Republicans to Attribute TARP to Bush

[Dinner]

Exactly. Case in point.

[Thoth]

I miss him. He was fun to bash.



Drzxnkjhglhjglph isn't as amusing.

[KrazyHorse]

Krazy Kitty be nicer to the new guy. Think of it as an investment in the future. By being semi nice you can keep him around to argue with and call names for years to come but if you chase him off right away then you'll be back stuck with calling BK names again.

As soon as I realized he was an "audit the fed" type, I lost interest.

[KrazyHorse]

In all fairness, I was only one of a half-dozen or so who can claim credit for pedotard.

[Thoth]

In all fairness, I was only one of a half-dozen or so who can claim credit for pedotard.

?? So he was a Wiglafesque communal DL ?

****. I need to up my internets.

[curtis290]

As I suspected previously, you're a ****ing idiot.

http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/historicalInflation.aspx

http://inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Rate/HistoricalInflation.aspx?dsInflation_currentPage=1

Inflation has been low and stable since the 80s. Thinking that changes in nominal interest rates can lead to changes in inflation (the premise of the Fed's open market operations) is NOT THE SAME as claiming that low interest rates imply high realized inflation. The disconnect between the two is the foundation of the Lucas Critique, and is why your claim that the same high nominal interest rates of the Volcker years are necessary to control inflation is, frankly, idiotic.

As for the rest of it, I can't even see a coherent ****ing point. "Benefiting lenders" by having high nominal short-term rates (the thing that the Fed actually controls) is a ****ing joke, you utter imbecile. Insofar as banks as a group benefit from nominal rates, they do so via the carry trade (borrowing short and lending long). Driving up the short end of the yield curve HURTS THEM.

If you're going to construct conspiracy theories, at least ****ing get your story straight.

You're a ****ing buffoon.

It's always embarassing when someone is a pretentious a**hole and insults the person he's arguing with when he didn't even understand what the other person said.

I said that the Fed during the Volcker years kept interest rates high because at the time, that was in the interests of the financial sector. Lenders don't like inflation. But during the 1990s and 2000s, they obviously were reaping the benefits of a huge asset boom, meaning they wanted low interest rates that would increase the velocity of capital flowing through Wall Street. Some people said that the economy was overheating and that we needed to raise the interest rates, but Greenspan replied that "We're in a new economy," with new financial technologies that could effectively provide risk-free credit. Very similar to Irving Fisher's declaration in 1929 that we'd "Reached a permanent plateau." Where did you get it in your head that I said there were high interest rates in the 90s and 00s? Did I say that in my post?

As for the CPI understating inflation, a LOT of people think that the government deliberately understates inflation because it's in their interests. I guess the only one I can think of off the top of my head is John Williams, the shadowstats guy, but I've heard a lot of economists make that argument. I'm not going to get involved in a discussion about that, but don't act like just because you've read a few economic textbooks your opinion is the only one that is valid and every other person (or economist) is an idiot if they disagree with you.

I also find it amusing that you call unions and homeowners are 'politically privileged' interest groups while the financial sector isn't. You don't think the financial sector has had an unfair amount of influence on the government over the past 30 years in proportion to the size of its population? As if they can't afford lobbyists.

And as for auditing the Fed, you do realize that according to the bill supported by people on the right (like Ron Paul) and people on the left, any data the Fed would have to report would be MONTHS after the fact. Do you realize that many people, both inside and outside of the discipline of economics, consider diehard monetarists like yourself to be completely delusional?

Congratulations, you're my least favorite person here so far! The fact that I came here and simply stated my point of view in a respectful matter made you explode and insult my intelligence repeatedly makes it obvious that you have some serious issues. Either a) you have no social skills (or perhaps a social disorder such as Tourette's syndrome), b) you are an extremely insecure person that has to insult people when they disagree with you, or c) you are completely miserable and have to take out your anger on random people on the internet, or d) a combination of all of these factors. Whatever the case, I feel very sorry for you.

Just because you've read a few econ textbooks doesn't make you smarter than us and the only person able to discuss these issues. This is why I hate economists. They are the most arrogant scholars of any discipline. We were told by them that they were priests of a divine knowledge that only they understood; that politicians, political scientists, and the public could not enter the discussion because they didn't understand the math and models based on faulty assumptions. We were told that markets always worked and knew best, and that everything would be fine as long as we kept meddling politicians from 'interfering' with the economy. This was taken to be dogma, and that in any country or any situation, the answer was always privatize, deregulate, remove tariffs, or contract the government.

