<p>Here’s the video of McCain caught in his own words …again.</p>
<p>[YouTube</a> - McCain Pleads Ignorance Of, Rails Against Golden Parachutes](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrGyODKMtB4&feature=user]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrGyODKMtB4&feature=user)</p>
<p>Also, isn’t it funny how we go from the American economy is “fundamentally sound” to the American economy is on the brink of a depression w/in a week?</p>
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<p>If you want to be tarred and feathered, I recommend you say that in public.</p>
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<p>[YouTube</a> - Palin To ‘Get Back’ To Couric About McCain And Regulations](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM72M62jAUc]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM72M62jAUc)</p>
<p>Couric asked Palin a tough question (she must be “sexist”!).</p>
<p>And can the Palin/MCain campaign use the “maverick” theme to (not) answer questions any more than Giuliani did by using 9/11?</p>
<p>^</p>
<p>Steve Schmidt must’ve forgotten to give her cue cards on that. Then again, McCain never pushed for de-regulation, so they’d be blank cards anyway.</p>
<p>After interviews like that, I’m going to find it hard to sympathize with anyone who votes for Palin/McCain and loses their job.</p>
<p>^ And I’m saying this as a lifelong Republican and a FISCAL conservative and someone who (generally) believes in “free markets”.</p>
<p>All the people who blab about having zero regulation have no understanding about how business and the markets work.</p>
<p>Heck, even the “FATHER of Reaganomics” (which, btw, is a bunch of crock) admitted in an interview that the lack of oversight was the biggest problem (ignoring the fact that he was one of the backers of the deregulation of the financial markets).</p>
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<p>I see nothing wrong with contaminated milk, why cant the consumer make a educated purchase. </p>
<p>Are you kidding me about Bubbles, they came from regulation and intervention(price fixing). Recessions, Depressions, Booms and Busts don’t exist in a pure free market. They only occur when you guessed it, we try and fix commodity prices, thus regulation. </p>
<p>I see nothing wrong with so called predatory lending. If you cant afford a house and you get it, you deserve the result of you living beyond your means. Why don’t we take it a step deeper and ask. Why were these companies given so much credit to be able to give so much debt? Again the answer is intervention by government and its organizations. In a pure free market with a stable currency based solely on the true market price of commodities, there is no excess credit. Thus problems like what we have now, and like we had in the 20’s, 30’s and 70’s could have never happened. Don’t ya find it surprising this all started in 1917.</p>
<p>The problems we have now, are based solely on fiscal policy’s we chose. Where do you think Inflation, excess credit, etc come from. We choose to have them. We choose for inflation to exist. Again in a pure free market inflation doesn’t exist and due to that Recessions, Depressions, Booms and Busts don’t exist.</p>
<p>The Austrian School has predicted all economic events since before 20’s, and they have always been correct, including our current crises. Maybe you should take a look.</p>
<p>I find it funny, the idea that we should fix our problem of inflation with well more inflation.</p>
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<p>Well I am a graduate student of economics and tend to think I understand markets decently well. Businesses equally as well, since i invested my way through my undergrad and I am still making a bunch of money today, when the big dogs on wall street are loosing. I can say just by your post, that you don’t understand free markets. Trickle Down economics again is nothing more than collective regulation. Do you actually believe it to be hands off? How can it be, when the government still taxes highly and regulates the economy with said taxes. The socialistic structure is still intact. The federal reserve was still there creating credit. Supply side and demand side, aint all to different.</p>
<p>So to both of you, I still hold my views that a completely unregulated free market is best. The simple economics are as follows.</p>
<p>A economy cannot survive if the prices of its commodities are not precisely know. This was the downfall of the Soviet Union. The economy becomes a guessing game, like what we have now. When commodities are precisely known, Recessions, Depressions, Booms and Busts don’t exist They cant exist.</p>
<p>Dr. Horse, you are good at knowing things and you explain them cryptically in a way that makes me want to take notes. Why aren’t you a professor? Your massive frame and surly demeanor would render you nearly unapproachable to nerdy students, leaving your office hours free to roam the golf course, perhaps grazing on the fairway like a horse.</p>
<p>Hey Dr. Horse,</p>
<p>Since you are a graduate student of economics, wouldn’t you agree that it’d be much more productive for you to utilize your time and valuable knowledge else where instead of hanging around CC (which is primarily geared towards high school kids)? Time is your opportunity cost. Btw, which school do you go to?</p>
<p>Also, I’m really interested in hearing about your investing experiences during undergrad years. I’d appreciate it if you could enlighten me on that aspect. Thanks a bunch.</p>
<p>Id rather not say where I go, theres not a reason for you to know. </p>
<p>as for the investing, fast buying and selling on minimal gains. Today I made $426 on citibank buying out wachovia. Tuition at my state U was only $4350 a year, so as you can see a few smart decisions and a volatile market can do wonders.</p>
<p>btw which online investment platform do you use? which one would you recommend for small investors like us?</p>
<p>I use Zecco, because its cheap. Free trades in October also. It has a decent interface and is easy to use. Ive also used schwab, and like zecco better. if ya want i can refer you, pm me your email if ya want to.</p>
<p>“I was just clueless about why the housing market was so significant. I found out.”</p>
