Who else resents USAians for causing this finanical crisis?

[KrazyHorse]

Taxing everyone directly (and indirectly via inflation) punishes everyone, including those who have made sound investments

This is the most retarded statement I've ever seen. The only assets hurt by inflation are long-term fixed rate debt instruments and cash. Equities and short-term debt both respond quite fluidly to changing expectations in the price level.

[HalfLotus]

I think you underestimate the negative effects of inflation.

edit:

And given the emotional, sarcastic, and ad hominem style of many posts here, I have to wonder if you guys are thinking about this situation rationally.

[KrazyHorse]

I think you don't know what you're talking about.

Long-term high inflation expectations are quite bad both due to menu costs and labour contracts picking up the unfortunate trait of writing in high inflation raises. Short term increased inflation is a mild annoyance, but is quite preferable to continuing strings of debt defaults.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Because the guy blaming "fiat money" is thinking about this rationally?

[KrazyHorse]

RON PAUL 08

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by HalfLotus
And given the emotional, sarcastic, and ad hominem style of many posts here, I have to wonder if you guys are thinking about this situation rationally.

I only engage in ad hominem attacks when drunk or when confronted with obstinate stupidity. And I haven't had anything to drink yet today...

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by HalfLotus
I think you underestimate the negative effects of inflation.

That certainly doesn't mean much considering you don't back up anything you say. All you do is say 'see Austrian Economists,' as if no one here knows anything about their theories.

[HalfLotus]

Originally posted by Kidicious


That certainly doesn't mean much considering you don't back up anything you say. All you do is say 'see Austrian Economists,' as if no one here knows anything about their theories.

I should toss out more insults and rhetorical arguments, as those seem to carry a lot of weight around here.

My point re: Austrians is that they had this situation pegged for many years now. As opposed to Greenspans "No one could have seen this coming." That's a lie, considering we know that Greenspan is more than familiar with the Austrian school.

Now why on earth would anyone still be listening to the Greenspan/Bernanke/Krugman nonsense and not lend a little weight to the Austrian argument? That is what seems retarded to me.

Call the Austrians all the names in the book, but the fact remains that they were right all along.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by HalfLotus
I should toss out more insults and rhetorical arguments, as those seem to carry a lot of weight around here.

They don't actually, except with idiots.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Traianvs
Erm, actually it was the investment of ****loads of money that really did not exist. Banks created all kinds of inventive ways to put investments into some obscure fund elsewhere in order to quickly gain money, as the past two decades has proven, but they didn't have anything to back it all up. They were just playin poker with a hand they hardly bothered looking at. bleh

To the extent that any money is real, the global investment pool was real. The problem was that there was much greater demand for places to invest the money than there was solid investments. So shaky investments had to be created.

It is a classic crisis of overproduction. There was too much money, so capitalism comes crashing down. If that doesn't make sense, that's Marxism's chief critique of capitalism: capitalism has a contradiction at its heart. When it is most productive, it fails.

Kid, it took all of human history for the global investment pool to reach $36 trillion in 2000. It took another six years to double. The cdses, the hedges funds, the subprime loans, all of those were symptoms of the real problem: capitalists looking for a place to put their money. If there wasn't too much money, we wouldn't be in this particular problem.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by HalfLotus
Now why on earth would anyone still be listening to the Greenspan/Bernanke/Krugman nonsense and not lend a little weight to the Austrian argument? That is what seems retarded to me.

It's not a valid dichotomy. I can discount both, because both deserve to be viewed as suck. (I meant "such" and mistyped, but it fits even better so I'll leave it.)

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Comrade Snuggles
It is a classic crisis of overproduction. There was too much money, so capitalism comes crashing down. If that doesn't make sense, that's Marxism's chief critique of capitalism: capitalism has a contradiction at its heart. When it is most productive, it fails.

Kid, it took all of human history for the global investment pool to reach $36 trillion in 2000. It took another six years to double. The cdses, the hedges funds, the subprime loans, all of those were symptoms of the real problem: capitalists looking for a place to put their money. If there wasn't too much money, we wouldn't be in this particular problem.

You can call it overproduction but I prefer not to. Money isn't real, as you say, so you don't really produce it. I think Marx talked about overproduction of actual goods, didn't he.

I think one problem is the expectations of underconsumption. Capitalism needs expansion in the real economy to survive in the long run.

As far as the financial problems go we wouldn't be facing such an accute downturn if people didn't think the economy was productive when it actually was not. We might drifted downward slowly.

[chequita guevara]

Underconsumption is the other side of the coin from overproduction.

[Kidlicious]

True dat. I noticed reading Marx the other day, that he implies that.

[chequita guevara]

Oddly, though, a lot of Marxists get bent out of shape when you say underconsumption instead of overproduction, as if you could have one without the other.