How did we get here?

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MissSepphora1 -> How did we get here? (6/3/2009 1:26:45 AM)
I was pondering this question today. How did we get here: Economic meltdown, borrowing even more money from China, GM, a company synomous with US going into bankruptcy? I think we can sum it up in one word: greed. Many threads have talked about how we have moved away from what the US stands for with reference to our treatment of "enemy combatants". But what about what we stand for in helping our fellow man, team work, and pride in our country. CEOs have drug their companies into losses and get millions in compensation, and even more in golden parachutes, the whole time moving jobs to other countries. Politicians only interested in pork barrel projects that can help themselves without worrying about the taxpayer who is already suffering and can't afford any more taxes. Lawyers who take cases of people who don't use their own common sense and win millions of dollars. Along with the judges who award those dollars. People who have learned to milk the welfare and SSI for all they can get. I'm sure there are more instances. List them if you wish. Or argue against my idea if you wish. But I believe we can sum up our problems in one word: greed.

HeavansKeeper -> RE: How did we get here? (6/3/2009 3:44:16 AM)
One word: Brilliance. It was the biggest racket in the history of Earth. The largest caper ever pulled. For a century the United States, its "private banks", largest companies printed money. For a hundred years, every dollar officially made created 10 bucks in loanable capital. This means our strong banking system was printing money 1000% as quickly as our mints. What did we do with the money? Buy wars. Expand businesses. People like money too much for it to get destroyed. It goes somewhere. I have a stock, and its pricey. Once I sell it, I have liquid assets. It's in my best interest for that stock to plummet the day after I sell. Why? Because now my competitor (who I was golfing with 24 hours prior) has nothing. And I still have his money. The Bulls and Bears are thieves. Take, for instance, the .com boost in the late 90's. Who funded that? Foreign investors. (I don't want to spit out unverified claims, but as I recall it was heavily Asian investment). So basically people were throwing money to anyone with a business plan. Billions of dollars, recklessly being tosses around. Zero product, zero infrastructure, zero sales. Just a good idea. Good ideas (with zero materials, factories, and trucks to move stuff) are free to make. And people bought them. Everyone hoping to make an overnight million "just like yahoo!" All this foreign money invested, and the floor falls out. Effectively every .com goes bust. Where did the money go? Foreign investors paid for those IPOs, 20 bucks a pop, 30 bucks... Not to mention venture capital. It went into yachts, Ferrari's, fancy restaurants, cocaine, and other necessities for 90's dollar jockeys. True, a lot of money got "lost" but most got stolen... Right into American bank accounts. Same thing happened... circa 03 with entertainment companies and French investors - I didn't really follow it. Same thing happened this time. Except there was no foreign interests to fuck. So who'd we fuck? You're not a capitalist until you'll fuck your countrymen for a 1/4 of a %. We fucked the American upper-middle class. A notable size (big enough to fuck, anyhow) of the NYSE was owned by upper-middle class America. Lawyers who bought some stock and tinkered with e-trade, grandma's who took out mortgages on that gaudy Victorian-Gothic and shoved the money into Meryl-Lynch... Everyone had a vested interest in the market because anyone who's anyone had a few grand in the beast. So much so, they started getting smart. Middle class Americans figured out the stock market prints money. Fat cats can't have their pockets tightened because Mrs. Goldsplatz figured out she's getting 3% a quarter on her nest egg. So all these yuppies buy stock. It's very a la mode. We go poker style. We reel em in slow, growing the pot. "Oooo! Google's at 400! Mmmmm! Apple's at 190! Better get in while it's hot!" Then the piggy was ripe for plucking. Like with the Asian investors in 01, how do we drop the floor on the new fish? Easy. You make a crisis. A sub prime mortgage crisis. (A bunch of banks lend out money at borderline usury rates to people with bad credit (i.e. likely to default, lose the house, and get fucked by the bank)). 30,000 houses default on their $100,000 mortgage. It's a serious issue. A serious 3 billion dollar issue. (30K x 100K = 3B). "The Fundamentals of the economy are strong!" One. Day. Later. Half a day, seeing as the market was already closed for the day... Half a day later, the United States falls into shambles. "OMG! The bank is going to lose all my money! All the banks are out of money!" Yes, the banks were in a tight spot, no funds coming in, and they were up to the tits in unsellable $100,000 homes. But it was a 3 billion dollar problem. Fear, starting with a big hiccup in bank stocks, yanks the holders out of the market like you can't believe. Pulling out like prom night in the bible belt. Dad's saying "Honey, we can ride it out!" Mom's yelling "Just get the money back before we lose it all!" And the selling starts. Selling only happens when someone buys... Everyone's selling. Who's buying? Curious. Could it be the corporations so happy to sell at 400 and buy it back at 150? Hrmmm... In any case, the market crashes. Fear and 3 billion missing dollars. Every yuppie making a livable wage by grinding out on the stock market just lost 30-50%. 99% if they were big on banking stocks. "Wage earning" homes, homes whose income comes from hourly rates, were not harmed that day. Meanwhile "Investment return homes" homes whose income is gathered by small % returns on investments... They got the strap-on. One. Day. Later. "We need 7.2 TRILLION GODAMNED FUCKING DOLLARS" That's 7,200 billions to fix a 3 billion dollar sub prime mortgage scandal. No biggee, Barack's good for it. Or should we say college yuppies with their BARACK ATTACK bumper stickers and Che Guevara T-shirts (stolen joke, by the way). HOPE. No sir, not hope. Hope and tears don't pay bills. 7.2 trillion tax dollars my generation will be forking over into our 80's... That pays bills. Where did that money go? Where did it come from? No one fucking knows! All I know is that CEO's bought more planes, boats, and happy endings that week than in the 80's. And the icing on the cake... As stock plummets, somehow that means the company will make less money (even though stocks are based on potential profits, not the other way around). Fine, whatever, GM takes a nose dive (this is before the bankruptcy goes through). "Bailout" becomes a phrase blonde bimbos at the gym start using. How much was GM's Bailout? At least 50 billion, right? Maybe 100? (That's more than THIRTY TIMES the cost of the sub prime mortgage issue). So the countries in trouble. "What do we do, Mr. President? By the way sir, the grey hair looks very dignified." And here's my favorite part... The part no other country had the cassava melons to do: In a time of economic shit storm... WE PRINT MONEY! For some unknown reason other countries still value the green back. And now we're the only boy on the street with enough walking around money to buy up the world. Don't worry, though. Eight years from now we'll fuck China over on the money we owe them, and we'll be in the green again. Please note the use of "we" as we are a team. United we stand <3

