1 Great insight. Now if we can just forget that most people do not see the truth till it is too late.

2 It is more than just ignorance Monty; it is also arrogance.  It is a lethal combination.

3

Ideological marxists are evil. Drunks, not so much. Both are selfish.

4 Would you consider Coryn's amendment cop-like or more reckless behavior?

5 Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." That said, I'm not entirely convinced. The Democrats knew what was involved in their spending bills and they knew the costs. They hid those costs deliberately, and ignored them when they were exposed. They fully intend to either raise taxes themselves or force their successors to do so. There is a certain malice in what they are doing.

6 Monty, that cop is the Teaparty movement, though the Politicians are driving a supertanker, and the Teaparty is pursuing in a rowboat.

7

8 Oh,there is Evil involved,of that I'm sure.

9 Thoughtlessness and a misplaced sense of ability to handle a situation are outward forms of repressed malice.

10 Would you consider Coryn's amendment cop-like or more reckless behavior? I have to be honest: I'm not sure. Prohibiting "bailouts" is a good thing in that we must re-establish the principle of moral hazard in our economy. But we have bailed out so many of the undeserving with so much borrowed cash that it just seems like barring the barn door after the horse has run out. Our pols seem to think that the problem can be solved with regulation and rule-making, when in fact the problem is one of behavior. We're spending too much money we don't have. All of us. From America to Britain to Europe to Japan. We've spent far more than we've earned, and promised trillions more in entitlements than we can ever hope to repay. I personally think that the world is going to have to accept a gigantic deflationary event to get things back on the bubble: something on the order of a 20-30% reduction in gross global GDP. But I'm not sure it's possible for this to happen without major social unrest, civil wars, and inter-state warfare.

11 Unfortunately, where I see this all ending up is war. People who see their own fortunes sliding away will be very susceptible to politicians who give them explanations that blame the problems on other people. And this is happening all over the world.

I have a plan, but I'm not sure if it needs to be implemented yet: Sell everything, buy gold, move to Texas, buy guns, and build a bunker. Texas will be a tough place to be when hostilities with Mexico start, but will be well positioned when the USA goes Tango Uniform.

12

9 Oh,there is Evil involved,of that I'm sure.

 I'm inclined to agree; nobody's that stupid. Or are they?

13 As a practical matter, there's little difference in outcome, and both are incurable. 

14 "the order of a 20-30% reduction in gross global GDP." -- The US and Europe could survive that, but China, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia would be toast (amongst others). Japan could retrench and ride it out, Russia would be interesting.

15  I'm inclined to agree; nobody's that stupid. Or are they?

I'm not sure I'd call it "evil" per se. Ideology can be a very powerful thing. I think your average Marxist academic type (who, by and large are not EVIL people, just people who have been taught all the wrong things) sees what's going on here as a failure of capitalism, and sees these socialist moves as being what's needed to change the structure of the economy so that it doesn't happen again.

Now, we can all critique this view, make counter arguments, and etc., but what we can't do, at least not in a non-catastrophic way, is shift the filter through which these people view what's going on. That filter operates at a non-rational level.

16 We would need to qualify the terms 'malice' and 'evil'. For many people, these mean destructive, malevolent intent and purpose. If policy makers hide, bribe and lie a bill into existence we believe those acts themselves to be evil. If they believe that the results of that bill will somehow, someday outweigh the costs, then there is a rationalization that they have done good. If this is a grab for power or prestige, and they know that they and theirs will never bear the brunt of the negatives, then we're talking about a purely evil act.

17 I don't think our politicians are acting out of malice (even I am not that much a cynic -- not yet).

Sorry, Monty.  You could not watch what they did with the Porkulus and health scare and not be utterly convinced that they (starting with the prompting and threatening from The Precedent, but fully taken to heart by the useful idiots in the Washington junta) are acting out of PURE MALICE.  No one calls Tea Partiers or senior citizen Town Hall protesters "racists" unless they have the most malevolent intentions.

Monty, it is sad to have to come to grips with, but the left are nothing but despicable, lying scumbags who hate the US and are out to either take it over and do whatever they want with it, or, like the other Hussein, dump 40,000,000 barrels of oil into the economic gulf and light every oil well in sight on fire, leaving nothing but scorched-earth behind them.

Washington is nothing but malevolence from the left.  Period.  And it is led by an insane retard who fashions himself the avenging angel of the third world, come to power to rain destruction and pain on the US and the West - with the useful idiots coming along for the suicide run.

18 Stupid is scary enough, but stupid and determined is what really has me worried.  Damn the facts, ignore the people, full speed ahead into Europe 2.0.

19

dow is already down about 200.

 

shit i was debating whether or not to sell near 11,000.

20

Is there nowhere safe for money?

If it was just america collapsing i could move my money into different currencys.  But all of the worlds "strongest" currencys have to many short term and long term problems. The Yen will collapse sooner if not later. You can't have a society where everyone is over the age of 50. The Euro is on the brink. Our Debt is going to screw us sooner or later. The Yuan is well...

Gold? Metals? Survival Seed Bank Crisis Garden?(haha).

 

21 Politicians aren't any more wise than anybody else, and their overall intelligence is probably not much higher on the average.  Consider the incentive system they work under (pandering/payoffs/graft/ego/etc.), and that compounds into outright stupid.  Malice vs. incompetence is an interesting question, but it's one best addressed after you get the noose out from around your neck, and, either way, both are a good argument for having the evil/incompetents have powers as limited as we can make them.

22 And now we know why Monty plays the banjo.

23 dow is already down about 200. I've kind of stopped paying attention to the stock markets as an indicator of how fucked we all are. It's a measure of investors' mood; not much else. They're playing with monopoly money at this point. The debt markets (sovereign bonds especially) are where all the ugly shit is happening. LIBOR spread is widening, the USDEUR is spreading, and money is fleeing to so-called "safe havens" (as if there really was such a thing) which in turn reduces the amount available for loans and investment.

24 As far as stupid and evil goes, what do you say to the President of the United States standing on the White House lawn and taking sides against one of our own states with the President of a country who has draconian laws against unauthorized immigration into his own country?

25

On a related note. The Steel industry stocks are dropping like crazy. I believe ArcelorMittal, the worlds largest steel maker, has gone from about 49 to 29 in a month.

AK, US, Posco, etc have all dropped significantly. Nucor hasn't dropped as much but it tends to be a less volatile stock

26 If a mom gets drunk every day for years, drives on two wheels with her kid strapped on the roof, then calls the cops teabaggers when they pull her over, then maybe she's like President Il Douche.

27 Monty: "I don't think our politicians are acting out of malice (even I am not that much a cynic -- not yet)."

That makes one of us on both counts. We have Marxists and red diaper babies in our Executive. Anyone remember the word "czar?"

From Beck's "All the President's Men" (Friday, May 14, 2010):

Well, this — granted, Maurice Strong will say this is for a novel that he was writing but he has never written a novel, and Maurice Strong is a guy who is U.N.-central and surprisingly involved in almost everything. This is what he said in 1990 in an interview. He said: "What if a small group of these world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of rich countries in order to save the planet, this group decided, 'Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?'"

Maurice Strong is one of those globalists who works through the U.N. and other supra-national creations to remold international governance. He isn't American but he has peers in the U.S. with the same goals. "Social Justice" is but one avenue of subversiveness. Our government (Nancy Pelosi, for example) is now even urging churches to further Progressive goals without the irony of their assault on others who have a truer understanding of Church-State relationships in this Christian nation. We have Justices who seek to invoke international law in place of sovereign U.S. law. We have Congressmen and Executive Branch personnel fighting to get us bound into Cap & Trade asset redistribution schemes. These people are not over their heads except to the extent that molding people in democracies is difficult and time-consuming since Hugo Chavism is still generally frowned upon here. But they're working on it.

Alinsky is alive and well while socialism or worse is ceaselessly being ratcheted forward. Our government, which refuses to stop spending and expanding, is all the evidence you really need. Our federal government is corrupt to the core and those who wish it restrained are being methodically attacked and smeared by it.

Our government on the whole, and this Executive in particular, is malicious and is working around the clock to figure out ways to hide its actions. You best rehone that cynicism.

28 Is there nowhere safe for money? I think you'll be okay in US markets for some time yet; our currency is going to shit slower than anyone else's. You might have, oh, five years or so to plan and get ready. My own approach is simply to hedge as much as I can: precious metals, commodities, etc. Keep a diversified portfolio. If you have to buy a big-ticket item, do it now, because rates are low and you're going to be paying it back with inflated dollars anyway. I've also gone ahead and bought stuff that has high barter value. (In my case, some high-dollar guitars. Guitar players would rather starve than play a shitty instrument.)

