Anonymous to Occupy Wall Street and Create Megathread

[Hydesland]

Once again, my main argument is this: money was lent to people who couldn't pay back the money, i.e. if you make $20,000 a year, you can't pay back a $200,000 loan, and the housing bubble, which as you pointed out, was about to burst, was used as collateral. It doesn't take Einstein to predict that the system will fail if this is done. Duh! You've done a masterful dance around it yet again.

How many times do I have to explain this, we're talking about wall street and the shadow banking sector here, not the retail banking sector, the protesters are not protesting retail banking on the whole. The only thing that really mattered for wall street in terms of the securities being exchanged was the value of housing, the default rate didn't actually suddenly massively increase until after the crisis, that was never the problem, and did not cause the bubble. Wall Street was already aware that the default rate was higher for sub-prime, so you're just simply missing the point, the main problem was identifying if housing was overvalued. I'm going to ignore your nice story about Johnny for now on, since it's not relevant, I'm not discussing the practice of retail banks.

If the banks were aware of the housing bubble, why the fuck were they using houses as collateral on high risk loans?

Again, by then it was already too late, this is something you need to know about before you make huge investments into that particular asset, the banks already had significant long positions on MB securities. Which leads to:

As for "not much could be done about it" - umm yeah there was. How about not using overvalued housing as collateral on high risk loans?

As I just said, too late, they were already hugely invested with leverage into the assets, there is no easy way out of that situation when your assets are worthless, a sudden huge sell off could cause a panic in the financial markets and make investors suspect your bank is insolvent and shedding its shit as fast as possible, causing your share price to plummet and you to go bankrupt, not good. This is where it gets very difficult.

[Marcheria]

No idea if anyone's posted this yet, but it just showed up on my Facebook from someone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjfhOPCPJnE&feature=channel_video_title

Quite a powerful little flick on the protests.

[Cosmopoles]

I'm going to ignore your nice story about Johnny for now on, since it's not relevant, I'm not discussing the practice of retail banks.

It doesn't even make sense in the context of retail banks. The trouble was with subprime loans, not people with low incomes borrowing large amounts.

Once again, Krugman will show us the way.

it gives the lie both to those who blame Fannie/Freddie/Community Reinvestment for the housing bubble, and those who blame predatory lending. This was a broad-based bubble.

[Distruzio]

[Distruzio]

He doesn't. That anti-fractional reserve issue is the ONE thing I can actually agree with the Protesters about beyond the sheer anger they feel.

I cannot think of anyone that knows even the slightest bit about finance and banking, isn't a communist or isn't a lunatic, that thinks full reserve banking is practical, desirable, or even meaningful (or even non contradictory). It removes the very purpose of banks, financial intermediation, it is an extremely extremely extremely anti free market position to be entirely anti financial intermediation, it only makes sense if you're a communist or central planner.

Being opposed to fractional reserve banking is not the same thing as being in favor of full reserve banking. What is opposed is central bank fractional reserve banking and the abolition of competing currencies.

And I loled at the implication that the free marketers advocate an anti-free market financial position and are therefore commies.

[Greater Cabinda]

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He really thinks that the other people haven't tried to do what he does? Fucking pathetic.

[Hydesland]

Being opposed to fractional reserve banking is not the same thing as being in favor of full reserve banking. What is opposed is central bank fractional reserve banking and the abolition of competing currencies.

I don't really see what fractional reserve banking has to do with a central bank, given that fractional reserve banking happens under hard money and free banking. Your problem is with central banking.

And I loled at the implication that the free marketers advocate an anti-free market financial position and are therefore commies.

Look, it requires massive intervention to prevent financial intermediation, which will always be an inevitable natural market outcome due to it being extremely risky and extremely costly for individual savers to seek out individual borrowers without any maturity transformation, economies of scale, diversification and other things to make capital allocation less risky and more efficient. So the only alternative is for capital allocation to be taken away from the market and put in the hands of a central planner, or some communal system - communism.

[Occupied Deutschland]

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[Terra Agora]

Look, it requires massive intervention to prevent financial intermediation, which will always be an inevitable natural market outcome due to it being extremely risky and extremely costly for individual savers to seek out individual borrowers without any maturity transformation, economies of scale, diversification and other things to make capital allocation less risky and more efficient. So the only alternative is for capital allocation to be taken away from the market and put in the hands of a central planner, or some communal system - communism.

That's BS.
Explain free banking in countries like Sweden.

[Distruzio]

I don't really see what fractional reserve banking has to do with a central bank, given that fractional reserve banking happens under hard money and free banking. Your problem is with central banking.

