>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

So Jim Rogers is a hypocrite, what's your point?
Are you implying/concluding something about Ron Paul's economic policies?

Not so much Paul's policies so much as Paul's supposed knowledge of macroeconomics.

Paul's Austrian economics says that expanding the monetary base the way the Fed has should result in immediate inflation since monetary "stimulus" doesn't do anything but raise the overall price level. According to Paul's prediction, anyone holding a stock of U.S. dollars in cash is a moron, because those dollars are expected to fall in value dramatically any day now. Smart investors would "sell" their dollars and move their wealth to a better investment instrument.

Similarly, Paul's Austrian economics say that running massive government deficits never have a positive effect, and will only lead to inflation and a rise in the government's borrowing costs. In investor terms, that means that you should expect treasury bond prices to fall -- and an investor looking to capitalize on that knowledge can make a profit by shorting bonds.

Jim Rogers is not doing either of those things. Which means one of two things:

1) Jim Rogers is a moron who knows nothing about investments.
2) Jim Rogers thinks Ron Paul's central economic predictions are wrong.

Either way, that means this is not a particularly ringing endorsement of Paul's economic chops. Either he's being praised by a Grade A moron, or his so-called supporter thinks Paul is actually full of shit on the economy, and was stupid enough to make that abundantly clear on TV.

The title I'd probably have sifted this with would be "Paul endorser forced to admit Paul doesn't know jack about economics." Well, at least I would have if titles could be that long...

>> ^ChaosEngine:

Sorry, I must be hearing things, because I'm pretty sure I just heard him advocate the "purchase of slaves freedom". Are you fucking kidding me?
I'm sorry, there's no room for debate, practicality, states fucking rights or anything else on this. If someone owns slaves, you go to that person and you inform them that "their" slaves are no longer slaves. If they object, you shoot them in the fucking head. In fact, I'd go further. You then calculate how much the person owes the former slaves for the work they would have done, and you seize those assets to compensate the former slaves.


From our modern perspective and (genuinely) more civilized understanding of human rights, I totally agree with your statement. That is my perspective on the topic as well. However someone put it to me once that made me look at the entire clash between slave-holders and anti-slavery-abolitionists differently.

In that day, slaves were valued as property. Now, I'm paraphrasing poorly here, but the way it was described to me was that the total value of slaves in the south at that time was more than any other property, product or monetary value altogether. Inflated for today's markets it was on the scale of billions of dollars directly tied to the industry and economy of the south.

Now, as reluctant as we probably all are to do this, put yourself in the shoes of someone from the south at that time, accepting that slaves were basically the commodity of the highest value in the region. "Commodity-X", for analogy's sake. Ignore the human rights aspect for the sake of this example (horrible, but necessary to understand it from their perspective). Your states entire economic backbone relied on Commodity-X. Through it, economy and incomes were stable, prosperity was extremely high, and life was good all around for the majority of citizens.


Now imagine if the federal government came to your state and told you:
"We've decided that Commodity-X is 'wrong', therefore we are going to eliminate and ban all traces of Commodity-X from every person and property in this region."

Essentially imagine the government taking 80% of your personal property based on their own criteria without compensation of any kind. You would go nuts! You might storm the capital, or maybe even be angry enough to join a movement of militant resistance against that kind of theft.

So when I take that perspective into account, I can understand why Paul would make a comment like "purchase of slaves freedom", because it would essentially be compensation of the billions and billions of dollars lost to a quarter of the United States citizens.



Another, equally valid parallel that might be even easier to understand would be looking at today's resistance by the Oil industry to relinquishing their addiction to that commodity. Once again, the economy of a massive part of the world is affected, and those which rely on it for their lively hood are being asked to relinquish with no real compensation. Granted there are a number of inconsistencies between the two that I won't go into, but the similarities are such that it's very comparable, sans human rights issues.

It's an apt analog for understanding why those affected would be so butt-hurt over the whole ordeal.

@dystopianfuturetoday it goes on from there:

-He wants to abolish licensing for doctors
-He wants to abolish regulation of drug testing
-He wants to abolish regulation of food safety
-He wants to abolish auto safety
-He wants to abolish the CDC, and the NIH
-He wants to abolish disaster relief and FEMA

That's still not even getting to the fact that he's an utter crank when it comes to his beliefs on monetary and fiscal policy.