29 I'll agree that they're not evil with the stipulation that the stupid that they are is monumental, verging on psychosis if not willful. As pointed out, they are aware that the costs are much higher than they claim and cannot be paid as is; so they are aware that they are doing what we, with good reason, greatly fear. They must think, like a drunk teenager swerving into the oncoming traffic lane, that they, unlike everyone who came to disaster doing the same, are perfectly in control.

30 Mark Levin  Minute and a half audio.

31 Imagine the kind of shit that Obama's whore mama brought home from Bitchoula's bar in the middle of the night.

32 Not stupid, not evil, just avaricious. 

They DESERVE to live at a certain standard, and it's not their fault that they can't do it with what they have (at least in their own minds.)  Therefore, this other person who offends them by having something they want must give it over to them....or else it must be destroyed.  That's what's behind all of the wealth redistribution, forcing us to accept an inferior but "green" product to replace a perfectly adequate one (like the light bulbs), and this stupid health care plan. 

Perfect example....the Greeks throwing a temper tantrum when the Germans were reluctant to bail them out while they refuse to give up retirement at 50 and lazing on the beach half the week.

33 32 Mark Levin  Minute and a half audio.

Levin was on fire en fuego yesterday!

34

I wasn't alive in the late 1970s, but from what I read about history I wonder is the general mood of the populace today similar to what it was back then?

That america was on the permanent decline, there was little hope of salvation, everyone expected their childrens lives to be worse than theirs. Two bad presidents from each party (Nixon/Ford-Carter) damaging america economically with regulatory policies, price controls, etc.

I know no two situations are exactly the same in history, but I think I am getting a better understanding of what the mood in the country was like then despite not having lived during that time.

35 Malice? No. A misplaced sense of their own intellectual superiority? Absolutely. Our pols have become so insulated from the real-world results of their actions that there is no feedback. So there is no learning. They read the praise and ignore the criticism, so their only impression is that of success. And then they move to the next topic.

36

Thanks for the link to Minyanville Monty. I used to read that site, but forgot about it.

I didn't realize Europe was China's largest customer.

37 I might prefer evil to stupid. We can identify and deal with evil; stupid is likely widespread.

38 nickless: "Politicians aren't any more wise than anybody else, and their overall intelligence is probably not much higher on the average."

I forget the study/poll from a few months ago, but it was revealed that politicians generally were less intelligent than voters. (Remember that only a relatively small number of Americans actually vote, so it's a self-filtering selection where a good number of participants know a little about local/world events.)

I was shocked to learn that. In fact voters knew American history better than the politicians. I did a quick search for the poll but couldn't find it. I'll try to find it if I have more time.

39 Evil and Stupid,  Stuvil or Epid.

40 @36: Yes, they were Marxists before. I'm just talking about how they're viewing what's happening now.

It's kind of difficult to understand the Marxist worldview if you're not steeped in it. It's kind of a fantasy world where taxing people somehow makes them more prosperous. I used to work in academia, so I know a lot of these people. As I say, on the whole, they're not bad people. They're just wrong in some fairly enormous ways. And the system is set up so that the more wrong they are, the more rewarded they are, and the smarter they're told they are.

Of course Marxism is an ideology driven by avarice. But they've been taught for their entire careers that their avarice is actually a drive for "social and economic justice".

41 Monty, I think you're close with this argument but the problem is there is evidence that there are two kinds of politicians - the one who mean well, but are stupid, and the ones that mean to do harm, and do intend malice. You don't have to be a cynic to read the very words coming out of the mouths of our so-called-betters to tell which are the idiots (Biden) and which utterly despise everything around them (O!).

42 "bought stuff that has high barter value" -- hey me, too -- except I bought guns. Good guns, properly cared for do not depreciate much (in good times).

43

Good article that goes along with this topic. It nails what's going on now.

http://tinyurl.com/37vuldv

44

I wasn't alive in the late 1970s, but from what I read about history I wonder is the general mood of the populace today similar to what it was back then?

Posted by: Ben at May 20, 2010 09:50 AM (wuv1c)

A major difference between now and the 70's (though there are many substantive differences, with the real possibility of our monetary system imploding being one of them) is that the Cold War served to place limits on what sort of America-hating stupidity this nation would stand.  The Cold War also kept the UN from having any power, as it was nothing but a joke that no one took seriously - which is the only state of the UN that it shoud ever have, as the idea of an empowered, peerless, competitionless entity is one of the dumbest in all of recorded history - and most dangerous.  The fact is that the UN never really gained any power until after the USSR was on its way to trash heap of history - ergo my argument above.

People were very pessimistic in the 70's, but the facts on the ground, regarding the serious threats to our nation, were not even in the same ballpark as today.  We didn't have an ineligible foreigner (for all intents and purposes) in the White House who viewed our nation and ourselves with nothing but contempt and the desire to make us feel pain.  And America was quite different in the 70's.  The number of muslims in our country was round about zero, as we didn't really start importing muslims in great numbers until the late 80's.  Before that, most arabs coming here were Christians who were driven out by the muslims who then followed them, here - invited into this nation by all sorts of boobs, globalists, idiots, and America-haters.

That's my view of the comparisons, at least.

45 This is like the post that came around a couple of weeks ago  ...

i have to argue with those that say our government is spending like a drunken sailor..
as a former drunken sailor i can guarantee you that unlike our government, i QUIT spending when i ran out of money!

46

The practice of small evils by politicians, who lie to themselves as much as they lie to the people, has incrementally built up until evil itself is now percieved as banal and become confused with stupidity.

Good article Monty.

However, the pols are evil.  The people are welfare junkies now because the pols, as welfare pushers, have hooked them on the welfare state.

47 There is no doubt what is happening in the USA and and Europe will not end well. I went from thinking it was caused by Hubris (stupidity combined with arrogance) to Evil ("bring it all down, man"). We have the latter in the White House, and he got 52% of the votes. I know a lot of people who think exactly like him. Bring It All Down, Man is now the order of the day.

48 Really, the question of evil or stupid is academic at the moment. The effects are basically identical. I don't think I could do any better to destroy western civ if I tried (didn't sharpton used to chant "hey hey, ho ho, western civ has got to go?)

The question will only matter after the collapse when you're wonder whether to tar and feather the miscreants responsible or simply exile them to live among the mutant hordes.

49 ...but the left are nothing but despicable, lying scumbags who hate the US and are out to either take it over and do whatever they want with it, or, like the other Hussein, dump 40,000,000 barrels of oil into the economic gulf and light every oil well in sight on fire, leaving nothing but scorched-earth behind them. Posted by: progressoverpeace at May 20, 2010 09:33 AM (Qp4DT) ---------------------------------------------------------------- This is scary as hell but spot on - what few realize is that Obama and his crew are driven primarily by ideology and a belief that our system is inherently unfair thus the push to make the "haves" pay their fair share. In short, they hate America and its capitalist system - and they'll do whatever they can to humble us in order to pay for our past "sins". It's that simple. These folks are no better than any garden variety poverty pimp that foment violence and hate then cry when the city burns all while continuing to scream about the injustice of it all. The only difference is that this time they're playing with the nation and the world. Dark times folks.

50 Have to disagree with much of this post. Europe's situation is very different from our own. In this country, any attempt to reduce the deficit right now would be counterproductive. It's not as if the deficit is producing high interest rates or inflation; both are at historic lows. And our economy is recovering, albeit slowly. Consumer confidence is up, stocks are up, and home prices have stabilized. There is no sign that deficit spending has hurt our economy, and every sign that it has helped. I know this viewpoint is anathema to many here, but the doomsayers are likely to be proved wrong ... again.

51 Sorry, I have to go with evil. These idealogues think of people as a mass like we might think of algae. They do not see individuals unless those individuals are themselves. Obama thinks "some people" earn enough but does he? No. They have the ability to segregate others into an inantimate status over which they must maintain control. This mindset is the root of the evil for every dictator, tyrant, and mass murderer in history. Our founders were very specific in their philosophy of equality and our rights being divinely endowed. Radical secularism is the tool of the lefty ideologue for the purposes of power. There isn't a big gap between these lefties and Stalin---if people are meat then it's easy to treat them that way. Evil.

52 Honestly Monty, I just can't look at the Big Picture playing out in America without knowing there is evil and malice involved.  The Socialists know the results they want and are working feverishly to attain them before they are put on a very short leash by the voters.  It's difficult to come to any other conclusion as I watch our "President" openly colluding with foreign leaders to subvert our laws and Congress passing massive nation-changing Bills before they are written.  As the Chinese curse says, we are indeed living in interesting times.

53  (In my case, some high-dollar guitars. Guitar players would rather starve than play a shitty instrument.)

~Monty

True.  But I'd rather eat than listen to live music with an empty stomach.  What else does a starving guitarist have to barter with in exchange for your high-dollar guitar?

54 People were very pessimistic in the 70's, but the facts on the ground, regarding the serious threats to our nation, were not even in the same ballpark as today. 

