23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism

[.Morticia.]

Not a liberal at all. Liberalism is about sustaining this hell called capitalism.

There is no way people will live actualised lives until they move past materialism and all the oppressions that make capitalism possible.

[sandinista]

Not a liberal at all. Liberalism is about sustaining this hell called capitalism.

There is no way people will live actualised lives until they move past materialism and all the oppressions that make capitalism possible.

Liberalism is a stain.

[Coito ergo sum]

Not a liberal at all. Liberalism is about sustaining this hell called capitalism.

There is no way people will live actualised lives until they move past materialism and all the oppressions that make capitalism possible.

How does capitalism stop you from living the way you want to live and actualizing yourself? Would you have more resources to actualize with?

Why can't you live like you think you'd live under communism, just give up the materialism you seem to claim to be forced into, and do what you want?

Or, is it that your actualization depends on everyone else living the way you do?

How does communism cure the ills you're talking about anyway - how does your version even work? Do you know? Or, are you just saying "communism" = a society where people aren't into materialism and capitalism is gone?

Also - how are you "oppressed" by capitalism? Too much ability to do as you please? What?

[Coito ergo sum]

Not a liberal at all. Liberalism is about sustaining this hell called capitalism.

There is no way people will live actualised lives until they move past materialism and all the oppressions that make capitalism possible.

Liberalism is a stain.

The modern kind, that thinks of itself as "leftist light" is certainly a stain. The liberalism that came out of the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason was one of the greatest things to happen to mankind in all of human history, and liberated more people to live free lives out from under the bootheels of tyrants than just about anything else.

You won't find liberty on the left or in communism, that's for sure. I don't know where Morticia thinks she'll be allowed to "actualize" in a communist society - after all, she'll have to give according to her abilities - not necessarily according to her wishes or desires. Maybe one of you can explain how communism increases a persons ability to "actualize" ....

I've asked a few times...still waiting....

[Seth]

Not a liberal at all. Liberalism is about sustaining this hell called capitalism.

There is no way people will live actualised lives until they move past materialism and all the oppressions that make capitalism possible.

Ah, well, finally a theoretical policy statement we can work with. Thanks!

The philosophical belief that materialism is bad has a good deal of validity to it. Many philosophies argue that attachment to material things interferes with personal happiness, and there is justification for this belief. Nothing wrong with rejecting materialism in your life, so long as you also accept personal responsibility for your own philosophy and actions. In other words, it's fine for YOU to reject materialism, and even the "oppression that make (sic) capitalism possible," but the fundamental question is whether you have any moral authority to impose that anti-materialism on others.

The answer to that is a resounding no.

You also fail to explain how people will "live actualized lives" in the absence of an economy that provides for the material goods they need merely to survive, like food, water, shelter and suchlike.

What, precisely, do you mean by "actualized" lives? What does an actualized life consist of, other than a rejection of materialism and capitalism?

[Boyle]

The Community Reinvestment Act, and everything that followed from it that resulted in the housing market meltdown that triggered this recession is the quintessential example of why such social-agenda redistributive regulation is improper, imprudent and dangerous.

The CRA did not cause the housing market crash. Predatory lending did, which the CRA was specifically designed to prevent. Specifically, it requires institutions to operate in a "safe and sound manner". Predatory lending is not safe nor sound for business. As well, lenders that were CRA bound contributed little to the crisis.

Hogwash. The CRA was a liberal Democrat program begun by Jimmy Carter intended to increase the level of home ownership in the US as part of a liberal Progressive social engineering program. The CRA specifically prohibited "redlining" which is a practice that banks and mortgage lenders had used for decades to deny home loans to applicants in poor communities because the banks saw such communities as having inordinately high risks of default and low levels of equity in the assets to protect the banks.

Right, it prohibit banks from denying loans based simply on the fact that people lived in low income areas, regardless of their specific risk level. Rather, the banks now had to deny loans based on individuals' risk level.

