USSA 2009: Another Step Towards Statism

Originally Posted by SDW2001

http://www.cnbc.com/id/33417281

After giving billions to Big Finance, the government has now decided two wrongs make a right. In these companies' defense, they accepted a "deal" that included certain conditions for taking government money. However, they are now told after the fact that the government is altering the deal (Darth Vader/Empire Strikes Back). The government will now set executive pay limits, ban certain types of perks, etc. Fascism/Statism on the march!

Granted, these companies DID take taxpayer money, which necessarily came with restrictions. However, the government did not buy controlling stakes in these companies. Therefore, it would seem they could certainly tell the government to go "pound sand."

As a conservative, I find this kind of government dictating extremely concerning. Does anyone support this move?

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich

The end result of this global car crash is unchecked growth of government, trillions of wasted taxpayer dollars and a continuation of Bush-era policies. The corruption is wide, deep and getting deeper.

Originally Posted by Frank777

Absolutely.

a continuation of Bush-era policies

Originally Posted by jimmac

Originally posted by SpamSandwich :


Yes all Bush era policies need to be stopped.

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich

Not only that, but all Obama era policies need to be stopped!

Originally Posted by jimmac

Well that of course is where we disagree. However I wonder if Frank777 would have agreed to the first statement a short time ago.

Originally Posted by jimmac

However I wonder if Frank777 would have agreed to the first statement a short time ago.

Originally Posted by dmz

There is no solution to this either way, America has poisoned itself with greed and lawlessness -- it is no longer functional. There is nothing left for America, except to let the oligarchy fight over the scraps.

With every crisis the country will entrench into more and more messianic government intervention, which will only make matters worse -- this is inevitable.

You can't run the "greatest country in the world" on cycles of dependency and addiction, a 30th place public education system, epidemic obesity, and women who want their cesarean sections and tummy tucks scheduled on the same weekend.

If you will not be ruled by True morality (God) you will be ruled by tyrants.

We wanted it, and we'll get it.

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Originally Posted by Mumbo Jumbo

The economic crisis is the Holy Wrath of the Lord God of Abraham!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Originally Posted by dmz

If you will not be ruled by True morality (God) you will be ruled by tyrants.

Originally Posted by Mumbo Jumbo

Ah.

Do you mean your moderate centre-left president Barack Obama?

Is he the tyrant you mean here?

Originally Posted by Frank777

I don't agree with your silly statement now. Brainless jingoism is your thing, not mine.

Not everything Bush did was bad. Not everything Obama has done has been bad.
I don't expect someone like you to understand that.

However, when it comes to the subject of this thread, Bush did give in to a lot of nanny state nonsense, and Obama has made it a thousand times worse.

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich

How 'bout the White House trying to keep "Fox News" (which I detest, by the way) out of the press pool? IMO, that is really overreaching on the part of the administration. News organizations, such as they are, should have as much access as is practical. "Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one." (quote by H. L. Mencken)

In a sign of discomfort with the White House stance, Fox’s television news competitors refused to go along with a Treasury Department effort on Tuesday to exclude Fox from a round of interviews with the executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg that was to be conducted with a “pool” camera crew shared by all the networks. That followed a pointed question at a White House briefing this week by Jake Tapper, an ABC News correspondent, about the administration’s treatment of “one of our sister organizations.”

Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss

I've noticed over the years that many people who call themselves conservatives are actually corporatists.

Originally Posted by Taskiss

What is the difference between your "corporatists" and capitalists?

Originally Posted by Frank777

I don't agree with your silly statement now. Brainless jingoism is your thing, not mine.

Not everything Bush did was bad. Not everything Obama has done has been bad.
I don't expect someone like you to understand that.

However, when it comes to the subject of this thread, Bush did give in to a lot of nanny state nonsense, and Obama has made it a thousand times worse.

Brainless

Originally Posted by SDW2001

So the government can now change the terms of its bailout after the fact...because the corporations are insulting people? Our founding fathers were deathly afraid and aware of the dangers of unchecked government expansion and power. If the government can dictate pay because it's insulting now, then we might as well burn the Constitution.





Take what? These are publicly traded companies. They are responsible to their shareholders, not the federal government. And really...how do high salaries affect you? Do you really think the government has the right to limit pay like that, just because at one point these companies took bailout money? Don't get me wrong jimmac, I think keeping outrageous salaries is is an extremely bad idea in terms of PR. As a shareholder, I would be having a fit. I just don't think the government should have the right to do what they are doing...unless it was part of the initial agreement to take the money in the first place.



No, you mean in your opinion they are corporatists. It's not like you've just now seen some readily observable fact.



I can't speak for others, but what I'm taking issue with is the government altering the deal after the fact based on public perception/politics and nothing more.



Many don't. Let the shareholders sort it out. Besides, the government encouraged and accelerated the collapse to begin with.



What you're presenting here is a sort of false dilemma. It's quite possible to not believe either. The point is that it is not the government's job, right or responsibility to set limits on the private sector like this. That is, unless such limits were part of the bailout to begin with (which would have been understandable, even if I'm not sure it would be a good idea).

