Peter Schiff On CNBC: GM/Chrysler Bailout Debate has been added as a related post - related requested by Trancecoach.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Peter-Schiff-On-CNBC-GM-Chrysler-Bailout-Debate

We need to take the word libertarian back from right wing cranks like Peter Schiff and the Cato Institute. Schiff is free to defend the 1% all he likes, but let's not pretend it has anything to do with liberty.

Peter Schiff is right more often than not... I sure the "other" networks were just as wrong.
>> ^Issykitty:

Faux News at its best. Even assholes like Schiff are correct sometimes. Who knew.

Valid my ass.

The brand of free market bullshit that this guy pedals has fucked our entire system, led us to endless corporate war, created vast economic disparity, corrupted our politics beyond imagination, and wrought havok on the underclasses.

We should have national healthcare like the rest of the civilized world. Until we get that, I see no problem whatsoever in asking insurance companies to hand out contraceptives free of charge. Contraceptives are a lot fucking cheaper than the medical costs involved in both pregnancy and treating venereal disease, so this is a gift to the insurance industry. One wonders why they didn't think of it themselves.

Yes, I do hate this clown and his ideology that has failed time and time and time and time and time and time again. If he even once took some responsibility for his miserable career of failure, I might be more sympathetic. If he hadn't gone down to OWS to talk shit, I might be more sympathetic. I'm sick of these assholes. I think Schiff should be called out and reprimanded, and that's precisely what I did. I should remind you that my comments and downvotes are dissent as well, and that Mr. Schiff has a much bigger megaphone than my measly single downvote. Deal with it.

And why is it that I should not be permitted to dissent against Peter Schiff in your mind? Why should I not have the right to rail against this guy with my comments and downvotes? If you don't want your sacred cows charbroiled, then keep them in the fucking barn. Otherwise, you are going to have to learn to live in a world where people might disagree with you.

Peter Schiff was also 100% correct about the 2008 crash, but that still doesn't exonerate him as being a complete tool. i do not care for these examples of suitability for office due to correlation, correlation is not causation, and these attempts at power of authority figures to garner support for his cause is just appalling - just because a veteran says it does not make it a fact (& they are trained to follow order, not be free-thinkers) to me the true patriots shun military service 'Think of Muhammad Ali' when he so famously stated (No Vietnamese person ever called me nigger).

Paul may be right about wanting to bring the troops home, but he is very wrong about more broader issues & before of the cultists ask me for what those are read my older posts on my profile, i don't feel like repeating myself to people who close their ears & their minds.

>> ^VoodooV:

Quite simply, people need to take a stand on the whole "Money is not free speech" issue
If enough people dislike a product and don't buy it..thus motivating the company to make a better one, well that works for commerce, but it doesn't work for government. equating money to speech runs DIRECTLY counter to the whole notion that everyone has an equal voice in our gov't.
I would simply argue that in the information age, there simply is no need for lobbyists and corporate donations. If you've got something to say to your elected officials, you can email them or write a letter just like everyone else. You want to learn more about a candidate? that's what we have debates and that's what we have publicly funded websites for. There is just absolutely no need for billboards and commercials and stupid lawn signs that clutter and ugly up the landscape.
Remove/ban private money from public government (no I'm not referring to taxes, that's separate and necessary and you know it...deal with it) and I guarantee you we'll have a more fair society. Remove/ban the ability for a business to influence gov't and there will be no incentive for a politician to take the job so he can get corporate lobby/donation money.
We have to make it so that the only reason to become an elected official is because you want to make the country better. We have to make so it really is one person one vote and restore democracy


Correct step, but you're not accounting for folks who hire onto some big corporation or what not after their public service term. Government regulatory bodies are notorious for this, but so are Congress or their staffers. You can't really deny them future employment, but there is obvious alignment and abuse of that taking place throughout government. Taking lobby dollars away might make it harder for them to maintain a relationship, but they will work out it by employing their family members with fat salaries or other means.


And then once they get to working for the company, they have a line into the relationships created during their terms. While it'd still be lobbying, it'd just end up being favors....a less quantifiable currency.

I actually thought the same thing. Cenk was totally like Bill O'Reilly but in this case Cenk is speaking truth something O'Reilly has a delusions of. Let's hope Cenk doesn't get carried away with it. Being reasonable / logical does not need to consist of aggressive veneer.

I understand where Schiff is coming from. He is absolutely delusional, upper-class filth. Off with their heads!

>> ^artician:

I wish he would have let Schiff explain more. Even if he was wrong, I certainly couldn't tell because Cenk just kept bowling over him with his insistence to make his point.
Cenk very much took a page from the O'Reilly interview handbook this time.

Your video, Cenk Turns off Peter Schiffs Mic, Gets Pissed at the 1%, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I'd rather see Cenk continue to rip this guy a new one than cut him off.

