Nothing is and nothing was too big to fail. It was the largest theft in history organized by politicians. If banks don't their shit right, they need to suffer from it. I understand protecting the savings of individuals that would've been lost but not the worthless lines of text in some computer system that is used to create money from thin air.

Next: derivatives that will burst and even larger theft where rest of the wealth is transferred from poor to the rich. Then they can start to decrease our numbers.

Perhaps if your beloved so called "job creators" paid people a living wage rather than horde more and more of their profits for themselves there wouldn't be a war on poverty.


>>> You are your own boss, whether you work for someone else or not. You create the value and sell your time and labor to others, and can increase the value of both in many ways: providing solutions for others, inventing new products or boosting your own knowledge base. Yep, there are socialist countries that will pay you a living wage to push a broom, and those economies can't hope to compete with non-socialist economies.


I will go out on a limb and assume that you would shop exclusively at a Wal-mart-type store that paid their employees a living wage as opposed to the real Wal-mart? There aren't enough such "conscious consumers" to sustain such a business.


The problem with your narrative is you believe that the wealthy all won some type of lottery, that they did not provide any service or create an invention that yielded deserved financial rewards. This is a common sickness surrounding socialism: the game is rigged and those at the top are there by pure chance. This is what Obama was raised to believe.


The rich pay the lion's share of taxes in America, while the bottom half pay NOTHING in income tax yet get plenty of benefits. This model is nothing new, the ancient Athenians taxed the wealthy at a much higher rate than the poor. The difference is they didn't endlessly spend and create money out of thin air. I'm not against the social safety net, but what we have now is unsustainable and beyond ridiculous.


I agree that many of these CEOs are overcompensated turds, but they are a small part of the problem. In order for them to be paid, stockholders have to be happy, and for stockholders to be happy, a business has to be successful. Only in the fantasy world of government is anything too big to fail.


You're somewhat awakened in that you see that the ole government's robbing peter to pay paul routine doesn't work. Wonder where the trillions went? First and foremost, to con artists and bureaucrats, who gobble up so much of every dollar seized by government very little reaches the intended recipients, and that will NEVER change. "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else."


If you want to attack "greed", start with these Obama worshipers who nonetheless sheltered their own wealth when it came time to pay up.


http://michellemalkin.com/2013/01/01/obamas-tax-evaders-of-the-year/

Nothing was done about "Too big to fail", except to help them get even bigger. Isn't that enough?

The utterly useless POS that is Dodd-Frank does nothing to prevent the same sociopaths from holding the world economy for ransom again, so they can skim off yet more for themselves. No crash is going to hurt -them-, after all. They'll just move to a private island with their loot.

>> ^renatojj:

I dislike the careless use of the term "rich", it needs a more refined distinction.
A lot of people who are rich are honest and productive to society. They're also needed to help this country out of its recession.
Others are rich because they steal from society or benefit directly from the governments or the Fed, the institutions that steals the most.
So there are the productive rich (good), and the destructive rich or squanderers (bad)
Carry on.


When we use the term "Rich" we're usually not referring to just people with money. We're using it to refer to the Owners of the Country, those who buy the elections and expect what they paid for. Those who control the wealth of this nation and use the Managers to keep the mob at bay.

Also the Fed and the Government work for those owners of the nation and they have their own Welfare. Too Big to Fail it's called, knowing that no matter what happens, they will get bailed out by the Nanny state that they formed to protect them from the people and losing all their money.

First off, Romney does not equal Obama. This kind of thinking is truly what frightens me, and it's not because of the reasons you probably think.

Some 20 years ago, the overwhelming majority of the population were ignorant of politics and apathetic. Political games were played, cheap shots were utilized, but in the end, in the big scheme of things, on the truly big issues, both sides would compromise and do the right thing. Clinton and the GOP Congress balancing the budget, Bush Sr. raising taxes, etc. etc. Stuff got done. And the majority of people were wholly ignorant on things like federal budgets, that kind of thing. There was also some kind of understanding on basic principles where regardless of your ideology, you couldn't do catastrophic things just because it suited your ideology.