<p>It isn’t that significant.</p>
<p>The problem was the financial institutions that over bet on the housing market and poorly-crafted financial instruments. And keeping investors out of the loop of the firm’s exposure. Now that the housing market has suffered, investors are realizing these weren’t the great investments they thought they were. Everyone is running away from them and any one who is or may be (many we don’t know - they were held off the books) exposed to them. The result is a scared ill-liquid financial market.</p>
<p>This Article from Economist Jeffrey Miron sums it up nicely. </p>
<p>[Commentary:</a> Bankruptcy, not bailout, is the right answer - CNN.com](<a href=“http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/29/miron.bailout/index.html]Commentary:”>Commentary: Bankruptcy, not bailout, is the right answer - CNN.com)</p>
<p>It’s indeed very easy and casual for those sitting in the ivory tower to comment on the defects of the current bail out plan or any action taken by the government. From Paulson’s perspective, it’s a completely different picture. Paulson’s had years of experience working in wall street firms, and he innately understands the importance of market confidence in a time of serious recession or potential depression. The solution to that is a large scale bail out package. </p>
<p>Somehow, the ivory tower academics (as usual) simply haven’t felt the urgency of the situation (of course, all of them have life tenures…who cares?). Even Miron admits that there would be a period of severe shortage of capital and credit conditions may worsen. And how long would that little “period” last? 3 months? 12 months? 2 years? 5 years? And how does Miron expect an economy without sufficient capital to function during this time of depression when capital is urgently needed to boost new investments to keep unemployment low and consumption stable? Many today praise FDR because he saved capitalism during the Great Depression. FDR’s New Deal gave hope and relief to millions of people, even though it did not have a tremendous economic impact. If the ivory tower academics were in the shoes of a decision maker, would they want to be labeled as the next Hoover?</p>
<p>I can agree with the ivory tower theory, but schools of economics have predicted this stuff a decade before it happened and nobody listened.</p>
<p>Its not matter of if anybody understands the markets or not, I personally feel there is a massive scam going on and the media owner are in on it, so ya don’t hear it. Paulson, Bernake, etc all keep making bad choices, you have to wonder if there is some side scheme going on. I wouldn’t doubt it. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t say there is necessarily a limited supply of capital, though there is in some sectors, but I would rather say the goods aren’t being priced properly due to market restrictions.</p>
<p>You bring up FDR, but he didn’t save capitalism, in the 20’s we again saw alot of regulation, such as Smoot Hawley and such. We had the depression simply because of to much credit and then a massive contraction of monies. I mean by the end of the 20’s, 90% of durable goods were bought with credit. back to FDR, my point is that he supposedly saved some mix of capitalism and socialism, but it surly was not capitalism. if there was not the part socialism, the problem wouldn’t have occurred.</p>
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<p>Gee, I guess Wall Street firms touting dot.com “dogs” while they took in hundreds of millions in IPO fees was the “free market” working.</p>
<p>The same goes for Enron manipulating the California energy market as well as the recent run-up in oil (where a big chunk of the run-up had nothing to do w/ the supply/demand equation and had everything to do w/ the rush of speculators into the latest bubble).</p>
<p>Now, the excess credit was bad policy by the Feds and the current administration which was desperate to keep the economy going (just like Reagan, all the “growth” was via “easy money”).</p>
<p>But, at the same time, there were members of Congress pushing for legislation to prohibit these bad lending practices but any such attempts were quickly killed thanks to $$ from lobbyists.</p>
<p>Even w/ the low interest rates pushed by the Feds, we wouldn’t be in nearly as bad of a shape if previous regulations hadn’t been watered down or done away w/ by Phil Gramm and his cohorts.</p>
<p>The regulations that had been in place would have PROHIBITED these financial firms from taking these huge risks w/ “swaps” and thus, leveraging themselves to the point of no return if things turned south which was inevitable.</p>
<p>Besides, how well did the markets “work”. All these financial firms knew that some of the paper was bad or that they didn’t know the true worth of the paper and yet, they continued to buy and securitize these mortgages b/c there was a “feeding frenzy” (that’s the market at work) and there was gobs of easy $$ to be made.</p>
<p>In order for the markets to work smoothly, there needs to be TRANSPARENCY, but you can’t have that when the regulations to make that so have basically been gutted (same thing happened 20 some years ago w/ the S&L scandal and bailout - it’s no coincidence that McCain and his good buddy Phil Gramm have their fingers in all of the excesses and burst bubbles of the markets of the past 20-25 years).</p>
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<p>Harvard prof. and the “father of Reaganomics”, Martin Feldstein, who was instrumental in the push for deregulation of the financial markets grudgingly admitted that this mess was a result of over-deregulation and the resulting lack of oversight.</p>
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<p>Please - I saw many of these things coming and did very well as well, thank you.</p>
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<p>No - the downfall of the Soviet Union was a state-run economy.</p>
<p>And to take your point - what was the “true value” of oil earlier this year w/ accordance to supply and demand? It certainly was $146+/bbl.</p>
<p>^ And oh, the Soviets fell partially due to wasting immense resources fighting a war (Afghanistan) in which they little reason to (hmmm, that sounds familiar).</p>