The Glade 4.0

Don't you guys think you're being a wee bit elitist, and are trying to exploit the fact that you have IQs 2 or 3 standard deviations above the mean in order to profit? I mean, seriously, you expect the average American to evaluate the lending record and business practices of a major financial institution and decide if it's sound or not? Seriously? You need several semesters of calculus to even understand how the formulas they use to evaluate risk work at all, let alone know if they're financially sound. You guys might be able to make an informed opinion but the vast majority can't. Sure, they could pay someone to do the analysis for them and save their asses but that's not any different than paying the FDIC to save your ***. You just don't want to pay for that because you're in the very small minority that doesn't need to.

It is simply unreasonable to expect people to understand ridiculously complex things like insurance and the financial system, or even make informed choices if given the necessary information. People on this board complain all the **** time that CNN essentially tells people how to vote. You think a multibillion dollar financial company can't do the same to people with an advertising campaign? Hell, they already do that. The fact is, if AIG runs $500 million in ads telling people that they care about them and that their investments are sound, no amount of financial experts trying to raise the alarm about the opposite will ever be listened to. This is a big reason we need government intervention. Companies spend billions on ads telling people, "We're not about profit, we care about you, we're your best friend." They might even see the coverage gap or problems in their health or car insurance, for example, but Allstate is my friend! They wouldn't **** me over over a technicality! Can you really blame them for wanting the government to intervene when their "friend" **** them over?

Don't you think that your staunch desire for no government intervention at all isn't motivated just a little bit by the desire to make ridiculous amounts of profit off the relative stupidity of everyone else that does not understand how economics works?

Forget Donkeys and Elphants maybe we need a camel or two in Congress.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

If you think anyone on this board is in a position to "make ridiculous amounts of profit off the relative stupidity of everyone else that does not understand how economics works", you've been fooled by rhetoric.
No X, the reasons I want the Goverment out of these various "consumer protection" deals is because, first and foremost, they don't work. There is no way the Government will police everyone; there is no way the Government can police everyone. They only catch them after the fact and take them to court, so why not just use the court system anyway.

The primary reason these programs and policies are so complicated and hard to understand is because the Government is involved. When lawyers make the laws many have a vested interest in making them complicated so only they can understand them. Government lawyers have even more reason to make things complicated. When the Government makes regulations, they inevitably have exemptions. These exemptions are, when benign, for entities they deem "essential". When the exemptions are malevolent, they are so the legislators can line their pockets or give "favors" to their friends and employers. They need to make this legislation overly complicated in order to hide those exemptions from you and I in order to say with a straight face that they are intended to help us.

I don't recall ever complaining that CNN tells people how to vote. I would have an issue with the scenario you present because if AIG is running ads telling people something, at least they are a corporation and everyone knows it. If a news agency does the same sort of advocacy they are using their oft-proclaimed status as the ones who report the facts in a fraudulent manner.

Finally, paying an investment advisor is in no respect like "paying" the FDIC. Hiring and investment advisor breeds a sense of responsibility, knowing that you have to choose the investment advisor and you are responsible where your money goes. On the other hand "paying" a Government entity to watch over you breeds complacency. You are not responsible for anything in that circuit. You don;t choose who to deal with and you don't feel any obligation to watch anything, because "The Government" is taking care of it. Hell, it's a guarantee by the Government that your money is safe. No investment advisor worth a nickel guarantees anything.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

You've got to be kidding me. Aside from it being unimaginable how any of us would be profiting off this, so what if most of us are much smarter than average? Smarter people shouldn't use their smarts to get ahead?



Actually, it's completely different than paying the FDIC becuase private consultants do not tax you. Even if you don't want to pay a consultant you can at least open up the Wall Street Journal and go on the internet and do a little basic research.

All you're doing is, once again, making a spurious claim that something else is just like letting the government do it, so we should let the government do it. The claim is absurd; ll you're doing is graasping at straws to create a problem for your preferred solution of government involvement to solve.



You're wildly exaggerating the amount of time and effort a person needs to put in. Has it totally escaped you that there's more than one big financial company, and if one makes a big advertising campaign the others will too? Even relatively unintelligent people can see that if every company claims to be best, all but one of them must be bullshitting.



No, we think you're just inventing wild claims to justify the government intervention you're so in love with.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Because the vast majority of the time, what the corporation did was legal. You can't take them to court over that. The government can change the law to prevent the abuse in the future.

Have you read, for example, a credit card agreement lately? Some of these contracts have a clause saying the credit card company can arbitrarily declare you in default pretty much whenever they want, even if you have never missed a payment, and demand repayment of the entire balance within 28 days. I've even seen some claiming the privilege of retroactively reducing your credit line and demanding you pay additional interest on all "overlimit" charges during the months where they retroactively reduced it. Or they promise you a 0% APR card with all the advertising and promotions and then send you a 29.99% interest rate card and mention this fact nowhere except on page 6 of the fine print. Sometimes they even include 0% APR advertising material in the actual envelope that your new credit card comes in to further mislead you. Or they'll often "nest" the description of your interest rate within several code words so to even find out what your APR is you have to read page 6, then refer to page 12 to find what category you're in, then refer to page 4 to get descriptions of those categories..... There are other terms that are equally repugnant, I've never seen anything so monstrous and unfair, the only way they can possibly get away with the terms I'm seeing is because they know nobody ever reads the agreement before signing it. Of course, since nobody reads it, they have no real incentive to cater to the minor few who do, meaning we're all screwed. The only way this will ever stop is if the government gets involved. Or you can remove the government completely and let people sign away all their possessions and freedom because they managed to put a clause stating that on page 8 which nobody read either. Yeah, that one is much better.