Now, that's gone. Extremists in both parties are labelled fascists or communists, or whatever, but now moderates are being labelled as either part of the same extremist groups, or they're called sell-outs, part of a completely corrupt system, and perpetrators of that system, not as agents trying to work within a system that was built long before they got there, who could change the system while they work within it. When they do the right thing that violates ideology, it's not because it was the bipartisan right thing to do; it's because they're extensions of the corrupt system. The bailouts are an absolutely perfect example. I hate to break it to people here, and I know most won't agree with me, but the bailouts were the right thing to do, even if you're against too big to fail, etc. The banking system was already in place when the economy collapsed. It's like being in a boat as its sinking. You can critique the design of the boat all you want, but the boat sinking kills you all. It's ridiculous to talk about actions that will blow up the boat. Plug the holes, do what you need to do to get the boat to land. THEN figure out how to fix the design, or build a new boat. But what happened? The bipartisan policy by both a Democrat and Republican president was tarred and feathered as government being in the pocket of big business. Those same people don't seem to realize the boat didn't sink. We didn't face another depression. Be critical the banking system wasn't significantly reformed after that was done, I have no issues with that.

To the person who said Obama's policies haven't worked in three years? Again, are we in a depression? No. Those policies worked. And how can you expect a macro-economic shift within a year or two of his other policies? Go back and look at economic history. Things don't change on a dime just from macro-economic policies instituted by the government. It takes several years before the effect can be measured. Again, sheer ignorance. The difference today is the ignorant are far more willing to participate in the political debate even though they don't have a clue what they're talking about. This is a problem on both sides.

Both sides are stoking the ignorant to get involved in the public debates, and not encouraging a very very basic understanding of crucial facts about history. Like... WWII was a Keynesian economic exercise effectively, which in the end was a gigantic gov't deficit that did end the Great Depression. This is a very straight forward basic economical historical fact. But there's 30% of the population that will not believe it because it blows apart what they politically favor today. It's ridiculous.

I disagree with Romney, and I probably won't vote for him. But he's not a fascist. There's a significant difference between him and Santorum. And there's a significant difference between him and Obama. Is there a choice as clearly different as say Ron Paul vs. Ralph Nader? No. Is that a bad thing? Not in my book.

My fear is in our political ecosystem, the moderates, the good ones who truly aren't compromising for the wrong reasons, but do it to get things done, and have a willingness to ignore ideology for practical solutions that help the country are getting drowned out, and characterized as corrupt when they're not. I disagree with Romney, but he's not corrupt. I disagree with Obama, but he's not corrupt. We don't need a revolution to fix our current political system, but an increasing number of people think we do. And the last decade we're seeing a rise in the extremists on both sides enough to drown out the political moderates we desperately need. This just can't continue indefinitely.

>> ^deathcow:

>> ^lantern53:
Obama's policies have not worked for the past 3 years. If you believe some improvement is coming, you have far more faith than the average Catholic bishop.

obama = romney = anyone else they put forward

Sure he would. This whole video is him speculating that Carolyn Maloney will be the Democratic Party's ranking member in the finance committee, because that's who the banksters want.

And then he spends 5 minutes crowing about how right he is because an article got published in a newspaper that pretty clearly indicated banksters like her. So what? Only crazy Republicans think the newspapers work for the Democratic party.

Plus, every quote he took from the article was sourced to someone on Wall Street's side. Where's a source from, say, someone in the Democratic party who's part of the decision-making process? Nowhere to be found in Cenk's piece. But, in the article he's sourcing all this from, there's this:

“For Nancy Pelosi, Maxine is a three-fer,” said one congressional staffer, noting that it will be Ms. Pelosi who ultimately makes the determination if Democrats retake control. “She is a fellow Californian, she is an African-American woman, and it is her turn.”

And this:

“A lot of folks in the CBC [Congressional Black Caucus] would not look too kindly on an outside challenge,” said one Capitol Hill lobbyist. “They want to go back to the seniority system.”

