Banks are not forced to make huge profits that drive up their share price and create huge dividends for their stockholders. They CHOOSE to make huge profits that drive up their share price and create huge dividends because they CAN. They didn't used to.

You speak like banks are supposed to act like a charity, or a public work like a sidewalk. Banks didn't 'used to' try to earn profits? When was that - exactly? Profits on home loans used to be based on the interest. Why did that change? Because politicians changed the laws. Loans became cheap and the poor, middle-class, and rich all started getting bigger loans (or more loans) that they couldn't have gotten under the old system. They all did it not because banks were 'forcing' them, but because they could make out like bandits while it was all clicking.

Canada didn't have the same problems our country had, because they had BANKING REGULATIONS.

Regulations that the US also had before government interfered in the marketplace. Government removed Glass-Steagall - not the banks. Prog-libs may whine about the banks acting unscrupulously, but you don't see mass arrests and prosecutions do you? Why? Because the cold hard reality is that banks did not break any laws. They simply followed the laws that government created. Don't like what they did? Blame the government. Prog-libs say government didn't 'force banks' to lend bad money. True. But you know what? Banks didn't 'force consumers' to borrow bad money either. But both banks and consumers acted stupidly for the same reason... Because government said it was fine.

And when you say the government pushed for subprime lending so everybody could buy a house, don't you mean bank lobbyists told Bush to push the idea in the first place?

The whole push for this started under Jimmy Carter, built up in the 80s & 90s, and finally took place with Bill Clinton in 1999. Did bank lobbyists push for it? Of course - mostly the bigger financial houses who were really limited by Glass-Steagall. The GOP was all OK with it too - alas. Democrats (particularly Barney Frank) were salivating over it. The rhetoric that built up to the final passage was mostly about how banks who were redlining poor minorities, and repealing G/S wouldu help everyone get homes, increase bank profits, fix your truck, and cure cancer. Both the GOP and Dems let this happen. Nowhere near enough people tried to stop it.

But let's call a tiger a tiger here... Standing up for Glass-Stegall in 1999 was a tough position to take. The proponents of the change were blasting anyone who opposed it as a racist, or a rich fat-cat that just didn't want 'the poor' to get a break. If you were against the repeal, all you could do is point at the Great Depression, and very distant macro-economic philosophies. We now have the 20/20 hindsight to see clearly that it was really the people trying to repeal G/S who were the jerks, @$$hats, and slimeballs. But in 1999 it was very different. Bush never 'speechified' it. In fact, Bush tried to get some reforms going in 2005 long before the bubble popped. But it was slapped down for the same reasons as the before. Wasn't until September/October 2007 that reality finally hit.

The government forced them to create CDO's? to bundle up non-AAA holdings and sell them as AAA? to extend themselves beyond their ability to cover their loses?

In a word - yes - the government forced the issue. Before the government interfered, lenders had actuarial tables and KNEW with 100% certainty who could and couldn't afford a loan the second they walked in the door. Mortgage rates were in the 8% to 10% range. Banks 'made' money on loans with the interest. People who earned less than 30K a year had a tough time getting into a house because (DUH!) they didn't really earn enough money. It was common sense. People that were POOR couldn't just go out and buy houses willy-nilly.

Then the government came along. They wanted people to get loans cheaper and more often and entirely for political reasons. But banks aren't charities and if they can't make the money on the interest (which you can't with sub-prime) then how do you make money? Hmmm... Oh yeah - let's get rid of this little thing called "Glass Steagall"! Now let's use the Fed to jack around interest rates until they are below 5%. Now you banks are commanded by government to make your profits by bundling the loans as derivatives. Now it is almost impossible to survive as a lending institution without doing what we tell you. Oh yeah, you banks? When it all blows up down the road it is YOUR fault... There you go banks!

That was government meddling with the market. They changed the rules so Barney Frank could tell voters that they had "UFFODUBBLE HOW-SING!". It was true left-wing, neolib stupidity on parade and it screwed up the entire planet. They were the ones that changed the laws. The private sector had no choice but to react to the rules that government barfed up.