The CRA not only made redlining illegal, it required banks to "improve" their minority lending practices, which is Progressivespeak for "lend more money to poor people even if they cannot possibly pay the loans back." To get this to happen, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created to back the mortgage loans with government guarantees.

Incorrect. That's almost exactly the opposite of what the CRA required. It specifically calls for banks to operate in a "safe and sound manner", which excludes your description.

Predatory lending emerged only in the last decade or so, as the government meddling in the markets, and actions by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd to coerce banks to make ever-more risky loans that were immediately bought up by Fannie and Freddie, skewed the housing markets more and more.

What does this have to do with the CRA? In fact, it seems to vindicate the CRA of any culpability because of "the government meddling in the markets, and actions by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd to coerce banks to make ever-more risky loans...".

Government guaranteed loans drove a housing construction boom and that's when predatory lending, which is knowingly lending to unqualified applicants who have no chance of repaying the loans at low initial rates with huge balloon payments down the road, began. Government was complicit in this, as were Frank and Dodd, who ignored the warnings given them by economic experts and declared the housing market to be stable mere months before the collapse.

Okay, but how does this implicate the CRA?

But the whole problem ORIGINATED with the liberal Progressive CRA, which was intended as a SOCIAL ENGINEERING PROGRAM, not as a rational economic program. The purpose was completely political, and it's purpose was to pander to the working poor who dreamed of owning a home in return for their votes. But Jimmy Carter couldn't pull that off, and Reagan took over in 81, but the CRA, like most Progressive cancers, was never excised, and the result is today's recession.

Sure had a long run before the problems really became apparent. 30 years is quite the dormancy time.

And Jimmy Carter is to blame, along with a host of other Progressives since who have protected that Progressive pork project as a way to pander to the working poor while putting them further in the poorhouse, and then out on the street, as their mortgages become unaffordable and they lose every dime of equity (if any) they built up.

Please provide some sort of citation for this. Unless the passing of the CRA, and its subsequent provisions, can be tied with the bubble to a further degree than more recent legislation then it would appear that the CRA had little to do with the bubble.

Sure, predatory lending, securitizing of toxic mortgage paper and many other misdeeds on the part of the mortgage and banking industries and the government occurred, like the failure of the SEC to regulate "credit default swaps" and other derivatives, but it all started with the Progressive notion that everyone ought to be entitled to own a home and the efforts to pander to working poor and middle-class voters in exchange for government-backed largess.

And when it all came crashing down, did government help the homebuyers? Nope. TARP money flowed out of the US and into the hands of foreign investors who should have lost their asses for investing in toxic mortgages in the first place like a breach in Hoover Dam. The entire CDS/derivatives market, and every investor and bank involved in the toxic mortage mess should have been allowed to go bankrupt, and any TARP money, if it was appropriated at all, should have gone to paying off the REDUCED VALUE (after the bubble burst) of the homes that were the subject of predatory lending. Better yet, any consumer who can prove predatory lending, which means material misrepresentations about the mortgage terms, should be awarded their home free and clear, as a penalty to the lender.

I'm glad we agree that the banking institutions shot themselves in the foot on their own volition.

On the other hand, any homeowner who falsified a financial statement, even at the urging of a mortgage lender, should not only lose their home, they should go directly to federal prison for perjury regarding a federally-secured loan.

Agreed. If coercion was involved, however, I would lessen the sentence.

[Seth]

The Community Reinvestment Act, and everything that followed from it that resulted in the housing market meltdown that triggered this recession is the quintessential example of why such social-agenda redistributive regulation is improper, imprudent and dangerous.

The CRA did not cause the housing market crash. Predatory lending did, which the CRA was specifically designed to prevent. Specifically, it requires institutions to operate in a "safe and sound manner". Predatory lending is not safe nor sound for business. As well, lenders that were CRA bound contributed little to the crisis.