And that's just the stuff he's standing by, there's a lot of stuff he's said and later denied that should give people pause.

Very good song I like your playing.

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@marinara, yes, I agree we need more fiscal and monetary stimulus, not balanced budgets and tighter money.

The wording is intractable vague though, so while the heart of fairuse is in the right place, you aren't going to have a hand full of 1000 dollar an hour lawyers like large corporate media firms. Modern copyrights aren't about people making things at all, they are completely about making money. Ask any real artist why they did something and it was art first, and money some other priority down the line. I know the things I make in minecraft have nothing to do with money, but I value them greatly. This is where the entire body of legal mess around providing monetary "insensitives" to art and science; the people who do REAL art and science don't really have that as the primary motivation. All copyright laws have it wrong, they are broken and exist in a completely different world of reality. It would be like trying to provide monetary insensitive for having a family, having a family isn't about money first...ect ect. All copyrights do is encourage media domination by content holders, not the explosion of content makers like it planned. That is the one real lesson the net has taught us all, that people create all the time, and not for money (thanks @dag and all the rest).

>> ^marinara:

I did some reading about "fair use" which lets you use clips of copyrighted material.
It comes down to: If you "transform" the clip, to retool it for a different purpose than the original.
And if you use a "small" amount of the clip, the clip must not have a significant value, on it's own.
long blog here
So if you use such a short clip, that nobody can claim value of it, and rework it into a different use than the original. You can use copyrighted work under fair use.

I think his idea that the monetary system is going bankrupt is quite possibly true, especially in Europe. I don't see how Obama is pulling the strings of a big nuclear, pardon me, thermonuclear war conspiracy. His influence on any meaningful policy changes has been stunted by the ineffectiveness of congress.

[edit - After watching past 32:00:00] OMFG, this guy is nuts. Colonizing Mars? Galactic radiation threats? This is cult logic on a epic, Branch Davidian/Scientology scale. Crazy like a fox, perhaps. A retarded fox.

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This is the original swiftboating... ronpauling...

We begin with two simple questions:

Why would he put out publications under his name without the slightest idea what was in them?
And if he didn't write the stuff, why hasn't he identified the author and revealed his name?



Based on comparing the writings and positions of Dr. Paul and several other people involved, it would appear the people responsible would be:

Murray Rothbard,
http://murrayrothbard.com/category/rothbard-rockwell-report/


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My google quest began with this article and the comments in it, i have compiled my results:
http://www.redstate.com/leon_h_wolf/2011/12/22/about-those-racist-ron-paul-newsletters-that-he-didnt-read-and-completely-disavowed

------------------------------------------------ RESEARCH

HERE'S RON PAULS RESPONSE:

"The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts. When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publically taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name."

-------------------------------

OK, fair enough. Now for a 1995 interview, go to 1:54, here is transcription with his interview proving that he knew newsletters existed, not all the content. In fact, he seems more concerned with finance:

“Along with that I also put out a political, uh, type of business investment newsletter, sort of covered all these areas. And it covered, uh, a lot about what was going on in Washington and financial events, especially some of the monetary events since I had been especially interested in monetary policy, had been on the banking committee, and still very interested in, in that subject.. that, uh, this newsletter dealt with that… has to do with the value of the dollar [snip] and of course the disadvantages of all the high taxes and spending that our government seems to continue to do.”

Watch video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW755u5460A

A constant theme in Paul’s rhetoric, dating back to his first years as a congressman in the late 1970s, is that the United States is on the edge of a precipice. The centerpiece of this argument is that the abandonment of the gold standard has put the United States on the path to financial collapse.
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/98811/ron-paul-libertarian-bigotry

------------------------------------------------------

So what about that, he did have a newsletter? Did it talk about more than money, and did he author those writings? Well it gets more interesting..

this is from a comment here:
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2011/12/22/the-ron-paul-newsletter-and-his-jeremiah-wright-moment/#comment-152657

"Wish I had saved the links. This Dondero guy was supposedly part of a group of people that wrote the content of the newsletters (maybe seven different people), and that Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard were the main brains behind the content. Ron Paul wrote some of the content too (probably about sound money, lol). They have also hinted (maybe Rockwell did), that the writer of some of the extreme articles was now dead. It seems that multiple people from that time have died, but the most relevant is Murray Rothbard. He’s like a messiah to this sub-culture, and Rockwell would probably never spill the beans on Rothbard. The tone of the racially offensive parts does seem like it would be written by Rothbard. If you are unlucky enough to attempt to listen through one of his lectures on YouTube, you will notice his attempts at sarcastic humor, if you don’t fall asleep first.

