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- drooder, on 10/19/2009, -0/+54Anyone who thought the bankers would act responsibly by giving them bundles of money should have known better. And anyone who thought the bankers would show any gratitude was just kidding themselves. The bankers are going to fight for no reforms at all in the name of "free market capitalism". They want every last penny they can get their grubby hands on.
- PhilPerspective, on 10/19/2009, -1/+45FTA:
"Ask the people at Goldman, and they’ll tell you that it’s nobody’s business but their own how much they earn. But as one critic recently put it: “There is no financial institution that exists today that is not the direct or indirect beneficiary of trillions of dollars of taxpayer support for the financial system.” Indeed: Goldman has made a lot of money in its trading operations, but it was only able to stay in that game thanks to policies that put vast amounts of public money at risk, from the bailout of A.I.G. to the guarantees extended to many of Goldman’s bonds.
So who was this thundering bank critic? None other than Lawrence Summers, the Obama administration’s chief economist — and one of the architects of the administration’s bank policy, which up until now has been to go easy on financial institutions and hope that they mend themselves.
Why the change in tone? Administration officials are furious at the way the financial industry, just months after receiving a gigantic taxpayer bailout, is lobbying fiercely against serious reform. But you have to wonder what they expected to happen. They followed a softly, softly policy, providing aid with few strings, back when all of Wall Street was on the ropes; this left them with very little leverage over firms like Goldman that are now, once again, making a lot of money."
Isn't it interesting that banks aren't making money the old fashioned way? And it doesn't matter whether you are an Obama supporter or not. His biggest problem so far as been his reluctance to go all populist on banks like Goldman Sachs. There should have been strings attached to the bailout. Given his time in the Senate, he should have known what would happened. That should have been one of his strengths. This is one area where "Change We Can Believe In" better mean something. - sola, on 10/20/2009, -1/+43The saddest part is that most of America is completely apathetic.
You can run a story about a boy in a balloon and all the nation is glued to the news.
But devalue the dollar into oblivion and give certain bankers like GS an unlimited amount of "second tries," and very few care... - rocknog, on 10/20/2009, -0/+35Is it any wonder why banks are so irresponsible if we're so quick to fork over free money when they ***** up? What incentive do they have to act differently? You reward bad behavior, and you only foster it.
- sola, on 10/20/2009, -0/+31They say they want "free market capitalism" -- except when it comes to them being bankrupt. Real capitalism lets failures fail.
- sola, on 10/20/2009, -1/+27Making money is fine.
What is not fine is taking billions of taxpayers money when you should have gone bankrupt, turning that into billions more in profit (when no one else on the planet could get a loan), and then dishing it out in record-breaking bonuses to your company boys.
You can't say "Making money is fine" when one year ago, losing enough money to bankrupt you into oblivion simply means "free cash from the taxpayers." - joculator, on 10/20/2009, -0/+24Bring back Spitzer. Let him clean up the street and throw him a hooker once in a while.
- fireburner23, on 10/20/2009, -0/+21Supposedly 75% of all Americans opposed the bank bailouts, yet Congress and the President passed the bailouts anyways. No wonder Americans are apathetic, nobody is listening to them.
- WhiteHatTrick, on 10/20/2009, -1/+21Trust me, the bankers don't want a free market. In a free market they wouldn't have received more than 28 Trillion with a T within the past year. Thats more than the nations GDP. Yep, thats more money than everyone in the US made last year was given to the banks and we taxpayers have to pay for all of it plus interest, which is basically infinite. We have a system where corporate profits are privatized while corporate losses are socialized by the taxpayers. This is the very definition of fascism. Yet no one will admit this and of course Im "crazy" for pointing it out. This situation is pretty messed up and scary and its only going to get worse is we keep electing neocon democrats and republicans.
- LinuxLiberty, on 10/20/2009, -4/+22Fractional reserve banks are always bankrupt. That is how they operate, if even 5% of depositors withdrew their deposits the entire banking system would collapse. The question is, why do people tolerate this fraud?
- Ymeg, on 10/20/2009, -4/+20Banks need to go down. Their corrupt antics should not be tolerated.
- WhiteHatTrick, on 10/20/2009, -0/+14In fact, when they know they can get their losses right back from the taxpayers, it incentives it for them to make 500 billion dollar bets on derivatives and what not. The more money they spend and funnel to themselves, the more money the get in return off of taxpayers backs.
- Waiting2awake, on 10/20/2009, -2/+16Lok -
"If we let the banks fail it would be riots in 24 hours."
- Indeed, and then people would pick up the pieces and begin to work their way out of it. As it went, the riots are still possible as nothing has been solved. The toxic debts are still in the system. So no risk was removed, but capital has been extorted from the hands of the public and placed into the hands of the politically connected.
