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Thread: Trump's America is taking children away from their parents at the border and detaining them separately

  1. #761

    Default Re: Trump's America is taking children away from their parents at the border and detaining them separately

    Quote Originally Posted by Genghis Skahn View Post
    Uh--you did, by asking me whether I had any proof that any other administration would have done better, which is a claim I've never tried to make, but which you then suggested I try to prove... Still not seeing how this is a valid defense in any way shape or form of the Clinton Administration or any sort of absolution. I could easily make the same claim in defense of W. Bush's administration--in fact, it would work even better since he was basically a puppet due to his sheer incompetence. It's a non-argument, plain and simple, and it's something you wouldn't stand for if a Republican was involved instead. He was president at the time, and when you're the leader of the country ultimately you take responsibility for your administration's actions--that's how the job works.

    Oh, and don't forget that he reappointed Alan Greenspan Chair of the Federal Reserve, who's medieval title would have likely been "The Deregulator"--guess it's only ok to blame Reagan and W. Bush for his tenure as head of the Fed though.
    That's not me accusing you. That's me bringing up that Clinton didn't have a large role in the 2008 Crisis as you could put any other political contender there at the time, and the result would most likely be the same. Moreover, all I did is ask you to validate your point, which was Clinton's role in the 2008 crisis. I also think W. Bush's "incompetence" is vastly overblown and is essentially a liberal meme at this point. But I agree, I also think W. Bush did not have any idea about what was going on. There were too many other things going on at the time, namely the War on Terror and a little later, the Russo-Georgia War which re-ignited Cold War fears. As I already said, W. Bush is in an unfortunate position of being President during the crisis which was, for the most part, unforeseen by the political establishment. Al Gore in 2000 didn't say a word about the Finance sector, nor did John Kerry in 2004.

    Then why don't you do so, if you can so decisively beat my argument? Why play cat and mouse? And why must only my claims against Clinton be substantiated? Why not Reagan and the two Bushes as well? Why is their guilt so much more obvious than the Clinton Administration's? Why is the possibility that the blame could be even the smallest bit bi-partisan in nature so unacceptable to you? Do people like Chuck Schumer, who openly embraced the deregulatory agenda of wallstreet, not exist in your mind or something?

    Also, the two articles I just cited in my last post weren't opinion articles... Unless that term has a specific context in terms of economics, they should technically be scholarly articles with many references attached(2nd one is from MIT press, so...). Furthermore the Hill article, and the NYTimes article I posted are not opinion articles(again, unless that has a specific context in economics), since NYTimes opinion articles are mentioned with the sub-heading "opinion" which that article was missing, since it was in the international business section. And neither is the Time magazine article I posted, to my knowledge, since like I said, opinion pieces are almost always labelled as such; the three of those should be news articles. So like I said, unless the word "opinion article" has a specific context in economics, you're seriously misrepresenting a sizeable portion of the evidence I've provided.

    This would be an opinion article:

    https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009...iglitz200901-2

    From a nobel laureate in economics. Both he and Paul Krugman believe that repealing Glass-Steagall was a mistake, although Krugman doesn't believe it caused the crash. Naturally, the article's headline reads:
    You didn't present an argument. All you did was parrot the usual Glass-Steagall talking points. That's not an argument and I addressed it with the relevant information from the FCIC. I'm not the one playing Cat&Mouse. I asked you to specify what criticism you had against Clinton, and then I addressed any information you brought up.

    Because financial de-regulation happened under all three--it might be an opinion article, but that statement is factual, that is for sure. It's really not uncommon for all three of those presidents to be mentioned when talking about financial de-regulation and the 2008 crash. Also worth noting that he worked on a committee under the Clinton administration:

    So his opinion is especially valuable because he was an eye witness to some of Alan Greenspan's deregulatory actions and decisions under the Clinton administration.
    Stiglitz was also working for the World Bank. He wrote one of my favorite books on the euro. I know who he is and I'm even familiar with the vanity fair article, moreover he doesn't agree with you on Glass-Steagall either.

    The most important consequence of the repeal of Glass-Steagall was indirect—it lay in the way repeal changed an entire culture.
    I've never seen Sitglitz say that the repeal of Glass Steagall caused or significantly contributed to the 2008 crash. Most economists don't. They treat the repeal of Glass-Steagall as a symptom, not a cause.

