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You demand that I retract that the only just ends of government is the protection of liberties?!? I will not. Ban me if you wanna.

You continue to obfuscate and lie. What's the point of a debate when your position is that the government has no business enforcing laws against force and fraud?

You claim that the only just end of the government is "protection of liberties", but in your world nobody has a right to be free from fraudulent misrepresentation. That's not a "liberty"?

You have made all sorts of claims about me that are simply not true with the most damning one being this:

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but you seem unabashedly pro-state, seemingly believing that the super-state can accomplish any feat of economics if they only do the right things on the margin

I have said absolutely no such thing.

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I didn't come looking for a fight. Why are you intent on having one?

The hell you didn't.

You've offered absolutely nothing in the form of a profferred solution, and you're polluting this thread.

You want to start some sort of search for a solution in one of the areas appropriate for it, have at it.

ALL that you have done in this thread is bitch, whine and moan. You are just like the ****ing politicians that claim that "so and so is a crook!" but they never say what they will do differently.

This area is for discussion of the daily Ticker, NOT the "let's just say things suck but offer NO CONSTRUCTIVE COMMENTARY AT ALL" area.

I expect you to offer constructive solutions if you wish to disagree.

You've done none of that.

If you can't, then just say you can't.

If you are here to just throw stones, then leave. You're not being productive or constructive.

In case you haven't noticed, this particular subforum is NOT your "let's jack off" area. It is for discussion about the daily Ticker, and with the exception of one comment you made, your "discourse" has nothing to do with it.

I will go through this thread tomorrow and clean it up.

IF you have something constructive that bears on the Ticker then post it.

If you wish to start a discussion on monetary theory and actually have constructive suggestions then have at it in the appropriate place.

If you are here to throw stones, its going to stop here and now.

Take a good look around in public, observe people.

Then see what Bozonian said.

The only hope we have is somehow hoping for a government that is better than the sum of it's parts.

We had that once upon a time, now we don't.

Why?

Well that's a good question but I think it boils down to leadership, people took the time and also IMO the government being smaller it was easier for a few good people to sway it, not that it was ever easy, it was just easier.

On the one hand you have a much more complex society with more complex interactions which argues for a larger government and on the other hand we all have our real world experience of seeing the government having the anti midas touch where everything it touches turns from gold back into ****.

So the idea of asking the government to do anything is frightening thought.

Maybe we should focus on removing a lot of that fear by focusing on improving the beast to be at least passibly efficient?

How to do that?

Ah there's always a catch.

"What's the point of a debate when your position is that the government has no business enforcing laws against force and fraud?"

Straw man. I hold no such position. My position is that government shouldn't be in the business of sanctioning and promoting fraud on one hand, and piously claiming the mantle of the people's champion on the other. It should punish fraud, and does not do so enough.

I feel my replies were well within context of the subject matter being discussed, if not with the original post. I'll certainly do my best to stay on the topic at hand, and will take note when you feel that I haven't.

I'll drop the discussion, since my intention is not to antagonize.

Genesis,

A good ticker. As an ex-Republican and son of a Republican official and family, I totally agree with you. I gave up on the party in the last scam, the defined benefit to defined contribution scam thrust upon J6P in late last decade.

In any case, I'm afraid that this will fall on deaf ears. McCain, you may recall already had his hands dirty with the S&L debacle, so I'm not optimistic here unless he abandons the party leadership and strikes the true right path on his own. It could happen, but it's doubtful.

I'm pretty sure that because the party weathered the S&L crisis they think they'll weather this one as well.

A tragedy in the making for the fall or winter.

Frankly it's very hard to conceive all of the suggested and prudent remedies as having any slight practical and effective impact on the mess we are in.

The convoluted puzzle palace of fraud and corruption that has ingrained itself into the economic structure just isn't going to come back down to earth and settle into nicely shaped and delicious cupcakes we can all enjoy as comfort food while our bank accounts rise with vigor as a result.

