I am convinced that the liar, option arm, toxic loans were planned

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   bgamallposted 15 years ago

   After looking at the issue, I am convinced that the toxic loans were a result of an international banking scam. In Basel 2, 1998, banks were allowed to establish off balance sheet banking, otherwise known as shadow banking or parallel banking. Regulators of the nations, especially the United States, who all were in the pocket of the international one world banking system, looked the other way while this fraud was perpetuated on the American middle class.
   
   It is interesting to note that while mostly Republicans were involved there were many Democrats who benefited and were involved, like Chris Dodd and Robert Rubin.
   
   Tim Geithner is one of the fed who has essentially allowed Paulson's giveaway to continue. He does not want the banks, who scammed the American people with these toxic loans, to be taken over with bondholder haircuts, but is content to let the treasury and taxpayers take the hit.
   
   There was a run on the money markets through Fannie and Freddie in Sept 2008 to the tune of 550 billion dollars in less than 2 hours. This was likely China getting nervous about her US investments. As our biggest creditor, China wants America to protect the investments.
   
   One way that is now being done is through recent purchases of treasuries, agency paper and MBS by the federal reserve. This is inflationary and could backfire.
   
   Bottom line, your politicians allowed an international banking scheme to invade the shores of the United States and pillage the middle class of this nation. The economic bounceback will not just depend upon the supply of loans and the fixing of the financial system, but also on the health of the consumer, which, I believe, is grossly overrated by the government.
   
   The golden goose of world prosperity, the US consumer, has been tapped out, and it remains to be seen if he/she can recover anytime soon.

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   knolyourselfposted 15 years ago

   Some Sunday reading:
   http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22276.htm
   A brief history of the destruction of the world economy.

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   bgamallposted 15 years ago

   Phil Gramm was instrumental in bringing the ponzi scam to American shores. I think he is a traitor and should be thrown in a dungion.

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      Ralph Deedsposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      I agree. Gramm is a lousy economist and a crook. As I recall his wife was a director of Enron, and Phil is or was a director of UBS which has been helping rich Americans evade U.S. invome taxes with secret Swiss accounts.
      
      Here's a link on Wendy Lee Gramm. She's an economist who specializes at George Mason University on government DE-REGULATION, and she was a director and member of the audit committee at Enron.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Lee_Gramm

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   knolyourselfposted 15 years ago

   Phil Gramm was John McCain's chief financial advisor, and had he become president, Gramm was to become Treasury Secretary.

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      Ralph Deedsposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      Here's a good piece of reporting on what happened at AIG.
      http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/st … g_takeover

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         Eric Graudinsposted 15 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks. This is a masterful piece of writing which clearly explains how our financial system has been destroyed.
         
         Anyone care to project themselves 50 years into the future, and provide a scenario about how everything panned out?

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            pgrundyposted 15 years agoin reply to this

            I don't know. I could see a future 50 years out where there are way fewer people and a more agrarian lifestyle, kind of like kerryg's hub on what could happen to the suburbs.
            
            I think there's a good chance Mama Nature will take over shortly here and just wipe most of us out with a plague or weather disaster or whatever. We'll be arguing about politics and economics and next thing you know 80% of us will drop dead from something or the other.
            
            It happens.

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   pgrundyposted 15 years ago

   Apparently governments are close to becoming totally irrelevant as corporate interests now rule the world. Corporations aren't about competition or about providing the best product for the least money--what a corporation really wants is ALL the money for providing NO product. I'd say the current state of affairs comes about as close to that as I can imagine. We have AIG dictating what the U.S. government will do. Yes we are screwed. Totally.
   
   This toxic asset plan of Geithner's is pure crap. It is just a slightly different way of throwing even more government money at hedge fund managers and all the other Wall Street types--the very people who are responsible for creating this mess to begin with. So basically Geithner will explain to us today that the answer to a crisis created by too much leverage and lying is to create even more leverage and lying with government backing. Rilly? How freakin' stupid do they think we are? I guess pretty freakin' stupid.
   
   At this point I don't see how we can avoid a mammoth collapse.

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   kerrygposted 15 years ago

   Krugman put my thoughts into words better than I could have (helps that he's a Nobel prize winning economist and I'm just a politics junkie who's been playing frantic catch-up on the subject):
   
   
   
   I was and am pleased overall with Obama's appointments and his work so far in his first less-than-100 days. But I was unhappy about Geithner and Summers' appointments back when they were announced and am even more so now. If they continue fumbling as badly as they fumbled the bonuses and now this new-old bailout, they're going to bring down the whole administration, and in all likelihood the world economy with it. I have a hard time believing Obama doesn't realize that, despite his statement the other day, so I'm genuinely baffled about what his exit plans are.

