Juvenile Rich? Here is a quote from you from one of the last political threads. Rich- "But that was trashed when the republicans allowed their party to be hijacked by the (teabaggers)." Actually the term was used a couple of times in that one thread by more than one person. That is one intellectual word to use in serious political dialogue.
In response to Larry's picture and dialog posted above, I would simply post this, in the hopes that you might begin to understand the message:
What is Corporate Greed? Why is it greed for a company that follows the LAW to make as much money for itself and its shareholders? Is that not capitalism?
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winning economist at Columbia University, in response to the arrests of Occupy Wall Street protestors"We have too many regulations stopping democracy and not enough regulations stopping Wall Street from misbehaving. We are bearing the cost of their misdeeds. There's a system where we've socialized losses and privatized gains. That's not capitalism."
The objections to the wide adoption of these positions suggested by Stiglitz's discoveries do not come from economics itself but mostly from political scientists and are in the fields of sociology. As David L. Prychitko discusses in his "critique" to Whither Socialism? (see below), although Stiglitz's main economic insight seems generally correct, it still leaves open great constitutional questions such as how the coercive institutions of the government should be constrained and what the relation is between the government and civil society.[29]
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz, ForMemRS, FBA, (born February 9, 1943) is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979). He is also the former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He is known for his critical view of the management of globalization, free-market economists (whom he calls "free market fundamentalists") and some international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. Since 2001, he has been a member of the Columbia faculty, and has been a University Professor since 2003. He also chairs the University of Manchester's Brooks World Poverty Institute and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Stiglitz is an honorary doctor of Durham Business School, an honorary professor at Tsinghua University School of Public Policy and Management and a member of the Executive and Supervisory Committee (ESC) of CERGE-EI. Stiglitz is one of the most frequently cited economists in the world.
Rich you are correct , he is a socialist who knows exactly what he's talking about.
I can't relate to most of these people in the Occupy Wall Street movement who are protesting the lack of jobs or the lack of money.
". . . while not a single wall street banker or hedge fund operator was arrested for taking the risks that resulted in the financial meltdown?"
Wall Street fat cats helped the situation of bad mortages which started the fall of house of cards , however, politicians, mostly democrats, also pushed for more loans to go to minorities that never had a chance at paying them back. You don't like the salaries in big business, how about some of the union salaries? Lifeguards in places in CA making well over $100,000 a year and pensions of the same amounts. Did you see the recent news of some of the union bosses in Chicago? Then tax money I pay, is used to go into a stimulus, which is used to help out localaties that were in trouble because of such nonsense. Be mad at Wall Street, but they didn't create this trouble on their own, nor did the republicans. After all, Wall Street gave Obama contributions of almost 2 to 1 over McCain, and he gladly accepted the dough.
I could go on, but I'm not changing anyones political opinion and don't pretend to think that I can. I need to get back to work selling, so perhaps one of these days, I might be one of those that people are thinking makes way too much. At least that is my plan.
Actually, there are a number of things being protested: See Post #35 for a terrific explanation of the leading issue; Also, War #1 and War #2 [this after Bush declared specifically during the 2000 campaign for the Presidency that he was strongly opposed to nation-building]; I do not think they are "protesting capitalism" per se, just the outrageous way it is practiced by some; if there are those who are "protesting the enviroment [sic]", my guess is they are protesting the radical cuts being pushed by republicans to gut the clean air and clean water acts. To some it is "Hell, yeah, bring on the dirty coal and other pollutants, who needs to breathe clean air anyway?"Len- In the first post of this thread, Gordon wrote " I'm surprised that as ambiguous and non "theme" organized that it is ...". I took that to mean that that those protesting don't seem to be unified in their message or complaints. Most news organizations have used words such as incoherent to describe their messages. I didn't say anything about those protesting, "Wall Street and banker dudes". Some are protesting the enviroment, some are protesting capitalism, some seem so stoned and wasted I wonder if they even know they're standing in New York City. But for those complaining about their student loans and the fact that they can't find a job, no- I'm not kidding, I can't relate.
I already said that I worked my way through my own education. Mostly I worked at a place called Tart Lumber. I very highly doubt that a lot of those protesting "lack jobs or money", would have ever applied for a job such as that. It was hard, dirty, and low pay at first. Even if they were to, some (not all) wouldn't have been considered when they show up with rings in their faces and pink/green hair. So no, I can't relate. My point is, is that anyone could have shown up and applied for the summer time position that I did that then led to an opportunity for perhaps better things. So no- I can't relate.
If you ever pay attention to my posts, my message is mostly that there is a share of the blame to go around. I don't defend Bush. He increased the deficit with wars and increased entitlements. I wasn't against the wars, nor were the democrats who voted for us to go, however, we should have never gotten into nation building. In my opinion, if you go to war, we should feel strongly enough to go in full strength or not at all. I don't think we could ever again do to Japan what we once didn't think twice about. In fact, it now sounds as though Obama wanted to apologize for those bombings.
Wall Street fat cats helped the situation of bad mortages which started the fall of house of cards , however, politicians, mostly democrats, also pushed for more loans to go to minorities that never had a chance at paying them back. You don't like the salaries in big business, how about some of the union salaries? Lifeguards in places in CA making well over $100,000 a year and pensions of the same amounts. Did you see the recent news of some of the union bosses in Chicago? Then tax money I pay, is used to go into a stimulus, which is used to help out localaties that were in trouble because of such nonsense. Be mad at Wall Street, but they didn't create this trouble on their own, nor did the republicans. After all, Wall Street gave Obama contributions of almost 2 to 1 over McCain, and he gladly accepted the dough.
ASINDC- The main "push" I guess I'm refering to occured in the 90's, when Franklin Raines of Fannie Mae, who was appointed under Clinton, began requiring that the banks with which it did business, "prove" they were not redlining. While redlining had always been illegal, this set the bar higher to show you weren't doing so. This basically started a process of the lending companies having to fulfill quotas of mortgages to minorities. To meet this quota, they relaxed their rules on how much a person placed down towards a mortgage, as well as the proof that they could make their future installments to the mortgagee. In turn, the banks knowing of the additional risks they were taking, issued these mortgages at higher 'subprime' interest rates. As this occured, other banks started making these loans as well. This pretty much set into motion banks making bad loans and selling them off to reduce their own risk. As the money started pouring in from these loans, and as a result home prices started going through the roof covering some of the risk , greed set it and banks made more and more of these risky loans.
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