US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2437

On June 21 2020 02:04 GreenHorizons wrote:

Pretty sure LL, Simberto, and myself all come at it from different political bends with different prescriptions, what we all recognized is the blatant absurdity of what Biff is suggesting.

On June 21 2020 02:30 Biff The Understudy wrote:

I have to agree with that. Then again, the sad thing in 2008 is that what a lot of those people were doing was legal. Horribly unethical but legal. That's where Dodd Frank has really been important; the kind of clowneries that bankers were doing in the early 2000s are not possible anymore without, this time, ending in jail. But it's a long, long, long way before the financial sector is regulated enough. And many republicans are actually calling to dismantle Dodd Frank completely and go back to the old times. It's kind of a miracle that both DF and the ACA survived four years of Trump administration.

On June 21 2020 02:48 Nevuk wrote:

Some of it was legal that shouldn't have been, but there are broad statutes against fraud that could have been used for a lot of them. For instance, all the misclassified ratings. They may not have gotten as much time as they should have without the new laws, but they definitely broke laws.

I've read some analysis that the reason why no one got charged is that overzealous prosecutors overcharged the last bunch of finance crimes and everyone got off. However, it should have been obvious that this was different.

On June 21 2020 02:38 ChristianS wrote:

Then I guess I’d like to see the common enemy set aside so we can get into the particulars of what we expect out of this economic collapse, and what should be done about it?

I try to stay out of financial system discussions because trying to understand the financial system makes me dizzy. But if the subject at hand is how the government should address the economic distress, the obvious premise to me is “collectivize losses caused by the pandemic.” How best to achieve that is obviously a massive question, and I certainly don’t think we’ve done a very good job of it thus far, but that seems like the obvious goal.

If I understand him correctly, LL seems to be coming from a market pessimist perspective. He thought a lot of stuff was overvalued before the pandemic, and the bubble was going to pop pretty soon anyway. I’m sympathetic to that - my vague uninformed impression was that we were due for a crash in the next couple years - but I’m feeling like the pandemic has robbed us of our chance to find out. Moderate recessions can have a nice winnowing effect where the parts of the economy that were secretly held together by scotch tape and twine collapse, and the sturdier bits survive. But this has just been so devastating that it seems like sturdy or not, a lot of places are gonna have to beg the government for assistance to survive.

I don’t think you, on the other hand, are that interested in preserving the current system, even the sturdy bits. Now certainly seems like an opportune time for radical changes, if you were going to do it. As long as the whole thing is gonna collapse, we might as well rebuild it how we want it rather than how it was. I’m not well-versed in Marxism, though, which I imagine would inform a lot of the changes you’d want to make.

On June 21 2020 03:06 GreenHorizons wrote:


Marxism is a good reference point for imagining my perspective on a given topic, though I'd say folks like Biff's description is wanting and my personal perspective more reflective of more 'current'/personally relevant interpretations of Marx (Freire, Hampton, Baldwin, etc).

I think all of us agree that any viable remedy will require damage mitigation that ostensibly conflicts with the underlying reasoning for the remedy itself. Simberto and LL acknowledged this in bailing out pensioners and nationalizing banks (policies I don't think they'd support under less dire circumstances?). For me that's forestalling what appears to me to be an inevitable confrontation with the intention of mitigating fallout by establishing more favorable conditions for when it does come.

I think the gullibility and ahistorical nature of Biff's analysis that we were all keying in on was the fanciful idea that this time they'll be held accountable, as if they haven't already been handed trillions more than they got in 2008 and the lasting economic damage inevitably far worse.

On June 21 2020 03:24 Biff The Understudy wrote:

I'm certain that the long awaited well substantiated exposé of your position will be fascinating, but you don't need my ahistorical gullible position to make your point.

Your ratio substance-to-condescending-jerkery is, extremely extremely low, you might want to concentrate on the former, for which you do not need me.

So stop quoting me, and strawmaning the shit out of my position with your signature condescending tone, especially if you are not addressing me directly.

see the common enemy set aside so we can get into the particulars of what we expect out of this economic collapse, and what should be done about it

On June 21 2020 03:52 GreenHorizons wrote:

I was just pointing out how besides supporting making good on pension promises for workers and nationalizing banks there's going to be little overlap in our prescriptions (LL, Simberto, and myself) but that what we saw wrong in your position is at the core of considering any viable path forward.

Which is to say we can't exactly:

if the "common enemy" set aside is the argument you made which the 3 of us critiqued, instead of you personally which we weren't. You just happened to be the person that made the argument that LL and I were pointing out is basically a given for the two parties (as opposed to at least some performative conflict in 2008).

I think it's important to clarify we can set you aside but the position you espoused has to be considered and addressed.

On June 20 2020 15:18 LegalLord wrote:

Being a ghoul about this whole situation is the wrong answer.

