David Friedman and Bitcoin

[thoughtfan]

Everyone looks at what happened and what factors affected it, then apply their worldview to the situation. And we all know, of course, that every person on Earth believes the exact same thing.

On this we are agreed (and this is the second post in a row where this was my response)!

[21after2]

I have no problem with people paying a fee for someone else to be responsible for them. I've even suggested that services like this will eventually exist for Bitcoin. One beauty of Bitcoin is that if I choose to be responsible for my own actions, I can avoid the middleman and his fees.

I agree 100%. If BitCoin gets big enough, I fully expect there to be BitCoin banks for the casual users. Using those banks, just like with any sale, loan, or investment with BTC, will be up to the judgment of the person. And with BitCoin (like you said), we can also choose to take charge of our own money.

To me, BitCoin is less about freedom of money and more about freedom of choice, without attempting to "punish" people (so to speak) for not using their money in one certain way or another.

[miscreanity]

Just wanted to point out that David's son Patri is involved with seasteading, a potentially ideal environment for Bitcoin.

[axus]

Not true at all. That bubble happened precisely because of regulation. Banks were practically forced to lower lending standards by Freddie and Fannie, not to mention the FED key interest rate affected mortgage rates to get artificially low enabling many to borrow who couldn't afford it. All Wall Street did was feed upon this circle and meet a demand that was created by the government and no one else. It's called moral hazard, look it up.

Try reading this:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/business-economy-financial-crisis/untouchables/blowing-the-whistle-on-the-mortgage-bubble/

All the pressure to lower standards was coming from higher up inside the companies.  If they'd wanted to not buy these loans, they would have jumped on the chance to use underwriting standards to block them.  And you'll notice they stopped buying them when the bubble burst, nobody was forcing them to buy.  Both the government regulation, AND the self-regulation failed to change behavior.  But you can see that attempts at discipline were ignored or lied at to avoid.

[Monster Tent]

People who think anarchism will somehow break out and become a major political force are deluding themselves. It will be crushed brutally by the ruling elites and by people who are very good at violence and suppression. In the unlikely event that a government does not exist its more likely to return to feudalism than anything else. I think humans have a gene that predisposes them to slavery and its been well conditioned. If you look around the war has already been lost and the market demands slavery and oppression.

This doesnt make me a statist it makes me a realist.

[cypherdoc]

it was clearly the banks that caused the housing crisis by facilitating private unregulated firms thru securitization; it was the lack of regulation:  

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/fannieFreddie2.jpg

here's a list of the idiots:  

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-subprimeloans0706-sort.html

"The vast majority of subprime mortgages — the loans at the heart of the global crisis — were underwritten by unregulated private firms."

[Anon136]

People who think anarchism will somehow break out and become a major political force are deluding themselves. It will be crushed brutally by the ruling elites and by people who are very good at violence and suppression. In the unlikely event that a government does not exist its more likely to return to feudalism than anything else. I think humans have a gene that predisposes them to slavery and its been well conditioned. If you look around the war has already been lost and the market demands slavery and oppression.

This doesnt make me a statist it makes me a realist.

yes most people are like you describe. That is why our best hope is not to join the mafia in order to turn it good but instead to gather all the people who arnt like you describe and find a currently unoccupied space that they can move to in order to create their own new independent society. It is unlikely the state would have the foresight to deal with such a problem when it was still small enough to be quelled.

[iCEBREAKER]

Fractional reserve banking. Fiat money. Central banking.

All key causes of the business cycle and its latest iteration. None result of "unregulated" markets, but rather of regulations designed to give banks special privilege.

Read about regulatory capture please...

Precisely. Unfortunately 21after2 is focusing on the symptoms instead of the actual problems hence his false diagnosis.

It's okay for us to have a difference of opinion. We can just call each other liars and be on our respective ways.

The only legitimate regulators of markets are competition and the invisible hand. 

What part of "regulatory capture" do you find so hard to understand?

