AS YOU KNOW

The economic situation is of grave concern to all included, especially me.

As you also well know, you four are the most reviled and loathed of political loonies. Between Bloodsage's bootstraps, Maradon's xenophobia, Zair's apologism and Noxhil's sexual offenses lay the most repugnant political commentary.

It is also within these that I shall find my answer.

All four of you shall give me your views on the stimulus package...OR ELSE...I'll make impotent threats and kind of call you a jerk or something.

But I must know.

Mr. Parcelan fucked around with this message on 02-18-2009 at 10:12 PM.

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Maradon! wrote this then went back to looking for porn:
I don't talk about politics on these forums anymore.

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Steven Steve screamed this from the crapper:
Finally.

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Maradon! said:
I don't talk about politics on these forums anymore.

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Blindy. had this to say about Tron:
I guess I'll have to start listening to talk radio to hear what insane things are coming out of the right wingers these days then.

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I do this a few times a week. I like to keep up on what all the crazies out there are thinking. I pick up a talk radio station out of Reno and they are convinced that Obama is the literal Antichrist and that the apocalypse is coming.

I'm a little numb to it. Maybe because I hear bad news about the economy every day and it really doesn't do me any good to think about how much money 765 billion really is. Maybe because I've just turned off the part of my brain that's interested in economic or governmental policy. Maybe because I never thought our economy would take a turn this suddenly, and this badly, and I've never really seen anything like this in my life time.

I don't know what to think, really.

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Maradon! painfully thought these words up:
I don't talk about politics on these forums anymore.

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Then what are you good for? Leave.

owned

PM your case to me and I will consider it, though.

Maradon! fucked around with this message on 02-19-2009 at 09:52 PM.

And part two too- it's in related videos.

Basically the stimulus package isn't going to do much to jump start the economy and it's going to get much much worse before it gets better. We're screwed either way- I've been looking at data that says the multiplier effect for additional dollars put into the economy through tax cuts is as low as .1 (yes that means that for every dollar of tax revenue that is cut we add 10 cents) and multiplier on government spending is something like 1.1.

I'm also less than convinced that spending the other 350 billion in the TARP fund is a good idea. I haven't seen any evidence that it's helped the credit situation whatsoever; highly qualified borrowers (the small number that are and want to borrow) are having trouble finding loans which is bad news. So far all we are doing is propping up a financial system that is a literal black hole.

We're going to get some very painful lessons on why you don't let a government massively spend in the red during an economic boom. Everyone who was saying it is only 5% of gdp per annum have basically been exposed for the pseudo-economists they are. (For reference, anyone with even basic econ knowledge knows you run a deficit during a recession and a surplus during a boom- trying to "outgrow" a constant deficit is insane; nothing grows at 5% once it is developed)Now we don't really have the economic resources to take any action. Fortunately the federal government is getting money really cheaply right now because everyone is scared of the private capital markets but don't expect that to last and is another headache that is looming.

Our econ department (which leans to the right of center) is firmly pointing the finger at deregulated financial markets which have had far too much influence and trust of the public and government.

I don't mean to be especially negative but frankly we've been trying to warn everyone how unstable the economy has been for the last 6 years and everyone including the regulators turned a blind eye. This is certainly the biggest failure of government in my lifetime. It's insane how the right has been screaming about how the fundamentals are sound and the left just ignored the problems.

From what I've seen the right is following its standard MO right now and is going to whine about tax cuts and a balanced budget without doing any actual analysis. Here's a hint for the future- choosing the answer to a question and then trying to figure out/justify why it's correct is basically the worst problem-solving you can do in econ. Basically that's what groups like Heritage etc. are. I've been disappointed with how many pet projects the left is interested in; I feel like right now is hardly the time for frivolous or non-directed spending since we will need these resources later but I guess right now the extra billions barely even register as a blip on the budget.

It's unfortunate but basically nothing this administration can do will turn things around. Intelligently using the money to do things like upgrade infrastructure is a sound plan to create some areas of economics activity and improve the fundamentals in the future. I personally think electric infrastructure should be key but I'm biased since that is related to my field. It seems like they are trying to do that but I think that some of the more effective provisions were cut to appease republicans and bring the bill closer to the center. The agricultural subsidies are absolutely shameful but they have been around so long they are here to stay. The state of health care spending (propping up medicaid) by the government is ridiculous but I don't think this administration has the political capital or wont to tackle it.

tl;dr - The stimulus plan is a stopgap at best and at worst will make the coming depression significantly worse. It doesn't do much to address the underlying problems that caused the financial crisis and isn't nearly comprehensive enough to do much at all. I'm pointing my finger directly at the indiscretions of our capital markets which reminded us of human nature.

