Comments by "Xyz Same" (@xyzsame4081) on "Bernie Sanders Launches ‘Anti-Endorsements’ Page" video.
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The stupid woman (Ayn Rand) did not even understand the nature of industrial mass production. Division of labor in a high technology society. Isaac Newton: If I have seen farther it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants.
Margaret Thatcher on the other hand: there is no such thing as "society".
It is a lazy intellectual exercise to glorify selfishness and to deny that we need each other and no one invented it all alone or did it all alone. Take Bill Gates or Albert Einstein and put themin a Amish community - there goes the contribution of the extraordiny scientist or business man.
We have an anonymous society where people exchange services and goods with money makes it much easier to dismiss the interdependency. Humans have very strong social instincts, and the impulses of greed, agreession and selfishness are well kept in check. In a cociety like ours there is much less check on greed and selfishness. Creatures like Ayn Rand or Greenspan need a good ideology to kill of the stirrings of their better self. Humans can engage in the art of double think, before they deceive others they usuallly deceives themselves. (I am not a anti-social, greedy and selfish prick, it is a sophisticated philiosophy and it is justified or even a virtue to be and act like that).
Ayn Rand I think had the intellectual forte to be quite open about her glorified seflishness, she could allow herself to fully realize it. Unlike most people she did not feel the need to sugarcoat the ugly philosophy.
Back in the day the upper class (seizing all privileges and the rest could bugger off) were able to shut up the unwashed masses with the claim that "god" had meant society to be run like that. Organized religion helped them. it is much easier to dominate people who accept the caste system as fact of life. Else the control of the military was useful.
The "roayals" inherited: privilege, wealth and power inherited. And then there was the upper class / aristocracy. In the UK the rich merchant class got uppity (people always do when they get educated and wealthier) so they demanded and got their parliament - and the City of London (that's the financial center district, it does not mean the whole of London) got a special status in 1688. Thee Queen has to ask for permission before she goes to the City of London.
The parliament did not mean that they had a democracy. The merchants and wealthy had ripped some power away from the aristocrats and the king or queen. Together they subjected and exploited the middle and lower classes.
"God meant us to rule you and he made it that some people are nobility and others are peasants or serfs" doesn't fly anymore so they have to come up with another "philosophy".
Greenspan was at large under Regan, Bush1, Clinton (Greenspan called Bill a good Republican or Conservative - not sure which term he used), and Bush2. - that tells you everything about the "difference" between the parties.
Andrea Mitchell is the wife of Greenspan btw. (and she is passive / aggressive when interviewing Sanders).
Under the watch of Greenspan the financial crises of the 90s bloomed. And after 2000 the largest of them was developing right under his nose.
Never mind that he helped to crush the agency (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) that made a small attempt to ASSESS the derivatives scene and the inherent risks (end of the Clinton presidency). All hell broke loose, the Clinton cabinet, Congress and Alan Greenspan lined up against the very sensible action recommended by Brooksley Born.
Congress did not take any risks (in that matter) - they later passed a law that the agency cannot regulate the large players who "know what they are doing". Greenspan explictiely endorsed that (and took a swipe at Brooksley Born).
But Greenspan and the other crooks kept their jobs and remaiend rich, BB that was later justified by history, she stepped down after Congress passed a law that directly opposed her recommendations. ** see at the end
The financial crisis was:
a) a real estate bubble financed with shoddy loans sold all over the world. it was passing on the hot potatoe - and of course by transfering the loans out of their balance sheets to European banks who were could not directly give out reckless loans to citizens - the U.S. banks could give out much more loans compared to keeping in within the bank or even within the country. So they could blow up the bubble more.
b) The European banks knew full well that the loans were not that good (the certificates they got gave them plausible deniability). But if they placed a bet on the default risk of the loans - in case they loans would default, they would also win a large bet (so to speak) and that was their backup. That is all well - if only those engage in bets (derivatives) that have a stake in the underlying real world transaction (= they own loans).
Then the bet was an insurance (insurance is a special (and highly regulated) form of bets. That would have been O.K. it spead the risks - but the risks (the maximum amount of damage) did not grow.
However: they speculate all the time with huge amounts and on everything on the sun: interest rates, the weather, pork halves, the price of stocks, oil price, currencies. They do not have to make downpayments for their bets, so the volume are HUGE. The volume of OPEN bets was 700 trillion at the end and mid of the year in 2011 - so on a given DAY. Note that the U.S. GDP for ALL of 2011 was in the range of 18 - 19 trillion USD).
During the bubble another object for bets offered itself and became popular: the default risk on the subprime mortgages. Many people with no skin in the game placed those bets. So of course when loans in the volume of let's say 50 millions went under - a MULTIPLE of that was the damage because some "lucky" had won huge bets. Well they were not long lucky because winning a bet only helps you when there is enough money to satisfy your claim.
the whole world and their dog started to place bets (derivatives) on the default risk of those loans. So when they started defaulting much more money was owed resulting from the bets.
It was a speculative bubble on top of a severe real estate bubble. The latter the U.S. could have handled. After all there was some underlying property even if it was overprices.
The bets were completely detached from the real economy.
from Wikipedia: Brooksley E. Born (born August 27, 1940) is an American attorney and former public official who, from August 26, 1996, to June 1, 1999, was chairperson of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal agency which oversees the futures and commodity options markets.
During her tenure on the CFTC, Born lobbied Congress and the President to give the CFTC oversight of off-exchange markets for derivatives in addition to its role with respect to exchange-traded derivatives, but her warnings were ignored or dismissed, and her calls for reform resisted by other regulators.
Born resigned as chairperson on June 1, 1999, shortly after Congress passed legislation prohibiting her agency from regulating derivatives.
In 2009, Born received the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award, along with Sheila Bair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in recognition of the "political courage she demonstrated in sounding early warnings about conditions that contributed to the current global financial crisis".
Reagan had started the project deregulation of banks, Clinton finished it off. That was one of the last nails in the coffin.
it took the market players that know what they are doing only from the end of the Clinton admin (1998/1999) to 2006 to completely screw up.
Btw: Spain, Ireland, Cyprus, Greece, Iceland had their OWN financial crisis (additionally to many banks that got into trouble over U.S. loans or the bets related to them). They had their own crooked actions, real estate bubbles, specualtion and what not. (Also one German/Austrian Bank Hypo alpe Adria, and a publicly owned bank screwed up later regarding junk bonds of Greece Communalcredit).
And the large Deutsche Bank - their troubles stem from that time although they indirectly profited from other institutions being bailed out (so they got paid).
In the UK some shadey stuff was going on - not sure if that had to do with U.S. mortgages.
Many large financial institutions watched what had been going on the whole 1990s (which were test runs really) and they paid attention to the final dregulation in 1998 / 1999. They saw what profits could be made and took their cues from the U.S. crooks.
A lot of the large instituions that operated globally went crazy, and more often than not neither politics, nor regulators nor the media or academia hindered them.
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