Objectively intelligent.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Geoghehan's point is that there's a serious honesty to the current message ("Go to college like us") that is being heard loud and clear, and that's the problem. But anyway...

There are places that had better prospects than they ever will again, and neither the government nor cooperation can change that. Detroit is never going to make cars for the world like it once did. Rural Iowa is losing farm jobs, because rural communities all over the industrialized world have been losing farm jobs for decades and it's not changing. My grandfather grew up in a town in Wyoming that doesn't exist anymore. It's not coming back.

College will not save you. Grad school will not save you. The algorithms are terminators. If you’ve a mix of skills that require high education plus physical work with a great clientele (plastic surgeon), you’re safe. The rest of us are not. Even lawyers who go to court are going to be eliminated in the near future. The algorithms can’t get them directly, but the cost of court is so insane, nobody goes to trial anymore.

Society is splintering in many ways. I can’t point to all of them, but one I can see is rural poor folks being left behind. They can leave, as my immigrants forebears left Eastern Europe. Or they can stay and have limited but perhaps happy lives. I am advocating telling them, “We can’t help you. But we won’t hurt you. And your debts are cancelled, and we don’t expect taxes from you. Have a nice run in your off the grid lives. Or move and join us. But we’re not your enemies. We don’t want to tell you how to live. And we don’t want you to try to tell us how to live. We want to coexist and, if it’s best, leave you alone. You make the call.”

Allow the people who want to live outside the modern economy to do so. That seems to be what they desire. Let them have it. But if they want to move, welcome their effort to take a chance on bettering their lot.

Telling them to all go to college, and worse to get a STEM degree, which will land them in a glut, is a terrible idea. Better they go to trade schools. We’ll need plumbers. We won’t need people made obsolete by algorithms.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Society is splintering in many ways. I can’t point to all of them, but one I can see is rural poor folks being left behind. They can leave, as my immigrants forebears left Eastern Europe. Or they can stay and have limited but perhaps happy lives. I am advocating telling them, “We can’t help you. But we won’t hurt you. And your debts are cancelled, and we don’t expect taxes from you. Have a nice run in your off the grid lives. Or move and join us. But we’re not your enemies. We don’t want to tell you how to live. And we don’t want you to try to tell us how to live. We want to coexist and, if it’s best, leave you alone. You make the call.”

This rural-places-are-dying-and-cities-are-happening thing has been happening since forever. Dickens got several novels out of it. The American twist on it is to give each rural voter as many Senators as the City of Los Angeles, although this is not so new, either.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Well, I asked Sebby because I think he's more focused on the problem than anyone here, but tends to assume that any kind of political action is pointless.

If you want to talk about whether Dems are honest, fine. The person I hear pretending to bring back manufacturing jobs more than anyone else is Donald Trump. If Dems have a pathology here, it's the idea that retraining programs (and going to college, per that article) are going to solve the problem.

On the healthcare issue, attacking Dems as dishonest is totally weird to me. If you have been paying any attention over the last decade, which is sometimes unclear, you know that the Democratic Party is committed to using the government to extend healthcare coverage to pretty much everyone, and the Republican Party is opposed to that, as much for political reasons than out of some conviction that the free market does it better, and has opposed and sabotaged the ACA and lately has taken to lying about it quite a bit, although to be fair Trump lies about everything so maybe this isn't anything unusual. IIRC, you were bent out of shape because you thought the Democrats were being insufficiently candid about how far they would go to implement HCR, so it's a little odd to hear you complain that they were lying when they said they wanted to get it done.

In point of fact, improving the ACA is one of the things that the government can do to really help people who don't have a college degree, and if I were redesigning the party's priorities per that Geoghehan article, I would put HCR and the provision of social insurance at the center. Strengthen Social Security. Stop pretending that the government can bring good jobs to parts of the country that are losing them right now, and create a real safety and benefits to make sure that people don't fall so hard.

You’re still focusing on buying off the angry faction of the Trump Nation. These are all fine ideas for avoiding widespread homelessness and more opioid deaths. But opioid deaths aren’t really the problem. Our decreasing life expectancy among hopeless males isn’t the problem. Those are actually examples of a “social market economy” winnowing out the losers.

That’s harsh, but factual.

The real problem is the unemployable who aren’t dying any time soon. What do we do with them? I like UBI. But in that regard, I’m also buying them off.

The problem is they want meaning and dignity and many of them are not the brightest bulbs. I suggest trades, but I’m being unfair to tradespeople. A lot of these people can’t and won’t learn trades.