And this:

For her part, Ms. Waters seems confident her long service will carry her through. “Let me let you in on a secret: I am the senior-most person serving on the Financial Services Committee,” she told the 2012 California State Democratic Convention last month. “Barney Frank is about to retire, and guess who’s shaking in their boots? The too-big-to-fail banks and financial institutions and all of Wall Street because Maxine Waters is going to be the next chair of the Financial Services Committee.”

Oh, so Nancy Pelosi, the CBC, and Maxine herself all think she's a lock? Well, that would kinda undercut Cenk's anti-Democratic spin, so he doesn't mention any of that.

Cenk's whole show seemed to just be a vehicle for bashing Democrats, often for things they aren't actually guilty of doing. Like...this whole thing about Carolyn Maloney, which is 100% speculation!

At this point he honestly seems to me like some sort of Karl Rove creation designed to depress Democratic turnout and liberal activism.

>> ^messenger:

Cenk would only say that Waters had sold out to the banks if it were demonstrably true. He's big on backing up his statements with facts. He would never just speculate that she "must have" sold out.

if it looks like banks are just sucking out money from hapless europeans, congratulations. You understand it.

Greed caused the too-big-to-fail banks to take on impossible amounts of debt. now that the bankers got their bonuses, and the banks are in jeopardy, the hedge funds will be making huge returns for the ultra-rich. Literally, it's a vacuum for money as these bad debts stay on the books.

Porksandwich,

I'm totally onboard with criticizing the Obama administration for not breaking up too big to fail banks, punishing the banks for their misdeeds, etc. That should have come part and parcel with the bailouts. But, the bailouts were still successful because they stopped the bleeding.

There's plenty to criticize the Obama administration and Congress for. It's not the bailouts that I have a problem with. It's the inaction afterwards to prevent another crisis.

Unfortunately, the GOP is bound and determined to nominate a candidate I can't consider voting for.

Some sort of spending policy was needed, but the bailout as it was put forth was pretty dismal in it's results. The companies that received it were the ones who created the mess for the most part (banks), and we really still haven't addressed punishing them OR putting laws in place to either:
A) Punish them if it happens again, really the laws now should be sufficient.
B) Make it impossible to happen again....all those acts, they repealed over the last 20-30 years.
C) Prevent some of the more insanity driven investing, such as over abundant speculation and similar cost creating but non-value creating (Call it a Private Tax, if you will) things.

Really the more I look back on the bailout, and look at the attitudes of most of the politicians at that time...they were saying let the auto industry fail. But the bailouts to the auto industries have at least halfway been paid back. Chrysler is likely going to short the government 1.3 billion last I read. GM gave the government stock and 22 billion. Stock is worth about 13.5 billion. They borrowed 50 billion. So 28 billion is what we have to get out of that stock to recover fully. And as far as I know there is no interest accumulated, so losing money in those deals is a kick to the crotch considering.

I think the auto industries might have been able to enter bankruptcy and come back out of it with some lessons learned. But vehicles like the "Volt" show that......they don't really know who they are selling to. Chrysler ended up being taken over by Fiat. And Ford handled it's own business. The one in the worst shape was GM, and I can't say that they probably didn't have it coming. And they still ended up pretty much killing the economy dead in my area despite the bailout when they shut their plants down that they really hadn't "kept up" in DECADES...place was really dumpy looking. No one would take it over because it was just utter trash when they left. I'm more against than for the bailout of the auto industries, but I can see that they were probably beneficial there although GM seemingly learned nothing of note from it.

Banks on the other hand......they took in 1.2 trillion. And a bunch of the borrowed money went to European firms. Along with other financial institutions. And many kept taking loans into 2010.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/that_federal_bank_bailout_in_2008_was_bigger_than_we_knew_a_lot_bigger.html

Has lots of info on it. I haven't taken the time to confirm every last portion of it, but we know the bailout/loans of 2008 that were announced ended up being MUCH larger than they told us. So the information is kind of hit and miss since they kept it hush hush for awhile.

But, the money was to help keep the banks off people's backs about foreclosures. It hasn't, in fact they took the money and foreclosed anyway to get both the cash to make it possible to allow the person to keep the house AND the house. That should be criminal.

