Possible Dem Win Driving Markets Down?

[DeeZire]

Possible Dem Win Driving Markets Down?

Actually, it's the failure of free market capitalism that's driving the market down, but it doesn't surprise me that Ami would propose a scapegoat. What is his favorite quote? "Free market capitalism brings out honor and integrity in free men" or some such BS. In the real world (as opposed to Ami's ivory tower) free market capitalism brings out the worst in people, and if it's unregulated, we end up with the events of the last two weeks.

 

[Boota]

A Democratic win in November will, in all likelihood, make things a lot better and a lot more stable. Most of what I've read concerning investments speculates that investors fear dumping more money into the system currently failing under the Republican leadership. President Fucktard simply doesn't inspire confidence any longer, even in those who touted him for seven of his miserable years. Now THEY have felt the sting of his economic policies.

True, as someone said, there will be more controls put on the investors and that may make them seem a bit petulant, but they'll still be willing to make a buck, even if it's an honest one. Historically, under Democrats, people get back to work. Then there is more money to put into the economy. While the Republican facade of "trickle down" economics hasn't, doesn't and never will work, trickle up economics is sure fire success. Corporations can't keep getting richer if no one has any money to purchase their product/services. It starts from the ground up or not at all.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Perhaps some of us don't know what we're witnessing here in this market meltdown. This isn't the end of America, but it's the end of the Reagan Revolution, the end of the idea that cutting taxes and regulations leads to a booming economy in which wealth will trickle from the top down. We see now that after a generation of ballooning deficits caused by this philosophy, that's neither true nor sustainable, nor even theoretically defensible. The horse Reagan rode in on is dead. It won't be getting back up.

The days of cowboy capitalism are over. What we're seeing are its death throes. In a world in which the price of houses in southern California determines the fate of banks in Iceland, things have become too complicated and ripe for scamming to do away with control and regulation.

Francis Fukayama, the "End of History" guy, has a piece in the current Newsweek about what the financial crisis means in terms of the end of the American "Brand", that is, American-style capitalism. He points out that every other industrialized country in the world is quite happy with its mix of socialism and capitalism. It's only in the US, where an anti-socialist streak parallels its puritan past, that such a mix is considered anathema. Or has been up to this point.

But now, with this new plan to semi-nationalize the banks...

 

[Selena_Kitt]

But now, with this new plan to semi-nationalize the banks...

Oh Doc, now you're just being MEAN... poor Amicus is gonna have a heart attack if you keep it up...

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

DOC

You cant be more wrong.

The problem is government involvement. Government involvement in the market is always the problem.

The GOP has as many thieves as any other political organization. The last mental health center I worked for stole 3 MILLION from Medicaid and got caught...theyre all Democrats.

But no one has yet come up with a system to replace capitalism.

 

[amicus]

Your concern is tenderly noted, Selena, but not to worry, Dr. Mab, et al, are merely Astrologers, when it comes to economics, psuedo scientists counting tea leaves and lines in the palm.

Truth of the matter is, the free market is merely an extension of human liberty and freedom as I have said, oh, so many times before, and will never just fade away.

The astrologer like socialists, all looking for a beardless god among the masses, keep the rose colored glasses firmly in place and prey for another Messiah to lead them to the promised land. (boy is that a batch of mixed metaphors_)

Another consistent theme of mine is to point out how the socialists always attack, never present or defend their vision of the future. It would be a difficult task to say to all our pointy headed intellectuals here that the moment a socialist government takes over, you go to the turnip fields with a hoe in your hands...we don't need you any more.

They never tell you how their grand social scheme would work, how they tell you where to work, when to work and at what rate you are compensated, usually by 'chits', that permit you one pound of meat per month, et cetera, all for the greater good, of course.

They never tell you, like the ACORN, scandal and Obama, where education becomes a conveyor belt for social re-education, as it is well on the way to being at the present time.

Seldom does anyone acknowledge my assertion that this is a battle between freedom and slavery, but it is surely that, if only you would open your mind.

Socialism is a dead issue, capitalism, human economic freedom, is the new kid on the block and is a feisty one and doing quiet well thank you.

We may have the beginnings of the next, 'Great Generation' (those who fought and won world war two), in the making as we prepare to resist and then revolt if socialism takes hold in America.

It be, 'blowin' in the wind', though the refrain is faint...(with apologies to Dylan)

Amicus...

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Amen Brother AMICUS

Socialists always complain about the free ride theyre getting but never buy horses.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Amen Brother AMICUS

Socialists always complain about the free ride theyre getting but never buy horses.

What's wrong with complaining? It's what made this country great. Who wants to live among a bunch of silent horsemen?

 

[Varian P]

When have so many Americans had so clear a sense that a Presidency has—at the levels of competence, vision, and integrity—undermined the country and its ideals?

