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Jeff Alan Hays
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 January 2007
Posts: 133
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| Posted: 18 September 2008 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | 1
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"No, government funded health care isn't inferior."
Yikes.
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Scott Richards
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 22 September 2005
Posts: 1258
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| Posted: 18 September 2008 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | 2
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My brother has had nothing but nightmares, red tape and jumping through hoops with the VA.
Why would anyone equate that with government funded health care being inferior?
What? It IS government funded healthcare. Trying to get in to see a doctor or have anything done is next to impossible.
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Michael Retour
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 May 2006
Posts: 932
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| Posted: 18 September 2008 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | 3
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Scott read what I said again. I said it has more to say about how the "greatest country in the universe" treats its soldiers than it does about government funded health care.
Did the government give our troops proper equipment before the war? No. Does that equate to "government bad, private good"? No.
I have doctor friends at the VA and they tell a story of underfunding (it isn't BIG NEWS that the VA has been underfunded for decades). Somehow you equate that with government funded health care being inferior when it isn't even the same thing.
You should have said "underfunded government health care" Scott. You should poke around the DAV site:
http://www.dav.org/
EDIT: The VFW says the same thing (the VA is underfunded and ill-equipped) and that says more about Bush and his war crew than it does about anything else. It says a great deal about the American people tolerating it too. The Sunshine Patriots that want to go to war because they fear Iran etc. It says NOTHING about government funded health insurance. You could have the government pay for things, as they are, and what would change? As I have insisted 100 times we do not have a strong enough economy to provide for our population's health care needs or we would not have 45 million (40 million, whatever it is) without health insurance.
Edited by Michael Retour on 18 September 2008 at 5:09pm
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Mike O'Brien
Byrne Robotics Member
Official JB Historian
Joined: 18 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 10927
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| Posted: 18 September 2008 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | 4
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It's one government funded system in a bigger system where the government does not fund it.
It's an apples and beefsteak comparison.
You want to see how government funded healthcare works, look at a government that funds the total healthcare package, not one that is opposed to it, and begrudgingly does it for it's veterans and poverty stricken.
In other words, for the comparison to truly work, compare it to the healthcare of, well, any first world nation.
And before anyone goes wagging any fingers of shame at me - my grandmother was killed by the VA - but I don't blame it on "Government run heath-care" - I blame it on "Government doesn't want to run health care, so our brave veterans suffer."
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Scott Richards
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 22 September 2005
Posts: 1258
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| Posted: 18 September 2008 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | 5
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Michael, and we are supposed to believe that a government who gives such poor healthcare options to the people who served their country are going to give better healthcare to those who didn't? Besides the VA, look at medicare/medicaid.
To me, thinking that government run healthcare would be any better than existing government run healthcare in the US is more mind-boggling a concept than the people who say McCain would be a 3rd Bush term.
It doesn't matter how governments else where do it. They aren't the US government.
Edited by Scott Richards on 18 September 2008 at 5:13pm
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Michael Retour
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 May 2006
Posts: 932
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| Posted: 18 September 2008 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | 6
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Scott how about Congress? Is that a government funded health care system?
I am not sure how to answer your hypothetical.
We let these people in government so I'd say look in a mirror (me too).
McCain a 3rd Bush term? I don't know. McCain doesn't seem quite as crazy and can put sentences together but I do think he's trigger-happy.
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Michael Myers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 December 2004
Posts: 831
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| Posted: 18 September 2008 at 5:44pm | IP Logged | 7
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Michael Retour wrote:
| Yeah, Mike Myers I do think you've been brainwashed by the "man" and you're out of touch. I don't mean you're not a nice fellow but you don't have a grip on economics. |
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Yeah. Tell me again about your mistaken conception of notional value and weather derivatives; you mistaken summation of employment figures; and your absurd suggestion that the global economy should look to the past of high tarriffs and fixed exchange rates as even being operable in today's global economy?
QUOTE:
| Myers (and I call you Myers because both our names are Michael and not as a sign of disrespect) the game is over. The financial system could not, and will not, stand without government intervention. It has not survived. What I proposed, and my friends have proposed, is going to have to be done. |
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You have *never* proposed anything remotely believable, Michael. I was the one speaking of actually viable proposals like the return to the enforcement of naked shorts and an RTC-like entity in this thread. Your proposals were nothing less than the following:
1. a general bankruptcy reorganization of the US economy
2. a general bankruptcy reorganization of EVERY other developed economy in the world
3. a global regulatory agency overseeing what could only amount to a non-fiat money supply with fixed exchange rates, high tariff trading, and direct challenge to national sovereignty
NONE of these "proposals" are even remotely a possibility.