The bailout of those institutions probably did stop a economic meltdown, but I think that bailout still should be criticized. The people who caused it suffered no punishment by law, financially, or by failure. And they have been fighting have regulations and such put in place to stop it from happening again and from practices like speculation being allowed in such quantities. It's affecting the oil prices and they are using it as a argument for "foreign oil" ALL the time.

Sure the bailout saved us from financial meltdown, but we aren't safe from it happening again. In fact we're probably even more precariously perched at the edge than we were before, and people are making money off that instability. If they could have made money during the total collapse, I don't think they would have gotten bailout to all those institutions.

So, we should criticize the bailout, simply because it has made it possible for the people who control the money to continue making money, and no one has corrected the conditions that caused the collapse in the first place. The people who caused it keep on keeping on, the politicians get some money stuffed in their pockets, and the people who got hurt most by the crash whether you lost your house, job, savings, pension, etc are just lined up to be knocked down again and no one is trying to fix it. The people who had money to weather the crash, are recovering and the people who didn't are still hurt by the crash they had no way of avoiding.

Too big to fail institutions are still too big to fail. Now they know that they can leech all the money from the government whenever they start to lean a little as a collective. Nothing was learned by anyone there, because nothing ended up happening to them besides some bad press...when they should have gotten a major investigation that was more like a full cavity search to determine wrongdoing.

i admire ron paul for voting what he espouses.he is fairly consistent and i can respect that BUT he is also a devout ayn rand fan and that should give anyone pause.
a unrestricted free market will not produce the pseudo financial utopia the chicago economists like friedman espouse,no matter how much they may wish it.
in fact,it will produce the exact opposite and there are many examples that people who believe in unrestricted markets seem to ignore.

in my opinion a few small but powerful changes could make a difference:
1.get rid of citizens united and make it so no private money can fund public elections.
2.put a cork on the ability of the congress and senate to profit from insider trading AND the ability to turn their political influence into a lucrative career as a lobbyist.make the job about public service and not pure enrichment at the detriment of those you were elected to represent.
3.re-instate glass steagall and other measures to separate commercial from investment banks.
4.return the phrase "for the public good" (removed in the early 70's) from the corporate charter and allow civil and class action suits against corporations who are discovered abusing communities by what ever means.and allow AG's to dissolve a corporation for gross un-compliance.if they are going to be deemed a "person" then they should be held to the same standard of community as the rest of us.

these are just some of the points ron paul does not address and i feel they are so vitally important and are a few reasons i cant support him.
his stance on military intervention and recinding the gross over-powering of the executive branch i totally agree with.
i also am not against his end-the-fed and other useless federal government agencies.either make them more effective or give that power to the states and some (DOD comes to mind) are so bloated and cumbersome that they have taken on an eerie "too big to fail" kind of character.

there is one thing that i find curious.
since ron paul is a free market prophet,why arent the corporations backing this man up with all their money and influence?
gingrich,romney and obama are getting all the wall street campaign money and media exposure.while ron paul is being marginalized.
maybe i am just being cynical but it seems to me that ron pauls "free market" talk may be perceived as a de-rigging of the game and our corporate masters cant have that.they paid big money to keep your business in the shitter.

if thats the case...well..good on him but i have to admit not being an expert on corporations nor economics.so i could be way off the mark.

Don’t Blame Capitalism for Wall Street’s Corruption and Lawlessness:

When Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought about Western civilization, he answered:

I think it would be a good idea.

I feel the same way about free market capitalism.

It would be a good idea, but it is not what we have now. Instead, we have either socialism, fascism or a type of looting.

If people want to criticize capitalism and propose an alternative, that is fine . . . but only if they understand what free market capitalism is and acknowledge that America has not practiced free market capitalism for some time.

...

People pointing to the Western economies and saying that capitalism doesn’t work is as incorrect as pointing to Stalin’s murder of millions of innocent people and blaming it on socialism. Without the government’s creation of the too big to fail banks, Fed’s intervention in interest rates and the markets, government-created moral hazard emboldening casino-style speculation, corruption of government officials, creation of a system of government-sponsored rating agencies which had at its core a model of bribery, and other government-induced distortions of the free market, things wouldn’t have gotten nearly as bad.

