Conservatives? (Clinton: real estate, mortgage broker, good credit)

[NorthPoleMarathoner]

Originally Posted by holden125

Trains are also "vital to commerce, transportation and connecting the entire continents" and are also crucial "infrastructure." By your own logic, they should be "paid for and up-kept by tax dollars." If anything, we're going to need a lot more of it in the decades to come.

They are paid for and kept up by tax dollars. And have been since they began.

[NorthPoleMarathoner]

Originally Posted by holden125

The "explanation" is absurd. The argument is that everyone's been "indoctrinated" by the "socialist bill of goods" except you and your twelve buddies in the woods of New Hampshire and northern Idaho. It's not about "something for nothing," it's about deciding which things are going to be provided for socially and which should be left for people to fend for themselves. We agree to include fire, police, and roads in the social category. I include mass transit and health care. You don't. That has nothing to do with getting something for nothing. It has to do with allocating the cost publicly instead of privately.

By your own words, you do not advocate a pure individualism where everyone has to put out his own fires; you concede that certain things should be provided by government. I would provide more than you would; that does not make me a sheep looking for something for nothing. I'm in a high bracket; by your count I'm putting in more than I get out. I don't really view it that way, since I think I only make what I make because of the infrastructure that exists, and even paying a higher rate I am doing better than most.

This one makes no sense to me. It's the libertarians who seek a pre-socialized world.

Fire, police and roads would be provided for more efficiently and cheaper by the private sector. It has been done in the past. It has been done so well that most governments have just outlawed all that stuff by the private sector.

Same could be said for schools, printing of money, health insurance, mail delivery and just about everthing else you can think of. It has all been done by the private sector at a cheaper cost. And provided better services than government pretends to.

And you are confusing your stereotypes. Libertarians want to join militias. It is the environmentalists that want to live in a pre-socialized world.

I assume by "pre-social" you mean pre-industrial?

I think it is important you get all sterotypes correct.

[dognh]

Originally Posted by holden125

Is the "dog" in your tag for the doghouse your ideology is in? Without Obama, GM, Citibank, Bank of America, and plenty of other would completely shut down by the end of the year.

Good. They should all gone belly up. I'm against ALL bailouts. By the way, since when did you Libs start endorsing corporate welfare anyway? Oh yeah, when their savior was elected.

[TheWereRabbit]

Originally Posted by dognh

Good. They should all gone belly up. I'm against ALL bailouts. By the way, since when did you Libs start endorsing corporate welfare anyway? Oh yeah, when their savior was elected.

Not all Libs support bailouts. The government should take complete control of those banks because obviously the private sector is not to be trusted.

[NorthPoleMarathoner]

Originally Posted by TheWereRabbit

Not all Libs support bailouts. The government should take complete control of those banks because obviously the private sector is not to be trusted.

LOLs. And exactly how many deaths are governments responsible for? 100s of millions for sure. Maybe even a few billion.

Obviously you would have to be insane to trust government.

[NorthPoleMarathoner]

Originally Posted by dognh

Good. They should all gone belly up. I'm against ALL bailouts. By the way, since when did you Libs start endorsing corporate welfare anyway? Oh yeah, when their savior was elected.

That is a good point. They are against the corporations unless it is time for them to go under then they are all for saving them. LOLs.

It reminds me of conservatives when their savior George Bush was president. They were all against President Clinton nation-building in Bosnia and Kosovo but are all for it when Bush wants to do it in Afghanistan and Iraq. Makes a lot of sense to me. LOLs.

[holden125]

Originally Posted by dognh

Good. They should all gone belly up. I'm against ALL bailouts. By the way, since when did you Libs start endorsing corporate welfare anyway? Oh yeah, when their savior was elected.

Well, at least you're consistent. I really do respect that. Frankly, I would not have minded seeing them go belly up if I didn't think it would have even more negative consequences for the economy as a whole. I do think it's a difficult choice that never would have been necessary if the previous policy, over the past 25 years, had not allowed financial institutions to take stupid risks that put them on the brink of collapse. (And, yes, when I say 25 years I certainly include Bill Clinton, who in my mind governed like a Republican on plenty of issues, foremost among them regulation of Wall Street.) So I do not like corporate welfare one bit, and I'm as steamed as anyone about these AIG jerks, but it's clear that the now-collapsed financial model was a product of Reagan-Bush ideology, which Bill Clinton did nothing to oppose while in office, and that Obama inherited a mess and bears the responsibility for trying to find a way out of it.

