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Listen, I’m willing to give just about anybody the benefit of the doubt. There are tonnes (sic) of confused posters on this site, as evidenced by the jumbled and disjointed list of demands, points of order and general temper tantrums archived on Monsieur Le Fly’s two “discussion posts” this weekend. Some of them offer contradictory recommendations, seeming to hate the government-banking cabal that’s all but run this country since the turn of the 20th century, but then recommending an even stronger government regime to take it’s place.
Folks, this is replacing the loan shark with the prison warden. I agree that we need to break the cycle of supported failure that crescendoed upon us in late 2008, but 2000 page bills from “friendly” members of Congress do nothing but cement that cycle. The first thing you need to do is force the banks to stand on their own. If that means forcing a complete separation from the Fed– which was the original intent — then so be it. If the Fed wants to “rescue” one of its lender institutions, let it do so without our tax dollar.
I am convinced, as you know, that we did nothing but “kick the can down the road” in 2008, and that TARP and all of these other remedies are doing nothing but setting us up for another voluminous group of failures. This is because we let the same cronies that supported the massively corrupt Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac write the “reform” bills that instituted a system where mega-banks, those egregious leviathans, can be bailed out, ad infinitum, by you and I, rather than allowed to fail or break up as normal businesses that fail must do.
There were many silly (and frankly, Marxist) definitions of capitalism promulgated on these board this weekend, but the worst were those that associated capitalism with this recent spate of bailouts. If capitalism is about anything, it’s about the creative destruction of old forms in order to allow innovation to drive progress forward.
This betrayal of true capitalism is why the recent bailouts of dinosaurs like AIG and GM and Chrysler were so pernicious. The breakup of GM would have freed billions of dollars in contract-bound assets and quite possibly sparked a whole new revolution in disaggregated auto manufacturing. Allowing AIG to dispense its well-deserved CDS losses to Goldman Sachs may have hurt Uncle Warren a bit in his pinchy pockets, but think of the logjam in the wealth managment business such action would have broken up.
Think about it — AB Bernstein is probably one of the most respected names in money managment. They are also the chief competitor in private banking to Goldman Sachs, in terms of research and institutional managment. Why should they be penalized because they did the right thing?
It’s the wrong thing that it worked out that way, and one need not be a hippy despoiling a small park to realize that.
My argument with (many of) the hippies is that asking for more government to “regulate” such nonsense is just asking for more trouble. Believe the fact that the large banks own Congress right now, and there single aim is to be dominant to the point where smaller banks are irrelevant annoyances. Believe also that this aligns with Congress’s aims as well. Why have to stretch your hand out to thousands of contributors when you can keep it to a neat and tidy ten or so?
Think about it. The only way to break the cycle is to take the power to “Stick-Save” out of Congress’s hands. Allow businesses to fail and you will create a stronger business arena from which to compete. That’s real capitalism, and that’s what’s best for everyone — to whatever percentage they might subscribe.
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I’m thinking the hippies may be buying gold here, however because I’m seeing some interesting formations in the weekly charts. Take a look at our friend the double gold bull ETF, DGP:
Note how our price maintained support at those two key support lines over the last three weeks? That’s a good sign. The amount of room left in the stochastics also tells me that this run is not over. What’s more, our stop loss line is pretty clearly demarcated here.
You can see the same action in a more exacting stand alone stock, the famous ANVil of ANV. As capricious as this stock is known to be, it also seems to be adhering to the same rule of law that DGP has been.
My best to you all in these harrowing times.
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Crap… I’ll have to fix that when I get home…
It looks…occupied.
You don’t know the half of it.
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Fixed!
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Silly hippies.
Here they come…
Just in time for Halloween – when all the other children dress up and play make believe.
They are making it easy for a lot of folks looking for last minute costume ideas.
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Jake- you supported TARP in 2008, what caused you to change your position on it now?
Nice post.
No, I didn’t.
And I especially did not support TARP for AIG and GM/Chrysler.
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I’ve got to admit, you are probably the most consistent person I know.
It’s pretty clear, once you take time to read their memoirs and various offshoot web sites, think tanks and all of their commissioned articles and books, that the central bankers would like to restructure the world politically to align with UN Agenda 21. The Bank of International Settlements already coordinates 57 top central bankers, though the BIS now needs recognition as the new world bank.
It’s already planned out. To believe there is still a choice is to be oblivious, IMO.
What is UN Agenda 21 again?
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Almost 20 year old initiative that ultimately puts at risk private ownership of land, homes, cars…as well as travel. It’s social justice on a global scale designed like all good socialist programs to punish the wealthy and spread it around.
