Man Made Global Warming

[kendo65]

Originally Posted by kendo65 View Post
...
If you described Ireland (and specifically the Fianna Fail government and their policies) as socialist most people would find it hard to stop laughing. The Irish screwup was caused by the banks having to be bailed out and rescued by the (boo hiss! BAD!!!) government/state after fueling a housing boom that subsequently crashed.

Similar situation in Spain afaik.
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Originally Posted by Wolf_Rider

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Regulator

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_F...tory_Authority

http://www.clintonmemoriallibrary.co...st_agenda.html

So you're blaming too little and ineffective regulation for the problems in Ireland (and presumably elsewhere too). Probably a good point and one I wouldn't disagree with but a strange one to hear coming from the anti-state pro-free market side. So do you think then that governments/states should get more involved in regulating and limiting the market to ensure we don't have a repetition of the crash(es)?

Virtually no-one was in favour of any such measures before everything went belly up. In fact the major voices in the last 30 years had been proclaiming that 'the market knows best' and would self regulate. All that government had to do was get out of the way. That's pretty much what happened - the experiment was run starting with the deregulation of the Thatcher/Reagan era.

The results came through in 2008. Pretty definitively too.

Though the right can't face that fact, which they (accurately) judge is too threatening to their world-view, because to fully absorb the lessons of the crash would mean advocating more regulation and a stronger role for government.


As for the Clinton link, a rabidly biased right-wing hatchet job of a site repeatedly throwing the 'socialist' label actually says much more about their own lack of perspective than it does about Clinton or the Democrats.

But I have now realised that most of you are using the term 'socialist' in the Fox News sense of the term - i.e. worse than 'liberal', but (probably) not quite as bad as serial-killer, rather than any accurate dictionary definition of the term.

[MadBlaster]

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/sec-pornog...4#.T9KQilK8q9s

[kendo65]

Priceless. Any fig-leaf will do apparently. Even if a handful of junior employees watching porn sites was enough to bring down the most powerful economy in the world , how do you propose that they would affect the quality of regulation in Spain, UK, Ireland as well?

But actually that isn't even the point, because right-wing free market doctrine said that ALL the regulators everywhere could have sat at home all day watching porn because they weren't needed because markets knew best, were self-regulating and definitely didn't need any government interference.

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An interesting (sort of...) question - it seems in this thread that the European posters are mainly (though not totally) from a left-wing perspective while, as far as I can see ALL the US contributors are right-wing.

So, are there any American forum-ites at all out there who hold left-ish viewpoints?

[MadBlaster]

More irony. Republicans trying to get more regulation on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Democrats/Socialists trying to stop it. These roles are usually reversed. All the Dems in this video are liars and thieves and should be arrested. But SEC is too busy surfing porn.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTbIb75JdwY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQXbT5ZMYaY

[kendo65]

The 2nd one is particularly good

http://myesoteric.hubpages.com/hub/F...ot-Responsible

http://spfaust.wordpress.com/2011/11...freddie-mac-2/

[MadBlaster]

Originally Posted by kendo65

The 2nd one is particularly good

http://myesoteric.hubpages.com/hub/F...ot-Responsible

http://spfaust.wordpress.com/2011/11...freddie-mac-2/

Priceless. Any fig-leaf will do apparently.

[kendo65]

Oh come on. It's even got a nice graph.

I like a nice graph.

[Wolf_Rider]

Originally Posted by kendo65

[I]


So you're blaming too little and ineffective regulation for the problems in Ireland (and presumably elsewhere too). Probably a good point and one I wouldn't disagree with but a strange one to hear coming from the anti-state pro-free market side. So do you think then that governments/states should get more involved in regulating and limiting the market to ensure we don't have a repetition of the crash(es)?

Virtually no-one was in favour of any such measures before everything went belly up. In fact the major voices in the last 30 years had been proclaiming that 'the market knows best' and would self regulate. All that government had to do was get out of the way. That's pretty much what happened - the experiment was run starting with the deregulation of the Thatcher/Reagan era.

The results came through in 2008. Pretty definitively too.

Though the right can't face that fact, which they (accurately) judge is too threatening to their world-view, because to fully absorb the lessons of the crash would mean advocating more regulation and a stronger role for government.


As for the Clinton link, a rabidly biased right-wing hatchet job of a site repeatedly throwing the 'socialist' label actually says much more about their own lack of perspective than it does about Clinton or the Democrats.

But I have now realised that most of you are using the term 'socialist' in the Fox News sense of the term - i.e. worse than 'liberal', but (probably) not quite as bad as serial-killer, rather than any accurate dictionary definition of the term.

Actually, I'm not (as you put it) "anti-state pro-free market"... you see, too much free-market (as in totally unregulated) is just as bad as too much intervention (as in Government control). Both end up with the masses standing in ruin, asking; "WTF happened?"

The way forward lay somewhere between the two. There needs to be a certain amount of free play and there also needs to be a certain amount of control. Australia set up a very effective regulator "APRA"... you'll have noticed our system did not go under (well not yet, but the socialists in power atm are endeavouring to rectify that). Most of all, there needs to be a high level of accountability. You can't privatise the profits and socialise the losses, neither (as the world has discovered) can socialism survive without capitailism.

The Clinton administration basically made it law (Community Reinvestment Act) that banks could not refuse homeloans to anyone in the their area. ie They made it so banks had no choice but to give loans to people who could not afford them.

[kendo65]

Wolf_Rider, I can agree with everything you said there (and believe me, it's actually a relief to be able to find some common ground in this thread).

Apologies if I misinterpreted your personal position, but when you have to interpret someone's viewpoint from a few supplied web-links it's maybe a little too easy to make assumptions.

I think one of the big problems we've had through history is a tendency to be seduced by 'beautiful' theories that provide nice simple readings of reality. They may provide some insights and useful ideas that explain certain aspects of the world but when they move from being tentative partial truths to being dogmatic, unchallengable 'beliefs' then they create problems. I'd count marxism and the extreme free-market variety of capitalism in there.

If I'm an advocate for anything it would be a more balanced, flexible (fairer) capitalism that is less theory driven and more accepting that the market while being essential is not perfect and has limitations. And I'd be in favour of getting more regulation for finance and the banks. They should be serving the rest of society not dominating it. For the last 10 years at least the tail has been wagging the dog.

[jimson8]

Originally Posted by Wolf_Rider

The Clinton administration basically made it law (Community Reinvestment Act) that banks could not refuse homeloans to anyone in the their area. ie They made it so banks had no choice but to give loans to people who could not afford them.

Yep, the seeds for the housing market implosion were planted long ago.

The other interesting fact is that the repeal of the Glas-Steagal act that allowed lenders to bundle up bad mortgages and sell them as Wall St securities was also signed by none other than Bill Clinton.

Not that the repeal should be laid solely at Clinton's feet, it was definitely a bi-partisan effort.