    No, I haven't; noticed that you conveniently skipped the last two sources I provided. The first one also discusses how the Clinton Administration's policy of "affordable" housing for the poor created the conditions for the creation of subprime mortgages, which has absolutely nothing to do with Glass-Steagall. Second one mentions how considerable financial de-regulation occurred under the Clinton Administration, without mentioning the Glass-Steagall act, which is a well known fact, unless you have a source which suggests that considerable financial de-regulation under Clinton didn't occur? Furthermore there was also the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 which thwarted attempts to regulate derivatives, signed by Clinton. Unstable derivatives later contributed to this crash, so again, harmful financial de-regulation occurred under Clinton.

    He even openly admitted that he was wrong about de-regulating derivatives and that he should have attempted to regulate them:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs3Z2Z2WMJk
    The Federal Reserve is independent of the Clinton Administration. Greenspan was appointed largely because he was a safe choice for both Ds and Rs. Moreover, the CRA thing is a myth and I didn't see you post any other two sources. Because there was no link and no citation. I'm not going through an entire book to understand what specifically you are talking about. Back to the CRA, that's a myth that's been pushed by Conservative economists but who have yet to provide a good argument.

    The FCIC on the CRA. First section, Conclusions of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, page xxvii. Page 28 in simple PDF terms.

    Finally, as to the matter of whether government housing policies were a primarycause of the crisis: for decades, government policy has encouraged homeownershipthrough a set of incentives, assistance programs, and mandates. These policies wereput in place and promoted by several administrations and Congresses—indeed, bothPresidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush set aggressive goals to increase homeownership.In conducting our inquiry, we took a careful look at HUD’s affordable housinggoals, as noted above, and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The CRA wasenacted in 1977 to combat “redlining” by banks—the practice of denying credit to individualsand businesses in certain neighborhoods without regard to their creditworthiness.The CRA requires banks and savings and loans to lend, invest, and provideservices to the communities from which they take deposits, consistent with banksafety and soundness.

    The Commission concludes the CRA was not a significant factor in subprime lendingor the crisis. Many subprime lenders were not subject to the CRA. Research indicatesonly 6% of high-cost loans—a proxy for subprime loans—had any connection tothe law. Loans made by CRA-regulated lenders in the neighborhoods in which theywere required to lend were half as likely to default as similar loans made in the sameneighborhoods by independent mortgage originators not subject to the law.

    Nonetheless, we make the following observation about government housing policies—theyfailed in this respect: As a nation, we set aggressive homeownership goalswith the desire to extend credit to families previously denied access to the financialmarkets. Yet the government failed to ensure that the philosophy of opportunity wasbeing matched by the practical realities on the ground. Witness again the failure ofthe Federal Reserve and other regulators to rein in irresponsible lending. Homeownershippeaked in the spring of 2004 and then began to decline. From that point on,the talk of opportunity was tragically at odds with the reality of a financial disaster inthe making
    As for the CFMA, which is one of the biggest factors in the Financial Crash of 2008, here's the voting record. This bill was going to get passed no matter what and I fail to see what the Clinton Administration had to do with a bill that was so successfully lobbied.

    The Glass-Steagall act effectively prohibited commercial banks from engaging in activities such as insurance under-writing and investment banking, as well as mergers between commercial and investment banks(to my understanding). Signed into law in 1933, the general idea was to keep commercial banking and investment banking totally separate from one another--the intent was to prevent people's deposits from being used in speculative activities aside from loans, as well as to discourage banking monopolies(from what I understand). It was also intended to prevent conflicts of interest from occurring. It also had further regulations such as that a industrial company could not own a bank, and that a bank could not own more than 10% of a non-banking entity. In the film "Inside Job", Soros compares this piece of legislation to an oil tanker, which is compartmentalized such that if the tanker gets a hole in it, only the compartments affected will lose their oil, and not the entire ship. He then compared the repealing of this act to eliminating all of the separate oil compartments in a tanker.