Posted by: progressoverpeace at May 20, 2010 09:58 AM (Qp4DT)

I am not ignoring, or downplaying, the threat of true physical annihilation that the Soviets posed (and that still exists, to this day, though most like to make pretend it's long gone) but the internal threats to the collapse of our systems and institutions.  That acknowledged existential threat from the Soviets served to keep Americans restricted to certain boundaries of sanity that no longer exist, today.

A true America-hater and retard such as the Indonesian Imbecile could NEVER have gotten elected (or even be taken seriously) at any time other than the modern US.  The question of Constitutional eligibility, and his having held other citizenship(s) would have had him stopped at the gate, even aside from anything else.

55 We have the latter in the White House, and he got 52% of the votes. I know a lot of people who think exactly like him. Bring It All Down, Man is now the order of the day.

But it's not really 'bring it ALL down.'  It's 'bring down everything else-- but leave me/mine still in charge at the top of the heap.'  The Left/Obamatons still believe that we'll go running to Daddy Gummint/Lord Humongous to save us from the wasteland.

I think they're making one helluva leap if they think that everything else will collapse but they won't.  Perhaps in the more socialized parts of the world (Britain), but this will put America teetering right on the razor's edge of anarchy/self-determination.  We will be more likely to begin breaking up the Union into smaller and smaller groups following a major collapse.

56

"Of course Marxism is an ideology driven by avarice. But they've been taught for their entire careers that their avarice is actually a drive for "social and economic justice"."

If coming up with clever excuses to justify one's evil actually made it no longer evil, there would be no such thing as evil.

57 The "adults" will be the voters, but they will need good alternatives to vote for.  The real need is for people who (a) know they would be good at governing on constitutional and market-based principles, and (b) have the wealth and stature to jump in and win, to (c) see their nation in dire jeopardy and rise to the occasion. It will take a village of our (actual) best and brightest to run for all the important offices, even though their personal situations will be made worse / less secure by doing so.  Rudy Giuliani should be gunning for Schumer.  Steve Forbes should be gunning for Lautenberg, etc.  We need our potential heroes to act heroically (and selflessly, BIRM), or we are sunk.

58 Breaking up the Union is inevitable, IMHO. Or do the rest of you really want to be on the hook for the Great California Bailout, which will be the predecessor for Secession, The Sequel? We have half a trillion in pension shortfall alone. That is not the total amount, that is the shortfall.

59 But it's not really 'bring it ALL down.'  It's 'bring down everything else-- but leave me/mine still in charge at the top of the heap.'  The Left/Obamatons still believe that we'll go running to Daddy Gummint/Lord Humongous to save us from the wasteland.

Posted by: nickless at May 20, 2010 10:11 AM (MMC8r)

I agree with you, regarding the useful idiots of the left, but disagree with you on The Precedent's motivations and desires.  To my view, he is a suicide bomber set on taking America down as he blows up.  He isn't really looking to change America as much as destroy it, by any means necessary, and he is happy to be destroyed in the process.  That's why he has been pushing our system to the absolute limits, daring us to fight back (thereby destabilizing the nation and destroying it through that battle) or just destroying our institutions if we don't.  He doesn't care about remaking America as much as destroying it, I would say evidenced by the fact that he never gave two shits about any details of legislation, handing everything off to Congress to run wild, then pushing them to pass whatever insanity they came up with.

60 Drunks and Democrats have one very important trait: they can never admit that they are wrong.

61 45 "bought stuff that has high barter value" -- hey me, too -- except I bought guns. Good guns, properly cared for do not depreciate much (in good times).

Posted by: Jean at May 20, 2010 09:56 AM (tJF9l)

As an added bonus to buying guns, when the zombies show up on your property,  you can barter with their lives (should you choose to).

62 There is no sign that deficit spending has hurt our economy, and every sign that it has helped. I know this viewpoint is anathema to many here, but the doomsayers are likely to be proved wrong ... again. Posted by: sauropod at May 20, 2010 10:08 AM (GPm6P) ------------------------------------------------------------ Sorry dude, but this is BS. Deficit spending now begets [much] higher tax rates later (sooner if I were a betting man) and that absolutely WILL NOT increase economic activity. Not to mention the economic activity that is currently pulled forward due to all of those stimulus dollars (CFC anyone?). The fact is that any economic growth we're seeing now is a direct result of the Feds spending money we don't have at rates that aren't sustainable. So, if the Feds cut off the spigot, which they will have to eventually either due to increased risk premiums or China saying no mas, the private economy simply can't take up the slack. And if you think there is another way out given our current level of spending I'd like to hear it, or smoke it if you're sharing.

63 I don't think we break up, but if California doesn't get their bailout in before January - I can see Washington saying no.

64 Obama is evil, not that he thinks so, most evil men do their evil out of a drive and ideology.  You cannot dismantle the economic engine of the U.S., on a daily basis and NOT be evil.  The suffering this man has unleashed, all unreported by a complicit and EVIL MSM would be shouted from every rooftop if done by any other President. 

I am not the only one that wakes up dreading what this miserable fucker has dreamed up in the night to cause division (Arizona), class warfare, destroy our health system, destroy productivity (Nationalizing banks, car companies etc).  Then to spend at a pace that is simply unbelievable, who ever thought that when you mention a billion dollars, nobody would even blink?  The new billions is now a trillion. 

The lying is constant, and in your face.  Meanwhile he touts heads of state that are our enemies, and puts on lavish banquets for the head of a failed narco-state, and assures him we will do all in our power to remain a relief valve for his peasant class, so Mexico does not experience one of their periodic and worthless revolutions. 

All the while use Air Force One as your personal pimp mobile to take your transvestite wife out on date night...not evil you say?  Not to mention hamstring soldiers in Afghanistan and give them absolutely no reason to be fighting or to win, other than to just protect the man next to you.  This man in my book is evil, the deaths that will be directly traced to his actions will be unbelievable.  Just by his rhetoric he may start trade wars between our own states.  Nobody seems able to stop him, nobody seems able to shame him. 

Not even mentioning his treatment of Israel and what he is setting up in the Middle East vis-a-vis his farcical diplomacy toward Iran.  At the least he is guaranteeing nuclear proliferation among the gulf States, and worse is a nuclear exchange, or war between Iran and Israel. Won't even talk about a re-energized Russia ready to take back Georgia, and probably the Ukraine, what would Obama do?  NOTHING, the Russians know this.  The Chinese own too much of our debt, but so does Britain and Japan and just about every country with a central bank.  But just keep spending and ignore any restraint.  He is doing this all in our face, not hiding it at all.  Elect radicals to surround you, I mean real radicals, right out in the open...not like our GOP leaders will fight.

65 Evil. Just evil.

66

Where's the concept of original sin nowadays? You know, the idea that everyone is born corrupted with a will weakened to be unable to control the baser passions.

Its only by coming to grips with the truth of our human nature that we can see the world as it actually is. The Founders new this and is why they placed limits on government (which have now been effectively eliminated). It wasn't to keep stupid people from acting stupidly it was to keep corrupt people from acting corruptly.

Take your own comment here:

I don't think our politicians are acting out of malice (even I am not that much a cynic -- not yet). But I do have the feeling that they are, as a group, simply in over their heads... They are blown to and fro in every political wind, and fear for their jobs more than they fear for the future of their country.

If that's not evil then I don't know what is. They are more concerned about there own well-being (i.e. fear for their jobs) more than the well-being of 300 million people (i.e. fear for the future of their country).

 

67

Thanks for sharing that, Monty.

>> And now I find myself wishing ... that a responsible adult would simply make them stop making the situation worse.

Back to your experience: The first adult did step in. She made an appeal, and it didn't work. Then the second adult, someone with authority, stepped in. But when a policeman turns on his flashing lights and a motorist pulls over for him, there's a middle step. The driver being ordered to pull over has to recognize that someone with authority is compelling her to do something and conclude that it's in her best interests to submit to that authority and accept what the cop says.

If that middle step goes the other way, a high-speed chase ensues. Think of how terrifying that would be.

Also think about the cop thinking of her son and how she doesn't want to orphan him over something so reckless and stupid. She might think that she'd be better off taking that job as a security guard at the mall. Isn't that what's going through Germany's mind?

 

68 One thing for certain, these are not the times for moderation. These are the times for some extremists. Extremism is as American as guns and apple pie. America's very existence is due to a small band of motivated extremists who had the balls to tell King George to piss off. And they did it over a hell of a lot smaller insults than we presently endure.

69 rawmuse: "Breaking up the Union is inevitable, IMHO."

I'm sensing this, too. There is real balkanization happening and irreconcilable differences remain evident. Just look at San Francisco WRT illegals getting to vote and its sanctuary city support compared to surrounding areas. Or look what certain Liberal political centers are trying to do to Arizona for its following the law and trying to defend legal, Constitutionally protected citizens.

