seedload wrote:Removed to prevent quoted wall of text
Maybe some misunderstanding.
The debt isn't the cause of the financial meltdown, it just became a focus point for political agenda. Debt in and of itself isn't bad, relying on debt is very bad as your spending future income.
If the Glass-Steagal act was still in effect then the housing burst would be just that, another burst. Some people would of went bankrupt, economy would of been bad for a little bit, otherwise life would of moved on. Bubble / Burst is the natural cycle of anywhere you have speculators involved. Supply / Demand states that the value of something is only what someone else is willing to pay for it, speculation artificially increases value as speculators are appraising things at what they would be worth in the future not what their worth now. Eventually there comes a point when an asset is over valued and no consumer will purchase it, prices start to slide and eventually cave in as the artificially hiked prices deflate. Anyone who was gambling on those prices will take a lose, the bigger the gamble the bigger the loss. Which is where the Glass-Steagal act steps in. It prevents consumer banks from making multi-billion USD bets. It prevents them from making multi-billion USD profits off those bets, and prevents them from taking multi-billion USD loss's from those bets. It was the massive loss's from the banks that set off the global financial meltdown, not the housing market burst. The burst just caused those loss's due to them being sold as commodities and insured against (gambling). That act existed not to prevent bubble / burst scenarios but to prevent the damage from spreading outside entities directly engaged in those gambles. Try to see it as a containment mechanism.
For the bad loans, that's just life. Bad decisions are always made when your gambling, that's why casino's always come out ahead. You can't manage who banks loan to, you gotta just let them do what they do and let the free market supply / demand sort things out. Greed is one of the greatest motivator in the world, sometimes the greatest as it can overpower fear. The bankruptcy's would of happened, the banks who made those bad loans would of taken the loss's and that would of been that. No spreading the damage into funds / insurance schemes and foreign banks.
For the wealthy, you can attempt to divert attention but it's not going to work. I used what's happening in Switzerland as an example, you should read up on it before going on a tangent. The other EU countries are cracking down on the anonymous numbered Swiss bank accounts used to stash wealth and evade tax's. Very soon the Swiss are going to be forced to hand over account statements to the other countries for their citizens, with the exception of safety deposit box's. The wealthy are taking their assets and stashing them so that they are not taxed on them, aka tax evasion.
This was to point out that the concept of the wealthy "creating jobs" when taxed less is complete BS. All they do is stash as much as possible and hire accountants to ensure they pay as little as possible. They donate large sums of money to ensure their ability to evade taxes in the future. Ultimately for them it's a question of cost effectiveness, by spending a few million they can save tens of millions in taxes. That needs to stop, period. You can not have investment bankers making 100+ million a year in profit, then paying 300K in taxes and only on their stated salary.
Funny thing about this is that I don't see anyone on this board that would be considered "wealthy". Everyone here is pretty much middle class (you make less then 7 figures a year, your middle class), meaning that your paying all the tax's. Your taking on the burden that the wealthier have deemed themselves too important to pay. You should be the ones demanding fair and equal treatment for all. Instead they've played their game so well, blinded you so completely with political ideology that you don't ever stop to consider what's really happening. No new taxes for the wealthy, plenty of new taxes for the middle class, that is the party line you've bought into.
I want lower taxes for all, just force the wealthy to pay their fair share. I don't want to raise taxes on the wealthy, I want to remove their exceptions, loop holes and hiding methods. Once their full wealth is reported as income to the IRS (like it is for everyone else), let the chips fall where they do. I'm not after their "stash", they can keep their capital, I'm after their hiding methods. And yes ALL wealthy people have a stash, it's how they stay wealthy (by hiding their income from the state).