    As to whether I think it would have stopped the crisis? Not necessarily considering how much other de-regulatory policies were being, or had already been, passed at the time. I agree with what you quoted beforehand:

    Like Soros' analogy, I think the increased compartmentalization and regulation that banks had under Glass-Steagall would make it more difficult for banks to behave as riskily as they did(as well as discourage monopolies). In 1987, in a report by the Congressional Research Service examining the case for and against Glass-steagall, found that: #3. " Securities activities can be risky, leading to enormous losses" they predicted that this could happen if this was repealed, and that's pretty much exactly what happened. Even if the Glass-Steagall act had already begun to have been eroded, repealing it just made things easier for banks to merge, behave more riskily and etc. IMO.
    Correct, however, the issue with focusing on Glass Steagall is that Glass Steagall does little to address the biggest causes of the crisis. Leverage and shadow banking. Like the quote said, the compartmentalization of the two entities may have helped, but it would be an indirect and small effect. GSA doesn't address the leverage ratios, or the massive shadow banking sector that's beyond government oversight anyway. And when we say shadow banking, we're mostly referring to investment banks. The issue was that deposits in investment banks (and other similar financial vehicles) were widely considered to be as safe as normal banks, except there was little regulation to control their risks. GSA doesn't address that fact, and the 12 trillion dollars in that system. So no, there is very little evidence that the repeal of GSA was a large factor in any of this. Simply speculation.

    No, I definitely have. You just have odd standards of evidence, especially when it comes to insulting the Clintons, apparently.
    Go back and re-read your own posts. No, it isn't clear that Clinton played a role in the 2008 crash and the evidence you brought up then didn't implicate the Clinton Administration in anything... The narrative that all 4 administrations had a role and were all responsible for the financial crisis is lazy and unimaginative and does nothing to address the actual causes of the crisis.

    Significant financial de-regulation occurred under Clinton. Too bad, so sad.
    Ah, but how does that make Clinton responsible for the crash? The de-regulation in isolation do not cause the crash all by themselves.

  2. #762

    Default Re: Trump's America is taking children away from their parents at the border and detaining them separately

    That's not me accusing you. That's me bringing up that Clinton didn't have a large role in the 2008 Crisis as you could put any other political contender there at the time, and the result would most likely be the same.
    Right, and how does this absolve him of anything again? "Anyone else would have done the same" is an unacceptable excuse, as I've already stated, sorry.

    The Federal Reserve is independent of the Clinton Administration. Greenspan was appointed largely because he was a safe choice for both Ds and Rs. Moreover, the CRA thing is a myth and I didn't see you post any other two sources. Because there was no link and no citation. I'm not going through an entire book to understand what specifically you are talking about. Back to the CRA, that's a myth that's been pushed by Conservative economists but who have yet to provide a good argument.
    1. The Clinton Administration chose him to remain as Chair of the Fed. They bear the responsibility for that decision. That is how politics works, sorry. The same is true of Reagan and W. Bush, although if you want to lay extra blame on Reagan for his initial appointment, then that's 100% OK with me.

    2. Stieglitz speaks a bit on Greenspan's initial appointment in the article above:

    In 1987 the Reagan administration decided to remove Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and appoint Alan Greenspan in his place. Volcker had done what central bankers are supposed to do. On his watch, inflation had been brought down from more than 11 percent to under 4 percent. In the world of central banking, that should have earned him a grade of A+++ and assured his re-appointment. But Volcker also understood that financial markets need to be regulated. Reagan wanted someone who did not believe any such thing, and he found him in a devotee of the objectivist philosopher and free-market zealot Ayn Rand.
    Jim Rogers also suggests that he lobbied for this position. Also, do you have a citation for the claim that he was a safe choice for both Ds and Rs? You can claim that he was a safe choice, but that still doesn't change the fact that the Clinton Administration clearly wasn't interested in appointing a Chair who was interested in actual regulation of the market, or at the very least didn't know any better. Again, the Clinton Administration is responsible for the appointments or reappointments it makes, and that remains true for Greenspan's reappointment.

    3. I already did an informal citation, which on a non-academic forum like this, is not really a good reason to ignore the entire paragraph and then totally misrepresent the evidence I've provided by saying that "all I've done is provide opinion articles". Nevertheless:

    Lal, D.(2010). The Great Crash of 2008: Causes and Consequences, Cato Journal, p.268(page 4 on the PDF)

    McCarthy, M., Poole, K.T., Romer, T., Rosenthal, H., (2012). Political Fortunes: On Finance and It's Regulation, Daedalus, p. 64(page 4 on the PDF)

    Both can be found on Google Scholar. I've left out the city they were published in, since that's often annoying to find(seriously, why is that the most difficult thing to find in a citation!?) and not really something to discredit the sources over...