The irony that this train of thought has come about under Obama is sublime. Obama and his Social Justice is in the process of breaking up our social fabric, and possibly the Union in a most extreme case, as formulated by Lincoln.

70

I wasn't alive in the late 1970s, but from what I read about history I wonder is the general mood of the populace today similar to what it was back then?

Short answer. No.  I'm more terrified now than I was then. But I'm also 30 years older and us old farts get that way when we see our dreams of a safe and happy retirement shattering right in front of our eyes.

71 we -- the citizens of this debt-ridden Republic

Too bad no one in the last 40 (perhaps longer) years has been taught what it truly means to be a citizen.

72 I'm claiming evil. I can't even listen to Michael Medved anymore. I'm so disappointed. Seems like he wants to get invited to a lunch at the White House like he got to do with Bush. He does nothing but say Obama is doing his best for the country. WTF?!?!?!

73 The irony that this train of thought has come about under Obama is sublime.

Oh, it's been around a lot longer than Obama. He's just intensifying it. And I don't think he'd necessarily see it as a bad thing, either. I think he kind of sees himself as an American Gorbachev, presiding over our sunset. I think he'd see a smaller, weaker USA, as one nation of several on the continent as a good thing.

74 California and Greece are excellent comparisons.

Both are currently FUBAR. I think we should lobby the EU for California inclusion. Just take those Az hatin mf'ers off our board entirely.

75

I don't think our politicians are acting out of malice (even I am not that much a cynic -- not yet).

Wish I could be so sanguine.  No, Obama and his cronies are set on a course to transform America into some socialist Utopia, and they're doing a bang-up job of that, the Country and her People be damned.

76 In fact, Michael Medved was challenged by a caller, the caller asked him why he is always saying Obama's doing his best for the country when others like Rush and Levin are saying the opposite. Medved said Rush and Levin really don't believe their own hype.

77 They don't have a clue and that makes Wash DC dangerous.  We have an activist administration and they will fuck things up totally.  I want to see them REPEALING their previous interventions not doing more.

78 I like the analogy of the cop stopping the drunk driver, as I imagine many others do, as well. I wonder, however, how many understand what actions are required to apply that analogy in the real world.

79

Drunks and Democrats have one very important trait: they can never admit that they are wrong.

BINGO!!

80 Yes, "citizenship" i.e., value of. Has a day gone by when the value of our citizenship has not been degraded? When our votes are nullified by fraud, when our taxes go to prop up a permanent criminal class, when nothing in the public sector gets done except at the most dear cost due to entrenched unions, when each family in the USA is in hock to the government to the tune of $115k (and rising) and the illegals among us get everything the want for free, whence the value of said citizenship? It has been converted in to a Liability, and that, my friend is the the death of a nation in a nutshell.

81 There is nothing more dangerous than an inflated and unconscious ego that believes it is smart. That is Teleprompter Jesus.

That's why we feel this sense of doom. It's gonna take years to unfuck this mess, if in fact we can. Only hoping Obama spends his golden years somewhere near Jakarta where I will not have to hear his BS.

82 Farmer Joe@78,

Oh I agree. Obama seems like the tipping point, and there's no question he'd want to go down in history for doing so. He said as much during the elecetion... hope-n-change. This Narcissist-in-Chief wants to go down in the history books, foam columns with pomp, circumstance, and all. He'll even go to Germany if he has to so that Europe can, once again, admire his greatness.

83 I don't know never was that hard for me. Then you don't have much money the feeling of envy for those who live a high life comes natural. The agenda that they must share is a no-brainer, provided you're cool with the idea of taking other peoples money against their will just because they have more of it than you do.

That's an operational understanding. Not a cultural one. If that were all there were too it, no one would ever be a Marxist once they'd reached a certain level of material comfort. Where the cultural stuff - the stuff that actually makes Marxism hard to deal with - comes in is in the network of lies, half-truths, ill-understood facts, and theories that are wrong but never seem to go away. This is the stuff that makes it possible to act on what is essentially a toddler's impulse ("No fair! He got more!") into adulthood.

84 "...the politicians who are supposed to be guiding us out of one of the worst recessions in our nation's history."

What makes you believe that?

85
Mens rea may distinguish murder from manslaughter, but its absence does not make the victim any less dead.

86 Posted by: rawmuse at May 20, 2010 10:32 AM (+JrzC)

Exactly.  It's amazing how the nation-state has become such a despised entity, these days, even among many Americans.  And the inability of people to understand even the most direct and simplest declarations in the Constitution is beyond frustrating.  The Founders tried to make it so clear that even the dumbest among us could not misconstrue it, right in the preamble to the Constitution:

"secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity"

The US Constitution was written for the US, not for the world.  Of course, that was written back at a time when people recognized that the flag was a a legal entity that signalled operational control (or claim to such) of an area by the nation bearing it, and when the concept of sovereignty was taken seriously and held dear.

Oh well.  The new nation to be formed by seceding states will reinvigorate these notions and hold the American creed as its foundation.

87 U.S. Debt Clock has us 16 billion away from 13 trillion in debt.

Heard a great "Gold ETF" story today. It is the same story the Fed uses.

Hey we have a bunch of gold in our garage, we can't show it to you, so you'll just have to trust us. The FED buys US debt. Hey we have all the money, we just can't show it to you (audit) so you'll just have to trust us.

88

Have to disagree with much of this post. Europe's situation is very different from our own. In this country, any attempt to reduce the deficit right now would be counterproductive. It's not as if the deficit is producing high interest rates or inflation; both are at historic lows. And our economy is recovering, albeit slowly. Consumer confidence is up, stocks are up, and home prices have stabilized. There is no sign that deficit spending has hurt our economy, and every sign that it has helped. I know this viewpoint is anathema to many here, but the doomsayers are likely to be proved wrong ... again.

Hey dumbass we are currently paying a $100 billion dollar interest payment on our debt at essentially a 0% interest rate. What the hell do you think is going to happen when that interest rate goes up to 3% to 4% or, God forbid 10%? How are we going to pay the extra $500 billion dollars in interest service? Don't say increased economic activity because every interest rate increase for the past 30 years led to a recession.

 

89 "But I do have the feeling that they are, as a group, simply in over their heads."

Yes, which is why our constitution constrains politicians and limits them to a few necessary mandates. If only our present day politicians followed the constitution...

90 ...That they are simply not smart enough or courageous enough to do the hard things that are necessary to get the world economy back on track.

The point you are missing is that we were tremendously foolish to think politicians were ever capable of keeping the economy 'on track.' 

We fucked up, we trusted them.

All this talk about government 'fixing things', just like the debate between lower spending and/or higher taxes fundamentally misses the point - the problem is that governments are strangling the economy. 

They know it, and they like it because it is all about power for them.  If you can take care of yourself and don't need their 'help' that always means they have less power, and that's not what they want.  Given the choice between greater economic growth and more power int heir hands they will choose power in their hands every time.

We need to get government the hell out of micro managing the economy.  but they won't go without a fight.

91

Monty, what a great analogy about your mother.  A very similar thing happened to me when I was a child, and mom drove three of us home while she was drunk as a skunk.  I was too young to know exactly what was wrong, I merely knew that she was laughing the whole time, babbling incoherently, and driving /swerving all over the road.  Unfortunately she avoided the cops, and got away with it.

That's my fear, that nobody is going to take away the keys and say NO!!  That we're all going down because the people who have the ability to stop it won't do it.  And that all the window dressing in DC right now, the Chris Dodd "financial reform" bill, is just papering over the really bad things coming our way soon.  Chris Dodd is one of the main architects of this disaster, it's criminal that he's now pretending to fix it. 

Just like all those years ago, I can't believe what I'm seeing.

92 They tried to manufacture a "recovery" with smoke, mirrors, tax credits, and spendulus. It isn't materializing. And slowly even the greatest leaning left tard will capitulate. These fuckers are truly incompetent.

With mid terms less than six months away, all I gotta say here is...how does my ass taste?

93

The recession was caused by the housing bubble bursting.

We had the housing bubble because of socialists playing the race card and forcing banks to issue subprime mortgages.

The banks lent the money because they had the promise of being bailed out by Fanny and Freddy.

Which of these causes has been addressed and rectified?

None.  Instead the socialists didn't learn anything from this teaching moment and are doubling down with more socialism, continually playing the race card and engineering bailouts and handouts.

That's evil.

 

94 @95 PJ

Yes, which is why our constitution constrains politicians and limits them to a few necessary mandates. If only our present day politicians followed the constitution...

@92 progressoverpeace

And the inability of people to understand even the most direct and simplest declarations in the Constitution is beyond frustrating.

Claiming that there are valid distinctions to be inferred over what the meaning of the word, "is," is worked quite well for Clinton.  That was one lesson not lost on Retarded Barry and his passel of petty tyrants.

