What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

[koalabear]

More scat references from our local closeted coward.

LOOK!, lits stud chihuahua home alone again! Poor lil chihuahua.

 

[koalabear]

Be happy, I elevated you above him. He's your dingle berry.

Keep trying, someday you might be able to jump up high enough to bite my ass,, Lil' Chihuahua.

slobdownsouth must have broke his date with the lil chihuahua.

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Wait a minute… the EPA is supposedly in the process of reviewing more than a million comments from citizens, energy producers, workers and everyone else. There allegedly isn’t a decision yet. But somehow Barack Obama already knows the outcome? Was this question ever seriously being looked at, or was it a fait accompli before the first screams emerged about the lost jobs to come and the strain on the energy grid, particularly in Texas and adjoining states?

Ms. JAZZ SHAW apparently skipped the class in 9th grade Civics where most children learn about the obligations of the Executive branch to comply with the orders of the Judicial branch.

These things are very fundamental to our form of government and I find it shocking that an internet reporter from a site called HotAir doesn't seem to understand these things.

Probably went to a public school.

Ask any Cherokee...

"Let's see if Mr. Marshall can enforce his ruling."

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

So in the 70s West Virginia could have told Ohio to stop polluting the Mountains with their power plants?

In Federal Court...


That's where you want problems solved, UNLESS YOU ARE A DEDICATED STATIST of either wing.


Now you can add that to your title of COMMUNIST!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Crony Capitalism

First, the most important principle for LLRs is that they only lend to solvent companies that would otherwise be able to get a loan from the private sector. If a firm is unsound and failing it will naturally have trouble getting access to credit and go bankrupt. The LLR exists for the times when healthy companies can’t get credit for extraordinary reasons but are otherwise healthy institutions. To highlight how far away from this principle the Fed has ventured, consider the financial institutions that the Federal Reserve has recently lent to:

American International Group—so full of toxic credit default swap contracts that it couldn’t get a loan at any price and was hours from running out of cash before the Fed stepped in with an initial $85 billion loan. It’s equity has since been diminished to near zero value.

Bank of America—weighed down by losses from bad mortgage investments on its books so large that it required $94.1 billion in loans and has remained teetering on the edge of technical insolvency ever since.

Citigroup—facing a $18.72 billion total loss for 2008, it borrowed $99 billion over a six day period in January 2009.

Morgan Stanley—took $107 billion in Fed loans in September of 2008 and still posted a massive $2.3 billion loss in just the fourth quarter of 2008 alone (10 times the consensus estimate of bank analysts at the time).

The list could go on for pages because the Fed lent to nearly any financial institution it could find. And since no one could convincingly value all those toxic mortgage-backed securities during the height of the crisis (one of the reasons Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson decided to use TARP for equity injections instead of buying the toxic debt from the banks directly), it is hard to see how the Fed could justify determining that all the financial firms it lent to were creditworthy. The Fed knowingly violated the foremost tenant for a lender of last resort.

Bernanke’s letter to Congress says it is misleading for articles to “depict financial institutions receiving liquidity assistance as insolvent.” But since regulators like the Fed get to officially determine technical solvency or insolvency, Bernanke has the power to ignore the numbers and pass a letter of the law test in bailing out the entirety of the financial industry.

Second, while the Fed could have mitigated some of its risk in lending to unsound financial institutions by demanding good collateral, it didn’t. The Fed went ahead and also violated this tenant for lenders of last resort.

Former Richmond Federal Reserve Senior Economist Thomas Humphrey wrote in the summer of 2010 that the collateral the Fed had accepted through its special lending programs was “complex, risky, opaque, hard-to-value, and subject to default.”

He pointed out that banks could even offer the rights to be paid back for loans they’d issued to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as quality collateral. That meant that if the bank failed to return the Fed’s loan, the Fed could get those interest and principal payments from the GSEs—but in early 2008 the GSEs were considered by the government as near insolvent. In fact the Treasury Department decided in August 2008 that Fannie and Freddie were so unsound they had to be taken over by the government to avoid bankruptcy (and they’ve now cost taxpayers $182 billion in bailouts, and counting). How could the Fed consider GSE debt to be good collateral?

The reason why the Fed was able to accept risky and worthless collateral is because it set the terms for defining good collateral under its own lending programs. For instance, the framework governing the Term Auction Facility—just one of the many murky, awkwardly named programs the Fed launched as lender of last resort—notes that the local Federal Reserve branch for the institution getting the loan determines the value of any posted collateral. This allowed the Fed to price collateral however it wanted to ensure it could technically provide bailout loans to any firm.