We’re being asked to find a way to give dignity and respect to a lot of people who haven’t seriously earned it. It strikes me a tad indulgent to narcissists. That’s why I think offering them their own little communities, detached from the rest, might work.

It’s a bizarre solution, but it’s a bizarre situation.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You’re still focusing on buying off the angry faction of the Trump Nation. These are all fine ideas for avoiding widespread homelessness and more opioid deaths. But opioid deaths aren’t really the problem. Our decreasing life expectancy among hopeless males isn’t the problem. Those are actually examples of a “social market economy” winnowing out the losers.

That’s harsh, but factual.

The real problem is the unemployable who aren’t dying any time soon. What do we do with them? I like UBI. But in that regard, I’m also buying them off.

The problem is they want meaning and dignity and many of them are not the brightest bulbs. I suggest trades, but I’m being unfair to tradespeople. A lot of these people can’t and won’t learn trades.

We’re being asked to find a way to give dignity and respect to a lot of people who haven’t seriously earned it. It strikes me a tad indulgent to narcissists. That’s why I think offering them their own little communities, detached from the rest, might work.

It’s a bizarre solution, but it’s a bizarre situation.

I'm not thinking about Trump voters. I'm thinking about my grandfather, who grew up on a farm in a Wyoming town that no longer exists, who never went to a day of college, and who made a life for himself and his children by learning a trade. He once told me that the only two institutions that had ever done anything for him were the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Democratic Party, although there were probably a few more (BPOE, e.g.). He's the kind of voter that Geoghehan piece speaks to. If a political party isn't going to help people like him, what good is it?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

This rural-places-are-dying-and-cities-are-happening thing has been happening since forever. Dickens got several novels out of it. The American twist on it is to give each rural voter as many Senators as the City of Los Angeles, although this is not so new, either.

A states’ rights advocate would argue this is the result of a too strong federal govt. In a more states’ rights’ oriented system, there wouldn’t be so much push to control one’s neighbors.

The down side of that is, of course, you’re neighboring state might decide it wants to jail women for having abortions. Hence the need for a robust fed govt to keep the crazy states in check.

Ya can’t win. The founders tried admirably, but it all rested on good faith. We’ve none of that since Gingrich.

That fat little fuck hacked the whole thing and infected it with a fatal virus. Amazing. Thankfully, history will nevertheless ignore him.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I'm not thinking about Trump voters. I'm thinking about my grandfather, who grew up on a farm in a Wyoming town that no longer exists, who never went to a day of college, and who made a life for himself and his children by learning a trade. He once told me that the only two institutions that had ever done anything for him were the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Democratic Party, although there were probably a few more (BPOE, e.g.). He's the kind of voter that Geoghehan piece speaks to. If a political party isn't going to help people like him, what good is it?

My grandfather was a swing voter. He was a consummate moderate. He wanted a good deal for himself, but wanted to keep everyone else in solid shape (owned businesses reliant on local consumers). If everybody had a few bucks, they cycled back to the merchants (Henry Ford theory).

I don’t think he’d have a candidate in the last few elections. He was anti-war (but a veteran), and detested bullshit. Never vote for Trump.

I don’t think anyone speaks to your grandfather or mine anymore because they were people existing at a time when politics mattered and politicians were connected to demographics rather than special interests.

They were also fucking normal. Pre-24/7-news-and-internet people could disagree and do the Reagan/O’Neill dance until they found a middle ground.

They’ve been forgotten because the Blight Generation - the Boomers - has poisoned everything. And Gingrich has destroyed politics.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

A states’ rights advocate would argue this is the result of a too strong federal govt. In a more states’ rights’ oriented system, there wouldn’t be so much push to control one’s neighbors.

The down side of that is, of course, you’re neighboring state might decide it wants to jail women for having abortions. Hence the need for a robust fed govt to keep the crazy states in check.

Ya can’t win. The founders tried admirably, but it all rested on good faith. We’ve none of that since Gingrich.

That fat little fuck hacked the whole thing and infected it with a fatal virus. Amazing. Thankfully, history will nevertheless ignore him.

Dickens is English, and the hollowing out of rural areas is the result of economic changes that have been going on for centuries. An awesome book about this that no one has read is Jorwert, about a Friesian village that has been losing population for decades. You can tell the same story about many places in the US.

