DesideriScuri
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ORIGINAL: Edwird
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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
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ORIGINAL: Edwird
Some idiotic simplistic and overreaching proclamation about "limited government" as one of your apparently core values doesn't exactly convey 'context' in that proclamation, does it?
Actually, it's your interpretation of my core value that is idiotic and simplistic. So, rather than consider there may be more than one interpretation, you attempt to bash me with whatever one works best (or the only one you can think of).
A big key to context, isn't just the specific words used, but other words around them. Thus, a "Conservative interpretation of the Constitution" just might lend a little context to what's meant by "Limited Government," no?
Whether my interpretation was correct or not, it's probably not the best that I singled you out for it.
It's just that I get aggravated by the fact that the first people to complain about the government 'not doing its job' almost always seem to be from the "less government!" crowd.
There is a difference between "less government" and "limited government." The size of a limited government is whatever size it takes to effectively exercise it's duties and authorities in the most efficient manner possible. A "limited government" in my usage, is one that is limited in powers and authorities; as set forth by a conservative interpretation of the Constitution.
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As for government reports on the financial crisis, I might or might not have read the one you did. I've read so many articles and reports and books about it that between that and my uni classes I had to start using reading glasses. In any case, I don't recall from any of it that the Fed interest rates had any more than a minor contributory role.
Here's the Senate report that I did read;
http://www.hsgac.senate.gov//imo/media/doc/Financial_Crisis/FinancialCrisisReport.pdf?attempt=2
I skimmed through it again just now, didn't see anything about the Fed.
There was this, though;
In the mid 1990s, the United States initiated substantial changes to the banking industry, some of which relaxed the rules under which banks operated, while others imposed new regulations, and still others encouraged increased risk-taking. In 1994, for the first time, Congress explicitly authorized interstate banking, which allowed federally-chartered banks to open branches nationwide more easily than before. In 1999, Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which had generally required banks, investment banks, securities firms, and insurance companies to operate separately, and instead allowed them to openly merge operations. The same law also eliminated the Glass-Steagall prohibition on banks engaging in proprietary trading and exempted investment bank holding companies from direct federal regulation.
In 2000, Congress enacted the Commodity Futures Modernization Act which barred federal regulation of swaps and the trillion-dollar swap markets, and which allowed U.S. banks, broker-dealers, and other financial institutions to develop, market, and trade these unregulated financial products, including credit default swaps, foreign currency swaps, interest rate swaps, energy swaps, total return swaps, and more.
[Emphasis above is mine.]
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Even though blame certainly should fall mostly on the financial industry itself and their actions, every responsible account of the financial crisis I've come across points to massive and irresponsible deregulation as the prime mover. Nothing -of this magnitude- could have happened under the prior existing regulatory regime.
There were what heretofore regarded as 'financial disasters' that happened in the old days, no question. The S&L crisis (after the deregulation of thrifts), Continental Illinois, the Boesky-Milken-Drexel Burnham Lambert scandal, the Long-Term Capital Management fiasco, etc.
None of them affected home equity or jobs beyond their purview.
Nope, not the one that I read. I read the one from the FCIC.
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-FCIC/pdf/GPO-FCIC.pdf quote:
- We conclude this financial crisis was avoidable.
The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire. The captains of finance and the public stewards of our financial system ignored warnings and failed to question, understand, and manage evolving risks within a system essential to the well-being of the American public. Theirs was a big miss, not a stumble.
...
The prime example is the Federal Reserve’s pivotal failure to stem the flow of toxic mortgages, which it could have done by setting prudent mortgage-lending standards. The Federal Reserve was the one entity empowered to do so and it did not. The
record of our examination is replete with evidence of other failures: financial institutions made, bought, and sold mortgage securities they never examined, did not care to examine, or knew to be defective; firms depended on tens of billions of dollars of borrowing that had to be renewed each and every night, secured by subprime mortgage securities; and major firms and investors blindly relied on credit rating agencies as their arbiters of risk. What else could one expect on a highway where there were neither speed limits nor neatly painted lines?
It goes on to also blame lending Wall Street, citizens, Fannie/Freddie, etc.
As far as the S&L crisis goes, government had a major hand in that one, too. By first capping the amount of interest the S&L's could offer on savings while limiting their loans to fixed rate mortgages, when interest rates started to rise above the rate they could offer, they lost their ability to get new savers. Congress lifted the cap, and also allowed them to offer more services, while also raising the amount covered by the FDIC. This S&L's an opportunity to "outgrow" their issues. However, it also opened up the opportunity for them to game the system (and Wall Street didn't shy away from taking part). For instance, when they increased FDIC coverage from $40k to $100k, that allowed for riskier lending, more risky lending, or more and riskier lending.
Congress tried to make changes, but every change, pretty much, made things worse. At the very beginning and core of the crisis, was the cap on savings account interest S&L's could offer.
http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2929&context=flr
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What I support:
- A Conservative interpretation of the US Constitution
- Personal Responsibility
- Help for the truly needy
- Limited Government
- Consumption Tax (non-profit charities and food exempt)
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