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darmanad

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"Inside Job" is an angry and elegant new documentary from entrepreneur-turned-filmmaker Charles Ferguson, who took on the mismanagement of America's war in Iraq in his Oscar-nominated "No End in Sight." It might well be the most important film you see this year, and the most important documentary of this young century. In clear, ruthless and specific detail, Ferguson explains how the ongoing financial collapse that began in 2008 was itself caused by the criminal greed of the global financial elite that ordinary citizens had (unwisely) trusted, empowered by government deregulation and by the viral spread of rapacious free-market ideology.
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/...y%20Newsletter%20%28Not%20Premium%29_7_30_110
 
Can you watch it online? It got an excellent review in the NY Times.
 
SaraSara said:
Can you watch it online? It got an excellent review in the NY Times.

Well of course the NY Times loved it. It's another FAR left propaganda attack on the Bush Admin.

I'm sure that 200 hours of footage gives an accurate depiction of a war that has lasted over 8 years.

Michael Moore would be proud.
 
The best piece ever written about the roots of the financial meltdown.
-------------------

The New York Times
OP-Ed COLUMNIST
June 1, 2009

Reagan Did It

By PAUL KRUGMAN

“This bill is the most important legislation for financial institutions in the last 50 years. It provides a long-term solution for troubled thrift institutions. ... All in all, I think we hit the jackpot.” So declared Ronald Reagan in 1982, as he signed the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act.

He was, as it happened, wrong about solving the problems of the thrifts. On the contrary, the bill turned the modest-sized troubles of savings-and-loan institutions into an utter catastrophe. But he was right about the legislation’s significance. And as for that jackpot — well, it finally came more than 25 years later, in the form of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

For the more one looks into the origins of the current disaster, the clearer it becomes that the key wrong turn — the turn that made crisis inevitable — took place in the early 1980s, during the Reagan years.

Attacks on Reaganomics usually focus on rising inequality and fiscal irresponsibility. Indeed, Reagan ushered in an era in which a small minority grew vastly rich, while working families saw only meager gains. He also broke with longstanding rules of fiscal prudence.

On the latter point: traditionally, the U.S. government ran significant budget deficits only in times of war or economic emergency. Federal debt as a percentage of G.D.P. fell steadily from the end of World War II until 1980. But indebtedness began rising under Reagan; it fell again in the Clinton years, but resumed its rise under the Bush administration, leaving us ill prepared for the emergency now upon us.

The increase in public debt was, however, dwarfed by the rise in private debt, made possible by financial deregulation. The change in America’s financial rules was Reagan’s biggest legacy. And it’s the gift that keeps on taking.

The immediate effect of Garn-St. Germain, as I said, was to turn the thrifts from a problem into a catastrophe. The S.& L. crisis has been written out of the Reagan hagiography, but the fact is that deregulation in effect gave the industry — whose deposits were federally insured — a license to gamble with taxpayers’ money, at best, or simply to loot it, at worst. By the time the government closed the books on the affair, taxpayers had lost $130 billion, back when that was a lot of money.

But there was also a longer-term effect. Reagan-era legislative changes essentially ended New Deal restrictions on mortgage lending — restrictions that, in particular, limited the ability of families to buy homes without putting a significant amount of money down.

These restrictions were put in place in the 1930s by political leaders who had just experienced a terrible financial crisis, and were trying to prevent another. But by 1980 the memory of the Depression had faded. Government, declared Reagan, is the problem, not the solution; the magic of the marketplace must be set free. And so the precautionary rules were scrapped.

Together with looser lending standards for other kinds of consumer credit, this led to a radical change in American behavior.

We weren’t always a nation of big debts and low savings: in the 1970s Americans saved almost 10 percent of their income, slightly more than in the 1960s. It was only after the Reagan deregulation that thrift gradually disappeared from the American way of life, culminating in the near-zero savings rate that prevailed on the eve of the great crisis. Household debt was only 60 percent of income when Reagan took office, about the same as it was during the Kennedy administration. By 2007 it was up to 119 percent.

All this, we were assured, was a good thing: sure, Americans were piling up debt, and they weren’t putting aside any of their income, but their finances looked fine once you took into account the rising values of their houses and their stock portfolios. Oops.

Now, the proximate causes of today’s economic crisis lie in events that took place long after Reagan left office — in the global savings glut created by surpluses in China and elsewhere, and in the giant housing bubble that savings glut helped inflate.

But it was the explosion of debt over the previous quarter-century that made the U.S. economy so vulnerable. Overstretched borrowers were bound to start defaulting in large numbers once the housing bubble burst and unemployment began to rise.

These defaults in turn wreaked havoc with a financial system that — also mainly thanks to Reagan-era deregulation — took on too much risk with too little capital.

There’s plenty of blame to go around these days. But the prime villains behind the mess we’re in were Reagan and his circle of advisers — men who forgot the lessons of America’s last great financial crisis, and condemned the rest of us to repeat it.

