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Big Banks and D.C. Politicians Doing the EXACT SAME THINGS Which Caused the Financial Crisis In the First Place
Liberals blame deregulation and reckless Wall Street greed for the economic crisis.
Conservatives blame bad government policy.
Now, the D.C. politicians are doing the exact same things which got us into
the crisis in the first place. For example, they are:
- Following policies which lead to rampant inequality (that didn't work out so well last time)
- Letting white collar criminals know that they have free rein to do whatever they want, and they won't be prosecuted (once again)
- Letting the giant banks get bigger and bigger (the government helped them get big in the first place)
- Bailing out the banks with hundreds of billions of dollars a year (which creates dangerous "moral hazard" - just like before the 2007 crisis - and once again destroys sovereign nations)
- Indeed, crony capitalism has gotten worse than ever (even though heroes have been fighting it for 100 years)
- Enacting policies which discourage people from even trying to find work(government employment policies have been bad for a long time)
- Enacting policies which suck money out of the U.S. economy ... and ship it abroad (as they've been doing for 50-plus years)
- Giving the Federal Reserve more power than ever (while a neutral government agency says that the Fed is riddled with corruption, and economists say the Fed caused many of our problems in the first place, and has too much power for the good of the economy)
- Blowing insanely large speculative bubbles (when they burst in 2007, that caused the last crisis; and see this)
- Leverage is back to pre-crash levels (too much leverage was one of the main causes of the crash)
- The humorously-labeled “financial reform” laws passed in the wake of the crisis have intentionally allowed fraudulent accounting; and here and here (deja vu all over again)
And the big banks and financial institutions are engaging in the same risky behavior which got us into the crisis in the first place. For example, they are:
- Taking insanely risky bets (see this, this and this) with the money that we deposit into our bank accounts. When some of their risky bets blow up, they will either look to the government - once again - for a bailout, or to our bank deposits
- Getting back into "synthetic" financial instruments - and here - which are even more disconnected from real assets than regular derivatives
- Once again doing no-document mortgage loans
What could possibly go wrong?
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Follow the money. The House holds the purse string so they (whatever their color/party/persuasion) are implicit in all. The bullshit is wide and deep and it is indeed time to drain the swamp. There may be a friend or two who's "one of we" swimming in that DC cesspool but....
I live back in the woods, you see
A woman and the kids, and the dogs and me
I got a shotgun rifle and a 4-wheel drive
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive
I can plow a field all day long
I can catch fish from dusk till dawn
We make our own whiskey and our own smoke too
Ain’t too many things these ole boys can’t do
We grow good ole tomatoes and homemade wine
And a country boy can survive
This country boy will survive!!!
Government is just the front man for vested interests and the bigger the government gets, the more powerful and protected the vested interests become.
Invariably you have three choices. You end up in jail for fighting them, you end up working for one of their companies or your final choice is to find your capital and labour increasingly under threat of taxation, confiscation or inflation.
Capture a State.....it is much easier in the USA than in any other political system. Capture the Southwest.
It's all about the benjamins...get rid of big money in campaigns, get rid of lobbyists and the crooks and rats will find a new place to infest.
You start by blaming everyone:
Liberals blame deregulation and reckless Wall Street greed for the economic crisis.
Conservatives blame bad government policy.
Now, the D.C. politicians are doing the exact same things which got us into
the crisis in the first place.
Really? What legislation have conservatives passed since 2008 to deregulate financial markets further? Was Dodd-Frank a form of deregulation?
Second, if liberals were so unhappy with Wall Street greed, why isn't John Corzine in jail?
Third, why do you think that conservatives in any way condone or feel any philosophical sympathy for crony "capitalists"? Crony capitalists parlay regulatory capture and TBTF into billions. Regulatory capture and TBTF are not exactly what you'd get in a real capitalist economy.
It's intellectually weak and inaccurate to blame "both sides" all the time.
Well of course, they're not contributing to much of anything that could make things look better than they are since they don't have the desired control of the government branches. If they did, they would be deregulating "out the wazoo" once again. So, just because it is not in their current best interest as the weak party, they don't deserve any less contempt for their reasons. Thus, it's much easier and accurate to just blame "both sides" as neither has the countries long term interests prioritized above their own.
No, it's intellectually dishonest and lazy to think there is a damn bit of difference between the two tribes. What regulations or laws have any politician passed since 2008 to make sure that never again will the taxpayers of this country bailout Wall Street to the tune of $23 trillion dollars? What politician, conservative or otherwise, dared to stop this massive redistribution of wealth?