Third, the Fed has charged a near zero penalty rate when conducting its extensive emergency lending operations. The final tenant of lending as last resort is designed to discourage banks from taking advantage of the LLR and to avoid political favoritism in determining the recipients of the loans.

http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/09/trillion-dollar-bailouts-equal-crony-cap

 

[JohnnySavage]

In Federal Court...


That's where you want problems solved, UNLESS YOU ARE A DEDICATED STATIST of either wing.


Now you can add that to your title of COMMUNIST!

With respect to State v. State, the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction. Should a citizen sue a power plant, it could be brought in any of several different courts.

Here's the end results:

The Court says, "Stop that polluting"

Which is the same outcome as a regulator writing regulations pursuant to a law passed by Congress and signed by the President.

The difference is that you would hire 100s more judges and 1000s more lawyers to try pollution cases. You'd vastly expand the role of the judiciary and the government to achieve the same end result as if the rule making process was carried out.

You'd get the same end result, albeit without the public input that goes into rule making by the executive branch.

In short, you support a massive judicial bureaucratic apparatus that would rule on the whim of a judge with (probably) no scientific, engineering or medical background.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

REALLY?????????????????




That's sadly delusional. You have heard of mission creep? no?

Or how each politician has to do SOMETHING to get elected?

How about the cost of regulators? How about the cost of regulations?

HOW ABOUT THE COURT COSTS WHEN THEY DON'T WORK AND YOU STILL HAVE TO SUE???

BP come to mind? THAT was preventable by regulation? THAT headed off court activity?

COME ON MAN!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I understand your lament, the law cannot be trusted to protectively punish, for it can be bribed and thus we look to government to protect us from business. But the bribing of the court is a criminal activity and the bribing of the government is a legal, protected activity called politics. In one you have an opportunity to actionable remedy, in the other you have only the calamity of the calculating and corrupt.
A_J, the Stupid

That would be the regulation of a bringing of "actual" harm to another being addressed in a court of law. Not the regulation of those unbound by the limits of The Constitution under the guise of security and benevolent "protection" which, of course, leads to paying "protection" money (and the vig is HUGE!).
A_J, the Stupid

We don’t prevent pollution, we export it (along with our jobs).
A_J, the Stupid

 

[JohnnySavage]

REALLY?????????????????




That's sadly delusional. You have heard of mission creep? no?

Or how each politician has to do SOMETHING to get elected?

How about the cost of regulators? How about the cost of regulations?

HOW ABOUT THE COURT COSTS WHEN THEY DON'T WORK AND YOU STILL HAVE TO SUE???

BP come to mind? THAT was preventable by regulation? THAT headed off court activity?

COME ON MAN!

Growing up in coal country, I know exactly what corporations will do to the environment and the health of the people unlucky enough to get in their way.

You'd have everyone damaged by a corporation hire a lawyer and go to court seeking redress. I prefer one regulation to stop the problem in the first place.

We have a fundamental difference of opinion. Your "every man handles his own problems" is inefficient. My regulation based approach is the correct approach both from an efficiency perspective as well as an economic perspective.

Knowing how much you love the corporation, wouldn't it be better for them to have a black and white set of regulations to comply with as opposed to 100s of different court decisions from every justice of the peace in the state or region?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Growing up in coal country, I know exactly what corporations will do to the environment and the health of the people unlucky enough to get in their way.

You'd have everyone damaged by a corporation hire a lawyer and go to court seeking redress. I prefer one regulation to stop the problem in the first place.

We have a fundamental difference of opinion. Your "every man handles his own problems" is inefficient. My regulation based approach is the correct approach both from an efficiency perspective as well as an economic perspective.

Knowing how much you love the corporation, wouldn't it be better for them to have a black and white set of regulations to comply with as opposed to 100s of different court decisions from every justice of the peace in the state or region?

You don't think KANSAS is coal country too?

One regulation never stops anything...

How can you measure the value of knowing that company books are sounder than they were before? Of no more overnight bankruptcies with the employees and retirees left holding the bag? No more disruption to entire sectors of the economy?
Michael Oxley 2002
Co-Author of Sarbanes-Oxley Law
Co-sponsored by JON CORZINE

It will take the next economic crisis, as certainly it will come, to determine whether or not the provisions of this bill will actually provide this generation or the next generation of regulators with the tools necessary to minimize the effects of that crisis.
Chris Dodd
Co-Author Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act
Friend of Angelo

Who writes the regualtion?

