"John McCain showed us his real personality this week, and made some of us fearful" - George Will (???)

Yeah, and George Will is an uber-conservative (the Republican kind, not Libertarian kind).

Election hype, particularly on McCain's part with calling for the firing. Were it not an election year, it's entirely possible there would've been no bailouts and those that fuct up the economy would be left to drown.

What no one on either side is talking about is that government, not unbridled capitalism, is responsible for all of these messes, going back to the 1930s. Government, not the stock market, caused the 1930s crash and FDR's New Deal prolonged the Depression.

As for G-Will, he's welcome to say whatever he likes. Lots of conservatives disagree, especially about McCain. It's more realistic and adult than the lockstep Changehope clones voting for Obama's grab bag.

>> ^quantumushroom:
What no one on either side is talking about is that government, not unbridled capitalism, is responsible for all of these messes, going back to the 1930s. Government, not the stock market, caused the 1930s crash and FDR's New Deal prolonged the Depression.

I'm not in a position to really state whether any of that is true, but if it is, and the Republicans have been in power for the last 8 years... then surely it'd be stupid to vote in more of the same leadership?

No? And if you're going to try to suggest that all the problems are because of a democrat being in office in the 1930s... please, respectfully... f*ck off.

If your chosen part has been in power for the past 8 years and has done nothing but help your country sink into its own financial abyss, then have the bloody balls to accept that, don't pull some shit about someone 70 years ago causing the trouble now.

That's some serious blinker you have on there.

This is the one time Ive seen some clarity out of QM.

Government is the sole cause of this economic crisis...they have the power to put regulations in place that prevent the market from making stupid and dangerous investment decisions (prevention of loans to those who cant afford it, preventing speculators trading on prices into the future etc.)

Lots of stuff that bush has unwound, were put in place after the great depression to prevent another from occurring, and now that hes removed those guards...look whats happening.

I find it personally difficult to believe that government is to blame for financial problems on wall street. The CEO's of those companies were the ones who made risky business descisions that resulted in the recent bailouts. I don't agree with the idea of a bailout, not without at least a takeover and subsequent sell off of the businesses properties to those businesses who were responsible. And a regulation only prevents people from doing something unethical and stupid. If a house gets robbed, the robber is still to blame whether the doors were locked or wide open.

When left to their own devices people are greedy, and greedy people will do whatever they can to ensure that they have all the money they can. Government cant stop greed, they can only ensure that it doesn't hurt anyone else.

Finally, I see a lot of people dogging on Obama's message of hope. What bothers me is that because a man was able to excite his party, those excited people are somehow less intelligent. But counter to this, when the republicans get excited about Palin, Its perfectly acceptable. Their is a double standard in this election, and let me tell you it has nothing to do with race or gender.

If a house gets robbed, the robber is still to blame whether the doors were locked or wide open

The problem with that analogy is that the act of robbing is still ilegal, wether the door is open or not.

The regulations that the govt. removed made it legal to give out unethical loans, and on a massive massive scale.

A better analogy would be the sudden removal of "burglary" from the list of things that are not legal.

>> ^charliem:
A better analogy would be the sudden removal of "burglary" from the list of things that are not legal.


I don't know, there's a moral question with removing burglary from the lawbooks, theres not so much with regulation.

I was more going for who's responsible. Whether the door is locked or not the burglar is still the guy committing the crime.

Same with the mortgage industry, regardless of whether the regulation is there or not. Personally though, I'm all for the government locking some doors.

they're all republicans, because they all make boat loads of cash for what they do, and Obama will raise *their* taxes, not the middle class.

>> ^quantumushroom:
Election hype, particularly on McCain's part with calling for the firing. Were it not an election year, it's entirely possible there would've been no bailouts and those that fuct up the economy would be left to drown.
What no one on either side is talking about is that government, not unbridled capitalism, is responsible for all of these messes, going back to the 1930s. Government, not the stock market, caused the 1930s crash and FDR's New Deal prolonged the Depression.
As for G-Will, he's welcome to say whatever he likes. Lots of conservatives disagree, especially about McCain. It's more realistic and adult than the lockstep Changehope clones voting for Obama's grab bag.