Come on man! Stop bring a rube.
The invisible hand at work.
It is more probably the "invisible boot" at work, deliberately kicking the shit out of the American economy. The destruction of the American economy is an inside job, the same as the events on 9/11/2001 were an inside job. The politicians are puppets, whose strings are being controlled by transnational banksters, that have been profiting from killing the American economy, and have a bigger agenda which requires totally destroying the American democratic republic.
Tragically, the overwhelming vast majority of the American people have been reduced to Zombie Sheeple, or adamant political idiots that do not understand those facts, and do not want to understand. But then, while it should be relatively easy to figure out that a system of privatized, legalized counterfeiting of "money" made out of nothing, as debts, is SOCIAL INSANITY, and FUNDAMENTALLY FRAUDULENT, it continues to be extremely difficult and dangerous to attempt to do anything to change that.
I find it impossible to believe that the political puppets could not understand how insane and fraudulent it is for the government to allow private banks to legally make "money" out of nothing. However, I find it quite possible to believe that the surviving and successful political puppets have adapted to accepting that situation, and working within it.
The list of problems identified by George Washington, which show that all of those problems are being repeated yet again, more so than ever, ARE THE RESULT OF THE BIGGEST GANGSTERS, THE BANKSTERS, BEING ABLE TO APPLY THE METHODS OF ORGANIZED CRIME FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY, IN ORDER TO TAKE OVER CONTROL OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE USA, AND THEREBY, DIRECT THAT GOVERNMENT TO DO WHAT THE BANKSTERS DEMANDED BE DONE.
The few politicians that might have been the people's champions against that had their careers deliberately discredited or destroyed. Therefore, only a tiny percentage of the politicians are not adapted to act as the banksters' puppets, whose only real job is to serve as the best available professional liars, and immaculate hypocrites, in order to continue to fool enough of the people enough of the time, which is way too easy now, since the banksters were also able to take control of the mass media, and the school systems, etc., for quite a long time.
Therefore, the transnational banksters appear to have nothing in their way from continuing to profit from deliberately killing the American economy, and thereby, also killing the American democratic republic. The government of the USA is now run by people who are certainly more than 90% traitors, if not closer to 99% treasonous.
Tragically, I can not imagine any plausible ways that they can be stopped now. In my opinion, while everything that George Washington outlined in this article above appears to be correct, the reality is far worse, because these things are not happening due to incompetence, but rather, due to a malicious plan to deliberately cause those things to happen, in the sequences of events whose outlines appear clear enough, although their exact timing is unpredictable, (especially since other unforeseen events might trump them?)
I would also insist that the theoretical reality is far worse too! After one understands that governments are simply organized crime on the highest level, and that those governments are effectively controlled by the best covertly operating organized crime gangs (which is the real historical situation of War Kings being directed by Fraud Kings), then it becomes clear that MONEY IS BACKED BY MURDER, AND MUST NECESSARILY BE!
THAT is what the vast majority of the American People do not understand, and do not want to understand, which means it is impossible for them to do anything to arrest the established runaway fascist plutocracy juggernaut. Therefore, that runaway is probably going to turn more of the American people into its road kill, because there is no doubt that the American financial affairs are being deliberately set up to be knocked down again, worse than before!
"Big Banks and D.C. Politicians ARE Doing the EXACT SAME THINGS Which Caused the Financial Crisis In the First Place" BECAUSE that worked to do what they wanted to do before, and what they want to do again ... and again, and again, until they have finished destroying the American economy, and the American democratic republic.
Unfortunately, since 99% of the "citizens" in North American are adamant political idiots, that act like Zombie Sheeple, there are no reasons to believe that will not happen. Furthermore, to emphasize that the theoretical reality is far worse, the only possible theoretical solutions are to do what the banksters and their political puppets are doing better than they are doing it now ...