Well, we along with the rest of the world have been doing that pretty damn consistently for the past 20 or 30 years, and when there were all of these short term economic gains (usually followed by debt crises), economists were jumping up and down saying "Look at what neoliberalism has done for us! Isn't uncontrolled laissez-faire capitalism the best thing ever?" And look where we are now. Yet a lot of these same economists are all of the sudden saying the state has to engage in massive interventions to bail out the financial sector. If markets always know best, than why are we here now? Why should the state get involved? Isn't any type of government intervention worse for markets than if they had been left alone?

It's very unsurprising considering that their intellectual granddaddy was the exact same way. If you read Friedman's Free to Choose, you hear that markets always know best and that the state needs to stay out of them, yet his work in The Great Contraction is all about how the state needs to take extraordinary measures to save the economy (and that even their unprecedented measures taken during the last Great Depression were not enough, they just had to do more of the that and we would have been fine). It's a bankrupt ideology. Economists should be forced to read Keynes and Minsky before they open any of their textbooks, and read credible works on the Great Depression alongside The Great Contraction. Kindleberger, Temin, Eichengreen, etc. have all written much more believable books on why it happened.

[ricketyclik]

I understand that you think there is some kind of desert argument to be made here.

You understand wrong. I'm simply stating that because an investment is not repaid directly does not mean that it was a bad investment when put in the context of trying to save a flailing economy.

[KrazyHorse]

It's always embarassing when someone is a pretentious a**hole and insults the person he's arguing with when he didn't even understand what the other person said.

Given that you obviously have no understanding of or experience in the high finance, I think it's actually far more likely that you yourself don't understand what you said.

I said that the Fed during the Volcker years kept interest rates high because at the time, that was in the interests of the financial sector. Lenders don't like inflation. But during the 1990s and 2000s, they obviously were reaping the benefits of a huge asset boom, meaning they wanted low interest rates that would increase the velocity of capital flowing through Wall Street. Some people said that the economy was overheating and that we needed to raise the interest rates, but Greenspan replied that "We're in a new economy," with new financial technologies that could effectively provide risk-free credit. Very similar to Irving Fisher's declaration in 1929 that we'd "Reached a permanent plateau." Where did you get it in your head that I said there were high interest rates in the 90s and 00s? Did I say that in my post?

Given that you can't even keep the terms "interest" and "inflation" straight in your head, it's unsurprising that you get lost when you attempt to comment on macro and monetary policy.

What you said, you utter twit, was:

Yet why has it been completely incompetent since the Volcker years? Back then interest rates were too high to keep down inflation and benefit lenders (the banks). But once we got into the 90s with the huge asset booms and a financial industry that aimed at generating wealth for itself primarily by funneling capital through its many conduits, it desired low interest rates to enable these huge asset booms so that the casino game would continue.

It's incredible how many retarded claims you can make (both implicitly and explicitly) in 3 sentences.

1) The Fed, under standard monetary policy affects the SHORT TERM RISK FREE INTEREST RATE. Asset prices are affected by LONG TERM, RISKY INTEREST RATES.
2) When the Fed UNEXPECTEDLY drives up the interest rate it targets under standard monetary policy, it HURTS LEVERAGED LENDERS LIKE COMMERCIAL BANKS, because they tend to engage in the long-short carry trade
3) As an example of (2), see the S&L crisis (holy ****, anybody with a modicum of interest in monetary policy should know this)
4) Sorry, ******, but using phrases like "the economy overheating" is prima facie evidence of utter ignorance.
5) If you don't mean "inflation" by "the economy overheating", then what the **** do you mean?
6) The fact that INTEREST RATES WERE HIGH during the early 80s has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FACT THAT INFLATION SUBSEQUENTLY DROPPED. Instead, it was the fact that the Fed came in, RAPIDLY INCREASED interest rates and developed a CREDIBILITY of fighting inflation that caused inflation to fall. Making the correspondence high interest rates = tight money = low inflation = "cooling down" the economy is the type of lazy, ridiculous, inconsistent thinking that infects popular media commentary and the morons that swallow it without any frame of reference to place it in.

