Congress grants the Executive branch the power to break up any company

[antagon]

so there's a bi-partisan reflex to bail out highly influential firms. i agree with that. the government's role in the economy is not to stand by and let the consequences of free markets run their course - the private sector will affect that itself. the government should referee these consequenses such to conserve the benefits and soften the costs.

the bill proposes snipping up companies that enter this highly influential, 'too big to fail' bracket, so that left to their own devices, their failure wont thrust 250k people into the midwest job-market at once, in the case of GM, or leaving $80+ billion in assests suddenly uninsured should AIG bust.

sounds like a resonable solution for corporate welfare and a nod to freedom in the market to me. the only folks let down by this are those who would prefer the catastrophic failures of the firms that comprise measurable parts of or GDP and national employment, and all at the same time. thats why we need government, sometimes... to protect the ignorant from themselves.

 

[Avatar4321]

And yet i cant find a thread on it. I cant imagine that this is a good thing.

Hmmm....seeing as how you started THIS thread, one would have thought YOU would provide the link to support your thread? Just sayin'.

Were you living under a rock Friday when they did this? there have been a number of threads started since my threat on the overreaching power Congress just granted the executive.

 

[Avatar4321]

Any company too big to fail is a threat to the USA and should be broken up.

The lie is that there is a company that is too big to fail.

 

[Avatar4321]

Unless you ENJOYED bailing out the banks, the car makers and the investment houses and the insurance firms, I see this as a VERY good thing.

Why on earth do you believe that our only options available are to give the government power to "Bail out" these companies, or give them power to break them up?

Seems to me you are making the same stupid mistake in both instances, you are giving more power to the government. There is a very clear alternative. Let them survive or fail on their own merits and get government out of the way.

 

[Avatar4321]

Congress grants the Executive branch the power to break up any company

The Constitution does not grant Congress the power to break up companies, so where the fuck did the congresscritters get the authority?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

.

To be blunt: The pulled it out of their asses.

 

[saveliberty]

Unless you ENJOYED bailing out the banks, the car makers and the investment houses and the insurance firms, I see this as a VERY good thing.

Why on earth do you believe that our only options available are to give the government power to "Bail out" these companies, or give them power to break them up?

Seems to me you are making the same stupid mistake in both instances, you are giving more power to the government. There is a very clear alternative. Let them survive or fail on their own merits and get government out of the way.

Economies run in cycles. It is very very difficult to put in place something to control the downside, without hurting the upside. Better to let the cycle run its course.

Why did we fall so far? Because government allowed an artifically high cycle.

 

[Avatar4321]

Oh, btw while the Constitution grants Congress the authority to regulate interstate commerce. It doesnt give Congress the authority to break up companies, let alone give them the authority to delegate power to the executive branch to do it based solely on a determination by a "czar", or any other member of the executive branch, that said company is too big and detrimental to the economy.

The Congress also doesnt have a right to remove due process rights and tell the executive branch they can take someone's property away from them on a whim of the designated member of said executive branch.

Finally, the sheer amount of potential abuse this opens up by providing politicians a way to legally extort money from corporations would make any sane American downright stupid for thinking its a good idea.

 

[beowolfe]

Unless you ENJOYED bailing out the banks, the car makers and the investment houses and the insurance firms, I see this as a VERY good thing.

Why on earth do you believe that our only options available are to give the government power to "Bail out" these companies, or give them power to break them up?

Seems to me you are making the same stupid mistake in both instances, you are giving more power to the government. There is a very clear alternative. Let them survive or fail on their own merits and get government out of the way.

Economies run in cycles. It is very very difficult to put in place something to control the downside, without hurting the upside. Better to let the cycle run its course.

Why did we fall so far? Because government allowed an artifically high cycle.

Wait a minute. You say we're better off letting cycles run their course. And in the next breath, you say the government 'allowed an artifically high cycle'. You can't have it both ways, sweetcheeks. Either we should let the cycles run their course or government should intervene. Which is it?

 

[Avatar4321]

Things change. Period. And the Constitution, in all of its wisdom, couldn't (and didn't) predict everything. For instance, it didn't predict how anti-democratic monopolies would be. So, Teddy Roosevely introduced anti-trust laws. No one, to my knowledge, ever contemplated 'too big too fail', so to save the entire system, congress has put this in place in the hopes that it'll keep us off that particular cliff again.