QUOTE:
| Regulation is coming back. |
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No. Not in *any* manner *you* have advocated, Michael. On the other hand, the option I had mentioned of an RTC-like entity was announced today as a proposition which will be considered by the Fed. This isn't anything like the regulation *you* trumpeted. And it is definitely, nothing new.
QUOTE:
| Government intervention into the economy, to direct the economy, is coming back. No more invisible hands picking pockets. |
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What are you talking about?
Michael, what led to the adoption of the Federal Reserve System over our former Central Banking System? Yep, the panic of 1907. The whole reason the Federal Reserve System was adopted over a mere expanded Central Bank was to better address cyclic crisis in the financial sector. How? By manipulating money supply through monetary policy (increasing/decreasing supply) and acting as a regulating force and lender of last resort. The very Federal Reserve System there in the first place to act as mediator between institutionalized financial interests and the interests of the public.
This has ALWAYS been the case. There has ALWAYS been regulation, and Smith's invisible hand has LONG been idle.
When people currently speak of a lack of regulation, what they are properly speaking of is a lack of enforcement of existing regulation. Even the reimposed naked short regulations I spoke of address a problem that was already technically illegal (short-selling, itself, is still perfectly valid), the problem lay in more easily enforcing charges of its abuse. And even the uptick rule I mentioned HASN'T yet been reimposed. I'll remind you of a previous statement of mine:
"Rich, regulation IS obviously necessary; but it has to be smart, effective regulation. This is NOT the arena for precipitate or "feel good" moves along the lines of your nebulous suppositions."
Michael, your statement of the sort of regulation necessary--what would amount to a return to fixed exchange rates, high tariffs, and some far-reaching global regulating agency--are even farther away now, than they ever have been.
QUOTE:
| Or... it will all go down. |
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According to you in at least ten posts, the current economy is not even salvageable and has *already* gone down. You didn't start admitting the global nature of the situation until I made a point of stressing the international nature of the problem...until then, all of your arguments were that it was America's fault and you pointed to overseas systems as guiding the way. Hey, we can go back and read old posts here for a reason. Remember this question?
"A worldwide phenomena?"-Michael Retour
Now, remember also your statement that Russia's economy was a model of a healthy economy compared to America? Russia, the land of the GKO pyramid scheme, is the nation which was emptying an even larger percentage of its GDP into its financial system the last three days than any other developed nation. You know, Russia? The country who has had to bar the doors of its two stock exchanges to avoid a truly complete collapse?
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Michael Myers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 December 2004
Posts: 831
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| Posted: 18 September 2008 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | 8
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QUOTE:
| Insurance companies are broke. |
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Just to be clear...
AIG, Inc., operates in four segments: General Insurance, Life Insurance and Retirement Services, Financial Services, and Asset Management. All are *independently* run subsidiaries. It is the Financial Services segment, the umbrella holding company, which needed liquid capital to meet its ratings obligations.
AIG's mundane insurance divisions are not only solvent, but has excess assets ON HAND. In fact, it was to this arm that AIG, Inc (the umbrella company) was looking to upline cash for AIG Financial Services precisely because those 'insurance' companies possessed tens of billions of dollars in *surplus* over and above their legally required reserves. This is precisely why AIG, Inc. needed the New York Federal Reserve to approve an upline, as the money is untouchable by the holding company without such approval. It is AIG Financial Services which couldn't meet its ratings obligations. And it couldn't meet them because we are in the middle of a credit crunch. AIG was never a question of solvency, it was a question of liquidity on the part ONLY of the AIG holding company. Mundane 'Insurance' monies are, by their very nature, regulated and secure.
So, it isn't the auto or home insurance division, or even retirement annuities, which we're talking about...it is the credit default swaps of AIG's Financial services division that were in trouble. These are insurance of a type, but not what is being discussed by most people in this thread.
To simplify the situation--and limiting it to the context of what type of insurance is being discussed--CDS are a way to protect, or hedge, against, say for example, stock devaluation; i.e., some company or fund manager invests X amount in company Y's bonds, then initiates a CDS to protect their play by paying AIG Financial Services X amount to protect themselves if Company Y defaults on that bond.
It can get even more complex, but this should draw the distinction between the actual types of insurance being discussed.
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Michael Myers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 December 2004
Posts: 831
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| Posted: 18 September 2008 at 5:47pm | IP Logged | 9
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QUOTE:
According to the Washington Post, the United States Federal Reserve itself has asked the US Treasury for a bailout.
"The pathology of this crisis is that unless you get ahead of it and deal with it from a position of strength, it devours the weakest link in the chain and then moves on to devour the next weakest link," former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, former Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady and former Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig said in an op-ed in the 17th's Wall Street Journal." |
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Smiling. Why, you sneaky bastard, you're misrepresenting the quote which you're offering.