Today's repeat list of items #1 thru #10 are simply not going to somehow magically override the tightly locked-down self-interests of the fraudsters and make them all heal to command like well trained canines. Ain't gonna happen, things just don't work in such cleanly choreographed fashion.

Each individual player at the top of the slime-filled robber pyramid is angling for his own last greedy cent to be gained by all this 'no regulations' mantra that the Republican party has spewed for eternity. Collectively, and without any real consolidated consciousness each is saying in-effect to themselves:

'F*ck You... I got mine and I don't give a sh*t about your annoying 'fair play' barking that's getting under my grimy fingernails. Give me a gun so I can blow that dogs brains out, I don't need the distraction.'

The rest will be left to the chaos of random fate of which some will be better at tap-dancing around and others will be crushed.

End of story.

Prosecute all the crooks.

Each and every one of them.

The centerpiece of Gingrich's Contract With America was the Private Securities and Litigation Reform Act. Passed in 1995 over Clinton's veto, the bill shielded outside accountants and law firms from liability for false corporate reporting and made it more difficult for shareholders to bring suit against fraudulent reporting. A flood of corporate misstatements has followed; nearly a thousand companies have had to restate misleading reports in the last five years.

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?....

Something tells me we will, soon, be being reminded of the

KEATING 5.

From the same link:

"Immediately upon taking office, Reagan created the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, chaired by Vice President George Bush. Its goal was to remove government oversight of business practices and reduce or eliminate the accountability of corporations and their officers to the public. It did its work. Enforcement budgets were slashed."

I am going to a funder tomorrow with McCain. I will personally deliver saturday's ticker to him and ask him to read it. Lord knows it cost me enough to get that close to him.

This is an outstanding thread and i would like to address Gen, BW and Boz in this response:

"Getting rid of fractional reserve banking simply is not going to happen in our global economic environment without a global political catastrophe first."

Gen, - outstanding analogy. I am delighted that you see a solution to circumvent this by eliminating fraud. I am honestly not quite so sure that the elimination of enough fraud to allow us to keep this current system is possible - but i would certainly support any and all attempts to give it a try as this would certainly be the path of least resistance towards a solution if it were possible.

Boz and Bw:
You guys make a ****load of sense and i am often labeled "gloom and doom" for my likewise oppinion. But hey? How can we think otherwise with the unsustainable direction we keep going down and stick saving every chance we get to go down more?

Gen - I'm WITH YOU in warning these people every step of the way. But i am honestly concerned that their committment to fraud and the cheap rewards it has hooked them on FAR outnumber the common sense appeal of our warnings. Which means they not only need to, but insist on going down the toilet!

But i'm all for appealing to them every step of the way and i'm with you on each and every appeal.

Just keep in mind Dostoyevski's "crime and punishment" - which alludes to the reality that there are some instances that we cant save no matter how hard we try................

Also Gen - glad to hear your comment on Lincolns "greenback" - keep in mind that anything that is done now to overcome the fractional reserve banking system catastrophe will ALSO come at a VERY HIGH short term penalty. The powers that be certainly wouldnt make it easy for us to cecede our lips from their tit - LOL!!!!

Geez, someone really got KD's dander up. 1am on Sunday morning. Nice way to start your week Karl. Is this about to escalate to Hamilton-Burr? Karl I'll row you across to Weehawken if need be.

http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/....

Jim Webb on the cover of today's Parade Magazine. Jim is the author of classic military novels including Fields of Fire, Something to Die For, and a nonfiction book I really love, Born Fighting, How the Scots-Irish Shaped America.

http://www.jameswebb.com/reviews/reviews....

Here is the money quote which I believe we all need to take to heart:

"Our challenges lie in improving the way we’ve been selecting our leaders. To the American voters, I offer this advice: Be as shrewd and ruthless in your demands on our leaders as the wizards running campaigns are in their strategies to get your vote. Do your part to send to Washington people who truly want to solve the problems of this country from the bottom up.