I'm not complaining about the laws or policies. I'm saying you could get 100% truthful, in-depth information on your bank's lending practices and the vast majority of people would have no idea how to interpret it. Are they using a good system or a bad system? Is it sustainable? How much risk is there? You would never know. This has nothing to do with complex laws, surely you don't think it's a good idea for banks to dumb down the complex math they do to evaluate risk? That could only lead to bad things. But the average person cannot even understand this math in the first place, let alone evaluate if the math is being used appropriately. Khross called me earlier in the thread on using the Gini index in the United States, which is a perfect example. I can barely understand how the math behind the Gini coefficient works. I'm sure he's right about it not being applicable but there's no possible way I could know that. I have nowhere near the background required. I simply used it because an "authority" told me that this is how you measure the rich/poor gap in countries. Other authorities could tell me why its use is bad but I would still have no ability to sort the lies from the truth without a whole lot of education and research.

This is where the problem is, AIG for example has billions of dollars to get its message out. I think there's a principle of economics that states that the credibility of a source of information increases as the amount of money spent to spread that information increases. Even if AIG is straight up lying, the fact that they spend so much money to spread their message enhances their credibility. They become the mainstream, and real economics experts crying foul on their blogs and newspaper opinion columns start to look like 9/11 truthers.

Ok, yes, they're different in that way. What I meant is that you still have to pay someone to mitigate your risk of losing your banked money. Sure, someone could decide not to do so, but if they don't understand what they're doing otherwise, that decision is objectively bad.



Or they could all push the same message so they can all enrich themselves. Sound crazy? It's no more implausible than the supposed Liberal Media Conspiracy (tm) that always exalts the government in order to get kickbacks from the government.

I guess if you can't look at it holistically, then whatever I've said doesn't matter.
Do you think that the "legal" things the corporations do are "legal" because of, or in spite of what the Government mandates?
If you think it's in spite of what the Government mandates what is the Government doing to "protect" you? How is that going to change in the future? If you think it's because of what the Government mandates, what good are future Government mandates going to do for you?
Do you think that people are willing to sign their lives away because they know that they are responsible for their actions, or because they have been told that the Government will make sure that everything's fair?

You ae not alone if you think doing being responsible for yourself is scary. The majority of people think it's scary. That's why the pull of the thought that "The Government will protect you" is so strong. The only problem is that it's not true. Relying on the Government to protect you will only make you more dependent on the Government, which will make it even more scary to stand on your own two feet. Do you see where that leads?

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Yes, so? When you're choosing who you pay, you're at least in control of how much you put into determination of risk. Even with the FDIC, people still consult professionals about financial risk of all kinds anyhow.



You don't think that it's any more likely that major media outlets are pushing big government to get kickbacks than a bunch of random guys on the internet are somehow conspiring to get rid of government financial protection by arguing about it on a message board?

Wow.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

What do you consider a fair tax rate on someone in the top income bracket? How much more would you to tax those in the highest income bracket when you say they should be taxed significantly?

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~Tolyn~

"A penny for your thoughts; $20 to act it out."

I am still trying to figure out exactly why it is okay to tax people more simply on the value that they have made more money... if you want to make more money, make more sound financial decisions.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

.....what? No, I was talking about the major financial corporations conspiring to put up deceptive advertising to get people to entrust them with their money even when it's a bad idea. When I was talking about people here I said they don't like the FDIC because they have the ability to judge a financial institution's strength themselves, and thus don't want to have to pay someone to safeguard their "investments."

Demonstrate how the FDIC is able to "judge the strength of a financial institution" with any degree of accuracy.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Xeq, will you read the book and be willing to talk about it?

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

I'm not sure where you're going with this. If the government can't do this then noone can, and the whole argument is pointless.



Yes I will, I'm going to be very interested to see if it answers certain questions about conservative philosophy, like how government stimulus doesn't even work in the short term.

Frankly I think most people here would still get a professional's opinion. While most people here are more skilled than averge at this sort of thing, I don't think many of them are formally trained.

Furthermore, we already have laws against deceptive advertising, which is a form of fraud, and therefore are not something that would disappear. Not only that, but, like I said, those large institutions still compete with each other. If an institution got a reputation for dishonesty or incompetance it would collapse, and we wouldn't be bailing out incompetance and dishonesty.

Even if a person does absolutely nothing to check out financial institutions it can still spread their money among several to mitigate risk, in any case.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

False. Just because the government can't do something doesn't mean no one can. The government can rarely run any sort of buisness at a profit.