The system that GOVERNMENT established turned the housing market within a very short time from a staid system of "moderate loans paid off by interest" into a crazed gold-rush of "cheap loans for everyone paid off by bundling". Banks had no choice to play that game because that was playing field that GOVERNMENT created. Any bank offering a SANE loan at an 8% interest rate and making its profits over 30 years was getting clobbered by lenders handing out loans at 2.5% ARMs that were making a bundle on the back end. Banks knew it was crazy, but those were the rules that GOVERNMENT set up and they didn't have any choice but to operate within that rubric. But government said, "Hey - if the loans blow up don't worry about it! We'll cover those bad loans with Freddie/Fannie and you won't be on the hook for it..." Government.

You see, that's what that happens when government interferes with the market and picks the winners and losers by changing rules, laws, and policy. The whole thing would have been impossible without a corrupt government starting the ball rolling for political purposes.

Everybody on the planet learned after the Great Depression that having an 'environment' where bundling and other such investments could exist was not good. That's why Glass-Stegall was created. It stopped a BAD investment practice and it worked for over 50 years without government being "involved" in a single, bloody thing. That's what !good! government does. It establishes a simple, basic set of rules and then STOPS INTERFERING. The reason for the housing failure was not because government WASN'T regulating the market. It was because the government WAS regulating the market in a terrible way.

Reinstate Glass-Steagall - a common sense law - and then ban the government from EVER interfering with the housing sector again. Things work just fine when you set up a simple, transparent system and then forbid the government from coming within a million miles of it.

>> ^snoozedoctor:

I have yet to hear one of the protesters voice a plan. I'm with Cain, I don't know what they want. Was there greed involved in the sub-prime fiasco....YES. WE ALL KNOW THAT. PEOPLE ARE, BY NATURE, GREEDY. Congress's explicit approval of sub-prime lending, under the banner of "affordable housing for all" was mostly a lefty dem deal, (I think I hear Barney Frank somewhere), although both sides of the aisle should have been pistol whipped for letting such an obvious fleece go on for so long.


http://videosift.com/video/why-Occupy-WallStreet

I have yet to hear one of the protesters voice a plan. I'm with Cain, I don't know what they want. Was there greed involved in the sub-prime fiasco....YES. WE ALL KNOW THAT. PEOPLE ARE, BY NATURE, GREEDY. Congress's explicit approval of sub-prime lending, under the banner of "affordable housing for all" was mostly a lefty dem deal, (I think I hear Barney Frank somewhere), although both sides of the aisle should have been pistol whipped for letting such an obvious fleece go on for so long.

>> ^quantumushroom:

No Barney Frank? No Chris Dodd? Feh.


I agree QM...this government is only their for the rich...they're all culpable.

No Barney Frank? No Chris Dodd? Feh.

Sharing a cell with Dick Cheney and George W Bush, right?


>> ^quantumushroom:

If Justice got better this liar and thief would be delivering his message from prison.

Look at Madoff, people knew for years that he was lying and scheming and stealing and nothing was done until absolutely no one could deny that he was. How do we expect people to act?

Now THAT is a much more fair and logical assessment than Russell's foolish brand of populism, or the typical neolib socialist rah-rah found on the Sift.

You're right. Citizens everywhere are angry when large companies, financial institutions, banks, or whatever other 'capitalist' source you care to name rakes in billions of dollars using shady, unethical tactics - but is able to skate away with only wrist slaps. Who isn't angry about stuff like that? I sure am. Contrary to what the average neolib may think - fiscal conservatives such as myself are not saying that 'big money' should not have to pay their fair share.

The problem is not the companies pulling these kinds of shenanigans though. The PROBLEM is that governments have an incestuous relationship with these big organizations, and are writing the laws (or ignoring them) in such a way as to create this tooth-gnashing dynamic. In the United States, the federal government's JOB (in fact its ONLY job) is to be a place where people can go to redress their grievences. Government is supposed to be the referree that only steps in the game when there is a foul - so to speak.

But that's not what happens in Britain, the US, or any of these other so-called 'social democracies'. What has happened is that the central governments in these nations have BECOME the 'big money' bad guys. The governments are the biggest providers of housing. The biggest providers of food. The biggest providers of money. The biggest providers of health care. The biggest providers of retirement. The biggest financial house. The biggest in just about everything. And yet at the same time they are the ones that write the laws that are supposed to be protecting the citizens from abuses. It is a huge conflict of interest.

