The Horror, The Horror

[born rich]

We must trust the market.

We must find our way back to the self-interested profit motive, unhinged from freedom-robbing, efficiency-destroying Government control. We want a system of exchange based on the activities of creative entrepreneurs and consumer demand -- one which is not crushed by social engineering and imposed distribution schemes. We want to provide incentives to great men willing to risk everything to bring innovative, life-improving products to market. We want the government to stand back, in the hopes that by rewarding productivity and success, our Great Nation will enjoy its fruits. We want to get behind men like Andrew Carnegie, who produced steel more efficiently, so he could deliver cheaper material-costs to all industries, thus lowering the construction, transportation, & manufacturing costs for generations of Americans -- which lower costs had a ripple affect across the economy, freeing capital for investment and higher living standard. (psst: the economic growth which exploded across industries created more jobs than all government projects in history)

If we over-tax and over-regulate our most productive members, we will kill the entrepreneurial spirit which delivers jobs, cheap prices, and life-improving technology for all.

We must move government out of the way, so our most productive citizens can compete to see who can lift our boat the highest.

Listen people: if you try to control (regulate) economic activity, you will crowd out private investment; you will suffocate efficiency, excellence, and productivity -- you will fail to incentivize our next generation of Andrew Carnegies. If you try to lift-up, coddle, and reward the lazy & unproductive by punishing men like Andrew Carnegie with confiscatory taxes and Byzantine regulations, you won't get cheaper steel, and cheaper manufacturing costs, and cheaper transportation costs, and the higher standard of living that results from economic efficiency and innovation. You will consign an entire nation to mediocrity.

Indeed, we must move government out of the way!

Indeed, we don't need Financial Regulations stagnating our credit and investment products. Let our great Financial Entrepreneurs determine the types of goods brought to market -- e.g., Subprime & ALT-A mortgages, Hedge-Funds based on Credit Derivatives.

Let the professionals determine the amount of risk assumed ("freedom to fail"). If our Great Financial Innovators want to sell, purchase, and spread toxic assets across the globe, than so be it. If the market wants to create a speculative bubble that destroys America for generations, than so be it. Freedom has consequences.

The market, like a free individual, should be just as free to make choices and assume risks. This is the point of Reaganomics: get government out of the way! We don't need some government bureaucrat with some fascistic vision of the public good dictating risk-levels to free individuals and institutions.

Live free or die.

Note to grandchildren: "Sorry for ruining your life. You'll be glad to know that we did it in the name of freedom. Granted, we were handed a very different economy by our postwar grandfathers --one that was financially healthy, i.e., protected from excessive speculation and risk by longstanding banking regulations. Rather than maintaining that financial health and controlling risk -- rather than keeping investment and commercial banks separate, and tightly regulating the types-&-levels of risk assumed -- we decided that we wanted to get rich quick. We cooked the books with the greatest ponzi scheme in history. Freedom! We wanted to create incredible returns based on assets we knew to be toxic -- and we lost untold trillions, bankrupting generations of Americans."

"You'll be happy to know that we did this in the name of freedom. Our Great Leader, Ronald Reagan, told us to get rid of the heavy hand of big brother and trust the market to regulate itself -- trust the profit motive; -trust individual freedom; -trust corporations and consumers to determine their own risk levels. Trust Freedom! Indeed, the real enemy is "evil-doers" (pot smokers, liberals, Soviets & terrorists. Grenada is building a nutmeg bomb and Janet Jackson's breast is destroying our great traditions). Ronnie helped us stop worrying about the S&L's, Enron and Bear Sterns, so we could focus on the real danger: two same-sex, consenting adults living together in Northern California, and petty dictators living in Iraqi caves with pre-modern weapons-technology. Reagan set us free -- he liberated the market so we could assume as much risk as we wanted. Freedom! Now, you get to lie in the bed we made for you. You get to enjoy the fruits of our Freedom!"

(Suckers)

 

[jillian]

self-interested profit motive, unhinged from freedom-robbing, efficiency-destroying Government control.

And right from there, we know we're in nutterville.

now reality:

But on Thursday, almost three years after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24panel.html?fta=y

Well, d'uh!

 

[Shogun]

meh.. i'll pass, thanks. good luck next election.

 

[cunclusion]

But this is based on the people working in this economy working for the good of everyone and not just to line their pockets at the expense of others. This is where the free market issue is. Everyone would love to have a market where regulation is not needed but as you have seen people abuse such things and then someone has to pay for it and most of the time its not the people at the top.

 

[Ravi]

We must trust the market.

We must find our way back to the self-interested profit motive, unhinged from freedom-robbing, efficiency-destroying Government control. We want a system of exchange based on the activities of creative entrepreneurs and consumer demand -- one which is not crushed by social engineering and imposed distribution schemes. We want to provide incentives to great men willing to risk everything to bring innovative, life-improving products to market. We want the government to stand back, in the hopes that by rewarding productivity and success, our Great Nation will enjoy its fruits. We want to get behind men like Andrew Carnegie, who produced steel more efficiently, so he could deliver cheaper material-costs to all industries, thus lowering the construction, transportation, & manufacturing costs for generations of Americans -- which lower costs had a ripple affect across the economy, freeing capital for investment and higher living standard. (psst: the economic growth which exploded across industries created more jobs than all government projects in history)

If we over-tax and over-regulate our most productive members, we will kill the entrepreneurial spirit which delivers jobs, cheap prices, and life-improving technology for all.

