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Government intervention in the private sector, NAFTA, Trilateral Commisions - notice how everyone's answer leads back to the same thing - government. But the goverment isn't the root of our problem, it's only a symptom of whats really wrong. The problem isn't government, it's us.
We've allowed ourselves as a people to become lazy, selfish, and arrogant, and uneducated about the problems we are facing, and most of us have allowed ourselves to believe that we have to rely on government to fix all of our problems. The goverment doesn't solve problems, it only keeps pushing problems off until later when they are worse, or they spend time and money creating new problems.
The government we have today is a direct reflection of our own dereliction of the duties of basic citizenship that our founding fathers put forth as not only our right, but our responsibility. I can only imagine what George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin would think about our country today. Ultimately, people always get exactly the government that they deserve. We are no exception to this rule, and I believe those gentlemen I just named would agree.
Our government spends way too much money, and we all complain, but boy do we raise hell the minute they start talking about cuts. Union wages, benefits and pensions are helping to drive our auto industry to ruin and are choking our federal, state and local governments with massive deficits which in the end are going to kill us all with ridiculous tax levels. Yet try to cut back and the unions take to the courts, or worse, riot in the streets (see Greece). We all complain about our jobs moving to Mexico or Asia, but we all still shop at Walmart and buy all the junk that's "MADE IN CHINA, MADE IN HONDURAS, MADE IN PAKISTAN" and we complain about the price of the few items that are still MADE IN USA. We all complain about how tough things are, and yet we all continue to live beyond our means, carrying large amounts of debt as if it had no consequences, saving almost nothing for emergencies. We think of Ipods, laptops, HD TV's and satelite radio as "must haves", yet we say we can't afford to add 1% more to our 401K contributions.
So that's it in a nutshell. We can blame government, blame Wall Steet, blame TV or video games, blame other countries, blame terrorists, TV or video games, but in the end, none of these problems will go away until we as a people take a good, hard and honest look at ourselves, take responsibility for our problems, and deal with them once and for all instead of looking for someone else to blame. Will it be painful, yes - excruciating actually. But what choice to we have? What will become of us if we continue down our current path? I'm not sure, but it won't be fun having to learn to speak Chinese.
You have missed a key point in there, Kidd.
Mis-education -- or Marketing -- or Propaganda -- or whatever you want to call it.
Americans have been intentionally mis-educated by the various international corporations and some government agencies.
The idea of "choice" is now typically selecting between two bad options --
Coke v. Pepsi (about the same thing)
D v. R (about the same thing)
Ford v. Chevy (about the same thing)
on and on and on.
In short, for many things, the long line of bad choices are the only choices.
We do not so much have a democracy but more of de-mockery.
It is far harder to un-learn something (hence the old dog, new tricks proverb) than it was to intentionally mis-educate the masses -- so we will likely have a rough road ahead.
Mis-education -- or Marketing -- or Propaganda -- or whatever you want to call it.
Americans have been intentionally mis-educated by the various international corporations and some government agencies.
The idea of "choice" is now typically selecting between two bad options --
Coke v. Pepsi (about the same thing)
D v. R (about the same thing)
Ford v. Chevy (about the same thing)
on and on and on.
In short, for many things, the long line of bad choices are the only choices.
We do not so much have a democracy but more of de-mockery.
It is far harder to un-learn something (hence the old dog, new tricks proverb) than it was to intentionally mis-educate the masses -- so we will likely have a rough road ahead.
coke is better than pepsi.
other than that, you have made a good point here. on a micro level, even if people spent 100% responsibly (which i agree with kidd that they are not) it wouldn't matter in the scheme of things on the macro level because the scheme of things is for governments to manipulate currency and this is intentionally happening on a worldwide basis.
The point I would emphasize is that sovereign defaults, if and when they happen and most especially if we have a cascade of them or two, aren’t a function of market impacts but of governmental policy choices. Latvia, Ireland, Greece, Abu Dhabi, other such: they are at the markets’ mercy. The EU, the US, Japan, China: they may have bad options, but when they move it will likely be by a deliberate policy. I don’t say a good policy, or a wise policy. Perhaps yes; perhaps not yes. But they will act when some government in power sees a reconfigured currency/debt position more in their interests that other remaining options. —But don’t expect the amount of sovereign debt in the world as of today to get paid back at close to face in today’s valuations. That strikes me as the _least_ likely of all scenarios.
in reality, the people are at the mercy of government policy and things that are entirely out of their control. i think that this whole article and commentary makes for some interesting reading: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/...-defaults.html
From Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at the Telegraph (hat tip reader Swedish Lex):
Roughly €560bn of EU bank debt matures in 2010 and €540bn in 2011. The banks will have to roll over loans at a time when unprecedented bond issuance by governments worldwide risks saturating the debt markets. European states alone must raise €1.6 trillion this year.
“The scale of such issuance could raise a significant ‘crowding out’ issue, whereby government bonds suck up the vast majority of capital,” said Graham Secker, Morgan Stanley’s equity strategist. “The debt burden that prompted the financial crisis has not fallen; rather, we are witnessing a dramatic transfer of private-sector debt on to the public sector. The most important macro-theme for the next few years will be how easily countries can service and pay down these deficits. Greece may well prove to be a taste of things to come.”
This is going to be an interesting next couple of years, and the odds are pretty high that it may not be interesting in a good way.
