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

[cebalrai]

Looks like the government, it's regulation, and the Federal Reserve who's whole purpose is to keep all of this from happening...has failed.

Dodd-Frank ended the possibility of the government bailing out large financial institutions. This is what you wanted, right? Republicans hate bailouts - even though they voted for them.

Well here's the fallout from that. When credit ratings agencies know that the government doesn't have the backs of the banks like they used to that makes it really easy to downgrade them.

 

[unregistered]

 

[koalabear]

Dodd-Frank ended the possibility of the government bailing out large financial institutions. This is what you wanted, right? Republicans hate bailouts - even though they voted for them.

Well here's the fallout from that. When credit ratings agencies know that the government doesn't have the backs of the banks like they used to that makes it really easy to downgrade them.

Stocks tank on Fed plan; Dow off 283

Idiot,MORON.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Looks like the government, it's regulation, and the Federal Reserve who's whole purpose is to keep all of this from happening...has failed.

Whoa! Thats not at all what the regulations are in place for on any industry. It's to keep them from doing dangerous/risky stuff. Has less than nothing to do with keeping them from going bankrupt.

You miss the point MercAppendage, in the final analysis, the government is the root problem.

Nope. If anything lack of government is again the problem. Not that I'm not more or less on board. I think I'd vote fuck it let em fail if shits so bad all around that the banks need to be bailed twice in five years maybe we should just let everything collapse and start over at step one again but still. This is your plan. Own it.

 

[rosco rathbone]

Until the great depression, general view among both businessmen and economists was that the business cycle was natural and periodic mass unemployment should simply be accepted. Even in the worst economic depressions in America, in the 1870's, the 1880's, the 1890's and the 1930's, the general business view, reinforced by the dominant "neo-classical" economic theories, was that depressions were a "natural adjustment" of the market mechanism and that any attempts to reduce unemployment by government action would necessarily make things worse rather than better.

Neither business nor conservatives really had any significant change of heart after World War II. Behind the closed doors of their country clubs and executive dining rooms they still agreed with conservative economists like Milton Friedman who argued that Keynes had not actually proved that any basic flaw existed in the turn of the century "neo-classical" model.

Business did offer very clear public statements of support for "full employment" in the 1950's and 1960's however, but it was based on an entirely different calculation. With Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev running around the world in the 50's proclaiming that capitalism was doomed and socialism superior, top business leaders indignantly harrumphed to each other over their 20 year old scotches that they "were god-damned if they were going to have the evening news show U.S. unemployment creeping back up to 10 or 15% percent and give the god-damned Ruskies a huge propaganda coup all across Europe and the third world." Occasionally they added "even though that's exactly what that god-damned son-of a bitch Walter Reuther (president of the UAW) needs to cut him down to size."

Grumpiness aside, there was indeed a very solid big business consensus in the 1950's and 1960's that as long as the U.S. was in a life or death global competition with the "Ruskies," unemployment needed to be kept at around 4-4.5 percent. The argument that capitalism had now solved the problem of mass unemployment was a critical part of America's ideological defense against the threat of communism and there was an entirely genuine concern in the business "establishment" that a return of high unemployment in the United States would produce a huge, worldwide propaganda windfall for the Russians and possibly contribute to parliamentary or extra-parliamentary socialist victories in a number of European and third world countries.

http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2011/09/democrats_the_major_reason_why.php#more

 

[unregistered]

 

[koalabear]

Insight: Fed's new rate policy twists insurers into a knot

The Federal Reserve's latest move to stimulate credit for consumers and businesses, known as Operation Twist, is likely to threaten the earnings of some of the country's largest insurers for years to come.

Wall Street in the past week has dimmed its view of MetLife, Prudential Financial and other big insurers, forecasting that they will have to cope with low rates and weak market returns through the end of 2011 and possibly well beyond.

The problem is that returns on insurers' investment portfolios can't keep pace with the obligations they have accumulated from torrid sales of annuities and life policies over the past few years.

http://news.yahoo.com/insight-feds-rate-policy-twists-insurers-knot-190917497.html

 

[Sean Renaud]

If the government wasn't involved, they would have failed, and I suspect we'd be better off for it.