Dondero: “Neither Rockwell or Rothbard are/were “libertarians.” In his later yers Rothbard called himself a “Paleo” aligning with the conservative southern successionists. Rockwell, today calls himself an Anarchist, and has distanced himself greatly from any part of the libertarian movement.”

http://www.libertarianrepublican.net/2011/02/1970s80s-libertarian-party-stalwart.html

“The newsletters’ obsession with blacks and gays was of a piece with a conscious political strategy adopted at that same time by Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard. After breaking with the Libertarian Party following the 1988 presidential election, Rockwell and Rothbard formed a schismatic “paleolibertarian” movement, which rejected what they saw as the social libertinism and leftist tendencies of mainstream libertarians. In 1990, they launched the Rothbard-Rockwell Report, where they crafted a plan they hoped would midwife a broad new “paleo” coalition.”

http://reason.com/archives/2008/01/16/who-wrote-ron-pauls-newsletter"

---------------------------

Ok now we're getting somewhere.. so what about Dondero, Rockwell, and Rothbard?

Reason: Your former staffer Eric Dondero is challenging you for your House seat in 2008.
Paul: He's a disgruntled former employee who was fired.
http://reason.com/blog/2007/05/22/ron-paul-on-9-11-and-eric-dond

-----------------------------------
What about these mid 1990's interviews like this one from the Dallas Morning News:

In 1996, Paul told The Dallas Morning News that his comment about black men in Washington came while writing about a 1992 study by the National Center on Incarceration and Alternatives, a criminal justice think tank in Virginia. The comment about black males being fleet of foot came from a 1992 newsletter, disavowed by Paul.

Paul cited the study and wrote (NOT SAID): “Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”

“These aren’t my figures,” Paul told the Morning News. “That is the assumption you can gather from the report.”

Dr. Paul denied suggestions that he was a racist and said he was not evoking stereotypes when he wrote the columns. He said they should be read and quoted in their entirety to avoid misrepresentation. [...]

"If someone challenges your character and takes the interpretation of the NAACP as proof of a man's character, what kind of a world do you live in?" Dr. Paul asked.

In the interview, he did not deny he made the statement about the swiftness of black men.

"If you try to catch someone that has stolen a purse from you, there is no chance to catch them," Dr. Paul said.

He also said the comment about black men in the nation's capital was made while writing about a 1992 study produced by the National Center on Incarceration and Alternatives, a criminal justice think tank based in Virginia

Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said the congressman was practicing medicine at the time the newsletters were published and “did not write or approve the incendiary passages and does not agree with them.”

“He has, however, taken moral responsibility because they appeared under his name and slipped through under his watch,” Benton said. “They do not reflect what he believes in: liberty and dignity for all mankind. … Dr. Paul, renowned as a straight shooter who speaks his mind, has given literally thousands of speeches over the past 35 years, and he has never spoken such things.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul, an obstetrician from Surfside, Tex., denied he is a racist and charged Austin lawyer Charles "Lefty" Morris, his Democratic opponent, with taking his 1992 writings out of context
http://reason.com/blog/2008/01/11/old-news-rehashed-for-over-a-d

"Instead of talking about the issues, our opponent has chosen to lie and try to deceive the people of the 14th District," said Paul spokesman Michael Sullivan, who added that the excerpts were written during the Los Angeles riots when "Jesse Jackson was making the same comments."

-----------------

And all the confusion because he wanted to take responsibility. .. and the real issue? Not with what he may have said, or how consistent he has been denying this lie, but merely:

"Would he even check in to see if his ideas are being implemented? Who would he appoint to Cabinet positions?"

it comes down to an EITHER/OR false choice:

Either Paul is so oblivious to what was being done in his name that this obliviousness alone disqualifies him for a job like the presidency
— or -
he knew very well that horrific arguments were being published his name and he lent his name to a cynical racist strategy anyway.

Is there not any other choice?