I don't think a strong or weak federal government has anything to do with it. That's more a story about race.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

My grandfather was a swing voter. He was a consummate moderate. He wanted a good deal for himself, but wanted to keep everyone else in solid shape (owned businesses reliant on local consumers). If everybody had a few bucks, they cycled back to the merchants (Henry Ford theory).

I don’t think he’d have a candidate in the last few elections. He was anti-war (but a veteran), and detested bullshit. Never vote for Trump.

I don’t think anyone speaks to your grandfather or mine anymore because they were people existing at a time when politics mattered and politicians were connected to demographics rather than special interests.

They were also fucking normal. Pre-24/7-news-and-internet people could disagree and do the Reagan/O’Neill dance until they found a middle ground.

They’ve been forgotten because the Blight Generation - the Boomers - has poisoned everything. And Gingrich has destroyed politics.

Democrats spoke to older whites by defending Social Security and Medicare. Republicans speak to them by promising to cut other people's benefits, but not theirs, and by playing to racial and cultural resentments. My grandfather wasn't long on resentment.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

A toddler who is over tired but doesn't want to sleep sometimes also wants to kill you. Or at least behaves that way.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

What does "A bubble is a bubble" mean? That any time anything is called a bubble, people within it are absolved from responsibility for failing to see that it was a bubble? You cannot be asserting that bubbles are impossible to see while they are occurring. Again, as Charles Prince, head of Citi in the mortgage bubble, noted -- when the music's playing, you have to dance. He was a rather lousy executive and even he admitted knowing he was in a bubble. His defense was, "When everyone else is making cash on the bubble, you have to do the same."

I'm conflating MBS with the housing market because they are inextricably interwoven.



No one thought the r/e market could drop? People were saying it for years before 2008. And for fiance professionals who I'd assume have some schooling in probabilities, the argument that it could not drop because it had never dropped before is amazing. That a thing goes one way for an amazingly long period of time can be proof that it will continue to do so. But there's an even greater probability that its long overdue for an adjustment.

Why would housing, on the heels of a dotcom bust, and following so many jobless recoveries, be a unique market, immune to downturns? Because it never happened before is a really scary answer for a finance professional to have offered. But I agree with you that many indeed did think that, which is nuts.



I wasn't asserting that the MBS should have been marked down to its lowest value (when the downturn was at its worst). I was asserting that during the run-up, the credit risk of the mortgages which justified the value of the MBS was not accurate. It was in fact fraudulently or incompetently rated far better than it was.

Adder's suggestion that the MBS's valuation pre-collapse was close to accurate is just wrong. The middle and lower tier credit risks were lousy. The people who bought the middle tier stuff were either dumb, defrauded, cynical, or all three.



IBGYBG. Herding. Thinking they were going to win at a game of musical chairs. There are loads of reasons people suspend disbelief or just keep doing as they've been doing in bubbles.

It's way easier to just go with the flow and mint another bonus than it is to pull a Michael Burry or John Paulson style mother-of-all-shorts.

Whatever.

TM

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Adder's suggestion that the MBS's valuation pre-collapse was close to accurate is just wrong.

At this point, I'm just going to assume you're illiterate.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Adder

At this point, I'm just going to assume you're illiterate.

Adder, adder, adder.

You have a target-rich environment and you choose that one?

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Adder, adder, adder.

You have a target-rich environment and you choose that one?

I didn't really read the rest. Were there better ones?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Adder

At this point, I'm just going to assume you're illiterate.

When shit was collapsing I actually found this Board of value for once. Some socks here seemed to actually work in the area. Like T seemed to know stuff? Do/did anyone here actually have real world knowledge?

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

When shit was collapsing I actually found this Board of value for once. Some socks here seemed to actually work in the area. Like T seemed to know stuff? Do/did anyone here actually have real world knowledge?

I did not work on any MBS deals (or other structured products), but I had colleagues who did (mostly GSE stuff, but nonetheless, some of them could claim to be "inventors" of some of these things). I did not work on the defense of any of the financial institutions after the crash, but I had colleagues who did. I did not work on any of the premerger notification or competition aspects of any of the government-brokered financial system combinations or restructuring of any auto-makers, but I had colleagues who did.

I definitely went to cocktail parties with all of the above.

ETA: And I had a lawyer's level understanding of the accounting rules around the accounting for fixed-income securities (some, but not as much, for derivatives) from participating in an "independent" investigation of a GSE in the prior round of scandals, although my memory says the rules had changed some in between.