"Letting Lehman fail triggered a near collapse in the money system. Do you think that would have been a good idea."
- Yes, and absolute yes. An unequivocal YES. Because that would have solved the issue, exposed the scheme, removed the toxic debts, and the people accountable for it in the light of day and able to face the extorted public. That would stop it from happening again.
As it happened, nothing was removed other than wealth from the hands of the public. Those that did it are still free and benefiting from it. How can anyone support the taken course of action, especially having 20/20 now and seeing how it all went down is astonishing to me. - jamesinraro, on 10/20/2009, -2/+15These banks are not "making money" or anything else of tangible utility or value. They are simply using sophisticated computer programs which operate in nano seconds to skim small but consistent margins from the normal dynamics of the markets. They operate only because the structure of the equities trading system was never designed to prevent this sort of fraud. This is really what so called trading really amounts to. It is merely a clever form of redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the bank owners and management.
- sola, on 10/20/2009, -1/+14They let Lehman, Bear Sterns, and Merril Lynch fail (albeit in a controlled way).
Just not GS. And now GS (and JPM) run the show with record profits... - dutchguilder2, on 10/20/2009, -2/+14I used to be apathetic, but now I don't care.
- Waiting2awake, on 10/20/2009, -5/+16Uhhmmm, without the government involvement the bankers would have went bankrupt. This is directly a result of a government with too much power. In fact, they had enough power to take whatever they wanted, and gave it to whomever they wanted, and regardless of the outrage and anger there was nothing to stop them.
A weaker federal government would have been forced to be more accountable to the people. - hokie47, on 10/20/2009, -0/+11Why not just bail out people instead? Granted some people will just waste the money, but most people would have paid off their debt and then hopefully spend some more to get the economy started again. The end result being the banks get most of their money back quickly and there is no way for them to ***** us over.
Not that anyone cares, but for example my my wife and I are trying to pay off our small amount of debt. We should have it paid off in a few months, but we are allocating a good amount of our income to paying it off. So instead of pumping money into the economy we are doing nothing but paying money to the banks that received the money. - Alheithinn, on 10/20/2009, -1/+11We definitely still don't have the right people in office.
- Waiting2awake, on 10/20/2009, -0/+10Lok - All our money is STILL worth zero. All that is happening is "they" are allowing us to continue this game, and that is what it is. All those "bad things" are still not only possible but guaranteed - and promised to be worse because we have just given those people threatening to strangle us more rope.
Where do we go from here? We still have to go through the inevitable. We still have those toxic assets, we still have unfunded debts, we still have a system that is doomed to collapse. We haven't solved anything, merely pushed it back and taken wealth from the future, to pay our masters today.
We made it our kids problem and taken their wealth for good measure. How any of us can hold our heads up high when we have done that to them, is beyond me. . - insomniacal, on 10/20/2009, -2/+12It's nothing another $700 billion can't fix.
/s - WhiteHatTrick, on 10/20/2009, -2/+12Loki, there is no magic solution to the problem they have created. All of your "solutions" only delay and increase the inevitable economic problems..
- Waiting2awake, on 10/20/2009, -2/+12You are exactly the type of man we are looking for in DC.
- govtdoesnotwork, on 10/20/2009, -2/+11You GOT $20 Billion more inflation adjusted dollars spent on regulation under Bush than under the same 8 years of Clinton. The problem wasn't spending too little; it was stupidity, corruption, and theft/waste.
- Waiting2awake, on 10/20/2009, -0/+8Your first point would only hold water had they not accepted public money. Also, this isn't a political issue, both parties have hung out the public out to dry.
- rkthoadan, on 10/20/2009, -0/+8Is there anybody out there (other than bankers) who doesn't think that re-instating Glass-Steagall would be a good idea?
- fireburner23, on 10/20/2009, -3/+11Maybe we should just get rid of Fractional Reserve all together and go with 100% Reserve.
- LokitheComplex, on 10/20/2009, -4/+11Banks are holding the world to randsom.
Its like the worlds farmers bet everything on growing on one type of crop. When that crop failed they say "we they are out of business and if you don't bail us out we will all starve." - aheinzm, on 10/20/2009, -0/+7that'll learn em
- inactive, on 10/20/2009, -0/+7What's up with George Clooney being randomly attached to stories on digg?
- govtdoesnotwork, on 10/20/2009, -2/+9There might be a tiny bias problem in the media, too...
- Demener, on 10/20/2009, -0/+7Sad but true.