You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

Here's How The Community Reinvestment Act Led To The Housing Bubble's Lax Lending
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-06-27/wall_street/30009234_1_mortgage-standards-lending-standards-mortgage-rates

The CRA was not a static piece of legislation. It evolved over the years from a relatively hands-off law focused on process into one that focused on outcomes. Regulators, beginning in the mid-nineties, began to hold banks accountable in serious ways. Banks responded to this new accountability by increasing the CRA loans they made, a move that entailed relaxing their lending standards.

Throughout the nineties banks, as banks lowered their mortgage standards, mortgage rates remained high. The laxity was spreading but the incentives for borrowers to re-finance even under relaxed standards remained low. New buyers often still didn’t know that some of the loosey-goosey mortgages existed. Speculators had an internet bubble, so they weren’t yet attracted to real-estate. Treasury rates were not yet so low that investors seeking yield would pour into mortgage backed securities. Securitization levels were low enough that banks weren’t yet willing to fully embrace the loose standards. The historical data on default and loss rates from the lax lending were not yet available, so they weren’t embraced by banks or the broader market.

But as the years went by, these factors changed. The Fed pushed interest rates down. This made refinancing more attractive, and created an investor demand for yield. Fannie and Freddie popularized low-income securitization. Low defaults and loss rates from lax loans made them seem not as risky as previously expected.  A shrinking consumer asset base thanks to the dot com bust created a demand for home-equity loans and high loan-to-value loans, as consumers exchanged high-interest credit card debt for low interest home debt. Speculators seeking higher returns and ordinary home buyers became aware that lax lending standards would allow them to buy bigger homes with little or no money down.

In short, the lax lending standards created in response to the CRA had dug a pit that was waiting to get filled when the circumstances were right.

[memvola]

People who think anarchism will somehow break out and become a major political force are deluding themselves. It will be crushed brutally by the ruling elites and by people who are very good at violence and suppression. In the unlikely event that a government does not exist its more likely to return to feudalism than anything else. I think humans have a gene that predisposes them to slavery and its been well conditioned. If you look around the war has already been lost and the market demands slavery and oppression.

This doesnt make me a statist it makes me a realist.

I agree that this doesn't make you a statist.

What's interesting to me is; we almost have the same view of reality, however I call it extremely hard instead of impossible, mainly because I can't just accept it as what it is and move on. That makes me an anarchist.

Anarchy doesn't have to "break out" though. I'm mostly hoping that humanity will grow out of statism. Highly unlikely, that I agree to. But it doesn't make any sense to leave the idea behind as long as you can do something about it.

[flix]

Link to Youtube of Friedman's conference (in English):
http://youtu.be/pRxOEvq4M6M

[makomk]

Not true at all. That bubble happened precisely because of regulation. Banks were practically forced to lower lending standards by Freddie and Fannie, not to mention the FED key interest rate affected mortgage rates to get artificially low enabling many to borrow who couldn't afford it. All Wall Street did was feed upon this circle and meet a demand that was created by the government and no one else. It's called moral hazard, look it up.

This is completely and utterly bass-ackwards. The only influence Freddie and Fannie had was that they wouldn't buy mortgages on the secondary market unless they met minimum underwriting standards. The pressure was actually in the opposite direction - the banks pressured Freddie and Fannie to lower their lending standard so the banks could make more money on risky subprime loans.

However that ignores the bigger picture, namely the amazing and astounding history of Freddie and Fannie from the 70s and the knock on effects.  My oversimplified understanding of it is of the way in which those government-set-up institutions got used to force lenders to lend irresponsibly to fulfill political agendas.

I've heard this said a lot, but again the exact opposite is true. For instance have you looked at what the much-criticised Community Reinvestment Act actually did? It banned the practice of "redlining" - banks were no longer allowed to refuse mortgages to people who otherwise met their lending criteria just because they were buying homes in poor, largely black urban areas. That's it. It didn't require them to lend money to people who couldn't afford it or any of the other things blamed on it; that was a purely profit-motivated commercial decision by the bank.

