Post by Atrahasis on Sept 17, 2008 4:37:01 GMT -5
Financial meltdown? Another Great Depression? Going to get worse? Markets on the verge of collapse? Pensions and savings evaporating?
All because of bad debt due to lack of regulatory controls, or in other words lack of big brother looking after things. Now I do realize the importance of the ideas of "the land of the free" and "keeping government small" and "out of our lives"...But doesn't that basically make the American financial market like the Wild West, which was eventually tamed, or supplanted, by the infinitely better thing we call civilization and law and order?
We need law and order and transparency...hallmarks of any advanced and peaceful civilization, and you do need a government run by the people to make sure it all doesn't go to hell. But all of this is "duh"...So what was the problem? Did America miss a step along the way somehow or what?
I believe equilibrium comes about when two forces strike a balance, and that maintaining this equilibrium should be the job of anybody trying to manage anything, be it a family or a government, or even how one divides oneself up between different areas of one's life. Was America so out of whack and skewed towards one side for so long that the meltdown had no choice but to eventually happen? Was it that a noble idea was overblown and misused to a greater scale and a longer time than it should have been?
Hey, getting money from the bank to achieve your "American Dream" of owning your own home and two cars is great, but giving that dream away like it was candy and not treating it as something precious (and on such a large scale) was something that SOMEBODY should have known not to do.
I wanna know where were the smart people on this one? America has to be the brain capital of the world when it comes to professionals. Just where the heck were they?
All because of bad debt due to lack of regulatory controls, or in other words lack of big brother looking after things. Now I do realize the importance of the ideas of "the land of the free" and "keeping government small" and "out of our lives"...But doesn't that basically make the American financial market like the Wild West, which was eventually tamed, or supplanted, by the infinitely better thing we call civilization and law and order?
We need law and order and transparency...hallmarks of any advanced and peaceful civilization, and you do need a government run by the people to make sure it all doesn't go to hell. But all of this is "duh"...So what was the problem? Did America miss a step along the way somehow or what?
I believe equilibrium comes about when two forces strike a balance, and that maintaining this equilibrium should be the job of anybody trying to manage anything, be it a family or a government, or even how one divides oneself up between different areas of one's life. Was America so out of whack and skewed towards one side for so long that the meltdown had no choice but to eventually happen? Was it that a noble idea was overblown and misused to a greater scale and a longer time than it should have been?
Hey, getting money from the bank to achieve your "American Dream" of owning your own home and two cars is great, but giving that dream away like it was candy and not treating it as something precious (and on such a large scale) was something that SOMEBODY should have known not to do.
I wanna know where were the smart people on this one? America has to be the brain capital of the world when it comes to professionals. Just where the heck were they?
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