The problem is that they did it the way you suggest when they let Lehman Brothers fail, and I didn't disagree at the time, but it wreaked more havoc in the economy than anyone expected. As much as I think they deserve it, I don't think it's viable to let all the banks with rotten balance sheets just go under. The problem remains that we need functioning financial entities to provide credit. That said, I am not a fan of the Geithner/Summers plan for the banks, which I see as having too much cost for the public treasury with too little upside, and being too deferential to private investors. I was not pleased when Obama first picked Geithner and Summers; if I'd wanted Larry Summers back in action, I probably would have supported Hillary. But I didn't like Clinton's Wall St. policy the first time around, and I'm not convinced these people (Geither, Summers, Laura Tyson) really grasp that their Wall Street-centered worldview is no longer viable.

I'd prefer to nationalize the failing banks and separate the functioning parts, for which there will generally be willing private sector buyers, from the rotten parts, which stay in the hands of the old bank, which then declares bankruptcy and ceases operations. This has happened more than 40 times since the beginning of 2008; most notably, WaMu was taken over and sold to Chase by the FDIC in a matter of days. That is neither government operation of the banks, nor a huge bailout. Losses are for the most part on the shareholders who bet wrong in a market.

[dognh]

Originally Posted by NorthPoleMarathoner

It reminds me of conservatives when their savior George Bush was president. They were all against President Clinton nation-building in Bosnia and Kosovo but are all for it when Bush wants to do it in Afghanistan and Iraq. Makes a lot of sense to me. LOLs.

Not me. I would have been happy to see W. level Iraq and Afghanistan then come home immediately

[NorthPoleMarathoner]

Originally Posted by holden125

Well, at least you're consistent. I really do respect that. Frankly, I would not have minded seeing them go belly up if I didn't think it would have even more negative consequences for the economy as a whole. I do think it's a difficult choice that never would have been necessary if the previous policy, over the past 25 years, had not allowed financial institutions to take stupid risks that put them on the brink of collapse. (And, yes, when I say 25 years I certainly include Bill Clinton, who in my mind governed like a Republican on plenty of issues, foremost among them regulation of Wall Street.) So I do not like corporate welfare one bit, and I'm as steamed as anyone about these AIG jerks, but it's clear that the now-collapsed financial model was a product of Reagan-Bush ideology, which Bill Clinton did nothing to oppose while in office, and that Obama inherited a mess and bears the responsibility for trying to find a way out of it.

The problem is that they did it the way you suggest when they let Lehman Brothers fail, and I didn't disagree at the time, but it wreaked more havoc in the economy than anyone expected. As much as I think they deserve it, I don't think it's viable to let all the banks with rotten balance sheets just go under. The problem remains that we need functioning financial entities to provide credit. That said, I am not a fan of the Geithner/Summers plan for the banks, which I see as having too much cost for the public treasury with too little upside, and being too deferential to private investors. I was not pleased when Obama first picked Geithner and Summers; if I'd wanted Larry Summers back in action, I probably would have supported Hillary. But I didn't like Clinton's Wall St. policy the first time around, and I'm not convinced these people (Geither, Summers, Laura Tyson) really grasp that their Wall Street-centered worldview is no longer viable.

.

I keep hearing that the banks caused this mess but I never hear any proof. Just generalizations. What "stupid risks" did the banks engage in? And what policy should be changed? And why should a "stupid risk" be outlawed or regulated?

Why do people blame the banks and then want to give money to them? It makes no sense at all?

I keep hearing it was the "Bush Policies" and "greedy banks" that got us in this mess. But I never hear any specifics. Just silly old and tired generalizations.

[holden125]

Originally Posted by NorthPoleMarathoner

And you are confusing your stereotypes. Libertarians want to join militias. It is the environmentalists that want to live in a pre-socialized world.

I assume by "pre-social" you mean pre-industrial?

I think it is important you get all sterotypes correct.

I do not mean pre-industrial. I mean pre-government. State of nature.