Take what? These are publicly traded companies.

Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss

I've noticed over the years that many people who call themselves conservatives are actually corporatists. What they really believe is that the government's job is to aid and comfort corporations, and if the government ever demands anything return, that this can immediately be called fascism. Funny, that. In a better world, many of these top executives (who after all brought the economy to the brink of collapse) wouldn't have jobs anymore, let alone big bonuses.

In 1978 CEO compensation was a multiple of 35 times the pay of the average worker. In 2007, the multiple was 275. That must be a function of the great job they are doing -- and if you don't believe it, you must be a fascist.

Originally Posted by Frank777

Conservatives don't believe that the government's job is to comfort anybody - corporations, unions, special interests etc.

Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss

Well as I said, I believe a lot of people who call themselves conservatives are in fact corporatists. Whether they know it or not, this is functionally the philosophy they espouse.

It's easy to talk about an economy that "behaves as it should" but what kind of behavior is that, precisely? It's not the government that created these financial institutions that are "too big to fail," it was the urge to merge, which is created by the corporations themselves. It wasn't the government that made AIG gamble its entire future on derivative insurance, the risks of which they themselves clearly did not comprehend. It was corporate greed and stupidity.

I don't want to get into an argument that these companies weren't too big to fail, because making this argument inevitably comes down to historical revisionism, a pretense that it would have all been sorted out, and we would not have been in a worldwide depression right now if governments around the world (not just in the US) had not stepped in to prevent it. Even Alan Greenspan, a lifelong disciple of Adam Smith, had to admit to his horror that corporations don't always look out for their best interests, and when they don't, the results can be calamitous for the economy.

I don't like all of this government intervention. Still, I don't want to be squatting in a cave around a campfire talking about how we stayed ideologically pure. I also think we do need to do something about the wealth gulf, because I don't want the US to become Brazil.

Originally Posted by jimmac

...
It's something you can't hang on Clinton or the democrats. It lands squarly at the foot of George W. Bush.

In The Warning, veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk unearths the hidden history of the nation's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the center of it all he finds Brooksley Born, who speaks for the first time on television about her failed campaign to regulate the secretive, multitrillion-dollar derivatives market whose crash helped trigger the financial collapse in the fall of 2008.

"I didn't know Brooksley Born," says former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, a member of President Clinton's powerful Working Group on Financial Markets. "I was told that she was irascible, difficult, stubborn, unreasonable." Levitt explains how the other principals of the Working Group -- former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin -- convinced him that Born's attempt to regulate the risky derivatives market could lead to financial turmoil, a conclusion he now believes was "clearly a mistake."

Born's battle behind closed doors was epic, Kirk finds. The members of the President's Working Group vehemently opposed regulation -- especially when proposed by a Washington outsider like Born.

"I walk into Brooksley's office one day; the blood has drained from her face," says Michael Greenberger, a former top official at the CFTC who worked closely with Born. "She's hanging up the telephone; she says to me: 'That was [former Assistant Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers. He says, "You're going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II."... [He says he has] 13 bankers in his office who informed him of this. Stop, right away. No more.'"

Greenspan, Rubin and Summers ultimately prevailed on Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation of derivatives. "Born faced a formidable struggle pushing for regulation at a time when the stock market was booming," Kirk says. "Alan Greenspan was the maestro, and both parties in Washington were united in a belief that the markets would take care of themselves."

Now, with many of the same men who shut down Born in key positions in the Obama administration, The Warning reveals the complicated politics that led to this crisis and what it may say about current attempts to prevent the next one.

Problems cannot be solved by the level of awareness that created them
-Albert Einstein

Originally Posted by dmz

Watch Frontline's recent piece: The Warning and get back to us on how this is "all Bush's fault".



You partisans need to see this for what it is: an American problem.

It'll happen again if we don't take the appropriate steps," Born warns. "There will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap over and over until we learn from experience."

Originally Posted by jimmac

The program begins in 2005. It figures Bush prominently. ....

Originally Posted by dmz

No, that program is about the Clinton years, and their chance to not drop the ball. Rubin went to CITI (LEVERED 87:1 BABY!!) and Summers is advising the President. The Bush years were a problem as well, to say the least. But in 2005 we all thought that we could lever ourselves and the economy into infinity.

Greed, confirmation bias, and regulatory capture -- which of those has changed? -- that's right, none of them have changed.

Just wait for Enron 3.0 -- it's going to be a riot.

However it seems to point to Greenspan who started in the Reagan years

Originally Posted by jimmac

To quote myself :


However it seems to point to Greenspan who started in the Reagan years

Originally Posted by SDW2001

This is utterly wrong-headed thinking. The free market leads to excesses, but it also is self-correcting. Free market capitalism, while flawed, has produced the greatest standard of living in history. And really...your last statement...seriously? You claim that anyone who believes in free market capitalism is "on the distant fringe?" Wow.

Let me ask then...what system should we use? What regulations should be passed?