You won’t regret it. You will benefit from it. And the stakes could not be higher. Sometimes the business of politics seems silly. It can also be infuriating. But you must stay in the game, because you and your grandchildren will be the inheritors of both our successes and flaws."

Jim Webb (D.) is a U.S. Senator from Virginia.

Circpros wrote..

I'll drop the discussion, since my intention is not to antagonize.

Thanks.

Human nature. It never changes. Thus Elliot started The Wave before it became popular at baseball games.

Greenspan wrote back in the 60's that the monetary policies of the FED lead into the Great Depression. When he had the chance to not do what the 1920's FED did, he chose to repeat what the 1920's FED did, in spades. Thus we are on the verge of another economic depression of some sort.

Bernanke claims to be a major student of the Great Depression. I presume he is now doing his part to move us into an economic depression of some sort, whether that is his intention or not.

I do not see either the republicans or democrats facing reality. Both are hiding from it. Those here looking forward to Gingrinch as a savior, need to be reminded that he received the largest fine for ethics violations in the history of congress.

There aught to be a law- they put up a stop sign at the intersection after someone has been killed. Glass Steagall was created to prevent the financial fraud that has just occurred. We haven't had a crash at that intersection in
60 years and the stop sign impedes traffic flow, so let's take it down.

The head of Goldman Sachs is the Secretary of the Treasury. Conflict of interest. Head of JP Morgan is on the NY FED board. Conflict of interest.

Mr. Freemarket Capitalism Hank Paulson unconstitutionally puts the tax payers on the hook for Bear Stearns. Hypocricy. Human nature. Paulson is faced with a no win situation. So he passed the buck. Bernanke is faced with a no win situation, so he hides bank insolvency behind a speak easy TAF window.

Basicly, this thing is going to have to blow up, before anyone is going to do anything about it. It has happened this way time and time again. Why would it be any different this time? Neither political party has the moral high ground, nor the will to do what is right. When money flows like water, corruption abounds.

The companies making pitch forks and torches are going to make millions.

R2Judge,

Are you suggesting a short treasuries/long pitchforks trade?

Sounds like a winner to me....

The other two depressions Karl is referring to were the ones from around 1837 to 1842 give or take. And the other was from around 1856 or 1857...Karl do you have have a list of books that are still being currently published that tell what happened in these time periods? Titles and authors would be greatly appreciated!

It's also interesting that both current political parties at one point in the past were actually one political party called the Democratic-Republican Party.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Uni....

What happens when finally TSHTF is anyones guess...we could get a third party completely out of left or right field, or a new party that is what to be known as democrats and republicans reunited or a new grass roots party formed from the bottom up. Actually there are more political parties in US history then I thought at first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pol....

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"What's the point of a debate when your position is that the government has no business enforcing laws against force and fraud?"

Straw man. I hold no such position. My position is that government shouldn't be in the business of sanctioning and promoting fraud on one hand, and piously claiming the mantle of the people's champion on the other. It should punish fraud, and does not do so enough.

Sure you do.

Look, the concept that fractional reserve banking inevitably leads to fraud and theft, and therefore sanctioning or designing such a system by the government is inherently evil, is a non-starter.

First, as I have expounded on a number of times, there is a perfectly-legitimate purpose such a system. Monetary supply must expand at roughly the rate of GDP, or you will get either punishing inflation or deflation. To do this with "direct supply" is simply impossible to accomplish with accuracy. Therein lies the problem.

A "gold standard" under a fractional reserve system is simply an invitation to foreign looting. How many examples would you like? Any commodity or hard asset base that is not wholly-contained in the nation using it is subject to this problem - we can't use corn or oil for the same reason. This is why Britain was forced off the Gold Standard during the Depression and why we were forced to abandon it as well. Metals as a monetary base worked well when the fastest ships were powered by the wind and continents were meaningful divisions that served to stanch looting attempts, but we no longer live in such a world. Absent one world currency and one world government you can't base on metals. Period.

