Random Arguments & Strawmen #15

Worth mentioning we never just say "it was expensive/cheap", we say what we ordered and how much we paid. So up to the person to decide if it's good for them; however when you go to restaurants often like we do you kinda know how much a meal comprised of x, y and z will cost you so you can judge that aspect.

I too think this plays a big role.


Yeah. I do like Google's ratings for that reason, because it gives you a $ gauge.

While admittedly highly impractical, I think you should have to visit a restaurant 3 times before being allowed to rate it.

"Service was terrible!"

Did you go once, at peak business hours, and happen to get a server who has a child with cancer right now so they're a little short tempered or distracted?

Did you try going back and see how thing went a second time?

Or are you writing off the entire restaurant because of your ill-informed experience with one person?

I dunno. Again, I just think people need to think more before leaving things that actually do have an effect on other people's lives.

I think "welfare" should be an ends to a means. The money we put in now should be less than the money we put in the future as the system should be designed to help people get jobs. I get that it probably isn't that way right now, which is part of the problem. Maybe putting tax money into infrastructure and hiring the less fortunate to those jobs while providing them temporary lodging and food.


Also didn't our tax money end up paying for Wall Streets poor planning? I'm sure our taxes go to a lot more fruitless things as well.

holy ***...I can't wait to read that novel >.>




did it?

You apparently have trouble reading one paragraph, I'd hate to see you read a novel.

Also, I think it was called TARP and the amount was 700 Billion.

You will have to tie that with something. I don't think anyone knows what your point is...

speaking of reading comprehension troubles.... we ended up making money on TARP

TARP

"TARP revenue has totaled $441.7 billion on $426.4 billion invested.[2]"

You said I was building a strawman, but I wasn't. Was just simply pointing that out.

...wait, did you blame the entire subprime mortgage crisis directly on Wall Street?

Do I have to go over with the class again the 3 major players that lead up to the financial crisis of 2008? Hint: Wall Street is just a minor player.

Which is what happens when the government buys loans from banks. Loans usually have payment schedules and interest rates associated with them.

Never mind that they relieved many of those loans, but collected as much as they could.

The original appropriation that Bush signed into law was about $700 billion. The adjusted appropriation that Obama signed into law (look up Dodd-Frank) reduced that down to about $425 billion.

can't wait to read about that time eliroo went to mcdonalds...

Thanks for pointing that out, I have found a few other articles that support that.



I don't think I said they were solely responsible, but the interpretation may have been there. Spoiler tags aren't working but you can just name names, I can research it myself if given direction.


I've heard that Clinton de-regulating Wall Street was a big player in that.

No idea why you are shitting on me for posting huge posts when I typically just match the length of the person I'm debating with. I'm also usually the one that stops the debate and doesn't continue to make huge posts.

I'm sure you can go much shorter than that then.

awww snap!

Yeah....we kinda figured out on our own that it was a measuring contest... >.>

I'm sorry that you feel that way, but I really just try to address every point that is made. I also don't argue to be proven right.

They were a little more active than that. The government was pushing banks to loan to as many people as possible and some people ran with it and it snowballed into more *** upon *** and boom!

Housing bubble goes sploot.

That would be the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA). Read up on it and then ask yourself if the: "Clinton repealed Glass Steagle 'narrative' is entirely accurate?".

I'll make it easy then:

Major players of the mortgage crisis, all of which share equal blame:

1) Banks - Some shady lending practices, especially those who knew that the people who they are lending to will not be able to pay, but in part was forced to make loans due to #2. Also bundled bad loans with good ones to equalize the risk, which made the good ones bad at the same time, doing enough times and at a large rate pretty much exasperated the whole situation.
2) Federal Government - Forcing banks to make loans that would have otherwise not have been approved otherwise. You can thank Reagan's administration for starting it, and Clinton's administration (including Janet Reno) for accelerating the issue.
3) The general public - At the end of the day, these decisions were made by people who had to have known that they couldn't reasonably afford the mortgage payments. Nobody held a gun to these people's heads and forced them to make these loans. The bad decisions started with these people, and it's these people who were bailed out.

Everyone attacks #1 cause it's easy. Few attack #2 because they understand how laws effect things. Nobody goes after #3 because who wants to be critical about themselves?

Is that your excuse for practically ignoring most of my points?

"I don't want to argue because I'm right, you're wrong, and you are a doo-doo head!"

To understand TARP people need to first understand how a banks financing is construction. A bank holds money from people in checking / savings accounts but those are typically very small portions of the banks total assets as banks also hold mortgages, car loans and other big ticket assets. If you take out a 300K mortgage on your home, the bank can then write that it owns a 300K house as part of it's total assets and then lend money based on that asset. The amount of money the bank can lend is strictly controlled by federal regulation and based as a percentage of it's total assets.

When the housing crisis hit there was a wave of foreclosures that resulting in extremely depressed home prices that caused the value of all those mortgaged homes "owned" by the bank to plummet and thus the total amount the bank could loan was extremely restricted. So sudden and extreme was this restriction that many banks found themselves either over the federal limit or dangerously close to it. If they were over it then they could no longer conduct business or make loans until they were under it again, which is only possible by either having more assets or getting liabilities off the books. The biggest effect was that these underwater homes now had an unknown value, that 300K mortgage asset was no longer 300K, in fact it's real value was unknown and therefor virtually impossible to use to back current / future loans. Most smaller banks borrowed from these bigger banks who then borrowed from the Federal Reserve.

TARP's purpose was to act as a backstop and conduit to allow the bigger banks to write off the liabilities via selling them to the US Government with the intent to create enough flexibility so that they could remain open and lending to customers. Their customers are typically business's and smaller banks. Business's, especially smaller ones, usually borrow money to meet payroll due to revenue not being consistent. Without banks to borrow from they can't make monthly payroll, meaning they can't pay their workers (illegal) or they need to reduce labor costs (layoff / ect). The problem snowballs into one of national economic freeze.

We can all agree that those banks did some really stupid things in how they repackaged loans (CDS is straight up gambling with someone else's money), but for the greater good of the nation they needed to be supported.

No!!! let's argue about it first!

Not really an excuse, i just didn't want to address every point and annoy everyone else.

FWIW my parents lost their house at the front end of this and it wasn't because they couldn't pay the loans on their income at the time...it was because my stepfather's employer went belly-up with the ownership family going to jail for massive fraud.

But yeah. The banks were very aggressive at that point and things didn't go awesome for them.

I think everyone agrees that this is the case, I have found very few people who think they didn't need to be bailed out. I think most people just want to find a way to prevent it from happening.

Clearly, though, my knowledge on the subject is limited so thank you for enlightening me with your post.

What are we talking about today fam?

Trumps new favorability numbers? His EPA pick? Or the Obama goodbye tour?

well don't let that stop you from posting about it.... >.>

However, we're veering wildly off the topic/point which was that minimum wage was never designed to be the wage for a single income earner to support a family of four... it's economic suicide to try to make that happen.

When has anyone here ever?!

Now, I may be an overachiever, but I strictly adhere to my own personal rule that I must actually have a clue about at least 10% of the things I talk about in here.