sether

Grantham on the Financial 'Titanic'

Libertarianism is infantile.
There is no free market utopia. All Utopias are fiction, usually based on the writings and fantasy of some naive mind. Whenever 'free' markets are shown to have produced results contrary to their ideals, Libertarians will always make the self-stultifying arguement that market conditions were not truly 'free'. There are no truly free markets, and never will be. This is a faith, exalting the numinous, ignoring reality. It's also annoying.

On Nov 06 11:16 AM John Galt wrote:

> Failure is what makes America great.
>
> Bad businesses go out of business, and they are replaced by better
> run businesses. Good businesses expand... In all fairness, the ones
> that go under aren't "bad". They just don't propertly allocate resources
> and serve the market the way customers want.
>
> Government doesn't work this way. When a government program failes
> ... like schools, medicare, medicade, social security, freddie, fannie
> etc.etc. etc. They don't fail, but in fact they ask for MORE money.

The Hypocrisy and High Stakes of Healthcare Reform

What costs are you talking about? Drug costs? Yes he did get screwed on that, by Medicare part D, written by pharmaceutical companies, in which it is ILLEGAL for the US govt. to use its massive buying power to negotiate drug prices. Thank you Dubya. Healthcare reform would deal with that in some measure I hope.


On Oct 22 03:46 PM TeresaE wrote:

> Congress "helped" seniors.
>
> My dad's costs went from less than 10% of his income to over 35%.
>
>
> He only gets $16,000 a year SS.
>
> With "help" like that you can bet that this "reform" is going to
> fail.
>
> Miserably and at a huge cost.

The Hypocrisy and High Stakes of Healthcare Reform

I'm not sure our system is the best in the world now, and I don't care. Civilized or 'developed' nations provide baseline minimums for their citizens in housing, food, education and health. I'll take any other developed nation's version of any of those things over ours, especially health, since we simply don't have it. And I'll take second rate health services over nothing; basic preventative care and maintenance. I know people WITH insurance for whom that is unaffordable.
A country that is interested in maintaining its place at the top of the world makes these kinds of investments in its people. That used to be common sense. Just the fact that we are arguing about this is proof that we are so, so f@cked.


On Oct 22 02:44 PM Steve in TN wrote:

> I read a NY Times article on Canadian health care system in which
> readers from Canada wrote in and stated that they prefer their system
> 10 to 1. I was surprised; but then found out that their system does
> not have enough specialists (too costly) so the Canadian govt. pays
> those that need specialists to travel to the U.S. and will pay 100%
> of their costs. The problem is what happens when we adopt a Canadian
> style health care system when our too costly specialists disappear?
> Where do we send our patients?
>
> From Sether:
> "You can argue that America has the best Health Care in the world.
> That's at least debatable. However, millions of people cannot get
> it, or cannot get enough of it. Health Care reform will allow people
> to GET that 'great' health care."
> The problem is when those extra "millions of people" access our system
> will it still be the "best in the world"?

The Hypocrisy and High Stakes of Healthcare Reform

You can argue that America has the best Health Care in the world. That's at least debatable. However, millions of people cannot get it, or cannot get enough of it. Health Care reform will allow people to GET that 'great' health care.
Insurance companies simply stand between patients and providers, gobbling cash and rationing treatment. They are scumbag middle-men. Their business is making money. It has nothing to do with medicine. You watch too much FOX.


On Oct 22 12:45 PM CLH wrote:

> This whole reform is unbelievable. America has the best health care
> in the world. Does anyone go to Europe or Canada for health care?.
> Of course not. They all come to America where the health care is
> the best. The only way to cut costs is to privatise Medicare which
> is a bankrupt disaster.

Bank of America's Gain Is Taxpayers' Loss

Without the intervention of Gov't "lackies", your BofA shares are worth ZERO, bro. BofA and every other major financial institution effed-up in a major way. If you owned the stocks, you lost. You had a bad day at the track. My charity (involuntary) is propping up your stock. Forgive me if I cannot muster any sympathy. Your post is petulant and asinine.