I've never understood this logic. Surely absolute rock bottom would have been terrible for us not just as a nation but as a world.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Sean Renaud]

I've never believed their bullshit, nobody is too big to fail. We might have had a tough time but we wouldn't have mortgaged the future of our children. The terrible consequences of our own actions would have been borne by us, and not by them. We would have had to sacrifice for our children, like our parents did for us. How immoral can we possibly get?

Nobody SHOULD be too big to fail. I'd debate that there are plenty who ARE too big to fail.

I don't see how you think that our children wouldn't have paid for it or why they have to pay for what we've done. We could pay for this easily in our (well my and your Children but you're an old fuck and if I'm not mistaken your children are of voting age and thus are paying for their own actions good or bad.) If we set the standard of American living back thirty years because everybody was broke our children would have paid. . .or at least not inherited prosperity from us which is just as bad. Honestly if you gave me two options where option a is I get nothing from anybody, no riches but no wealth either and option b is I get a pretty good house and a car but I still gotta pay off the credit card I know which option I'm picking.

And we should start with yes if the big three and the banks had fallen and had taken whatever industries with them we would have eventually landed back on our feet. Hard to know how many years it would have taken or if we'd still be falling now.

 

[unregistered]

 

[mercury14]

I've never believed their bullshit, nobody is too big to fail. We might have had a tough time but we wouldn't have mortgaged the future of our children. The terrible consequences of our own actions would have been borne by us, and not by them. We would have had to sacrifice for our children, like our parents did for us. How immoral can we possibly get?

Every economist of any standing says that allowing the major financial institutions to collapse would be an unprecedented catastrophe for not just America but the entire world. You disagree however.

You must have info that they don't have. Let's hear it.

 

[koalabear]

My my, the continuing resolution to fund the government just failed in the House.

FEMA funding seems to have hit a snag too.

 

[mercury14]

koalabear
This message is hidden because koalabear is on your ignore list.


Anyone not have him on iggy?

 

[Sean Renaud]

My my, the continuing resolution to fund the government just failed in the House.

I swear I saw this episode like two maybe three months ago. It ended with the stock market taking a pretty massive hit and then bouncing back right? Can we watch something else?

 

[mercury14]

Dodd-Frank ended the possibility of the government bailing out large financial institutions. This is what you wanted, right? Republicans hate bailouts - even though they voted for them.

Well here's the fallout from that. When credit ratings agencies know that the government doesn't have the backs of the banks like they used to that makes it really easy to downgrade them.

I saw that on the news as well. Dodd-Frank made it extremely difficult for another bank bailout to happen which has directly impacted their credit. It's exactly what Republicans wanted to happen.

 

[koalabear]

I saw that on the news as well. Dodd-Frank made it extremely difficult for another bank bailout to happen which has directly impacted their credit. It's exactly what Republicans wanted to happen.

Pretty sad when you talk to your own "shared account", MORON.

 

[Sean Renaud]

koalabear
This message is hidden because koalabear is on your ignore list.


Anyone not have him on iggy?

For some stupid reason him and miles have evaded iggy. Really the only regular poster I have on ignore is BB, everybody else I ignore are such trolls that I honestly didn't need to bother because everybody put them on ignore within a week and they got bored and went home.

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[mercury14]

And nothing you just posted at all counters the point I just made. You simply listed some academics who were concerned about how the bailouts might be implemented. All valid points but nowhere have you quoted them as saying that the collapse of the financial sector wouldn't be an epic-level catastrophe.

Please try again.


(incidentally you listed one of my undergrad economics professors

 

[unregistered]

 

[miles]

Pretty sad when you talk to your own "shared account", MORON.

What a douche!

 

[unregistered]

 

[miles]

They stay in shape running from computer to computer or get carpel tunnel tapping tabs in order to have their circle jerk.

You know, a normal person would be too embarrassed to show their ass around here after they've been busted.

I've said it a hundred times: they love the abuse.

How fucked up is that?