Fractional reserve systems are a buffering mechanism and if they are not abused they work. Are they perfect? Hell no! They can be abused just like any system can be abused. But they are what the world has adopted and without WORLD AGREEMENT on a different mechanism claiming that "we'll just toss the whole thing" is a non-starter.

So now we're down to "why are we here?"

The answer is fraud. A fixed reserve ratio set by statute works, provided it is policed and not cheated. Greenscam allowed some cheating and Congress allowed even more. The repeal of Glass-Steagall was the final straw and it happened after the LAST looting operation.

There have been plenty of cases in history where rich and powerful men have looted the public or even governments.

But all of this happens because we, the people, allow it - it does not happen because the system itself is built to loot.

I am convinced that Bear Stearns was literally stolen using the US Treasury as a convenient means of execution. The market's reaction to these events is exactly backwards, but nobody cares. We now have the same scam in the real estate area running in reverse - Realtors who are "handling" REOs are intentionally miscoding them in the MLS to drive down prices further, then cutting deals for confederates who immediately flip them. Its the same scam as in 2003-2007 but in reverse and nobody is being prosecuted for it.

Make no mistake - this is pure, simple, basic fraud. There is nothing at all complicated about it nor will there ever be. The people engaged in this campaign have become emboldened by the lack of prosecutorial superivision over the last 20 years and as that has grown they have become more and more audacious in their actions, but in the end, the entire problem is fraud.

The suggestion to regulate lending is in fact little changed from regulations that came out of The Depression. It worked - for more than fifty years - and put people in homes with very low default rates.

You can argue that this is "overreaching" if you want but the simple fact of the matter is that 99% of the population is financially illiterate. This needs to be fixed by parents but until it is fixed we must not allow people to commit fraud and get away with it.

Gingrich came into power with a great mandate and great talk. He then defaulted on virtually the entire Contract With America; essentially the only "plank" that was enacted was lower taxes. I did an analysis on this some time ago, but don't remember where - it was done on one of my blogs but I can't find it with a quick search.

The problem ultimately devolves down to us. We the people refuse to hold these fraudsters accountable at the ballot box and with our voices. We managed to turn back several attempts at amnesty in the last year, but we can't be bothered to stop our pocket being picked daily.

The issue is not "inflation" in the monetary sense, it is loss of confidence. You only need to look at the data to see it, if you bother - but most people don't.

We are on the cusp of something truly nasty in this nation. We've seen recessions but how many of you remember the 70s? That's my "best case" scenario. I remember it WELL, and I was a kid. Gas lines, food prices doubling in the space of a couple of years, fuel oil for heat going up in price by 2-3x, car prices increasing by 50% in the space of just a few years.

Our family was decidedly middle class and we were CRUSHED. Had we been in debt we would have been utterly ****ed, but back then a VISA card was a novelty, not something you needed a 10-compartment wallet to hold.

We can still stop this, but we are running out of time. The fraudsters have spent some of the money but not all of it. More importantly, we need to stick those *******s in prison as a deterrent to others who would try the same thing.

Its time to make a decision folks, and sitting on your ass is a choice.

There was also the Long Depression initiated by the panic of 1873.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depres....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_18....

Funny how that was known as the Great Depression until the 1930s one came along.

Sssssshhhhhh Cub.

Damn, you're doing people's homework for them

I read Webb's treatise in Parade magazine this AM. He was an able Marine officer and is a great writer. In this treatise, he is trying his hardest to extricate his treacherous buddies unfortunately.

The treatise is an interesting beginning to the justification to extricate those in power, Democratic and Republican, from all blame. They will use the excuse that the war on terror forced expediency over ethics thus excusing them from all liability. Good, sound logic, but he doesn't take it to the final conclusion that a good leader inevitably will have to.