When words no longer have meaning, axioms are opened to sophomoric debate, and reason and logic are derided as epistemic closure, there is no marketplace of ideas. 

Without that marketplace, the only means of resolving anything is naked force.

95

The closest thing to this cop that I have seen is Gov. Christie of New Jersey. So far, so good, but how popular will he be when people realize that their goody bags and handouts from the government will not be as full and munificent as they were?

Right now, we're loving watching him take the tough stands. And I believe the man is sincere. But when the reality of budget cuts hit home, people will start to grumble and squawk. Then the Democrats, who for right now have slithered under rocks, will come back out and start to demagogue about the evil Republicans taking away school lunches.

Will we have the courage to tell them to STFU, we don't buy snake oil twice? Or will we join the chorus and bleat about our problems, and watch the now seemingly courageous reformers run for cover? 

96 They are trying to run economies, from macro to micro. It's not that they aren't smart enough to do it, while someone else is smart enough. NO ONE is smart enough. This is what happens when the contradictions of their actions--their dictations, their transfers of resources from the chosen donors to the chosen beneficiaries, the dictation of how money, technology, and people will act despite the dictation's being contrary to the nature, the reality, of money, technology, and people--manifest. And they won't stop, no matter how much damage they do, because they believe that they can actually run economies successfully--that their intentions can produce the results that they intend, and determine how causality will operate. We're seeing in reality pages from ATLAS SHRUGGED.

97

19 Washington is nothing but malevolence from the left.  Period.  And it is led by an insane retard who fashions himself the avenging angel of the third world, come to power to rain destruction and pain on the US and the West - with the useful idiots coming along for the suicide run.

That needed to be repeated.  I live in LiberalLeftyLand and I'm surrounded by the useful idiots every day.  They all buy into this nonsense of white male privilege, and how the world needs to be reorganized according to social justice principles, and how once everything we know is destroyed, it will be rebuilt the right way and rainbows will appear and unicorns will fly and............

well, you know how the fairy tale ends. 

 

98

The only possible answer to these problems?

 

That's right, more government!

99 @104 That is the aforementioned "Bring it all down, man" crowd. Yeah, I am surrounded by them as well. You know what? If you listen carefully, they tell you exactly how they feel and think. They make no efforts to disguise those sentiments. Until they actually hold elected office...

100 Yoohoo, Shit Wagon, where are you today?

101 You know what? If you listen carefully, they tell you exactly how they feel and think. They make no efforts to disguise those sentiments.

Until they actually hold elected office...

Even then, if you know what the euphemisms are, they'll still tell you.

102

A lot of people calling "evil" in the thread. I won't disagree, but as a rule the people doing evil don't see it as such. They've either convinced themselves that they're doing good or they've believed that from the start.

It's a matter of perspective. It's like watching this

http://tinyurl.com/dxoc4q

and thinking the villain to be the hero.

103 99

⁽¹⁾The recession was caused by the housing bubble bursting.

⁽²⁾ We had the housing bubble because of socialists playing the race card and forcing banks to issue subprime mortgages.

The banks lent the money because they had the promise of being bailed out by Fanny and Freddy.

Which of these causes has been addressed and rectified?

Posted by: Speller at May 20, 2010 10:55 AM (o0R2E)

1. Symptoms are not the cause. What caused the housing bubble to collapse in the first place?

2. Inner-city borrowers that defaulted on home loans is actualy a very small percentage of the total bad loans mess. A far greater loss was by middle and upper-middle-class housing speculation combined with a bit of outright loan fraud. The banks did sub-prime lending because it was profitable (in the short term) and not because any government agency put a gun to their head.

You really need to go back to the late 1960's and early 1970's to see the genesis of the mess we are in now. Housing inflation from the 1970's that outstripped historic norms and the mechanisms that enabled it are the real culprits. That was the earliest signs of excess liquitity in the housing market. That beast is still with us.

104 A lot of people calling "evil" in the thread. I won't disagree, but as a rule the people doing evil don't see it as such. They've either convinced themselves that they're doing good or they've believed that from the start.

Yeah, I think there's a distinction between evil of intent, and evil of effect. There's a ton of evil of effect going on, and I DO think there's some evil of intent, but not as much as one might think.

105

Our real goal is to rape the child named Monty. If we get rid of his mother we can have access to the child. But how can we kill her without raising suspicion, or maybe even getting everyone to blame the mother for her own death? Oh, I know. We can do what we've been caught doing before - getting her drunk enough to kill herself...

 

This is the perfect plan. It can't go wrong, because we are smart and we came up with the plan, and... what do you mean it might kill the child?

106 29 A. Drivel:
Our government on the whole, and this Executive in particular, is malicious and is working around the clock to figure out ways to hide its actions. You best rehone that cynicism.

Hear! Hear!

107

I was here for the 70s, and it was bad. Progressives makes some good points but I remember:

-Long gas lines

-Vietnam hangover

-The Iranian hostage crisis, with nightly TV coverage of the mobs at the gate of the American embassy

-Watergate - Jimmy Carter was presented as sort of a humble savior after the horrible mistake of that evil Republican, Nixon.

-Banana republic magnitude interest rates and inflation

-Stagflation

-A botched rescue of the hostages in Iran

-Until Reagan came along (late 70s), there was nobody making any type of real case that maybe, just maybe, the government was part of the problem

-Painful, progressive taxation to the point of being confiscatory

-The left was ascendant. Conservatism was most surely not "cool", or even contrarian. You were regarded as basically an oddball swimming aginst the stream. My buddy and I shared a subscription to WSJ in college because it was the only source of any viewpoint that was remotely conservative, and people thought we were nuts.

-A totally monolithic, liberal media. No internet. If you sometimes think you're the only sane one around, you can't even imagine back then. William Simon's "A Time For Truth" was almost revolutionary when it was published.

-The cold war was pretty menacing. People still remembered the Cuban missle crisis and how close we came to nuclear war and the days of fallout shelters and school emergency drills. Meanwhile, the media painted us as the bad guys, the ones on the wrong side of the argument.

I could go on and on. Not a fun time in our country's history. We worry (justifiably) about collapsing economic systems today. Well, I can tell you my depression era parents, who had a 3% mortgage and never bought a car they couldn't pay cash for, were - I don't even know the appropriate word - stunned I guess to put it mildly, by double digit interest rates and inflation. If you did not look around sometimes and wonder if things were really going to work out after all, you had to be permanently asleep. 

108 The banks did sub-prime lending because it was profitable (in the short term) and not because any government agency put a gun to their head.

Posted by: Jim in San Diego at May 20, 2010 11:13 AM (oIp16)

Barack Obama was a part of the ACORN legal team which sued CitiBank because they were discriminating against poor people who couldn't come up with the down payment for a home purchase, which menat they were ineligible for a home loan.  The Government most certainly did hold a gun to banking institutions' heads forcing them to make piss poor loans to people who had no business owning a home, or even attempting to buy one.

That problem has not been fixed because the problem has gone unrecognized by the Dems currently in power.  It can't be poor people, it has to be the bankers (whom they forced to make the loans in the first place).  This goes back to the CRA and the Carter Years.

109 Posted by: sauropod at May 20, 2010 10:08 AM (GPm6P)

I see you get your information from the MFM.

110 I slep' with yo mama that night, biotch!

111

Barack Obama was a part of the ACORN legal team which sued CitiBank because they were discriminating against poor people who couldn't come up with the down payment for a home purchase, which menat they were ineligible for a home loan.  The Government most certainly did hold a gun to banking institutions' heads forcing them to make piss poor loans to people who had no business owning a home, or even attempting to buy one.

That problem has not been fixed because the problem has gone unrecognized by the Dems currently in power.  It can't be poor people, it has to be the bankers (whom they forced to make the loans in the first place).  This goes back to the CRA and the Carter Years.

Posted by: RickZ at May 20, 2010 11:21 AM (Hkzt9)

Go read the actual suit. It wasn't filed until 1994. That doesn't explain the lending practices that were going on in the mid to late 1980's.

The CRA dates from back to 1977, and was meant to address the issue of banks having branches in areas they would not lend in. They were instructed to either lend or get out those areas. Most of those defects were indirectly rectified by banking and S&L de-regulation in the early 1980's.

The CRA excuse is a smokescreen.

112 Inner-city borrowers that defaulted on home loans is actualy a very small percentage of the total bad loans mess. A far greater loss was by middle and upper-middle-class housing speculation combined with a bit of outright loan fraud. The banks did sub-prime lending because it was profitable (in the short term) and not because any government agency put a gun to their head.

