Sign The Financial Petition
"There is rampant, outright fraud in our financial system. Through a number of schemes various institutions are sacrificing the markets' integrity and financial strength while undermining the credibility of The United States as the world's leading economy. We the undersigned call upon you to address the following issues:"
http://www.financialpetition.org
Spread the word!
Comments
do you propose we instead lower interest rates, crash the dollar and create inflation so that people who have saved lose their buying power in favor of those that have taken on loads of debt?
help the grasshopper! smash the ant!
better?
In any event, all these regulations are a bit beside the point now that the bubble is popping. Setting up new SIVs is almost impossible (i.e. no investors want to poney up money for it), and much of the exotic mortgage financing that fueled the housing boom has already vanished. Just look at how well all the regulations passed during the depression (to ensure such a thing could never happen again) worked? Over the decades such regulatory regimes break down, and are percieved as anachronistic. How many people complained when Glass-Steagal was dismantled (allowing banks to greatly expand)?
I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with derivatives, CDOs, mortgage securities, or off-ballance sheet investment vehicles. There may be legitimate uses for all of them. Neither do I think we need more regulations around them. Our underlying problem has been that investors lost any fear of risk over the last 20 years. This is now (slowly) being corrected as people take substantial losses. We will see a whole new attitude of conservative investing appear that will last for at least a generation. We won't need regulation on SIVs because investors simply wouldn't dream of putting their money in such entities (as we know them today).
Changing the laws on bankruptcy (to be more lenient to debtors) is also a terrible idea, and will just create increased moral hazard for the future (i.e. people know they will never have to suffer dire consequences).
I do agree that bailing out investors and/or home owners is a bad idea, but all the rest of the ideas in this letter are not too useful.
As for all the pitfalls of too high or too low an interest rate, clearly the way to adjust them is not through website petitions. My main objection was to force the effects of a downturn onto one group to protect another. We will be hearing a lot more of that as more boomers retire, I am afraid.
This smacks of paternalism. What gives the government the right to say it is smarter than some individual who wants to take out a negative amortization loan? Just like I don't think the government should be putting restrictions on the ability of people to get pay-day loans (at attrocious rates), I don't think they should be second guessing other kinds of lending activities either.
This kind of lending wouldn't take place if there weren't idiotic investors who were willing to throw their money at borrowers who were clearly never going to repay. The investors were gambling that property appreciation would bail everything out in the end, and they lost.
The major point here is that this kind of abusive lending is finished for a generation as it is, there is no need for regulation now. No investor in their right mind will touch neg-am mortgage securities today.
I disagree. By your argument, why should the government regulate anything? Who's to say the government is smarter than the people who choose to shop at a monopoly? Why should the government regulate emissions and pollution? Aren't the people smart enough not to buy from heavy polluters?
The truth is that capitalism is not the ever perfect ever balanced system that we sometimes make it out to be. It is mathematically provable that individuals working in collusion can benefit greatly while costing the general public greatly. In ANY case where wealth is transfered to a few at a high social cost, the government should consider adding regulation.
What's the social cost of this housing crash going to be? Who knows, but it's clear that a little more regulation might have limited its scope to a fraction of its current levels. Just because we already screwed up this time doesn't mean we should leave the door open for the same problem to occur 25 years down the road.
In fact, any predatory lending exacts a cost on society. It hurts the poor, who then turn to society. Your not just transferring wealth from the poor to the rich, you are transferring it from everybody to the wealth via the poor. For that (and a number of other reasons) I wish payday loans were illegal.
That's even a little too much conspiracy for me. And I like my conspiracy.
Yes, the Fed bank was a mistake, and yes most Americans don't realize it. The media helps to reinforce this judgment error by exclaiming how fortunate we are to have had Maestro Greenspan saving us from ourselves.
But I draw the line at exclaiming the elected branches of our government have no control over the Federal Reserve. If need be, the legislative branch could pass a law to seize every piece of property from every American...so long as the legislative branch upheld the legislation and the military performed as requested.
Not that I believe that will happen either.
This is the main reason I don't sign the petition: it won't change a thing and Denninger is awfully naieve if he thinks that capitalism conquered the world because greed doesn't exist at the regulatory level. Just the opposite is true, so no petition will change the nature of the way the deals are made on that level.
And if the bankers who pay all the election costs ask them to do it, you can be sure that they will...
This is a country where each dollar gets a vote. Many mistakenly believe each vote correlates to a person. I'd hope that people here might realize how it really works, at least to that extent.
Come on now, that is patently absurd. No argument that it takes a lot of money to be elected to federal positions. In fact, even the money for state level elections can be hefty. But no dollar buys any vote.