You got it.

Look, it requires massive intervention to prevent financial intermediation, which will always be an inevitable natural market outcome due to it being extremely risky and extremely costly for individual savers to seek out individual borrowers without any maturity transformation, economies of scale, diversification and other things to make capital allocation less risky and more efficient. So the only alternative is for capital allocation to be taken away from the market and put in the hands of a central planner, or some communal system - communism.

Don't know where I, nor any one of my compatriots, implied that was something we supported, though.

[Hydesland]

Look, it requires massive intervention to prevent financial intermediation, which will always be an inevitable natural market outcome due to it being extremely risky and extremely costly for individual savers to seek out individual borrowers without any maturity transformation, economies of scale, diversification and other things to make capital allocation less risky and more efficient. So the only alternative is for capital allocation to be taken away from the market and put in the hands of a central planner, or some communal system - communism.

That's BS.
Explain free banking in countries like Sweden.

I think you misread my post:

fractional reserve banking happens under hard money and free banking.

[Hydesland]

Don't know where I, nor any one of my compatriots, implied that was something we supported, though.

Law of excluded middle. I don't know how it's possible to not imply being pro full reserve banking when claiming to be anti fractional reserve.

[Terra Agora]

That's BS.
Explain free banking in countries like Sweden.

I think you misread my post:

fractional reserve banking happens under hard money and free banking.

I may just be slow today, but it seems to me that you said that the only way to have a functioning banking economy is to have banking under government control.
If that's not the case my apologies.

[Xsyne]

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I was unaware "barely above minimum wage" translated to "at least $380,000 per year".

[Hydesland]

I think you misread my post:

I may just be slow today, but it seems to me that you said that the only way to have a functioning banking economy is to have banking under government control.
If that's not the case my apologies.

No I'm saying the only way it would be possible to enforce 'full reserve banking' (which is essentially equivalent to outlawing banks) in a market economy would be through intervention.

[Genivaria]

[Allrule]

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"My people love me!" -Muammar Gaddafi

"Our people love us!" -Corporations and their cocksuckers in the government and mainstream media

[Terra Agora]

I may just be slow today, but it seems to me that you said that the only way to have a functioning banking economy is to have banking under government control.
If that's not the case my apologies.

No I'm saying the only way it would be possible to enforce 'full reserve banking' (which is essentially equivalent to outlawing banks) in a market economy would be through intervention.

Ohh
Hm, I guess it can be done voluntary be it definitely wouldn't be wide spread.
But yes, point valid.

[Sremski okrug]

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"My people love me!" -Muammar Gaddafi

"Our people love us!" -Corporations and their cocksuckers in the government and mainstream media

The head of General Electric call for the American people to love GE as much as companies like Siemens in Germany

General Electric - Paid no taxes this year and is actually getting money from the taxman (lolwat) and has fired thousands of worker whilst getting these tax cuts over the past few years

Siemens - Has an extremely good reputation, actually pays it's fair share of taxes and has a union member on their board so they are fully represented in the company.

Which one would you support?

[Liberty and Legacy]

Hate crime is a criminal offence in the US as well, AFAIK.

To be precise, a hate crime is a separate crime - murder, theft, assault, etc - that is motivated by hatred; you don't get charged with just a hate crime, you get charged with murder as a hate crime or something.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

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So is this the Occupy group's equivalent to horrible country songs?

[Allrule]

"My people love me!" -Muammar Gaddafi

"Our people love us!" -Corporations and their cocksuckers in the government and mainstream media

The head of General Electric call for the American people to love GE as much as companies like Siemens in Germany

General Electric - Paid no taxes this year and is actually getting money from the taxman (lolwat) and has fired thousands of worker whilst getting these tax cuts over the past few years

Siemens - Has an extremely good reputation, actually pays it's fair share of taxes and has a union member on their board so they are fully represented in the company.

Which one would you support?

All I care about is whether or not the corpor-RATS and their whorish cocksuckers will give their own "Zenga Zenga".

[Genivaria]

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So is this the Occupy group's equivalent to horrible country songs?

Your comparing anti-establishment poetry to country music?

[Andaluciae]

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So is this the Occupy group's equivalent to horrible country songs?

It's like the bastard child brain-fart of the Occupy folks and Anon...it makes my eyes bleed.

[Andaluciae]

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I was unaware "barely above minimum wage" translated to "at least $380,000 per year".

I think the point is "Fuck off, you don't speak for me. I never gave you license to speak for me. I want nothing to do with you. Stop claiming to speak for me. I speak for me."

It's a sentiment I strongly agree with.