The only good solutions are to face the fact that money is backed by murder, and then do that better!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Job_(film)
i always forget the part where having failed the entire planet "they paid themselves huge bonuses" on account of "they'd thoroughly corrupted the political process and saw the bailouts as a victory too!" the beauty of course is they had no idea what had just been unleashed "on them...by them." indeed in many ways "they still don't." so yes...indeed..."they're doing it again." but let us be clear...CRYSTAL clear...about the purpose: namely "bonus retention." (where's MDB on all this?) amazingly this was being done in the middle of a war and "Congress at that time thought that this was what America was all about." is it only now that we are waking up to the staggering policy failure? i would argue STRONGLY to "yes to policy and yes to failure" and "yes to now." so now comes the time where we must gain an understanding of "it." that would be "the money thing" in the sense of how it relates to financing say...lifeguards or dogcatchers. and here's how you begin: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=backdraft+fire+breathes&oq=b...
Start reading KMD and Counter-Currents. There may be hope for the future.
Thanks George.
Amazing, isn't it?
The same damn script but with worse actors and a poorer populace who think the movie will be better and end differently.
And oh my good Lord you listen to the political commentators and they are stuck in 1972; perpetually - clueless - boneheads.
Ya. They're called globalists. They're taking over the United States of America.
So what are you going to do about it.
Wrong verb tense. It's "taken."
No, no, no. I've been told that it's different this time........Isn't it?
When this thing blows up again, the "majority" will have had enough of the elite, the politicos, the banksters, and the rest of the corruption. Since the Jail cells were left empty this last time (2008), I think this time it will be tie to take them out back and just shoot 'em. THAT would then be a deterrent to NEVER do the STUPID SHIT again.
Is anybody else sick to death of the muther fuckers?
Well I'm definitely sick to death of the MFers. But I think the American people have grown so pathetically soft that the elite is in no real danger. I mean the most outspoken group we've had since the 2007 collapse is Occupy Wall Street, and they're just a bunch of tree-hugging pussies. I mean c'mon. We berate and ridicule the French but unlike us the French at least knew how to throw a revolution....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY2EqAKpKzg
Read de Tocqueville: it was the Taxpayers who revolted in France.
I think everyone is.
But greed & power lust are universal things to human nature. It takes strong will to say this is the line I will not cross...but all those other little lines I crossed are, ok...paper clips, pencils, pads, flash drives...I'm doin the Peoples business here for crying out loud!...lol.
It takes character & integrity...being able to look at yourself (honestly) in the mirror and say...I've done all I can...I'm leaving and going home because its closing in on me.
Power is very seductive, then comes rationalizing the greed derived from it.
I hear what you're saying and have even said similar things in the past. But now Im not so sure that it's as general as all that.
I'm coming to the conclusion that greed and power lust are NOT symptoms of human nature per se', but rather failings of certain human being as such. Such defects no more rooted in everyone's psychology than alcoholism, drug abuse, or nymphmania are. Some people succumb to them while others do not. It may be interesting and useful to understand why that's so, but as a practical matter the political trick is to weed out and protect ourselves (in any future system, if there is one) from those who seek power (or money) for its own sake. Or to put it differently, can we shield ourselves politically from such people who are attracted to greed and power lust?
Maybe the ancient Athenians had it right all along. Random selection of politicians (politicians chosen by lot). That way even if power lusters and greedy get in, they wont be there long enough to indulge their lust or feather their own nest in any meaningful way. That's just one way. No doubt there are others.
+1
"Some people succumb to them while others do not."
But I believe the seeds are there, in all of us, laying there latent, dormant. I see it in myself & others in degrees so the old adage of absolute power corrupting absolutely will remain true as long as there are humans. Waiting for its opportunity.
Given unchecked power, I would like to think that you or I would do the right thing by all. But neither of us can make that promise as every decision we would make would affect another and our own self interest. We all like to entertain the notion that we would be altruistic but we could not...say if, a family member or friend were interjected into the equation, how could we throw that loyalty away in fealty to the larger whole?
Thats why equal, sometimes adversarial forces & structures are important. To check the others.
Most are not what we would recognize as Milo Minderbinders (to be apolitical) only obsessed with narrow self interest & domination...but those seeds are always there in my opinion. It takes people of impeccable character & honor to fight off those urges in themselves as well as blocking those around them who have already overtly given into those urges.
I don't know how we get around it...or more rightly said, get back to some semblance of it.
All the more reason to just scrap government
Gangsters do not dissolve themselves because you are tired of paying Protection Money
OT
"Obama budget to take aim at wealthy IRAs"
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/domestic-taxes/292071-obama-budget...
I'm sure this revelation will surprise ZHers. /s
(H/T Drudge)
Demand that Congress Pass the “Keep Your Hands Off My 401(k) Act of 2010?