There is your answer. The GOP is trying to sow any and all doubt at any and all cost. The content of the newsletters is just convenient; they would have done this anyway.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/12/the-story-behind-ron-pauls-racist-newsletters/250338/
-------------------------------------

So Why Smear Ron Paul? Here is why... and the answer may NOT surprise you:

http://www.infowars.com/cnn-poll-ron-paul-most-popular-republican-amongst-non-whites/

yet we're supposed to believe this man, a physician and politician, has actually uttered words like, ""Am I the only one sick of hearing about the 'rights' of AIDS carriers?"

Please. It is VERY unlikely.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/165290/why-do-gop-bosses-fear-ron-paul

Thank you for your time.

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Real Free Market Capitalists Demand that Financial Fraud Be Prosecuted
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/11/real-free-market-capitalists-demand-that-financial-fraud-be-prosecuted.html

Adam Smith, Leading Austrian Economists and Other Free Market Advocates Are For the Prosecution of Fraud

There is a widespread myth that free market supporters are against regulation or prosecuting fraud.

In fact, Adam Smith – the father of free market capitalism –
was for regulation of banks, and believed that trust is vital for a healthy economy. Because strong enforcement of laws against fraud is a basic prerequisite for trust, Smith would be disgusted by the lack of prosecution of Wall Street fraudsters today.

>> ^Sagemind:

I understand what he is saying, and aside from all the course language, he has a point.
(because youth today is far too "entitled" and he's right as to how they got that way.)
BUT
His argument falls apart because the economy has changed. If the economy was the same as it was even 20 years ago (never-mind 35-40 years ago in the 70s) and this attitude of youth existed, then I'd completely agree - but it isn't. Today's economy says I can't feed my family and own my own house, even with two full-time incomes in the household. I work damn hard, I'm not a slacker.
I may not run my own company but, my job, as it is today, and would have been 20 years ago, would have paid the bills and allowed some extra cash to take my family on a holiday once a year. My wife would have been able to stay home with the kids, at least part-time.
I bought a house. It cost me $400,000. Ten years ago, the same house was valued at $140,000-170,000.
Twenty-one years ago, when my house was built, it cost $100,000 brand new. Wages, on the other hand, haven't changed all that much. As I left high school, people with good jobs were making $19-25 an hour working at the mill. Today, the wages are much the same. No one is making 300% more for the same job they were doing 20 years ago. So why has housing gone up, why has everything gone up(fuel, food etc.)? The truth is I can't afford a $400,000 house, no regular person can, but what choice do I have, the cheapest rental I could find was $200 more than what my mortgage payment is.
It's the economy, it's the banks, It's globalization, It's International Trade, It's Corporations buying up all the little guys and then jacking up the prices, paying employees less and paying all the politicians to stay out of their way.
His analogy about seeing Mr. Rich and respecting him in the old days and slamming him today also doesn't stand. Today, very few people own their own business and are successfully wealthy. Most small businesses are barley hanging on, operating in the shadows of the companies like Wal-Mart. Most small businesses need to barrow money to set up shop. These businesses pay more tax and interest than they ever did.
In the sixty's to late eighties, both of my uncles owned their own businesses. They were very successful and made a decent living and had many employees. Life was good. That bubble popped in the late eighties to nineties not because business was decreasing but because new governments raised business and property taxes to the point that, they both had to close up their shops. Taxes more than doubled over night and the interest on banking skyrocketed.
So Adam's rant is fun. It makes a good point about entitlement and winy brats wanting reward without working for it but that's it. It doesn't explain Occupy of the financial state every one is in now.
Period.


we should be happy that all the increases in wage/salary/benefit that we should have been getting over the last 30yrs have been going to a small group of individuals

we should be happy that money is allowing for the degradation of rights and civil liberties

we should be happy that every noble endeavor should be stifled and made irrelevant for the sole reason of monetary gain

we should be happy that our elected officials blatantly lie to our faces, and serve only their greed, and thus the whims of those with money... and not so much individuals as much as corporate interests... corporations who while now given the same "rights" as humans, bear none of the responsibility... either to their local communities or to the nation they are now a "citizen" of

we should be happy that education is becoming something you pay off over your life as opposed to something nutured and pushed by your nation, because it's how we seize the future and progress as a society... better we become ignorant and uneducated so that we are easier to control and are reduced to grunt manual servitude to our feudal lords

we should be happy the rich get bailed out; are allowed to gamble with our money consequence free... then because of it, we lose our home and our children lose their future

better we lose our right to privacy than be subjected to invisible boogeymen
better we lose our freedom of speech than be allowed to exercise it

i honestly hope not... but I can't help feeling the road back to sanity starts with the rolling heads of politicians and bankers... and I don't mean that metaphorically

i honestly hope they have the humanity to overcome their greed... because no amount of money will overcome the fury of the masses... right now the bear is waking up... best not poke it with a stick