[KrazyHorse]

Signs that somebody has close to zero understanding of monetary policy:

They refer to "the" interest rate, and further show signs of misunderstanding of the importance of SPREADS much more than nominal rates

They use the phrase "overheating" to describe the economy

They make the connection high interest rates = low inflation

[curtis290]

It's always embarassing when someone is a pretentious a**hole and insults the person he's arguing with when he didn't even understand what the other person said.

Given that you obviously have no understanding of or experience in the high finance, I think it's actually far more likely that you yourself don't understand what you said.

No, you said that I thought having high interest rates would benefit the bankers. Which was the exact opposite of what I said. So clearly you were the one who didn't understand what I said.

[

I said that the Fed during the Volcker years kept interest rates high because at the time, that was in the interests of the financial sector. Lenders don't like inflation. But during the 1990s and 2000s, they obviously were reaping the benefits of a huge asset boom, meaning they wanted low interest rates that would increase the velocity of capital flowing through Wall Street. Some people said that the economy was overheating and that we needed to raise the interest rates, but Greenspan replied that "We're in a new economy," with new financial technologies that could effectively provide risk-free credit. Very similar to Irving Fisher's declaration in 1929 that we'd "Reached a permanent plateau." Where did you get it in your head that I said there were high interest rates in the 90s and 00s? Did I say that in my post?

Given that you can't even keep the terms "interest" and "inflation" straight in your head, it's unsurprising that you get lost when you attempt to comment on macro and monetary policy.

And where exactly did I confuse the two?

[What you said, you utter twit, was:

Yet why has it been completely incompetent since the Volcker years? Back then interest rates were too high to keep down inflation and benefit lenders (the banks). But once we got into the 90s with the huge asset booms and a financial industry that aimed at generating wealth for itself primarily by funneling capital through its many conduits, it desired low interest rates to enable these huge asset booms so that the casino game would continue.

It's incredible how many retarded claims you can make (both implicitly and explicitly) in 3 sentences.

1) The Fed, under standard monetary policy affects the SHORT TERM RISK FREE INTEREST RATE. Asset prices are affected by LONG TERM, RISKY INTEREST RATES.
2) When the Fed UNEXPECTEDLY drives up the interest rate it targets under standard monetary policy, it HURTS LEVERAGED LENDERS LIKE COMMERCIAL BANKS, because they tend to engage in the long-short carry trade
3) As an example of (2), see the S&L crisis (holy ****, anybody with a modicum of interest in monetary policy should know this)
4) Sorry, ******, but using phrases like "the economy overheating" is prima facie evidence of utter ignorance.
5) If you don't mean "inflation" by "the economy overheating", then what the **** do you mean?
6) The fact that INTEREST RATES WERE HIGH during the early 80s has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FACT THAT INFLATION SUBSEQUENTLY DROPPED. Instead, it was the fact that the Fed came in, RAPIDLY INCREASED interest rates and developed a CREDIBILITY of fighting inflation that caused inflation to fall. Making the correspondence high interest rates = tight money = low inflation = "cooling down" the economy is the type of lazy, ridiculous, inconsistent thinking that infects popular media commentary and the morons that swallow it without any frame of reference to place it in.

1. Yeah, and historically low interest rates for two decades combined with a laxly regulated financial sector and a global credit glut will give you an asset bubble. If you don't think there were huge asset bubbles in the 1990s and 2000s, than you clearly don't know as much as you think you do.

2 and 3. So the Fed is supposed to keep interest rates permanently low? Monetary theory at its most basic level is that the Fed is supposed to expand the money supply during recessions and contract it during periods of growth to keep asset bubbles from being blown. I take it you disagree with this then? It's sad when monetarists are terrible within their own ideology. I've run into a couple of monetarists that make the argument that you can't raise interest rates when a bubble is being blown because it'll lead to the collapse of the highly leveraged institutions. Then when are we supposed to raise interest rates? If the Fed were competent at managing the economy like it claims, it would make it clear that it was going to raise interest rates during the growth of asset bubbles, and lower interest rates during recessions. Instead, the Fed keeps interest rates historically low for decades, because in Greenspan's words, the 90s and 00s weren't a bubble. The huge jump in asset values reflected real changes in the economy. We'd entered a new economy, where new financial technologies enabled high degrees of leveraging without the risk. And it was obviously a crock of s**t.

