Dear People Scared Of The (Big) Government

[MikeMike]

Unenforceable. You can explore thousands of loopholes. Brazil has even more "strict" banking standard and it has a MONSTER real estate bubble. We used to hear the same crap: It cannot happen in Brazil, our baking system is ultra-regulated. 30% minimum down payment. Banks cannot operate as hedge funds. No loan made beyond market value of the collateral Yada, yada, yada.

Then you inflate the evaluation of the collateral. People took short term loans or family loans for the 20% down payment. etc...

Ya, maybe. Depends on the implementation? I'll admit, I couldn't imagine a law being passed in the US that would actually be effective and not riddled w/ loopholes as you mention (given the influence the financial sector).

Go Argentina-style? 50% down, 10 yr loans, 40% interest rates and an all cash market ?

 

[gsi16386]

Just curious as to where individual responsibility plays into all this. Should one not read the fine print on what they're borrowing? Should banks not be allowed to fail if they package loans to individuals whom can't afford it?

Gov't should have moved out of the way of the housing market. There should have never been any Fannie or Freddie and there never should have been any bailouts, period. Bottom line is gov't put stipulations on loans, pushed them to be packaged foolishly with the backing of the US gov't and then bailed everyone out at the taxpayers' expense when it didn't work out. They should have never had their hands in the real estate market at all.

And to those individuals whom are underwater on their assets (me included), there has to be some form of individual responsibility for your actions. Every day I wake up and take it like a man...on the chin, but like a man and I don't blame a lack of gov't regulations for my misfortune. If anything, I blame gov't intervention into a free market.

 

[Joe]

Reducing government control leaves it to corporations to step in that are even less democratic then governments. At least we can vote against a government.

Just take a look recent history and take note of the horrors the US have committed compared to the big governments or Europe.

With corporations you don't have to buy their products, they can't tax you and they can't take you off to the gulag - governments on the other hand...

Regarding the US, it is also a giant government, more people are on government assistance than ever before as the economy has supposedly recovered, a giant military industrial complex controlled by the beloved government. Bank bailouts, socialization of bank losses instead of the free market approach that allows failures to fail. The US is no poster boy for small government - not in the least! In fact the US is one of the many poster boys of the failure of big government.

The Libertarian believes in a small government - INCLUDING the military. And this is not any far fetched idea because this is basically the US and many other countries (including Argentina) for the 1800s and the first 3/4 of the 1900s. It worked, every generation, people were wealthier than before. This increase of wealth only ended with the start of the big government era we have today.

 

[JamJam]

The Libertarian believes in a small government - INCLUDING the military. And this is not any far fetched idea because this is basically the US and many other countries (including Argentina) for the 1800s and the first 3/4 of the 1900s. It worked, every generation, people were wealthier than before. This increase of wealth only ended with the start of the big government era we have today.

So how was the level of education in 1900? Or perhaps the amount of malnutrition compared to today?

 

[PhilinBSAS]

With corporations you don't have to buy their products, they can't tax you and they can't take you off to the gulag - governments on the other hand...

Regarding the US, it is also a giant government, more people are on government assistance than ever before as the economy has supposedly recovered, a giant military industrial complex controlled by the beloved government. Bank bailouts, socialization of bank losses instead of the free market approach that allows failures to fail. The US is no poster boy for small government - not in the least! In fact the US is one of the many poster boys of the failure of big government.

The Libertarian believes in a small government - INCLUDING the military. And this is not any far fetched idea because this is basically the US and many other countries (including Argentina) for the 1800s and the first 3/4 of the 1900s. It worked, every generation, people were wealthier than before. This increase of wealth only ended with the start of the big government era we have today.

Incoherent, unsubstantiated and myth-making ignorance

A real libertarian has no more confidence in private corporatism than in state corporatism

This is where one of these hysterical unreconstructed reaganites ended up who pretend to themselves they are libertarians and then turn "survivalist" with a cache of guns and blood on their hands because they feel mad enough to attack "big government"

in reality to shoot some old bloke who was driving some kids to school and who bravely had sufficient sense of community to try to prevent their abduction

This arrant nonsense is fast becoming a symptom of a national paranoia - as corporate capitalism fails to deliver

How many more of the ilk of these will end up dead in holes? Sad sociopathic rootless malcontents who attempt to rewrite history in their own image - and actually serve corporate capitalism well by distracting attention from some of the real issues such as effective and efficient regulation and control

http://usnews.nbcnew...ker-by-fbi?lite

 

[Joe]

This is where one of these hysterical unreconstructed reaganites ended up who pretended to themselves they are libertarians and then turn "survivalist" with a cache of guns and blood on their hands because they feel mad enough to attack "big government"

This is an example of the famous propaganda technique of the Big Lie (Große Lüge)

BS Phil took my straight-forward argument in favor of small government and then somehow associated with Mass Murdering Gun Nuts - not as elegantly done as Goebbels - but he is trying.

The Cronies - all that benefit from the current system - will utilize any propaganda technique to keep the status quo. You see BS Phil is one of the Cronies - one of the beneficiaries of the status quo. As an academic he feeds like a fat pig at the public trough. We pay his salary so he can continue to be a parasite to the system. The problem is that if the parasites get too strong the host starts to die, e.g 55% youth unemployment, price controls, currency controls etc. which can lead to complete societal breakdown, anarchy and death.

 

[JamJam]

1st: Crisis caused by the banking industries

2nd: Banks are given the states money

3rd: Blame is transferred from the banks to the poor.

 

[JamJam]

This increase of wealth only ended with the start of the big government era we have today.

Factually incorrect. Only since the financial crisis (caused by the banks) will the next generation be poorer than the last.

Your trying to transfer the blame of the finical crisis on 'big government'.

 

[Joe]

1st: Crisis caused by the banking industries

2nd: Banks are given the states money

3rd: Blame is transferred from the banks to the poor.

This occurred due to what is called "Regulatory Capture", i.e the capture of regulatory agencies by corporations.

With the simple regulations of Glass-Siegal no major financial calamities occurred for 50 years. The confluence of big corporations with Big Government allow this shameful wealth transfer to occur.

In the Cold Capitalist days, that most of you look back on with dread, these banks would have been left to go bust.

If you think that the bank bailouts were an example of capitalism, you need to dig out the Econ 101 textbook.

What we have now is NOT Free Market Capitalism - it is "Crony Capitalism" or more accurately "Socialism for the Rich". Also see Fascism and Plutocracy.

 

[JamJam]

Big government? This doesn't have anything to do with it. Its because the government can be manipulated by big business we have this problem. Making the government smaller won't help.

A darwin type free market, survival of the fittest sounds good and may work for a while but what you'll see is that the rich and powerful will try to acquire as much wealth as possible, hence we are seeing wealth ever more concentrated in the few.

Just look at the most capitalist country in the world, USA and their shocking level of health care and concentration of wealth in the few.
Now compare that to Germany, Sweden or Denmark.