@bmacs27 I've been wanting to come back and reply for a couple days now, but didn't have the time. Now I hesitate to messing with the good conversation that followed, so I'll just touch on the points I'm interested in from the whole conversation. If I skip something you really wanted me to answer, let me know!

For one, I do tend to have an odd mix of pro-market and anti-market beliefs. On unemployment, my answer is that in an ideal world, I would want people entitled to some sort of minimum guaranteed income, no matter whether what they do. I like unemployment insurance because it's kinda like that, only with pragmatic real-world strings attached (it's limited in duration, and you've gotta be looking for work and not finding anything, and it stops when you get a new job...).

heropsycho already gave the more economics-minded answer I would've given about unemployment benefits helping prop up demand, and keep the economy from shedding even more jobs. I'd go along with your "you get unemployment, but we're going to make it contingent on you attending free job retraining", but I'd also go along with a WPA-style "we won't pay you unemployment, we'll just directly hire you" sort of arrangement, especially in a jobs market full of laid off construction workers.

heropsycho also gave the succinct answer I was going to give about hoarding labor -- worker salaries and benefits are always on the "cost" side of the company's ledger, and people often get fired long before they become an outright loss to the business. Usually it's because you've become less profitable than what they think they could make by replacing you with someone else (or by just by making other workers work more hours).

And no, I'm not a protectionist who wants to see unions and/or government forcing companies to employ people who're losing them money, I'm in favor of having a social safety net so there's no moral issue with companies laying people off (that's why I like the idea of a minimum guaranteed income).

On the topic of whose economic theories we've followed post-Volcker, for the most part, it's been Monetarist-style monetary policy, coupled with ideological right-wing fiscal policy. Namely, a targeted package of policies aimed at redistributing wealth from the poor and middle classes to the rich. That still leaves things a bit blurry, because the only economic justifications for debt-fueled tax cuts are Keynesian, and modern (New) Keynesians have largely adopted monetarist notions of monetary policy.

But the big disagreement between modern Monetarists and modern Keynesians is about fiscal policy -- Monetarists say it can't work, Keynesians say it can. Part of what confuses people a bit, is that Republicans adopt whatever economic theory justifies what they started out wanting to do. Keynes is right when they want to borrow money to cut taxes, Monetarists are right when Obama wants to pass a stimulus program, and Austrians are right when the Fed tries to help the economy by printing money when a Democrat is in the White House.

This. Monetary unions need to follow political unions, not the other way around. The problem in europe is that they can't just print the currency of the nations that were irresponsible. If they could do that, there would be very little problem (just localized inflation). Instead, since responsible countries in Europe don't want to suffer because of the Mediterranean profligacy, they need to go with the often counter-productive austerity measures and debt renegotiation (declaring insolvency). With a global bank the problem would be worse. I'm okay with a concept like the SDR (a basket of currencies) for currency reserves and commodity pricing, but sovereign nations need the power to print their own paper. It seems clear however that the global economy needs to be decoupled from the dollar. It would be better for everybody.

>> ^NetRunner:

I think a) it's obviously politically impossible, and b) a global monetary union would be harder to pull off than the euro monetary union, and the euro is headed for collapse as it is...

A. Overly simplistic, and you're confusing to some degree what is Keynesian. A central tenant of Keynesian economics is counter-cyclical budget deficits. When there's a recession, the government should run deficits, and the larger the recession, the larger the corresponding deficit. That's been a non-stop, although admittedly abused, government policy since the Depression. Also, Keynesian economics had components in it for monetary policy as well. Keynes advocated for lower interest rates during times of recession along with increasing the monetary supply. Yes, he did believe that during more severe recessions that monetary measures would not be enough, but he nevertheless advocated for the various monetary policies. These align up with most recessions as far as what the gov't did from the Great Depression on. Just because Keynesian policies disappointed during the 1970's, the ideas were not altogether abandoned ever since. The simple fact of the matter is aside from 2007, there hadn't been a particularly severe recession since the 1970s, so it's reasonable to assume that direct employment wasn't deemed necessary, not that it was seen as bad policy in all cases.

