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May 4th, 2009 07:00 PM
kahljorn thats right i remember thinking that he SUCKED the life out of the economy

HE DAMMED IT UP
May 4th, 2009 05:23 AM
Colonel Flagg Herbert Hoover
May 4th, 2009 02:00 AM
kahljorn I read somewhere recently that part of the reason the first depression got so bad was because the president at the time, I think it was woodrow wilson, chose not to put any more money into the economy and just stopped spending ;\
Apr 30th, 2009 10:54 AM
Dimnos
Quote:
Originally Posted by birdshine View Post
I hate to say it but this is kind of a moot point because no one wants to buy up these companies. These toxic assets and credit swaps are total trash they have negative values they're completely unusable. When these companies fail, no one benefits. No one gets goods for cheap and turns it around, no one picks up valuable assets, it just leaves a giant hole in the economy where there used to be money spent and it scares everyone it doesn't touch because its happened to people they thought would never fail so they dont think anyone can pay them back. This government is buying up these toxic assets so the companies can exist to pay off their debts. Hell, we let Lehman Brothers fall and it was a huge catastrphy. It immediately killed AIG and other business. No one wanted to buy their crappy "assets" so the government ended up giving them 2 dollars a share. The problem is these people fucked up so bad there is no way of profiting on it, only minimizing the damage. The Free Market could not possibly heal this wound without us entering another depression.

The Government isnt going to continue to run these business forever giving them the edge over competition they're going to hold on to these shares until theyre worth something again and then sell them back to the private sector.
Lehman Brothers made their own grave. First by handing out so many subprime loans, then when those loans started to bite them in the ass they chose NOT to sell of portions of their company. Lehman Brothers were made offers from different companies all over the world for portions of their company but they chose not to sell or in some cases stalled so long that the offers were retracted. Then when in the face of bankruptcy it was suggested to them that they cut back on the multi-million dollar bonuses they were paying to their executives, they opted not to do this and effectively drove the nails into their own coffin. After Lehman Brothers filled for bankruptcy people lost confidence in similar companies, as they should, and AIG stock went down. In the world of capitalism you take risks and you find yourself with either a gain or a loss. They tried to manipulate the system and lost. You cant start crying when things dont go your way. Now... AIG got a bailout, why not Lehman Brothers? Do we just not care that much about them? Do we just not have the money to bail them out? Or do we just not want to? What makes AIG so special that they get a hand out for the same bad business practices?
Apr 29th, 2009 06:58 PM
Colonel Flagg
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tadao View Post
Hahaha Flagg it's the Family Guy where Clinton gets 4 huge women in his limo (after judging a cankle contest) and turn off the air conditioning to have a contest to see who gets a bead of sweat race to thier buttcrack first.

Family Guy did an awesome job of their portrayal of him.
AWESOME!!!
Apr 29th, 2009 06:03 PM
birdshine
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dimnos View Post
Yes keeping the money circulating is going to help the economy; but giving an ass ton of money out of peoples pockets to a bunch of ass pipes with zero fiscal responsibility is just irresponsible. Big companies with a lot of debt go under, get chopped up and then the pieces get bought up by smaller companies every day. Its what makes the world of capitalism go 'round. Sometimes these big companies can sell off small pieces of their company to actually make enough money to get out of debt and survive on their own. In some cases the "parent" company bounces back so well they are then able to buy back the portions of their company they had to sell off. While they are not the only ones to do so, the phone companies do this all the time. As far as these companies causing a domino effect had they gone down... maybe, maybe not. In the business world their are winners and losers. If you make good business decisions you succeed. If you make bad business decisions you fail. And what about their competitors? The ones who did practice good business and succeeded in keeping their companies afloat. They now have to compete with basically the government. How are they expected to survive? They have to go down and get shit canned because they acted responsibly with their companies and resources and didnt need the government to step in on their behalf? Basically we are punishing hard work and rewarding irresponsibility. Executives who managed responsibly begin to ask "Why the hell bother" and turn to corrupt and bad business practices themselves. If we are not going to allow companies to fail, and are going to bail them out with money from our own pockets, we should require their shareholders vote out current executives and vote in new ones. If for no other reason than to send a message that bad business practices will not be tolerated.

Health care reform is something that need to be looked at. We should have spent that $800 billion on that.
I hate to say it but this is kind of a moot point because no one wants to buy up these companies. These toxic assets and credit swaps are total trash they have negative values they're completely unusable. When these companies fail, no one benefits. No one gets goods for cheap and turns it around, no one picks up valuable assets, it just leaves a giant hole in the economy where there used to be money spent and it scares everyone it doesn't touch because its happened to people they thought would never fail so they dont think anyone can pay them back. This government is buying up these toxic assets so the companies can exist to pay off their debts. Hell, we let Lehman Brothers fall and it was a huge catastrphy. It immediately killed AIG and other business. No one wanted to buy their crappy "assets" so the government ended up giving them 2 dollars a share. The problem is these people fucked up so bad there is no way of profiting on it, only minimizing the damage. The Free Market could not possibly heal this wound without us entering another depression.