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      pgrundyposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      I'm a big Krugman fan too. His editorial today is really good. He has been saying for some time now that the government should seize the banks, break them up so the insolvent parts can be allowed to fail, then return to solvent parts to private hands asap. 'Nationalization' is always presented as the government seizing the banks and running them for all eternity, but in the past when the government has had to seize insolvent banks that's not how it was done and that's not what's being recommended right now.
      
      So we have this weird situation when investment bankers can prey on the hysterical public fear surrounding the word 'nationalization' so they can just keep sucking up taxpayer bailout money until it there's nothing more left to grab.
      
      I don't think people will stand for this 'new' old plan. And then Obama will be out of ammo when he wants to try something else, and then it will all fall down. That's basically what Krugman says in today's column.

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   Mark Knowlesposted 15 years ago

   Been done :
   
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
   
   

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      Eric Graudinsposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      Yeah, you're probably right.

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   kerrygposted 15 years ago

   I believe it was you who first introduced me to this picture, Pam?
   
   
   
   Hasn't gotten any less true.

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   pgrundyposted 15 years ago

   Sadly it does still look pretty grim!
   
   Well, sometimes unexpected good things happen... I wish a few would happen now!

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10. 63

    Mishaposted 15 years ago

    Oh, you can count on GW being a hoax. The rest unfortunately is not

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       kerrygposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Oh, I am pretty well convinced that most of the "solutions" to global warming are scams. Just not global warming itself.
       
       Bearing in mind that I don't actually believe the planet is a conscious organism so much as a well-regulated system that may sometimes appear to be so....
       
       When deer overpopulate an area, she sends in a drought or a bad winter and starves them back to healthy levels. With humans, she's had to get a bit more creative, but I have no doubt at all that's she's working on it and that the effects won't be pretty.

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          Mishaposted 15 years agoin reply to this

          I think it is a bit easier Kerry
          First deers eat all the available food and starve themselves, no external help needed. Second, wolves eventually learn there are many deers here and come to get their piece of a pie
          So sending a bad winter just for that seems a bit excessive and too much conscious. As well as heating the stove just for us humans 

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    Aya Katzposted 15 years ago

    Misha, in nature, the wolves are there from the beginning, and they keep deer populations down so that deer won't get to starvation level. It's when man intervenes and kills thew wolves, that deer ever get to point overgrazing. Moral: Wolves are beneficial.

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    Mishaposted 15 years ago

    Good point Aya

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    kerrygposted 15 years ago

    What Aya said.
    
    Humans have removed both the literal and the metaphorical "wolves" that should have kept the human population at more reasonable levels. That leaves Mother Nature to intervene, just as she does in a world with all deer and no wolves.
    
    To name a closely equivalent situation that's happening right now, in several African countries, humans cut down all the trees for firewood. Now they're watching as their farmland gets swallowed by the Sahara desert at a rate of hundreds of square kilometers per year. Helloooo, population crash. Similar situations are going to play out with increasing frequency over the next couple hundred years even if we do manage to salvage the financial crisis. If we don't, it will happen even sooner. At least impoverished Africans know HOW to farm. Most modern Americans and Europeans don't.

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       pgrundyposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Yeah. The Dust Bowl pushed the Great Depression over the edge. Corporate farming isn't much better than the bad farming practices that caused the Dust Bowl. There's already evidence that the MERSA virus may well come from corporate pig farms--the same ones that John McCain was making fun of in his earmarks schtick about "pig odor reduction." If he lived by a corporate pig farm he'd be the first one tacking on that earmark.
       
       It's only a matter of time before some germ we helped to create takes our population down to manageable levels.

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          kerrygposted 15 years agoin reply to this

          I had a bitter laugh about that too. My experience with corporate pig farms is limited, but I lived about five miles from a (actually relatively small) feedlot for cattle when I was younger and on bad days you could still smell the stench of it. Dreadful.
          
          I wrote a hub just the other day about the role of corporate agriculture in the rise of superbugs like MRSA. Scary stuff.

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    Mishaposted 15 years ago

    LOL Kerry, either I misread a lot of your previous posts, or you have some contradiction between your views you probably want to sort out
    
    Aren't you wholeheartedly pro removing "wolves" related to human population? Like pro affordable medical care, against wars, etc....

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       kerrygposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       I am, yes, but I think that some of the ways we've gone about removing "wolves" are patently unsustainable (corporate agriculture being one really prime example - thank you Pam) and liable to lead not so much to a plague of wolves in the future as something more akin to a plague of T-Rexes.
       
       I honestly don't know if we have enough time left before the T-Rexes arrive to switch over to more sustainable systems. I like to hope we do and that's why I continue to support things like better healthcare, peace, and improved access to education - I do genuinely want the human race to survive, and to survive with the highest standard of living possible.
       
