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The Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression you bunch of sheep:
We may find a few of our esteemed Thought Cops now as they:
1) Attack the sources....part of the Skeptanazi Paradigm
2) Attack the poster
3) Spread disinformation
4) Go get drunk again
It's a free country. You can believe whatever you want. So can the rest of us. Many among the rest may choose more wisely however. As an example, we might not take Bernanke's trying to say something nice about Milton Friedman on the occasion of his 90th birthday to have been an actual pronouncement on actual economic history. But suit yourself. You might want to consider though that in the four months following the 1929 stock market crash, the Fed cut interest rate targets from 6% to 4% and purchased very large stocks of Treasury securities from the public. Given Hoover and the sorts of pre-Keynes classical economic thinking that prevailed at the time, that was about as much intervention as could be tolerated at one time. There would be a two-year lull in such activism, and that lull -- rather ironically -- is what Friedman actually complains about. The lack of activist monetary intervention that liberals of the day had called for. Even more helpful would have been a step-up in expansionary fiscal policy, but the wisdom of that had not been widely realized yet.
Focus. Having a solvent financial system is a necessary good. Without a solvent financial system, there is no credit. Credit is the life blood of every modern economy. Without credit, payrolls are missed, jobs are lost, and plants are shut down. Economic activity does not occur without credit. The bailouts that you so love to hate were done to protect YOU, not the banks or the bankers. It was YOU and the rest of the Main Street economy that regulators were worried about.
You are abusing the concept of solvency. Insolvency is part of an organic process back to solvency. Thus is it no good to make things solvent. it is good to allow the insolvent institutions to fail which will then become solvent emerging out of bankruptcy. Houses are not bulldozed in foreclosure, they simply have new owners. You also fell for the idea that the only source of credit is banks. Every heard of the Treasury? It is always "solvent". It could have "funded" SS withholding putting 15% in everyone's pocket. That would replace credit with something more old fashioned like money as the institutions were flushed out. You do understand banks are paid trying to figure out who should get money? Lacking anything else, 300 million people can also decide who gets money. The reason why we don't do it now is because it would punish savers. With the prospect of deflation, this is not an issue since savers would be getting scarcity profits in a such an event. .
That why is dope is bad. Its good to feel good as a natural reward linked to survival. And if the financial system does cause contagious effects, the Treasury is solvent until an enemy makes off with the flag.
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Yes, I did, and it was laughable pabulum, virtually unchanged from the time when the right-wing disinformation media poured it into a little bowl for you to lap up. Mortgage interest rates dropped by 335 basis points between mid-2000 and mid-2003. Everyone who had one of those 8% mortgages from back in the 1990's or before should have refinanced at least once. Interest rates and asset prices are meanwhile inversely related. As rates fall, prices rise. People and housing markets in fact behaved exactly as they should have at the time.
Um, no. It wasn't the right wing media. It was people telling me they were taking equity out of their housing, including one person looking for a new job since he lost his side income. They were not just cashing in from low interest rates. They were taking out home equity loans because the equity kept rising.
How can I debate people who don't even read the post? You make up complete crap like I got it from the news. I told you where I got some of my information. I also got my information from mortgage brokers who were telling me they had not seen someone like me very often, that is someone with my savings and ability to put 20% down. That is in addition to actually researching it.
Housing and interest rates did what was expected, not as it should. I think cash flows from real estate are the root of the problem. So you definitely have the wrong person here talking about should. If every state in the union abolished income and sales taxes and shifted taxes on real state, the real estate bubbles would not have happned like it should not have , and people who were paid for work would have money instead of people cashing out "equity".
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Foolish analogies only highlight the extreme degrees of popular misunderstanding. The "White Knight" theory for example was and still is a load of worthless crap. Without a solvent financial system, those who might have hoped to play the white knight role would have gone bankrupt even more quickly than you, done in by their own over-exposure. They'd have been cripples themselves, while at the same time there would have been no potential partners or backers left out there having the wherewithal to join forces with them. Stop and think about it for 60 seconds -- none of that whole white knight scheme works at all without a reliably functional financial system, the very thing that you want to remove from the equation.
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You don't even know what an analogy is. Entertainment is a component of an economic system. If I added surgeons with shaky hand hands and blind police would that also be an analogy? No, it would be an assumed sample of the population allowing one to extrapolate. We have seen misplaced resources just like this In economic system that fail to reward and punish, its exactly what we see. . Its almost like you are a fish out of water....Oh now there is an analogy. See the diffrence ?If you can't then you have no business in a field that requires understanding subtleties like this.
