What is Digg?Sponsored by Best Buy
The camera starts rolling on Best Buy holiday campaign. view!
www.youtube.com/bestbuy - A behind the scenes look at one employee's singing debut.
26 Comments
- inactive, on 09/19/2008, -0/+21"You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, will rout you out."
(Andrew Jackson's quote to the central bankers)
He was successful. His successors were not. The fact that we allow a foreign bank to print money out of thin air and charge us both face value and interest shows just how weak and pathetic we have become.
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." Thomas Jefferson
We didn't listen. Prepare to become homeless. - inactive, on 09/19/2008, -0/+10A do nothing SEC that refuses to enforce. Derivatives that will sink a global economy. Bushco wants a scorched-Earth policy before he gets out of the white house.
- ad33lshahid, on 09/19/2008, -0/+10the average american is too dumb to understand economics, you ever notice how its not even MENTIONED in our school systems? palin's statement of "fannie and freddie got too big and too expensive to the taxpayers" is good evidence of how clueless most americans are.
- roosevans, on 09/19/2008, -0/+9FTA:
"Until recently, most people had never even heard of derivatives; but in terms of money traded, these investments represent the biggest financial market in the world. Derivatives are financial instruments that have no intrinsic value but derive their value from something else. Basically, they are just bets. You can “hedge your bet” that something you own will go up by placing a side bet that it will go down. “Hedge funds” hedge bets in the derivatives market. Bets can be placed on anything, from the price of tea in China to the movements of specific markets.
“The point everyone misses,” wrote economist Robert Chapman a decade ago, “is that buying derivatives is not investing. It is gambling, insurance and high stakes bookmaking. Derivatives create nothing.”1 They not only create nothing, but they serve to enrich non-producers at the expense of the people who do create real goods and services. In congressional hearings in the early 1990s, derivatives trading was challenged as being an illegal form of gambling. But the practice was legitimized by Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who not only lent legal and regulatory support to the trade but actively promoted derivatives as a way to improve “risk management.” Partly, this was to boost the flagging profits of the banks; and at the larger banks and dealers, it worked. But the cost was an increase in risk to the financial system as a whole." - inactive, on 09/19/2008, -0/+9FTA:
Daniel Amerman maintains that the government’s takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was not actually a bailout of the mortgage giants. It was a bailout of the financial derivatives industry, which was faced with a $1.4 trillion “event of default” that could have bankrupted Wall Street and much of the rest of the financial world.
----
If only they had just let the bloodsuckers go under. It would only be fair. - inactive, on 09/19/2008, -0/+8America, we are insane for putting up with this. There should be rioting in every street in every city in the nation. I realize I'm preaching to the choir for the most part on here, but this is just totally insane.
- brad3378, on 09/19/2008, -0/+7Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Congress is unlikely to pass new legislation to overhaul financial regulations this year because ``no one knows what to do,'' Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&si ...
Apparently, even our law makers are too stupid to understand economics. - Ebacherville, on 09/19/2008, -0/+6Sweet, I always wanted to live like a homeless person!!!
- Hangly, on 09/19/2008, -0/+5I'm heavily invested in weather derivatives myself.
- brad3378, on 09/19/2008, -0/+5With all of this information publicly available, I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it.
- mcla007, on 09/19/2008, -0/+5What good will nationalizing the Fed do? Most countries have central banks owned/managed by the govt. They have the same problems like easy credit, fiat money, inflation, and business cycles of booms and busts. The problem is with the concept of a central bank that has a monopoly on issuing legal tender, and a licence to counterfeit money. Private or nationalised, it is a fraudulent racket and should be abolished.
Somewhere in people's minds there's a comforting myth that the Govt is on their side and is trying hard, however unsuccessfully, to fight these nasty big capitalists. That's why in any crisis they like to put their weight behind the govt and against all private enterprises. It's amusing to watch and works out all right for the ruling class. For the uninitiated here's my brief theory of the scam:
The ruling class has two hands, the left (the State) and the right (the Capitalists). Both the hands are in the average Joe's pockets. Sometimes the two hands get in each other's way, but mostly they work in tandem. One hand distracts Joe with some highfalutin ideal, while the other cleans his pockets. Often one hand passes the loot to the other hand. When the loot moves from the left hand to the right, it's called privatisation. The vice versa is called nationalisation. But ultimately the loot moves only one way: from average Joe's pockets to the ruling class' pockets.