On Sep 23 02:33 PM Big Jack58 wrote:

> No, I'm not infuriated.This was another mechanism the governement
> was using to try to milk money out of one of our largest financial
> institutions. And we can count on the inept government lackies to
> fail to get the documents signed (which has been well reported for
> several months, but it took this author until now to figure this
> out). Additionally, in it's quarterly meeting for Q1 in April, BAC
> announced they would never leverage this backstop because the terms
> would cause the price to be paid by BAC to be greater than any backstopping
> they would receive (but the author failed to call into that analyst
> meeting and hear any of this). Being a shareholder, I'm furious at
> our sleezy government because BAC received nothing in return for
> their $425 million payment for backstopping ... again, nothing was
> backstopped. So let's see: Sept 2008 the gov't highly encourages
> BAC to buy a failing ML in an attempt to save the economy the gov't
> couldn't save themselves; Dec 2008 the gov't threatens BAC to not
> back out of the deal nor leverage the MAC for a cheaper price on
> the merger; Jan 2009 the gov't, as consolation to BAC for a forced
> merger, decides to throw $20 billion in loans at 5.5% interest along
> with a scheme to backstop several billion that would never materialize
> (given they had $45 billion in TARP); Summer 2009 the gov't blames
> the recession on BAC, changes it's board and management teams and
> forces lending practices that provide handouts to irresponsible consumers
> (at the expense of the bank's profits and the shareholders' gains).
> It's obvious our gov't is no longer the leach we thought it was ...
> its a full sized vampire.

51.68% in 165 Days

Why should I care what a couple of 15 year-olds have to say?

Why Obama's Big Spending Fallacy Could Ruin U.S. Economy

Umm, the US Economy is already ruined, bro. And I think I could come up with another group of carefully bracketed charts and cherry-picked statistics to make a different argument, or any number of different arguments, each citing as many books and economic theorists as yours does. The 1980's ended in 2008. Any economic policy which contrasts with those in vogue over the last 30 years is a good one.

National Health Insurance, 'Cap and Trade': Two Steps in the Wrong Direction

72% of americans want public health care.
90% of corporate money doesn't.
If public health care drives private providers out of business, GOOD. The sooner the better. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people. Health care for profit is unethical, and violates the hippocratic oath. Look into it.
Peter Schiff here reduced to FOX News-level propaganda. Nice work, you sellout. How do you sleep?

National Health Insurance, 'Cap and Trade': Two Steps in the Wrong Direction

If the free market can solve everything, why is it so afraid of a public healthcare option? Private healthcare is so great right now it should kick the ass of any public option, right? What harm can a little increased competition do to our health care oligarchs?

Economic Decapitation via Cap and Trade

Hey John Dalt (Galt?) you write and dress like a clown.
Are you one of those Ayn Rand Scientologists - er - Libertarians? Your article is about as lucid and useful as Atlas Shrugged, but thankfully less verbose.
Libertarianism is actually just Infantilism. Has anyone else noticed this?

Recession, Depression and Monetary Mismanagement

Freemarket fetishist and econocaust denier Gerard Jackson attempts once again to claim that it wasn't 30 years of deregulation, globalist freemarketeering, and massive tax cuts that caused this mess, but rather, not enough of those things. Oh, and Fed policy. Well, that policy tied everything together and kept your bubble going; almost long enough to push it out past Bush 2, but not quite.

Give Obama 40 More Years in Office!

Libertarianism, and its free market dogma is infantile, with no more basis in reality or rational thought than any religion. Adam Smith is equally ridiculous as Joseph Smith when applied to real-world economies. Likewise the vague noodlings of Ayn Rand, who was naive and overly verbose at best. Her books are thick with fantasy, like L. Ron Hubbard's. Lose that religion folks, it sucks. Unregulated Free Markets eat themselves and enslave nations. I'm all for capitalism, but the main role of 'government' should be to protect us from the 'free market'.