The whole housing bubble was created not because banks suddenly came up with the brilliant idea of bundling mortgages into bigger deals to trade. It happened because the government repealed the LAW that prevented financial houses from doing that stuff. But why? Because government (Barney Frank) wanted UFFOWDUBBLE HOWSEING and wanted to use Freddie/Fannie to engineer it. But banks made no money loaning money to folks that couldn't afford a mortgage - so they came up with the whole bundling sceme to make it all work. Well - any idiot knew it couldn't last (except Frank of course) and pop goes the bubble. Where do the citizens go to 'redress their grievences'? The banks? They were ordered to make the bad loans by government? The government? You can't sue them. So the citizens get screwed, the banks have to be bailed out, and the government makes out like a bandit.

The answer is not bigger government and more taxes. The answer is smaller government, with limited powers and fewer responsibilities. And above all - government MUST be removed from the market equation. When government is both IN the market AND ALSO is in charge of picking the winners and losers - it will always pick itself. The perception of 'big money' getting away with crap only increases as government becomes stronger and stronger (as socialist governments always do).

Government must be 100% removed from the marketplace, and THEN it can serve its proper role as a recourse to appeal to for a redress of grievences and enforce proper restrictions on private organizations that engage in shenanigans.

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I'm very confused. Let me get this straight...

You're gonna blame the repeal of Glass-Steagall (a law that REGULATED financial markets) on Barney Frank who voted AGAINST the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which is the legislation that repealed Glass-Steagall?! You do realize you're basically making effectively a socialist argument, right?! You're saying the repeal of Glass-Steagall was intended to help the poor, but it didn't. Glass-Steagall is fundamentally socialist, so you're saying repealing it hurt the economy?!

Other than the fact you got the critical detail of Frank voting against Gramm-Leach-Bliley wrong, I completely agree with you.

In respect that job reports have been disappointing, you didn't address what every objective report about the stimulus bill says it created jobs, and those jobs did go to lower and middle class people. There's a disappointment it didn't do more than it ended up doing, but it DID create/save jobs in the short run, that's undeniable. Extension of unemployment benefits helped the poor and middle class. I could go on and on. You're seriously gonna fight this point?! Ridiculous.

Every company Obama visited and showed as a good example folded, huh? Let's see some proof. I want to see everyone of these companies, and what happened to them. You don't get to throw idiotic statements like this out without proof and expect not get called out on it. You're full of crap on that.

Oh, so if the jobs went to people you blanket don't like, it didn't do any good? LOL! Nevermind they're poor and middle class jobs, those very people you said weren't helped. I don't blame you. Those fat cat teachers and other civil servants, robbing the country blind with their gross underpay and what not! BTW, state employees are not all union members. There are in many states laws against state employees unionizing. Minor detail really...

So you're talking about "real Socialist" countries, not the fake ones I described. Are they more left than us? YES! You then mentioned we've gone "too far to the left" and the pendulum swing of a correction is coming to smite us! Are you suggesting the UK, France, and Britain were smited by the wrath of the free market gods for being too socialist? How have they managed to avoid the smite?!

As to the US education system today. First off, I'm glad you agree with me that universal public education system did coincide with the rise of the US as an economic superpower. You do at least seem to understand attacking that point is pretty pointless. But that also means you lost the argument. We had undeniably the world's best education system during that time, and it was a socialistic program in nature. Do we have the best education system now without question? No. What changed? Not the public mandate. Not the fact it's still mostly gov't operated. That's the same. Therefore, it's undeniable that you can have a top notch gov't run public education system.

Need more proof?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-education-rankings-maths-science-reading

What do you notice about the countries with the best education systems? Oh wonder of wonders, virtually all of them have gov't operated public education systems! How do so many evil socialist programs work so well?! Hmmm, maybe it's because sometimes, socialist ideas work the best, and maybe you should open your mind a little, look at specific things, look at data objectively, and apply socialist or capitalist solutions, whichever work the best? I know that's apparently revolutionary for you, but it's called "effective problem solving".