We must move government out of the way, so our most productive citizens can compete to see who can lift our boat the highest.

Listen people: if you try to control (regulate) economic activity, you will crowd out private investment; you will suffocate efficiency, excellence, and productivity -- you will fail to incentivize our next generation of Andrew Carnegies. If you try to lift-up, coddle, and reward the lazy, inefficient, and unproductive by punishing men like Andrew Carnegie with confiscatory taxes and Byzantine regulations, you won't get cheaper steel, and cheaper manufacturing costs, and cheaper transportation costs, and the higher standard of living that result from economic efficiency and innovation. You will consign an entire nation to mediocrity.

Indeed, we must move government out of the way!

Indeed, we don't need Financial Regulations stagnating our credit and investment products. Let our great Financial Entrepreneurs determine the types of goods brought to market -- e.g., Subprime & ALT-A mortgages, Hedge-Funds based on Credit Derivatives.

Let the professionals determine the amount of risk assumed ("freedom to fail"). If our Great Financial Innovators want to sell, purchase, and spread toxic assets across the globe, than so be it. If the market wants to create a speculative bubble that destroys America for generations, than so be it. Freedom has consequences.

The market, like a free individual, should be just as free to make choices and assume risks. This is the point of Reaganomics: get government out of the way! We don't need some government bureaucrat with some fascistic vision of the public good dictating risk-levels to free individuals and institutions.

Live free or die.

Note to grandchildren: "Sorry for ruining your life. You'll be glad to know that we did it in the name of freedom. Granted, we were handed a very different economy by our postwar grandfathers --one that was financially healthy, i.e., protected from excessive speculation and risk by FDR's postwar Financial regulations. Rather than maintaining that financial health and controlling risk -- rather than keeping investment and commercial banks separate, and tightly regulating the types-&-levels of risk assumed and sold -- we decided that we wanted to get rich quick. We cooked the books with the greatest ponzi scheme ever created. We wanted to create incredible returns based on assets we knew to be toxic -- and we lost untold trillions, bankrupting the country for generations. You see, we got rid of the regulations that prevented us from buying, holding, and selling toxic assets."

"You'll be happy to know that we did this in the name of freedom. Our Great Leader, Ronald Reagan, told us to get rid of the heavy hand of big brother and trust the market to regulate itself -- trust the profit motive; -trust individual freedom; -trust corporations and consumers to determine their own risk levels. Trust Freedom! Indeed, the real enemy is "evil-doers" (pot smokers, liberals, Soviets & terrorists. I hear Grenada is building a nutmeg bomb and Janet Jackson's breast is destroying our great traditions). Ronnie helped us stop worrying about the S&L's, Enron and Bear Sterns, so we could focus on the real danger: two same-sex, consenting adults living together in Northern California, and petty dictators living in Iraqi caves with firecracker weapon technology. Reagan set us free -- he liberated the market, so we could assume as much risk as we wanted. Now, you get to lie in the bed we made for you. You get to enjoy the fruits of our Freedom!"

(Suckers)

I agree...most of our current mess can be traced right back to Ronnie.

 

[jillian]

I agree...most of our current mess can be traced right back to Ronnie.

oops...was my sarcasm meter off?

 

[Diuretic]

I think I can understand deliberately ambiguous posts but then I'm not sure.

Even in born rich's post the use of the final (suckers) continues the ambiguity apparent in the first few lines. It could be read as an exhortation back to the pre-meltdown grabfest or it could be read as a taunt to the fundie market types who deny any form of regulation is required other than the famous "invisble hand".

Sometimes you just have to leave a few clues

 

[jillian]

then i don't feel so bad. lol.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

self-interested profit motive, unhinged from freedom-robbing, efficiency-destroying Government control.

And right from there, we know we're in nutterville.

now reality:

But on Thursday, almost three years after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24panel.html?fta=y

Well, d'uh!

For the record, Greenspan did not believe in the free market. No actual proponent of the free market would take a job as the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

 

[born rich]

I think people believe in the Free Market situationally.

Reagan was a heavy protectionists, when it came to certain interests (Google "Reagan Protectionist"). For him, the Free Market was for the poor worker and single mother, to whom the state owed nothing. Free Market for him meant: if you don't have enough money to bribe the state, you're not going to be very free. Only the Norquist-driven Reagan Legacy folks believes that he was a Free Market guy when it came to his backers.

On another note...