Things change so much that they tend to stay exactly the same. People keep making excuses to give government more and more power and then are shocked when they no longer have freedom and are poor while the politician and his friends are lining their pockets with money they didnt earn.

We dont live in a Democracy. We live in A Republic. Or atleast we did. Im not sure what to call our government now.

The so called "Too big too fail" mantra is a lie. There is no company too big to fail. If they run poor business practices, they deserve to fail. If they are dishonest, they deserve to fail. You people act like we have no alternatives to government intervention. The most obvious is Let them fail!

People seem to think you can avoid harsh consequences the world has for bad behavior if you work hard enough to avoid it till the last possible second. Reality is quite different. In reality, the more push off the pain, the more pain you are going to have later on. It's about time this nation started to man up and accept reality. The economy will not reach an unshakey position until we do that.

 

[saveliberty]

Why on earth do you believe that our only options available are to give the government power to "Bail out" these companies, or give them power to break them up?

Seems to me you are making the same stupid mistake in both instances, you are giving more power to the government. There is a very clear alternative. Let them survive or fail on their own merits and get government out of the way.

Economies run in cycles. It is very very difficult to put in place something to control the downside, without hurting the upside. Better to let the cycle run its course.

Why did we fall so far? Because government allowed an artifically high cycle.

Wait a minute. You say we're better off letting cycles run their course. And in the next breath, you say the government 'allowed an artifically high cycle'. You can't have it both ways, sweetcheeks. Either we should let the cycles run their course or government should intervene. Which is it?

The point you are addressing is let it run its course. I was simply mentioning that the earlier interference to allow a false high, meant we had further to fall. Let them self correct.

 

[saveliberty]

Things change. Period. And the Constitution, in all of its wisdom, couldn't (and didn't) predict everything. For instance, it didn't predict how anti-democratic monopolies would be. So, Teddy Roosevely introduced anti-trust laws. No one, to my knowledge, ever contemplated 'too big too fail', so to save the entire system, congress has put this in place in the hopes that it'll keep us off that particular cliff again.

Basic human rights and RESPONSIBILITIES have not changed. Limits of government in order to preserve liberty have not changed. The willingness of some to forfeit these for an immediate gain has not changed.

 

[jillian]

And yet i cant find a thread on it. I cant imagine that this is a good thing.

congress already had the power to break up any company.....

they're called anti-trust laws.

so maybe next time no company will be "too big to fail".

not a bad thing, IMO.

 

[antagon]

whats up with this johhny-come-lateley free market economics? too many libertarian party pamphlets going around. sound economic policy is the opposite of letting the economy run amuck. like letting kids raise themselves. yeah, it'll free their minds...

 

[beowolfe]

Things change. Period. And the Constitution, in all of its wisdom, couldn't (and didn't) predict everything. For instance, it didn't predict how anti-democratic monopolies would be. So, Teddy Roosevely introduced anti-trust laws. No one, to my knowledge, ever contemplated 'too big too fail', so to save the entire system, congress has put this in place in the hopes that it'll keep us off that particular cliff again.

Things change so much that they tend to stay exactly the same. People keep making excuses to give government more and more power and then are shocked when they no longer have freedom and are poor while the politician and his friends are lining their pockets with money they didnt earn.

We dont live in a Democracy. We live in A Republic. Or atleast we did. Im not sure what to call our government now.

The so called "Too big too fail" mantra is a lie. There is no company too big to fail. If they run poor business practices, they deserve to fail. If they are dishonest, they deserve to fail. You people act like we have no alternatives to government intervention. The most obvious is Let them fail!

People seem to think you can avoid harsh consequences the world has for bad behavior if you work hard enough to avoid it till the last possible second. Reality is quite different. In reality, the more push off the pain, the more pain you are going to have later on. It's about time this nation started to man up and accept reality. The economy will not reach an unshakey position until we do that.

So, you're of the opinion that in addition to Lehman Brothers, if we had allow AIG, CitiBank, BOA, and a host of other really large financial institutions to fail, we would have been just fine........yeah, right....

That's the thing about conservatives, you're so caught up in how things 'used to be' that you cannot see the need for change until it's too late.........aka The Great Depression.

As for excuses, you want to call my reasoning excuses; then I'll have to reciprocate and say that you guys are just a bunch of whiners. You've been whining since November 4, 2008 and probably will be whining until January 20, 2017.

