Cite?Perhaps not, but they do support the "right" of an individual and independent state to make its own rules about whether or not to own other people.
So the prevalence of rent-seeking and regulatory capture in the halls of the regulatory agencies that claim to protect society from rent-seekers and those who would game the system is just a lot of verbiage not worthy of discussion? Got it.I was tired.
And I still think my comment was both appropriate and correct. Your solution to "protect society from rapacious corporations" is . . . a lot of verbiage, near as I can discern
caw
Some people are apparently more interested in scoring political points against the other end of the acceptable left-right paradigm than unsettling their worldview by having that left-right paradigm challenged and exploring root causes of the problems under discussion.I don't think either one is in line with the sticky in this forum regarding name calling.
Things seem to stay pretty clean in regards to the two main parties and mainstream left-vs-right ideas, but things that don't nicely fit in either of those tend to more often be the recipient of name calling. A few months ago someone (I don't recall who, but it wasn't a regular) responded to one of my posts with some nasty variation on the word libertarian, and I regret not immediately posting that link and/or clicking the red triangle.
No, this one didn't start out as a screed. But I can forgive Blacbird for assuming that it was going to become one and expressing some annoyance at the idea. I don't see any realistic way this thread would not have ended up in that territory.
Come on, guys. There are some topics clearly open to detailed discussion of general political theory, and there are some that are about very specific issues and situations where the majority of us focus on the issue at hand rather than going into depth about only vaguely-related philosophical points. And yeah, those tangents into philosophy will always happen and should always be welcome, and I'm not advocating for any sort of censorship here except SELF censorship, but when you have a longstanding habit of turning thread after thread after thread into a chance to advocate one particular political theory instead of focusing on the OP, you are actually inhibiting the conversation the rest of us are trying to have.
Please, please, please for the love of god try to remember that we do not need a near-daily lesson in libertarian philosophy and thought in threads that are not so much about general political philosophy. You are certainly free to post what you like, and I am free to ignore it, but so many threads are getting hijacked that it's causing some of us to enjoy AW less, so I'm really asking you on a personal level to take that into consideration when you post.
As a favor.
Please.
Well, Bbird could have not made this about anyone's personal philosophy, right? Really, that's where this all started.
And then the rest of us just poked the bear further because we knew the script. And it was funny.
See, at the risk of getting people mad at me (yeah, I worry about that), I think this is the correct reading of the course of the thread. And I think it is very obviously the correct reading.What bbird may have done was simple trolling but all too easily, Don took the bait and worked himself up in a lather. In the end, Don made a parody of himself. And then the rest of us just poked the bear further because we knew the script. And it was funny.
I am asking for a little voluntary restraint for the benefit and continued presence and enjoyment of fellow members. Not that preferred philosophies should never be expounded on at length, but that personal restraint should be shown in how often that happens so as to allow other conversations to take place.
Responding to a post initiated by another is what we do here.
So he really believes that libertarians have the same self righteous attitudes you'd see like, say, from the Fox news talking heads or that they play the victim as much as the MSNBC talking heads? Yeah, not a very well thought out observation at all. So one can add inaccurate and simply not true in addition to insulting for that one.And also this observation:
http://internetisinamerica.blogspot.com/2012/12/why-libertarianism-sucks-as-ideology.html?m=1
ETA
Back to the OP then - which I think is quite flawed because it presumes that the Fed has a regulatory function that it does not, in fact, have. The Fed's purpose is to manage the money supply to keep the economy on an even keel (as much as possible) by setting the interest rates for loans it makes to the banks. That article takes the Fed to task for trying to mitigate the failures of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and AIG. I see it as what the Fed is supposed to do - use its power to try to avert economic crises.
The regulatory authority is supposed to rest in the Treasury and Commerce Departments. Give us an article about how they're failing to regulate the banking industry, and there's some real meat. Not this, which is basically a sugary soft drink of empty calories totally devoid of actual nutrition.
Indeed going back to the OP - perhaps the point is that even when the Feds try to regulate the failures of these corporations they end up making things worse because they end up acting based on their loyalties to certain corporations and ultimately do not regulate fairly. Which goes back to the principle that the Feds are ultimately made of individuals who are prone to the same types of inherent failings as private individuals, which is the fundamental point, not that the Feds are some sort of demonic entity that came from nowhere.
And the decision of the New York Fed to grant "primary dealer" status to MF Global? Do you have an issue with this? Because it looks very much like MF Global only got that statusBack to the OP then - which I think is quite flawed because it presumes that the Fed has a regulatory function that it does not, in fact, have. The Fed's purpose is to manage the money supply to keep the economy on an even keel (as much as possible) by setting the interest rates for loans it makes to the banks. That article takes the Fed to task for trying to mitigate the failures of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and AIG. I see it as what the Fed is supposed to do - use its power to try to avert economic crises.
The regulatory authority is supposed to rest in the Treasury and Commerce Departments. Give us an article about how they're failing to regulate the banking industry, and there's some real meat. Not this, which is basically a sugary soft drink of empty calories totally devoid of actual nutrition.
The firm’s bankruptcy raises an important question. Had its financial soundness changed dramatically in nine months since it received New York Fed approval or were the standards flawed?
From a risk perspective, its capital position was 30 times weaker than that of most primary dealers. It was also new to investment banking, a higher risk area than its core brokerage business. Under Mr Corzine it placed ever bigger bets, and more of its own capital, at risk. With less capital, trading losses could quickly erode its financial stability. Within months it had placed a single bet of $6.3bn – six times its capital – on risky European sovereign debt. Its leverage, assets to capital, leapt to a ratio of 40 to 1.
By March 2010, soon after the New York Fed’s decision, a joke began to circulate: MF Global won fast-track approval because of two words: Jon Corzine. William Dudley, New York Fed president, and Mr Corzine had indeed worked together at Goldman Sachs, though approval came a month before the latter officially joined MF Global.
Giving primary dealer status to an institution that was recently in serious trouble, that lacked the reserves and the stability of other primary dealers, apparently because the new boss used to share executive space with people at the New York Fed strikes me as both corruption and doing a poor job.