Justin Fox crunches the numbers, and hit don't look good: Excerpt:
Citigroup has liabilities of $1.797 trillion. The deposits that the FDIC has some responsibility for (up to $250,000 per depositor) add up to $241 billion. So we have this reasonably sensible system for winding down troubled banks, but when it comes to the most troubled big banking company in the country, said system only covers a fraction of the overall operation. Which leads to a couple of conclusions:1. I get why the administration is so reluctant to take over Citi completely.
2. I don't get why we all (I'm including myself in this) thought it was okay to allow the creation and growth of gigantic financial companies for which we had absolutely no plan for winding down in case of trouble.
Because of lobbyists? Because of ideologues? Because of Alan Greenspan? Because we're fools?
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Irresponsible lending, borrowing, spending, and a lack of concern over our neighbor (whomever it may be) has flushed away life savings of those in search of the prototypical American dream.
A lot of that irresponsible lending and spending has been expended for the sake of our "neighbors." It was part of the "ownership" society pushed by both Bush and the Democrats. Even the idiotic war in Iraq was launched under the misbegotten idea of "liberating" the benighted Iraqis.
As far as life savings go, if they were put into proper funds, they're insured. If not, them's the risks you take.
There is only one party; the party of money. And that one party is chock full of scumbags. Corruption and stupidity seem to be the requirements for election to our Congress. If you think that the Dems are clean, you are a know nothing. Look at the Youtube segments on Fannie and Freddie, where the Republicans warned of the upcoming crisis and Maxine Waters and the Black Caucus called them "racists." What a bunch of idiots. Dirtbags and fools. We should cap them all and start over. They were ALL bought off by Wall St.
In fact, you might as well say that we have been governed by Wall St. for the last ten years.
We should cap all of them too.
You know that some of the guys who sold ARMS betted that they would implode at the 2/3 year reset? They made money at both ends.
We're talking about hundreds of trillions in BS derivatives...airballs...and nobody wants to touch it. They don't even wanna talk about it. Subprime has already been paid for. The big numbers relate to the casino that the Wall St. scum made out of our once strong economy.
Cap 'em all, and soon.
Until Obama takes some steps to make these bastards accountable...there will be NO CONFIDENCE IN OUR ECONOMY.
Why is it my responsibility to "plan" for someone else's wealth, as in
Why? Because so long as we concede the ponzi-scheme-fraud which is America's fractional-reserve-debt-based-FIAT dollar currency we are liable for the legal black hole we legislated for!
Return to sound money and contractual obligation under the law and we'll return to a simple concept of liberty based on personal responsibility (so simple in fact it's basically the "true/false" of apriori absolutes underpinning Roman law -- advocated by most of Christendom until the enlightenment dawned and wrought its great confusion)
Read Jorg Guido Hulsman "The Ethics of Money Production" to follow the scholastics study on the dearth in morality we are facing, starting with fourteenth century French bishop, Nicholas Oresme’s treatise on money
http://mises.org/books/moneyproduction.pdf
Rod,
That si th epoint that those of us criticising Clinton from the Left have always made, his economic policies we're just a continuation of the Reagan's with some minor tweaks.
Re: However, his direct descendants, those who took Smith's mantle, were fully proponents of a type of social darwinism, and Smith's inheritance has been tainted because of it.
I assume you are using "descendants" metaphorically here as I am not aware of any great-grandchildren of Smith's that became Social Darwinists.
More seriously, many people who bandy Smith's name about are probably quite ignorant of his works. And if Smith is tainted by Social Darwinism, why isn't Darwin himself so tainted? Heck, why isn't Special Relativity tainted by Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
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