I hope your career fields are insulated from the business cycle.

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Peanut butter ass Shaq Blindy. booooze lime pole over bench lick:
Ok now watch this.

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Everything in this is correct, but it leaves out a lot. Significantly, prime mortgages began a rise in defaults before sub-prime ones, among other things.

It's in the book.

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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Noxhil2 who doth quote:
Our econ department (which leans to the right of center) is firmly pointing the finger at deregulated financial markets which have had far too much influence and trust of the public and government.

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You really need to read a book on the topic.

Maradon! fucked around with this message on 02-21-2009 at 01:45 PM.

Nobody saw that one coming.

At least we aren't trying to intellectually justify pre-conceived conclusions, though. After all, our econ department, which I assure you is right of center, said so.

Maradon! fucked around with this message on 02-21-2009 at 01:51 PM.

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Maradon! had this to say about Optimus Prime:
I don't talk about politics on these forums anymore.

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When the moral hazard of deposit insurance is combined with the "too big to fail" mentality, which will not allow large institutions to fail, the result (a conclusion compelled by common sense and bolstered by recent research) is that banks will take on considerably more risk than they would if they were subject to genuine market pressures.

This is the context in which regulation and deregulation have to be considered: a system so far removed from the free market that innocent third parties are on the hook for private firms' foolish and risky decisions. In that context, is "deregulation" necessarily the best approach? Of course, real deregulation, which would abolish all monopoly privileges, establish free competition, eliminate the "too big to fail" presumption, and force banks to produce their depositors' money on demand or declare bankruptcy - in other words, treating banking just like every other industry - would be the most welcome outcome of all. But a mixture of liberalizing banks' risk-taking ability while maintaining a government guarantee may be the worst of both worlds.

Recall the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, in which the federal government came to the rescue of the failing S&Ls. That fiasco, too, was supposedly the result of "deregulation." But once again, "regulation" and "deregulation" are utterly beside the point. The point is that, as with Fannie and Freddie, and now the great investment banks, the taxpayer was on the hook for these institutions' bad decisions. That makes such institutions less cautious and more reckless than they would otherwise be, since they can spread out, or socialize, their risk across the broad expanse of the taxpaying public. "Deregulating" the S&Ls to allow them to make riskier investments - which was widely regarded from 1980 onward as a critical step to keep them from sinking - is "deregulation" in only the most perverse and unhelpful sense. Real deregulation would have cut the S&Ls' ties to the taxpayer entirely.

The problem, in short, is not "regulation" or the lack thereof. Once again, the problem is the system itself, a system that artificially encourages indebtedness, excessive leverage, and reckless money management in general. The money and banking system we have now, which is nearly as far removed from a genuine free market as it is possible to be, is so fragile and prone to instability that it's no wonder people call for more "regulation."

But why should we be satisfied to regulate a house of cards when we can take the much more sensible step of allowing the free market to establish a far sounder, less crisis-prone system in it's place, a system needing no taxpayer bailouts and afflicted by no moral hazard? Shouting matches over regulation versus deregulation necessarily neglect this genuine free-market alternative.

In practice, moreover, calls for "more regulation" wind up suffocating the market in response to a handful of notorious wrongdoers. They are an anti-terrorism strategy that is always prepared for yesterday's terrorist - there will never be another shoe bomber aboard a commercial plane, but we sure are ready for him.

In the wake of the Enron scandal and the dot-com boom and bust, Congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley, a regulatory act that well-established firms came to welcome since they knew it would give them a competitive advantage against newcomers. They had no idea how much. The most recent estimated annual cost to implement it in a public corporation is $3.5 million.