The 'bad choices as the only choices' does indeed seem to be the default setting. But people have the ability to get educated and change the default - not enough do though.
it isn't the fault of the average citizen that the government chose to submit to the will of the federal reserve and institute the bailouts. as a matter of fact, i remember americans disagreeing vehemently with the bank bailout, and it failed on its first effort, until the government stepped in and pushed it back out there.
Well, the bailout vote was public. We know who supported the bill, and who did not.
If the American people intentionally choose to vote for candidates who had previously voted for the bailout... that seems to imply that Americans agree with the bailout. Or at the least, their opposition is fairly weak.
Well, the bailout vote was public. We know who supported the bill, and who did not.
If the American people intentionally choose to vote for candidates who had previously voted for the bailout... that seems to imply that Americans agree with the bailout. Or at the least, their opposition is fairly weak.
we have an election coming up and we shall see. i think anti-incumbent sentiment is pretty high though, as americans don't like the idea of having the government redistribute the wealth from the middle class to the top.
i thought denninger's column was good today on timmy geithner, fraud, and obama: The Market Ticker
Today I am going to focus on FRBNY's culpability in the apparent Lehman fraud - that is, the role that FRBNY (and thus Tim Geithner) played in keeping an insolvent institution afloat through the use of fraudulent artifices.
....so we have the company intentionally avoiding public disclosure of "a material event." Securities laws are supposed to prevent this sort of thing - if they're enforced.
Did FRBNY know of this? It sure looks that way:
The FRBNY was aware that Lehman viewed the PDCF not only as a liquidity backstop for financing quality assets, but also as a means to finance its illiquid assets.
But wait a second - that's not what the PDCF was intended to be. So here's a clear statement that FRBNY knew that Lehman (and perhaps others) were in fact gaming the system and yet they did nothing about it.
Who ran FRBNY at the time? None other than Tim Geithner.
It gets better.
Remember the "tests" of the PDCF from that time? Those were lies too...
And again, FRBNY and Tim Geithner allowed to be promulgated to the market false information about the character of the use of this facility.
Free trade has warped our domestic economy to death. A refusal to understand the concept of a domestic economy has led us to this impasse. It is very vital for a country, if it wishes to survive, to produce as much as possible, THINGS THAT CAN BE MADE AT HOME. That is, if we can make something we consume, we better do this or die.
The reason why we can’t export our way out of a trade deficit should be glaringly obvious by now. We consume many things we ought to produce here, via importation. From food to cars, all the things we easily produced in the past here in the US are now imported in vast quantities. The role of tariffs and barriers is to prevent easy importation of things one can produce domestically.
There is no way around this: only major commodity exports powers with low population levels can afford to import basic consumer goods in mass quantities. All nations that manufacture things for export are also nations that restrict consumption of imports of these same manufactured items via various tricks and schemes. This is why Germany and Japan, the world’s two biggest auto export powers, didn’t buy hardly any US auto production while the US passively allowed both to bring cars to the US. (supkis)
we need a tariff on goods for all countries which have a trade surplus with us. let's face it-we have tried it the other way and run up a huge deficit in the process so we really don't have anything to lose by trying something different.
Last edited by floridasandy; 03-14-2010 at 05:43 PM..
I blame a lot of it on the schools. They are a nightmare and they're turning out non thinking individuals that don't know anything about anything.
-Part of the problem is that none of these things are really new. But because of the schools, people think that they're new. How long has global trade been going on for? Centuries.
If people understood the depression of the 30's better, they would have understood this latest crash better. But somewhere along the line there was a disconnect. What happened in the "old days" doesn't happen anymore. People losing thier money in banks in the early 1900's. They didnt know what they were doing.
-Bank runs, bank panics. Those things don't happen anymore. We "solved them". I think schools in the last 30 years have created this subtle imprint in peoples minds that govt can solve all your problems. Don't worry. They can fix it.
You wonder why people had so much faith in Greenspan and Bernanke (before they started getting criticized). It's created this age of stupidity and faith. Don't worry. Watch American Idol and go out and spend (didn't w bush say, go out and spend?). And let Geithner and the FED fix things.
-Schools don't teach that history can repeat itself. They don't teach that public officials can be wrong. They don't teach generational history. There's no proper context for what's going on. Media and corporations fill the void with empty books and "experts", but they dont know whats going on either.
Mis-education -- or Marketing -- or Propaganda -- or whatever you want to call it.
Americans have been intentionally mis-educated by the various international corporations and some government agencies.
The idea of "choice" is now typically selecting between two bad options --
Coke v. Pepsi (about the same thing)
D v. R (about the same thing)
Ford v. Chevy (about the same thing)
With all due respect, I think it's you who has missed the point here Philip.
-Don't like Coke or Pepsi? Invent your own drink!
-Not inspired by Democrats or Republicans? Run against them!
-Don't want a Ford or GM? Ride a bike!
This is the USA for Pete's sake. The not-so-great choices you've layed out here are the lazy man's choices. There are always better choices (note that I said BETTER, not EASIER) and sometimes they are so obvious, we spend most of our lives looking right past them. Quit falling for the status quo and think outside the box.
Mis-education -- or Marketing -- or Propaganda -- or whatever you want to call it.
These sorts of issues were brought up when America democracy was just getting started. For example, Tocqueville described a number of problems with democracy and that was before modern marketing.
Maybe...just maybe the problem is democracy.
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