401(k)'s are an absolute joke. Their presence is nothing more than a wealth extraction vehicle to gut the middle class, and by God it's working.
Will we ever learn?
"401(k)'s are an absolute joke. Their presence is nothing more than a wealth extraction vehicle to gut the middle class..."
How so?
They are a scam of the highest order. Remove workers from defined benefit pension plans and into defined contribution plans. Fool them with whimsical tales of generating fast fortunes by being in charge of their own retirement while hammering the rubes with hidden fees and exposing them to the giant casino. Just like in all casinos, the house always wins. When invariably the 401k doesn't generate the needed income for retirement, the worker is told that it is his fault. He should have been a more savvy investor.
"Remove workers from defined benefit pension plans and into defined contribution plans."
Well I can't argue with the premise of how it used to be but state workers are finding defined pensions to be not so "defined" as they thought. Any pension plan still has to be guarded against mismanagement, loss or theft.
I guess I was thinking I've done ok on mine. I didn't reach for massive yield, get all manic because Bernanke was printing, only moved in & out from cash to scalp the obvious with the rest sitting in bonds. I'll be settling up with Uncle Sam on the IRA next week and I'm quite confident the rest will lost in a boating accident...which will be just my luck ;-)
I agree GW, but since when do you think the assholes in DC give a flying fuck about what we want? They have a 9% approval rate and a 90% re=election rate...why would they worry?
"The proposal would save around $9 billion over a decade, a senior administration official said, while also bringing more fairness to the tax code."
I love the way the language bureaucrats speak has become completely bastardized...an affront to the common sense of the public. Someone (anyone) "saving" in an IRA is apparently an expense to a bureaucrat...so therefore, someone NOT saving in an IRA saves them money?
No, they never had it to save. Its not theirs. What he's saying here is they want to tax more of what someone earns.
Then we get down to it...
"The senior administration official said that wealthy taxpayers can currently “accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.”
So now they have decided what is "reasonable"? People saving in IRA's pay "senior administrations officials" salaries & benefits so they can sit around navel gazing deciding whats "reasonable" for them to keep?
The stifling haughtiness of these fuckers who have never worked for an honest dollar in their lives is something to behold.
Regulatory capture.
Did you see where Mary Shapiro took a job with Promontory Financial Group? In short, the taxpayer gives them "on-the-job training" so they can further enrich themselves and stick the government with the losses when they blow it all up again.
You'll notice I said the government...not me/us.
Government, in all its forms, exists to benefit the governors, not the governed.
Any benefit to the governed is either incidental or undeserved.
"Brutal reckoning" vs "Whatever it takes?"
Some of the strains are coming to a head. Those who have advocated loose money policy, QEternity and NINJA loans etc have run the system to the breaking point.
Now we may see some changes. The incoming governor of the Bank of England - Mark Carney - has written extensively on why he thinks long term low interest rates are damaging and should be feared. This puts him in a contrasting position with Mario Draghi of the ECB and with the FED. What Carney does with interest rates/money policies when he gets to the Bank of England will be interesting to watch. There will be some interesting times ahead for the ECB as the crisis in Europe goes on (and on and on).
We are going to have an all Goldman Sachs MMA cage match between Mark “Brutal Reckoning” Carney and Mario “Whatever it Takes” Draghi as different ideas emerge on how to deal with fragile and fragmented economies. For a humorous look at what the "clash on the continent" may look like, see http://tinyurl.com/c4dlrdt
But that's good thing - perhaps this time, when SHTF, people WILL kill them.
As Georgy-boy said "fool me once - shame on you, fool me twice"
If it gets real bad Benny will just follow Japan's lead...to keep the playing feild level he'll print $4.2trillion in the next two years. That should solve some problems, at least for the TBTF banks.
We are not in control: Those in power want to hold the "status quo", that is to say, the existing social US structure and organization of Circa 2005. ?...
Okay and paraphrased Hymen Minsky the noted US Economist, one of the very small few that got some of it right, and who is totally ignored by the Economic supremes, said, that 'stability leads to instability'. (Basic Thermodynamics actually.) Any comparison between stats of 2005 and today clearly indicate trends leading to disaster, with acceleration of this/our holocaust being provided by Central Bankers, politicians, Bankers, Bureaucrats and the Lobby, all aka "leadership". IOW the unwashed are being dysenfranchised so as to maintain the "elite". This, in terms of physics, is sheer maddness.
