Send in the clowns

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I have visions of Funny Farm "Cue the deer". What a show now that the music has stopped. How many of them are "OUTRAGED!!!" at this? Right on time, as usual. Dark comedy at its best.


Quote:
In Washington, a Split Over Regulation of Wall Street


In Congress, Democrats are drafting bills that would create a powerful new regulator — or simply confer new powers on the Federal Reserve — to oversee practices across the entire array of commercial banks, Wall Street firms, hedge funds and nonbank financial companies.

The Treasury Department is rushing to complete its own blueprint for overhauling what is now an alphabet soup of federal and state regulators that often compete against each other and protect their particular slices of the industry as if they were constituents.

But the two sides strongly disagree about whether, after decades of a freewheeling encouragement of exotic new services and new players like hedge funds, the pendulum should swing back to tighter control.

One central battle is likely to be over tightening supervision of the risk-management practices of Wall Street investment banks and perhaps requiring them to keep higher cash reserves as a cushion against unexpected trading losses.

The Democratic proposals would subject Wall Street firms to the kind of strict oversight that banks have had for decades. If firms like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch were required to set aside substantially bigger capital reserves, they would have that much less available for lending, trading and underwriting new securities.

Wall Street firms played a central role in packaging and financing trillions of dollars in high-risk home mortgages, and the losses tied to those mortgages are at the heart of the deepening crisis in the financial markets that has pushed the economy to the brink of a recession.

“You need regulation that is adequate to the scope of innovation and to the scope of activity,” said Representative Barney Frank, the Democrat of Massachusetts who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

N.Y. Times - registration required
 
Barney Frank - now there is a guy I trust with my jewels!!!

Yeah dude was in Congress well before this went down. So now he has the solution. Indeed, dark, deep, dirty comedy.
 
Congressional oversight has been so effective.
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Time to buy more Eurodollars
And Congress has done such a fine job in spending money, that we don't have. Greedy Bank/Financial institution CEO's ate total lightweights compared to the Crooks in Congress.
 
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We can talk politics now?

No sense writing more rules with anything; there is always a small group of people who will continue to ignore them....

The irony of the thread is not unnoticed.
 
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Well, I would term it economics and fiscal management. I would think political would be more along the lines of personality preferences where "My dog's better than your dog. My dog's better than yours".

Irony?
 
Gary has always had diplomatic immunity. There is even a controversial politician right in his quote. It's the way he couches it in terms of "the plight of the common man". Gary, in his hang dog sense of almost being downtrodden himself by the man, but not quite a full victim, because he foresees and foretells all. It used to bug me, but now I just chuckle.
 
If I had such foresight - almost clairvoyance of what's "really" going on, I'd be.....in the stock market. Maybe real estate. Probably both. Making tons of money.
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Originally Posted By: Drew99GT
If I had such foresight - almost clairvoyance of what's "really" going on, I'd be.....in the stock market. Maybe real estate. Probably both. Making tons of money.
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That could only be possible if you actually believed in what you're doing. You do what you're doing due to your ability to rationalized that it's "good". This is, generally, why there's a denial of the ultimate effects of such distractions of self interest. No one could entertain the thought that what they were doing was due to a process that was defacing the very society that provided it.

Now ..I've fully admitted that I've never taken an economics course ..but I can see the in:eek:ut of any black box without, at all, understanding the mechanisms/processes contained within and see the sensibility of its function.

So, chuckle away. I guess I'm just the only smacked behind that's not in on the joke.
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Is Warren Buffet defacing society? Especially when he's giving half is wealth to charity - 10s of billions of dollars? Or Bill Gates who's doing the same?

For me at least, I can think that "the man" is keeping me down and screwing everyone else - which many are but the vast majority are not (we only hear about the Dennis Kozlowskis on the news) . Or, I can focus on my own life and get on with the show. It's all about locus of control. If you always think that everyone else is controlling your outcome - their advantage to your dismay, then why even roll out of bed in the morning???
 
You appear to think that I find inherent criminal behavior in the acquisition of wealth. Not so. No. I want to be wealthy. We all want to be wealthy. It's not evil at all.

Which would you rather be, Drew?:

A person who innovates and brings added value to the society and benefits along with whom he benefits?

A person who essentially is a neo-carpet bagger who capitalizes on what effectively results in a non-violent neo Civil War? One where the victor gets the spoils and a gain is done at a direct loss to one segment of the society in the process?

Now Mr. Bill surely brought much "value added" to the entire world ..albeit with some unfavorable side effects ..but in most evaluations it was a great true expansion of utility and productivity and access. It truly enabled far more than it retired into dysfunction.

My whole point(s) is that if you're not truly benefiting the society in the motions, you're not "creating" anything, you're merely shifting around the pieces. If you're in a degenerative environment, you're scrapping/salvaging. What would best describe our current path?
 
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