Why the experts from the industry or experts in government.

What could possibly go wrong with a plan like that?

A regulation is somewhat similar to rounding up the unemployed to prevent theft.
It punishes the innocent for the few and adds cost to all endeavors directly and indirectly and protects us from nothing...
You simply cannot regulate an accident and a criminal has little regard for the law, the only thing you can do is make the consequence so severe that it deters or punishes.
A regulation is like a stop sign, a political tool to make the mouth-breathers think you are working for them and a fine way to get industry to bribe you with campaign donations so you can tell the mouth-breathers all the wonderful things you did so that they will vote for you.
A_J, the Stupid

"It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don't cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn't come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore."
Barack Hussein Obama

"Then why the hell did this president, what was it, two weeks after the spill started, signed another waiver for exactly this kind of deep sea drilling, another waiver for the exact same company!"
Don Imus

When Government gets so powerful that its purchase price is cost effective, even imperative, to business, then business will purchase government indulgences.
A_J, the Stupid

Political Realists see the world as it is: ... In this world laws are written for the lofty aim of "the common good" and then acted out in life on the basis of common greed.... In the world as it is, the solution of each problem inevitably creates a new one.

Remember: once you organize people around something as commonly agreed upon as pollution, then an organized people is on the move.
Saul David Alinsky
Rules for Radicals

 

[JohnnySavage]

I had an excellent response typed out, but hit the wrong button and lost it.

In short - I'm not one to tell you how to post, but your quotes/faux sig lines make your posts unreadable. Also, the fellas you quoted aren't here, although I'd welcome them to the discussion. I'm only interested in what you have to say about a topic, not some quote you think will make your point.

Also - you have nothing to gain by calling me names; it only leads me to believe you are arguing for arguments sake, not because you really believe the ideological position you've backed yourself into.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I had an excellent response typed out, but hit the wrong button and lost it.

In short - I'm not one to tell you how to post, but your quotes/faux sig lines make your posts unreadable. Also, the fellas you quoted aren't here, although I'd welcome them to the discussion. I'm only interested in what you have to say about a topic, not some quote you think will make your point.

Also - you have nothing to gain by calling me names; it only leads me to believe you are arguing for arguments sake, not because you really believe the ideological position you've backed yourself into.

Da Comrade! They are only friendly names.

It is clear and simple to me that you are arguing for the rule of man over the rule of law for regulations are made not upon facts, but simple subjective evaluations and what makes you "safe" simply makes me "uncomfortable."

I prefer that blindfolded statue of justice to the petty bureaucrat whose sole charge is my well-being...

For he is in a far-off land sequestered from the world I live in, like Castalia in Hesse's Magister Ludi.

"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
CS Lewis

I use quotes because it saves me the retyping of topic replies oft examined and demanded.

 

[JohnnySavage]

Da Comrade! They are only friendly names.

It is clear and simple to me that you are arguing for the rule of man over the rule of law for regulations are made not upon facts, but simple subjective evaluations and what makes you "safe" simply makes me "uncomfortable."

I prefer that blindfolded statue of justice to the petty bureaucrat whose sole charge is my well-being...

For he is in a far-off land sequestered from the world I live in, like Castalia in Hesse's Magister Ludi.

"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
CS Lewis

I use quotes because it saves me the retyping of topic replies oft examined and demanded.

We are arguing over the scope of the regulation and who sets the regulation.

You've admitted that for society to function, some regulations are necessary. For some reason you seem to believe the judiciary is better suited to enact those regulations than the executive. I don't see the difference if the end result is that the regulation is established. And quite frankly, I'm more trusting of an executive branch regulator than a country judge.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

We are arguing over the scope of the regulation and who sets the regulation.

You've admitted that for society to function, some regulations are necessary. For some reason you seem to believe the judiciary is better suited to enact those regulations than the executive. I don't see the difference if the end result is that the regulation is established. And quite frankly, I'm more trusting of an executive branch regulator than a country judge.

No. We are not. You are trying to convince me that regulation has some sort of defining end and good purpose while I am pointing out that its only end is tyranny, for the politician needs regulation, it is his lifeline for cash and claim. The cash comes from those who want protection and the claim is that he actually protected us from those with enough cash to massage the regulation.

And then we get those people on a mission, on a holy crusade, those who can get to the regulators, the politicians and the bureaucrats with relentless intent to pas regulations that are the wet dreams of the Luddite trying to banish the weaving machine...