Michael, Volcker, et al, were speaking *directly* to the concept I had mentioned in this thread of a possible revival of an RTC-like entity to increase investor confidence by taking over companies leveraged by bad mortgage paper.
Here's another quote--this time straight from the WSJ op-ed--to put yours in context:
"There is something we can do to resolve the problem. We should move decisively to create a new, temporary resolution mechanism. There are precedents -- such as the Resolution Trust Corporation of the late 1980s and early 1990s, as well as the Home Owners Loan Corporation of the 1930s. This new governmental body would be able to buy up the troubled paper at fair market values, where possible keeping people in their homes and businesses operating. Like the RTC, this mechanism should have a limited life and be run by nonpartisan professional management."
Why the misrepresentation?
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Michael Myers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 December 2004
Posts: 831
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| Posted: 18 September 2008 at 5:47pm | IP Logged | 10
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QUOTE:
| When one of our (norwegian) banks got "bailed" out by the government, what the government did was that it went in, set the share price at zero and took it all over. |
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Sort of the same thing, here, with respect to AIG. The Fed 'loaned' AIG Financial Services $85 billion in exchange for 79.9% of its shares and the express right to replace management personal (AIG's CEO, Willumstad, has already been replaced). The initial term is for two years. AIG Financial Services investors did indeed take a hit; while, as of today, AIG's assets, under Fed control, are actually up in value from the date of the initial deal. BTW, the rationale for the 79.9% stop is that, by law, the Fed is prevented from controlling any greater percentage of a private company without first assuming and reflecting such obligations on the federal budget balance sheet. The same less-than-80% situation applies to the former GSEs.
QUOTE:
| How will these "bailouts" work in the US? Is the government going to take over all the banks' assets and just "zero out" the shares? Then run the banks until the government (and the taxpayers) get their money back? Or are they going to get these banks up on their feet and then hand them back to the shareholders or sell them off cheap (meaning the government is content to handle this at a loss to themselves and the taxpayers)? |
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Which bailout? In the case of the Bear-Stearns bailout, it was a case of a low-interest credit line to JP Morgan for assuming the inherent risks of merger. In the case of AIG, Inc., the company will sell off its solvent assets in order to repay the American people at a rate of almost 12% interest on initial principal by buying back those shares which are now controlled by the Fed and its appointed managers over an initial two-year period.
QUOTE:
| And now, when the government has to bail out all these banks, wouldn't this be the moment to implement necessary banking reforms so that when the banks get up on their feet they'll be committed to a more fiscally conservative approach? |
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Knut, so far we're talking about the Fed line of credit to JP Morgan to assume takeover of Bear-Stearns and the AIG deal (which I don't know what to call, as it's uncharted territory). The GSEs were already government secured, and none of the above were banks in the sense you're implying. Keep in mind, even with the repeal of Glass-Steagal, America still draws a sharper distinction than Europe with respect to the degree that "banking institutions" and "financial institutions" may overlap.
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Michael Myers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 December 2004
Posts: 831
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| Posted: 18 September 2008 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | 11
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QUOTE:
| EDIT: Worse, the "loan" is backed by AIG's assets. The amount of its
credit swaps makes AIG bankrupt. It's like trying to revive a corpse. |
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Still don't understand the concept of notional value, do you, Michael?
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Michael Retour
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 May 2006
Posts: 932
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| Posted: 18 September 2008 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | 12
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Michael c'mon. Get out Barron's dictionary and read it to the PC screen.
What you don't understand is what has happened in the course of what? Two weeks? You can stomp your feet all you like Mike but it doesn't change reality.
How much has been lost? Gimme a dollar amount Mike.
Russia was my model? No, sorry. To the extent Russia follows FDR they will, with China and India, do quite nicely compared. Russia is for a fixed-exchange rate but you say it isn't possible? You know how Malaysia handled you speculators in 1997 or so don't you?
Odd, governments are discussing fixed-exchange rates. You just either ignore it, don't talk about it, or deny it.
When people currently speak of a lack of regulation, what they are
properly speaking of is a lack of enforcement of existing regulation.
What people? Here or people that actually run things in various governments? People that got pink-slipped on Wall St. this week? How many? Reminds me of some song... "That's all there is"? PJ Harvey singing it.
The people I am talking about run governments and they are talking about slamming down enough regulation to shut down your casino and return to what works.
Think of a bomb going off. You there? It has blown. A few days, weeks, months later corpses wash ashore. That's all AIG is. You assume this will work but then out of the other side of your mouth say it is uncharted territory.
