antiquary

The Economy, And Why It's Taking So Long to Fix It

It's not 20 years in the making, it's 30. The credit culture at the root of this addiction to leverage began with the US Supreme Court case Marquette National Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corp. (1978). That case gutted state anti-usury laws by saying that nationally chartered banks can apply the interest rate laws of the state where they operate from, not the state the borrower is in. That, of course, set up the classic "race to the bottom" among states that we're now seeing in gambling; states without anti-usury laws attracted the big credit card companies and became addicted to the taxes on the huge amounts of money that began rolling in, providing the incentive for other states to repeal their anti-usury laws.

Congress, of course, should have then stepped in and amended the federal law to reverse Marquette National Bank, but they didn't.

On Feb 27 06:06 PM User 365859 wrote:

> The mess we got into is 20yrs in the making. It started with the
> most favorite nation status to China(by Bill Clinton). Since then
> we have shipped 7 million manufacturing jobs to China. and the 20
> million support jobs that go with them This was done with the help
> of wall street and complicity of our managerial and political class.
> In order to maintain the standard of living in the face of these
> losses of good paying jobs american middle class borrowed too much
> and again wall-street was complicit in selling mortgages credit cards
> and every other form of debt that they knew people would not be able
> to laon back.
>
> Let the larger banks fail and create an RTC which will then sell
> those assets that are worth something to the next tier of banks.Wipe
> out the common share holders and start over. There would be much
> less pain in the medium term and we could make the medium banks the
> abilityh to make good profits and grow.
>
> The individual howeowner like me who has 70 percent equity is just
> going to suck it up. There are a few million too many homes in this
> country and we have to work through the inventory which could take
> a long time.
>
> I am my brothers keeper so we the better off have to help those less
> fortunate.
>