Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Finance, the economy & Economics The coming crash

I am not sure what you are talking about. I think you are saying that gov is going to take over (nationalize) failing industries. That is simply not the way it works. What happens is that gov goes in and bails them out then shakes their hand and wishes them well. This is what happened to the banks in 2008, for instance. It will also happen again and, I think, they are gearing up for that right now.

Are you saying that the Trump administration is Fascist? You are waaaaay to early but, if he wins the next election you may be close. After all, an ex wife has said that one of the books he keeps by the bed is a compendium of Mussolini speeches.

I thought it was Mein Kampf?
Either way, I don’t believe he reads at all. File it under propaganda from media.

You keep insisting on ‘the way things work’.
I don’t think anyone should be laying a claim to ‘the way things work’ at this point.

Just as I don’t believe you’ve understood what leftism is, I’m not confident of your ‘way off’ observation of fascism as I doubt we would agree on what that is.

You or I havent seem this kind of meltdown with this much leveraging before.

Seems as tough they already have. QE4 that is not "QE4" . If I'm not mistaken the Feds announced "very quietly" Monday their intent to repo $500b in treasury bills and $200b in mortgage backed securities. Plus there was an earlier report that the Feds have promised to do the same up to $1.5T in the coming months.

If debt is our underlying economic problem, it seems this should be suicide especially when the most primary recipients of this balance sheet influx goes to bankers who can lend this money out at at 10 times the amount on their respective asset balance sheets.

No, he's a fascist right now. He just doesn't yet have complete control.

Extreme socialism is when the government seizes the means of production and runs it under central planning. Owners of corporations are SOL, and either dead or living in exile.

Fascism is when government coopts all the corporate owners to work together with government, so government and corporations are in cahoots to the detriment of the workers. Cooperative owners are still owners and usually get very rich from the deal.

Very easy to tell the difference. Nazis were socialists like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is Democratic, of the people, or a Republic.

That was the second book mentioned by the previous wife. I just did a search and, now, it seems that its "Speeches by Hitler" and nothing by Mussolini. I will stick with the two but I may be wrong.

Actually, we are watching, right now, how it works. This time its 500 billion to bail out the corps and 500 billion to be given to, er, uh, well, not sure but it may become clear pretty soon as the promises are bold and a bit hazy. The proposed recipients are currently stuff like; "those who have been hurt by the pandemic" and "Small Businesses" Perhaps a bit of that may have to also go to the aforementioned corps. In addition they are also talking about another helping hand for those who were not already included. Anyway, Do Nothing Mitch is making a lot of serious, slightly obscure, promises!

Chunk;
Let me try again. We have, two political bases; Liberals and Conservatives. (I know they can be broken down further and further but I will stick with this for now).

Anyway, this is, again basically, a battle between those who believe in original sin and those who do not. The Liberals believe in original sin. The Liberals believe that its necessary to regulate citizens so they don't get into trouble. On the other hand the conservatives believe that ANY regulations remove the rights of persons to do the right thing. If you know any conservatives ask them how they feel about, say, Social Security. You will be told that this takes away the personal right to decide for themselves how they want to retire and gov should not be messing with that. Again, basically, Conservatives are against any and all regulation.

I have been doing this dance, and arguing with conservative friends for a very long time about this stuff. My main concern is that this means that the conservatives also have a LOT more faith in their fellow humans than do the Liberals which I have always found to be very strange. All that being said its the truth and, to my way of thinking, kinda strange.

I think the important thing, as far as those two sides are concerned, is that, most of the time, both sides are capable of recognizing something that needs fixing. Take rape. I believe that both sides find that rape is not a good thing. it doesn't need regulation it needs to be gone. The question is a solution. The solution is when both sides have to sit down and decide how that gets done. This is, in the political sense, how two sides are supposed to be able to sit down and make decisions (I know, it gets more complicated but I am going with simple here).

Most of our current problems is because NEITHER side is will to sit down and talk about problems that may have solutions. Each lives in their own little enclave does not give an inch. Each side also gets to live with failure and that is the shame of it all - for both sides.

In India the people have a solution, for instance, to government overreach. I am not sure its still going on but it was a good one. What happened is that everybody in the community surrounds the place with gov does its business. I have seen this one in action and its impressive. Nobody, and nothing, gets in or out until those inside make decisions that those on the outside can live with. This gets done because both sides must talk so that they, first, actually understand what the problem is and THEN decide what to do about it.

Right now I am not even convinced we have even gotten to the point of actually agreeing on what the problem is.

Oh, one last. Hitler took over when he only had 30% of voters on his side. This is because the other side was not of one mind but many, so the 30% won. I am hoping that Trump does not win with his 30% but, given how the other side behaves (liberals, moderates, left, progressives, etc), I am not convinced that Trump won't win which I believe would be a literal disaster!

This is, incidentally, why I would vote for Bernie if he was running as the candidate of the Democratic party. You, I think, believe that getting a progressive venue is the most important thing, even more important than beating Trump. I don't and I have a lot of company on this one. The problem, I think, is that I consider the race for president to be more important than the ongoing battles between moderates, liberals, progressives, etc. That is a party problem not a presidential problem. I also remain convinced that Bernie could never beat Trump (because, incidentally, there are not enough voters on his side to even get the nomination). The problem there is that Bernie and followers tend to talk a lot with one another whilst discounting everybody else. That's never a real good idea.

Anyway..........

There is some pretty damned good evidence that the conservatives are wrong about letting people "do the right thing" or not, and that is the average retirement savings in America. We have a minimal mandatory plan (social security) and many optional "do the right thing" plans (IRAs, Roth IRAs, SEP-IRAs, 401Ks, Simple-IRAs, life insurance, annuities). Yet the average American has done almost none of the optional plans!

People know their social security payout will suck, because the social security agency keeps on sending out those statements and all the media keeps on harping on social security running out of funds. Yet they DON'T plan for their future and use any of the optional plans. So there you go: The conservatives are obviously wrong about human nature. Or they are cynically planning their own good retirement while relishing the opportunity to look down on all those people who were not conservative enough to use the optional plans.

Conservatives have a solution for what you talk about. Its really quite simple, if somebody doesn't do the right thing, and take care of themselves, then they are going to get, exactly, what they are entitled to. I have had this argument about SS. There is a lot of documentation on the battle over SS when it was starting up. There were photos of old people begging on the streets for food, etc. I had a friend, now passed, that used to tell me that those people begging on the street were good examples so that others could seem the error of their ways. The problem is that would not happen, no matter how logical it all seems. My question was always; "Are you telling me that you want those old people to die of starvation?" and the reply was usually a long sigh, "of course not", and move on after just letting it all lay there. There are piles of people who just don't look ahead. Every now and then the news will feature somebody, living on SS, who used to own a summer home, a big boat, and an airplane and now had nothing but Social Security and has absolutely no idea what happened.

Sometimes.................

THIS ^^^ as well as the entire post, but most of all, THIS ^^^.
If anyone still thinks that we can afford another four years of Trump, they're batshit crazy.

We can GET TO where we need to be if we get rid of Trump.
If we don't, abandon all hope because we'll wind up living in a real life version of The Walking Dead, only the "zombies" will be the unfortunates instead, and most of them will not be very docile or cooperative.