Pepper sprayed for public safety.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

For starters:

1. Allow bkcy modifications of primary residence mortgages;
2. Allow bkcy discharge of student loan debt to 50% of face;
3. Expand HARP to cover all underwater homeowners with closing costs capped at $1000;
4. Reduce bankruptcy refiling bar from 7 to 5 years.

5. More vibrancy.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Do you love me?

Will you love me forever.

I just wanted to share that brainworm you induced, Ty.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Adder

I had a period where I was. I do not like Obama's record on the War on Drugs, on drone strikes, on indefinite detention and I don't think he's done enough for the economy and hasn't pushed the fed enough.

I think Romney has the potential to do more for the economy and on pushing the Fed by virtue of reducing the heckler's veto from the hard-money economic fringe of the Republican party. I fully expect that a Romney administration would open both the fiscal (i.e., military and other handouts) and monetary spigots.

But (1) the fiscal spending will be exactly in the wrong places and done via costly trade offs, especially for social security, (2) I can't accept the rest of the crap that an unconstrained Republican government would do, and (3) Romney will be as bad or worse on the police state issues.

If I thought the Dems would take both houses of congress, I might be more open to it, but that isn't going to happen, while the opposite might.

I'm with you 98%. The 2% is that I'm less troubled by the drone strikes, though that may be because I see them as a cool add-on to the next version of Call of Duty-Modern Warfare.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Will you love me forever.

I just wanted to share that brainworm you induced, Ty.

Ty has the brainworm, I have the brainworm. It appears that Adder does not, but two out of three ain't bad.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

Ty has the brainworm, I have the brainworm. It appears that Adder does not, but two out of three ain't bad.

I do, but I am trying not to reinforce it.

[Hank Chinaski]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012...policy-change/

just wow! is it possible Obama has bet heavy on Mitt winning and is trying to lock the $$$$ to be won by losing the race intentionally?

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012...policy-change/

just wow! is it possible Obama has bet heavy on Mitt winning and is trying to lock the $$$$ to be won by losing the race intentionally?

How much would you like to wager on the outcome of the election? I'll take Obama. You can have Romney.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

But now we have to make economic policy for everyone because Grandma's a shitty investor? No thanks.

Newsflash: That's what we've been doing all along. We've been attempting to carry those with less working years left at cost to those with many.

Huh? The cost to youth and workers, who are more likely to be workers than savers, is in persisting with low inflation and low growth.

The cost to them is a lack of jobs occasioned by the fact that no one believes the current status quo can persist - that when interventions (stimulus, twist, QE) finally end, so does the economy.

The best we can get with blunt monetary policy is growing NGDP. Some of that will be real growth, some of that will be inflation. As we have no policy tool that allows us to separate the two, we can do what we can do.

We do have that policy tool. We can give debtors the tools to force investors to write down more debt, freeing discretionary income. Alternatively, we could simply refuse any more easing, which would force investors to cut more deals with debtors, which frees up discretionary income. Remove the Bernanke Put and investors will become fearful, and when they become fearful, they negotiate with less leverage. The debtor class has no choice but to spend, so every dollar they lose in a negotiation is a dollar that goes into consumption, rather than debt repayment. Which is, of course, what I think we should be trying to achieve. Less debt repayment, more consumption. Sure, it's nuts. But it's necessary.

But growing NDGP means growing income which means lessening relative debt burden and more nominal spending.

Income from what? There are no jobs being created. And what are tend to be low pay service sector shit jobs.

On top of that, which bank agrees? The servicer? The one who sponsored the MBS? The many who hold the MBSs? The one who sponsored the CDO that included the MBS? The holder of those CDOs?

Servicers have broad latitude to cut deals on behalf of the investors. They don't like doing so because they're all owned by the big banks, which usually held 15% of the paper. Also, the servicers get monthly fees for managing the loans through loss mitigation and litigation.

Okay then, but I don't follow why you keep saying the things they said about how everything will right itself if only we go through enough pain/prices fall enough.

Kills uncertainty. Right now, everyone's waiting for the other shoe to drop. Let the fucking thing fall already.

Now you're going Austrian? To fight them endlessly with monetary policy is to help solve them.

I agree with Keynesian responses up front. But after a thing's been tried from several different angles without success, you have to start considering the definition of insanity (same thing over and over, expecting a different result).

Your approach is to make the current hole deeper. Granted, you believe that will make it shorter and I think it will make it longer, but nonetheless, your position is that we should make things worse so they can get better.

No. I'm saying let it go for a while, and see if after it gets worse, it doesn't get better, which I think it should. If that doesn't happen, turn the printing presses on again.

Yes, that worked so well in the Great Depression.

WWII got us out of the GD. If we hadn't had that, FDR's policies would have taken us through a see saw of downs and ups with tepid growth.

The problem with Hayek in times like these is that interest rates cannot fall to the market clearing level because they are already at zero. That's why Hayek disciples, in this situation, should actually be calling for more inflation. The resulting negative real interest rates are how you make the market for loanable funds clear.

That would have happened already. The market in, say, housing can't clear because even if there were equilibrium between credit demand and availability, there is an absence of qualified creditors.