I haven't posted in this thread as yet, but combed all 36 (and growing) pages last night; couple of observations:
My libertarian (please note: no distinctions via left- right- or capital 'L') leanings go all the way back to 1968 -- when the movement itself was just getting organized on a handful of campuses. The polarization within the general conservative movement of those times revolved around traditional "God and country" absolutes vs the philosophical Objectivism of Rand et al.
With the ideological conflict of those times still pitting the conservative movement fostered by Buckley and Goldwater vs the heirs of the New Deal, banking issues were a sideshow. The only general area of agreement was that the last of the expansions of the 1920's was artificially accentuated by the Federal Reserve -- leading to the Crash of October 1929. Little attention was paid to the negative effects of the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930, or that the general economic collapse did not expand beyond Wall Street and a handful of capital-goods industries until the fall of 1931.
There was, mostly among the traditionalists. a skepticism of all central banking and a return to a stronger version of the gold standard, and a few of the "captive embarrassment" threw in some anti-Semitism, but these were the lunatic fringe; the pragmatists among us simply recognized that no power-structure could hold gold (the commodity) to an artificially low price, and were proven correct within less than a decade.
Little by little, as more of us familiarized ourselves with the workings of both monetary and fiscal policy, and the origins and history of a banking mechanism which evolved from the goldsmiths of Medieval times (the first "creators" of money) we came to view the function of some sort of central banking as a necessity. And the single largest fault I can find with this thread is the lack of any discussion of the Fed as the heir to the two Banks of the United States -- so vilified by Jackson and his simplistic following, who probably did more to discourage economic progress than any influence up until the coming of the New Deal.
When I graduated from Penn State in the spring of 1971, I received a couple of oil company credit cards in the mail, and a couple of insurance promos mostly centered around the expectation (no evidence -- just the standards of the times) that I'd be getting married soon -- that was all. We've come a long, and possibly-perilous way to a point where the typical 23-year-old is more concerned with his/her credit score than his/her net worth. Almost all of the Millennial cohort have been "peonized" via the "consumerist" / credit-based system, and I can offer no speculation as to how it will end -- save to point out that the temptation to "tie down safety valves", like the urge to gamble, is deeply rooted within everyone's psyche.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 11-07-2015 at 03:14 PM..
Semantics are never the point. Lack of liquidity will ultimately lead to insolvency. In a credit freeze, everyone is effectively insolvent because no one has adequate liquidity to support a book. There isn't a need to evaluate here for "organic-ness".
Quote:
Originally Posted by gwynedd1
Um, no. It wasn't the right wing media. It was people telling me they were taking equity out of their housing, including one person looking for a new job since he lost his side income. They were not just cashing in from low interest rates. They were taking out home equity loans because the equity kept rising.
What percentage of the market was refi's? That's people selling their homes to themselves, and anyone who had a mortgage in 2000 and hasn't refinanced multiple times by now made a very big mistake. You call it "greedy", others call it "smart". Or at least "not bonehead stupid".
As for home equity lines, everyone of any means has needed one since Reagan did away with the tax deduction for personal interest other than that backed by -- equity in a home. If you are going to carry debt, that's where it ought to be -- off where your Uncle Sam will pick up a bit of the tab for you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gwynedd1
How can I debate people who don't even read the post?
Protest all you like. The plain and simple facts of the matter are that people and housing markets responded to the mortgage rate declines of 2000-2003 exactly as they should have. They again responded as they should have when interest rates crept back up again between mid-2004 and mid-2006.
The ones who were off doing other than what they should have been doing at the time were the blood-sucker cowboy capitalists on Wall Street and the enabling laissez-faire regulators in the Bush administration who simply sat on their hands and watched it all go down.
...the pragmatists among us simply recognized that no power-structure could hold gold (the commodity) to an artificially low price, and were proven correct within less than a decade.
By 1968, this was already a foregone conclusion. Bretton Woods had done its job and was already well into disintegration. Nixon ultimately did it, but he was only ordered to by the nature of the changing world around him. Otherwise and on other levels, the gold standard had died as an idea by the time the 20th century got here. We only had bigger fish to fry for 50 years or so.
So what had all you libertarians thought about the deflationary effects of French attempts at gold hoarding in the 1920's? Did that ever come up?
So what had all you libertarians thought about the deflationary effects of French attempts at gold hoarding in the 1920's? Did that ever come up?
The organized libertarian movement has now been with us for 43 years; in a political system which is heavily rigged against the emergence of third parties, that is a pretty good record, and one of our core principles -- deregulation, particularly in transportation -- became a fait accompli as early as the 1980's; so I'd say we have plenty to be proud of.