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Amazing how all leftists are criminally corrupt, all of them, apparently. Just because you're a leftist, it automatically means you don't care about the people.
Of course not all of them are corrupt – just most of the ones in political office. However, that is more endemic of being a politician than a leftist as the GOP is corrupt to the core too. I’m sure on some level even the corrupt political leftists believe they ‘care’ and are ‘helping’. But their method of helping is a poison pill destined to kill the supposed beneficiary. For example… Barney Frank thought he was helping the poor by pushing to repeal Glass-Steagall. In Frank’s fuzz-filled brain, he helped the poor get “uffodubble howsing”. But the result of his policies speak for themselves. The poor were NOT ‘helped’, and the nation’s financial stability was ruined by leftist plans for making banks give out loans to people who could not afford them. The left’s method of ‘help’ almost universally manifests in the form of inefficient, expensive, wasteful, freedom-killing big government programs which inevitably crash, burn, and make things worse than any leftist ever DREAMED life was like without their ‘help’.
Obama's big gov't spending doesn't do anything for the poor and middle class. You mean, except saving jobs when the economy tanked, the vast majority went to the poor and middle classes. Other than that... LOL...
That’s why every month the US has “unexpectedly high” unemployment figures. It’s why every job report for the last 3 years has been ‘disappointing’. It’s why every company Obama visited on the stump as a ‘shining example’ for jobs has folded. There are multiple reports that prove Obama’s stimulus money has gone almost entirely to labor unions, or state governments (and thence, THEIR unions) who supported him. In short, like a typical Chicago thug, he used the stimulus as political payola “walkin’ round money”. Jobs for the middle class & poor? Maybe 1 for every million bucks.
Leftist governments do not help with wealth distribution?! They just make it worse? I'm sure that's happened on occasion, but that's generally patently false.
I’m talking REAL left government – socialism. History has proven that leftist political philosophy’s ultimate end is wealth concentration at the top of government with the ‘people’ in utter poverty such as Soviet Russia, North Korea, Cambodia, Cuba, et al. What you are talking about are not really socialist governments. They are capitalist with socialist programs IN it (sort of the mirror image of China’s “socialist with capitalist programs”). The US ever since FDR has not been so much a ‘capitalist’ society as much as it is just another European-style capitalist with social program left-leaning government. The New Deal, the Great Society, and so many other leftist programs have routinely and regularly siphoned wealth from the middle class and used it to conduct failed social experiments. For the last 20 years or so, the US has gone further and further left in terms of spending and economic policy.
For example….universal public education and a progressive income tax coincided with the rise of the US as a global economic superpower as those first generations of publicly educated people came of working age.
Like all socialist systems, it starts well but ends badly. Remember Orwell's "Animal Farm"? Look at the US education system today and tell me it is “working wonderfully”. It is one of the most expensive in the world, while at the same time one of the least effective. Universal education is great. PUBLIC universal education? Not so much – and mostly BECAUSE it is a ‘socialist’ program. Open up a voucher system and let people choose the school, which will increase competition and lower costs.
Now - I don’t disagree with the underlying premise of your position. A pure capitalist freedom isn’t good either. Freedom is the best choice, tempered with a distant set of standards. I don’t have a problem with government mandating universal education, or even with it establishing some basic, simple standards. However, the pendulum has swung too far in the ‘socialist’ direction, and we are due for a correction. However, the people who benefit from the social system (government & unions) are responding as predicted to pullback, and would rather blow up the system than give up their power and money. Such is the end result of socialism, alas.
The founding fathers had it right. It is best to leave such matters at the state level where the people have more control and there is more accountability. The federal government should serve as ONLY a place where people can go to redress grievances (abuses). Central systems are fine when they are distant, have little power, and serve as little more than a final authority to appeal to, or as a repository of advised (but not REQUIRED) standards. The ‘system’ should be about 5% centralized and 95% local. Right now the US is more like a ‘45% federal, 55% local’ government and it is coming apart at the seams.

Amazing how all leftists are criminally corrupt, all of them, apparently. Just because you're a leftist, it automatically means you don't care about the people.