LadyEllen -> RE: How did we get here? (6/3/2009 4:11:41 AM)
I'd have to use a number of words, applicable variously to several social groups indolence is a good one, referring to the notion that there is any such thing as a free lunch, ever. The plain truth is that we in the west for the most part dont do work any more, its beneath us - we have immigrants for that stuff (and to complain about) stupidity - a related word, referring to the populace at large unable to grasp the bigger picture or even acknowledge there is one, and fully willing to believe bold falsehoods about how globalised capitalism will improve their lives to the point of voting for anyone promising more stuff for less effort, without ever questioning how that could be true ignorance, very much related to stupidity, but applicable to those who thought they understood what was going on, but clearly didnt, as well as those guilty of stupidity who simply took no notice greed of course, related to indolence above - but applicable not only to those at the top but nearly all of us. We at the bottom may not have gotten the big pay rises and bonuses but we sure as heck got through all the mass produced crap we could whilst the party lasted overall, selfishness is the one word that sums it all up - the trouble with that of course being that the whole system is based on this all too human characteristic. to argue against selfishness is to argue against the holy of holies in the western socio-economic system. to place rules and legislation to counter selfishness is to risk enormous wrath from those who rely on it for their success - which is all of us at some level or another, because we will all make that extra buck where we can, the only variation between us is the lengths we might go to in order to do so. E

LadyEllen -> RE: How did we get here? (6/3/2009 4:37:02 AM)
what I cant get over.... here in the UK we have spent all the money made from the industrial revolution all of the money made from trading Africans as slaves all of the money made from Empire all of the money made from selling heroin to the Chinese and all of the money we made in the meantime plus over the last ten years, a good proportion of the savings of Chinese families what I suspect is that all of the "economic growth" since the mid 1990s has been nothing of the sort. in fact all we have been doing is passing what little money we still had amongst one another - and the "growth" was just the addition of money from the Chinese savings. This works out OK, as long as the addition continues but that requires an infinite amount of savings by Chinese families who are after all receiving a pittance of their money back as wages when we used it to buy what they had made in the factories they worked at - diminishing returns both ends. now we're all broke (or will be shortly) - but some got incredibly rich so they think (at least until their millions are devalued), so now we're going to try the same thing over again - by printing money (or quantitative easing) to add back in to the economy so that it will "grow". E

MarsBonfire -> RE: How did we get here? (6/3/2009 6:12:31 AM)
I'd say greed, yes. Also a political ideology that supported the worst in capitalisim. An ideology which favored the huge multi-national over the interests of the average consumer.

Louve00 -> RE: How did we get here? (6/3/2009 9:26:26 AM)
Greed, yes. But, if you look back in history, we are simply repeating it. Happens everytime too. Either human memory is short, or we think we've figured it all out to our own good.

Arpig -> RE: How did we get here? (6/3/2009 10:03:36 AM)
If you really want to know, I suggest reading Voltair'e Bastards by John Ralston Saul. While not the ultimate answer, it does give a good idea of the processes in play that got us where we are today. Its a little slow at first, and a little dry, but really a fascinating read. http://www.amazon.com/Voltaires-Bastards-Dictatorship-Reason-West/dp/0679748199 A review... http://www.muslimedia.com/ARCHIVES/book98/voltaire.htm And for a little balance... http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/saul.html

popeye1250 -> RE: How did we get here? (6/3/2009 10:47:50 AM)
"Helping our fellow man" to our govt. means "foreign aid" which makes a LOT of people in Washington and big companies rich. There's an article in Yahoo today about letting the Katrina survivors buy govt trailers for $5. Meanwhile our Taxdollars go for building hospitals and providing medical care in foreign countries while 50 million U.S. Citizens in this country have none. Meanwhile, G.M. bailed out with U.S. Taxpayer dollars to "save U.S. jobs" plans to go to 23% of it's vehicles made in foreign countries from 15% today! With our fucking money! Whenever you hear the phrase "Government and business partnering together" it's a *bad thing* not a good thing! We have bankruptcy laws in place for a reason! Where's the "CHANGE? It appears that the people who voted for Obama were duped magnificently! "Oh! Was that a "D" behind my name?" "Sorry!"