Let's look at historical evidence of this. We all know that in 2000, Bush won the presidency by the slimmest of margins (negative something or another). Clearly, if the every dollar buys a vote theory held true, Gore must have out-funded Bush and then misallocated those funds to negate their maximum vote buying potential. Follow this link and you will see that Bush actually had a cool $193 million on hand to Gore's $132 million. The every dollar buys a vote theory suggests that Bush should have won the 2000 election with 60% of the popular vote.
No offense, but it's clear the world doesn't work that way. It's also clear that it doesn't work the way it ideologically should. Let's just admit that it's somewhere in the middle rather than spout out crazed conspiracies. If the people on this forum unanimously accepted that Greenspan were a horseman of the apocalypse, then they will assume the careful analysis of the housing bubble must also be insane. It's the same reason nobody respects anything Mack McCoy says. He sounds like a lunatic most of the time, so even if he said something sensible, who wants to sort it out?
The fact that it was Gore and Bush shows how much a dollar buys a vote. Don't get too excited about Ron Paul, by the way. The banking-dollars voting against him are going to make it look like they went easy on Howard Dean. Remember him? Yeah, it doesn't matter what happened between Gore and Bush -- the guy who the people liked was out looooong before then.
Sheesh, I haven't heard that fallacy in awhile:
It's not a "conspiracy" as much as a simple observation that money is power and power matters. The federal reserve system controls our economy, bankers make real-life decisions about what ventures will be funded or not, and politicians are basically powerless to withstand their influence for many reasons, but chief of which is that the Fed/congress relationship is probably the best ever paradigm of a captured regulating agency.
Do note that our current sec of treasury is Hank Paulsen from Goldman-Sachs. You don't have to be shouting about "conspiracies" to notice that this guy is in control of a lot of shit, was before he became sectreas and will still be in control of a lot of shit long after he is gone. The trilateral commission? Council on Foreign relations? These people are making real decisions about our fate as a nation, but nobody elected them. This is NOT a conspiracy!!! They basically ADMIT it on their website, dude!
I mean, really, let's take it apart, shall we? What do YOU think is the point of an organization that is
non-profit non-governmental dedicated to policy issues funded by private individuals and corporations
If you can't figure it out, then I can see why you think it must be about "conspiracies". It's all a secret when you're blind, right?
That said, I think we've moved off into additional topics which aren't even what I was calling a conspiracy. What I call conspiracy on are the statements that a) the entire goal of all bankers is to produce a one world currency - with which they will form a monetary hegemony - passing control of that currency down to their children and their children's children for unforeseen generations to come. And b) that Americans electing idiots is proof that the system is entirely corrupted and each dollar buys a vote.
Historically, this nation has been very hit and miss with elected officials. For every Lincoln, there's a Grant. These things tend to go in historical cycles, and we are at a cycle where money makes things happen. Eventually, people get fed up and ideology makes up ground.
You mention Ron Paul so negatively, but I think it's great that we have a guy who might bring real reform, and that he has such a ground swelling of support.
For every Grant or Lincoln, there were a hundred JP Morgans and Carnegies and Rockefellers and Vanderbilts and et cetera.
Sidhha -- If you want to stay on topic, then stop going off topic.
One "fact" you got wrong: David Rockefeller did not "start" the CFR. He was a director from 1949, and CEO 1970-85. The Rockefellers provided alot of seed money, but so did others, the Carnegies for example.
It is actually quite a diverse group: http://www.nndb.com/org/505/000042379/
They are a non-partisan org. Foreign Relations is their magazine. There have been good and bad polices promoted (by indivduals), and analyzed (as a think tank), there, as one would expect from such a diverse group.
The wikipedia entry is actually pretty neutral on the CFR:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on ... _Relations
The illuminati archive gives them far too much credit/blame. One thing often ignored are the large number of former ambassadors on the CFR.
How does that relate to the topic? You want to talk about the IMF and the papers written by the CFR on that?
Huh?
If it's false, as I believe, it doesn't. If it's true, super secret guys behind the scenes are pulling deals which you and I will never know about, therefore only 5 people in the world know.
See above.
Good question. Real estate is just peachy. Inflation accelerates to astonishing paces, as all goods we buy today become priced out forever to the common man. In this state of hyperinflation, housing values fall back to historical norms quickly and everything thinks they've gotten rich because the $$$ price of their asset went up even if it's value declined.
It's almost certainly going to be a slow motion collapse, and it's happening right now. A quick collapse is unlikely, because too many large parties have too much vested in that not happening. But in short, if the currency has a rapid collapse, expect massive overhaul to our elected representatives. Also, plan on not hearing people complain about illegal immigration for a long time, as people will be trying to cross the boarder to get jobs in Mexico instead.
Actually, quite serious, even if my tone was in jest. Either you think there are conspiracies but can't prove them sufficiently (else they would be general fact) or you don't and therefore you have no motivation to prove the conspiracies exist.