The Government isnt going to continue to run these business forever giving them the edge over competition they're going to hold on to these shares until theyre worth something again and then sell them back to the private sector.
Apr 29th, 2009 03:44 PM
Tadao Hahaha Flagg it's the Family Guy where Clinton gets 4 huge women in his limo (after judging a cankle contest) and turn off the air conditioning to have a contest to see who gets a bead of sweat race to thier buttcrack first.

Family Guy did an awesome job of their portrayal of him.
Apr 29th, 2009 03:37 PM
Colonel Flagg I wish I could see it damned firewall.
Apr 29th, 2009 03:08 PM
Tadao Hahaha Dimnos, after I sent that I was thinking about that scene.
Apr 29th, 2009 03:06 PM
Colonel Flagg I'd bet in the smoke-filled rooms surrounding the halls of Congress there were plenty of "Atta Guy!"'s, especially considering the penchant many Representatives and Senators have fof congressional pages.
Apr 29th, 2009 03:05 PM
Dimnos
Apr 29th, 2009 02:52 PM
Tadao Dude, he totally made biggums feel like they were on par with Marilyn Monroe.
Apr 29th, 2009 02:46 PM
Dimnos Fat girls need love too.
Apr 29th, 2009 02:45 PM
Dimnos Yes keeping the money circulating is going to help the economy; but giving an ass ton of money out of peoples pockets to a bunch of ass pipes with zero fiscal responsibility is just irresponsible. Big companies with a lot of debt go under, get chopped up and then the pieces get bought up by smaller companies every day. Its what makes the world of capitalism go 'round. Sometimes these big companies can sell off small pieces of their company to actually make enough money to get out of debt and survive on their own. In some cases the "parent" company bounces back so well they are then able to buy back the portions of their company they had to sell off. While they are not the only ones to do so, the phone companies do this all the time. As far as these companies causing a domino effect had they gone down... maybe, maybe not. In the business world their are winners and losers. If you make good business decisions you succeed. If you make bad business decisions you fail. And what about their competitors? The ones who did practice good business and succeeded in keeping their companies afloat. They now have to compete with basically the government. How are they expected to survive? They have to go down and get shit canned because they acted responsibly with their companies and resources and didnt need the government to step in on their behalf? Basically we are punishing hard work and rewarding irresponsibility. Executives who managed responsibly begin to ask "Why the hell bother" and turn to corrupt and bad business practices themselves. If we are not going to allow companies to fail, and are going to bail them out with money from our own pockets, we should require their shareholders vote out current executives and vote in new ones. If for no other reason than to send a message that bad business practices will not be tolerated.

Health care reform is something that need to be looked at. We should have spent that $800 billion on that.
Apr 29th, 2009 02:07 PM
Tadao He made fatties feel good about themselves.
Apr 29th, 2009 02:01 PM
Dimnos
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tadao View Post
A stupid blow job and everyone seems to forget what Clinton did.
Paula Jones?
Apr 29th, 2009 01:50 PM
birdshine No I recognize Clinton left us with a surplus but it doesn't matter now because Dubya pissed it away.
Apr 29th, 2009 01:22 PM
Tadao
Quote:
Originally Posted by birdshine View Post
we just finally have a president who realizes you have to pay for all of that eventually.
A stupid blow job and everyone seems to forget what Clinton did.
Apr 29th, 2009 12:08 PM
birdshine I would love to see this companies burn but I don't know if its realistic. The systemic risk is so large that if these business went bankrupt and were unable to pay off their debts then hundreds of other business would go bankrupt and be unable to pay off their debts and that cycle continues. Meanwhile the people that do have money to give loans are not going to give loans because they don't think any ones going to be able to pay them back. Ideologically, as a capitalist, I'd love to say just let them fell but if you do that everything is just going to fall down around our ears and if the economy has a complete fallout like that we have no chance in hell paying off our deficit, millions of people would be out of work and international markets would also crumble.

When the Economy is in recession there isn't less money. There is the same amount of money its just not circulating because everyone is scared to spend it because they're afraid they're going to lose their job or their house. Spending your way out of a recession is exactly what you need to be because you need to get all of that money circulating again so you need to make it "okay." The classic example of this is the New Deal. I know, I know, the popular thing to say now is its not the New Deal that killed hte depression it was WW2 but the reason why WW2 ended the depression was for that same reason - a huge spike in federal spending. We just spent it on weapons and not highways. Also all of Western Europes production abilities were demolished leaving us a huge gap to fill but I doubt we're going to start bombing Europe to get out of this one.

