YEAH, squealing seems to have invaded every single fucking blawg I read these days. This is why I just don't care about politics anymore. From the usually sane Brad at Sadly, No!
blahg blahg blahgYES! Big banks pose an EXISTENTIAL THREAT to the EWE-ESS-AY! We'd best get to bombing 'em.
(...)
This is me saying our country will simply not survive if we can’t get the banks under control.
Remember, everyone who is white might be a bankerrorist, so we have to round them all up just in case.
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Seems more rant than whine to me.
And saying tut, tut, don't be so shrill, have a cookie is sorta, dare I say, Broderian.
Fuck that. Calling banks an existential threat is the exact same bullshit Sadly, No! used to mock. Hyperbole is hyperbole, and Brad is NOT being sarcastic.
If you wanna call me Broderian, fine. But calling something an existential threat when it's not is fucking Rovian.
Our current system of plutocracy is dependent on eternal growth, cheap energy, the willingness of the rest of the world to lend us money, and the ability to keep the populace distracted.
Is it going to crash? Hell, of course it is.
Is the current crisis the start of a violent unwinding, or will we pull it back together for a few more rounds? Damnfino. By staying put & not really making any major changes, I guess I'm betting on pulling it back together.
But someday fairly soon, the Big One will hit. And it could well be touched off by the next bank crisis.
The banks really are in deep shit. The stimulus helped cover up the losses the banks suffered, but those losses are still there, and more are coming, in ARM recasts, commerical loan failures, and continued unemployment.
There is a chance it will all come crashing down. Nothing substantial has been done to prevent it from happening.
It is so terrifying that even a dystopian pessimist like myself doesn't talk about it much.
Thank you, Susan.
You've put into simple words that which I've been blogging on and on about for years.
It's hardly hyperbolic.
S
The stimulus helped cover up the losses the banks suffered, but those losses are still there, and more are coming
. . . There is a chance it will all come crashing down. Nothing substantial has been done to prevent it from happening.
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NoT, the government is buying its own treasuries. China is backing away from us. Our government is running on fumes. We're Wiley E. Coyote, and the only thing keeping us from crashing is that we refuse to look down.
I'm reading that we have 5-10 years, and it's closer to 5.
As I'm the one who wrote the comment that touched off that rant, I think I should provide some background. A few days ago, Brad wrote a ridiculous post on how a single, rather neutral comment from Obama meant that the country was doomed and we should wreck it now so that we can start rebuilding. I wrote a few comments, calling him an idiot for making such a big deal over an inconsequential comment. At the time, there were a few other commenters discussing our consumer-based economy. Just so that I could say I contributed constructively, I dashed off a comment on the subject. You can see it at the link.
Here's where it gets tricky. Some of the people in the thread (including Brad) were suggesting that we needed to completely change the government and economy of the US. I was arguing that this was not necessary, as there is nothing particularly revolutionary about the idea that a country should have an industrial base. Brad subsequently took it out of context to suggest that I agreed with him. I don't.
Needless to say, I'm not too happy with Brad right now.
After I was told by the people in charge that if the big banks failed we'd have a huge depression and mass hysteria, so we had to pour giant bags of money into them to avert disaster, I can't get too worked up about a blogger saying the same thing from a different angle.
Arguing whether or not the bailout needed to happen is a lot different than calling an entire class of people "America destroyers."
The whole point is that phrasing belies a lack of reasoning. It's indicative of the same kind of mindset that creates any other scapegoat.
Yes, various financial institutions fucked up. So did millions of everyone else. Shit is going bad because PEOPLE ARE STUPID. Not because we haven't thoroughly enough cleansed ourselves of some small subset of them.
They did not accidently walk off with billions of dollars. They spent years and millions lobbying to have regulations eliminated, which were put in place in the 30s to prevent another depression. They created a shadow banking system outside of existing regulation. They paid off congressmen. They paid off Obama. They worked long and hard to create this situation, and they reaped the benefits.