And we've already ceded them the ground and the moral claim to enact a greater good despite some actual harm without the benefit of a fair hearing and impartial jury or avenue of appeal because we used the regulatory system to do good for ourselves and they supported our efforts, so some of us (YOU YOU BIG DOPE ) will suport their efforts because we live in COAL COUNTRY!



Washington takes up its causes, it decides and it enforces with the guns we purchased for our own protection from tyrants abroad...

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it."
Frédéric Bastiat

But it is upon the law that socialism itself relies. Socialists desire to practice legal plunder, not illegal plunder. Socialists, like all other monopolists, desire to make the law their own weapon. And when once the law is on the side of socialism, how can it be used against socialism? For when plunder is abetted by the law, it does not fear your courts, your gendarmes, and your prisons. Rather, it may call upon them for help.
Frédéric Bastiat
The Law

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

We are arguing over the scope of the regulation and who sets the regulation.

You've admitted that for society to function, some regulations are necessary. For some reason you seem to believe the judiciary is better suited to enact those regulations than the executive. I don't see the difference if the end result is that the regulation is established. And quite frankly, I'm more trusting of an executive branch regulator than a country judge.

Again, patiently, I am for laws of redress to actual harm, not regulations to prevent harm, for they demonstrably CANNOT, but they can be used to enslave us and destroy economic activity.

You are going out of your way to describe me as wanting an activist court to prevent harm.

Your bad.

 

[Saint Peter]

Again, patiently, I am for laws of redress to actual harm, not regulations to prevent harm, for they demonstrably CANNOT, but they can be used to enslave us and destroy economic activity.

You are going out of your way to describe me as wanting an activist court to prevent harm.

Your bad.

You reactionary policies are dangerous to the civilians who are under a constant threat of a nice fucking by Big Business.

Regulations are the only way to level this field.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

You reactionary policies are dangerous to the civilians who are under a constant threat of a nice fucking by Big Business.

Regulations are the only way to level this field.

I am more afraid of government than Big business for the latter gives me choices and the opportunity not to deal with them.

Why is it that if someone applies the adjective BIG to a noun that I'm supposed to be terrified of that noun with the lone exception of the noun Government?

A_J's corollary #3, “The New Age Liberal maintains contradictory positions comfortably compartmentalized. (This is because the New Age Liberal is a creature that believes in consensus as a short-cut to an examination of the facts and a reasoned judgment about said facts. Corollary #2.)”

Mama always said...

 

[JohnnySavage]

Again, patiently, I am for laws of redress to actual harm, not regulations to prevent harm, for they demonstrably CANNOT, but they can be used to enslave us and destroy economic activity.

You are going out of your way to describe me as wanting an activist court to prevent harm.

Your bad.

So there should be no regulation on how fast one can drive through town? Only if you run over someone at 120 mph should the government step in to provide a mechanism for redress?

 

[RightField]

You reactionary policies are dangerous to the civilians who are under a constant threat of a nice fucking by Big Business.

Regulations are the only way to level this field.

Most of the "fucking" has been by democrats at the core. Who told big business to make all the bad loans and provided them incentives (and force of law) to do it (which lead to the crisis in the first place)? It's the democrats who are screwing us all and then trying to blame it on business. Was it business that declined the pipeline deal? Was it business that halted all drilling in the gulf? Was it business that passed the laws saying it was discriminatory to refuse loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them back? Was it business that increased government spending so dramatically that we ran $1T+ deficits and pushed the debt to unsustainable levels that are going to require ALL OF US to pay additional taxes until its under control again? All of this tension and worry about the future that we all have has been directly caused by democrats' incompetance. Go "occupy" the Senate or the White House.

(ALL OF US means because the 20% tax increase that they want to put on "millionaires" will raise about $70B per year and the deficits are around 1,500B per year.....so all of us will have to pay....and what did you get for all this extra spending...a bunch of very rich democrats - unions, solyndra owners, etc).

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

So there should be no regulation on how fast one can drive through town? Only if you run over someone at 120 mph should the government step in to provide a mechanism for redress?

You conflate my stand on the Federal State with Local Government.

I don't care if your town has a speed limit or if California goes completely Communist.

(Furthemore, if you have ever seen my wife drive, then you know a speed limit only works with people inclined to abide by it like ME. Of course, I don't have a get out of jail free card when I get stopped, cops don't give tickets to nurses. )

The local laws and regulations are the business of the people who live there and the neighbors they elect to help them manage their local affairs and while some few may be corrupted the vast majority will be held in check by the careful oversight of the community.

