Economics business.The Sub-prime Crisis. How bad is it?

[LaurieAG]

Is globalism too big to fail?

 

Considering that a 'jobless' recovery is just an admission that the system isn't working, surely now is the time to bite the bullet

 

If the 'recovery' means more jobs and industry going overseas then who really benefits, a few shareholders? some resident within the countries that suffer the loss of employment and industry?

 

Is globalism too big to fail? Is 'government of the people, by the people, for the people' a bit passe in the modern world, it certainly seems so for our neo politicians.

[Michaelangelica]

Is globalism too big to fail?.

We dig it up. the Yanks sell it to China (Chevron Mobile's biggest deal ever from the Gorgon Gas fields). The Chinese Make stuff. Walmart sells the stuff.

Everybody happy? Nobody happy?

[LaurieAG]

Hi Michaelangelica,

 

We dig it up. the Yanks sell it to China (Chevron Mobile's biggest deal ever from the Gorgon Gas fields). The Chinese Make stuff. Walmart sells the stuff.

Everybody happy? Nobody happy?

 

And we get a couple of jobs and the people of Australia get to pay for the accelerated depreciation of the foreign multinationals assets (probably twice if 2x acceleration) and a carbon tax for the entire process to boot.

 

Add this to the current state of play and we can look forwards to beautiful ETS figures, a massive windfall profit for the Australian government while the dark clouds start building in the north.

 

Gee, last time pig iron Bob sold iron to the Japanese during the depression and then took the side of the allies in WWII. Is Australia going to be neutral this time because of contractual obligations? Human nature is so predictable and greed at any cost is pathetic.

[lawcat]

Is 'government of the people, by the people, for the people' a bit passe in the modern world, it certainly seems so for our neo politicians.

 

Therein lies the trick. What does government "by the people" mean? What does "government for the people" mean?

 

Are there any benefits in globalism? Are there any costs? What are the risks? How does the government benefit from globalism? How do people beneift? What "government by the people" benefits?

 

There are too many judgment calls to find an answer, but if someone can derive a singular, reasoned, and ultimately convincing conclusion I would love to read it.

 

In the end it all goes to the question of profits: How much appetite for profit do we have considering the risks? And these are discretionary decisions.

[maikeru]

I have to confess I couldn't get past DiLorenzo's first line:

 

 

 

That's an interesting interpretation of the social contract. It's not just a little overreaching, it kind of reaches back to the origins of all civilization and says they are all corrupt, every single one of them, and the fact that he is able to put anything in print is just a sign of how we've given up our individuality.

 

No, it's more than that. He's saying that the fact he exists is a denial of his premise and that he as the author of that line is therefore an idiot.

 

I've seen him on CSPAN. He makes a little more sense than that, although that's not difficult to imagine, but he doesn't make enough sense to be taken seriously.

 

But who cares? Anybody who has that as his thesis is still an idiot. The rest doesn't matter. If you are in a bookstore, pick up a book, and read that as a first line, you should put down the book and find somewhere to wash your hands.

 

--lemit

 

Hi Lemit,

 

Excellent observation. Too bad I've missed this thread. I wish I'd joined the conversation earlier.

 

Mainstream economists consider the Austrians idiots, but they are a favorite of Libertarians and other independents. Increasingly people have become wary of Keynesian and other schools of economic thought and have turned to outliers like the Austrians. I agree on some points with the Austrian School of Economics, with their observations on how a "free market" ought to work, *ought to* being the key words here, but I've found out that much like Libertarians, etc. they tend to be too extreme and too myopic in their total belief in "free markets," "natural" regulation through capitalism, etc. that it's become something short of an alternative economic mantra and unjustifiable, unprovable religious belief system. I don't believe in "free markets," but I believe we can have "freer markets," and I don't believe we can approach and reach the ideal in the real world, with people, resources, and the limitations of human thought and action.