It wouldn't happen. Cenk = cut and run.


>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

Nice to see one of these corrupt think tank bullshit artists held accountable for once, though I'd rather see Cenk continue to rip this guy a new one than cut him off.

In reply to this comment by enoch:
In reply to this comment by marbles:
>> ^enoch:

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/marbles" title="member since May 7th, 2011" class="profilelink">marbles.
dude.
are you even aware of how contradictory your arguments have been of late?


Contradictory like: "[strawmen arguments] is all i have seen you post ... you make some salient points"?

But evidently I'm the one that's oblivious. So please do tell.

>> ^enoch:
and the irony of calling people out for using strawmen arguments when that is all i have seen you post?


Wrong thread pal. But again, please do tell.
>> ^enoch:

i write this with all sincerity and humility because i feel your heart is in the right place,but man..your arguments are conflations smashed with contradictions.
you make some salient points and then confuse your entire premise with smashing them with red herrings and gobldegook rhetoric.
stay on point brother,
and disagreeing with DFT is fine but questioning his intellect or sanity is a step i would recommend against.
he does not suffer fools lightly and your arguments have left you wide open for a smack down.
just my friendly two cents.


I don't know what a "conflation smashed with contradictions" is, but I would suspect your post is a lot closer than anything I've posted here.

Seriously I appreciate the concern and the Bible reference about suffering fools, but I hope that's not a swipe my intellect or sanity. For that would subvert your whole neutral status, now wouldn't it?

Go back to mindless cheerleading and let DFT fight his own battles. Or rather, babble ad hominem static in-between championing Wall Street agendas.


@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/marbles" title="member since May 7th, 2011" class="profilelink">marbles
did you just bullet response my comment?
/chuckles
awesome.
ok...whatever man.
and by what means did you derive my intentions?
crystal ball? voodoo?
you got me wrong scooter.
you aint got the first clue who i am.
my comment and intentions were sincere.YOU projected your own bullshit which had nothing to do with me.
any inclination i may have had to elucidate further on some of my points has evaporated due to your own feeble understandings of who i am.
so you go right ahead and believe whatever bullshit you want to believe concerning me based on nothing but your own limited perceptions.
because frankly...i dont give a shit.

If you view free market as a processes like natural selection, then everything counts including regulation. Regulation is simply an adaptation to market conditions by certain segments of a population. It is an ability to exert control on the market while avoiding the volatile, risky and harmful consequences other methods might accrue.

There will always be someone/something trying to control market forces in their favor. If you were to eliminate any regulation you would be eliminating one side's ability to exert control, they would be at the mercy of those who control the resources. So I guess in rebuttal to your argument, we either already have free-market working as intended or it doesn't exist and can't exist because anytime you put in a stipulation that you can't do X you're regulating someone's ability to exert control over the market forces.

As far as consumers go, I'm torn by the desire to see people acting more personally responsible and the opinion that you shouldn't have to be a professional in everything. You just can't compete when you're trying to know everything so you can make the right decisions, against someone who specialize in a specific area. At some point you're going to have to appeal to an expert. Unfortunately we have become so used to appealing to the experts its become increasingly easy for the experts to take advantage of everyone else.

Also:
I really think there are numerous systems which can successfully regulate a market but we've got these bits and pieces of several of them that don't work together. The people we've put in charge of this stuff all have such deep emotional attachments to their one economic gospel that they're often unwilling to even honestly discuss things with anyone from a different church.
I can't help but feel that is an exceptionally true statement. Our system of regulations has been cobbled together and broken apart by various ideologues over the years as painful a process it might be I wish we could redo everything in a manner that makes sense for the current market.


In reply to this comment by xxovercastxx:
A totally free market runs on the same principals as natural selection. It's totally possible. The question is whether it's desirable. The problem with both is that you have to be willing to deal with some chaos and most people are not willing to.

My own tastes are for a somewhat high degree of market freedom, with with a handful of absolutes protected by regulation. A bill of rights for the market, if you will. I admit, though, that this is closer to a gut feeling than a detailed plan.

A healthy free market requires responsible consumers. I made a comment about this just a couple days ago so I won't rehash it here.

In reply to this comment by Crosswords:
Well many of us don't think there is such a thing as a 'free market'. Not just that there isn't one now, but that the idea of a free market is only possible conceptually. We see it as a chimera, a mythical beast constructed of other animals, that does not exist and cannot be created. So while individual pieces exist, lions, eagles, supply, demand, the combination of these pieces into some self balancing force seems impossible.

So I guess to put it another way when we hear the words free market we think about the human factor, those people actually exerting their control and manipulating market forces and the basic hierarchy for control goes something like this:
1% > next 4% >> government >>>> everyone else.
So when we hear free-market we usually think of the people who can exert the most control.