 

[MaggieMae]

How do you determine what is "too big to fail"?

I personally don't believe there is such a thing. And if there is, gov't is the last entity in the world that needs to be deciding that.

Scroll down to Page 5 here, and you'll hopefully understand why a giant conglomerate like AIG was "too big to fail." Hundreds of smaller insurance companies, for which AIG was the umbrella institution, would have gone under immediately.

Powered by Google Docs

 

[MaggieMae]

Congress grants the Executive branch the power to break up any company

The Constitution does not grant Congress the power to break up companies, so where the fuck did the congresscritters get the authority?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

.

Oh gawd, an anticipated contribution for someone who would insist we should still be using Pony Express for communicating because establishing a US Postal Service isn't DETAILED in the Constitution.

 

[MaggieMae]

Lets just give the government total control over everything in our lives from cradle to grave, let them run everything!!!! Will VaYank finally STFU!!!!!!!!!THEN??????? NOT!!!!!!!!!!

What a dumbass. PP bitches about taxes, but is more than happy to bail out Wall Street...

You means the hundreds of billions of TARP dollars that are getting REPAID AS WE SPEAK or the hundreds of billions of dollars that OBAMA FLUSHED DOWN THE TOILET...Please clarify jackass!!!

Since you brought it up, why don't you post some source material for your comments? Little hissy fits don't cut it.

 

[MaggieMae]

The right to REGULATE does not grant the right to break up just because the President doesn't think they are creating enough jobs.

And where do you get this crapola of yours from? link up.

And if memory serves, the government does have the right to break up monopolies, so what are you saying, they really don't????

care

RETARD ALERT, Retard alert.

Monopolies are bad for business. They cause price fixing and destroy competition and destroy business. Breaking up Companies cause they don't hire enough people according to the current Administration is NOT the same thing.

What ARE you talking about? The Federal Regulatory bill has nothing to do with hiring practices.

At the end of the chain, employment will be helped along because when Big Banks stop hoarding their cash and start lending to small banks, who in turn lend to small businesses, the latter can then begin to start employing again.

Here's what the bill does in a nutshell (and the Senate version is similar):

It would identify firms and activities that should be subject to heightened standards, including requirements that they place more money in reserve. The government could dismantle even healthy firms if they were considered a grave risk to the economy [such as Enron!]. Large firms with assets of more than $50 billion, and hedge funds with at least $10 billion in assets, would pay into a $150 billion resolution fund that would cover the costs of dismantling such a company.

The Associated Press: Major makeover of Wall Street regs passes House

 

[MaggieMae]

Could you imagine the outcry from the loony left if Bush & Co. had done this?

Don't have to imagine, they whined and bellyached for eight solid years about "executive power" see you have to remember the folks on the loony left only give a shit about the country when they are in charge.

The BA only cried "executive power" when they got hit with subpoenas.

 

[MaggieMae]

credit default swaps have been around for YEARS!!! but with deregulation they became the norm rather than the exception...the risk is huge...but with governments printing money like it was going out of style and banks giving it away by the wheelbarrow full there was no way one could lose....or so they thought. It was a Ponzi scheme the likes of which has never been seen!!!!
read this...
PBS Frontline: The Warning -- How Greenspan, Summers & Rubin Conspired To Silence Derivatives Whistleblower Brooksley*Born - Home - The Daily Bail

So, are you admitting that the loaning of money to individuals who should not have gotten loans was not the only reason these institutions deemed "too big to fail" were bailed out?

I'm not admitting anything...I'm telling you what my opinion is....

If you have a person who is approached by a bank and asked if they would like a 100k credit line so the bank can bundle up their new mortgage into a mortgage derivative "bond" and sell it and that person lies on their application then yes not only should that person NOT have gotten the loan but the bank shouldn't have lent it. The agencies and banks deemed to big to fail were not only tied to bad American investments...but worldwide bad investments. That's what is meant by "to big to fail". They were beholden to foreign investment houses as well as American ones.

There's one huge factor left out of your almost correct analysis, and that is that it was private mortgage lending companies (not banks) who were issuing mortgages to people who couldn't afford them, then selling those mortgages (pieces of paper) to the major Wall Street investment banks, who in turn bundled them together with good mortgages and sold the entire package as one "security." It soon became evident that the single "security" was worthless because there was more bad paper than good paper in it.

The problem was that nobody was monitoring this sordid trading activity until it was too late.