The incumbent Administration has distinguished itself for the ages. The Presidency of George W. Bush is the worst since Reconstruction, so there is no mystery about why the Republican Party—which has held dominion over the executive branch of the federal government for the past eight years and the legislative branch for most of that time—has little desire to defend its record, domestic or foreign. The only speaker at the Convention in St. Paul who uttered more than a sentence or two in support of the President was his wife, Laura. Meanwhile, the nominee, John McCain, played the part of a vaudeville illusionist, asking to be regarded as an apostle of change after years of embracing the essentials of the Bush agenda with ever-increasing ardor.

The Republican disaster begins at home. Even before taking into account whatever fantastically expensive plan eventually emerges to help rescue the financial system from Wall Street’s long-running pyramid schemes, the economic and fiscal picture is bleak. During the Bush Administration, the national debt, now approaching ten trillion dollars, has nearly doubled. Next year’s federal budget is projected to run a half-trillion-dollar deficit, a precipitous fall from the seven-hundred-billion-dollar surplus that was projected when Bill Clinton left office. Private-sector job creation has been a sixth of what it was under President Clinton. Five million people have fallen into poverty. The number of Americans without health insurance has grown by seven million, while average premiums have nearly doubled. Meanwhile, the principal domestic achievement of the Bush Administration has been to shift the relative burden of taxation from the rich to the rest. For the top one per cent of us, the Bush tax cuts are worth, on average, about a thousand dollars a week; for the bottom fifth, about a dollar and a half . . .

from The Choice

 

[Safe_Bet]

What's wrong with complaining? It's what made this country great. Who wants to live among a bunch of silent horsemen?

Ummm, Doc? You know you aren't responding to horsemen, or even horses... it's more kinda like half horses...you know, the back half....

 

[Sean]

As a self confessed Socialist, some would say Bolshevik, can I just say: Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The fact is, freedom is a simple matter of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Statistical mechanics tells us that the degree of freedom of a system is inversely proportional to the number of particles. The more particles, the less freedom.

In the same way, the amount of personal freedom in a society is inversely proportional to the number of individuals. The more people you have, the less personal freedom. You have ultimate personal freedom when you're the only person in the world. Your freedom goes down as the number of people go up. That's been the law throughout history. The more people, the more interdependent we become. Freedom becomes a zero-sum game: I'm free to smoke only if you're not free to avoid my second-hand smoke. I'm free to dump my shit in the river only if you're not free to avoid it. Moral infringement.

Note that another way of thermodynamically stressing a system besides increasing the number of particles (increasing mass) is by increasing their velocity (temperature) which corresponds to increasing rate of information exchange in humans; or increasing pressure, which corresponds to reducing distance between the particles (people), all of which we've done. All these serve to stress the idea of absolute freedom in a way analogous to the ideal gas law:

PV=nRT where P=pressure, V=volume, n= number of moles (a measure of total # of particles), R= the gas constant, and T=temperature in deg Kelvin)

 

[amicus]

