Posted on 08/29/2010 4:35:57 PM PDT by dynachrome
Companies will remain ostensibly independent, but their activities what they can do and how much they are allowed to make will be determined by the White House or the bureaucracy.
The vampire economy: http://mises.org/books/vampireeconomy.pdf
THE business organization of private enterprise has had to be reorganized in accordance with the new state of things. Departments which previously were the heart of a firm have become of minor importance. Other departments which either did not exist or which had only auxiliary functions have become dominant and have usurped the real functions of management.
Formerly the purchasing agent and the salesmanager were among the most important members of a business organization. Today the emphasis has shifted and a curious new business aide, a sort of combination “gobetween” and public relations counsel, is now all-important.
His job—not the least interesting outgrowth of the Nazi economic system—is to maintain good personal relations with officials in the Economic Ministry, where he is an almost daily caller; he studies all the new regulations and decrees, knows how to interpret them in relation to his particular firm and is able to guess at what may be permitted or forbidden. In other words, it is his business to know how far one can go without being caught. He also develops special knowledge on how to camouflage private interests so that they appear to be “interests of the community” or of the State.
Some businessmen have even started studying Marxist
theories, so that they will have a better understanding of
the present economic system.
Some businessmen have even started studying Marxist
theories, so that they will have a better understanding of
the present economic system.
You are only confirming what I said before. DOes it bother you at all that you repeat word-for-word what Obama says?
Bonus money is a way, which apparently has worked, to make you angry at corporations --- so that you will accept the gov rescue.
FYI: there is not an economist in the world who would not laugh at the suggestion that bonuses can create an economic crisis. This is nonsense.
It is because conservatives like you don't bother to learn how their country works and swallow anti-capitalist propaganda instead that we could counter Obama only with MacCain.
You have what you wanted in the White House: your friend and an an enemy of "fat cats," "bonuses," "BP..." Enjoy. Just don't complain in a few years and don't tell your friends, "I just did not know."
I guess not.
You missed the message so I will repeat it. Leaders of finance and auto did WHAT was in their interest. They were not forced to do anything like you claimed. Conservatives have to stop drinking ‘the devil made us do it’ koolaid and consider that there can be some greedy self-interest capitalist bastards.
I understand what you are saying but I’m tired on the ‘devil made me do it’ stuff - the government made me do it and the unions made me do it. The leaders of finance and the auto industry took away a pile of bonus performance money. Passing the buck on their screw ups does not cut it any longer. Their screw ups is why we have Obama.
Actually I was thinking about you all day man.
But tomorrow I swear I’m going to cut the grass.
I think I got my answer: you have absolutely nothing to say and think that rudeness passes as intelligence. It does not; it only makes your inability to think more visible.
Have a good cutting-grass day.
My purpose was not to win an argument or even persuade you that you were wrong (you cannot change your opinion just because someone said something). The purpose was for you to have some doubt and investigate these matters a bit further.
"Leaders of finance and auto did WHAT was in their interest. They were not forced to do anything like you claimed."
1. Re housing bubble (and mortgages, secularization, etc. --- the "evil Wall Street"). In 1997 Clinton charged Rubin to invigorate The Community Reinvestment Act of the Carter administration. The result was the 1998 modification of that Act that mandated relaxation of lending standards to enable the previously ineligible applicants (supposedly minorities and the "poor") to get mortgage loans. The bad loans was supposed to be absorbed mostly by Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae (the pair that was completely omitted from the financial regulation passed in July -- surprise!). The percentage of bad loans to be issued was specified by Congress and HUD. It increased to 52% in 2007. Think about it: one half of the loans going through Fannie and Freddie was knowingly bad, issued to people that could not repay them.
Markets provided what was demanded of them --- that's what markets do, no matter where demand comes from. Is it any surprise that banks relaxed their standards? What else were they supposed to do? If your bank did not do so, some other would (competition). If all American banks refused to do so, foreign banks would.
But bad loans were shoved down their throats in The 1998 Community Reinvestment Act. In 1997, when that Act was debated, the only bank CEO that testified in support of that act was that of the ShoreBank in Chicago , which had been created in 1973 by two "missionaries" with the express goal of "helping the poor." (It has just recently gone bankrupt and taken over by the FDIC). No other bank wanted or supported the atrocious Act.