My portfolio is filled with Blue Chips who have, shall we say, certain competitive advantages. While I do invest in some risky small caps, I mostly own stocks like Eli Lilly precisely because they've paid Congress to muscle out the generics and foreign competition, i.e., fix the market. I want a company who bribes Senators to pass a drug bill which protects it from competition. I want a company that bribes government to buy its drugs at inflated prices -- thus increasing my company's profit margin. I want a company that bribes Washington to destroy the power of labor, so its operating costs are lower. I want a company who can pollute the Hudson with PCBs without having to make costly (bottom line destroying) upgrades to its chemical waste system. I invest in winners with competitive advantages. I want a company with enough money to bribe scientists to disprove the link between their most profitable pesticides and Alzheimer's disease.

Free Market? Are you kidding.

I buy Lockheed Martin stocks precisely because I know they sit directly beneath the taxpayer spicket.

Alan Greenspan, FYI, was the great Ayn Rand collaborator, who, with Milton Friedman, put Neoliberal Economics on the map. Alan is like so many other Great Believers from the Right: he talks a good game until he has to do the political bidding of his masters (see Slick Willie's Tech Bubble and W's Housing Bubble -- both of which were centrally planned by "easy money" Fed policies to artificially stimulate an otherwise sick economy....for political reasons).

Free Market? We've never had one.

The Free Market for Reagan meant: your free from government regulators who check your books for illegally hidden losses. If you consider deregulation's greatest hits -- S&L, Enron, and the Subprime meltdown, one thing is clear: the Reagan Revolution has been a staggering bipartisan success (yup- both parties are guilty of moving government out of the way so their backers could game the system. Note to self: next time a cabal of business interests asks you to get rid of Adult Oversight, please question their motives. Duh!)

[Note to self: don't look at how much Reagan/Bush/Clinton were paid to deregulate Big Finance and defang the SEC. Which is to say: hiding losses and fixing the books isn't a criminal anomaly, it's the mark of profitable corporation. -beats working for a living. Perhaps we had no choice. Once we lost our solid postwar job base, the only things left to stimulate the economy were Mater Cards and Bubbles. What choice did the Fed Chairman have? Did you expect him to come out of his hole and say "We're broke". Look what happened to Carter when Volker raised rates in order to cool inflation. Americans punish politicians who don't give them easy money and false hope. Profligate American Consumption and Living Beyond One's Means is the American Dream -- just ask any politician, who promises each generation that it will live better than the next (even though we've been steadily losing good jobs for decades). We don't want to hear Carter's malaise about energy-dependancy and the over-consumption of meaningless junk; no!, just give us a Master Card so we can buy a Hummer, McMansion and plasma TV, and grow the largest energy sucking suburban network in world history. Why do you think we casted our fate with a "B" Rate actor? We wanted to keep the Dream Alive. We wanted to spend... and drive... and expand like there was no tomorrow, and we needed a fake-savior who was willing to tell us exactly what we wanted to hear: "it's morning America", i.e., your profligate consumption and excessive lifestyle will continue. Who knew we didn't have the fundamentals -- e.g., solid jobs and benefits -- to pay the bill? Oops. Call China. Maybe they can bail out our banks one last time, so we can leverage even more of our children's future]

Do you want to know why we had to suffer through the corrupt Clinton years? Because Bush 41 had to fix the financial black hole left by the Reagan deficits.

The Reagan Revolution taught a great nation how to live on credit and hide the damage in deficits. By the time 43 came along, we figured out how to keep an entire 3 trillion dollar Wars off the budget. Take that Arthur Anderson!

Suckers.

 

[auditor0007]

This is so very simple. Government is necessary. That does not mean the government should have a say in every aspect of our lives or business. Some regulations are needed as the private sector, both citizens and business, need certain rules to follow. This is more than evident when it comes to environmental regulations, regulations that involve worker safety, and so forth. The issue is where to draw the line. Government tends to feed on itself. Programs that are meant to do good become giant monstrosities that not only become ineffective, but end up stifling growth, and costing taxpayers their hard earned income.

Many programs that are run by the federal government should be in the hands of state government. All too often, federal programs overlap and duplicate state programs. Even good programs run amuck. Look at Social Security. When it was set up, the average life expectancy was less than 65 years of age. By 1960 life expectancy had only hit 65 years. Now, life expectancy is around 78 years, yet government never adjusted for this. People became complacent believing this was owed to them and that they deserved to retire at age 65. Now, when there is talk of raising the age to collect benefits up toward 70 or 71, people have a fit.

If we, as a society, want government to be effective, we must understand that it can't be everything for everybody. Yes, government does have an obligation to provide certain safety nets. It is in everyone's best interest. That does not mean everyone should rely on government for everything.

Looking at where we are currently, the federal government, since the 60's has accounted for approximatley 20% of GDP, sometimes falling slightly under and sometimes going slightly over that number. This has been an effective percetage as our economy has continued to prosper at these rates. When we look at future projections however, we see a very different picture. Three programs will jump those numbers from 20% of 40% of GDP by 2075. Those programs are SS, Medicare, and Medicaid.

All of the other spending government does will hold steady. In fact, SS will only account for a small portion of this increase. It is Medicare and Medicaid that will go completely out of control. But just like SS, nobody wants to talk about the obvious changes that need to be made.