Politics
Out of context: Reply #5773
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- TheBlueOne0
I half-agree with you designbot...disagree with you on the primary role of things like the Community Redevelopment Act etc.
One way of looking at it is we no longer operate an economy of scarcity. In this Marx was right, that industrial society can produce goods, and cheaply enough, to satisfy all the basic necessities of life. After you provide that, the question becomes - Then what?
Sure, we had this huge Post-War boom from 1946 onwards, but real wages stopped increasing in about the early 70's - and we had our first crash then. I posit it's because all the major consumer goods had reached it's apex in the US - everybody had by that point TV's, radios, cars, furniture, etc. You had up to that point capital investment into means of production because it did produce high rates of return in investment. Once the market was saturated, not so much. It's at exactly that point you see two developments - the outreach for globalized markets and the construction again of financial instruments designed to produce profit without any real productive value. That combined with even MORE focus on marketing/advertising and planned obsolesence of products.
These are some very deep issues that we as a society and as a civilization has to address, and I am of the opinion that the COnservatives do not have the tools to respond to this crisis in the short and long-term basically for the reasons George Lakoff outlines here in his point #6:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2…
And that whole essay is well worth reading if you want to understand what Obama is saying.
Anyway, back to the economic thing - We saw a couple of bubbles grow and burst because we have in fact an excess of liquidity sloshing around...too much money that can't be invested profitably in production, thus the rush for the tech bubble in the 90's and then this one-two combo of the housing bubble combined with a bubble based on financial instruments using those mortgages as collateral. As much as the Republicans want to lay the fault of this at the feet of near-sighted greedy poor people who just wanted what everyone else had, these mortgages were pushed onto that market segment by the banks. Poor people wanting things they can't afford is normal, rich people exploiting them for their own gain is the moral hazard here, and a system that does exactly that, and when it blows up, turns around and blames the poor people is not only usury, but borders on psychopathy.
That said, I'm not sure what the answer lies in this propping up of the banking system currently going on - the system is broke. I liked alot of what Obama said last night, and how he said. But this bit with getting the credit markets flowing again? I'm not a believer in what he's done so far. Their not moving because there is absolutely no way to know who holds what and any measurable way as of yet to assign market value to it. Everyone is afraid that what they hold is worthless, and even more afraid that what the guy next to them is holding is worth even less. Nationalization is one way to do this. Letting the market just go by itself is another, although that might be so painful to society (here and abroad) that you invite deep and lasting social disturbances that will tear apart societies and governments. That is probably not a risk the world is willing to pay.
But doing these half measures is like ripping a band-aid off slowly. I'm of the opinion that Obama is playing a longer game and is holding his cards close to his vest. I think he's doing a lot of headfakes for expedient political purposes.At least I hope that is the case, if not than it's getting close to a blind and short-sighted direction of failure.
- Well said. In regards to the Community Redevelopment Act I think it was a bad idea, but I agree you can't make the 1-to-1 here. There were no guns pointed at these lenders heads....greed is the key word.designbot
- there were no guns pointed at these lenders heads....greed is the key word.designbot
- so l...o.....n... . ... .. ...********
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- @getrefresh
?designbot - He's used to 30 second blips of information from FOX to get his talking points...TheBlueOne
- ..anything longer than a paragraph forces the "What are you, an egghead?" default response.TheBlueOne