    As for the CFMA, which is one of the biggest factors in the Financial Crash of 2008, here's the voting record. This bill was going to get passed no matter what and I fail to see what the Clinton Administration had to do with a bill that was so successfully lobbied.
    Again, this is a non-argument as far as an attempt to absolve the Clinton Administration of any wrong doing goes. It's an admission of guilt, an admission that Clinton, as I've shown, readily admits to. So you're defending him for something even he himself now claims responsibility for. As president, he takes responsibility for the actions of his administration, that's how the job works. Or what, does Bush get a free pass for his de-regulatory policies too? All that voting record proves is my initial point that de-regulation had bipartisan support(and yes, that was probably due to successful lobbying; millions of dollars worth of it)... When both parties are complicit in such a bill, you don't get to say "well we both did it, so nobody gets the blame". No, they both receive the blame and deserve to bear the guilt for doing so. Successful lobbying my ass; successful lobbying absolves them of absolutely nothing. All that speaks to is the level of bipartisan corruption that exists in US politics.

    Go back and re-read your own posts. No, it isn't clear that Clinton played a role in the 2008 crash and the evidence you brought up then didn't implicate the Clinton Administration in anything... The narrative that all 4 administrations had a role and were all responsible for the financial crisis is lazy and unimaginative and does nothing to address the actual causes of the crisis.
    No, it's really not lazy or unimaginative at all, given Greenspan's 19 year tenure as Chair of the Fed, which spanned all four of those presidencies... Or what, are you claiming his policies had nothing to do with the crash? Good luck proving that. Like Stieglitz said, financial markets need to be regulated, and Greenspan wasn't interested in doing much of that, for an entirety of 19 years. However, it's ridiculous to only lay the blame on him or Bernanke and not the people who appointed or reappointed him to his job. The Fed is not just a money spigot, but also a regulator--and obviously when you appoint a de-regulator to a position which requires regulation, bad things can and did happen. He was kept on for four whole presidencies as Chair of the Fed, and each president who appointed him to the job bears some of the responsibility for his dangerous financial policies--acting like they don't simply because the Fed is theoretically independent of a President's administration is just nonsense.

    Ah, but how does that make Clinton responsible for the crash? The de-regulation in isolation do not cause the crash all by themselves.
    Good thing that de-regulation was never and could never be isolated from the larger financial system. De-regulation, especially of things like derivatives, can, and has already in the past, cause financial instability. Financial de-regulation was what created the necessary conditions for the crash to occur. Again, Clinton's signing of the CMFA and his "affordable housing" programs are thought to have helped create the conditions necessary for the crash to occur--and the statement "but how does that make Clinton responsible for the crash" seems a bit misleading to me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it almost seems like you're suggesting that I'm saying that it was specifically Clinton who caused the crash. I only believe that he(or rather his administration) played a role in facilitating the crash(something which, again, is discussed in scholarly articles, news articles, documentaries etc.), not that he is the sole bearer of responsibility(though clearly he does take some responsibility for his de-regulatory policies, otherwise he wouldn't have apologized and said that he "was wrong" to Jake Tapper on CNN). Far from it, there's plenty of blame to go around, like the NYT (non-opinion) article I posted upthread states in it's headline.

    Again, I'll remind you that we're wildly off topic here, and I still don't understand why I'm only expected to prove Clinton's contribution to the crash and not the other 3 presidents I've mentioned. I can only fathom that it must be due to some partisan itch you have whereby you're 100% OK with slandering the three Republican presidencies(which I would do again, FTR--I don't have any loyalty to the Bushes or to Reagan) but not the one Democrat involved(who even admits his involvement at this point) in dangerous financial de-regulation.
    Last edited by Genghis Skahn; November 07, 2018 at 08:48 AM.

  3. #763

    Default Re: Trump's America is taking children away from their parents at the border and detaining them separately

    Okay Genghis, first. Let me apologize as you do seem a bit irritated. I didn’t mean to offend you. I also want to clarify that we are in agreement over many things, Ill post a reply in a couple hours. I just wanted to make a short post so we could both cool down and have a calmer discussion.