For some weird reason average Joe prefers that his pocket is picked by the left hand. And thus the myth of the Govt fighting the big, bad capitalists continues. - inactive, on 09/19/2008, -2/+6I don't remember those two being equated when I was taking calculus. Maybe things have changed.
- inactive, on 09/19/2008, -0/+3The answer is gold based money. One to one convertability.
- macman2k, on 09/19/2008, -0/+3I dug you because you hit on many good points, but I want to clarify that capitalists cannot get into your pocket without your consent. There are only fascists and their enemy are all those who love freedom (capitalists). The fascists know that to win not only do they need to make people "love" government, but also "hate" economic freedom. THe fascists pretend to be "capitalists" and present straw man arguments to get the people to hate the true freedom-loving capitalists.
- allowners, on 09/19/2008, -1/+4Why don't we trade bankruptcy derivatives? Think of how big the market will be!
- inactive, on 09/19/2008, -0/+3The best explanation of all this that I've seen so far.
- principle, on 09/19/2008, -0/+2Like "credit default swaps"? AIG did...
- MoneyTutor, on 09/19/2008, -0/+2Wall Streeters "dreamed up investment schemes that they themselves don't even understand" and who used "derivatives, credit default swaps, and mortgage-backed securities" to try "to make their own rules." Senator Phil Gramm, McCain's onetime campaign chairman, used a backroom maneuver in late 2000 to slip into law a bill that kept credit default swaps unregulated.
A few days after the Supreme Court made George W. Bush president in 2000, Gramm stuck something called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act into the budget bill. Nobody knew that the Texas senator was slipping America a 262 page poison pill. The Gramm Guts America Act was designed to keep regulators from controlling new financial tools described as credit "swaps." These are instruments like sub-prime mortgages bundled up and sold as securities. Under the Gramm law, neither the SEC nor the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) were able to examine financial institutions like hedge funds or investment banks to guarantee they had the assets necessary to cover losses they were guaranteeing.
Short selling — a bet that a stock price will decline — is the practice of selling stock without owning it, hoping to buy it later at a lower price, and thus make a profit.
It has often been blamed for forcing prices down in times of market stress, but the level of anger has intensified as the American government has been forced to bail out major financial institutions and the leaders of some investment banks have asked for action to protect their shares.
Short sellers say that the criticism directed at them, and any restrictions on their activity, are wrong-headed, because they were among the first to raise the alarm about the risky mortgage lending practices that led to the current financial crisis. The S.E.C. had “kept in place trading rules that let speculators and hedge funds turn our markets into a casino” - macman2k, on 09/19/2008, -0/+2And if economics were taught in our welfare schools, it would be taught WRONG!
- WTFppl, on 09/19/2008, -1/+2I wounder what the fight would be like if we tried to Nationalize the Fed?
Something tells me our Governement is to weak and corrupt to do that!
I'll hand this out to the public. You people need to hit the streets too! - mcla007, on 09/20/2008, -0/+1@macman2k
In interest of brevity I didn't expand on "capitalist". By capitalist I don't mean the innovative, risk-taking entrepreneur who makes a living offering goods and services people freely choose to buy.
By capitalist I meant the "fascists pretending to be capitalists", those who use the iron fist of the govt-- through innumerable rules, regulations, laws, tarriffs, taxes, subsidies, standards, etc.--to drive out honest entrepreneurs, and restrict the choices for consumers. And then charge monopoly prices on their goods and services. Such "capitalists" can and do get into your pocket without your consent. You are not left with any other choices except buy from them.
Hope I didn't offend any genuine free-market capitalist :) - principle, on 09/19/2008, -0/+1Money As Debt
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-905047436 ... - scooterbaga, on 09/19/2008, -0/+1You just freaked me the ***** out.
- principle, on 09/19/2008, -0/+1I think Paulson will guarantee the home mortgages somehow, thus increasing value of the derivatives that are highly leveraged relative to the underlying mortgages. This will cost less money then taking over the derivatives. The problem is what to do with the foreclosed homes? Will they sell them as they did during the S&L crisis? Will they prohibit issuance of new derivatives? And even if this plan is implemented, some of the financial firms will still go broke.
- AlbinoRaven, on 09/19/2008, -1/+1I love her ***** tho. I want to see them wiggle before she's sent back to Alaska.
- inactive, on 09/19/2008, -11/+3Derivatives? Is that new slang for jews?
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is