Posted by: Jim in San Diego at May 20, 2010 11:13 AM (oIp16)

The subprime problem was that, in an effort to affect social engineering through mortgages (without having to record actual expenditures on the federal balance sheet) the leftists forced a misvaluation of debt by the lenders.  Initially, the lenders reluctantly agreed to the limited amount of loans required by the CRA and other pressures brought to bear on them, but as the feds saw that those lenders did their part in the community loans (i.e. mispriced debt that they were forced to originate, as they had to provide the same interest rates for poor risks as they did for better risks) and then stopped, as the underperforming mispriced debt sat on their books, they decided that the project had to be forced further along.  They empowered Fannie and Freddie to go out and start scooping those bad loans off of the balance sheets of the local lenders, freeing their capital up to misprice more CRA debt.  In the process, part of the mispricing of the debt was papered over by the implicit guarantee that Fannie and Freddie magically transferred to the crappy loans.  This procedure got revved up, with Fannie/Freddie buying up as much poorly priced debt as the locals could originate, thereby relegating those lenders to the position of risk-free brokers, and that whole process just got ramped up as now, the whole of the private markets were more than happy to cooperate with the feds (at the risk of lawsuits and other sanctions, anyway, if they didn't). 

The biggest problem, though, was that the mispricing of debt for social engineering could not be quarantined to that area, only.  That mispricing was arbed through the debt markets and affected much more than merely the sub-prime loans it started with.  That mispricing was mostly gathered up and stored in the CDSs, not intentionally, but merely as it wound its way through the system and finally came to a resting place.  It was out of the way and out of most people's minds ... until the serious mispricing was made evident by loans defaulting and the calls were made for the illusory wealth bound up and hidden in the CDSs, which is what brought AIG crashing down and forced the "implicit" guarantee of Freddie and Fannie to made very explicit.

But, this is typical of leftists.  They think that they can pervert one section of a liquid and fluid market and the perversion will remain restricted to the area they intended (as leftists are staticists who cannot even imagine a changing and dynamic world - to them nothing moves unless the government moves it, and then it only moves exactly as the government planned - an idea that we all know is ignorant, naive, childish and stupid ... but that's how leftists view everything).  The cost of their social engineering and forcible mispricing of debt was a destabilization of the entire debt market and untold damage to our economy.  Typical of leftists.

113 The fate of the economy and all mankind is in the hands of fools. And this is what Hahvadd produces? Shit man fuck, we're in a lot of trouble.

114

This isn't the only place I've seen the phrase "Not evil, just...", and I've noticed that when I do see it, it's pretty much always wrong.  Just somebody trying to be the Peacemaker saying "we don't have to demonize our opponent, they just know not what they do".

Well, there is certainly a place for that, but this ain't it.

If anybody should be described as "Not Evil, Just Stupid", it should be the voters - and even that is something of a stretch because a substantial number of them are motivated by parasitic and/or collectivist ideal.

That politicians on both sides of the aisle are after power, plain and simple - but in the context of the economy there's something especially pernicious with the Left.  The Left considers it morally wrong that the US should be relatively wealthy compared to most of the rest of the world.  The agents involved are certainly smart enough to see the destructive effects there policies are likely to have on the economy.  It's obvious that they really don't care, and - more than that - there's a decent theory that it's very much part of an intentional effort to overthrow capitalism.  In summary:

"It's Not Just Stupid - It's Evil"

115 "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity". The key is knowing when something can be explained by stupidity, and when it can't.

Here is the way to tell the difference between stupidity and malevolence: Evil people try to hide and/or disguise what they are doing - stupid people don't; since stupid people think they are doing the right thing.

Progressives have been trying to hide what they are doing for 100 years - now it is becoming increasingly obvious to most people what is going on - that is malevolence, it is not possible for it to be anything else.

116

Another 70's moment that may give some of those who weren't priviliged to be around then a feel for the lovely zeitgeist of the times. This might have been an aberration, but it happened.

I was at a basketball game (76ers) circa 1975. They played the National Anthem, and in my section, with hundreds of people there, there were literally two (2) people who stood. Myself, and a soldier in uniform. The soldier had tears in his eyes. In the Spectrum, which seated 18,000, I would guess that less than 5% to 10% of the total audience stood. Nice, huh?

117 Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

The Phinn's Razor is: "Never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by malice."

People are presumed to know and desire the obvious, natural and inevitable consequences of their actions. 

If I can understand the proposition that private people are harmed by massive governmental debt, spending and interference with economic processes, then it should also be obvious to Captain Wonderful and his team of super-geniuses. 

118 There were lots of "causes" of our present misery. Going off the gold standard, the Fed's ironbound insistence on keeping interest rates artificially low, the (apparently fallacious) belief in America that everyone "deserves" a house of their own...it goes on and on. It boils down to one simple truth: we're spending far more than we earn, both individually and as nations. Our fiat money system has amplified our ability to spend beyond our means, and financial derivatives instruments allow for vast leverage but not backed by any real assets. It's a castle built on air, and it is bound to fall.

119

# 120 progressoverpeace

Thank you for that post.

120

The subprime problem was that, in an effort to affect social engineering through mortgages (without having to record actual expenditures on the federal balance sheet) the leftists forced a misvaluation of debt by the lenders.

You are getting warmer!

The mis-valuation on risky debt was mostly (almost entirely) done on the institutional retail side. Why would they do that? Easy. The profitability of a typical A-paper loan is actually quite modest. B-paper, a bit more profitable, but modest still. But B-paper that can be turned into A-Paper by gaming the system is where the real money is at. That loan is now worth roughly five times more on the secondary market than your typical A-paper loan. And that my dear is why they did what they did.

121 "The subprime problem was that, in an effort to affect social engineering through mortgages (without having to record actual expenditures on the federal balance sheet) the leftists forced a misvaluation of debt by the lenders. "

So lending a few million dollars to dusky folks cause trillions and trillions of dollars in wealth to evaporate?

What an appropriate post given the title of this thread.

122 The Euro may be dying right before our very eyes. I notice they're busting out the "unexpected" adjective about the higher US unemployment numbers again, too.

123 Posted by: Jim in San Diego at May 20, 2010 11:47 AM (oIp16)

I agree with you, in terms of the poorly priced paper being magically blessed by the implicit Fannie/Freddie guarantee, but, if you're talking about the A-rated tranches formed out of bundles of B-rated paper, I have to disagree.  I don't have any problems with the concept that one can bundle crappy paper together and, using only the top 10%, say, generate true A-paper.  I ususally explain this to people by simple analogy:  Anyone who has ever played scramble golf knows that you can put 4 really crappy golfers into a scramble game and score 5 over par, since they are only taking the best shot of 4 at every point along the game.  The A-tranches were like scrambles, as those holding them got something like "the first 10%" of payments, thereby being able to build secure paper out of insecure pieces.  Now, I don't doubt that valuation of those instruments are more difficult, but I don't like the idea that people were floating that somehow the idea of bundling the B-paper and generating A-rated tranches out of the best performing pieces for any given period was some sort of fraud.  There was nothing wrong with those bundled instruments - not that I have ever seen, at least.

124 Posted by: Jim in San Diego at May 20, 2010 11:47 AM (oIp16) What Jim said is true, but the whole idea of disregarding the normal risk premiums banks normally price into loan products in favor of some larger social "goal" (at the Feds behest of course) started with the CRA. That and the fact that banks stopped holding onto their paper and starting securitizing it.

125 Does this mean Ru paul is not gonna save us?

126 Via Derb at NRO's Corner (a pessimist after my own heart), a post that makes my own look like flowers and sunshine: Sell Everything, You Won't Recognize America By The End Of The Year.

127

I don't have any problems with the concept that one can bundle crappy paper together and, using only the top 10%, say, generate true A-paper.

The problem is when that percentage gets too high. Actually, I think 10% is getting pretty high because that corresponding high default rate (when the music stops playing) really screws the later tranches.

Now, I don't doubt that valuation of those instruments are more difficult, but I don't like the idea that people were floating that somehow the idea of bundling the B-paper and generating A-rated tranches out of the best performing pieces for any given period was some sort of fraud.

More difficult? Try impossible. That's simply because you can't really rely on the quality of the data a well informed investor would need. Historical models become just a guess and no longer a predictive tool to evaluate risk.

It's not fraud, but it is gaming the system. When a few people do it, and their volume is so small it doesn't really matter. When everybody does it, the whole system goes to hell.

128 People who are unable to create wealth act like the world owes them something.

129 132 Posted by: Jim in San Diego at May 20, 2010 11:47 AM (oIp16)

What Jim said is true, but the whole idea of disregarding the normal risk premiums banks normally price into loan products in favor of some larger social "goal" (at the Feds behest of course) started with the CRA. That and the fact that banks stopped holding onto their paper and starting securitizing it.

Posted by: volfan at May 20, 2010 11:59 AM (Tuf1i)

Yes and no. The real reason for securitizing debt was to increase the velocity of lending and move to a fee based profit model and away from servicing profit model. If I'm a bank, I can loan that same amount of money infinite times instead of just once (like I could in a traditional S&L in the 1950's).