Our economy will continue to run on a cycle independent from government in frequency, but related to government with regards to magnitude of its maximums and minimums.

an intelligent debate about current politicians? gtfo
you get right outta here

>> ^spoco2
I'm not in a position to really state whether any of that is true, but if it is, and the Republicans have been in power for the last 8 years... then surely it'd be stupid to vote in more of the same leadership?
No? And if you're going to try to suggest that all the problems are because of a democrat being in office in the 1930s... please, respectfully... f ck off.
If your chosen part has been in power for the past 8 years and has done nothing but help your country sink into its own financial abyss, then have the bloody balls to accept that, don't pull some shit about someone 70 years ago causing the trouble now.
That's some serious blinker you have on there.


Though it sounds like quantum doesn't really understand what he's parroting, to those learned libertarians in world who understand the problem, he's actually kind of right and it's not as ridiculous as it sounds. It's entirely a matter of socialist big government policies that have been building over a long period of time, just waiting for someone highly corrupt to abuse them. Are you aware of the benevolent dictator argument? The idea that just because it's possible to have a benevolent dictatorship for a certain period of time, the costs of that system ultimately catch up to it because as long as those highly centralized powers EXIST, they WILL be abused by an eventual regime change and destroy the country. This is why we embrace constitutional limits on government and a system of inefficiency in which it is (supposed to be) extremely difficult for any political group to do this. Those limits started to get ignored at the turn of the 20th century and are almost all violated in some fashion today. It doesn't matter how convinced you are that your candidate is telling you the truth, some powers shouldn't exist. The system should not come down to who can pick the best dictator, and then being left with the consolation of "I told you so" when the people finally screw up and elect the wrong guy. Because there are actually two ways to do harm: through stupidity or through deceit. It's perfectly possible to be a well-intentioned, charismatic guy that is just plain wrong or ignorant how to best solve a problem. It's also possible for someone to promise to do one thing to get elected, and do the opposite once elected. People on this forum are educated enough to see #2. They're not seeing #1.

Bush is a highly corrupt individual, no question about it. But to restrict the debate to a choice between liberalism and neo-conservatism is to restrict the debate to socialism, because that's exactly what both of them are with minor differences. This population needs to understand libertarian principles, and fast. Because make no mistake, these socialist enablements and crises and scandals have plagued politics in general over the years and it was bound to come to a head sooner or later. We are in the late stages of socialism, there is nothing "regulatory" that can be done about something that is inherently fraudulent or corruptible. You simply have to understand that markets are merely individuals making mutually agreeable transactions with one another. Government's main functions are very simple, it is to make sure rights are not infringed with police/fire/national defense, and to provide a system of courts for recourse and the settlement of disputes. It is not to have its hands in every part of the market to regulate "greed," this is a nonsensical statement that assumes politicians with privileged power to forcibly appropriate money are not themselves greedy. This is the kind of idealist thinking that enables lobbying, corporatism, etc, and it's stunning that people haven't figured this out yet. The only way a person or a company can turn a profit, without infringing on people's rights, and without colluding with government-specific powers that they do not have (see:below), is to create a product/service that people will want to improve their lives with. That's it. It doesn't matter that the primary goal in a business venture is to make money in a truly free market, because the only way to make money in that system and keep it is to meet the demands of someone else. The EFFECT is that both parties benefit, even though the goals are both driven by self-interest. People are also very generous and are more apt to give excesses to charity under this system, charity was at its highest in America in the late 19th century. Because we didn't have inflation and we didn't have an income tax. Here is a short list of things that have brought us here and Ron Paul was the only one talking about any of them.

