I like George Will. He reads you Dave, but he reads and speaks Heloise! LOL

Heloise

I read your piece and frankly I felt sorry for you. I have the nasty feeling that your world is about to disappear on you. This article from Strategic Forecasting came in my e-mail, and while I generally do not have a terribly high opinion of the author's analyses, he makes a number of cogent points.

Lwt's have a look, shall we?

Underlying this political pressure is a sense that the financial class, people who run global financial institutions, have failed to behave responsibly and effectively, and have therefore lost their legitimacy. The expectation, reasonable or not, is that the political system will now supplant these managers and impose at least a temporary solution. The finance ministers therefore have a political mandate, almost global in scope, to act decisively. The question is what they will do?

The article continues,

This weekend some basic decisions have to be made. The first is whether to give the bailouts time to work, to increase the packages or to accept that they have failed and move to the next step. The next step is for governments and central banks to take over decision making from financial institutions, and cause them to lend. This can be done in one of two ways. The first is to guarantee the loans made between financial institutions so that solvency is not an issue and risk is eliminated. The second is to directly take over the lending process, with the state dictating how much is lent to whom. In a real sense, the distinction between the two is not as significant as it appears. The market is abolished and wealth is distributed through mechanisms created by the state, with risk eliminated from the system, or more precisely, transferred from the lender to the taxing authority of the state.

From the long-winded and wordy article that I'm directing you to, it appears that the illusion of the free market (there never was any such thing as a free market) is about to be stripped from you.

A solution akin to state socialism may well be imposed on the bankers of the world. A government bureaucrat will decide if you get a loan or not. And the irony of it all is that it will be imposed by politicians who "swear by" capitalism and the "free market".

I don't particularly like this either, but you have run for office and involved yourself in party politics inspired by the idea that government should involve itself minimally in an individual's life in a free society. That idea is, if the "next step" described by George Friedman is taken, about to disappear.

Have fun, Dave....

Ruvy, in a way it's a good thing that the illusion that this market was ever free has been stripped away. Now we can see the real problem and understand that we need to start over from scratch and establish truly free markets with government out of the picture.

Dave

Dave: "Now we can see the real problem and understand that we need to start over from scratch and establish truly free markets with government out of the picture."

You are kidding, right? Adam Smith died a long time ago, Jesus a long time before that. The financial world is bankrupt morally and ethically. In fact, the idea of morality and ethics is not taught in business school, quite the contrary. Certain basic rules must be established, and those rules must have teeth.

A totally free market would be like allowing a cat to supervise a creamery.

PS: can you fix the pix on your piece? At least on my computer, Mr Will is covering a paragraph of your article.

Dave,

It's nice to see the curtains finally lifting as you see the world for what it really is. I'm sending you two more links and the money lines (pardon the pun) from both.

The first is from the Jerusalem Post's financial editor, Pinchas Landau, written last Tuesday. The guy sounds just like my father-in-law in his very last paragraph....

From the article:

Once you grasp that it's possible to create make-believe money that lasts as long as everyone believes it's there but goes poof as soon as this belief is questioned, then you won't believe any more in the whole spiel. And once most people stop believing - indeed, become active unbelievers - then there's no money for a long time.

That's what analysts call a serious recession and that's where we are. So, now you understand the whole thing. Aren't you sorry you started asking questions? If people like you had just taken everything on faith, how much happier and richer we would all be.

The "Golden Calf" (the culture of "Edom", the decadent materialism of America and the other western countries) has been terribly wounded and is on the verge of death. Just as we said years ago, the banks are going to fall and money will be worth no more than tissue paper. Some people think they will be able to save themselves financially by buying gold. But you can't eat gold.

We created a world of shéker (lies) in order to satisfy our lusts and to fufill our desires ["On that day man will discard his idols of silver and his idols of gold that he created for himself to worship", Yeshayahu 2). But usually, the things we want have no relevance to the emét (Truth).

If I'm not mistaken, free markets were adopted in Germany after WWII (to halt the predominate and successful blackmarket) and were extremely successful. So succesfull that West Germany climbed out of the devestation of WWII and rebuilt there economy into a powerhouse in a very short period of time.

But that was Hayakian theory at work and nobody REALLY wants to adapt that... as it gives up control and leaves the market alone.

UCLA's findings regarding FDR administrative tampering/experimenting probably extended the depression by 7 to 9 years (according to the report). It is widely available online and one should take a glance at it.

I believe in letting markets kill off the weak and other companies take their place. And if you read the teeny-tiny print on any prospectus you will find the disclaimer that your investment is NOT secured in any way-shape-or-form. But GOVERNMENT needs to pick up the collicky investers and burp them... bail them out (when they acknowledged understanding through contractural means of the risks involved through investment practices and concerns).

The government needs to stay out of it and SHUT UP. The government is causing panic, for no reason... and throwing money at a problem.

Listen, these companies that are failing are chumming the waters... beleive me, when the sharks start in on the feeding frenzy the air will clear and the strong will have survived. Will invester money be lost? Yes. But those investers , knew the risks going in, or will have learned to read the fine print and assume the risks of certain investment practices. Hard lesson? You bet.