What's wrong with complaining? It's what made this country great. Who wants to live among a bunch of silent horsemen?

~~~

Not a thing wrong with complaining, Mab, not a thing at all.

A major fundamental of every assertion I make on this forum, is the axiom of human conflict and change, from an evolutionary perspective, that winnows out the weak and rewards the strong. And, no, not Social Darwinism, just an observation that conflict is inherent in the species.

It functions on very basic levels in sibling rivalry and in the battle between the sexes that begins with initial relationships and continues through marriage and family life.

So, keep complaining and making your point. In general, however, I would ask for a little more intellectual honest in that the 'complainers', the Bush haters, add to their rhetoric, a plan, or several, in opposition to the status quo.

Of course, that won't happen and by definition, is impossible, as the left, those who advocate communal rights over individual rights, do not value human life and human liberty as fundamental and seminal, thus, we always debate at cross purposes.

I would, however, like to see, just once, someone present an argument that defends the sacrifice of the individual to the greater good.

And yes, I know there are martyrs to the cause and Mab would probably volunteer his existence to gratify or sustain the greater good.

So....rather the horns of a dilemma?



Amicus...

 

[xssve]

xssve, to be honest, Enron had help from Clinton as well.

The political reality is that all politicians have become dependent on the patronage of special interest groups to do anything, it doesn't matter who you are or what you want to achieve, you can't do it alone, and if you don't cut deals, you will be alone.

Even conservatives fairly early on noted that the major difference between Clinton and W. was that W. was the one on his knees under the desk.

Clinton-Gore did propose some relevant financial transparency legislation in the first term. Unfortunately this was at the height of the neo-con sweep into power under the leadership of Gingrich (the contract on America), and the legislation was killed unceremoniously - the same republican congress, BTW, that was considering presenting Osama Bin Laden with a medal for his opposition to the Soviets in Afghanistan, and who armed both Iran and Iraq with conventional and chemical weapons.

 

[xssve]

The fact is, freedom is a simple matter of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Statistical mechanics tells us that the degree of freedom of a system is inversely proportional to the number of particles. The more particles, the less freedom.

I like the physic analogy, listen to this:

In 1994, I was deep in conversation with a technologist who managed our server security and firewalls for my investment bank. We started to talk about what would happen as the explosion in information and communications technology increased the learning metabolism within the economy. At one point, he got up to call a physicist he knew at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory to ask him what happened when the learning metabolism rose in a system. After conversing with the physicist, he returned with this warning. "He said, 'When the metabolism rises, the rate of entropy increases.'”

The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008: An Analysis by Catherine Austin Fitts

 

[dr_mabeuse]

As usual, Amicus, you see everything in extremes and extremes only. Life isn't all about only me or only them. It's lived in the middle, partly for me and partly for them. Partly for my own gratification and partly for the gratification of the people and the institutions and the humans I love.

And if you're not willing to sacrifice for love, then all I can do is detest you. I want no part of your world or your "philosophy", which is worse than bestial and has nothing noble, natural, or human about it.

 

[Huckleman2000]

Well, no one seems to be railing against Sarbanes-Oxley accounting standards anymore...

 

[amicus]

You just can't get past the vitriol can you, Mab?

Sacrificing for love is quite the different subject than sacrificing for ideology or belief, which was the issue being discussed.

You and your fellow travelers may think the world is composed of grays only and you may proclaim it as long as you have breath, but reality is the final arbiter and it is not the least bit wishy washy but indeed composed only of yes's and no's, rights and wrongs, good's and bad's, no middle ground at all.

A common curse of elite intellectual's is to imagine they have learned so much that they find nothing is absolute, which usually either drives them mad or to drink. "The more I know, the less I know..." is/was, almost the password into the Bohemian world of drugs and kinky sex and other distractions away from living.

Not necessarily Randism or Objectivism, but harkens back to Aristotle, "A is A", 'a thing is what it is'. Thus the world is in fact a construct of absolutes whether you perceive it as such or not.

Elections are also just sooooo interesting....



amicus...

 

[Selena_Kitt]

What's wrong with complaining? It's what made this country great. Who wants to live among a bunch of silent horsemen?

It will be the Republicans' turns to complain soon... really soon... 25 more days?

 

[Sandy_Fox]

You just can't get past the vitriol can you, Mab?

Sacrificing for love is quite the different subject than sacrificing for ideology or belief, which was the issue being discussed.

You and your fellow travelers may think the world is composed of grays only and you may proclaim it as long as you have breath, but reality is the final arbiter and it is not the least bit wishy washy but indeed composed only of yes's and no's, rights and wrongs, good's and bad's, no middle ground at all.

A common curse of elite intellectual's is to imagine they have learned so much that they find nothing is absolute, which usually either drives them mad or to drink. "The more I know, the less I know..." is/was, almost the password into the Bohemian world of drugs and kinky sex and other distractions away from living.

Not necessarily Randism or Objectivism, but harkens back to Aristotle, "A is A", 'a thing is what it is'. Thus the world is in fact a construct of absolutes whether you perceive it as such or not.

Elections are also just sooooo interesting....



amicus...

Would you mind explaining what it is that you just tried to say? I have read through all the other postings on this thread and, though I might not agree with them, they were understandable. This posting isn't making any sense to me at all.

 

[Liar]

I'm not ecatly sure how, but this seems appropriate.

http://stateoftheunion.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/marketsvsmccain1.jpg

Dunno if a possible dem win is driving the markets down, but the markets going down is driving a possible dem win.

 

[DeeZire]

You just can't get past the vitriol can you, Mab?

This accusation coming from the guy who routinely demands that anyone who disagrees with him should be drawn and quartered in the public square? You, Ami, are one of the most vitriolic posters around here. Your claimed innocence is reminiscent of Baghdad Bob, the spokesman for Saddam H who claimed, in front of news cameras, that Baghdad was not under attack when bombs were exploding behind him.

You and your fellow travelers may think the world is composed of grays only and you may proclaim it as long as you have breath, but reality is the final arbiter and it is not the least bit wishy washy but indeed composed only of yes's and no's, rights and wrongs, good's and bad's, no middle ground at all.

You are right about absolutes, in the sense that life and death are absolute, but you are wrong about everything being an absolutely right or wrong decision. For example, is it wrong to defy the commander-in-chief of the government you live under? How about if he's your commanding officer and he instructs you to march off a cliff? Is it wrong to send children to work in sweatshops instead of sending them to school? Is it wrong to discriminate against certain classes of people living in a society when the constitution that governs that society says everyone is created equal? Is it wrong to pass laws protecting the environment when private enterprise threatens to harm that environment?

You have come down on the wrong side of right on many of these issues, which indicates to me that your absolutes are based on whim and fancy, rather than serious thought. In fact, it is apparent that your ideology is simply a game you have devised for your own entertainment - a way to get your rocks off by pushing the buttons of the people who annoy you.

You are impossible to take seriously, my friend, but you can be quite entertaining - and that's an absolute truth.

 

[Le Jacquelope]

Well, no one seems to be railing against Sarbanes-Oxley accounting standards anymore...

Don't get Amicus riled up on that, please.

He already thinks that honest accounting ruins capitalism...