Of course not all of them are corrupt – just most of the ones in political office. However, that is more endemic of being a politician than a leftist as the GOP is corrupt to the core too. I’m sure on some level even the corrupt political leftists believe they ‘care’ and are ‘helping’. But their method of helping is a poison pill destined to kill the supposed beneficiary. For example… Barney Frank thought he was helping the poor by pushing to repeal Glass-Steagall. In Frank’s fuzz-filled brain, he helped the poor get “uffodubble howsing”. But the result of his policies speak for themselves. The poor were NOT ‘helped’, and the nation’s financial stability was ruined by leftist plans for making banks give out loans to people who could not afford them. The left’s method of ‘help’ almost universally manifests in the form of inefficient, expensive, wasteful, freedom-killing big government programs which inevitably crash, burn, and make things worse than any leftist ever DREAMED life was like without their ‘help’.

Obama's big gov't spending doesn't do anything for the poor and middle class. You mean, except saving jobs when the economy tanked, the vast majority went to the poor and middle classes. Other than that... LOL...

That’s why every month the US has “unexpectedly high” unemployment figures. It’s why every job report for the last 3 years has been ‘disappointing’. It’s why every company Obama visited on the stump as a ‘shining example’ for jobs has folded. There are multiple reports that prove Obama’s stimulus money has gone almost entirely to labor unions, or state governments (and thence, THEIR unions) who supported him. In short, like a typical Chicago thug, he used the stimulus as political payola “walkin’ round money”. Jobs for the middle class & poor? Maybe 1 for every million bucks.

Leftist governments do not help with wealth distribution?! They just make it worse? I'm sure that's happened on occasion, but that's generally patently false.

I’m talking REAL left government – socialism. History has proven that leftist political philosophy’s ultimate end is wealth concentration at the top of government with the ‘people’ in utter poverty such as Soviet Russia, North Korea, Cambodia, Cuba, et al. What you are talking about are not really socialist governments. They are capitalist with socialist programs IN it (sort of the mirror image of China’s “socialist with capitalist programs”). The US ever since FDR has not been so much a ‘capitalist’ society as much as it is just another European-style capitalist with social program left-leaning government. The New Deal, the Great Society, and so many other leftist programs have routinely and regularly siphoned wealth from the middle class and used it to conduct failed social experiments. For the last 20 years or so, the US has gone further and further left in terms of spending and economic policy.

For example….universal public education and a progressive income tax coincided with the rise of the US as a global economic superpower as those first generations of publicly educated people came of working age.

Like all socialist systems, it starts well but ends badly. Remember Orwell's "Animal Farm"? Look at the US education system today and tell me it is “working wonderfully”. It is one of the most expensive in the world, while at the same time one of the least effective. Universal education is great. PUBLIC universal education? Not so much – and mostly BECAUSE it is a ‘socialist’ program. Open up a voucher system and let people choose the school, which will increase competition and lower costs.

Now - I don’t disagree with the underlying premise of your position. A pure capitalist freedom isn’t good either. Freedom is the best choice, tempered with a distant set of standards. I don’t have a problem with government mandating universal education, or even with it establishing some basic, simple standards. However, the pendulum has swung too far in the ‘socialist’ direction, and we are due for a correction. However, the people who benefit from the social system (government & unions) are responding as predicted to pullback, and would rather blow up the system than give up their power and money. Such is the end result of socialism, alas.

The founding fathers had it right. It is best to leave such matters at the state level where the people have more control and there is more accountability. The federal government should serve as ONLY a place where people can go to redress grievances (abuses). Central systems are fine when they are distant, have little power, and serve as little more than a final authority to appeal to, or as a repository of advised (but not REQUIRED) standards. The ‘system’ should be about 5% centralized and 95% local. Right now the US is more like a ‘45% federal, 55% local’ government and it is coming apart at the seams.

A rather simplistic, populist bit of tripe.

To start with, if this guy thinks that things were so great back in the 1960s then maybe he should think again. The 'middle class' he talks about in the 60s was a far smaller entity than it is in 2011. In the 60s the country had a higher proportion of people in the 'lower' class. Since that time, the average american family has gotten proportionally wealthier - not poorer - and enjoys a higher standard of living, more property, and greater economic freedom than ever before. The entire premise of this video is nothing but an anachronistic fantasy.

