Bitcoin Forum

I recommend watching Inside Job : http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/

it's a nice documentary about the 2008 financial crisis.

Good side: it explains well how the crisis was unavoidable and why the financial market is defective by design.

Bad side: a good part of the movie is more sensationalism, taking a lot of time to underline that people in the financial sector spend their money in drug, whores and expensive yachts. (how they spend their money is, IMHO, completely irrelevant, the interesting question is how they earn that money)

Financial markets, or any market for that matter are not defective by design. What caused the entire crisis was government intervention in the market. Low interest rates across the board in the US, and EU for far too long, the entire Euro, penalising institutions that lent responsibly, and banks being able to lend money they did not actually have.

This was the foundation that speculators around the world build on.

The entire thing was made worse when the actual crisis came, again by government intervention. Instead of all the institutions that had bet wrong going out of business, like a normal market, the government intervened, taking capital from the winning, productive part of the economy, and gave it as life support to the failing, non-productive parts.

It is government action that is attempting to correct the markets (correct and rational) behaviour. And it is the government that is taxing ordinary people (Ireland, UK,US) to pay for it.

I'm so happy that bitcoin is taking the money out of the governments hands, stpooing them from ever doing this with bitcoin.

What Nefario was getting at in short is that this movie is a blatant misdirection of blame from the actual cause of the problem to merely the symptoms of the problem and to top it off it provides a wrong or non solution. Text book definition of a controlled opposition if you ask me.  ::)

What he said.

Any mainstream documentary on financial issues is going to be such.

Yeah, I started watching that movie.  "Iceland was doing just fine.....UNTIL they decided to deregulate their banking system.  Then the dirty capitalists took over and turned everything to shit.  Guess they should have had more regulation and government intervention, shouldn't they?"

Then I stopped.

So what's your analysis of the situation Iceland got into? Too much regulation? Too much government intervention? I'd love to hear it since you can dismiss this documentary in less than 5 minutes.

So since a conclusion that was reached disagreed with a conclusion you, yourself had come up with, it is suddenly bunk? We're you this obtuse when you found out Santa Claus was not real as well?

Q: What is the difference between someone who believes in the power of capitalism or the "free market" to be fair and good and any other Religious zealot?

A: Nothing

I usually take the time to review the facts before making up my mind. I listen to arguments by people with a different opinion than me because they generally have a good understanding of things from their perspective. That's how we learn. That's how you get a nuanced picture. Not by immediately dismissing something that doesn't agree with your philosophy.

How about you?
Since Iceland is worse off today than before, what's the reason for this? The reason given in the film was dismissed in less than 5 minutes, so what's the reason then? If you know that the reason given was bunk, then give another.

Watch that part again: clients were having the prostitutes charge the finance companies they worked at, rather than pay for it out of their personal pocket.

Money that, might I add, was basically stolen out of investor's pockets.

So congrats, your grandmothers' 401ks were used to pay for hookers for rich healthy people while your grandmother can't retire anymore and must take on debts for her medical bills.

Wow, this was a while ago.  You are right, I should have given it a fair hearing.  I must have been in a bad mood or something.  A friend recently recommended this documentary to me.  I will go back and give it a fair watch and evaluate the facts and arguments it makes.  I don't have any theories about what happened to Iceland at this point.  I don't know what happened.

There's always a staggering amount of money lost in illegal activities, but is it really so big that it can cause a crisis? I'm neither an economist nor a police investigator, but the accusation "they stole the money and spent it on drugs and whores" sounds more like sensationalism to get a viewer angry then a real reason for the crisis

So, when you watch a documentary that explains what happened there,  you stop watching after 5 minutes because you dont like what its saying and assume it to be wrong despite not having a clue?

As for "too much regulation" and "government intervention" mantra's; please, dont confuse them. Government intervention as in bail outs or other market distorting actions are bad. But a free market needs regulation, regulation is not evil its a dire necessity.  Its not regulation that caused this crisis, if anything its a lack of good (and enforced) regulation.

You're only 9 months late criticizing me on this.  JeffK and JA37 were only 8, so they have you beat.  Did you not read my post?

Here it is again:


I was wrong to dismiss the documentary without watching the whole thing.  I was in a bad mood when I watched it and didn't like the stereotyped view it seemed to be promoting from the outset.  Regardless, I should have given it a full hearing.  Also, I should not have posted on the forum about it because I didn't give it a fair viewing.  The criticism is justified, but rather late. The last part is me saying that I'm trying to go into watching the film without preconceived notions of what the Icelandic situation was in order to be as unbiased as possible.  Mmmmkay? 


I'm coming around to regulation.  Especially if its regulation that involves getting people like you to read before jumping on a bash-someone bandwagon.  ;)

That wasn't the reason for the crisis. Go watch the movie. It's an interesting piece of work. The journalist is quite knowledgeable and asks all the right questions.  :)

I recommend skipping this controlled opposite propaganda BS movie.

The movie only pretends to really reveal the true cause of this mess we're in but ignores the most crucial players - FED + government regulations - and, and this is the worse part, they present a non/false solution.


If you want to know what really happened just watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgMclXX5msc

EDIT: oh wait, I already said this in this thread. Oh well, I guess it can't hurt repeating myself  ;D

So true, I would also add that questioning each others opposing POV's is much better than just talking at each other. Making the extra effort to be polite rather than aggressive also helps. Honestly, I ignored bitcoin when I first heard about it until I noticed how often I came across detractors arguing their point in such an aggressive and closed-minded way. Such arguments are meant to end discussion rather than encourage it, and are usually based in dogma rather than reasonable consideration of the evidence. I'd even call the presence of such arguments a contrarian indicator... one person that later apologized doesn't suffice though.

Having the government regulate the market, protecting big corporations from competition and the central bank run a centralized monetary policy favoring the government contractors and the super rich financial corporations and having banks blow up bubbles with fractional reserve banking while being "too big to fail" and FDIC insured is not the free market you stupid imbecile.

The world hasn't had a true pure capitalism yet. And the closest we got ended in 1913 with the FED. Ever since then the world has nothing else but socialism, corporatism and some version of fascism even to this very day. If you don't know this, you have no idea about the reality of the situation.

Haha, completely ignored my post. I agree with you (although I'd add the war of 1812 proved to banks they were an arm of the US government), but I think you will likely have little success in convincing people who think differently with that approach. Maybe your personal experience differs from mine?

It's irrelevant when it comes to facts. And fact is, we haven't had a free market.

And we never will. Just different masters.