Dude, Schiff is the one spewing the most ridiculous things from a historical perspective I've ever heard, not West. Are you saying right now that Schiff is right that child labor was ended by the free market, not gov't regulation?! That's just patently absurd!

He's saying that a guarantee of deposits by the FDIC fueled speculation. Okay, so when and why was it instituted? In *1933*, it was instituted *after* massive stock speculation among other causes triggered the Stock Market Crash of 1929, which triggered the Great Depression. As banks had invested in stocks, etc themselves (outlawed by Glass-Steagall), made bad loans, including to allow people to buy stocks on credit, etc. etc. people made runs on the banks to get their deposits out before the banks went belly up, regardless of if individual banks themselves participated in the speculation because no one knew which banks were actually in trouble. Some Depression era people put their money "under their mattresses" and a few kept that attitude up until their deaths because of those runs on the banks. The FDIC was instituted to get people to put money back into banks to rebuild on hand deposits, so banks would be able to lend again and actually stay in business. We had the FDIC for almost 80 years now, and the banking system has remarkably MORE stable than it was before the FDIC without any doubt, and this clown says it fuels speculation?! You know what you didn't see in the last recession when the market tanked? MASSIVE RUNS ON MOST BANKS! That's precisely why we have it! And it's logically ridiculous on the surface of it. Just think about it. The FDIC guarantees that I get MY money back if I deposit it to a bank that is FDIC insured, and the bank goes belly up. What happens to the bank if it makes bad decisions? It goes belly up. So why would the bank speculate in that situation due specifically to the FDIC?! THEY STILL GO BELLY UP! You can say the bank bailouts had something to do with it because now the Goldman Sachs of the world know that gov't won't let too big to fails fail. I'm sympathetic to that argument, but the FDIC's insurance on deposits?! RIDICULOUS!

Peter Schiff is not correct here. It's some of the most patently ridiculous things I've heard yet about the economy. If you've read my posts, I'm as pragmatic as one could possibly be, and I'm without a doubt a moderate. I don't give a crap whether specific gov't regulations work or not, but I don't attempt to blind myself with ideology, but this clown is going to great lengths to fundamentally rewrite historical record that's basic freaking fact about the US prior, during, and after the Great Depression that even a basic historical understanding would allow anyone to realize he's an idiot, or is at best making a disingenuous argument to trumpet free market economics for the sake of itself.

>> ^bobknight33:

Peter Schiff is correct. Cornell West foolishly wrong. He teaches African studies which teaches jack about how economies work.

are you talking about the deregulation of the banking system and Wall Street that led to not just this crash but the previous one? because, yeah... the oh-so-lovable working class were behind that

Oh, no, more about the Let's-Give-Free-Houses-To-People-We-Know-Can't-Pay-For-Them-But-That's-The-Banks'-Problem-We-Just-Buy-Votes-From-The-Poor-Act.

The left likes to call it 'deregulation' as if that were a dropping of vital safeguards keeping the wealthy in check. It was more like a creating an opportunity for certain parties--not all of them wealthy--to take stupid risks thanks to government offering to cover their butts with taxpayer largesse. Not the same thing.

or the banking bailouts, where instead of using the money to cover the banking losses (see above) wasn't used to get lending going again, but for banks to consolidate and buy each other out... leading to banks that are even more TOO BIG TO FAIL

I was 100% against the failouts, but not much you can do against a leviathan government made that way by worshipers of leviathan government as the solution to every problem. You don't create a Kong then act surprised when Kong does what he wants instead of what you want, do you?

and how exactly is Trickle-Down Economics, which have been repeated over and over by the rich as reasons not to tax them, not completely horsesh_t considering the last 30yrs?
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/23/7927178-the-koch-brothers-graph

Why do liberals insist on calling 1% paying 40% of all taxes "not being taxed"? They're being taxed plenty already, and if you try to confiscate the rest, they'll just beam it overseas or keep it in tax-free products where it won't get invested or circulate. And that's ignoring the moral issue of why someone gets taxed proportionately higher for the 'crime' of having more?

of course, regarding that link, I assume your first response is... "Well Rachel Maddows, that's all I need to know about that link"

No, but I'm not sure what the point of that link was, really. Due to increasingly efficient software and other tech advances, over time a job that once required a thousand workers can be done with only 300. It's called "creative destruction" and yeah, it requires you to be on the ball.

