Violent Protests in America! - Page 3 - New England Patriots Forums

PatsFanInVa · 02-01-2011, 05:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PatriotsReign

lol...nice touch on the last line!

As you know, I've favored regulation here on this board. But I've been reading about how regulation actually caused this recession...Yes, it was POOR regulation, but still regulation that allowed for this PFiVA.

I do agree with your proposition that banks insure themselves...why hasen't anyone ever asked why they haven't up til now?

LOL, sorry couldn't resist. I mean, come on. But I'm going to leave you & the future radicals of America to your scheming regarding your call to arms. I personally oppose it. LOL I will watch you and Chico & the remainder realize what you do/don't have in common with each other on my teevee, and laugh...

But on the policy idea, I think it would be interesting. Like - establish a big mutual insurance pool, but it's a pool they all pay into that covers the possibility that one or the other would go under.

I guess the argument against it would only come from the banks themselves, who would say it inhibits their mutual growth. After all, it would tie up money in a mutual risk insurance pool, to hedge the part of the hedge fund that is overexposed by their other risk-taking, which in fact is usually done in the name of... wait for it... "hedging." The difference is an insurance pool would have to be highly liquid and invested in something emanently non-volatile (if invested at all - hell, they're exposing us ALL to this risk, I say make them keep their pool in cash or bullion.) Whattaya think? We'd just have to make sure their fund it big enough to protect against their potential default risk.

Side note - "Too much regulation" would seem a weird conclusion for the 08 disaster, since we'd been deregulating for 30 years in a number of ways, one of them financial. The Brits & Germans had famously not deregulated their banking to the same extent, yet the crisis emanated from the U.S. firms, and spread to them by way of counterparty risk, right? Wouldn't it be the other way around if the more regulated societies were actually more vulnerable to aberrant risk-loading?

Looking forward to the response, can't really support your plan to violently protest, but glad to help prevent the "next meltdown."

PFnV

chicowalker · 02-01-2011, 05:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PatsFanInVa

LOL, sorry couldn't resist. I mean, come on. But I'm going to leave you & the future radicals of America to your scheming regarding your call to arms. I personally oppose it. LOL I will watch you and Chico & the remainder realize what you do/don't have in common with each other on my teevee, and laugh...

But on the policy idea, I think it would be interesting. Like - establish a big mutual insurance pool, but it's a pool they all pay into that covers the possibility that one or the other would go under.

I guess the argument against it would only come from the banks themselves, who would say it inhibits their mutual growth. After all, it would tie up money in a mutual risk insurance pool, to hedge the part of the hedge fund that is overexposed by their other risk-taking, which in fact is usually done in the name of... wait for it... "hedging." The difference is an insurance pool would have to be highly liquid and invested in something emanently non-volatile (if invested at all - hell, they're exposing us ALL to this risk, I say make them keep their pool in cash or bullion.) Whattaya think? We'd just have to make sure their fund it big enough to protect against their potential default risk.

Side note - "Too much regulation" would seem a weird conclusion for the 08 disaster, since we'd been deregulating for 30 years in a number of ways, one of them financial. The Brits & Germans had famously not deregulated their banking to the same extent, yet the crisis emanated from the U.S. firms, and spread to them by way of counterparty risk, right? Wouldn't it be the other way around if the more regulated societies were actually more vulnerable to aberrant risk-loading?

Looking forward to the response, can't really support your plan to violently protest, but glad to help prevent the "next meltdown."

PFnV

How did I get involved here? I already discovered that my marching through the streets with sticks and stones accomplished nothing.

PatriotsReign · 02-01-2011, 06:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PatsFanInVa

LOL, sorry couldn't resist. I mean, come on. But I'm going to leave you & the future radicals of America to your scheming regarding your call to arms. I personally oppose it. LOL I will watch you and Chico & the remainder realize what you do/don't have in common with each other on my teevee, and laugh...

But on the policy idea, I think it would be interesting. Like - establish a big mutual insurance pool, but it's a pool they all pay into that covers the possibility that one or the other would go under.

I guess the argument against it would only come from the banks themselves, who would say it inhibits their mutual growth. After all, it would tie up money in a mutual risk insurance pool, to hedge the part of the hedge fund that is overexposed by their other risk-taking, which in fact is usually done in the name of... wait for it... "hedging." The difference is an insurance pool would have to be highly liquid and invested in something emanently non-volatile (if invested at all - hell, they're exposing us ALL to this risk, I say make them keep their pool in cash or bullion.) Whattaya think? We'd just have to make sure their fund it big enough to protect against their potential default risk.

Side note - "Too much regulation" would seem a weird conclusion for the 08 disaster, since we'd been deregulating for 30 years in a number of ways, one of them financial. The Brits & Germans had famously not deregulated their banking to the same extent, yet the crisis emanated from the U.S. firms, and spread to them by way of counterparty risk, right? Wouldn't it be the other way around if the more regulated societies were actually more vulnerable to aberrant risk-loading?

