits it Defrauded Investors During the Financial Crisis

From 2005 to 2007, Goldman issued and underwrote many mortgages and securities that had been backed by residential loans borrowed by consumers with shoddy credit ratings. That helped tip the economy into recession after the housing bubble burst in 2007, leading to a tsunami of foreclosures and delinquencies. That caused billions of dollars in losses for investors. The settlement mentioned mortgage loans that had been originated by Countrywide, Fremont, and others. Countrywide was bought by Bank of America is early 2008. Fremont is no longer in business.

Goldman agreed to pay $2.39 billion in civil penalties, and another $1.8 billion in relief in the form of loan forgiveness and financing for affordable housing. An additional $875 million will be paid in cash to resolve claims from other federal and state entities.

“This resolution holds Goldman Sachs accountable for its serious misconduct in falsely assuring investors that securities it sold were backed by sound mortgages, when it knew that they were full of mortgages that were likely to fail,” said Acting Associate Attorney General Stuart F. Delery in a statement.

As part of the settlement, New York-based Goldman agreed to a list of facts put together by the DoJ that stated Goldman had misled investors about the mortgage-backed securities while knowing that the repackaged loans were indeed riskier than what they had told investors.

Goldman also agreed to say the bank had failed do to its due diligence. In one case, the bank’s due diligence noticed an “unusually high” percentage of loans with credit and compliance of defects. When asked by Goldman’s Mortgage Capital Committee: “How do we know we caught everything?” A transaction manager responded “because of the limited sampling … we don’t catch anything.” No further due diligence was undertaken.

On June 15 2016 04:48 oneofthem wrote:
it's priced in already, years ago.

On June 15 2016 04:53 Plansix wrote:
That is like a couple non-profitable quarters for them. Nothing of substance. It really bothers me that there are no criminal charges being filed for any of these. But the party of the FBI that investigates and brings cases against Wall Street Firms lost most of its funding when everything shifted to fighting terrorism. And there has never been political will in congress to restore that funding and get agents to dig into this stuff.

On June 15 2016 04:59 IgnE wrote:


what do you think locking up some wall streeters will effectively accomplish? lock one up and another will appear in his place. how is society better off if a wall streeter spends a decade in a jail somewhere? how is anyone better off?

On June 15 2016 04:59 IgnE wrote:


what do you think locking up some wall streeters will effectively accomplish? lock one up and another will appear in his place. how is society better off if a wall streeter spends a decade in a jail somewhere? how is anyone better off?

On June 15 2016 04:59 IgnE wrote:


what do you think locking up some wall streeters will effectively accomplish? lock one up and another will appear in his place. how is society better off if a wall streeter spends a decade in a jail somewhere? how is anyone better off?

On June 15 2016 05:29 Plansix wrote:
If accountability at a bank so diffused that no one person can be held accountable for the bad actions, that would be one thing. But if accountability is systematically diffused to avoid responsibility across all instructions, it is by design with the intent to avoid criminal liability. If the current laws cannot support criminal cases, then they must be changed to prevent banks from spreading the responsibility so thin.

On June 15 2016 04:33 GreenHorizons wrote:


Simply being a "pistol" doesn't make it less deadly. There are other aspects one has to consider. See video for an example of a pistol that easily could have done more damage, though not as a result of rounds passing through victims.

+ Show Spoiler +

or if one thinks shotguns by nature are less dangerous than something like a AR 15

+ Show Spoiler +

You may understand the nuance (I don't know) but some people just think pistols and shotguns are less dangerous than AR-15's because they believe the hype without having any context beyond battlefield or movies.

On June 15 2016 05:24 oneofthem wrote:
neither is enough for jail time but taken as a system there is catastrophic failure.

On June 15 2016 05:41 m4ini wrote:


Did you just show videos of fully automatic weapons as an argument as to why pistols and shotguns are not less deadly than an assault rifle, because it's semi-automatic? Why not add a minigun, a 50cal machine gun and a 120mm smoothbore to that comparison?

Would make as much sense.

On June 15 2016 05:49 SolaR- wrote:
One of my co-workers says that an ar15 isn't really an assault rifle and it gets annoyed everytime someone calls it that. He is into guns but I dont know if he is a valid source of information. He is of the cynical natured, so he could just be an elitist. Thoughts gun gurus?

On June 15 2016 06:08 Mohdoo wrote:


In hopes of keeping this thread alive, I think it is worth pointing out that we were encouraged to use the gun thread for any gun related discussion.

On June 15 2016 06:05 Plansix wrote:
The AR-15 is an assault rifle like fire arm that is as close to an assault rifle as the gun can get without being classified as one. Its semantics because the people who design guns build them to avoid being classified as assault rifles.