I will say, if you already don't, you should lobby for some rich interests... I'm sure they got a teet for you... because you sure a capable job of touting the rhetoric without providing any concrete details

I've never been offered a job by a poor man, have you? Unless you're a vote-buying politician, you shouldn't overly concern yourself that someone else has more than you, nor blame them. Economics is not a zero-sum game.









>> ^packo:

>> ^quantumushroom:
The average oh-so-lovable working class stiff is chock-full of wrongful assumptions about business, law and government.
The most harm has been done and money wasted in the past 60 years by governments trying to guarantee an equality of outcomes.

are you talking about the deregulation of the banking system and Wall Street that led to not just this crash but the previous one? because, yeah... the oh-so-lovable working class were behind that
or the banking bailouts, where instead of using the money to cover the banking losses (see above) wasn't used to get lending going again, but for banks to consolidate and buy each other out... leading to banks that are even more TOO BIG TO FAIL
and how exactly is Trickle-Down Economics, which have been repeated over and over by the rich as reasons not to tax them, not completely horsesh_t considering the last 30yrs?
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/23/7927178-the-k
och-brothers-graph
of course, regarding that link, I assume your first response is... "Well Rachel Maddows, that's all I need to know about that link"
I will say, if you already don't, you should lobby for some rich interests... I'm sure they got a teet for you... because you sure a capable job of touting the rhetoric without providing any concrete details

>> ^quantumushroom:

The average oh-so-lovable working class stiff is chock-full of wrongful assumptions about business, law and government.
The most harm has been done and money wasted in the past 60 years by governments trying to guarantee an equality of outcomes.


are you talking about the deregulation of the banking system and Wall Street that led to not just this crash but the previous one? because, yeah... the oh-so-lovable working class were behind that

or the banking bailouts, where instead of using the money to cover the banking losses (see above) wasn't used to get lending going again, but for banks to consolidate and buy each other out... leading to banks that are even more TOO BIG TO FAIL

and how exactly is Trickle-Down Economics, which have been repeated over and over by the rich as reasons not to tax them, not completely horsesh_t considering the last 30yrs?
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/23/7927178-the-koch-brothers-graph

of course, regarding that link, I assume your first response is... "Well Rachel Maddows, that's all I need to know about that link"

I will say, if you already don't, you should lobby for some rich interests... I'm sure they got a teet for you... because you sure a capable job of touting the rhetoric without providing any concrete details

That's a pretty long picket sign. I'm just saying that they should focus. As an engineering student, the biggest thing I learn is that in order to solve a problem, you have to break any problem into smaller bite-sized problems. That's the only way to solve things without confusing the situation. I would totally jump on the protester's side if they started to make specific demands like: stop allowing government officials taking campaign money from lobbyists/corporate interest groups. It's clear, concise, and there's and end goal in sight. You can't just say "boo this system sucks!">> ^zombieater:

I'm pretty sure most of these people are the same ones who are going to farmers markets, avoiding big chains, and are supporting local businesses. The problem is that's not enough if only a minority of the population gets involved.
On that end, I think that OWS is more than just asking for change (which they certainly are doing in clear statements), it's about waking people up. Making people see the injustices that are taking place right under our very noses. In fact, many signs say that exact thing: "WAKE UP!" People should realize that they should be utilizing credit unions instead of banks, that they should be supporting local businesses as opposed to large chains, and that they should be buying products that are produced locally (your example of farmers markets is a good one for food).
As David Korten said, it's about dismantling large corporate power, especially those that produce nothing (read as wall street investment firms), and supporting local, more homegrown groups.
Now, granted, small homegrown companies grow into large powerful companies, and the cynic would say that it's a waste of time because it will happen all over again once these small companies increase in size. True, if things continue unchecked. But that's where the change part comes in - increasing oversight and regulation has the power to prevent this "too big to fail" bullshit.