Looking forward to the response, can't really support your plan to violently protest, but glad to help prevent the "next meltdown."

PFnV

PFiVA....let me first tell you that I am NOT a fan of our banking system as it is today.

Now I'll seguay over to the "regulation caused this mess"...it was the REGULATORS who did the de-regulating...it's that simple. There is good and bad "regulation"

Now, as far as the "Pool" insurance idea...hell yeah, I'm for something like that. I'm also in favor of making "hedging" illegal. Wall Street is not a casino and no one should be able to bet on "the up" or "the down" where "the house" usually wins. There is something inherently evil and greedy about such a concept that eminates from the "sacred halls of our financial system"

Everything....EVERYTHING our banking system "should" be doing should be guided by very, very conservative rules. Banks aren't supposed to take risks and they certainly aren't supposed to encourage risk taking.

Everything is upside down PFiVA!!

PatriotsReign · 02-01-2011, 06:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Holy Diver

I'm in 100%.

How I long to be young again...second thought, I'd prolly end up in jail with you!

Mrs.PatsFanInVa · 02-01-2011, 06:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PatriotsReign

How I long to be young again...second thought, I'd prolly end up in jail with you!

Yeah, but since you're not, you and people like Harry Boy, Rush and Beck will content themselves with inciting my sons and other young people like them to risk their own lives while you sit home and tell yourself how it could have been if only.........

PatriotsReign · 02-01-2011, 07:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mrs.PatsFanInVa

Yeah, but since you're not, you and people like Harry Boy, Rush and Beck will content themselves with inciting my sons and other young people like them to risk their own lives while you sit home and tell yourself how it could have been if only.........

What ev-AH Mrs P! Good to see you back in rare form.

BTW...maybe you haven't followed the thread and read that we've been discussing solutions, not "if only's".

"inciting my sons and other young people...."

***Harry Boy*** · 02-01-2011, 09:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mrs.PatsFanInVa

Yeah, but since you're not, you and people like Harry Boy, Rush and Beck will content themselves with inciting my sons and other young people like them to risk their own lives while you sit home and tell yourself how it could have been if only.........

What did you think about the violence during the 1960's over Viet Nam and The Civil Rights Movement.

The results of the 60's riots
Nixon Surrenderd and Segregation ended.

Again I say "Riots get results.

Another Riot Result
Rodney King was handed 4 million dollars, the cops went to jail Rodney went home and broke both of his wifes legs.--------

The people in Egypt just had a riot, it got results.

"yup, your right again harry"

PatsFanInVa · 02-02-2011, 06:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PatriotsReign

PFiVA....let me first tell you that I am NOT a fan of our banking system as it is today.

Now I'll seguay over to the "regulation caused this mess"...it was the REGULATORS who did the de-regulating...it's that simple. There is good and bad "regulation"

Two faces to regulation:

1) The actual laws, which are written to be industry-friendly (in this case, the financial sector's interests)

2) The behavior of regulators, who, in a certain climate, get in bed with the regulated industry (in the case of the oil industry, literally, from news reports attendant to the BP disaster. I am sure those are not isolated cases.) In the SEC's case, it was just porn browsing. I guess Wall Street didn't -- to our knowledge -- throw hookers at the regulators. But then again, they had the choice of which rules and which agency to be regulated by in many cases. Maybe they already had everything they wanted.

Quote:

Now, as far as the "Pool" insurance idea...hell yeah, I'm for something like that. I'm also in favor of making "hedging" illegal. Wall Street is not a casino and no one should be able to bet on "the up" or "the down" where "the house" usually wins. There is something inherently evil and greedy about such a concept that eminates from the "sacred halls of our financial system"

I'm sort of torn between going with you on the whole ball of wax conversation regarding the financial system, and stopping at the insurance concept.

Ask any market purist and they'll tell you everything good emanates from whatever they dream up on Wall Street to make money. The theory dictates that someone with a lot of money making more is the basis of everyone else's prosperity. How do you encourage rich people to make more money? Why, you guarantee that they can't lose the bet LOL!!!

Risk is a funny thing. It's a wavefront function that hasn't collapsed to borrow the quantum guys' language. There is a possibility that something terrible has happened, but it hasn't happened yet. Any Wall Street insider can say "look, I'm the expert, and there's no real risk." Um, but then why are you rewarded for the transaction? Makes no sense. I would put this down to observer bias LOL... and that's being kind. It's pure self-interest.

Your difficulty would be with the market purist, not with me. The problem is that people do, in fact, want something for nothing.