But most, if not all, success stories in the world of realpolitik can trace their origins to philosophers and throreticians. I can recall discussions at which, for example, means for privatizing the already-sprawling highway network of the times were proposed, but I doubt if anybody took them seriously.
"Gold hoarding" was simply too far-removed in both location and years, to be seriously studied, but the writings of people like James Dines and Howard Ruff, coupled with the early days of the sales of Kruegerrands in conservative publications were proof enough that some people were aware of the opportunity (though how to raise the capital or pay for storage, etc, would negate much of an opportunity for most of us at that stage in our lives).
Our favorite historic figure was the gentleman linked below:
And as an "aside", one of the players in the abandonment of the gold standard made his home right across the Susquehanna from where I'm writing this post:
I haven't posted in this thread as yet, but combed all 36 (and growing) pages last night; couple of observations:
My libertarian (please note: no distinctions via left- right- or capital 'L') leanings go all the way back to 1968 -- when the movement itself was just getting organized on a handful of campuses. The polarization within the general conservative movement of those times revolved around traditional "God and country" absolutes vs the philosophical Objectivism of Rand et al.
With the ideological conflict of those times still pitting the conservative movement fostered by Buckley and Goldwater vs the heirs of the New Deal, banking issues were a sideshow. The only general area of agreement was that the last of the expansions of the 1920's was artificially accentuated by the Federal Reserve -- leading to the Crash of October 1929. Little attention was paid to the negative effects of the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930, or that the general economic collapse did not expand beyond Wall Street and a handful of capital-goods industries until the fall of 1931.
There was, mostly among the traditionalists. a skepticism of all central banking and a return to a stronger version of the gold standard, and a few of the "captive embarrassment" threw in some anti-Semitism, but these were the lunatic fringe; the pragmatists among us simply recognized that no power-structure could hold gold (the commodity) to an artificially low price, and were proven correct within less than a decade.
Little by little, as more of us familiarized ourselves with the workings of both monetary and fiscal policy, and the origins and history of a banking mechanism which evolved from the goldsmiths of Medieval times (the first "creators" of money) we came to view the function of some sort of central banking as a necessity. And the single largest fault I can find with this thread is the lack of any discussion of the Fed as the heir to the two Banks of the United States -- so vilified by Jackson and his simplistic following, who probably did more to discourage economic progress than any influence up until the coming of the New Deal.
When I graduated from Penn State in the spring of 1971, I received a couple of oil company credit cards in the mail, and a couple of insurance promos mostly centered around the expectation (no evidence -- just the standards of the times) that I'd be getting married soon -- that was all. We've come a long, and possibly-perilous way to a point where the typical 23-year-old is more concerned with his/her credit score than his/her net worth. Almost all of the Millennial cohort have been "peonized" via the "consumerist" / credit-based system, and I can offer no speculation as to how it will end -- save to point out that the temptation to "tie down safety valves", like the urge to gamble, is deeply rooted within everyone's psyche.
So are you saying credit has hurt the millenial generation?
So are you saying credit has hurt the Millenial generation?
Not all of them, certainly not those with some study of personal finance in their background.
But when some schlockmeister in a used-car lot can prepare a tax return, use an "instant refund" (for yet another fee) to sell a clunker, and repossess the car two months later, something in our "pop culture" clearly needs reform -- and I doubt that Madison Avenue and Hollywood would show much enthusiasm for that idea.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 11-07-2015 at 07:45 PM..
The organized libertarian movement has now been with us for 43 years...
What libertarians might once have been was snowed under entirely by the avalanche of fleeing former Bush-supporters not willing to be associated with the GOP and neocons any longer, grasping instead at the convenient straw of libertarianism as some sort of refuge and safe haven. Same sort of fate that paleo-conservatives had faced when the hordes of neocons descended on the GOP to begin with. Same bunch today. Just the different label.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2nd trick op
...and one of our core principles -- deregulation, particularly in transportation -- became a fait accompli as early as the 1980's; so I'd say we have plenty to be proud of.
Right. Deregulation has worked wonders.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2nd trick op
"Gold hoarding" was simply too far-removed in both location and years, to be seriously studied...
That depends how serious one is. If the topic were factors in the run-up to the Great Depression and French gold-hoarding was not discussed, the seriousness level was none too high.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2nd trick op
...but the writings of people like James Dines and Howard Ruff...
These are latter-day, hard-money newsletter hacks, not grounded philosophers or theoreticians.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2nd trick op
Our favorite historic figure was the gentleman linked below:
Lysander Spooner was a 19th century anarchist, one of whose main claims to fame is having gone quite out of business after deciding to compete against the US Post Office. I would think that history might have offered some better champions.
Last edited by Reynard32; 11-08-2015 at 03:08 PM..
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