Dave sez:

The most riveting speaker of the night was columnist George Will, ... conveying his frustration and anger at Congress and out of control government and the irresponsibility of the American people...

A cynic might take this as a call for a dictator.

I believe in letting markets kill off the weak...

....


500000000 or bust!

There is more on this meltdown from a religious point of view - and the scary part of it all is how relevant it all is.

Jonathan Rosenblum is a writer on "Haredí" topics most of the time, tht is to say topics that concern the Jewish folks wearing the long black coats and sidelocks, but here, in spite of all the Jewish religious references - there is one issue that stands out like a sore thumb - let's have a peek:

But one thing is clear: part of the crisis has a moral component - in particular a severing of the relationship between productive activity and wealth. Decades ago, I read that the economic future of a society could be judged by the ratio of engineers to lawyers (and, we might add, financiers.) For the last fifteen years, too many of Americas brightest have been drawn not just to the big law firms but to Wall Street and affiliated hedge funds. Rather than to inventing better widgets or finding a cure for cancer, they opted for the quickest way to earn millions.

Not only on Wall Street and other world financial centers was the relationship between productive activity and the enjoyment of the fruits of such activity severed. Americans have been living well beyond their means, unwilling to postpone enjoyment of those things money can buy until that money was earned. Credit card debt swelled to 100% of GNP in 2006 from 50% in 1980.

In the midst of the worldwide depression beginning in 1929, Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman, who would be martyred in the Kovno ghetto, wrote a piece that applies no less to today's crisis. The problem, he wrote, was not that there was no more money, but that all trust had broken down. The credit upon which any modern economy is based had dried up. Those with money refuse to lend it (check the current interbank overnight lending rates), suppliers will not sell on credit.

Reb Elchonon saw a Divine lesson in that loss of trust. He attributed the loss of trust between people to a loss of emunáh (belief) in God.

Ruvy, I think you are right in many ways, and it's scaring me too. This is a deeper problem than a few greedy Wall Street traders hunkered down in front of computers trying to manipulate the markets with hedge funds and other money gobbledy-gook. Unfortunately, this is a problem that all of us have to claim ownership of, and $850 billion dollars isn't going to fix. Much of this is due to the cultural shift in values. It's sad, but I think much worse days are coming.

It won't matter who is in office. In fact, if I were running, I think I would back out. Who in their right mind would want to inherit this mess?

"The most riveting speaker of the night was columnist George Will, ... conveying his frustration and anger at Congress and out of control government and the irresponsibility of the American people...

A cynic might take this as a call for a dictator."

Not really, but an idiot might.

Now can we please talk some more about Obama's penchant for associating himself with organizations with deep committments to voter fraud such as Acorn?

Archie is too cynical for my taste.

Bing,

Now can we please talk some more about Obama's penchant for associating himself with organizations with deep committments to voter fraud such as Acorn?

There are several such discussions already in progress on the site. Must we have another one?

Can't we stick to the important topics of whether our money will be worth anything next week? Or can we attempt to deal with our own responsibility (yes all of us have contributed, in one way or another) for the mess we are all in? Instead of yammering about ACORN's and seeds and Huffpoing and Puffpoing, can we examine the moral issues behind not spending more than we have?

Those issues are not going to go away, and the sooner we face the reality that this mess is a spiritual crisis and not an economic one, a moral crisis and not a political one, the better off we will be.

"Can't we stick to the important topics of whether our money will be worth anything next week?"

You have a very valid point Ruvy. As much as I despise Obama, McCain is just another globalist whore cut from the same cloth who doesn't give a damn about the American people as long as he can have the power he seeks.

I often lament the fact that I do not exist in the ruff and rugged pioneer days of this nation when it was much easier to get away with shooting somebody dead who pissed you off as much as these self serving monsters in Washington piss me off. But then again people were actually much more free back then and they did not yet have a laundry list of people screwing them six hundred different ways so I probably wouldn't have had much at all to be angry about.

from 2002 SWP convention resolution:

"Today the propertied families of finance capital, and their hired circles of managers, politicians, technicians, academics, and professionals--the 'cognitive elite'--are incapable of believing what's happening to the mountains of paper values they've piled up over the past two decades. What worked so wonderfully well over those years for the well-heeled, what seemed like free money, has today inflated bubbles of debt that--as they overlap and reinforce one another, and before the contraction in stock prices has come anywhere close to running its long, full course--will bring down major banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies, pension and health trusts, and industrial and commercial corporations."

archie, in a moment of relative humanity: "I often lament the fact that I do not exist in the ruff and rugged pioneer days of this nation when it was much easier to get away with shooting somebody dead who pissed you off..."

ladies and gentlemen! a republican! and a terrorist. go associate with obama or something.

Shooting one annoying person makes you a murderer and a psycho, but not a terrorist.

Terrorists have bigger targets.

Dave

face it dave, archie pissed off with half the country. maybe a little more than half. we shall see in a few weeks.