When you try to figure out how to eke out a few years of retirement, you turn to Wall Street. The magic of the market will give you returns in excess of inflation. You therefore capitalize the other risks -- including any plant startups, job creation, etc. If the promise of something for nothing goes away, Capitalism goes away. That's a very good thing except as compared with Capitalism's predecessor, feudalism, or Capitalism's direct competitor last century, the command economy.

I've said here before we need to pursue an ideologically muddled thing called a mixed economy. To some extent we have that, but it's a lesser extent than most other industrial/"post-industrial" economies. I think we're on the right track with regulation, but that problem of risk won't go away.

They'll chase returns. Guys like you and me will want good returns. I think you're right that greed comes into play: guys like you and me don't need a supermodel and a jetski when we're 65 or 68 or whatever. At some point enough has to be enough.

Okay, editorial over. Let's see. So we need to put a rule in place for banks to mutually insure against the most egregious risky transactions. We need an independent evaluator of said risks.

That means either the Feds, or (much more to the liking of conservatives,) a private sector rating agency that gets no money from the banks they are rating.

It also means that we have to enforce the rule on the "dead money" pool that just insures against catastrophic collapse.

But really, this is just a modern version of keeping people from "buying on margin." What you are doing is reducing leverage, which makes it impossible to pursue mammoth returns. It throws any long-term "empire building" into a tizzy. If you can't count on 8% returns per annum, isn't life over?

Quote:

Everything....EVERYTHING our banking system "should" be doing should be guided by very, very conservative rules. Banks aren't supposed to take risks and they certainly aren't supposed to encourage risk taking.

Everything is upside down PFiVA!!

If you think about it, risk-taking is exactly what banks do -- but that's investment banks.

Remember the day when you were six, and your parents gave you a dollar in a savings account, and explained that it would grow to be a zillion bucks by the time you were their age? That was using conservative passbook savings math.

That's the kind of bank you're thinking of - low risks, low but predictable returns. You tried to beat inflation by a few bucks, and you counted on time to do the work, not accelerated returns every year. Your goal was to have a little more by a lot later, not the other way around.

We've talked about sustainable/unsustainable social programs, and what we're talking about here is sustainable growth.

Long story short, a big fat "dead money" pool that mutually insures the investment banks does two things: it would reduce mammoth returns in the good times, and it would protect against the mammoth collapses in the bad times. The question is, can we live with that?

Right now everybody's still all about getting unemployment down. Long term, don't we have to think about a solution like this? I mean, once we have an unemployment rate approaching "normal," wouldn't this be the way to go? Stop lurching from boom to bust and back again?

At exactly the wrong time, Americans got very fiscally conservative (in the personal savings sense.) But wouldn't that be a good thing, in the long haul? What if we were a nation of savers, and not as a fad?

What if some of the rules did change, and what if we can encourage that psychological change by encouraging a "mini-greed" ethos?

Final note - you may or may not know that the mutual insurance pool is one feature of the financial reform package passed last year. It's too small to do the job, of course -- something like 50 billion.

I could see growing that pool. I could also see establishing a body that evaluates transaction risk, and basing the premiums on the risk of the holdings. In reality, I bet that's in the guts of the fincancial reform regs as well. I don't know for certain -- seems like the smart way to do it. Evaluate the exposure, and charge the insurance to the pool accordingly.

That would have the effect of each risky transaction being priced in accordance to the risk posed. Suddenly they're not so attractive, right? THat's good. As we both say, they shouldn't be attractive.

PFnV

***DarrylS*** · 02-02-2011, 06:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PatriotsReign

How I long to be young again...second thought, I'd prolly end up in jail with you!

Age does not have much to do with jail.. it is an equal opportunity place, less so for middle aged whites though.

Give peace a chance..

PatriotsReign · 02-02-2011, 07:48 AM

Any system that allows for "mammouth gains" is inherently predisposed to massive down-turns/recessions. That was our whole economic philosophy from the late 80's to 2007, when the bottom fell out.

So your proposition is exactly the type of thing our leaders "should" be doing...but are they? I think not.

What "SHOULD" we have learned from that? We should have learned that whatever mechanisms existed that allowed for the creation of "Bubble-economics" should have been eliminated or, REGULATED.

Fast-forward to 2010, and Ben Bernanke imposes a policy (selling billions in treasuries or QE2) that is at this very moment creating a bubble in commodities. I don't care if it spurs short-term economic growth if it's done by creating a bubble. A bubble is basically a damn lie. And Ben Bernanke is in my opinion, lying to the American people and robbing low and middle class Americans...so the scum-bag is liar and a thief.

The Fed's loose money policies fueled a housing bubble last time, now money is pouring into commodities, junk bonds, and leveraged buyouts (once again). This is bound to end badly once again. Meanwhile, the unemployment rates is still 9.4% officially, and much higher unofficially.