130

I suspect that we -- the citizens of this debt-ridden Republic -- will have to step up and be that cop who pulls the drunk over.

Good post.  Unfortunately, the citizens of this debt-ridden Republic are, many of them, no more capable of getting it right than are the drunken and cowardly pols they elect.  This is what is bothering me.  Obama, Reid and Pelosi will leave, but the folks who gave us this disasterous, crushing debt and these awful pols are not going anywhere; rather, their numbers are increasing.

Here is where your analogy misses.  We, the rest of us, aren't children held captive by drunks and cowards.  We are adults, capable of and responsible for looking out for ourselves.  If we don't want to get back in the car with chronic drunks, people we know are not going to put down the bottle, then we had better bid them good luck, farewell and look for another ride home.

131 Posted by: Jim in San Diego at May 20, 2010 12:12 PM (oIp16)

Agreed.  But, as I wrote above, that process was generated by Fannie and Freddie scooping up the paper off of the originators' books, forcing them to go back out generate new loans of equally poor quality, with Fannie and Freddie giving the imprimatur of a federal government guarantee (implicit as it was - though we all knew the truth).  The lenders, once forced into this, jumped in happily with both feet, as it was easy cash for them, and they faced ruin or lawsuits if they didn't participate.

A further problem was the proliferation of variable rate mortgages (though the blame falls SQUARELY on individuals who took these loans out, not the sellers of them) which transferred interest rate risk to homeowners.  That added exposure to interest rate movements was magnified by the no-money-down nature of many loans, which made housing prices even more closely bound to interest rate movements - so that homeowners with variable rate mortgages were engaging in "Texas hedging", really.

132 I'm voting for "evil"  -- anyone clinging to centrally planned and managed economies after fascism and socialism imploded so thoroughly in the 20th century, but who still has enough reserve brainpower to tie their own shoes, has to be possessed by a lust for power and control that crosses into "evil".

133 I understand the point you are making Monty.
Unfortunately most people don't understand the ramifications of their behavior until the body is in the morgue.  The person who caused the wreckage is either dead or willfully ignorant of the destruction they have caused.

134

A further problem was the proliferation of variable rate mortgages (though the blame falls SQUARELY on individuals who took these loans out, not the sellers of them) which transferred interest rate risk to homeowners.  That added exposure to interest rate movements was magnified by the no-money-down nature of many loans, which made housing prices even more closely bound to interest rate movements - so that homeowners with variable rate mortgages were engaging in "Texas hedging", really.

Yes and no. Personally I would most outlaw variable rate residential lending.

Consumers DID NOT flock to those instruments. They were jammed down their throats by banks and S&Ls by cranking up the qualifications, fees and rates on fixed rate mortgages (and in the case of banks and S&Ls completely tanking the commissions paid to originators).

I worked at one particular S&L in the early 1990's (Home Saving - later bought by WaMu) that would pay roughly 1/10th the commission rate on a fixed rate loan than they would on an ARM.

If you did too many fixed rate mortgages, you were written up, and if you kept doing it, you were gotten rid-of. It never got to that point because you would starve to death first.

135

I suspect that we -- the citizens of this debt-ridden Republic -- will have to step up and be that cop who pulls the drunk over.

Heh. Too bad so many of our number are suceptible to a little cash with the ID trick...

136 What's worse is that the IQ of the group is lower than the sum of the parts. Traditional team building exercises predict the opposite.

137 I have to disagree. Stupidity isn't the cause. At the very heights of power, people like Obama know what they're doing won't help things. They are purposely destroying this nation to rebuild it into their leftist hell. Now their schills and followers may be stupid. It may be the majority cause of following failed leftist policies. But at the top they know what they're doing. And knowing the atrocities they are about to impose upon us they are truly EVIL.

138 By and large the our situation is not a result of evil. I don't see the evidence that the bulk of Democrats want to see millions of people out of work and dead. On their fringe, sure.

The greatest of giants can brought down by stupidity, greed, and utopianism. Our leviathan state has become such a complex system that no one person or any one group of people can comprehend the entirety.

When you have an ever-increasing, complex system that is managed by arrogant, mis-educated, politicians the result will be periodic dislocation and fracture. No evil required.

Humans are imperfect by nature; when they believe they adjust and manipulate their condition to such a degree to bring about paradise, disaster is certain. Again, only humanity is required.

Question; if you believe the Left is motivated by evil, what are you doing fucking around on a blog?

139 I'm generally with you, Monty. I think they're all over their heads (Benron, Turbo Timmy, Obambi as well as Hammerin Hank and Georgie before them) - but it's hard when you have members of the Administration openly talking about not letting a good crisis go to waste to not to think there might be a little malice there as well. Of course, they probably only wanted to set a couple of houses on fire, and now the entire east side (soon to be the entire city) is an inferno. Playing with matches, that's what it gets you.

140

What it comes down to is the (phony in my view) belief that money can be borrowed into existence. 

The Federal Reserve wills money into being, and they do that by debt.

Then that debt gets borrowed again and again, sort of a reverse compounding of interest.

It's exactly backwards of how something of true value comes into existence.

It really is the fairy tale of the Emperor's New Clothes.  In that tale, the ending has been rewritten to show a small child calling out the nekkid emperior.  In the original, those who pointed out the emperor's nekkidness were killed.  Therefore it was in everybody's best interest to go along with the lie. 

141 I don't think our politicians are acting out of malice...

There are a committed minority of politicians in America whose actions can be legitimately called "malicious."  Those who believe in Lenin, Alinksy, CPUSA and the left-radical fringe (e.g. Van Jones, Barbara Jordan, Maxine Waters, former Congresswoman McKinney* and a host of others) want America to be destroyed or so radically "reformed" that it resembles Soviet Russia (witness Jordan's unhealthy zeal for Castro, for instance).  They are somewhere around 10% of the body politic (still a distressingly huge number).

The second category display what we'd legally call "reckless indifference rising to the level of malice."  They act out of pure self-interest with no regard for what damage they inflict in their ruthless march to power.  They may not be throwing the bombs, but they don't give a damn about what happens when they play footsie with radical fringe types.  Barack and Blago define this category, along with the radical fringe enablers in Obama's administration - Jarrett and Emmanuel, to name just two*.  It's all about power, and the "God Damn America" folks represent votes we can garner to reach places where we can get rich and hand out favors to those of our friends who are in on "our thing."  I'd put them at a significant % but not a majority (say 20%).

The largest category are those you refer to who are in over their heads and just want to keep their jobs by sucking up, going along and getting along.  They get towed in the ideological direction of the more committed 30% above.  I'd put these guys around 50%.  Think John McCain and Bob Dole from the Right, and John Edwards and the Kennedys from the Left.  They mouth the slogans of their respective sides and play some shitty politics, but it's just to look busy.  They don't have the intensity of the 20% hustlers or the 10% bomb-lobbers and would happily vote "Present" then lay by their whiskey-dish if they had guaranteed jobs that made them "important" for life.

The remaining 20% are those who genuinely act in what they see as the public interest.  To spread some of the ideological credit around, I would put Lierberman in this category, and even Kucinich (for all that he sold out the Left on Obamacare).  The guys I'd vote for are here too (Ryan, Christie to name two).  Palin's in this spot for all that she doesn't have my vote.

*BTW baiters and haters, the fact that these lists contain nothing but black politicians is a reflection on those politicians' expressed views, not my "racism."  I'm not spending half an hour Googling for radical whiteys for "racial balance."

142 Agreed.  But, as I wrote above, that process was generated by Fannie and Freddie scooping up the paper off of the originators' books, forcing them to go back out generate new loans of equally poor quality, with Fannie and Freddie giving the imprimatur of a federal government guarantee

F & F did not take all loans. A huge 50% of the market sure, but they did not buy the bulk of the sub-prime and no-doc stuff. That stuff went to the securitized sausage.

The lenders, once forced into this, jumped in happily with both feet, as it was easy cash for them, and they faced ruin or lawsuits if they didn't participate.

Show me one lawsuit. The CRA enforced through renewing bank charters and participation in FDIC, not lawsuits. Again, the CRA thing was minor part of this debacle. As Jim stated above low-income housing loans were dwarfed by the other varieties.

A further problem was the proliferation of variable rate mortgages (though the blame falls SQUARELY on individuals who took these loans out, not the sellers of them) which transferred interest rate risk to homeowners.
Posted by: progressoverpeace

That doesn't let the sellers out of a duty to inform. Banks are and should be under a standard to disclose risks and, even more importantly, they should not be selling no-docs or ninjas. That's transparent fraud.