Actually, things would probably have been worse without the CRA. Amongst other shady things, banks had been pushing black homebuyers into expensive subprime mortgages they couldn't afford even though they were eligible for a much cheaper, affordable prime mortgage on the same house because those mortgages were more profitable for the banks in the short term. Without the CRA, the banks could and almost certainly would have refused to give prime mortgages to those buyers, forcing them to rely on the subprime mortgages that caused the problems in the first place.

[thoughtfan]

Not true at all. That bubble happened precisely because of regulation. Banks were practically forced to lower lending standards by Freddie and Fannie, not to mention the FED key interest rate affected mortgage rates to get artificially low enabling many to borrow who couldn't afford it. All Wall Street did was feed upon this circle and meet a demand that was created by the government and no one else. It's called moral hazard, look it up.

This is completely and utterly bass-ackwards. The only influence Freddie and Fannie had was that they wouldn't buy mortgages on the secondary market unless they met minimum underwriting standards. The pressure was actually in the opposite direction - the banks pressured Freddie and Fannie to lower their lending standard so the banks could make more money on risky subprime loans.

However that ignores the bigger picture, namely the amazing and astounding history of Freddie and Fannie from the 70s and the knock on effects.  My oversimplified understanding of it is of the way in which those government-set-up institutions got used to force lenders to lend irresponsibly to fulfill political agendas.

I've heard this said a lot, but again the exact opposite is true. For instance have you looked at what the much-criticised Community Reinvestment Act actually did? It banned the practice of "redlining" - banks were no longer allowed to refuse mortgages to people who otherwise met their lending criteria just because they were buying homes in poor, largely black urban areas. That's it. It didn't require them to lend money to people who couldn't afford it or any of the other things blamed on it; that was a purely profit-motivated commercial decision by the bank.

Actually, things would probably have been worse without the CRA. Amongst other shady things, banks had been pushing black homebuyers into expensive subprime mortgages they couldn't afford even though they were eligible for a much cheaper, affordable prime mortgage on the same house because those mortgages were more profitable for the banks in the short term. Without the CRA, the banks could and almost certainly would have refused to give prime mortgages to those buyers, forcing them to rely on the subprime mortgages that caused the problems in the first place.

OK, I've gone back to where I'd got this impression.  The author is Eamonn Butler, Director of the Adam Smith Institute so his angle is not surprising.  However, it sounded plausible when I read it and I've still not been persuaded otherwise.  I will admit to wanting to continue believing because it supports my world-view but I will invite you to post any references backing up your argument so I can if necessary revise my opinion by being better informed.

How politicians forced bankers to make bad loans

The final ingredient in this poisonous cocktail was the Community Reinvestment
Act (CRA), which President Jimmy Carter signed on 13 October
1977. Its aim was laudable – to promote home ownership for minorities.
It made illegal the practice of redlining, whereby lenders would simply
refuse mortgages in poor (and commonly black and Hispanic) areas on
the grounds that low-quality housing and high levels of unemployment
and welfare dependency made local residents unattractive as borrowers.
From now on, the lenders were expected to conduct business over
the whole of the geographical area they served. They could not favour the
suburbs over the inner-city districts. To make sure they complied, the
1975 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) forced lenders to provide
detailed reports about whom they lent to. And the Carter administration
also funded various ‘community’ groups, such as the Association of
Community Organisations for Reform Now (ACORN), to help monitor
their performance on the CRA rules.
In 1991 the HMDA rules were strengthened to include a specific
demand for racial equality in the institutions’ lending. In 1992 the
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston published a manual for lenders that
went even further. It advised them that a mortgage applicant’s lack of
credit history should not be seen as a negative factor in assessing them
for a loan; that lenders should not flinch if borrowers used loans or gifts
for their mortgage deposit; and that unemployment benefits would be a
valid source of income for lending decisions. It also reminded them that
failing to meet CRA regulations could be a violation of equal opportunity
laws that exposed them to actual damages plus punitive damages of
$500,000.
The government went further, ‘streamlining’ the CRA regulations in
1995 to allow, and indeed force, lenders to ignore most of the traditional
criteria of creditworthiness in their loan decisions. Mortgages could
now be any multiple of income; a person’s saving history was irrelevant;
applicants’ income did not need to be verified; and participation in a
credit counselling programme could be taken as proof of an applicant’s
ability to manage a loan. In other words, the government was now
forcing the institutions to make loans to people who they knew were not
creditworthy.
And to make sure all this happened, more taxpayer funds were
given to monitoring groups such as ACORN. As public scrutiny of
bank mergers and acquisitions increased following their 1994 Riegle-
Neal deregulation, these groups were actually able to hold the banks
to ransom. Under the CRA, if a lender wants to change its business
operation in any way – merging with another bank, opening or closing
branches, or developing new products – it must convince the regulators
that it will continue to make sufficient loans to the government’s
preferred groups of borrowers. ACORN and others can file petitions
with the regulators to stop the banks’ plans.