As for the free market or the 1% giving us child labor laws, that was government regulation in the form of the Fair Labor Standards Act. If you want to call government regulation free-market corrections go ahead.

A totally free market runs on the same principals as natural selection. It's totally possible. The question is whether it's desirable. The problem with both is that you have to be willing to deal with some chaos and most people are not willing to.

My own tastes are for a somewhat high degree of market freedom, with with a handful of absolutes protected by regulation. A bill of rights for the market, if you will. I admit, though, that this is closer to a gut feeling than a detailed plan.

A healthy free market requires responsible consumers. I made a comment about this just a couple days ago so I won't rehash it here.

In reply to this comment by Crosswords:
Well many of us don't think there is such a thing as a 'free market'. Not just that there isn't one now, but that the idea of a free market is only possible conceptually. We see it as a chimera, a mythical beast constructed of other animals, that does not exist and cannot be created. So while individual pieces exist, lions, eagles, supply, demand, the combination of these pieces into some self balancing force seems impossible.

So I guess to put it another way when we hear the words free market we think about the human factor, those people actually exerting their control and manipulating market forces and the basic hierarchy for control goes something like this:
1% > next 4% >> government >>>> everyone else.
So when we hear free-market we usually think of the people who can exert the most control.

As for the free market or the 1% giving us child labor laws, that was government regulation in the form of the Fair Labor Standards Act. If you want to call government regulation free-market corrections go ahead.

>> ^xxovercastxx:

The entire video is based on the strawman laid out at 0:29.
I'm not backing Schiff, but this is a misrepresentation of his argument. He said the free market provided these improvements, not "the 1%". These are not equivalents and you all know it.
You're all so eager to dismiss the opposition that you don't even pay attention to what they are saying.


Well many of us don't think there is such a thing as a 'free market'. Not just that there isn't one now, but that the idea of a free market is only possible conceptually. We see it as a chimera, a mythical beast constructed of other animals, that does not exist and cannot be created. So while individual pieces exist, lions, eagles, supply, demand, the combination of these pieces into some self balancing force seems impossible.

So I guess to put it another way when we hear the words free market we think about the human factor, those people actually exerting their control and manipulating market forces and the basic hierarchy for control goes something like this:
1% > next 4% >> government >>>> everyone else.
So when we hear free-market we usually think of the people who can exert the most control.

As for the free market or the 1% giving us child labor laws, that was government regulation in the form of the Fair Labor Standards Act. If you want to call government regulation free-market corrections go ahead.

A. We have been running counter-cyclical deficits. You can say what you want about the "shell game", which I btw don't agree with as a characterization, in the mid to late 90's, but compare that to the deficits run post 9/11. There's a marked difference. Compare George W. Bush deficits of the mid 2000's to what Obama has done. When the economy tanked, deficits grew, not stayed the same or shrunk.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/include/us_deficit_100.png

I completely agree with you we have failed to run surpluses when the economy has been prospering. That is absolutely the case, but you definitely see swelling of deficits in response to recessions in the chart above. That's a Keynesian idea, even if it is shared with the monetarists.

B. Yeah, I'm sure. Granted, LOL @ Ballmer from time to time.

D. Individuals may be skeptical of the FDIC right now, but we're speaking of the influence systemically of the FDIC. This past financial crisis was all about a credit crisis. Part of why the recession occurred occurred was an eroding of available credit due to pervasive fear and mistrust, a lot among banking institutions of each other. The last thing we needed was a run on the banks, and that was very largely avoided. The FDIC was a huge reason for that. Had there been, more banks would have gone under, and banks still surviving would have been even more irrationally tight on lending. That would have been absolutely disastrous. There's little doubt in my mind we would have seen 20% unemployment.

>> ^bmacs27:

A. Lol at counter-cyclic budget deficits. I know they played that whole shell game with social security in the 90s, but other than that, I don't think we've really been running many counter-cyclic Keynesian surpluses. The other thing to remember is that monetarism is a derivative of Keynesian theory, so it isn't surprising that they have some overlapping prescriptions. I guess I would push my argument further by stating that Greenspan is broadly considered a monetarist, and he pretty much ran the economy over that interval. Teh maestro.
B. Heh, you sure about that? "I LOVE this COMPANY!!!!!!!"
C. I think we pretty much agree here without getting to wonkish.
D. My GF is in ING. It's now capital one, so she's likely leaving it. Pretty much I wish your average bank was much smaller than they are today. Also, I wouldn't be so confident in that FDIC insurance. The FDIC itself is in some dire straights. Also, they just moved all that bad Merrill paper into FDIC insured subsidiaries of BoA so that they could borrow against the deposits at better short term rates to support it.