It has gotten play in our government from a Clinton-era executive order to study it and HW Bush support.
George Soros is a big supporter through one of his many cash funnels.
Do you have anything more concrete than that?
Sounds a little ethereal.
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It is totally ethereal.
Best start here:
http://www.citizenreviewonline.org/2011/Feb/sustainable_development.html
Anything I write would not be as succinct as that short essay.
It is mostly concerned with “sustainable development”. A socialists wet dream.
Here’s where it gets sticky: The International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) support Agenda 21 which in turn the ICLEI is funded by Soros.
ICLEI is now entrenched in numerous US cities which by extension means the UN holds sway over environmental decisions at the local level in this country.
1762 cities working for “sustainability”:
http://www.icleiusa.org/sustainability/sustainability-overview
Conspiracy minded folks would ask if you want local governments agreeing to rules and regulations set up by a UN-based organization that wants private property transferred to government control.
Sounds bat shit crazy. Agenda 21 is just a little portion of a much bigger UN socialist problem. It has roots dating all the way back to some Vancouver Declaration on Human Settlements in 1976 whereby the UN discussed private ownership of land as bad.
Note the board of directors for ICLEI. Liberals, the lot of them.
They must be uprooted, root and branch.
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If someone is an abuser of drugs it is probably partly his fault. If someone is an abuser of the system, it is partly their fault. Yes, the occupy crowd is dumb for putting this all on the shoulders of the rich international bankers. This is just want the Gov’t wants and it’s Obama’s way of saying “it’s the rich’s fault first, then the republicans for not voting to do something about those “evil doers”.
It is not the 1% but more like the 1% of the 1%. It is a few guys that corrupted power in washington.
Democrats no doubt support the occupy and it’s marxist movement, tea partiers are trying and hoping they can redirect the focus of occupy group to the “enablers/drug dealers” rather than the abusers.
I certainly think that the system needs structural reform
I’m sure OWS people would have forgotten all about the bailouts if unemployment wasn’t a +20% shadowstats.com level and nearing 10% officially and 17% officially for underemployment+unemployment.
Afterall, George Bush senior created a bailout package, George Bush Jr did, and Obama did, but the rioting is starting now because
1)Obama wants them to deflect the blame
2)Obama didn’t do the economy any favors
3)The bailouts are getting bigger as the system is becoming more fragile.
Then of course there’s all the other issues that are coming up such as social security and medical care and welfare and the government’s military budget and the large amount of debt to GDP expected to continue to rise, Europe falling apart, etc.
I can’t blame people for wanting to do something, I just wish they were better educated.
Agreud.
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If TARP was intended to really impact the economy, then they should have shaved 25% of all mortgages and that would have PREVENTED the massive foreclosures and mitigated, not prevented the long term bear market in real estate. That would have eased the pain, but that was NOT the concern. If everyone stayed in their homes but the PRIMARY DEALERS collapsed, who would sell the government debt? So if you think the Democrats really care about the poor, think again! This is all about keeping the debt game going.
Excellent post sir.
Your hero Jim Cramer now supports #OWS.
My hero?
You are on the wrong blog. Check with the one at which you were recently banned.
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LOL
Great post Jake. That pic of Ba-Ba-Ba-Barney Frank looks like a mug shot.
Why are these kids not occupying the colleges and universities who ripped them off?
Why are they not demonstrating against the federal government’s harsh regulations and non-incentives for hiring?
Why are they not marching on Dodd and Frank’s homes for virtually destroying the economy via the housing market?
Why are the kids not asking for honest reporting from the media?
Why are these kids aligning themselves with job destruction and wealth destroying Marxists, Socialists and Communists?
OWS and the Tea Parties actually have a lot in common. Unfortunately OWS wants MORE government to solve their problems. The Tea Party wants less government.
OWS clearly shows how pathetic, how leftist, our education system is.
For 50 years we have had a statist big government. Left-right. GOP-Democrat. They are all the same. We now have an administration that is complicit with the Marxist/Communist movement that is being promoted by the media. He stands with them. I have never been more worried about the welfare of this country.
LOL, top ticking Cramer supporting the OWS movement surely means a stampede of cops on big retarded horses will surely ride through the park within 24 hours grinding the protesters into Hippie Dust.
Lol.
Hilarious.
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I said Hippie Dust.
What did I tell you about that Skiffles 200 day EMA?
Wait til you see the chart tonight… unbelievable.
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Will it be a darker shade of black?