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Quote Originally Posted by Genghis Skahn View Post
    Right, and how does this absolve him of anything again? "Anyone else would have done the same" is an unacceptable excuse, as I've already stated, sorry.
    Okay, well you didn't explain how it's not an acceptable excuse. The political establishment was generally unaware of the crisis brewing and there was very little direct action that exacerbated by any parties.

    1. The Clinton Administration chose him to remain as Chair of the Fed. They bear the responsibility for that decision. That is how politics works, sorry. The same is true of Reagan and W. Bush, although if you want to lay extra blame on Reagan for his initial appointment, then that's 100% OK with me.

    2. Stieglitz speaks a bit on Greenspan's initial appointment in the article above:
    Okay first of all, Raegan doesn't get blame from me for appointing Greenspan. As I already said, Raegan gets extra blame because he started a wave of unchecked de-regulation. He started the movement so to say, Bush gets the blame because he was the President in charge when the crash happened. It's unlucky for him, but that's just how it is. I don't put the blame on Bush Sr. or Clinton, they weren't even aware of the brewing crisis and there were few tools available to them to know.

    Jim Rogers also suggests that he lobbied for this position. Also, do you have a citation for the claim that he was a safe choice for both Ds and Rs? You can claim that he was a safe choice, but that still doesn't change the fact that the Clinton Administration clearly wasn't interested in appointing a Chair who was interested in actual regulation of the market, or at the very least didn't know any better. Again, the Clinton Administration is responsible for the appointments or reappointments it makes, and that remains true for Greenspan's reappointment.

    3. I already did an informal citation, which on a non-academic forum like this, is not really a good reason to ignore the entire paragraph and then totally misrepresent the evidence I've provided by saying that "all I've done is provide opinion articles". Nevertheless:

    Lal, D.(2010). The Great Crash of 2008: Causes and Consequences, Cato Journal, p.268(page 4 on the PDF)

    McCarthy, M., Poole, K.T., Romer, T., Rosenthal, H., (2012). Political Fortunes: On Finance and It's Regulation, Daedalus, p. 64(page 4 on the PDF)
    Here's a 1991 article from NYT.

    Mr. Greenspan, who is 65 years old, is unusually popular in Congress, and his confirmation is unlikely to be a problem. A spokesman for Senator Donald W. Riegle Jr., the Michigan Democrat who heads the Banking Committee, said the committee would hold confirmation hearings as soon as it received the formal nomination papers from the White House.
    https://www.congress.gov/108/chrg/sh...8shrg22918.htm
    https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/276

    Transcripts of the hearings. John Kerry's (D) Statement.

    What concerns me greatly is that everything that is happening to us today was happening to us 2 years ago, was raised in this committee 2 years ago, has been offered prior to this to Bill Seid-man when he was serving, and now to Mr. Taylor, and to you and to others, and you serve on the Board of the RTC and are probably the single most influential member of the Open Market Committee and you are certainly the foremost banker, if you will, in this coun-try.
    I have, like my colleagues, enormous respect for your abilities and for your expertise. And none of us are capable of calling all of these things correctly, and they are indeed extremely complex, and I acknowledge that. But some simple things seem to be overlooked at this point in time, or somehow, the message is not reaching those that need to be reached.
    Greenspan was obviously well-liked by Rs due to his policy of de-regulation and so on. But anyway, I think this establishes the point that while there were contenders, and arguments against Greenspan, he wasn't by any means, a controversial choice in 1991-2 when he was reconfirmed. Both parties had respect for his tenure as Chairman of the Fed.