 

Likewise, beliefs in people being wholly rational or irrational are unfounded as well, so economic models and theories based on rational or irrational agents are flawed. We know from common and personal experience, psychology, and increasingly backed by neuroscience that people and their decisions are both rational and irrational, and more rational or irrational depending on situations, beliefs, education, etc. If they cannot account for such basic unpredictability in models and theories, basically we need to keep in mind they're working with "best case" scenarios but not necessarily realistic or wholly predictable ones. In short, it boils down to economics often being perceived as but not really being a science. The scientific method has no place in it, nor does validation by testing and experimentation and refinement of theories. (Indeed, how can one do it in many cases with economic theories and models? It is often impractical or impossible.) It's more akin to a mishmash of mathematics, psychology, philosophy, and history, IMO. And it appears very logical and good, and several of the fundamentals have a strong basis in our perception and experience of reality, but not really of reality or the natural world out there.

 

For example, several economists often are strong adherents in the growth of populations and consumption to boost GDP but do not factor in that population growth can lead to unsustainable crowding, resource depletion, lowered quality or standard of living, or even population collapse due to resource depletion, food scarcity/famine, untenable living standards or living costs, disease, war, etc. Many ignore, deride, or mock Malthus. I've also run across a lot of scientific ignorance or mocking or derision of global warming on Austrian economist websites and blogs. If they cannot even understand basic science and common sense, I am not inclined to trust all their predictions, theories, and analyses. Many of them just might be idiots. Very smart, very well educated idiots, but idiots nonetheless because they ignore even basic tenets and observations of reality. I look at it this way: science lets reality (the natural world) be teacher, when others would simply like to "teach" or remake reality. Which one is more realistic? Which one is doable?

 

As LaurieAG suggested earlier in the thread, I suspect that all our man-made systems are more like "shadows" that mimic natural systems, but have less of the stability, full utilization and capacity, efficiency, natural design, or grace that natural ones do. We must make do with imitations. We can always more closely approach, but never realize the ideal. Realizing this, I believe boom, bust, collapse, and failures as well as successes will be more frequent and, indeed, are inevitable, due to our shortcomings.

 

Seriously, several things I'd really be interested in knowing is if the 'free market' is just another flawed human construct, is it really a 'natural' system because it shadows mainstream cosmological constructs, and accordingly, are mainstream cosmological constructs 'natural' systems or flawed human constructs based on the global financial system?

 

As Shakespeare put it, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

[LaurieAG]

Hi Lawcat,

 

Therein lies the trick. What does government "by the people" mean? What does "government for the people" mean?

 

It's probably one of the earliest warnings of democratic failure. In the ancient greek Peloponnesian war the Athenians lost not too long after changing their system of democracy.

 

Are there any benefits in globalism? Are there any costs? What are the risks? How does the government benefit from globalism? How do people beneift? What "government by the people" benefits?

 

That's the problem with globalism, national borders are blurred and accounting on anything else apart from the aggregate of the global economy within these borders just leads to more than 100% of 'good' news and less than 100% of the 'bad' news with nobody being accountable for any of it apart from the 'good' news.

 

In the end it all goes to the question of profits: How much appetite for profit do we have considering the risks? And these are discretionary decisions.

 

That's what I said in my previous post, give capitalism and globalism the unregulated 'hidden hand' of the market they will soon work out the best way to make profits, war. Also, if you demonise your perceived enemy enough, many atrocities are considered 'acceptable' risk.

 

When democracy is spun so much that it isn't 'for the people' anymore but 'for the business that might employ the people' in better times, how close to political corruption can you get.

 

I come from Queensland Australia, Rupert Murdoch's home state, global media mogul and owner of all my major local, regional, state and federal newspapers. In Australia in the past 20 years we have had 16 state Members of Parliament (MP) locked up on criminal convictions. Half of these MP's were from Queensland and were evenly balanced with members from all sides of politics.

 

While this would undoubtedly be reported as greater media scrutiny leading to

greater political accountability surely there is a direct connection between print media control and official corruption, especially considering that quite a few politicians have also been convicted in the state that hosts the 'Jerusalem Post'.

 

While our political spin doctors have had a field day in the media it seems that their true contribution to the world for the new millennium is the combination of two old words to form two new ones. The old ones are Propaganda and Paranoia and the new ones both mean the same thing.

