angelofdeath Posted October 13, 2009 Share Posted October 13, 2009 "greed" is way to simplistic. People ALWAYS act greedy. Which leads us to why this certain sector's players all acted the same way. Which brings us to the FED and federal policy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shai Posted October 13, 2009 Share Posted October 13, 2009 People ALWAYS act greedy. This is the problem I have with unchecked capitalism. Don't worry, I have the same problem when greed is institutionalized and happens via bureaucracy, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelofdeath Posted October 13, 2009 Share Posted October 13, 2009 How do you stamp out "greed" in"unchecked capitalism" when self interest and "greed" is how people cooperate? You are "greedy" if you accept money for any work you do. Even charity is out of self interest because you ultimately do it because it makes you feel good. It's not out of benevolence that we get goods from the baker, butcher or candle stick maker, it's out of an acute awareness for their own self interest. Greed. Grocery stores don't distribute food out of benevolence, they sell it to make a profit. Greed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mainframe Posted October 13, 2009 Share Posted October 13, 2009 No...greed is characterized by excess. The baker is greedy not by virtue of selling goods, he is greedy IF he, for example, mixes in day old bread with the fresh bread and sells it for the same price. The candle stick maker is greedy IF he short changes every third customer on purpose. Greed implies dishonesty and excessive self interest. Greed can be subjective but your definition is very very skewed. Here: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/greed Also, I hear the word "always" way too much in here. Simmer down with the absolutes, this isn't math. But there are almost ALWAYS shades of gray. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shai Posted October 13, 2009 Share Posted October 13, 2009 So let's refrain from using the word "greed" in favor of "avarice". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelofdeath Posted October 13, 2009 Share Posted October 13, 2009 No...greed is characterized by excess. The baker is greedy not by virtue of selling goods, he is greedy IF he, for example, mixes in day old bread with the fresh bread and sells it for the same price. The candle stick maker is greedy IF he short changes every third customer on purpose. Greed implies dishonesty and excessive self interest. Greed can be subjective but your definition is very very skewed. Here: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/greed Also, I hear the word "always" way too much in here. Simmer down with the absolutes, this isn't math. But there are almost ALWAYS shades of gray. greed is ALWAYS subjective! that is the point of my post! who decides? middle america may think wall street was 'greedy' but the rich just think they were making normal salaries. the union worker may not think he is 'greedy' for making sure he works on holidays to get his triple overtime just for sitting around, but a non union worker might think he is. someone might think a person who just bought a house with an extra bedroom is 'greedy' but the person who bought the house might think the house is to small. and so it goes. most people try to make as much money as they can. that is all wall street did. are you 'greedy' by taking a higher paying job than the one you have now? in commerce, you want to attain whatever it is you want, for the cheapest price or free. whoever is selling something wants to get the highest price. its 'greedy' of a seller to deny your offering price for a car and take the higher bid, no? its easy to sling words around about bankers being 'greedy' but it doesnt address the problem of WHAT made all the big banks act the way they did. the federal reserve and the federal regulatory and housing apparatus. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SOAKER Posted October 13, 2009 Share Posted October 13, 2009 THE seeds of today’s financial meltdown lie in the Community Reinvestment Act – a law passed in 1977 and made riskier by unwise amendments and regulatory rulings in later decades. CRA was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods. That has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in “subprime” loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers. Any bank that wants to expand or merge with another has to show it has complied with CRA – and approval can be held up by complaints filed by groups like ACORN. In fact, intimidation tactics, public charges of racism and threats to use CRA to block business expansion have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America’s financial institutions. Banks already overexposed by these shaky loans were pushed still further in the wrong direction when government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up their bad loans and offering them for sale on world markets. Fannie and Freddie acted in response to Clinton administration pressure to boost homeownership rates among minorities and the poor. However compassionate the motive, the result of this systematic disregard for normal credit standards has been financial disaster. ONE key pioneer of ACORN’s subprime-loan shakedown racket was Madeline Talbott – an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae’s mortgage policies. Long the director of Chicago ACORN, Talbott is a specialist in “direct action” – organizers’ term for their militant tactics of intimidation and disruption. Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council to push for a “living wage” law, shouting in defiance as she was arrested for mob action and disorderly conduct. But her real legacy may be her drive to push banks into making risky mortgage loans. In February 1990, Illinois regulators held what was believed to be the first-ever state hearing to consider blocking a thrift merger for lack of compliance with CRA. The challenge was filed by ACORN, led by Talbott. Officials of Bell Federal Savings and Loan Association, her target, complained that ACORN pressure was undermining its ability to meet strict financial requirements it was obligated to uphold and protested being boxed into an “affirmative-action lending policy.” The following years saw Talbott featured in dozens of news stories about pressuring banks into higher-risk minority loans. IN April 1992, Talbott filed an other precedent-setting com plaint using the “community support requirements” of the 1989 savings-and-loan bailout, this time against Avondale Federal Bank for Savings. Within a month, Chicago ACORN had organized its first “bank fair” at Malcolm X College and found 16 Chicago-area financial institutions willing to participate. Two months later, aided by ACORN organizer Sandra Maxwell, Talbott announced plans to conduct demonstrations in the lobbies of area banks that refused to attend an ACORN-sponsored national bank “summit” in New York. She insisted that banks show a commitment to minority lending by lowering their standards on downpayments and underwriting – for example, by overlooking bad credit histories. By September 1992, The Chicago Tribune was describing Talbott’s program as “affirma- tive-action lending” and ACORN was issuing fact sheets bragging about relaxations of credit standards that it had won on behalf of minorities. And Talbott continued her effort to, as she put it, drag banks “kicking and screaming” into high-risk loans. A September 1993 story in The Chicago Sun-Times presents her as the leader of an initiative in which five area financial institutions (including two of her former targets, now plainly cowed – Bell Federal Savings and Avondale Federal Savings) were “participating in a $55 million national pilot program with affordable-housing group ACORN to make mortgages for low- and moderate-income people with troubled credit histories.” What made this program different from others, the paper added, was the participation of Fannie Mae – which had agreed to buy up the loans. “If this pilot program works,” crowed Talbott, “it will send a message to the lending community that it’s OK to make these kind of loans.” Well, the pilot program “worked,” and Fannie Mae’s message that risky loans to minorities were “OK” was sent. The rest is financial-meltdown history. IT would be tough to find an “on the ground” community organizer more closely tied to the subprime-mortgage fiasco than Madeline Talbott. And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama. When Obama was just a budding community organizer in Chicago, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her personal staff. He returned to Chicago in the early ’90s, just as Talbott was starting her pressure campaign on local banks. Chicago ACORN sought out Obama’s legal services for a “motor voter” case and partnered with him on his 1992 “Project VOTE” registration drive. In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN’s up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott’s drive against Chicago’s banks. More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago’s Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation’s board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. In 1995, the Woods Fund substantially expanded its funding of community organizers – and Obama chaired the committee that urged and managed the shift. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SOAKER Posted October 13, 2009 Share Posted October 13, 2009 http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=43850708 Democrats are too blame... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mainframe Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 greed is ALWAYS subjective! It's very perplexing that you can concede this and yet still view things in such black and white terms (i.e. everyone is greedy or nobody is in fact greedy, you apparently favoring the latter.) Strictly speaking, any accusation of 'greed' is indeed subjective because it depends on a value judgment; the nature of excess is essentially a moral question and is up for debate. However, this argument is of a distilled intellectual nature, and it does not fully apply to the reality of human society and economic organization. Here's an anecdote: today I was driving on the freeway in a rainstorm, and I saw an electronic sign that said "both right lanes closed ahead due to accident." I noticed many cars in the two right lanes starting to merge over into the two left lanes. However, once the two left lanes began to slow down due to the congestion ahead near the accident (a crashed semi was facing backwards and blocking two lanes, looked like dude did a 180) I noticed many cars merging back into the relatively empty right lanes so they could drive faster and get a leg up on us left-laners. Of course, all this really resulted in was much worse congestion at the bottleneck, more lane-changing and shuffling around, and a slower drive for everyone. You could say that the people who merged into the right lanes got "greedy." They were making it worse for everyone by trying to get ahead in a thoughtless, unfair, selfish manner. Cooperation would have made things much smoother. Whether you agree with it or not, our society has a general definition of greed that is, yes, tied to a collective moral consciousness. This definition perhaps fluctuates with respect to smaller (family) and larger (the entire human race) levels of human organization, but there is still something universal that can be perceived as "greed," probably by every civilized person on the planet. It has to do with a rejection of cooperation for mutual benefit in favor of independant action for personal benefit. It has to do with a degree of selfishness that, whether intentional or not, is beneficial to oneself at the expense of other members of the community (at whatever level). Obviously this is subjective, and it has do with ideas of fairness which are also subjective. But we live in a society that is held together by some degree of arbitrary consensus rules and "objective" morals and THAT is where this concept of greed comes from. Thus greed is still subject to a significant degree of interpretation but your complete denial of its existence as an aspect of human behavior and therefore an agent of economic behavior in our society seems very shaky. The idea isn't to force everyone to become equal, it's to level the playing field. Remember that we live in a society composed of individuals, but it is still an organic whole. Your argument is about banking, something I admittedly