4 and 5. By "overheating" I mean the growth of giant, unsustainable asset bubbles. And the financial sector growing exponentially, to a size larger than ever seen before in history. I believe the reason we didn't see extremely high levels of inflation in the real economy has to do with low wages (in terms of purchasing power, if mininum wage had been at where it was during the 50s and 60s, it would have been over 10 dollars in hour. instead in the 90s you get the federal minimum wage set at 5.15) combined with neoliberal economic policies (less protectionism) leading to low prices in consumer goods.

6. Yeah, which is what I said. The Fed during the Volcker years made it clear that its policy was to control inflation, employment levels be damned, because at the time, that's what the bankers wanted. Which is because during the 1980s they still made their money primarily by lending it to the real economy.

You're obviously a classless d**chebag with no social skills and a huge ego that has to insult everyone that disagrees with you. I doubt anyone in real life can stand being around you, which is probably why you spend so much time posting on these boards.

[KrazyHorse]

Why is it that the intelligence of posters is generally negatively correlated with the length of their posts?

If you want to become an intelligent commentator I suggest you first LEARN how monetary policy and financial intermediaries actually work and how their actions are transmitted to the real economy, instead of parroting some nonsense you've pieced together from listening to other ignoramuses.

If you want to be yet another opinionated ignoramus that people with actual knowledge only pay attention to in order to mock, then feel free to continue as you have.

[curtis290]

Why is it that the intelligence of posters is generally negatively correlated with the length of their posts?

If you want to become an intelligent commentator I suggest you first LEARN how monetary policy and financial intermediaries actually work and how their actions are transmitted to the real economy, instead of parroting some nonsense you've pieced together from listening to other ignoramuses.

If you want to be yet another opinionated ignoramus that people with actual knowledge only pay attention to in order to mock, then feel free to continue as you have.

1. If you can't even read through a five paragraph post than you I wonder what you do with books. Then again, most economists can only read or write articles and nothing longer. They certainly can't write books since they don't have any meaningful analysis to back up their models.

2. There are many people better educated and more intelligent than you who agree with you. There are also many people who are better educated and more intelligent than you who completely disagree with you. And I take the works of Karl Marx, Maynard Keynes, Hyman Minsky, Peter Temin, Charles Kindleberger, Barry Eichengreen, Robert Brenner, and a whole bunch of other economists that I like over any words you've written here, and they'd all say you're full of s**t.

3. Monetarists such as yourself have been the fad in economics over the past 20 years. However, that's about to change, since we listened to you people too much for too long (resulting in a global depression), and the whole discipline has been corrupted by those who are more concerned with money and power than quality scholarship and thought. There's already a reaction against it and there is a whole new generation of economists being raised that are unconcerned with whatever financial/career opportunities they may find based on poor, dishonest scholarship, and instead have reasonable philosophies on states and markets.

4. You're not that smart, not nearly as much as you think you are. Especially for a monetarist. There are PLENTY of very intelligent, well-educated monetarists out there spouting their BS who are MUCH more qualified to talk about this stuff than you are. I'd rather read their works than yours. Your view of yourself is pretty pathetic considering the status of so many other people with your point of view, and you're a complete a**hole who has to be condescending to other people to make up for your own insecurities. I doubt anyone can stand to be in the same room with you for longer than a few minutes, and your life must be truly depressing due to your inability to successfully get along with other people, meaning you have to go onto the internet and insult other people to make up for it. I feel sorry for you, and I'm glad my life isn't nearly as bad as yours.

Oh, and none of your arguments in this thread were any good, just ask any neutral observer.

[SpencerH]

Denounced by the Dems? The majority of Congressmen who voted for the TARP program were Democrats and the almost exclusively the people who voted against it were Republicans (who were split about 50-50).

If you look at Ramo's post you'll see that the first vote was pretty much bipartisan with both dems and repubs voting for and against. Perhaps I'm wrong about the denouncement by the dems? Perhaps I imagined the daily dem whining about the TARP payouts of the contracted executive bonuses. Pelosi et al were practically singing "Joe Hill" on the Congress floor in their desire to unite with the common man against the evil wealthy bankers.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

because literally this was the only way to keep GM working as a viable automaker.

I literally challenge this assertion.

[KrazyHorse]

Curtis baby, quit while you're behind. It's getting embarrassing.

You've now demonstrated that you don't know how banks, the Fed or present value works.