Businesses invest via credit.

So it's "job creators" who'll spur a recovery?

I like all of those as ways to help people who are in trouble.

None of them should be expected to be particularly stimulative. To the extent it means more spending elsewhere, it's directly at the expense of the investors holding the mortgage and the housing industry (not to mention the other homeowners whose home values will drop yet further).

Sure it will be. Moral hazard's a dike. Crack it with a little bit of debt forgiveness and we'll be talking widespread jubilee soon enough. All the cash funneled to paying down debt will go into consumption, which is what we need to spur to heal ourselves. (I know this sounds twisted. I am picking a side, and oddly, it's not my own. I'm saying steal from investors and put the money into commercial, consumer circulation. As we heal, the rising tide of economic activity will lift the investors back up. But you have to start at the bottom first.)

First and foremost, macroeconomics is not a morality play, and enforcing moral judgment doesn't help. All of the big banks deserved to go under back in 2008. We don't allow that because the outcome of enforcing those just desserts is 1929 (or any of the bank panics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries).

There's no morality here. It's just smarter to put more dollars in the consumers' hands, as we've seen propping investors doesn't get the job done.

I don't know what you mean by current rally. Stock prices are basically where they were a decade ago. That's not a rally, that's a lost decade.

I was considering offering all sorts of cherry-picked timelines in response, but I'll leave it at this: Don't be annoying. You know what I'm talking about.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Kills uncertainty. Right now, everyone's waiting for the other shoe to drop. Let the fucking thing fall already.

I'm going to be brief because there isn't much new to say, except that your theory that people will be able to spend more if we just make everyone poorer was conclusively proved wrong by the Great Depression.

No. I'm saying let it go for a while, and see if after it gets worse, it doesn't get better, which I think it should. If that doesn't happen, turn the printing presses on again.

The problem is that there is exactly zero reason to expect it to get better.

WWII got us out of the GD. If we hadn't had that, FDR's policies would have taken us through a see saw of downs and ups with tepid growth.

There is a vast amount of scholarship on the Depression and in particular about how going off the gold standard and letting the dollar float and other expansionary monetary policies were working until the Fed improvidently reversed them by raising rates in 1937.

But yes, ultimately WWII is what it took to end the Depression, in the midst of the fiscal and monetary policies mistakes that have been well documents.

But you realize, right, that WWII was just a massive, debt-financed binge of government spending? If you say that it's what ended the Depression, you are telling an explicitly Keynesian (paleo and not even New Keynesian) story.

What's so frustrating about you is that you say so many things that make perfect sense, and then you mess them with nonsense spewed by the pop-culture financial press. Or you say things that make no sense and then render it irrelevant by reaching the right conclusion.

That would have happened already.

Huh? How, with the Fed policing inflation higher than 2%, would inflation have driven real interest rates sufficiently negative for the market in loanable funds to clear?

The market in, say, housing can't clear because even if there were equilibrium between credit demand and availability, there is an absence of qualified creditors.

This is finance. There is no such thing as "qualified creditors." There is "qualified creditors at market prices." Get rates to the right levels and there are enough qualified creditors. Given the choice between losing money on holding reserves via inflation and lending at positive interest rates, banks will find lenders they want to give money to.

So it's "job creators" who'll spur a recovery?

Work on your reading comprehension. Credit markets matter. That has nothing to do with "job creators" as a privileged class of individuals.

I was considering offering all sorts of cherry-picked timelines in response, but I'll leave it at this: Don't be annoying. You know what I'm talking about.

There was nothing cherry picked about the timeline. Pick whatever timeline you like, and we aren't in a rally of any significance. So, no, I don't know what you are talking about.

Btw, why didn't the beginning of 2009 inspire the "vulture rally" (a meaningless term), you're sure is just around the corner if only we let things get worse?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Adder

I'm going to be brief

did anyone reading this believe him at this point?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Adder

Work on your reading comprehension. Credit markets matter. That has nothing to do with "job creators" as a privileged class of individuals.

Hitler finally turned Germany around in the 30s by building roads, then he declared a type of people as being the root of all evil, then he put those people in camps. In the last few years you all have built the roads, declared Rs/Tea partiers as the root of all problems we have. Now you just near the triumph of the will to take the next steps.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Hitler finally turned Germany around in the 30s by building roads, then he declared a type of people as being the root of all evil, then he put those people in camps. In the last few years you all have built the roads, declared Rs/Tea partiers as the root of all problems we have. Now you just near the triumph of the will to take the next steps.

Hank, when they come for you I promise to speak up.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

did anyone reading this believe him at this point?

OK, this one is a win.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Hitler finally turned Germany around in the 30s by building roads, then he declared a type of people as being the root of all evil, then he put those people in camps. In the last few years you all have built the roads, declared Rs/Tea partiers as the root of all problems we have. Now you just near the triumph of the will to take the next steps.

Immediately followed by a concession speech. You ARE a republican.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Immediately followed by a concession speech. You ARE a republican.

not to be a timmy, but I believe I can call others Hitler, godwin's law applies only to the person you're arguing with.