B. It happened to me by the hand of Microsoft. I'm pretty sure they didn't have flunky MBAs. ;-)

C. There are a lot of similar issues involved. My point was only that you can't just tie requirements to it, and that's that. There are a huge myriad of issues that would come hand in hand with stipulations to unemployment. Your idea is still something I'd be onboard with if those devils in the details were addressed. I do see as an example that some people become unemployed because of structural changes to the economy that causes their jobs to never come back. As a case in point, textile factory workers who lose their jobs due to offshoring are suddenly in a position where market forces have no remedy. They lack the skills to get jobs in areas of growth such as more in depth computer skills, and likely lack the financial resources to get the education and training to get said skills because they're unemployed. This is a perfect example in my opinion where the market and free trade fail from time to time, and some force, likely the gov't, needs to step in for the good of everyone. These people would benefit from retraining, so they can get a good job, business owners benefit from increasing numbers of workers who can do the jobs they're needing people to do, and it becomes a win win situation.

D. The last time we tried no deposit insurance, it failed miserably. Banks lent money for people to buy goods and services they couldn't afford, and stocks on the margin. People stuck their money in banks anyway. The only difference is when fear hit the market after the crash, a lot of people, many irrationally, pulled their money from banks, causing a collapse in the banking system, which tanked the entire economy even further.

People lack the time and/or motivation to stay informed on all kinds of issues from local politics, to PTA meetings. I don't see how they could begin to assess what loans their banks were making as far as riskiness. And the typical American when it comes to finances? Yikes! Next to no savings, can't understand how much they should be regularly investing, etc. And it's not just the stupid people. Most Americans don't even know what a mutual fund actually is. How could they possibly make intelligent decisions about the riskiness of their banks' portfolios? I consider myself smarter than the average bear, but even I'd be paralyzed with fear selecting a bank based what little info I could find of their portfolios. Instead, I make sure they're FDIC insured, because that in and of itself entails objective benchmarks to even get that insurance.

And honestly, I don't see many people making decisions about their banks based on rates alone. As a case in point, very few people I know put money in online high yield savings accounts instead of the local credit union, bank, or large megabank, despite the fact that in most cases online savings account providers such as ING Direct pay 2-3 times the interest. I don't believe that's what caused the madness in the banking industry at all. At the very least, there's a massive list of causes well above FDIC insurance, and even if FDIC insurance did play a role in causing the crisis, it also served well in preventing runs on the banks in general that would have compounded the crisis further.

>> ^bmacs27:

@heropsycho
A. Because we've been leaning on monetary policy as our intervention of choice. Direct employment has been called socialism for 30 years. That doesn't suggest a dominant Keynesian ideology. Really it's been this mix of monetarism and supply-side economics which morphed into some mutilated crony-capitalism.
B. I suppose it could happen, but it would take a rough business climate, or some flunky MBAs. In that situation I'd try to increase my business (i.e. make $200,000).
C. That's why we have food stamps. It isn't a perfect solution, but the kid starves if her folks spend the whole check on smokes too. Vices aren't the kind of "demand side" stimulus I'd like to see (one flaw in the Keynesian argument given the current living conditions of the American poor).
D. I really do believe that if the FDIC didn't exist, "the market" would not have allowed deposits to be leveraged by banks investing in exotic financial instruments. Like you said, even the bankers didn't know what the hell they were doing! Without the FDIC people would very quickly ask, "what the hell you doin' with my money?" Rather, since their money is backed by the government they ask, "what sorts of rates are you offering?" It's that pressure from the distorted marketplace that pushed banks into more and more leverage to stay competitive. Those rates were realized by making massively leveraged bets that were only possible by hedging with exotic instruments. Once upon a time people knew their banker. I think that's the best FDIC there could be. There might be some legal patchwork of the Glass-Steagall flavor that might make it work, but chasing down all the unintended consequences would be a challenge. Certainly figuring out how to unwind all the securitized mortgages that already exist makes that sort of policy direction seemingly prohibitive.
F-. Dude, Peter Schiff is a quack.