"I know you like to point your finger at Reagan and deregulation; but the seeds were planted long before. Banks took risks because they knew that they would be bailed out; that is Keynesian policies that lead to this."

God I don't know if you're serious or not. Do you know why you don't hear about the great "X" bubble of 1950 or 1960 or 1970? Do you know why there was no banking disasters since the 1930s? It's because we had regulations in place that didn't allow the banks to do what the fuck you're describing. It would literally be impossible for the credit crisis to have occurred with the old regulations we had. But you know what, Reagan's advisers (all from wall streets especially goldman sachs) told him to deregulate the shit out of the financial industry. Voila! We had all kinds of wall street schemes to make money, it made such a great impression on society that they made a movie about it, called Wallstreet, in the 80s.

Want some anecdotal evidence of what I'm saying? Evidence presented: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTcL6Xc_eMM&feature=player_embedded



"If you deregulate banks AND let them FAIL when they over leverage (etc); then they stop over leveraging (etc) to avoid failure... duh."

Inherently you should realize that if you did that the entire economy would go under. And banks know that, and they paid the neo-cons to deregulate everything (no conservatives voted to suddenly deregulate/fix an industry that wasn't broken, the banks paid them to). If we didn't bail out the banks like we were forced to we would have had another great depression. Luckily Bush was smart enough to at least attempt to do that, albeit with a really shitty TARP act. Obama did a better job, but frankly neither addressed the issue which is deregulation. And I don't even know if it's possible to regulate the industry now with all the influence/lobbyists they have on the inside of our government.

"The brilliance of this whole issue; is that it will play out right here for all to see. Gold will skyrocket; dollar will die; food will be expensive; stock market will be crazy volatile; all of this will happen; and soon. Then you will be left with the failure you have created and it will be clear (hopefully) that you are wrong."

I don't* necessarily disagree that things will get bad, I think they have to before we ever actually face the problem which is the deregulated banking industry. But se la vi, I look forward to the next super progressive president whenever that finally happens.

edit: I don't necessarily disagree*

So Bush/Obama saved us all? And you call me crazy?

I guess we will all find out soon; good luck.

Happy Cinco de Mayo (+3 hours)

dead, I highly recommend you watch this movie when it comes out or maybe even read the book. The trailer is on that page under the synopsis, it's about a minute long but I am sure it will pique your interest as it has mine.

http://too-big-to-fail-movie-trailer.blogspot.com/2010/11/too-big-to-fail-movie-2012.html

The book the movie is being adapted from was actually written by a reporter covering the 2008 financial crisis as it happened.

What happened is 2008 was basically what happened in 1929 except instead of stocks we had complicated mortgage packages that would've been illegal before the deregulation of the 1980s.

I don't know how familiar you are with what lead up to the great depression but basically everyone invested in stocks because everybody else invested in stocks. This resulted in a bubble boom of growth during the 1920s but ultimately lead to a bust which was the great depression. As they say, you can't make money out of thin air and that's exactly what speculation is. And that's exactly what banks/wallstreet do. Of course after the nation elected FDR the jig was up and FDR designed financial regulations so that this could NEVER happen again.

But I guess you know what happened in the 80s and eventually 1991, 2001, and 2008. Anyhow, my personal take on it is that history is appearing to repeat itself. I know tend to blame the neo-cons for a lot of shit I dislike, but frankly it wasn't just the US, a lot of administrations suddenly adopted policies of deregulation in the 1980s. Margaret Thatcher if you remember all deregulated the financial industry. In fact one of the few powerful economies that did not deregulate its financial industry was Germany and today it is still very much a production oriented economy. As opposed to the financial emphasis US and UK have today. Indeed, we've seen an exodus of industry from our nation.

excuse the typos, i've been running on like no sleep because of finals

better link: http://www.hbo.com/movies/too-big-to-fail/index.html#/movies/too-big-to-fail/video/trailer.html/eNrjcmbOYC5kzlfPz0lxzEvMqSzJTA5ITE-1S8xN1SzLTEnNh4k65+eVpFaUsEknlpbkF+QkVtqWFJWmcjIysgEhAGCyFzg=

The Canadian banking system has come through the current downturn in better shape than that of the U.S. because of some differences in banking regulations. For example, in Canada there is no residential mortgage interest deduction.

For an article on the differences:

http://american.com/archive/2010/february/due-north-canadas-marvelous-mortgage-and-banking-system

my favorite typo was "se la vi". i wonder if any french people would even recognize that as an attempt at french. i never took french, but ive seen that phrase enough times to know its "c'est la vie". right?

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