Could an Eliot Spitzer comeback really happen? (Vanity Fair)

the guy was under 'Patriot Act' surveillance 24/7 because of his meddling in Wall Street and ratings agencies. Real dumb move with the floozy though.

The Coming Economic Collapse, Part 2

Hey mr. Magoo, are you an idiot or a liar?
For the last 30 years the US economy has been a Friedmanesque, supply-side, deregulating, trickle-down, tax-cutting (for the rich), Laffer-curve, Jude Wanniski, Voodoo economic Petri dish.
The experiment produced financial AIDS, which unfortunately we exported to the UK, and most of the rest of the world.
What country were you living in?

On Jun 09 06:29 AM JudeJin wrote:

> a hundred years of social experiment based on keynesian theory(government
> intervention) has failed miserably!!
>
> by comparison, in physics, an experiment could finish in nanosecond.
> thus we all honor einstein.
>
> in social science, we've followed the wrong man.
>
> i recommend everybody to study the austrian school of economics founded
> by ludwig von mises! he's the unknown einstein in economics. he predicted
> this miserable outcome of government intervention a long long time
> ago, but nobody listened. no bureaucrats would listen of course!!!
>
>
> amen to american people!
> wake up, american people!
> the world need you to stand up and lead the civilization into the
> right direction!
> a catastrophe is also an opportunity!
> we need a true leader, not obama!
>
>
>

The Coming Economic Collapse, Part 2

Our current dillema is the result of markets being more 'free' and all-encompassing for the last 30 years than they have ever been. Certain things should not be subject to market forces. We used to have enough common sense to realize that if we want to maintain our status as a civilized and advanced country, it is in our interest to provide and maintain baseline minimums and minumum standards in health, education, and housing/infrastructure. If you want private school, boutique healthcare, or a gated community, you buy it; but these are basic requirements about which many people are not able to make "willing exchanges". The real problem with Government has been that democracy itself has been exposed to market forces, and has ceased to exist to a great extent. Corporations, the nominal market 'winners', now own government and use it as another tool for self propigation. The last 2 supreme court appointments are corporatist shills. This is the inevitable result of an unregulated 'free' market. Free markets eat themselves with huge collateral damage.

On Jun 08 06:40 AM User 353732 wrote:

> I suggest that the path to a cure requires clarity about making and
> honoring distinctions between markets and governments.
> Markets allocate resources based on merit. Governments misallocate
> resources based on patronage. Markets create wealth, Governments
> destroy it. Markets promote choice; Governments suppress it. Markets
> are based on a voluntary system of property rights and willing exchanges.
> Governments are based on a coercive system of entitlements and impositions.
>
> It is not, I beleve, for individuals or Governments to decide the
> what, when and where of jobs and the composition of the economy:
> no individual can and Governments , by their very nature get in not
> just wrong but horribly wrong.
>
> Only Free and Fair markets can get it right.
>
> Our present grave economic/financial and decision making perversions
> and pathologies arise from the fact that free and fair markets are
> no longer permitted to function in important, indeed essential parts
> of the economy. This is because corrupt and self obsessed Big Corporations,
> advocacy and special interest groups and the Government profit hugely
> and consistently from suppressing or distorting market( eg credit,
> energy,water, labor, real estate, education, healtcare) signals.
> In large and growing parts of the economy Free and Fair markets do
> not exist or are no longer allowed to operate.
> The more the markets are tortured and weakened the more the Government
> and its corporate, special interest and media allies claims that
> only they, the annointed few, have the answers.
> Governments cannot credibly address the issues you discussed in Parts
> 1 and 2 of your essay and markets are not allowed to. No wonder the
> fundamentals of the economy, society, culture and national global
> stature continue to deteriorate.
>
> Until the Government/market balance is reasonably restored, property
> rights and the rule of contracts are again honored, free and fair
> markets are again the norm and the middle class is again central
> in national decision making our condition cannot, reliably and consistently
> improve. It can, however, greatly worsen.