143 66 "Sorry dude, but this is BS. Deficit spending now begets [much] higher tax rates later (sooner if I were a betting man)" Maybe. Maybe not. Japan has had extremely high deficits for 22 years. It has not raised taxes to balance the budget. It has just kept spending. Today Japan's interest rates remain near zero, and inflation is negative. Of course their economy remains weak, which no doubt reduces inflationary pressures. Still, it would appear that high debt does not automatically lead to high interest rates, so there may not be any need for balancing the budget. "So, if the Feds cut off the spigot, which they will have to eventually either due to increased risk premiums or China saying no mas, the private economy simply can't take up the slack." China is a long way from saying no mas, and it is debatable whether we are anywhere close to a level of debt that would be unsustainable. If the debt is sustainable then we don't need to find "a way out," and efforts to do so would be counterproductive. It's at least arguable that we need more money in circulation to fund full employment, and that fears of inflation are hampering efforts to properly stimulate the economy.

144

59 But it's not really 'bring it ALL down.'  It's 'bring down everything else-- but leave me/mine still in charge at the top of the heap.'  The Left/Obamatons still believe that we'll go running to Daddy Gummint/Lord Humongous to save us from the wasteland.

Have you seen any recent photos from Haiti?  The earthquake was months ago, the country is drowning in mud & human waste, people are now living on sidewalks with plastic bags stretched over them.

But, if you look at photos of the Presidential Palace (it's mostly collapsed & unoccupied but still there) the Palace is still being maintained.  The wrought iron fence & gate are secure.  The grass is being mowed and impeccably maintained.  Hundreds of thousands are dead, millions more have lost everything except their lives, but the president & his palace are secure.  So yeah, Obama thinks he will survive even if he destroys all of us.

145 Years ago I came to the conclusion that No One Knows WTF They're Doing.

Once you figure that out the rest is easy!

146 148: +1

Some of the commenters seem to be buying the Keynesian fallacy that you can borrow your way to prosperity (e.g. 151 to some extent). 

This kind of thinking relies on the lenders' presumed irrationality or lack of diligence (or the moral hazard of hoping another sucker will guarantee the debt down the road).

While the results in some countries may be mixed-positive, America's 2008 bubble and Greece demonstrate what happens when someone gets caught without a chair in the musical-debt game.  Eventually the productive capacity represented by the overprinted money will be exceeded, and a massive crunch will result. 

Pointing to Japan's 22 year flirtation with insolvency as a model for prosperity ignores the lesson of Greece - what happens when the confidence game runs out of investors to Ponzi, as they all do ?

147 Pointing to Japan's 22 year flirtation with insolvency as a model for prosperity ignores the lesson of Greece It also ignores the fact that Japan's debt is mainly owed to it's own people, not to foreign investors -- but as the Japanese age and leave the workforce, the Japanese are going to have to roll their debt in foreign markets, and at a much higher rate of interest than they're used to. This is when the shit is truly going to hit the fan. Japan has the absolute worst of all worlds: high structural debt, demographic collapse, a rapidly-aging workforce, and very little immigration.

148

154 Pointing to Japan's 22 year flirtation with insolvency as a model for prosperity ignores the lesson of Greece  - what happens when the confidence game runs out of investors to Ponzi, as they all do ?

So true.  For years now, the USA has been the reserve currency of the world, and the backstop for everybody & everything.  Japan could flirt with insolvency for 22 years because we were here buying their cars, and doing the heavy lifting of being policeman to the world. 

All the countries of the world were free to waste their own money on social welfare 'feel good' programs, while Americans worked more hours in a day, more days in a week, and more weeks in a year. 

Now we have an administration of vandals that is laughing at us while destroying our way of life.  The wraps are coming off the ponzi scheme, let's see if the market manipulators keep it going awhile longer or start letting it crash.

149 Question; if you believe the Left is motivated by evil, what are you doing fucking around on a blog?

Posted by: Garbonzo the Garrulous at May 20, 2010 12:52 PM (zgd5N)

*********************
Wow, I get to go all Godwin....I believe that Nazism in Germany was an evil movement, but not that Germans were all evil. The fundamental underpinnings of the current Left are just as evil -- in fact, a significant amount are exactly the same -- but I don't believe that every Democrat is any more evil than the average rank-and-file Party Member of that bygone age.

If you then proceed to the policy makers of each group, you come to the inevitable conclusion that there are lesser and greater evils. We are many orders of magnitude away from horrors like the Final Solution, Mengele's medical experiments, and Goebbels' nonstop warping of the truth....but if you draw a line from "normal and reasonable" through the constant racist blame game of the current administration, or the Death Panels' QOFY calculations, or the MSM's casual parroting of the Left's talking points -- well, that's where you'd end up. Of course, it should also be remembered that if you draw a straight line from street level to the top of a curb, you eventually end up in outer space.

When someone wants to run my life despite my wishes, that's evil. When someone wants to choose winners and losers to ensure their friends prosper despite actual accomplishment, that's evil. When someone attempts to legislate lies as truth in order to amass political power, that's evil. You have to call it like it is, even if it's dressed up as individual mandates, earmarks, and cap-and-trade.

Further, all the sorts of things that one can do besides "fucking around on a blog" have their own problems. One could take up arms, fly to DC, and start hunting congressmen....which would be evil in its own way -- disregarding individual human life for the purpose of ideology is just the start. Refining arguments and methods, and mulling over possible courses of action in the political sphere, and debating silly questions like "stupid or evil?" may actually be the best current course of action. Besides, "all work and no play......"

150

To plumb the full depths of the parable, we're going to need to know who Monty's Mom was out drinking with, just what went on in the intervening hours, and you know they did have photography back then -- or it didn't happen.

You can't do Political Science analogies with your Freudian anxieties.

Without pics.

151 Oh, they're evil. They're avowed Marxists. Well, stupid Marxists in the pocket of union thugs and out of touch with reality. Are they doing it on purpose? Probably, there is the whole Cloward Piven theory, ya know. I guess the best bet is to get a cushy union job.

152 To further belabor the point regarding Monty's story -- it could go either way depending on context. If Monty's mom had never before tasted alcohol and had no knowledge of its effect....if nobody had ever heard of DWI....that would certainly push toward "stupid". If, by contrast, Monty's mom had gone on a bender several times before, and his uncle and a neighbor had both been involved in serious DWI incidents, then the "evil" involved begins to predominate.

If we hadn't spent a good part of the 20th century battling against statist foes, with much of the rest cleaning up the messes after their implosion, then people might plausibly be "stupid" about the consequences. If we hadn't seen how the heady wine of comfortable socialism robs people of initiative and condemns them to mediocrity or worse, then a little nip or two might just be "experimentation". Chugging down 1/6 of the economy, a couple of car companies, and student loans, however, starts to sound like chugging down every stray bit of hooch in the house. That one out of four dollars spent on these boondoggles was borrowed only compounds the wrong.

153

I wish that Monty's anology was true, but there is a problem - there is no one who can pull over these politicans, the public is as addicted to their handouts as the pols are addicted to handing them out.

only conservative political junkies like us are even aware that some kind of intervention is required, but we are constantly painted as racists and haters and all other kinds of vile crap so one listens to us.

Plato saw it all coming and warned us - when the children run the school every teacher is made a monster.

we ARE going to crash it's just a matter of when... only then will the children  cry for the adults. 

154 It is unwise to attribute to malice alone that which can be attributed to malice and stupidity. - Simon

155 #126
Right on, again. I however, am a cynic. I have been since 2006. When others voted the party line I became what I call a "Saint Crispin" (We few, we proud, we band of orphans") This was in regard to being a conservative and not voting for the Obama light, McCain. Yes, I voted third party, but not because I want one, because I voted for who was closest to my principles. Yes, I am a Tea Party person.

I disagree that we have five years. It will be less than 18 months. Once the election is over and the economy keeps diving, hyperinflation will occur quite rapidly. Everything that is happening now is being ignored by the left, and those who support such shit policies.  They are going to wake up and say WTF? But, even those of us who see it coming are not safe.

Guns. Food. Shelter. Check.

It won't matter where your money is because it will have no value.

156

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158 DefendUSA,

We have less then 18 months, hun.

We have a month or two at most before the caca really hits the fan.

159 Throughout history, when civilizations (economies) have failed, war follows. I fear we're staring down the barrel of a gun right now.

160 Not Evil, Just StupidWhy not both:

The elected officials are mostly stupid; They have to be, not to see
that they are amongst the sacrificial lambs.

The Powers That Be are evil; They do not care how many sheep
are led to the slaughter, as long as they get to eat mutton,  pick wool out of their teeth, and survive the slaughter.

Some of TPTB may advocate crashing the system sooner, rather
than later, so have as much of it as possible still standing after the
die-off, thus making the renaissance easier; None of them admit
to themselves that they will not be able to survive the crash
of an industrialized, urbanized system optimized for efficiency
rather than reliability or failure tolerance, a system which has
just-in-time delivery of the necessities of life, with _maybe_
a week of those necessities in the pipeline.

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