The slow motion collapse is evident in the fact that the dollar is at an all time low against other major currencies, like the euro. Further, this trend has been slowly happening since 2001.
My assertion that a quick collapse is unlikely can be witnessed thus far in the way Japan and China (two of the largest holders of dollars) have handled the falling dollar. Rather than panic sell, they have simply began to slowly diversify their financial holdings. And if you think it though, do they really have any other choice? You can't just write off $1 trillion in losses.
As for my statements about what will happen if there is a rapid collapse, that too seems pretty obvious to me. We import almost everything. Assuming other nations don't hyperinflate to match the US, those imports become a lot more expensive. I'm not just talking about computers and toys here, but food and gas as well. Such a massive and rapid decline in standard of living across the board would set people off. The reason Americans put up with the massive wealth gap right now is because over all, the average American is doing pretty well. If that changes too quickly, it's bound to push the most armed nation in history (gun ownership that is) over the edge.
But I'm an optimist at heart, and so I believe that such a decline won't lead to violence, but will lead to political upheaval. Which is one of the reasons I think your entire theory is bunk. Politicians just want to stay in power. They is a long history of them passing off problems to later generations so they can stay in power another 2 or 4 or 6 years. So why would they actively and as a group work towards radical upheaval? It doesn't make any sense.
As for support of my final positions that housing prices would stabilize and immigrants would flee. Well, those are just guesses.
Or you never suggested there was one...
Where I come from we have a word for people who put words in someone else's mouth. "Asshole".
Relax dude. Did I cut you off on the freeway or something? What words did I put in someone else's mouth?
Here's the dictionary definition of conspiracy:
con·spir·a·cy /kənˈspɪrəsi/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[kuhn-spir-uh-see] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun, plural -cies.
1. the act of conspiring.
2. an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons; plot.
3. a combination of persons for a secret, unlawful, or evil purpose: He joined the conspiracy to overthrow the government.
My label of 'conspiracy' is attached to Siddha's earlier post in this thread. I'll quote it here to be clear. Some of this is well documented and accurate and some of I believe is not well documented or accurate but is stated as if it were. This is what I would refer to as conspiracy. Let me break it up, since there appears to be some confusion here that I didn't realize existed.
The following is accurate.
This next section looks dubious. Please provide evidence other than "stated hundreds of times". If it is reliable, I will retract my claim it is dubious.
This is where things start to unhinge. While an embarrassingly large % of income tax is payed back to bankers, it is false that 100% is. Here is a graph
The declared purpose of the Bilderberg meetings is to facilitate understanding between Western Europe and North America (an admirable goal if true). But the question before us isn't the veracity of this public statement. Rather, we are discussing whether or not this post is suggesting conspiracies.
You be the judge, but I will stand by my remarks that whether true or false, these assertions are conspiracy theories.
which is constructed to make sure there is no answer that he could give to avoid your feeble rhetorical trap. That's why he got pissed off and stopped talking to you. He was nicer than me, though.
In fact, his answer is "none of the above", because these are NOT conspiracies (so your first condition is false) at all, but instead the result of normal self-interested acts on the part of powerful, monied interests. Those interests gather into [non-secret!!] interest groups that influence legislators and regulators in a very well understood and open and documented fashion (ergo, proven sufficiently, so your second condition is also false) for their own gain and their own ends. These ends are not among the things that you and I get to vote on, and they are very successful at this whereas you and I visiting the polling booths are clearly not as successful as they are in geting our desires installed as policy.
I'm sure you know how to google. Your ignorance is not anyone else's job. He's right though: it's both quite true and well documented.
Your dictionary definition is not interesting or useful. None of this is secret, and it is not against the law to influence government as a special-interest group. It is just a normal part of the process. Seeking one's advantage in policy or legislation has never been illegal. Democracy makes no sense without that motivation for participation. Is it treacherous for me to try to own your land and have you pay me to live on it? Or is it just a business plan like any other? So where, again, is the conspiracy?
So, no, you didn't cut me off on the freeway, but with that comment, you are playing the jerk in this thread and the difference is almost nil. If you don't care to evaluate and address what he ACTUALLY SAID, then don't, but let's not pretend that your false attribution is worth any more discussion: it isn't.
What's clear to me is that you don't understand the banking system at all and you do not appreciate the importance of "Governments borrow their money from these people" or see how it could be different and why this represents a major source of power over government by banks.
This was a seminal issue throughout American history prior to the inception of the Fed in 1913, from the Revolution itself, through the Jacksonian bank wars and through the free-silver movements of the late 1800's. Banks owning our currency is a big deal but ignorance produces a lot of FUD in responses from people like yourself.
But don't feel bad about this ignorance, you are NOT alone. Prescription for you: Less talk, more reading up on it. You might want to start here.