Jake,
You know, there are a number of points on which I agree with you, with Fannie/Freddie being one… But don’t put the cart before the horse. This fiasco has happened because of deregulation, not in spite of it. To blame this on congress is an egregious violation of logic and common sense, not to mention history. And don’t blame the fed. They Didn’t bring this on. A certain ayn rand-waving central banker, though, certainly deserves much of the blame.
All my best,
The loyal opposition
Wrong. If anything this was caused by increased regulation, in the form of Congressional intereference in the banking markets.
The only decrease in regulation was a loosening of the traditional leverage rules. Again, that mistake could’ve been amended by allowing the gambling asshats who abused leverage to fail.
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Yes Yes Yes… Jake, that pretty much sums it all up. Well said
Do you not understand the concept of moral hazard?
Whether you want to put the cart before the horse or horse before the cart, the point is the banks had an implicit govt guarantee against failure, they understood this very well, and so took on exorbitant risk which they otherwise wouldn’t have.
Without failure you can’t have capitalism. In a truly freed market there is only one way for a business to succeed and that is by serving the consumer.
Businesses unable to adequately serve loose their resources as they are eventually transferred into the hands of the more capable.
Um, yes, thanks for the synopsis.
Points off for the egregious spelling of “Lose,” however.
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Well said. When you strip out the Republican partisanship and talking points from your arguments, you actually make a lot of sense.
My talking points are not “Republican” per se. They are, if anything, “conservative,” or better yet “classically liberal.”
The Republicans tend to agree with me (perhaps I should put “agree” in quotes?) more than the Dems because they at least claim that they want smaller government.
The problem is, Congressional power is immensely corrupting, even for alleged GOP’ers. However, we may actually finally have a sea change with some of these new (2010) Republicans that were ushered in by the Tea Party complaints. They actually seem not to be interested in playing “the Washington Game.”
If you read some of the conservative blogs, you will see how many K-Street ex-GOP operatives are in open arms revolt about the audacity of some of these freshman, who refuse to “play by the rules.”
There may be some hope yet.
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I read Red State, Free Republic, and The Corner on a regular basis to keep my finger on the pulse of the “conservative” movement, and you call out the left for crazy talk. Couple of items of note, Erik Erickson recognizing that there may be some common ground with OWS. I see many on the conservative side making the same base generalizations as the left did re: the Tea Party, there are nutty elements on both sides but the focus on the nuttiness causes people to miss the bigger picture. There is some serious churn going on in the country. The left is in the process of getting in front of it like the right did with the tea party. From my perspective the right (tea party) seems to be on the side of wall street and OWS are on the side of “the people.” All the rage against the dirty fucking hippies must put a smile on the face of Christ…Rush Limbaugh supporting the LRA is pure insanity and electrocuting Mexicans is right up there…bottom line is there is lots of crazy fuckers on the right..but the back in forth in pointing this all out is a distraction…corporations are not people and money is not speech..maybe we start with trying to find common ground like the recent attempts by Erik Erickson to move things forward.
You can chuck your illogical, straw man insults all you want (the tea party on the side of Wall Street? Could you be more stupid?), but the fact is, the form of government you seek is the same as that held by slave states for time immemorial, and will lead to the same unhappy end.
You can dress it up in hippy dippy happiness all you want, but in the end yours is the route to less freedom, authoritarian rule, and eventually, callous, unthinking state murder.
Read history, and get your head out of the clouds. Lenin spoke of “the useful idiots,” — research the term and his usage.
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Typical thoughtless response…seems you are really stuck in your thinking….Herman Cain is on the side of Wall Street banisters. It will be fun to watch your hysterical responses as the shit gets real and the protestors demand bank nationalizations and income redistribution. Of course you would have had the same response if you were around when social security and Medicare were proposed…the beginning of American communism. Fuck you.
Btw, if you want to read someone who makes a lot of sense, read John Hussman’s prescriptions for the OWC crowd.
Granted, I don’t back every point he makes (especially some of the solutions which lean toward more “big gov’t answers”), but his diagnosis of the criminality of what was done by the Fed and Congress is spot on.
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Ignore the video I sent via email.
It was a Mama Bear and two cubs visiting me tonight when I grilled a steak on the grill.
It won’t convert to Quicktime.
I believe it to be a sign of the bear market.
No, I downloaded Quicktime and saw it. Not sure how I could post it here, however.
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Banning is for pussies. The Fly is looking to create a echo chamber.
He doesn’t suffer fools as easily as I do.
Of course, I like pinata’ing lefties, too.
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