Bad loans and booming markets

Not surprisingly, the banks paid the ransom. And now that creditworthiness
was no longer a requirement for getting a loan, the number of
sub-prime loans boomed. Home ownership increased, from 65 per cent
of households to 69 per cent between 1995 and 2004, representing about
4.6 million new homeowners. This put pressure on house prices, which
also rose sharply from their stable position in the early 1990s.
Meanwhile, a 1992 law was pushing the government-sponsored
Fannie Mae and its younger twin the Federal Home Loan Mortgage
Company (Freddie Mac) to devote more effort to meeting wider home
ownership goals. High-risk loans were everywhere. Even the FHA
promoted more credit to poor borrowers by offering low-deposit loans.
And Freddie Mac actually developed the process of securitising bad
loan packages and selling this bad debt around the world. This business
boomed after 1995 too.
Fannie and Freddie profited from this system, while passing most
of the risk on to taxpayers. To make sure, they contributed heavily to
congressional offices, and spent hundreds of millions on lobbying and
pressure groups. Other unscrupulous lenders also knew that Freddie
and Fannie – and ultimately the taxpayers – would guarantee their bad
loans, so were happy to make more of them.
While house prices continued to rise, everything seemed to go well.
Even the riskiest borrowers were meeting their payments. Some people
refinanced on the back of rising house prices and pocketed nice profits.
And other government interventions kept the bubble growing. Land-use
regulations, limiting the opportunity for house building, pushed prices
up further. Income tax deductions for mortgages favoured housing over
other savings.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve – assisted by the Bank of England
– had flooded world markets with credit after the stock market crash
of 1987. They did the same again whenever any downturn threatened
– the dotcom crash, and spectacularly after 9/11, when interest rates
came down from 6.25 per cent to just 1 per cent – which just boosted
borrowing even more. So house prices continued their rise, and homeowners
enjoyed the boom.
There seemed every reason to buy houses, and no reason not to.
By 2006, perhaps a fifth of buyers were simply speculators – not just
middle-class speculators, but low-income ones too. In states like California,
where lenders could not go after a borrower’s assets, there was
no risk at all: if things went wrong, you simply sent the keys back to the
lender and walked away. They called it ‘jingle mail’.

Butler - The Financial Crisis: Blame Governments, Not Bankers - from the IEA publication Verdict on the Crash, Edited by Philip Booth

[flix]

David Friedman on Bitcoin and monetary freedom:

Published on Feb 13, 2013
http://youtu.be/YyHVDuWaBQM

[beckspace]

Nice! Friedman discussing Bitcoin!

Now you've got a PhD in Physics and you say you don't understand Bitcoin so that doesn't really leave much hope for the rest of us.