The best way to get housing prices under control is to let Fannie Mae & friends eat the loss when market forces inevitably cause a repeat of 2008. That would cause a widespread financial collapse since housing-derived financial instruments make up a frightening percentage of the entire market, and housing prices failing to maintain their current generally absurd price levels would cause trillions of dollars of losses. But it'd work a damn sight better than people dying, an effect which would be much more transient in the grand scheme of things.

Prices are high because the government makes it so.

On June 21 2020 04:16 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:

If I may? I wanna talk about points 1 & 3. Those are the areas I'm more interested in personally. For 1, I don't think the collapse of say, BoA or JP Morgan is something that can really be argued against. They're globally linked to a lot of people and smaller banks. So if they go, then a large ripple effect is going to happen and that will link to what you're saying. But I can also see LL in saying that they need to collapse and be restructured so that they are not in a "too big to fail" position and governments are obligated to bail them out. DF and more reforms are definitely needed before they do collapse though, as if there is nothing on the books, then they'll just walk again.
As for 3, the economy was already and has been precariously balanced. The pandemic, like a lot of the social ills we are experiencing, laid them plain for all to see. We need to have a serious discussion on how to fix that before we allow it to collapse wholesale. I'm not for allowing it to collapse without something coming for the average pronoun. I can get behind letting the shit hit the fan and the whole thing collapse, but not without substantial nets to catch the most vulnerable.

On June 21 2020 04:05 Biff The Understudy wrote:

Bro. What are you talking about? You didn't make any argument. There hasn't been any substance to our discussion. You have just been saying that what I am saying is absurd or ahistorical or gullible, and haven't even started to actually make a substantiated point.

I have a lot of problems with what both you and LL are saying. I have tried to articulate them:

- A collapse of the banking system and / or the biggest corporation means a systemic collapse of virtually the whole economy. That's something nobody wants. Do you want that, and how do you expect any government to want that?

- Why would anyone expect things to turn out differently than in 1929 if we did what was done there, which was several orders of magnitude worse for the population than 2008?

- I don't see any evidence that the crisis we live has anything to do with 2008. In fact it simply doesn't. It's a virus, and the economy would have needed salvaging anyway, in any context. So the argument that 2008 didn't work because look, the economy needs bailing is really moot. The economy was doing all right and then the whole world had to grind to a halt because of a pandemic.

- I don't see how we are in terminal descent and so it's better to hasten the process. I have understood that I wouldn't get any evidence of that whatsoever, I had to rely on LL gut feeling. That's a bit light.

All I have gotten is you being a complete dick, saying without even addressing me that I was saying nonsense and strawmaning my position into oblivion. There hasn't been an idea, there hasn't been an argument, there hasn't been anything.

So, if that's all you can do, just stop quoting me and have your little collapsology seminar with your friends without involving me. I am not interested. ChristianS is right, you should talk between you without the me, since apparently having objection to your rather baroque suggestions makes me an "ennemy" (that was so dumb I PMed him to ask what the fuck was that about but I guess we will never know)

you guys just don't understand why governments make the choices they make.

On June 21 2020 04:34 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:

Noted. And thanks. We agree on the first paragraph a great deal actually. It's more so the fact that it isn't just letting them crash for the lulz. It's not bailing them out to the tune of the same amount we did before. Before they receive any kind of financial assistance (which we've already given them, so they're not hurting for cashflow), we need to make sure that they aren't unfettered to do this again in the next 10 years. That's what, I assume, LL is talking about when he references '08. We can't keep feeding the leeches.

As to the second point, look at the stock market. People use that as a gauge to how the economy is doing and it's mostly people believing a false storyline. The number of people unemployed and the rally in the stocks are not indicative of the true economy. The true economy is in complete shambles. But people see the stocks holding strong and think the economy is fine/rebounding. It isn't. It's a second wave away, a closing of NY, CA, and other states/countries again from collapsing. That's the evidence as to why people can say the system was precarious. The stocks aren't the reality. I talk to people daily, from all nationalities and walks of life, and they know that shit is balanced on a razor's edge. But who is going to look out for them? The pandemic is a once in a lifetime event, but that doesn't negate the fact that the insane amount of money pumped to keep the system afloat was just masking it. This pandemic interrupted so many sectors and supply lines that shouldn't have happened. But I think that gets back into your talk of wanting to discuss breaking up monopolies than anything else, tbh.

On June 21 2020 04:54 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:

Again, I'm not saying don't bail them out. I'm saying not to bail them out as robustly as before. We agree the pandemic caught a lot of people off guard. But they should have never been in a predicament when it comes to their books to be this in need of a trillion dollar bailout, can you agree with that?

The bailout was not a failure in 2008. The failure was the non-creation of reforms needed to effectively make sure people who receive bailouts don't double dip and make off like bandits, again. That those who allowed their corporation, interests, etc fail or what have you, should face some kind of liability and jail time for it. That's my take on the discussion. I just wanted to get your thoughts on the matter and I think we agree more than we disagree, it's just on execution.