Also being repeated over and over again. - tgc1, on 10/20/2009, -0/+7The next banking failure will be bigger. And it will come. Since we've gone on to give the banksters the impression that the Public Purse is their personal pocket book.
- LarkStew, on 10/20/2009, -0/+6If I've got $4 billion and lose $2 billion, I'm still rich beyond most people's imagination. If I've got $400 and lose $200, I can't pay my rent and I'm screwed.
- WhiteHatTrick, on 10/20/2009, -1/+7Not when apocalypse delayed is many times worse and isn't delayed far enough to not effect us. We're all going to have to take the hit for what corporations and congress have been doing for many decades. The sooner we get it over with the less it will hurt all of us and the sooner we get things running they way they should. If they never would have delayed the economic apocalypse in the first place it would have been corrected before our time and none of us would have had to deal with this and we'd all have a much higher standard of living and would have been able to keep more of the wealth we earned. I mean think of it on a personal level. Do you really think you could just get yourself into hundreds of thousands of debt and then just keep spending massive more amounts of money and keep borrowing massive more amounts of money rinse repeat? Eventually the gig wont work anymore and eventually you're going to be really really screwed and it will only keep getting worse from there.
- zoomer123, on 10/20/2009, -1/+7The bailouts were pretty much "socialist for the rich". Instead of taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor, it's taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich. And it was the rich people who asked for it!
- millixaw, on 10/20/2009, -1/+7That's exactly why they planted a hooker on him. The whole thing was a setup.
- roodammy44, on 10/20/2009, -0/+6As someone who supports Obama and who supports his efforts against corporate health care, it pains me to say this.
Obama was paid up by the banks to get the top spot. It's why the US finance guy is a Goldman alumni, along with a lot of other "economists" and people with political power.
Face it, Obama rules over the US in name but he doesn't have as much power as the corporate elite. It's why he's had to fight and fight for public health care even though it makes economic sense, the majority of people want it and the whole of congress and administration is democrat. The powers that be don't want it, and they have exposed their power by going against him.
Who controls the economy more, a bunch of people in a fancy room or a bunch of bankers with their fingers on the economic triggers? - govtdoesnotwork, on 10/20/2009, -7/+13Ron Paul was right, and fiscal reality's now proving it.
http://site.theaustrianswereright.com/ too. - rkthoadan, on 10/20/2009, -0/+5I've seen him mentioned a few times for this job and I think it's a great idea. Very few people have shown the tenacity in taking down white collar crime as he did as NY Attorney General. I wonder if he would be able to get the Attorney General job again if he ran for it?
- PeppermintPig, on 10/20/2009, -0/+5Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria.
- hydrodev, on 10/20/2009, -3/+8"If we let the banks fail it would be riots in 24 hours."
Only the haves would loose enough to cause them to riot. The have-nots would really be missing much. - Antimatt, on 10/20/2009, -0/+5Banks go down - businesses go bust - new businesses form - new businesses hire more employees instead of repaying startup debts - businesses innovate - civilization continues on into Toffler's Third Wave.
- MattBlackCat, on 10/20/2009, -2/+7You are delluded if you think that.
- govtdoesnotwork, on 10/20/2009, -1/+6I blame 'em for media bias, like I just did, because I'm not ignorant. *****, I was the one who voted for Ron Paul in 1988, so this election has been a 20 years long "I told you so" that nobody wants to hear, as far as that *****'s concerned.
- 4NDr01D, on 10/20/2009, -0/+5instant hyperinflation
compared to the drawn out stagflation we are currently undergoing - PeppermintPig, on 10/20/2009, -0/+5Well, the politicians are letting them do it. There's a bit of cognitive dissonance for some people about recognizing that.
- PeppermintPig, on 10/20/2009, -1/+6Why do I find it amusing that Loki is concerned about the apocalypse?
Life will go on. It's not the end of the world... There have been times in history when societies lived WITHOUT banks, and if I go by the statist/collectivist measure of success, that's really all the evidence I need. This history of centralized banks is a history of fiat fraud money.
The point should not be to replace one corrupt system with another. Voluntary exchange is a tried and true method of creating wealth. - thespiff, on 10/20/2009, -0/+5The fact that some people can see this without making Obama the enemy is critical. We need to get over our political hangups and get past this Dem/Repub rivalry so that we can deal with the real enemy of Democracy in this country, unbridled abuse of our political system by the so called "capitalist" financial elite.
The rich elite only control our country when the president doesn't have enough of the political will from the people behind him to enact what is necessary to make our economy sane again.
We've gone way past capitalism in this country into some fantasy land of imaginary money which somehow manages to grow while our actual production of valuable goods and services decreases. - tgc1, on 10/20/2009, -0/+5Because people are stupid.
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