And there are obvious reasons why a lot of people would prefer to make expenditures that other people can't observe, and from that standpoint, an anonymous e-cash would be superior to the present paypal, credit card, the various ways we now make payments online.

So the only path that seems to me very likely is the one which comes not through a collapse of the present system, but through the introduction of some superior substitute.

[cypherdoc]

Not true at all. That bubble happened precisely because of regulation. Banks were practically forced to lower lending standards by Freddie and Fannie, not to mention the FED key interest rate affected mortgage rates to get artificially low enabling many to borrow who couldn't afford it. All Wall Street did was feed upon this circle and meet a demand that was created by the government and no one else. It's called moral hazard, look it up.

This is completely and utterly bass-ackwards. The only influence Freddie and Fannie had was that they wouldn't buy mortgages on the secondary market unless they met minimum underwriting standards. The pressure was actually in the opposite direction - the banks pressured Freddie and Fannie to lower their lending standard so the banks could make more money on risky subprime loans.

However that ignores the bigger picture, namely the amazing and astounding history of Freddie and Fannie from the 70s and the knock on effects.  My oversimplified understanding of it is of the way in which those government-set-up institutions got used to force lenders to lend irresponsibly to fulfill political agendas.

I've heard this said a lot, but again the exact opposite is true. For instance have you looked at what the much-criticised Community Reinvestment Act actually did? It banned the practice of "redlining" - banks were no longer allowed to refuse mortgages to people who otherwise met their lending criteria just because they were buying homes in poor, largely black urban areas. That's it. It didn't require them to lend money to people who couldn't afford it or any of the other things blamed on it; that was a purely profit-motivated commercial decision by the bank.

Actually, things would probably have been worse without the CRA. Amongst other shady things, banks had been pushing black homebuyers into expensive subprime mortgages they couldn't afford even though they were eligible for a much cheaper, affordable prime mortgage on the same house because those mortgages were more profitable for the banks in the short term. Without the CRA, the banks could and almost certainly would have refused to give prime mortgages to those buyers, forcing them to rely on the subprime mortgages that caused the problems in the first place.

OK, I've gone back to where I'd got this impression.  The author is Eamonn Butler, Director of the Adam Smith Institute so his angle is not surprising.  However, it sounded plausible when I read it and I've still not been persuaded otherwise.  I will admit to wanting to continue believing because it supports my world-view but I will invite you to post any references backing up your argument so I can if necessary revise my opinion by being better informed.

How politicians forced bankers to make bad loans

The final ingredient in this poisonous cocktail was the Community Reinvestment
Act (CRA), which President Jimmy Carter signed on 13 October
1977. Its aim was laudable – to promote home ownership for minorities.
It made illegal the practice of redlining, whereby lenders would simply
refuse mortgages in poor (and commonly black and Hispanic) areas on
the grounds that low-quality housing and high levels of unemployment
and welfare dependency made local residents unattractive as borrowers.
From now on, the lenders were expected to conduct business over
the whole of the geographical area they served. They could not favour the
suburbs over the inner-city districts. To make sure they complied, the
1975 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) forced lenders to provide
detailed reports about whom they lent to. And the Carter administration
also funded various ‘community’ groups, such as the Association of
Community Organisations for Reform Now (ACORN), to help monitor
their performance on the CRA rules.
In 1991 the HMDA rules were strengthened to include a specific
demand for racial equality in the institutions’ lending. In 1992 the
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston published a manual for lenders that
went even further. It advised them that a mortgage applicant’s lack of
credit history should not be seen as a negative factor in assessing them
for a loan; that lenders should not flinch if borrowers used loans or gifts
for their mortgage deposit; and that unemployment benefits would be a
valid source of income for lending decisions. It also reminded them that
failing to meet CRA regulations could be a violation of equal opportunity
laws that exposed them to actual damages plus punitive damages of
$500,000.
The government went further, ‘streamlining’ the CRA regulations in
1995 to allow, and indeed force, lenders to ignore most of the traditional
criteria of creditworthiness in their loan decisions. Mortgages could
now be any multiple of income; a person’s saving history was irrelevant;
applicants’ income did not need to be verified; and participation in a
credit counselling programme could be taken as proof of an applicant’s
ability to manage a loan. In other words, the government was now
forcing the institutions to make loans to people who they knew were not
creditworthy.
And to make sure all this happened, more taxpayer funds were
given to monitoring groups such as ACORN. As public scrutiny of
bank mergers and acquisitions increased following their 1994 Riegle-
Neal deregulation, these groups were actually able to hold the banks
to ransom. Under the CRA, if a lender wants to change its business
operation in any way – merging with another bank, opening or closing
branches, or developing new products – it must convince the regulators
that it will continue to make sufficient loans to the government’s
preferred groups of borrowers. ACORN and others can file petitions
with the regulators to stop the banks’ plans.