    In regards to your citations, dude, go back and look at them. You cited nothing except the title of the book and you quoted a passage. That means I have zero context except for your excerpt, and as I said, I have no intention of looking through a book I haven't read, trying to understand its arguments and then finding the exact spot where the excerpt was. It's unfair for me to do all of that research. I did the bare minimum in my citations, to give you the page number so you could read the relevant section of my passage of the report in case you wanted to read the original material, the surrounding context, and glean other useful information. I don't think I was unfair in any way to the way I treated your citations. Moreover I didn't ignore it, I did address it. You seem to be confused and accusing me of ignoring them, okay, I ignored some of it. Here's the original passages you quoted,

    "The recent emergence of universal banking was followed by a number of public policy mistakes on the path to the current crisis. The first was the bailout of LTCM in 1998. Its failure posed no obvious systemic threat. Its public salvation changed expectations of market participants that nonbank financial institutions could also hope for bailouts. Next, the infamous Greenspan “put,” which put a floor to the unwinding of the dotcom stock market bubble, promoted excessive risk taking. Third, the promotion of “affordable” housing for the poor by the Clinton administration, through the unreformed and failed Freddie mortgage twins, led to the development of subprime mortgages."

    1. That's the FED's action.
    2. Again, FED action.
    3. I already posted the information related to the "affordable housing" myth. See post #761

    Federal Reserve is independent of the Clinton Administration, something I already mentioned.


    "In a Washington epitomized by Alan Greenspan’s nearly nineteen-year tenure as Fed chairman, regulatory constraints were viewed in a dim light. There was either bipartisan support for a hands-off policy or lack of a winning coalition that would revamp regulation to address a new and highly complex environment. Indeed, a considerable amount of Financial deregulation occurred through agency decisions and legislation during the Clinton administration."

    While that statement can indeed stand on it's own, it's a secondary source. That's why I said, "You have no provided any evidence for your claim. This doesn't fall under the category of "common knowledge". We're not discussing why the Earth is round, we're discussing a very complicated economic issue. So no, show me exactly how Clinton is responsible and you can start by telling me why Glass-Stegall is so important to your argument, never mind what Clinton's role was in it. "

    I don't disagree that a lot of de-regulation went on. However, a lot of it was done either through the Federal Reserve, executive regulatory agencies (of which there were 14 for different things), and yes a few legislation pieces. Unfortunately, that's all very split up and the Clinton Administration is no a monolithic object that is the Executive Branch of the USA. Clinton does not appoint every single person and approve every single action, and neither does his cabinet. Majority of public servants work president to president, and high-level positions don't change with every president. This is why it's hard to determine exactly the effect the President has on the country and its economy and what can be attributed to past Presidents and existing institutions. This is why its important to be very specific about what exactly Clinton did that made the crisis worse. My argument, is that he actually did very little to cause or facilitate it.

    The 2008 crisis is characterized by failure of government agencies and by overleverage in the private sector. The 2008 crisis didn't happen because of a policies gone wrong.

    Again, this is a non-argument as far as an attempt to absolve the Clinton Administration of any wrong doing goes. It's an admission of guilt, an admission that Clinton, as I've shown, readily admits to. So you're defending him for something even he himself now claims responsibility for. As president, he takes responsibility for the actions of his administration, that's how the job works. Or what, does Bush get a free pass for his de-regulatory policies too? All that voting record proves is my initial point that de-regulation had bipartisan support(and yes, that was probably due to successful lobbying; millions of dollars worth of it)... When both parties are complicit in such a bill, you don't get to say "well we both did it, so nobody gets the blame". No, they both receive the blame and deserve to bear the guilt for doing so. Successful lobbying my ass; successful lobbying absolves them of absolutely nothing. All that speaks to is the level of bipartisan corruption that exists in US politics.
    Yeah, no. I never argued Clinton did nothing wrong. My original argument was, "This is extremely misleading. Please point what specific actions did the Clinton administration take to facilitate the 2008 crash. What you're doing is "Guilt by association"." Moreover, this isn't the case of "nobody" gets the blame. This is an instance of you piling all the blame you can find on as many people as you can find "culpable". No, that's simply a wrong way to approach this and a wrong way to prevent the next crisis. A lot of these things were unforeseen and several bills didn't simply "add on" to the damage, but were well-designed policies that ended up inadvertently contributing to the crisis because of weaknesses in other systems.