       In the end, I think our survival will depend on our ability to return to more sustainable levels of consumption naturally, thorough lifestyle changes and natural population decline (another reason I support better education and healthcare is because they tend to lead to lower birth rates). The longer we continue on our current unsustainable path, the more likely it is that the eventual decline in our numbers will be fast and painful, rather than slow and voluntary.

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    Mishaposted 15 years ago

    Where did you see deers who voluntarily reduce their population? Wishful thinking I would say
    
    Not that I wanted to argue, just to point out severe internal contradictions in your views that are easily visible from outside - and you still seem to fail to recognize them. Not that I don't have similar contradictions myself, I am not exactly being pro-war or against good healthcare - yet I recognize those contradictions that I and many of us have. Don't have the answers though, only questions

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       kerrygposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       I do still hold out vague hopes that we're smarter than deer, but you're probably right.
       
       
       
       *g* Well, I am only 26. Didn't all you middle aged folks determine in some thread awhile back that 20-somethings are supposed to be excessively convinced of our own correctness?
       
       Seriously, though, it all makes sense in my head, so I don't necessarily view it as contradictory, but it probably is. I have more questions than answers too.

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    Aya Katzposted 15 years ago

    Misha, many animals do have built-in mechanisms for the reduction of birth-rates in times of trouble. Rabbits, for instance, will re-absorb an embryo when they are stressed out. Conception is not a cut-off point beyond which environmental cues cannot have an effect.
    
    Humans also have built-in population reducing mechanisms, but we've circumvented all of them, by providing ourselves with too much food and not enough exercise. Among hunter-gatherer women, ovulation is curtailed for as long as four years after birth, because there simply aren't enough resources to sustain another child until the first one is weaned. The lifestyle of hunter-gatherers leaves very little surplus in the body, and so population is curtailed naturally -- without education or healthcare.
    
    When modern women in developed countries curtail their child-bearing using modern contraceptive means, they often put off having children until the very last period in their lives when doing so will be possible. The result is not equivalent to the old way.
    
    Wolves help deer maintain healthy populations, because they go after weaker deer first. If we kill all the wolves and periodically kill healthy bucks, we are doing the deer a disservice. The next generation will suffer.

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    Mishaposted 15 years ago

    I did not know you are only 26 Kerry, you definitely sound much more mature than that. I just love wise girls, you know Seriously, my later wife is a wise girl, too
    
    Aya, as for animals I would not call those mechanisms "voluntary", yet they definitely do work, I agree.
    
    The rest is pretty much my thinking, yet if we continue to pursue this line of thought we'll come to ancient Sparta and killing unhealthy babies - or just letting them die. May be this is a right way of doing things from the global point of view, but we all were taught different moral values...
    
    Again, I don't have answers here, just questions...

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    Aya Katzposted 15 years ago

    Misha, I didn't say anything about killing babies. I said that the natural way that humans used to keep their population down was that they simply didn't conceive when the circumstances weren't right. They didn't even have to think about it. If the time wasn't right, there was no pregnancy.

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    Mishaposted 15 years ago

    LOL Aya of course you did not say it - I said. Yet everybody can come to similar logical conclusion reading your last paragraph - this one:
    
    
    
    and continuing the line of thought...
    
    Again, I am not blaming anything on you, I am trying to think with you
    
    Whether we like it or not wolves KILL. That's how things are. And frankly, if we want to follow completely natural path of population control, this is how it works - no healthcare, only the fittest survives...
    
    Yet we have examples of animal species on the top of food chain that seem to work differently, so we might have some hope here

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    Aya Katzposted 15 years ago

    My point about the wolves is that sometimes we think that we have found a way to achieve the same result as nature, by using a different method. I was pointing out that the different method creates different results.
    
    In the case of human reproduction, it is better for women to have their children earlier, and then stop having children. Using delay as a form of population reduction is a stupid idea in the long run. It is unhealthy both for the women and the children.
    
    As for that part of the discussion in which wolves were used metaphorically, it's better to allow people to learn from small economic mistakes that they make along the way, rather than reduce risk artificially, until we all face one huge, global economic disaster.
    
    It's true that the more health care we have available, the unhealthier the population becomes. But nobody needs to kill anybody in order to draw some logical conclusions from that.

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    Mishaposted 15 years ago

    Sorry I scared you Aya. I often get scared myself when my thoughts go in this direction. Yet if I want to find the answer I have to explore even painful possibilities... It does not have to be there, but honestly going to the scariest paths and pondering through them sometimes give me really surprising answers. Not an easy task by any means though
    
    So, you being much more familiar with animals then me, how do, say, dolphins regulate their numbers? They don't seem to be a habitual food to any predator, and their food supply seems to be unlimited. Do you know how they do this?

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    bgamallposted 15 years ago

    Maybe someone would want to get back to the original theme of the original post. Of course I have digressed on forums before and I am not upset about it:)

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