His QE2 policies are keeping interest rates artificially low, which discourages saving and hurts those on fixed incomes (retirees). Bernanke is one person I wouldn't mind hearing contracted some rare disease as he's a living disease.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PatsFanInVa

Two faces to regulation:

1) The actual laws, which are written to be industry-friendly (in this case, the financial sector's interests)

2) The behavior of regulators, who, in a certain climate, get in bed with the regulated industry (in the case of the oil industry, literally, from news reports attendant to the BP disaster. I am sure those are not isolated cases.) In the SEC's case, it was just porn browsing. I guess Wall Street didn't -- to our knowledge -- throw hookers at the regulators. But then again, they had the choice of which rules and which agency to be regulated by in many cases. Maybe they already had everything they wanted.

I'm sort of torn between going with you on the whole ball of wax conversation regarding the financial system, and stopping at the insurance concept.

Ask any market purist and they'll tell you everything good emanates from whatever they dream up on Wall Street to make money. The theory dictates that someone with a lot of money making more is the basis of everyone else's prosperity. How do you encourage rich people to make more money? Why, you guarantee that they can't lose the bet LOL!!!

Risk is a funny thing. It's a wavefront function that hasn't collapsed to borrow the quantum guys' language. There is a possibility that something terrible has happened, but it hasn't happened yet. Any Wall Street insider can say "look, I'm the expert, and there's no real risk." Um, but then why are you rewarded for the transaction? Makes no sense. I would put this down to observer bias LOL... and that's being kind. It's pure self-interest.

Your difficulty would be with the market purist, not with me. The problem is that people do, in fact, want something for nothing.

When you try to figure out how to eke out a few years of retirement, you turn to Wall Street. The magic of the market will give you returns in excess of inflation. You therefore capitalize the other risks -- including any plant startups, job creation, etc. If the promise of something for nothing goes away, Capitalism goes away. That's a very good thing except as compared with Capitalism's predecessor, feudalism, or Capitalism's direct competitor last century, the command economy.

I've said here before we need to pursue an ideologically muddled thing called a mixed economy. To some extent we have that, but it's a lesser extent than most other industrial/"post-industrial" economies. I think we're on the right track with regulation, but that problem of risk won't go away.

They'll chase returns. Guys like you and me will want good returns. I think you're right that greed comes into play: guys like you and me don't need a supermodel and a jetski when we're 65 or 68 or whatever. At some point enough has to be enough.

Okay, editorial over. Let's see. So we need to put a rule in place for banks to mutually insure against the most egregious risky transactions. We need an independent evaluator of said risks.

That means either the Feds, or (much more to the liking of conservatives,) a private sector rating agency that gets no money from the banks they are rating.

It also means that we have to enforce the rule on the "dead money" pool that just insures against catastrophic collapse.

But really, this is just a modern version of keeping people from "buying on margin." What you are doing is reducing leverage, which makes it impossible to pursue mammoth returns. It throws any long-term "empire building" into a tizzy. If you can't count on 8% returns per annum, isn't life over?

If you think about it, risk-taking is exactly what banks do -- but that's investment banks.

Remember the day when you were six, and your parents gave you a dollar in a savings account, and explained that it would grow to be a zillion bucks by the time you were their age? That was using conservative passbook savings math.

That's the kind of bank you're thinking of - low risks, low but predictable returns. You tried to beat inflation by a few bucks, and you counted on time to do the work, not accelerated returns every year. Your goal was to have a little more by a lot later, not the other way around.

We've talked about sustainable/unsustainable social programs, and what we're talking about here is sustainable growth.

Long story short, a big fat "dead money" pool that mutually insures the investment banks does two things: it would reduce mammoth returns in the good times, and it would protect against the mammoth collapses in the bad times. The question is, can we live with that?

Right now everybody's still all about getting unemployment down. Long term, don't we have to think about a solution like this? I mean, once we have an unemployment rate approaching "normal," wouldn't this be the way to go? Stop lurching from boom to bust and back again?

At exactly the wrong time, Americans got very fiscally conservative (in the personal savings sense.) But wouldn't that be a good thing, in the long haul? What if we were a nation of savers, and not as a fad?

What if some of the rules did change, and what if we can encourage that psychological change by encouraging a "mini-greed" ethos?

Final note - you may or may not know that the mutual insurance pool is one feature of the financial reform package passed last year. It's too small to do the job, of course -- something like 50 billion.

I could see growing that pool. I could also see establishing a body that evaluates transaction risk, and basing the premiums on the risk of the holdings. In reality, I bet that's in the guts of the fincancial reform regs as well. I don't know for certain -- seems like the smart way to do it. Evaluate the exposure, and charge the insurance to the pool accordingly.

That would have the effect of each risky transaction being priced in accordance to the risk posed. Suddenly they're not so attractive, right? THat's good. As we both say, they shouldn't be attractive.

PFnV