The pap about families easily affording homes, cars, education, and retirement in the 60s on a single income is also a load of bull feathers. Middle class stiffs had to make tough choices back then too, and didn't have the dosh to just toss around money like that. His cutsey chalkboard claptrap cartoons of a smiling 'middle class' family easily affording any expense they wanted is stupidly wrong.

And this moron acts like people on a single income TODAY can't afford a home, car, college, and retirement. I am the lone wage-earner in my family. Not ONCE have I gotten government assistance or a handout on the dole. And I own a home, 2 cars, have $13,000 in savings for the kids, and I'm on track to be a millionaire when I retire. How did I do it? Because I'm not stupid. The middle class doesn't have to go into debt for these things - and this JERK'S premise that MC families have to rack up huge debt to live life is absolute specious.

And unions - yeesh. I noticed carefully that this obviously neolib goombah didn't bother mentioning that the over 26 TRILLION dollars in debt this nation has only exists because of private and public sector union unfunded liabilities. Corporations send world overseas because unions ARE making the cost of business in the U.S. (not to mention the fact that we're #1 in the world in corporate taxation) unfeasible for many industries. And he also doesn't mention the decrease in union size is only in the private sector, but that PUBLIC sector unions have swollen in size to gargantuan, slovenly, grotesque levels - and are (of course) literally breaking America's bank with thier costs. Of course companies outsource labor when paying a US employee costs them 100X as much money for only a fraction of the output. Only in the neolib Planet Fantasy does everyone get 100,000 a year for pushing brooms, assembling widgets, and other unskilled jobs that any reasonably trained lemming can perform.

He also doesn't mention that the top 50% of American taxpayers are paying 95% of the taxes, and that the "middle class" that he disingenously claims to speak for is actually paying almost NO INCOME TAXES at all. The bottom 50% of wage-earners (that's the middle class for you neolib idiots out there) only pay 5% of the taxes. How much more can the you burden the top 50% with before they pull up stakes and leave? That's the problem New York City, Chicago, LA, and many other neolib Meccas are facing. They have raised taxes so high on "the rich" (which Obama defines as anyone earning over 200K) that they are leaving these leftist enclaves, which in turn are literally dying on the vine under the weight of their own stupid policies and union debt.

But I do agree with some of the comments about lobbyists and the tax code. I do believe that is a problem, but it is a GOVERNMENT problem not a lobbyist problem. The government is the new "Robber Baron", when 100 years ago the government was protecting people from Robber barons. But of course this guy doesn't focus on the fact that it is GOVERNMENT making these stupid laws, and not companies. In fact, many companies hated the repeal of Glass-Steagall but government wanted it so Barney Frank could have is precious UFFODUBBLE HOWZING! Banks never wanted to be forced to give loans to people who they never would have touched in the 1960s - but Government played the Race Card with accusations of redlining and forced it through.

The problems with income disparity people whine about are largely a phantom. More people in the US are wealthier than they've ever been in the nation's history. Carping about how much MORE the uber-rich have than the middle class is pure sophistry.

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>> ^deathcow:

This is only going to spike usage by gay demon worshipers.


count me in!

My cards on the table, what I said about "every high school" was actually about Canada. I heard it from a police officer who gives talks about drugs to grade school students. I'm assuming the same is true in America. I'm also going to assume you're not high school aged anymore, and so like me, might have more trouble than the average 16-year-old finding a source.>> ^gwiz665:

We live in very different countries evidently. I have to go to some pretty seedy neighborhoods if I want weed here, which makes the "barrier to entry" relatively high. I'm all for selling it in pharmacies or even on the same level as cigarettes and alcohol. More people will try it, because they can get it legally, and that's fine.
>> ^messenger:
Right. And this bill will make it harder to get weed. Right now, weed is for sale in every high school in America. How much easier could it get? State control of weed would kill the illegal trade.>> ^gwiz665:
No. If it's easier to get it, more will use it. Same with guns.
That doesn't mean we should prohibit either though. Pot is less harmful than guns, or hell, arguably even cigarettes, why are they legal while pot is not?
Arbitrary laws based on flawed morality. Bah humbug.