"The closer you look at Sarbanes-Oxley," writes a critic, "the more you realize that it is almost perfectly designed to crush new business creation... [$3.5 million] is pocket change for a Fortune 500 company, [but] the entire annual profit of a newly public firm. Is it really any wonder that smart entrepreneurs look for a corporate sugar daddy instead of an IPO?" Add to that Regulation FD ("fair disclosure") and the new rules on stock option valuation, and the result is that "fewer new companies are going public; economic power is being concentrated in the hands of fewer companies; competition is reduced; new wealth is less widely distributed; the rich are getting richer; fewer talented people want to join entrepreneurial ventures; and corporate boards are getting stupider and more paranoid." That could be why the biggest and most established firms typically seem to favor additional regulatory burdens. Expect to hear them joining the chorus today, solemnly informing us how sadly necessary additional regulation is.

So we have little reason to believe regulation will prevent the repeat of such excesses, and in retrospect there's no reason to think more regulation would have made our pain any less.

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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Captain Tarquinn who doth quote:
[QB][/QB]

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Making fun of a party shill doesn't count as talking about politics.

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Blindy.ing:
Yes let's go back to a system where deposits are not insured and everyone fucking panics and pulls their money out of the bank all the time!

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Oh, I don't know, it worked fine for about 137 years.

The book goes into the viable free market alternative alluded to in this passage in later chapters.

This stuff has always been out there, and it's always been the one correct way of doing things if the goal is to achieve a free and prosperous society. I've been standing on the shoulders of giants all this time, and just communicating their ideas badly, which is why I'm not doing that anymore.

It's crucially important that you realize that, when Obama fails, it will be because of his ideas, not despite them. You can't reject free market principles and expect to help anything any more than an engineer can reject physics and expect to build a rocket.

Maradon! fucked around with this message on 02-22-2009 at 09:46 PM.

It's interesting that you've (rather, read someone who has) identified that the problems in our financial system are structural. Somewhat more predictable is that your response is we scrap everything and let the "free market" create a "stable" alternative. Make no mistake; the "free market" in its purest sense is anything but stable.

Although I fundamentally agree that divorcing risk from returns is a bad idea, I think in practice insuring deposits will encourage people to put their money in banks which can lend out. Principally, it's a good thing to inject as much of our available capital into the financial system so we can use it as effectively as possible. That being said, to the average person the risk of losing their money outweighs the returns they might get by investing it.

For example, I accept no return (well, very little) on money in my savings account because it's more important to me to be able to pay rent, buy books, food etc. than receive money for it. The bank can still use my money to expand the economy and lend it at lower rates than I would personally accept because the pooled money doesn't all have to be available at once. In other words, we have structured this to maximize the benefit to the economy and to me. My money is always available to me and people can use it to create wealth.

This is only possible because deposits are insured. The money I can risk is in my brokerage account where I will hopefully grow it. The structure makes it so people do not have to risk more than they can, but the economy as a whole can benefit from otherwise stagnant capital.

Now you're going to point out this is still separating risk from reward and you are correct. Where your analysis falters is that you can't conceive of a mixed ideological solution or do the work to understand it. You won't take my word for this nor will you investigate it, but society as a whole comes out ahead by this structure. The risk of the general pool of money being unable to pay out to people plus the cost of insurance is highly superior to individually holding all money stagnant. We are allocating money to a capital market and keeping people's money available to them.

As long as the insurance risk and the return risk are correctly or even mostly correctly analyzed this is a solvent system. These capital markets are the source of much of the U.S.'s growth over the last 60 years. Correctly regulated we have an excellent system both in concept and practice.

I'm not so willing to scrap it and engage in an experiment in Austrian economics and hope it works out. At least keep it in perspective, no one has ever tried it and you are proposing a ridiculously risky solution based on the premise that we should trust the "market" as if it's some infallible deity. I would not want to live in a society that tries this experiment.

Fortunately it won't ever happen and this is mostly idle chatter. We're far more likely to undergo a socialist economic revolution than a fantasy Austrian economic revolution. Both are pretty unappealing.

As an aside I'd like to point out that given how interconnected financial institutions are anything other than a regulated system is impossible from a practical standpoint.

Also I'll mention this again but you should try reading other points of view rather than your own. When you vet what you read based on what you already agree with you drastically limit your own cognition. I don't know if your mind is open enough to learn something but at least you would understand other arguments. For example, I read Amity Shlaes's The Forgotten Man, and although I didn't agree with all the conclusions, she made some good points and improved my own understanding of the situation in a way which expanded and altered my thoughts.

Lots of gold.