They were not alone, but we are fucked and they are the fuckees.
This is exactly like Iraq. Iraq didn't happen because we were wrong about WMD. It happened because people worked to make it happen, for various reasons. One of which was money.
Yeah, so have fucking dairy farmers, Susan. That is how politics work in this country, not a reflection of the rotten souls residing on Wall Street that need to be liquidated.
Heh, I don't believe in souls, so theirs are safe from me.
But do you think their actions were deliberate or just stupid?
I think there are millions of bankers in America, so that question doesn't have any meaning.
You're right that a blanket condemnation of bankers is stupid, but I don't think many people are thinking of all bankers when they say that the people working at investment banks or the big banks screwed us over. I like Grayson but I'll still say Congress is hopelessly corrupt.
OK, well, each of the big banks is run by Lex Luthor, then? And they can be evil and conniving because their minions are too weak willed? Or what? Yes, giant corporations screwed up. They aren't people. That's like saying the cloud screwed up cause it rained. There's a shit-ton more to it than just the cloud!
Screw the banks. Megan wrote an Atlantic article on the number of deaths from being uninsured. The blowback is already starting, and Megan is defending herself, which is always hysterical.
It's the Iraq Deaths article all over again!
Yeah, I saw that. She's been pounding the stupid pretty hard, lately. I think she might have kicked up her addiction to it another notch.
Maybe being stuck indoors is getting to her. She needs to be like Sally Quinn and a take a walk, soaking in all God's blessings while the servants try to keep the dinner parties going.
The problem here is NoT believes that the wall street banks actually have a stake in the survival and success with the 95% of the country that doesn't make 7 figures a year.
For a while that was the case but now with the crisis (hoocoodanode?) cheap money from the fed and derivitaves are the new business plan. How needs to invest in messy business loans and such, write it up sell it off collect fees and bet on it failing. It's a win all around.
They didn't screw up, at least not that badly in their perspective. They no longer need the rest of the US to live comfortable lifestyles. Hey didya hear, the Merrill CEO who stuck B of A with his white elephant just got a new job.
Who said anything about liquidations? About some coherent and effective form of regulations? How about making banking a boring business like it used to be instead of home for a trading mentality?
Banks should be in the business of lending money in a tightly regulated environment. When they get involved in complex trading or are let off a regulatory leash they put the entire economy at risk. This isn't really arguable since it's exactly the way the credit crisis played out.
I'm not arguing against regulations of the banking industry, Nony. I'm arguing against blanket demonizations and scapegoating. How can you possibly begin to claim you understand a problem when you can't accurately identify what caused it?
Yep, you pretty much don't have a clue, NoT. Banks, as an industry, lobbied to remove the checks and balances that prevented their subsequent reckless behavior. Sure, your average banker had little to do with this, but that is such a trivial observation as to belie either your shallow thinking on the matter or some ulterior agenda on your part.
I'm in the pocket of big banking.
or some ulterior agenda on your part.
Huh. I've never seen that particular gambit tried outside of the alt-med community.
Seriously, guys, NoT isn't saying that we shouldn't regulate the banking industry. He's saying that it's ridiculous for people like Brad R. to claim that bankers are the devil (and that is what Brad is saying - check the posts if you don't believe me).
It's both silly and creepy how quickly Internet liberals have reverted to unnecessarily revolutionary thought. Honestly, you don't get your way in the first post-Bush year and you're ready to let the system burn? That sounds more like what the liberals who live inside Glenn Beck's head talk like.
And just for posterity, the offending Obama quote was this:
I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.
Which encouraged Brad to say this:
Because if this country’s going to crash, I want it to crash hard and fast so we can just start over.
If you don't think that this is an overreaction, then there might be something wrong with you. Perhaps you caught Liberal Purist's Disease, by which feeding your own sense of self-righteousness is more important than fixing the country's problems.
I think you're actually full of it, there NOT. I think he's actually right. They nearly broke the economy this time, and they aren't being reigned in.
That's because they're not fucking horses.
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