The Obamited dragged over hot coals all sorts of CEOs --- from Goldman to GM --- but never ever called to testify anybody from Freddie or Fannie (nor their CEOs' bonuses are ever mentioned in press, but the departing CEO of Fannie, who happens to be black --- to ensure that the inner city folks would get the loans, I guess --- received the package fo about $80million. That's more than Goldman's compensation, but we don't want to talk about that, do we?) Why? Because, if they testifed before Congress, you and the rest of the American pulic would learn the simple facts that I just mentioned. You'd learn that it was the government --- Maxine Waters, Barnie Frank, etc. --- that created the housing bubble. They want you to be angry at banks (and other corporations instead) and see Obama as the savior from capitalism ("fact cats," "market failures," etc.)
[ To understand the bubble, here are some facts. For the longest period, in good times and bad, the rate of home-ownership was about 65%. Bad loans mandated by CRA brought in new buyers. Increasing demand increased prices --- to the point of making a bubble). The home-ownership rate increased to 69%. Think about it: 4% of Americans, about 12 million people, were made to live in the homes they could not afford in the first place. That's the depth of the crisis for you: when these 12 million people lose their homes --- and I am sorry for each of them --- the housing crisis will end. All these people where snookered by the government into believing that they could afford a first or a bigger home. ]
2. As for Detroit, it has suffered from the unions long, long before the crisis. At least since 1970s, Detroit conveyor belts were the slowest in the world (so that the workers don't sweat). In 1980, an 18-year-old kid at those belts was paid $20/hour --- as much as an engineer with quite a few year of experience. The common wisdom in Michigan was to start at 18 and retire at 48: after 30 years of service the retirees received all of their previous health benefits and a pension equal 95% of their last salary. This had been going on for decades, and your uncle and mother-in-law considered you stupid if you did anything else; you were set for life and a very comfortable, early retirement. Particularly damaging concessions the unions won in mid-1990s.
Though all those years, it was popular to b---ch how Detroit just cannot make good cars. It made you smart to say that. Indeed, why can Japanese do that but not Detroit? They must be just stupid or uncaring "fat cats." This was another victory of the Left.
Of course Detroit could make cars just as good as the Japanese. What they could not do is sell them at the same price. In 2007, just before the collapse, just the benefits of the retired workers were adding $1500 to the cost of each and every car GM sold. Could you compete under these circumstances?
There is a measure of benefits affordability: divide the cost of all benefits by the hours worked on your plants. For the U.S. Toyota, it was $32 in 2007; for GM it was $72. That's unions for you. Gimme, gimme, gimme --- that's all they know -- and h-ll with everything else. And the h-ll came in 2007: after 30-40 years of unsustainable blackmail by the unions, Detroit collapsed.
[ The reason they are recovering now is that (i) some of the plants and brands were bought by foreigners, and (ii) the bailout included a concession from the unions. Both allowed to void the previous "victories" of the unions --- and, surprise, Detroit is becoming competitive again.
You've been snookered, ex-snook, for a long, long time --- by all sorts of socialists in Congress and media (Bush, too, was very proud that home-ownership rate increased under his watch; and he increased the size of the gov by 56%). It was easy to blame "stupid engineers" and "fat-cats CEOs" for Detroit failures. That's just what the socialists, who stand for the "workers," want you to think. It is now easy to blame Wall Street for the crisis. That's just what the socialists, who stand against the "bourgeoisie," "fat cats" and other capitalists, want you to think. [Never mind that Wall Street is owned by the Main Street: AIG, Goldman Sacks, Citigroup, etc. --- each of them is owned by literally tens of millions of Americans. BP, another recent "villain," has 40 million shareholders in Britain and 39 million shareholders in the U.S. --- practically every 401K and other savings plans has its shares.]
Most of what I said remains a mystery to great many people among the "conservatives." That's largely why you see visceral hatred of Goldman Sacks on this forum, especially by those who know not a bit of what Goldman actually does. Which is why I said what I did earlier: when even conservatives no longer know how their country works, it is little wonder that we have a socialist in the White House.
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