==========


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/opinion/01krugman.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
 
darmanad said:
"Inside Job" is an angry and elegant new documentary from entrepreneur-turned-filmmaker Charles Ferguson, who took on the mismanagement of America's war in Iraq in his Oscar-nominated "No End in Sight." It might well be the most important film you see this year, and the most important documentary of this young century. In clear, ruthless and specific detail, Ferguson explains how the ongoing financial collapse that began in 2008 was itself caused by the criminal greed of the global financial elite that ordinary citizens had (unwisely) trusted, empowered by government deregulation and by the viral spread of rapacious free-market ideology.
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/...y%20Newsletter%20%28Not%20Premium%29_7_30_110


thanks darmanad. it's great to see material like this being released as more people come to the realization that the financial crisis was indeed completely planned in order to advance the agenda of the global elite.

i must say that i feel somewhat vindicated as i've been saying as much since i joined this board about 2 yrs ago. i have been repeatedly scoffed at, demonized and called a conspiracy theorist - indeed these are not conspiracy theories.

i've been championing gold and silver for the past 2 years and guess what? you would have more than doubled your money if you had invested even just 2 yrs ago. not too many asset classes that can make that claim.

i spoke about the falling value of the dollar and the drop in the living standard of the average american. i told all of you that there would be no financial recovery - all right on schedule.

i spoke about obama being a fraud and that hope and change were nothing more than phony rhetoric. indeed, nothing has changed since he's been in office - quite the contrary, he has only served to continue the globalist agenda.

feel free to look up my past posts in order to verify. it's all documented for those who care to check.

am i some kind of prophet? no. i simply stumbled upon the globalist scum agenda. from there it was easy to predict what would happen.

sara if i can give you one tip, stop reading anything that paul krugman has to say. the man is a hack and anything he writes will only serve to lead you away from the truth. he will attempt to give you half truths, add spin, then eventually lead you back into the false left vs right paradigm.

as i've said many many countless times on this board - there is no difference between democrat and republican. they both work for the same team and no matter who is president - some aspect of the globalist agenda is being served.

generally speaking, we should begin to move away from traditional media sources as well as the impostors that are deified by them.

the fact that krugman, obama and al gore all have nobel prizes means nothing - they are all bums working within the confines of an utterly corrupt and thoroughly compromised good ol' boy establishment in which only the agenda of a small group of power elite is represented.
 
Can't say any better.
It is pretty well known scheme of using known figures or characters to cover-up current "dealing". Sonsabitches at their best.
 
redrum said:
thanks darmanad. it's great to see material like this being released as more people come to the realization that the financial crisis was indeed completely planned in order to advance the agenda of the global elite.

i must say that i feel somewhat vindicated as i've been saying as much since i joined this board about 2 yrs ago. i have been repeatedly scoffed at, demonized and called a conspiracy theorist - indeed these are not conspiracy theories.

i've been championing gold and silver for the past 2 years and guess what? you would have more than doubled your money if you had invested even just 2 yrs ago. not too many asset classes that can make that claim.

i spoke about the falling value of the dollar and the drop in the living standard of the average american. i told all of you that there would be no financial recovery - all right on schedule.

i spoke about obama being a fraud and that hope and change were nothing more than phony rhetoric. indeed, nothing has changed since he's been in office - quite the contrary, he has only served to continue the globalist agenda.

feel free to look up my past posts in order to verify. it's all documented for those who care to check.

am i some kind of prophet? no. i simply stumbled upon the globalist scum agenda. from there it was easy to predict what would happen.

sara if i can give you one tip, stop reading anything that paul krugman has to say. the man is a hack and anything he writes will only serve to lead you away from the truth. he will attempt to give you half truths, add spin, then eventually lead you back into the false left vs right paradigm.

as i've said many many countless times on this board - there is no difference between democrat and republican. they both work for the same team and no matter who is president - some aspect of the globalist agenda is being served.

generally speaking, we should begin to move away from traditional media sources as well as the impostors that are deified by them.

the fact that krugman, obama and al gore all have nobel prizes means nothing - they are all bums working within the confines of an utterly corrupt and thoroughly compromised good ol' boy establishment in which only the agenda of a small group of power elite is represented.

I was slightly excited by reading this :)
 
jaredwb said:
Well of course the NY Times loved it. It's another FAR left propaganda attack on the Bush Admin.

Ah yes, the far left NY Times. I'm reminded of a recent piece by Paul Craig Roberts:

My conservative and Republican acquaintances believe that the “liberal media” is destroying America. When I ask them to identify the liberal media, the usual reply is, “all of it!” I ask them about Fox “News,” CNN, and point out that the TV networks are no longer independent but parts of large corporate conglomerates and that all
of the “liberal” news anchors have been fired or died off.


At that point my acquaintances fall back on the New York Times and the Washington Post.


I remind them that the invasion of Iraq would not have been possible without the New York Times leading the way. Judith Miller filled that newspaper with the neoconservative/Bush regime propaganda that was orchestrated to make the public accept US aggression toward Iraq. The Times later sort of apologized and Miller departed the paper.


That left the Washington Post, apparently long a CIA asset, as the “liberal media” that is destroying America, until on October 31 the paper’s long-time pundit, David Broder, wrote that Obama should spend the next two years disarming the Republicans and renewing the economy by orchestrating a showdown with Iran. Going to war with Iran, “the greatest threat to the world,” would simultaneously unite Republicans with Obama and restore the economy. By following Broder’s prescription, Obama “will have made the world safer and may be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history.”


Here we have the “liberal” Broder at the “liberal” Washington Post advocating the neoconservative’s desired war with Iran.
 
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