The justification will come in that ethics is secondary to expediency because we are at war with terrorists and were before at war with the communists. When "war" shows up in the equation, then according to Webb those in command are given the moral dispensation to do whatever they think they believe is necessary and to "live with the consequences". Good point.

It is interesting that the only place in which ethics is mentioned in his treatise is in the statement: "And every day, we who led the squads, platoons and companies were required to make decisions that would have confounded the seminars on ethics and philosophy at universities where some of our peers now grappled intellectually with thew war we had been sent to to fight." I completely agree with Webb on this one, but he better only place it in the context of combat, not economic warfare.

Hand to hand and close quarters combat is not economic warfare, even if they can stretch this fiasco to be part of the war on terrorism.

If the excuse is a dispensation of the Republican and Democratic leadership for this mess because "it's a crisis, a war" then I want the leadership to also dispense with commercial law and apply the laws of sedition, treason and espionage to everyone who ever supported or sold any of these instruments of economic destruction. After all, one of the newly emerging economic terrorist suspects, Buffett, called them "WMDs"!

Forget the attorneys and the courts, you must then just do like Bush did with the military combatants. I want to see these economic warfare enemy combatants like CEOs and mortgage salespersons sitting in Gitmo and in front of firing squads if you, Mr. Webb, claim that the economic decisions you supported via your appointee Mr. Bernanke as a political leader were made in the name of war expediency.

I'll let you leaders off the hook if I see you dig those same hooks deep into people like the CEO's and pumpers and hang them in the public squares of major US cities.

"In combat or on Capitol Hill, you must learn to make tough choices"...OK, Senator Webb, let's see you introduce legislation to hang some CEO's from the highest rafters as enemy combatants who sold themselves like Benedict Arnold, put some pumpers and analysts in front of firing squads and obliterate some banks.

Let's make economic treachery in wartime a capital offense. Isn't it already? Then let's be a leader and enforce it.

The mark of a good leader is only shown when he or she destroys what they hold dearest if it has turned to treachery.

Oh, and BTW, start with Halliburton. Nothing is more treacherous than fraud in economic warfare. Let's see some bean counters hanging from the rafters!

My bad Gen... I'll make sure I cover my paper from now on.

Options,

If you see McCain, then you might ask him that true leadership might be shown if he and Obama both work to destroy the root cause of the country's problems. Ask him what he thinks about the possibility that he abandon the Republican party and Obama the democrats and they both run together as independents.

If they did that, then they'd be true leaders, ready to clean up Washington and this mess.

I believe they'd win hands down.

Thanks cub but until this post today I have never used wikipedia for anything! All my research comes from bound books or family members, now still alive and unfortunately dead. I don't need info on the 1930's depression because my father was born in 1919 and lived on a farm during the 1930's depression about 10 mins from where i live, I have a clear view from his perspective of what happened. I was the only person in the family years back out of all sisters and a brother to ask him questions about it. My father died about 10 years ago.

I am of GenX and all the others are of Baby Boom Generation just for reference.
Interesting is that two brothers in the area at that time were the only ones that had physical on hand cash during that era bought all the houses and factories! That area is still alive today and with the town's name is what theirs was!

I take then that Karl views 1830's to 1850's period as a back to back rolling depression as one instead of two depressions.

As far as 1873 goes...I was thinking about buying a Ouiji board and asking my now dead grandmother on my mother's side about it. I did know her as well before she died but there are two problems with that. She was born in the 1880's and didn't come to America from Lithuania til around the 1890's!
Thanks

LjKewLj wrote..

The other two depressions Karl is referring to were the ones from around 1837 to 1842 give or take. And the other was from around 1856 or 1857

But did we have stock markets like we have today with active J6P participation via 401K and other derivatives during those times (meaning intense and widespead speculation by a broader population) ? May be during those times the stock market was for the privileged few and the rich. So it would be a bit odd to do comparisions using those times.