Nowhere has a Democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local government, providing a school of political training for the people at large as much as for their future leaders. It is only where responsibility can be learned and practiced in affairs with which most people are familiar, where there is awareness of one's neighbor rather than some theoretical knowledge of the needs of other people which guides action, that the ordinary man can take real part public affair because they concern the world he knows.
FA Hayek
The Road to Serfdom, Chapter 15 p. 234

What I dislike is a National 55mph mandated speed limit to "save gas and the environment."

When I drive that slow, it makes it hard to steer,
And I can't get my Volt outta second gear!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Most of the "fucking" has been by democrats at the core. Who told big business to make all the bad loans and provided them incentives (and force of law) to do it (which lead to the crisis in the first place)? It's the democrats who are screwing us all and then trying to blame it on business. Was it business that declined the pipeline deal? Was it business that halted all drilling in the gulf? Was it business that passed the laws saying it was discriminatory to refuse loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them back? Was it business that increased government spending so dramatically that we ran $1T+ deficits and pushed the debt to unsustainable levels that are going to require ALL OF US to pay additional taxes until its under control again?

(ALL OF US means because the 20% tax increase that they want to put on "millionaires" will raise about $70B per year and the deficits are around 1,500B per year.....so all of us will have to pay....and what did you get for all this extra spending...a bunch of very rich democrats - unions, solyndra owners, etc).

Good morning...

Can't wait for Petey's patented one-line reply...

Republicans suck and Rush takes OXY-CONTIN!

 

[Saint Peter]

The ability of Big Business to clog the courts with hours of lawyer mumbo jumbo takes all of the power from the citizen, or even group of citizens.

Do you think these people will ever have decent water flowing out of their faucets again? I doubt it. Encana will put the blame on the two contractors before them. The three companies will tie the courts up for years while the citizens of Wyoming get a royal fucking.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/encana-falls-on-epa-water-study-2011-12-08

Most of the "fucking" has been by democrats at the core. Who told big business to make all the bad loans and provided them incentives (and force of law) to do it (which lead to the crisis in the first place)? It's the democrats who are screwing us all and then trying to blame it on business. Was it business that declined the pipeline deal? Was it business that halted all drilling in the gulf? Was it business that passed the laws saying it was discriminatory to refuse loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them back? Was it business that increased government spending so dramatically that we ran $1T+ deficits and pushed the debt to unsustainable levels that are going to require ALL OF US to pay additional taxes until its under control again?

(ALL OF US means because the 20% tax increase that they want to put on "millionaires" will raise about $70B per year and the deficits are around 1,500B per year.....so all of us will have to pay....and what did you get for all this extra spending...a bunch of very rich democrats - unions, solyndra owners, etc).

 

[JohnnySavage]

You conflate my stand on the Federal State with Local Government.

I don't care if your town has a speed limit or if California goes completely Communist.

(Furthemore, if you have ever seen my wife drive, then you know a speed limit only works with people inclined to abide by it like ME. Of course, I don't have a get out of jail free card when I get stopped, cops don't give tickets to nurses. )

The local laws and regulations are the business of the people who live there and the neighbors they elect to help them manage their local affairs and while some maybe corrupted the vast majority will be held in check by the careful oversight of the community.

Nowhere has a Democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local government, providing a school of political training for the people at large as much as for their future leaders. It is only where responsibility can be learned and practiced in affairs with which most people are familiar, where there is awareness of one's neighbor rather than some theoretical knowledge of the needs of other people which guides action, that the ordinary man can take real part public affair because they concern the world he knows.
FA Hayek
The Road to Serfdom, Chapter 15 p. 234

What I dislike is a National 55mph mandated speed limit to "save gas and the environment."

When I drive that slow, it makes it hard to steer,
And I can't get my Volt outta second gear!

Noted - and I agree. Government should be pushed down to the lowest level possible. But with respect to environmental regulations (which I believe the EPA's regulations on power plants started this), individuals and communities don't have the horsepower to fight pollution that may be coming from 600 or 700 miles away.

With respect to the National 55 mph (now 65 I believe) - if it's a federal funded and maintained road - they can set it wherever they want. As a minor point; States and communities are free to have a speed limit of 1000 mph if they want. But if they want to feed at the public trough, they have to eat what's served.

 

[RightField]

Now that they've spent us into a huge hole...they're trying to scapegoat business and say this mess is because they weren't paying enough in taxes in the first place. Pleeeasssse, give me a break.

I'd be happy to take spending back to 2007 levels....or, if you want, even back to levels when Clinton was President.