I hold by what I said about spending money on health care reform saving us money in the long term because if we leave health care the way it is the expense will continue to explode. Whether you like social security, medicare, or medicade is a moot point. The government now has an obligation to pay it out and they will. If we keep the healthcare system we have now pretty soon we won't have any money for Defense, Education, or anything other then Medicare and Medicade and we'll be fucked. No one thought long term when we were writing and signing these bills but we need to start now.

e: Don't take the comic too seriously, its a comic and there are plenty of people crying socialism because of taxes. Taxed Enough Already? Obviously not considering the size of our debt.
Apr 29th, 2009 11:57 AM
Dimnos Ok... First, your cartoon is full of shit. People are not crying socialism because of his tax rates. People are crying socialism because the federal bailouts are a direct contradiction of capitalism. You make poor business decisions and run your company into the ground, your company goes under or gets bought out.

Second, our spending has been a bit ridiculous, to say the least, for a while. But to claim that we finally have a president who realizes this is moronic. Here we are in more debt than ever and the man approves an $800 billion plus spending package. "We are in debt, lets spend more!" How many times has this worked for anyone?

Third, I hardly consider libraries, police and fire services socialist programs. These are civic programs that may or may not be provided for by any government. Social security on the other had is a failing institution paying money to people who didnt pay into it. If I had the choice I would quit paying for it this very second. Anyone under the age of 50 who says otherwise is a fool.

Fourth, points you try to make in your first and third paragraph contradict each other. Either you believe Obama grasps our economic situation or he doesnt. Which is it?
Apr 29th, 2009 02:10 AM
birdshine

I think that comic is pretty funny. I find the talk of socialism pretty wild for two reasons. One is that we've been increasing our spending dramatically for the past 8 years, we just finally have a president who realizes you have to pay for all of that eventually. Health care reform, while expensive now, is actually going to lead to huge fiscal benefits. If health care continue to become more expensive at the rate it has been (which it will if we do nothing) pretty soon we'll spent more on Medicare and Medicaid then the national GDP. We've got to do something now or else that problem is going to explode.

The second reason is this general fear of socialism, why? Don't we all love our socialist programs? Libraries, police stations, fire stations, social security, medicare, medicaid? Aren't these things massively popular? So we do we still go "eek, socialism!"

I think this bailout is kind of ridiculous. It breaks my heart because we're already hugely in debt and I thought Obama might actually come to the budget with a realistic attitude, especially because we're sending the money to people who made their own troubles Unfortunately we live in such a culture that every one of these business owes money to everyone else and if they go bankrupt everyone goes bankrupt, then good luck trying to pay off the deficit George Bush left us with

Its a sad state of affairs.
Mar 30th, 2009 02:13 PM
Dimnos
Quote:
Originally Posted by kahljorn View Post
As for what you said, Dimnos: yea. But i would point out that if the guberment steps in it probably wouldn't mean: A) they don't have to pay taxes and B) they'll be more profitable or provide higher quality service to the point that competing companies won't be able to compete with them.
Thats exactly what Im saying. Companies (that had bad business practices) get taken over by the government and dont have to pay taxes and become more profitable while other companies (that had good business practices) still have to pay taxes and now have to compete with a government run company. They (the good companies) cant compete with that and get ruined for doing to right thing all along? Its like deciding to clear a train wreck up by ramming it with another train.
Mar 27th, 2009 10:40 PM
ZeldaQueen
Quote:
Originally Posted by VaporTrailx1 View Post
Why don't we just have the goverment start a series of factories across the country. These factories will produce toothpicks. And the goal is merely to constantly build toothpicks. forever. This way we will have jobs for everyone. Maybe we can build a giant something out of toothpicks which will produce more work. and then people will pay to see the giant toothpick structure. That's how you stimulate the fucking economy.
Yay for Lewis Black. He should advise the government once in a while.
Mar 27th, 2009 06:03 PM
Tadao It's a fucking start, because sitting around bitching sure as hell aint fucking working.
Mar 27th, 2009 05:57 PM
VaporTrailx1 Why don't we just have the goverment start a series of factories across the country. These factories will produce toothpicks. And the goal is merely to constantly build toothpicks. forever. This way we will have jobs for everyone. Maybe we can build a giant something out of toothpicks which will produce more work. and then people will pay to see the giant toothpick structure. That's how you stimulate the fucking economy.
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