In spite of what a few think....mostly here on this board and in the corner banking offices of Wall Street....I have seen other opinions expressed about the need to regulate the banking industry even more with regard to compensation and incentive as it relates to how they go about trying to achieve those incentives. The former head of the IMF says that the bailouts have only reassured those guys at the top in the financial industry that their risky actions do not have permanent downside ( again...they are taking unbridled risks because of the unbridled rewards promised or almost guaranteed by that risk ). Without some increased form of regulation or crackdown on overly risky money management these guys do not have the incentive not to take chances that are unhealthy for their own companies and for our economy in general. The bailouts have shown them that if they get in trouble....they get bailed out. In the U.S. we regulate those industries in which we deem regulation to be necessary for the health and safety of our citizens....industries like food, drug and transportation. Well...I think we have seen from this crisis that mismanagement in the financial sector is equally hazardous to our collective health. Before BT jumps in here and with all his bluster contends I am off base this is in fact basically the excerpts I saw last night from a story on ABC News and they interviewed the IMF chief on his views.
Hmmmmm......what may seem like bluster to some, would be recognized as fact or informed insight by those inclined to rational thought. To begin, many would argue and I would agree that the banking industry in the US is one of the most, if not the most, heavily regulated industry in US commerce. Now as for our friends at the IMF........a few words of background about our pal Dominique and many of his noble predecessors...... Mr. Strauss-Kahn was a member of the French National Assembly and Professor of Economics at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris. From 2001 to 2007, he was reelected three times to the National Assembly, and in 2006, he ran for the Socialist Party's nomination for the French presidential election. With that on background, I have no doubt that there are many things that Dominique and many of his noble predecesssors would propose for our system that run absolutely contrary to many of the founding principles of our nation......next you're gonna propose Karl Marx as Secretary of the Treasury. Carry on.....
I didn't notice a specifically clear comment on this statement BT. This rings very true to me because of all of the hardship that this crisis has caused so many Americans and continues to do so. The automotive and housing markets are in total ruin at the moment and it goes far beyond those two industries. Sure they may have had their individual problems but without the total and abysmal collapse of the financial markets they may have stood the chance to recover. I am going to be selling my house in the next few months or so and although I reside in one of the best locations in the state of Michigan I will be fortunate to make 20% on my purchase price of 17 years ago and I may not even make that. There are a lot of people at fault for this but the banking industry and a few profiteers are at the head of line and most of us hope they get theirs in the end....or sooner.
.....you need to read more carefully. Your thanks should go directly to the UAW...... Straight out of the populist class warfare manifesto.....sheer, unadulterated nonsense. Carry on.... Who are the "few profiteers" anyway? I keep asking you about these sinister characters and have yet to receive a reply......do they not name names in the socialist talking points memos? Sounds sort of like the "boogie men" kids have been fearful of for generations......who are these "boogie men"?
I think there are many different culprits that the term "profiteer" might encompass unless of course you feel that no one set out to achieve personal or company gains with outlandish risk and there is no one at fault for mismanagement in the financial world. I agree....from what has been said before that many different sources of blind ignorance and/or greed and/or the blind pursuit of political and personal agendas contributed to this mess from Barney Frank to Freddie Mac to Fannie Mae to the U.S Treasury to AIG and this goes on and on and on.... You may not believe it but there are many who saw a way to make a fast buck or two... or millions and those guys are the real "profiteers" and those guys are just part of a crowd that needs to be harnessed because obviously on their own they are abject failures and place the rest of us at great financial risk. They need to checked on and regulated just like the products need to be checked and monitored that we get from places like China because the system these people are a part of has failed us miserably and they are now no more trustworthy than the Chinese are to do things the right way. Turning our heads to these events of the last few years and pretending it didn't happen is to invite it's continuance and repetition and the bailout "rewards" have helped to foster that continuance. In essence those were the messages given in the ABC News story and for the record I concur.
:?: You are confusing the hell out of me....."many different", "few".....which is it? That said, there surely couldn't be any "profiteers" in the car business or organized labor now could there????? That is not a place you want to go.....but yet it's the "profiteers" amongst the investing class that busted the domestic automakers and Detroit......what crap. I believe to be sure and know it to be a fact......let's make sure we all realize that many, many, many of these guys - indeed the majority of "these guys" are your neighbor, my neighbor and everybody else's neighbor, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, mom and dad and grandma and grandpa......best of luck in legislating and regulating the basic human condition. Indeed no doubt many of "these guys" are getting a paycheck from Obama helping them with their mortgage. That'll teach 'em......! Carry on.....
