I know it's already on the front page, but *quality nonetheless.

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by blankfist.

He is right and wrong, this looks at actions after and not actions before that lead to a crisis like this.

Hudson claims fault with the government bailouts, yes a bailout by the US government is always a bad idea, but one must understand the root cause of why such an action took place, CDOs and subprime exposures were intertwined in complex financial instruments that exposed all the banks, Lehman had so much debt that no one wanted to touch it neither the US nor the UK government, Barclay's walked on buying it because no government wanted to under write it. After Lehman collapsed it spiraled confidence downwards in all sectors of the financial market. Government money and bailout was then needed to reignite confidence and loosen money and start allow interbank loaning to take place. If this didn't happen we would have been in a far worse position, is there problems with other incentives the government took? yes but one must understand the pressure induced by both the populace and economic interests to take all and any action, most of which was to shore up confidence in the financial sector.

How did this come about? the financial sector and believers like Alan Greenspan always believed that the financial market could always self regulate themselves to not taken actions that would lead to their own demise, CDOS and subprime packages actually evolved from greed and abnormal profits. This lead to a whole slew of deregulated financial instruments like NINJA loans, which allowed firms to give loans to people no have No Income No Job or Assets. Who would have prevented this? the SEC and Fed which were both pushed into taking more lenient positions with regards to financial markets (same thing happened before with junk bonds and derivatives).

But great sift indeed, I totally agree with his views on dissuading borrowing and creation of more debt. Financial markets do not produce wealth. They only transfer it. Old school investment doesn't occur, as its multinational and money doesn't have incentive to invest in the US then say China.

Peonage sounds a lot like pwnage.

>> ^schmawy:
Peonage sounds a lot like pwnage.


I support this statement and its sentiments

I prefer "serf".

Ah, The Road to Serfdom.

"You've fallen victim to one of the classic blunders! The first is never to get involved in a land war in Asia! The second, and only slightly less well known, is never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!!! Hahahahahah..."

"Unless you're producing stuff, unless you're making stuff, what are you doing?"

I never get tired of hearing this. People think only factory labor counts as labor because they can see with their eyes labor going in one end and widgets coming out the other. It's all so simple!

The reality is services, consulting, research, providing venture capital, etc. all have economic value, even though they're harder to understand than labor that uses hammers.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Wealth Gap has been added as a related post - related requested by notarobot on that post.