Hogwash. The CRA was a liberal Democrat program begun by Jimmy Carter intended to increase the level of home ownership in the US as part of a liberal Progressive social engineering program. The CRA specifically prohibited "redlining" which is a practice that banks and mortgage lenders had used for decades to deny home loans to applicants in poor communities because the banks saw such communities as having inordinately high risks of default and low levels of equity in the assets to protect the banks.

Right, it prohibit banks from denying loans based simply on the fact that people lived in low income areas, regardless of their specific risk level. Rather, the banks now had to deny loans based on individuals' risk level.

And if that's all it had actually done, there wouldn't be a problem. But once the CRA was in play, the regulatory pressure on banks to make toxic loans was enormous. It was Barney Frank who called the head of the Big Six in to a room and told them point blank that if they didn't loosen up their lending rules to allow more unqualified (poor) people to get loans, he would personally see to it that they were subjected to bank investigation after bank investigation by the SEC and the Fed. A bank investigation is a death-sentence for a bank, because even the fact that one has been opened destroys consumer confidence.

The CRA not only made redlining illegal, it required banks to "improve" their minority lending practices, which is Progressivespeak for "lend more money to poor people even if they cannot possibly pay the loans back." To get this to happen, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created to back the mortgage loans with government guarantees.

Incorrect. That's almost exactly the opposite of what the CRA required. It specifically calls for banks to operate in a "safe and sound manner", which excludes your description.

The letter of the CRA law and how it was actually misused and abused to coerce banks into making loans they would never have traditionally made are two entirely different things. You are laboring under the misperception that DC politics and political power plays by powerful Congrespersons never corrupt how the law is applied. That's an incredibly naive perspective.

[.Morticia.]

Not a liberal at all. Liberalism is about sustaining this hell called capitalism.

There is no way people will live actualised lives until they move past materialism and all the oppressions that make capitalism possible.

Liberalism is a stain.

Indeed it is brother

[Boyle]

The Community Reinvestment Act, and everything that followed from it that resulted in the housing market meltdown that triggered this recession is the quintessential example of why such social-agenda redistributive regulation is improper, imprudent and dangerous.

The CRA did not cause the housing market crash. Predatory lending did, which the CRA was specifically designed to prevent. Specifically, it requires institutions to operate in a "safe and sound manner". Predatory lending is not safe nor sound for business. As well, lenders that were CRA bound contributed little to the crisis.

Hogwash. The CRA was a liberal Democrat program begun by Jimmy Carter intended to increase the level of home ownership in the US as part of a liberal Progressive social engineering program. The CRA specifically prohibited "redlining" which is a practice that banks and mortgage lenders had used for decades to deny home loans to applicants in poor communities because the banks saw such communities as having inordinately high risks of default and low levels of equity in the assets to protect the banks.

Right, it prohibit banks from denying loans based simply on the fact that people lived in low income areas, regardless of their specific risk level. Rather, the banks now had to deny loans based on individuals' risk level.

And if that's all it had actually done, there wouldn't be a problem. But once the CRA was in play, the regulatory pressure on banks to make toxic loans was enormous. It was Barney Frank who called the head of the Big Six in to a room and told them point blank that if they didn't loosen up their lending rules to allow more unqualified (poor) people to get loans, he would personally see to it that they were subjected to bank investigation after bank investigation by the SEC and the Fed. A bank investigation is a death-sentence for a bank, because even the fact that one has been opened destroys consumer confidence.

The CRA not only made redlining illegal, it required banks to "improve" their minority lending practices, which is Progressivespeak for "lend more money to poor people even if they cannot possibly pay the loans back." To get this to happen, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created to back the mortgage loans with government guarantees.

Incorrect. That's almost exactly the opposite of what the CRA required. It specifically calls for banks to operate in a "safe and sound manner", which excludes your description.