And, as usual, the Fed asking the Treasury for a bailout goes unanswered by you. I believe it wad for $40b but it could have been more. Who knows? Does it matter? It's over.
So no one but crazy ole me is talking about this? On the contrary many are, just not many on John's forum. From 2008 (Tremonti is the current Minister of Economy and Finance in the Italian government so do you think you know more or that he doesn't talk to his European, Asian, African, etc. counterparts?) and please argue with Tremonti.
------------------------------------
In an interview with the Italian financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore, Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti again advances a new Bretton Woods
conference, as the only solution for the now-evident collapse of the
world financial system. Tremonti, who will become economic czar of
Italy if the PdL coalition of Silvio Berlusconi wins the April 13-14
elections, has electrified Italy over the recent weeks, with this
proposal to urgently reconstitute a
fixed-exchange-rate monetary system by international agreement.
Tremonti says: “Only now have they begun to speak about losses, and
only in the hundreds of billions of dollars. This is a double mistake:
in the first place, it is not a matter of losses. To lose something you
must own something: in the moment ‘T,’ you have an asset; in the moment
‘T+1’ you lose it. This is different: there has been no loss of what
one had, but only of the fiction of what one did not have. To have a
loss you must have had an asset, but if you did not have the asset,—
because you never had it,— the phenomenon is different from losses. The
second mistake is a quantitative one: it is not about hundreds of
billions, but about trillions of dollars. In the history of finance
there was once something similar, although on a smaller scale: a
similar kind of finance, connected with the globalization of that time:
stretching from Europe to North America, to Louisiana, in the
Eighteenth Century. It was John Law's techno-finance.”
When the journalist asks how to emerge from under the wreckage,
Tremonti answers: “I do not believe that aspirins are enough, nor do I
think it sufficient to close the barn after the cows have left.”
Question: A first attempt at joint monitoring was featured at the last meeting of the Financial Stability Forum...
Tremonti:
“It is preliminary, useful but only preparatory. Necessary, but not
sufficient. We need something much stronger, and I think it is a new
Bretton Woods. A political moment of very high symbolic value."
Question: In the year 2009, Italy will chair the G8...
Tremonti:
“I do not think that Gaeta [the Italian town to host the G8] can
replace Bretton Woods. We could go back to Bretton Woods; something new
and political, to bring order back into the global chaos, is
fundamental. Just go to Google, and look for the Mount Washington
Hotel, and the section dedicated to the historical gallery. It is
impressive: in 1944, with half of Europe still under Hitler, there were
representatives from Poland,... from China, from India, from Australia.
From the free world. And then, the men: Morgenthau, Keynes and, behind
them, the heads of state and government. Of acting governments, of
exiled governments. The breath of politics in a world shifting from war
to peace. I am firmly convinced that today we need something similar.”
------------------------------------
Didn't the Wall St. Urinal report that? Didn't it report that most of the world supports such a move? Hmm, wonder why? Could it be that Dow Jones owns the Urinal? Could it be that? Nah. Tremonti is just some nut right?
Richard Boone knows more. Have gun will travel...
Notional values...
EDIT: To add, all these bailouts are doing is adding the losses of parasites to the taxpayers. None of these bailouts have zip to do with protecting homeowners. It is all about protecting the parasites that have ruined the economy. Or as my friend put it: During
the heyday of the bubble, the debt machine was taking in mortgages,
credit-card receivables, corporate debt, and related items, and
spitting out even larger amounts of securities on the back end. In
2005, for example, this securitization game took in $1 trillion in new
mortgages, and turned it into $3 trillion in mortgage-related
securities. This game of turning piles of debt into even larger piles
of assets spun off huge amounts of cash, and as the pyramid scheme
grew, the banking system grew with it. Then, suddenly, the music
stopped, and Wall Street, the City of London, and other major financial
centers found themselves with far more capacity than business, far too
much expense for the suddenly reduced income. Suddenly these
over-leveraged behemoths were struggling just to survive, their assets
vaporizing, and no way to make the money they needed to cover the bills.
Notional value...
Mike you're a blow hard, as someone once said. You think you know so much but you're on John Byrne's forum trying to outwit me on something I know like the back of my hand.
I'd sure like to know what you do for a living. I've known plenty of brokers, that ran chop-shops, all scared out of their wits of being caught and compliance. I bet them about this crisis. They lost to a man. We wagered a laptop. It sits as a trophy to their insanity. I told them the so-called Asian crisis was the same crisis as today's. No, they insisted. Most of them had no idea what a functioning economy was or had read the simplest of economic history books, primary source stuff here. They were just greedy, vapid clowns like you see on CNBC.
Edited by Michael Retour on 18 September 2008 at 7:07pm
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