don't know much about, but it seems to hinge on a very shaky conception of human nature. If you are trying to dispute our society's definition of 'greed' you are opening a whole other can of corn. Perhaps you should eat that can before you sit down to dine on some banking beef. Examine your assumptions before you make conclusions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lord_casek Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 Mainframe: http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=66 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shai Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 It's very perplexing that you can concede this and yet still view things in such black and white terms (i.e. everyone is greedy or nobody is in fact greedy, you apparently favoring the latter.) Strictly speaking, any accusation of 'greed' is indeed subjective because it depends on a value judgment; the nature of excess is essentially a moral question and is up for debate. I'll speak for myself, here. There's a big difference between motivation, self-interest and greed. So, I'll create a baseline, then. Bernie Madoff was greedy. Dick Cheney was greedy. Michael Milliken was greedy. Leona Helmsley was a greedy bitch. My baseline for greed doesn't mean that you can't be rich. As I said before, I don't favor egalitarianism because I think that the desire to improve your lot in life and acquire wealth is so deeply ingrained into the human psyche that it's one of the key reasons civilization exists at all and it is a vehicle for self improvement...so there's no point in trying to suppress it or condemning people for getting their hustle on. When you get into Scrooge McDuck territory- where you have accumulated so much wealth that you cannot possibly spend it in one lifetime, nor could your heirs spend it in their lifetimes- and you did it by any means necessary including screwing over your fellow man, then congratulations, you've made the list! But if someone worked hard, treated people fairly, owned a few businesses and some property? No, that's not pathological or greedy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SOAKER Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 Michelle Obama is a greedy bitch... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shai Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 Because... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r1char Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 hes sooooo dreamy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delonemonkey Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 "WASHINGTON (AFP) – In an unannounced move, President Barack Obama is dispatching an additional 13,000 US troops to Afghanistan beyond the 21,000 he announced publicly in March, The Washington Post reported Monday." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lord_casek Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 "WASHINGTON (AFP) – In an unannounced move, President Barack Obama is dispatching an additional 13,000 US troops to Afghanistan beyond the 21,000 he announced publicly in March, The Washington Post reported Monday." Expect more of this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delonemonkey Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 40,000 requested - 13,000 allocated. Sounds like a slaughter in the making. Obama doesn't listen to his Generals request because he knows more than they do about these things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelofdeath Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 despite the boards subjective views on 'greed' i'll just re work the argument around 'self interest.' its easier and way less subjective than 'greed.' humans act in their own self interest. end of story. if you have a good historical background you will see that all the 'panics' (old 19th century term for 'depression') were caused by some sort of central government manipulation of credit or money, whether through bonds, central bank manipulation, etc. commonly after a war. you will also see that once the federal reserve was created to 'stop' the boom and bust cycle, they got WORSE. the 1920's boom in the stock market was a result of easy credit and money from the federal reserve. it led to speculation in the stock market. for every boom, there is a bust. the bust came in 1929. it lasted until 1946 due to hoover and fdr's policies. you never hear about the depression immediately after ww1 because the government did nothing to 'fix' it and it went away really quick. you have to ask yourself, why in the 1990's did people make the same mistakes in the stock market with the .com bubble? why did they make the same mistakes in 2001-2007 in the housing boom? the federal reserve and the federal regulatory apparatus. if we actually had people in government that understood economics, boom and busts, the business cycle, etc, and wanted to 'fix' something, they would have to dismantle the federal reserve and the federal regulatory apparatus. (soaker made a good post above about the CRA and the regulatory structure) but government has never 'fixed' anything. they always prolong the problem and make things worse. if you have a bunch of drunk people doing dumb shit, you have to realize that the alcohol has some effect on what they are doing. if you have a bunch of wall street banks making loans to people that cant pay them back (but why arent the people ever blamed for contributing to the collapse? after all, they signed these loans, coercion free!) you have to see why all the big banks were making the same 'mistake' and i already explained 'why.' human nature is to attain as much as possible for the least amount of effort. you cannot stamp this out. this is how the world cooperates and goes around around. but you can surely fix the federal reserve and create a free market. this would end 'greed' because banks would have to back up their own stupid ass mistakes. nobody in a free market would be making NINJA loans (no income, no job, no assets) to people if they had to loan their own money. as it is with banks. if they didnt get cheap credit, with a high risk of return, AND be insulated from risk, (moral hazard, private profit, socialized loss) not to mention government policy that forced them to make loans to people that couldnt pay them back, they wouldnt of made the bad loans. this would of never happened in a free market. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelofdeath Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 and ummm... guys. obama just won the peace prize. he already brought home all the troops from overseas. duh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SOAKER Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 Because... Well the fact that she needs over 3 million dollars to pay for her personal assistants might make her greedy? Ya think? Cause where Im from a million dollars is a lot of cash Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SOAKER Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ILOTSMYBRAIN Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 Shai just wanted you to know that entire post wasn't directed towards you. I should have just quoted the examples you gave when I made that post. IE: The whole not reading the articles comment. I'll give your reply a better look when I get some time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SOAKER Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 Obama: The New Hitler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lord_casek Posted October 15, 2009 Author Share Posted October 15, 2009 and ummm... guys. obama just won the peace prize. he already brought home all the troops from overseas. duh. Oh yeah, I forgot the 3rd ID came home to patrol the streets. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mainframe Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 Mainframe: http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=66 Well that puts what aod is trying to regurgitate in perspective. Anarcho-capitalism huh. I don't buy it based on what I've seen, it sounds like a very narrow-minded idea. Don't feel like getting into that right now. One thing came to mind as a good, modern example of unregulated, free-market business. Organized crime. I'd be interested to read an anarcho-capitalist take on that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lord_casek Posted October 15, 2009 Author Share Posted October 15, 2009 I gotcha. We all have differing opinions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shai Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 Obama: The New Hitler And this is all the confirmation I needed to show how little knowledge and perspective you have to bring to the conversation. Welcome to my ignore list, dumbass. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smart Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 Obama doesn't listen to his Generals request because he knows more than they do about these things. You mean the same General who sent another report stating that Afghani Govt. corruption has made the the war practically unwinnable no matter how many troops he sends. Yes, why isn't he listening to him? You know what would be better, you should post your phone number so he could just call you before he exercises his rank as Commander in Chief. Obama: The New Hitler First order of business, you have to wear a pink triangle on the front of your clothes. Later, you and x5 get to go 'camping'. One thing came to mind as a good, modern example of unregulated, free-market business. Organized crime. Just look to Mexico for a shining modern example! I gotcha. We all have differing opinions. Yeah, the thing is, MF also has a good point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SOAKER Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 Organized crime typically deals in the black market, which is in response to the restrictions government has placed on trade. For example, marijuana, or Prohibition, gambling, prostitution, etc. If for some reason your offended by the truth about Obama and his socialist agenda I don't give a fuck. With the government funding abortion, the take over of private enterprise, the desire to control health care, the unregulated spending, gun restrictions, numerous war fronts, and the increase in taxes it seems to me that we should all be concerned about his goals. If you want to cheer lead some political power then good for you. Obamas desire to be in power, his indoctrination by a religious fanatical preacher, association with proclaimed socialists, black nationalists, bankers, his professed disdain for the American Constitution. Do you really think that he is different than George Bush? Don't tell me you fell for all of those well coordinated speeches? They reminded me of Hitler rousing up the crowds, but maybe that's just me. When the Nazi's took over they did things very similar to what the government is doing now. My great grandfather owned a factory in Germany and the Nazis wanted to take it over for government use. When he refused he was murdered. To me it seems that the government is doing this same thing in a very "friendly" way. The parallels of Obama and Hitler can be made, the book writing, government take over of industry, expanding the war efforts, etc. “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.” — Adolf Hitler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SOAKER Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 "Obama and Hitler both have displayed a penchant for eliminating “undesirable” infants. Hitler’s case is well known; he believed he could create a master race through selective breeding, mandatory sterilization of “undesirable parents” and abortions. Obama’s methods lack the scope of ambition but the end result is similar – Obama has legalized the murder of already-born infants. In 2002, an important bill known as the “Induced Infant Liability Act” cropped up in the Illinois senate. The purpose of the bill was to protect infants who had been born alive after a failed abortion from being “aborted” after birth. In the United States, the second a person is born, they become a U.S. citizen. Taking the life of such a citizen is murder. That is something both pro-choice and pro-life advocates can agree on. Even the most pro-abortion lobby in the country, NARAL, did not oppose it nor the federal version of the law. Obama on the other hand, did oppose it, TWICE. In doing so, he helped establish the legality of murder of infant Americans in his state." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.