Bad loans and booming markets

Not surprisingly, the banks paid the ransom. And now that creditworthiness
was no longer a requirement for getting a loan, the number of
sub-prime loans boomed. Home ownership increased, from 65 per cent
of households to 69 per cent between 1995 and 2004, representing about
4.6 million new homeowners. This put pressure on house prices, which
also rose sharply from their stable position in the early 1990s.
Meanwhile, a 1992 law was pushing the government-sponsored
Fannie Mae and its younger twin the Federal Home Loan Mortgage
Company (Freddie Mac) to devote more effort to meeting wider home
ownership goals. High-risk loans were everywhere. Even the FHA
promoted more credit to poor borrowers by offering low-deposit loans.
And Freddie Mac actually developed the process of securitising bad
loan packages and selling this bad debt around the world. This business
boomed after 1995 too.
Fannie and Freddie profited from this system, while passing most
of the risk on to taxpayers. To make sure, they contributed heavily to
congressional offices, and spent hundreds of millions on lobbying and
pressure groups. Other unscrupulous lenders also knew that Freddie
and Fannie – and ultimately the taxpayers – would guarantee their bad
loans, so were happy to make more of them.
While house prices continued to rise, everything seemed to go well.
Even the riskiest borrowers were meeting their payments. Some people
refinanced on the back of rising house prices and pocketed nice profits.
And other government interventions kept the bubble growing. Land-use
regulations, limiting the opportunity for house building, pushed prices
up further. Income tax deductions for mortgages favoured housing over
other savings.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve – assisted by the Bank of England
– had flooded world markets with credit after the stock market crash
of 1987. They did the same again whenever any downturn threatened
– the dotcom crash, and spectacularly after 9/11, when interest rates
came down from 6.25 per cent to just 1 per cent – which just boosted
borrowing even more. So house prices continued their rise, and homeowners
enjoyed the boom.
There seemed every reason to buy houses, and no reason not to.
By 2006, perhaps a fifth of buyers were simply speculators – not just
middle-class speculators, but low-income ones too. In states like California,
where lenders could not go after a borrower’s assets, there was
no risk at all: if things went wrong, you simply sent the keys back to the
lender and walked away. They called it ‘jingle mail’.

Butler - The Financial Crisis: Blame Governments, Not Bankers - from the IEA publication Verdict on the Crash, Edited by Philip Booth

i think that is ridiculous.  when there comes a question as to who to blame, ask yourself, where did all the money go?

politicians make what, a couple hundred thousand a year?  what does Jamie Dimon or Lloyd Blankfein make?  how many hundreds of million a year let alone all the ancillary bonuses in the millions to investment bankers on Wall St? 

tell me who is in control.

[cypherdoc]

Who's to blame?

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/11/examining-the-big-lie-how-the-facts-of-the-economic-crisis-stack-up/

[thoughtfan]

...

i think that is ridiculous.  when there comes a question as to who to blame, ask yourself, where did all the money go?

politicians make what, a couple hundred thousand a year?  what does Jamie Dimon or Lloyd Blankfein make?  how many hundreds of million a year let alone all the ancillary bonuses in the millions to investment bankers on Wall St? 

tell me who is in control.