There can be no "status quo" as life is a dynamic. Get your mind warapped around this point. Everything changes...
Entropy is an interesting phenomenom as it marks that precise point when the cycle changes (Yes Sir, and it is Now); in fact, it could be said that Entropy anthropomorphizes as Kali, the terrifying God of Destruction and Birth, And this is fact, in all aspects of the appearances of Kali from the minds of the ancient Shaman.
And, it strongly appears that Entropy is actually triggered by the "Status Quo", you know, that state of being that all them thar' bankers, economists (sic) and politicians dream of so that they can continue to recursively scam the system and impose their ignorance on we, the unwashed, for their greater enjoyment, lust and profit. The "status quo" being the gradient of boring called the "norm". Will we never learn from the ancients and accept and or come to the realization that the Gods of time ancient, still rule supreme today, even if we think that it's smart to get a PhD that intentionally ignores their presence? How do you get a PhD in Economics, a religion founded in the institutionalization of blind faith - in your own God that happens to be consensually in vogue for the moment? It is clear that the most endeared holy "inner secret" to the higher Temple of Economics hermetically sealed in the stone etched valults of time, and guarded by those Great Sages and Priests of yore,and fiery dragon from Hell - is, "Theft" and "Lies"... these magic spells straight from Central Bankers' hidden chanbers. Simple really, but, it is the one "leadership" Economists action that is always consistent. And, to continue, "Critical Mass" marks the moment of change; it is the trigger of "Entropy" which destroys the milieu of the norm and creates or welcomes Chaos to change the scene - which can be of the Shakespearean monologue, As You Like It. Why? Well, the Gods get bored is the answer, as indeed, so do I. The answer is however, that civilization needs to morph consensual ignorance - represented by "faith and superstition" - into Science, that is to say, after having returned Science to its fundamental integrity in objectivity, that is. you know, as it was ~3,000 years ago, more or less! Do not mistake Technology for Science as they are both of difference Minds, and the latter, being of accomplishment. Ho humIt looks like we are going to have another market dump real soon and this time it's going to be much worse.
Guys, Benny will print to infinity forever to keep the shit from hitting the fan and the Big Dogs know it. The only thing we are going to have to deal with is major inflation, and Barry and his buddies will not suffer from the ill effect of those policies. Likewise, as long as more than half of the country is doing better, either because of increase in stock values or commodities or any tangible assets (real estate) then the revolution everyone talks about will have a hard time getting off the ground. The libtards and the repub fucktards know this. They will print forever, make the rich richer and close the gap with the poorer poor by increasing taxes. (By the way I harbor no ill will against affluent people). The affluent will will be better off and the poor willl stillbe poorer, but from a politcians point of view it looks good. And if the perception is that it is good, it does not matter what the reality is, otherwise Barry would be retired in Hawaii right now.
Given that with the new template "The Diesel-BOOM Model" we are supposed to be responsible for assessing the safety of our Bank:
1. Can we please have some non-casino Banks in which to deposit our funds. You know, lke...A Bank?
2. Can we please have GAAP accounting restored so that when reading a Bank's financial statements we will actually be able to understand the Banks position, including both on and off Balance Sheet liabilities marked to market and with declaration of all Repos?
Yeah, I love Minsky's work. It does seem to explain much more than the Neo Keynesians garbly gook they use. If their BS worked, why are we having so much difficulty maintaining jobs and incomes?
I have a friend that runs a local bank and she says that there just aren't many who are applying for new loan money and few qualify. The Banksters have to revert to NINJA loans because there isn't much sense in borrowing to create when all your profits go to them..
If you have ever gone thru Chris Martenson's Crash Course, you will understand the futility of the positions of those who have been existing off the backs of the working class. Exponential growth in debt requites exponential growth in borrowers to support it all. That requires exponential growth in jobs and income. Because this is impossible in a finite system, the PTB are forced to lower rates and standards to try and maintain the illusion of growth.
During the last 5 years, the governments have stepped in to bridge that gap using taxpayer backed funny notes..
There really is no way this can succeed. It is mathematically impossible.
http://dailybail.com/home/photo-of-the-day-fractional-reserve-sex.html
.
It turned out ok last time.
Let's do it that way again...
That candle's been burned at both ends and is now simply a wick being dragged around.
doubling down is precisely the right betting strategy when you have unlimited resources to take losses along the way
anything else is fiscally imprudent
bail-out = new betting money