1. Centralized price fixing of interest rates by the Federal Reserve System: sends the wrong signals to investors to prevent politically inconvenient recessions, incentivizing massive misallocations of capital investment. Enables catastrophic insolvency, market scapegoating and further socialist interventions. This is THE root cause of the two market bubbles which are now collapsing, as well as the bubble that formed in the 20s and crashed in 29. This one spanned both Clinton and Bush presidencies, started with the easy money policies of the 90s that led to the tech stocks collapsing, then the inflation was filtered into real estate by Greenspan's 1% artificially low interest rates in 2000 (he also egged on the market for years, completely oblivious to what he was doing), and finally the inflation is coming home to roost in basic commodities. Borrowers are walking away and banks that invested heavily in the housing mania with are now left with mortgages that are nowhere near worth the price that they could actually sell the home. The housing market mania was so intense that people were buying homes to flip them to other people who were buying homes to flip them, until eventually, all that was left was speculative sellers with no one buying to LIVE in them other than idiots with bad credit who bought with no down payments.
2. An unconstitutional, non-market determined money: easily manufactured at no labor or material cost by the banking industry that controls it, transferring purchasing power from those who have to work for them to the recipients of this free money in wall street and in the government without asking the working man. Morally reprehensible and enables bailout legislation to deal with the insolvency that #1 causes.
3. Fractional Reserve Banking: government enables the banking industry to fraudelently loan out credit many times what it actually has in reserves and earn interest off of it. The effect cascades as a result of successive deposits of this phantom credit between banks and enables bank runs and extremely unstable leverage, creating an environment that all but necessitates an FDIC and central bank to be lender of last resort in the event of a run, which of course leads to the creation of #1.
3. Heavy subsidization: enables corporate lobbying for government handouts of forcibly appropriated money as an anti-competitive advantage
4. Income-taxation, a direct tax on production, very difficult to enforce without intimidation tactics, enables special tax credits as an anti-competitive advantage
5. Anti-competitive regulation: who's regulating the regulator? Idealist FDA powers to ban products from being chosen on the market have led to anti-competitive bans such as Stevia, resulting in health repercussions unbecoming of an agency that is supposed to protect it. Special legislation such as NAFTA, a 100-page "free-trade" agreement acting as a pretense to lower tariffs to get the WTO to raise tariffs
6. Nationalization of industry: enables predatory anti-competitive takeovers for the largest institutions of smaller institutions, enables government monopoly in industry financed by forcibly appropriated money.
7. Medicare, SS: Unsustainable, government run ponzi schemes purporting to be welfare measures. New investors paying old investors in real time, continually increasing tax rates to prolong solvency, continually changing rules about retirement age to prolong solvency. Trust fund anually tapped by congress to spend the excess by replacing them with government promises of future dollars (bonds). CPI-adjusted payouts, allowing government to underpay by understating real inflation.

And after listing all of this shit, it should be obvious to see why I'm so incensed by simple little quips like charliem's that get rated up: "unethical" loans. You want to talk about ethical lending? You think the government doing the things above under either party gives one bloody shit about ethics? Lending money is a gamble, it's a gamble you implictly allowed that bank to take by giving them your money to gamble with. Banks aren't a free storing house for money, they immediately take the money you give them and loan most of it out to someone else at interest, that's how they pay YOU interest for keeping it on their books when you could otherwise put your savings in a lockbox for a fee. But seeing as how people are cheap, ignorant bastards that have no idea how fraudulent the current system is, they will continue to ask politicians to coo-coo them with "ethics reform" and other nonsense that do nothing to solve the fundamental problems.

And let me make this dirt simple if I haven't already: you can't "regulate" or "oversee" these activities any more than you can "regulate" or "oversee" murder. It is fundamentally fraudulent to loan out something you don't have, price fixing of interest rates creates shortages of capital when people otherwise would save it, and an easily inflatable currency is nothing more than legalized counterfeiting for government and anyone who colludes with them. Wake up already.

^ Libertarians have party lines too, in case you hadn't noticed.

Republicans blame regulation (it was the Democrats with their "liberalism" trying to make banks give loans to minorities!).

Libertarians blame fiat currency, the Federal Reserve, and seatbelt laws regulation.

Democrats blame the amoral greed of an unregulated industry.

Greens/Nader blame the free market, greed, and the Democrats for collaborating with Republicans.

Economists are siding with the Democrats right now.

Take that for what you will.

>> ^quantumushroom:As for G-Will, he's welcome to say whatever he likes. Lots of conservatives disagree, especially about McCain. It's more realistic and adult than the lockstep Changehope clones voting for Obama's grab bag.


Jesus, QM.

I made one remark on how way out-of-character George Will was to bemoan a Republican, and somehow you have to toss in another of those "Obamabot" lines only used to make the hysterics playing-field "even". I think you can cut it from this thread, please. (Oh, I forgot, we're all "in the tank", so how could we ever fathom having a real discussion?)

And George Will, in my recollection, has never uttered words of this level of contempt at any GOP party member, especially one who's top-ticket POTUS nominee.

btw: Can you please let me know which other "conservatives" disagree about McCain? I haven't seen one of em.

>> ^NetRunner:
^ Libertarians have party lines too, in case you hadn't noticed. [snip]

I may be mistaken, but I believe Banshee was talking about libertarianism, the ideal, rather than the Libertarian Party, "the other white meat."

Wow! Intelligent political discourse on US television? That's mind blowing. Must've been on at 6 in the morning on ABC2 or something.