Posted on 09/25/2008 10:00:46 AM PDT by Revel
Earth to Economists: The taxpayers ARE investors! That's why they stand to lose a bundle if investments blow up across the board.
And this silly petition is no more a "consensus of economists" than the global warming alarmists' press releases are a "consensus of scientists".
Does no good when you live in a world within yourself!
Relate this to everyday people.....how does it work for the community...America? When they can relate that, then their work is Nobel indeed!
Right, so let nature take its course!
Failure and loss is a part of life.
I don't believe for an instant that the entire economy would collapse over this.
Lots of people will get burned badly, and they deserve to get burned.
I just pray that the FBI does a good job of uncovering the culprits that need prosecution.
Maybe we can build a prison just for them.
Does no good when you live in a world within yourself!
Relate this to everyday people.....how does it work for the community...America? When they can relate that, then their work is Nobel indeed!
. . . and Long Term Capital Management had more Nobel prize winning economists than any other hedge fund on earth.
I agree entirely with two of the 'three fatal flaws'; I have my own major fatal flaw with #1, however:
1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn profits must also bear the losses..."
This avoids the essential discussion about who is the "taxpayer" and who is the "investor." They are not mutually exclusive.
In the thousands of words I've seen about the problem, there has been no attempt (that I know of) to determine how much (what percentage) of the "investment", and subsequent losses, are owned by individuals indirectly, through funds which are part of their 401(k) and other retirement vehicles.
If taxpayers are asked to "punish" the dishonest and opportunistic investors, they should clearly understand to what extent they are punishing themselves.
If there is an attempt to identify the guilty parties and restitution is part of the "solution", it becomes a different discussion altogether.
Not mentioned, but clearly possible, is that if the solution is rushed and badly reasoned out, a second wave of crooks will create the problem all over again.
Nothing attacts the criminals like almost a trillion$ just waiting to be plucked...
>> My gut tells me that unless the solution starts with THEM, they will not likely consider it—excessive pride, arrogance, and the excesses of power have all worked their ill on the majority of those who make up the current legislative body.
Of course — as compared to the astounding humility of 150 point-headed tenured economics professors at liberal institutions.
H
Are these the same economist who said NASDAQ was justified by the “new ecnonomy”, there was no housing bubble, and the foreign economies had decoupled from the US economy?
Were these among those geniuses?
I could post a list of 900 scientists who concluded man was responsible for global warming. Does that make it true?
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/sowell-williams-and-stossel-on-bailout.html
Sowell, Williams, and Stossel on the Bailout
John Stossel is against the bailout.
Thomas Sowell seems to be for the bailout, but not the Democratic additions like bailing out individual homeowners and keeping them in homes with bad loans.
I can’t find Williams’s position on the bailout. (I love Walther Williams. He is such a clear, no BS, straight shooter with oodles of brains.)
The first 150 names in the Boston telephone directory could do just as well, to paraphrase the late William F. Buckley.
Considering the shape we’re in economists don’t impress me. Our best economic brains are in government, wall street, main street and college street and look at the mess we have. It’s similar to the fact that some of our best legal minds are in congress passing our laws and look where we’re at in that regard.
You obviously are ignoring Gingrich’s proposal...which as a politician I’m sure he didn’t come up with on his own...
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.....or run for public office.........
>> You obviously are ignoring Gingrich’s proposal...which as a politician I’m sure he didn’t come up with on his own...
My post had nothing to do with Gingrich’s proposal. I haven’t read Gingrich’s proposal.
I was referencing these 150 economists lack of a proposal. I’m not sure why we should take these people any more seriously than the scientists who signed on to global warming, or the professors who signed petitions against the war in Iraq.
H
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.....or run for public office.........
Bill Gates is a good example - walked away from the arrogance of Harvard to actually do something. Edward Gibbon is another - went to Oxford for eighteen months, financed by a middle class merchant family, and in his own words found the dons so pompous he walked away to write a real history.
Formal college education is overrated, and would be especially so if it weren't around now to simply compensate for the abyss of the NEA public school system.
And of course there are the US Senators.
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