 

Propanoia and Paraganda - Public fear and loathing generated as a result of professional spin doctors doing what they are paid for. This can be used against political opposition members in ways like 'our guys might be corrupt but at least their not stupid like the opposition' type of comentators who hammer home that same message day in day out. It can also be used to justify things like torture and terms like 'collatteral damage' were introduced to desensitize the general public. It has even be used to convince an unwilling public to support unwinnable wars.

 

Why stop at one when there are good profits to be made.

[LaurieAG]

Hi Maikeru,

 

I suspect that all our man-made systems are more like "shadows" that mimic natural systems, but have less of the stability, full utilization and capacity, efficiency, natural design, or grace that natural ones do. We must make do with imitations. We can always more closely approach, but never realize the ideal. Realizing this, I believe boom, bust, collapse, and failures as well as successes will be more frequent and, indeed, are inevitable, due to our shortcomings.

 

As Shakespeare put it, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

 

I don't know how 'natural', the 'natural' systems are but I can say that both 'systems' give you the same results when you have both observation errors and heaps of spin involved.

 

I have discussed on these forums, many times, that the only way ahead to a clear view of our place in the universe is that we must reduce our observation errors and remove spin entirely from the equation. The same stands for our global system of laissez faire, non accountable, even in their own backyards, government.

 

The really funny thing is that both problems revolve around a point, a discrete observation point to be precise. At an infinitessimal scale the observation errors between an observer making an observation at a point, and another observer travelling at a relative velocity through that same observation point at the same time reduces to delta x and to zero as delta x approaches zero. That's the difference between spun perception and reality.

[Michaelangelica]

Worth a read

i never realised the Fed was a private bank> must be the only one of its kind in the world that is private.

 

http://www.smh.com.au/business/shaky-empire-on-its-last-legs-20111202-1ob7h.html

 

$US13 billion in funds to US banks without disclosing it to Congress.

 

Bear in mind the Fed, unlike other reserve banks, is owned by private banks. Wall Street if you like. The Fed and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in US history a secret.

 

The Fed didn't tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $US1.2 trillion on December 5, 2008, their single neediest day.

 

The abuses are legion, well worth a read. Morgan Stanley, for instance, took $US107 billion in Fed loans in September 2008, "enough to pay off one-tenth of the country's delinquent mortgages" while it was telling everybody it was healthy. That was before TARP.

 

 

 

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/shaky-empire-on-its-last-legs-20111202-1ob7h.html#ixzz1fXltdeiC

 

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/shaky-empire-on-its-last-legs-20111202-1ob7h.html#ixzz1fXll43ts

[Michaelangelica]

Iceland forgives mortgage debt of its population

 

The government of Iceland has forgiven the mortgage debt for much of its population. This nation chose a very different way of stopping the crisis from the rest of European countries. It decided to hear the requests of the population and to put politicians and bankers on the bench of the accused three years after their financial excesses would sank one of the most prosperous economies in 2008. teleSUR

A better way to go than bailing out banks?

More here

http://www.businessinsider.com/olafur-ragnar-grmsson-iceland-icesave-uk-banks-europe-2012-4

 

Edited April 14, 2012 by Michaelangelica

[Michaelangelica]

Evidence gathered by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission clearly demonstrated that the financial crisis was avoidable and due, in no small part, to recklessness and ethical breaches on Wall Street. Yet, it’s clear that the unrepentant and the unreformed are still all too present within our banking system.

 

A June survey of 500 senior financial services executives in the United States and Britain turned up stunning results. Some 24 percent said that they believed that financial services professionals may need to engage in illegal or unethical conduct to succeed, 26 percent said that they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace, and 16 percent said they would engage in insider trading if they could get away with it.

 

That too much of Wall Street remains unchanged is not surprising. Simply stated, the banks and their leaders have paid no real economic, legal or political price for their wrongdoing and thus have not felt compelled to change.

 

On the economic front, the financial sector has rebounded nicely from its brush with death, thanks to an enormous taxpayer bailout. By 2010, compensation at publicly traded Wall Street firms had hit a record $135 billion.

 

Last year, the profits of the nation’s five biggest banks exceeded $51 billion, with their chief executives all enjoying pay increases. By 2011, the 10 biggest U.S. banks held 77 percent of the nation’s banking assets.

http://lawcrimepolitics.com/category/tax-havens