    No, it's really not lazy or unimaginative at all, given Greenspan's 19 year tenure as Chair of the Fed, which spanned all four of those presidencies... Or what, are you claiming his policies had nothing to do with the crash? Good luck proving that. Like Stieglitz said, financial markets need to be regulated, and Greenspan wasn't interested in doing much of that, for an entirety of 19 years. However, it's ridiculous to only lay the blame on him or Bernanke and not the people who appointed or reappointed him to his job. The Fed is not just a money spigot, but also a regulator--and obviously when you appoint a de-regulator to a position which requires regulation, bad things can and did happen. He was kept on for four whole presidencies as Chair of the Fed, and each president who appointed him to the job bears some of the responsibility for his dangerous financial policies--acting like they don't simply because the Fed is theoretically independent of a President's administration is just nonsense.
    Except we were talking about the Administrations, not the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. And it is lazy to simply blame 4 Presidents without explaining what they actually did. Do we expect every president to be the world's 2nd smartest economist? No. When examining the choice of electing Alan Greenspan we have to analyze whether such a choice was a good one form their perspective, not from our own hindsight perspective. Moreover, I never claimed Greenspan had nothing to do with the crash.

    Good thing that de-regulation was never and could never be isolated from the larger financial system. De-regulation, especially of things like derivatives, can, and has already in the past, cause financial instability. Financial de-regulation was what created the necessary conditions for the crash to occur. Again, Clinton's signing of the CMFA and his "affordable housing" programs are thought to have helped create the conditions necessary for the crash to occur--and the statement "but how does that make Clinton responsible for the crash" seems a bit misleading to me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it almost seems like you're suggesting that I'm saying that it was specifically Clinton who caused the crash. I only believe that he(or rather his administration) played a role in facilitating the crash(something which, again, is discussed in scholarly articles, news articles, documentaries etc.), not that he is the sole bearer of responsibility(though clearly he does take some responsibility for his de-regulatory policies, otherwise he wouldn't have apologized and said that he "was wrong" to Jake Tapper on CNN). Far from it, there's plenty of blame to go around, like the NYT (non-opinion) article I posted upthread states in it's headline.
    Okay, your response here makes no sense. For one thing, de-regulation can be isolated from the financial system, especially if it's over stuff that's already being done. For example, explicitly writing a law that dictates that banks can't limit how much money you can deposit or invest at once, does not affect the financial system, even if it affects operating procedures of some banks (typically smaller ones). So that first statement is false for one. Two, my whole point was de-regulation isn't bad. It all depends on the context and on the overall design of the country's financial system. So you don't address my question whatsoever. Moreover, Clinton isn't responsible for every single bit of de-regulation that occurs under his watch. He doesn't know and approve of everything that happens, nor is everything done with his personal verbal approval. That characterization is absurd. Nor did I deny that Clinton was complicit in deregulation. He was, but not everything like you and your books seem to want to pin on him.

    Again, I'll remind you that we're wildly off topic here, and I still don't understand why I'm only expected to prove Clinton's contribution to the crash and not the other 3 presidents I've mentioned. I can only fathom that it must be due to some partisan itch you have whereby you're 100% OK with slandering the three Republican presidencies(which I would do again, FTR--I don't have any loyalty to the Bushes or to Reagan) but not the one Democrat involved(who even admits his involvement at this point) in dangerous financial de-regulation.
    Yeah, you keep saying that, but in one of my very first posts, this is what I literally said.

    Reagan started the wave of deregulation, G. W. Bush was the man in charge of the country when the crisis hit. The 2008 crash has little to do with politics, Republican presidents had the unfortunate positions of being,

    A) Being a progenitor of the de-regulation wave (Reagan)
    B) Being the custodian of the economy when the crash hit (Bush)

    Why I often bash Republicans on the issue of the crisis and the economy is due to

    1) The obsession with blaming poor people and Democrats, the people who had the least to do with the crash
    2) Absolute refusal to accept any responsibility for anything.

    Otherwise I believe this crisis was largely inevitable as nobody really paid to any of these things except for the academic community. Many predicted a crash and the "better" economists even predicted very specific things about how the crash would happen, but nobody predicted the scope and level of financial failure in detail.
    This isnt the fault of any individual president or even cumulatively their fault. This is the fault of regulatory agencies and the Federal Reserve who should have spotted this and sounded off the alarm bells. That didn't happen. And you seem to portray me as a "Clinton lover" when all I said is that your claim was misleading, which it was. To this post, you're unable to specifically substantiate what policies Clinton himself advocated and pursued that facilitated the 2008 crash. Your own citations make the exact same mistake.
    Last edited by Love Mountain; November 08, 2018 at 03:20 PM.

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