Something that solves a problem in the short term but exacerbates it in the long term can hardly be said to "work" now, can it?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Other than the obvious false dilemma, the problem here is that the FDIC is the fundamental problem with our banking institutions. Government managed deposit insurance creates 0 risk lending institutions. More to the point, it is precisely the FDIC that allows banks to leverage their deposits at a 50:1 ratio. So, why on earth would the party responsible for the failing of the banking industry be capable of judging its strength?

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Zero-risk lending institutions? What were all those bank failures due to other than bad debt? Also it's not a false dilemma, if a private corporation can assemble a team of people that have the capability of evaluating lending institutions then the government can too. They may not be able to do so at a profit but I never said that. And even if the FDIC is responsible for bank failures, that also does not mean it wouldn't have the capability to determine which banks are most at risk to fail, if anything it would make it easier.

Regardless, history has repeatedly shown that people are unwilling or unable to judge the soundness of banks, and that they do not behave rationally when their deposits are threatened. More than one perfectly viable bank has been destroyed by bank runs. I would also, like I've done before, use Germany as an example for why deposit insurance is necessary. People generally expect banks to pay them even when there is no deposit insurance in place beforehand and everyone knows it. Germany did not have state-backed deposit insurance until October 2008. German banks rolled out a voluntary, private bank insurance system for a fee in 1975, but to no one's surprise, very few people bought it. They still demanded their deposits be guaranteed when the recession sent German banks to the brink, and the conservative government in place at the time had to implement it anyway to stave off mass violence.

I don't actually disagree that deposit insurance is a net negative for a banking system, but people simply will not accept otherwise in the 21st century, and there's no way around that fact.

Except for the fact that the policies and evaluations of a government institution will be dictated by politics, not by the bottom line. A private company that evaluates financial institutions will make its money based on the accuracy of those institutions; a government evaluation will be based on whatever is politically valuable to those in a position to control the evaluating board or entity and will not have any need to make a profit by being accurate.



Then the government was a bunch of idiots, and caved in to mob threats. They didn't need to do it to "stave off mass violence"; the average German is not interested in running around burning things down or whatever.



Yes there is. Tell them they can't have it, and that's that.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

but but taxes won't slow growth so sayth Lord Geithner (was he one of the ones who did not pay his taxes, so many in this administration)

http://www.thefoxnation.com/business/20 ... low-growth

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

From my perspective, the wealthier you are, the more you benefit from the social contract. Not only in terms of the value of the assets the government protects, and the value of the contracts it enforces for you, but also in terms of how much a wealthy person benefits from all the horrid "socialism" that conservatives whine about.

For example, let's say I am wealthy enough that I make about a million a year entirely from investment dividends. I have no income beyond cap gains, so my tax rate is 15%.

The businesses I invest in have lowered costs because they ship goods over a highway system that is paid for by public funds. The human capital these businesses have are able to produce goods and services better and more efficiently because we have a public education system in the country that educates everyone born here, for free. Entrepreneurship is expanded because we have low cost state colleges, and that education opens up all kinds of opportunities for new businesses and jobs. The businesses I invest in are able to do business over the government subsidized internet for cheaper, and more efficiently. A government sponsored health program allows people to live longer, more productive lives, and as a result, they exist as consumers longer than they otherwise might. Minimum wages keep people at a particular earning level, which means they can buy more products that the companies I invest in sell. Worker safety laws keep people working in jobs longer, and help to keep volatility out of the labor force. Social Security keeps people spending money on the products and services these companies provide long into their retirement years.

The fact of the matter is that the wealthy benefit from the social contract, and social programs, in a compound fashion. Pound for pound, the wealthy industrialist sees more benefit from public education than someone who actually uses public education, even if that industrialist never set foot in a public school. The wealthy investor sees more benefit in terms of compound dollar value in a government subsidized internet than the poor person who uses it to read his email.

That is the first reason that the wealthy should be taxed more than the poor, in my estimation. The next reason is that if you are going to tax, you should tax with a mind of doing the least harm to the smallest amount of people while gaining the greatest benefit towards achieving your goals. I said it earlier in the thread, but the megabillionaires in this country could stand to lose 99% of their total wealth and it would in no way affect their lives or the lives of their families. That's an extreme example, and I would not advocate that high of a tax rate on those individuals. When you tax the lower and middle class earners, you actually kick your economy in the nuts. They are the people who spend the most and get money moving in the economy. Keep their taxes relatively low, but increase taxes significantly on the people who are the wealthiest. It makes sense practically, and in my opinion it's the only way to tax fairly.

I would, however, advocate a couple of more tax tiers, and a steep rate on the very wealthy in this country. Start it out on people with an income of over a million a year, just to toss the number out there.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Who provides more support to society, someone paying $35,000 a year in taxes, or someone getting a $3,000 rebate?

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In time, this too shall pass.

translation others have more money and I want to take it away

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

Lib wealth envy. Monty doesn't make anything pretending to fight with metal sticks so he wants others to suffer.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

They were due to bad debt and bad lending practices. And because of the FDIC, the deposits leveraged for those bad loans were insured by other money that ultimately had to be borrowed (more bad debt). The big thing is, the banks would have had no incentive to issue bad debts if they had to worry about maintaining the capital for their deposit accounts.

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