BT...I can accept that many different types of people from both parties had at least a complicit hand in this but I also acknowledge that the people with the real power and the ones who reaped the most financial rewards for the sbsurd risks taken are more the Wall Street type than the Main Street type. If you think the causative impact due to bad behavior of both groups is equal then I strongly disagree. I am going to say this again because it is just so obvious to me that we as a nation need to change the way we are going about this: "The financial markets and banking industry need to be checked on and regulated just like the products need to be checked and monitored that we get from places like China because the system these people are a part of has failed us miserably and they are now no more trustworthy than the Chinese are to do things the right way."
....give me the names of those who were so enriched by the absurd risks that they took. The last time you went down this road you were a shill for the AFL-CIO who suggested that the XOM CEO had enriched himself at the expense of the consumer and that poor SOB lost $30 million and tanked his net worth. I can't wait to hear the other names.....the notion that Wall St and the evill bankers enriched themselves at the expense of the rest of the nation through this crisis is laughable. The industries were crippled, the net worths and well being of the participants were similarly crushed. With very few exceptions, none of which I can think of off the top of my head, the banking industry is as tightly regulated as any in the country. Some of which, as we have seen, played a role in the current crisis. Beware of unintended consequences.....no doubt the Banking Queen, with his pals Pelosi and Reid,will craft a litany of new regs that will cure all evils.....
This is what gets me........ Why is it that it appears so many (ignorant) people have no problem with the government coming in and capping the earnings of people in the banking industry, but God help you if you even suggest that the border-line retarded guy with 2 prior felonies doesn't make at least $75,000 a year mowing lawns for the UAW in front of an auto plant!?!?!? When the overhead of the UAW benefits package became so top heavy that we all knew there was no way to pay for it (I will get back to social security later), why was it so evil to even mention that we might want to do something about the greed going on and an industry that will one day die from it? Why? Because we were 'sticking it to the man'... It was someone else's tab to pick up. We've been able to push away the check and point to the fat guy with the $800 tie across the bar since the 1950s and say 'he's getting that' and we've managed to juggle it... But that day has come in which all of the idiocy is catching up to us and rather than examine any of the real causes for these failures... we're pointing to the fat guy across the bar to not only take the blame for all of this... but to reach deeper into his (now near empty) pockets to pay for all this crap. Let's say that we do cap our financial institutions and markets.. Will the world do the same? Or will we, once again, put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage to the rest of the world just because 'we're American dammit'. Eff this noise.
The UAW is being capped and culled by natural selection at a rapid pace and certainly no one in that group is becoming enriched. Conversely not only are the workers of today rupturing income and benefits not to mention their outright jobs but so are their retired fathers. I think we strayed down this path before but in the U.S. auto worker's case it's a matter of which came first...the chicken or the egg. The workers started out pretty lean 90 years ago and through union efforts they evolved into earning more than a good living and in some cases they forged out a downright lazy living. But...as I have said before that evolution not only was halted but it has been going in reverse for many years and that chicken is already out of the egg and it's pretty damned difficult to squeeze it back in but they are doing just about all they can and I think they won't be able to survive long enough to see the rest of world catch up.
Bingo Corey......to some extent we already have. What remains to be seen is just how much is Obama willing to risk - or how much are the US citizenry going to let him risk - to further his populist war and social experiment. It is difficult for me to see anything but a material erosion in our global competitive position in finance when the President has the entire industry in his cross-hairs and has the weapon set to automatic. Sounds good on the campaign trail and makes for great stump speeches but is destructive to our system.
No, but I do listen to what the President says and watch what he does which provides more than ample evidence upon which to draw those conclusions. If you have not reached similar conclusions, then you are neither watching nor listening..... Here is a great question to ponder for all....... What percentage of those that voted for Obama paid ANY federal income taxes? That would include anything greater than zero......while we don't have the exact numbers in fact, we can make a range of assumptions and see the results....likely to be staggering to many.