The letter of the CRA law and how it was actually misused and abused to coerce banks into making loans they would never have traditionally made are two entirely different things. You are laboring under the misperception that DC politics and political power plays by powerful Congrespersons never corrupt how the law is applied. That's an incredibly naive perspective.

But that's the thing; the banks covered by the CRA didn't contribute very much to the loans that led to the crisis (around 6% of the toxic loans were made by lenders held to the CRA). If you are saying, though, that the banks were illegally pressured, that is different. It wouldn't be terribly surprising that they were, but it would be terribly surprising that they went along with it instead of saying "Fuck you" and suing. From my reading, your problem isn't really with the CRA, it's with corruption.

[Seth]

From my reading, your problem isn't really with the CRA, it's with corruption.

You don't get it. The CRA IS corruption. Its entire purpose of existence is a Progressive manipulation of the banking and mortgage system that became more and more complex and corrupt over time, with it's provisions and threats of investigation being used by powerful Congresspersons to garner votes and play political power games.

It never had a legitimate purpose. "Redlining" was already illegal under federal anti-discrimination laws, and banks, and bank loan officers, could be criminally prosecuted for refusing loans to minority applicants without proper justification. That didn't sit well with Barney Frank and his cohorts because it was difficult to prosecute on a case-by-case basis. Carter wanted a massive government mandate to increase home ownership of the poor, and nobody who supported the CRA cared a whit about the banks or for that matter the poor people. They wanted it as a Progressive feather in their cap that they could trot out when election time came around.

Everything that followed was the direct result of the CRA. If it had not been enacted, the housing bubble would never have happened in the first place. That was caused by easy credit and a higher demand for bigger, more expensive houses. The path to disaster is byzantine in the extreme, what with credit default swaps, machinations at the Fed and the SEC, not to mention the FHA, Fannie and Freddie, but it's all founded in the objectives of the Progressives, through Carter, to put people who could never afford to buy a house into a house that they could not afford, as part of a political agenda.

[JimC]

Not a liberal at all. Liberalism is about sustaining this hell called capitalism.

There is no way people will live actualised lives until they move past materialism and all the oppressions that make capitalism possible.

Liberalism is a stain.

Absolutism strikes again. Various strands of liberalism are perfectly compatible with effective constraints on capitalism, and strong labour movements. With care and intelligence, it is possible to have much of the benefits of a free market, without a rapacious free for all...

Anyway, the decsion is not up to isolated intellectuals fantasising about perfect societies, it is about the cut and thrust of compromise politics in real life democracies. Within such democracies, I will be arguing for different paths than CES or Seth, but I will sure as hell join with them to tell absolutist revolutionaries where to go...

[Hermit]

I will be arguing for different paths than CES or Seth, but I will sure as hell join with them to tell absolutist revolutionaries where to go...

Sorry. Couldn't help myself.

In truth, I love how people turn right become more realistic become more middle-of-the-road are still capable of changing their mind as they age.

[sandinista]

I will be arguing for different paths than CES or Seth, but I will sure as hell join with them to tell absolutist revolutionaries where to go...

Now that's funny!

[JimC]

I will be arguing for different paths than CES or Seth, but I will sure as hell join with them to tell absolutist revolutionaries where to go...

Sorry. Couldn't help myself.

In truth, I love how people turn right become more realistic become more middle-of-the-road are still capable of changing their mind as they age.

Even then, I was more a fuck-it-all anarchistical drug fiend, who was reprimanded by Harry Van Moorst of SDS fame for smoking too much dope rather than planning the next demo...

But some of it still remains with me, and many of the companies and political movements that sandinista and others would detest now, I still do. I simply no longer believe that any form of marxist economic theory, or violent revolutionary movement has any place in working to make the country I live in a fairer place. Plenty of room still for lobbying, voting for minority parties, general political debate and peaceful protests.

[Ian]

I will be arguing for different paths than CES or Seth, but I will sure as hell join with them to tell absolutist revolutionaries where to go...

+1