MrRodgers -> RE: How did we get here? (6/3/2009 11:41:20 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: MarsBonfire I'd say greed, yes. Also a political ideology that supported the worst in capitalisim. An ideology which favored the huge multi-national over the interests of the average consumer. A new culture has taken over the actions of those in power. Make or get what you can, as much as you can right now and damn the consequences. We got here from unmitigated, undiluted unfettered...greed and the pursuit of that greed with the money of others. I am convinced...capitalism is a culture of 'moneyism.' A detailed look at wall street and how our govt. has been in bed with them, you see the future and it isn't pretty. Fewer and fewer 'happy endings' in our stories for most Americans.

awmslave -> RE: How did we get here? (6/3/2009 12:14:53 PM)
quote: I think we can sum it up in one word: greed. If to blame human nature for an economic system failure then the whole world could not function in principle. I would rather assume US has ideological crisis and the corrupt elite can not solve it (as all the solutions would hurt their own interest).

popeye1250 -> RE: How did we get here? (6/3/2009 12:16:42 PM)
Oh boy, Obama's in Saudi Arabia having his picture taken with all the Sheiks! I wonder how much money the "Carlisle (sp) Group gave him? Do the Bush's have a "liason office" in the W.H. basement? Where's Ted Kennedy now? "I feel chaaaaaange in the air!"

Sanity -> RE: How did we get here? (6/3/2009 12:22:47 PM)
During the campaign Obama hid his Muslim heritage, and today is the day he's proudly letting it all hang out. Not judging, merely making an observation of facts. http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/06/abc-news-jake-tapper-and-sunlen-miller-report-the-other-day-we-heard-a-comment-from-a-white-house-aide-that-neverwould-have.html http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/toby_harnden/blog/2009/06/03/barack_hussein_obama_us_one_of_the_largest_muslim_countries_in_the_world

Arpig -> RE: How did we get here? (6/3/2009 12:37:38 PM)
Farts in the wind Sanity. Of course he is emphasising his muslim connection when dealing with muslim communities, he is a politician after all. There is no dire threat in any of this, and to attempt to make any sort of issue about it is jejune at best. And what exactly does any of this have to do with the question at issue here, which is how did we get to where we are, surely you are not saying that the present state of the economy has anything to do with the fact that Obama spent some time in a muslim country, or that his father was a muslim, or that there is a substantial muslim community in and around Chicago, or that he is playing to his audience when making a speech. I realise you have a single track mind when it comes to Obama, but not everything is his doing you know.

Sanity -> RE: How did we get here? (6/3/2009 1:03:46 PM)
Well Arpig, I was responding to popeye's remark, and I pointedly didn't say anything judgemental but - since you asked, what does the media's distortions regarding candidate Obama have to do with how we got where we are today? Everything. The news media decides what we can know and when we can know it. We're too stupid to make our own choices and so we have the self-anointed media elite silently guiding us along... And now we have those (ahem) who say they expect our politicians to lie to us. And that its okay, so long as its a politician who will lead things in their preferred political direction... And so here we are.

MissSepphora1 -> RE: How did we get here? (6/3/2009 2:49:52 PM)
I thought we were going to get through an entire page of intelligent comments and thoughtful insight without one single dem or repub comment, or any fingerpointing. Anyway, this is not dem or repub. It is human. We all have to take responsibility for what we've brought about. I can't point to any one solution, and I can't point to any one failure. I think as everyone has said it is a mixture of things. But taking loans from the chinese is NOT a solution. I was mad as hell when bush did it, and I'm mad as hell now that Obama is doing it. And the only thing worse than Obama kissing ass in the muslim world was Nancy Pelosi kissing ass in China.

Arpig -> RE: How did we get here? (6/3/2009 8:18:47 PM)
quote: Well Arpig, I was responding to popeye's remark, and I pointedly didn't say anything judgemental but - since you asked, what does the media's distortions regarding candidate Obama have to do with how we got where we are today? Everything. The problem with this idea, is that the process that led us to where we are has been ongoing for a long time, longer even than the US has been around, so I find the idea that Obama is somehow to blame is farcical. The cycle of boom and bust has been with man for a long time, and there is nothing particularly new or unique about the current cycle, nor is there really anything new about the efforts being made to stave off the collapse. Greed is not any more prevalent now than it has ever been, nor are its effects on an unregulated market. It has all been seen before, and it will all be seen again, it is part and parcel of every economic system ever tried. This particular phase of recession has been building for well over a decade.

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