If your only criterion for blame is the beneficiary then I can see how you would conclude the bankers are proportionally immensely more responsible for the problems than the politicians.  But some of these big bankers and the politicians were (are) in each others' pockets - at least if looking back at how Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer (prior to becoming Prime Minister) in the UK behaved is anything to go by.  These politicians want power; and to do that their parties need funders.  From what I understand it's even worse in the US.  But that you seem so incredulous that policies brought in for popular political gain, followed by more to try and solve the unforeseen problems of the first, followed by more to try and solve those etc. would leave us in such a precarious position is surprising to me.  In the UK they're doing it again.  Bringing in policies to guarantee first time buyers mortgages to encourage banks to lend, thus starting the balmy process once again.

I do believe it is a myth that entirely free markets would provide the mechanism to banish boom and bust to the history books but without all the laws and protectionism both preventing newcomers from entering the market and from irresponsible establishments reaping the consequences of their ridiculous risks - all the fault of politicians - and those who vote them into power - I can not believe we would not be much better off.

[miscreanity]

Butler - The Financial Crisis: Blame Governments, Not Bankers - from the IEA publication Verdict on the Crash, Edited by Philip Booth

i think that is ridiculous.  when there comes a question as to who to blame, ask yourself, where did all the money go?

politicians make what, a couple hundred thousand a year?  what does Jamie Dimon or Lloyd Blankfein make?  how many hundreds of million a year let alone all the ancillary bonuses in the millions to investment bankers on Wall St? 

tell me who is in control.

Banks bought gov't because it's a single point of failure. Control government, control the laws, and so on down the line. At the same time, there are more than enough intangible benefits politicians gain to make their six figure salaries just a symbolic token.

With regard to the fiscal calamity: it takes two to tango, and the song name was collusion. Pols want the bankers to help them gain more (through funding), and the bankers want the pols to help them gain more (through legislation).

[cypherdoc]

...

i think that is ridiculous.  when there comes a question as to who to blame, ask yourself, where did all the money go?

politicians make what, a couple hundred thousand a year?  what does Jamie Dimon or Lloyd Blankfein make?  how many hundreds of million a year let alone all the ancillary bonuses in the millions to investment bankers on Wall St?  

tell me who is in control.

If your only criterion for blame is the beneficiary then I can see how you would conclude the bankers are proportionally immensely more responsible for the problems than the politicians.  But some of these big bankers and the politicians were (are) in each others' pockets - at least if looking back at how Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer (prior to becoming Prime Minister) in the UK behaved is anything to go by.  These politicians want power; and to do that their parties need funders.  From what I understand it's even worse in the US.  But that you seem so incredulous that policies brought in for popular political gain, followed by more to try and solve the unforeseen problems of the first, followed by more to try and solve those etc. would leave us in such a precarious position is surprising to me.  In the UK they're doing it again.  Bringing in policies to guarantee first time buyers mortgages to encourage banks to lend, thus starting the balmy process once again.

I do believe it is a myth that entirely free markets would provide the mechanism to banish boom and bust to the history books but without all the laws and protectionism both preventing newcomers from entering the market and from irresponsible establishments reaping the consequences of their ridiculous risks - all the fault of politicians - and those who vote them into power - I can not believe we would not be much better off.

here in the US we have over 1000 financial industry lobbyists, most of them former politicians the number of which dwarf any other industry, running around The Hill pushing the banking industries agenda and promising future corner office jobs on Wall St.  What would you expect the politicians to do, ignore them?  perhaps this is why your politicians are willing to ram home another generation of mortgage guarantees to home buyers?

the corruption of money is what has enabled this whole mess on a global basis.  and guess who owns the money/printing press?

[marcus_of_augustus]

I'm liking that the "monetary freedom" meme is gaining traction ... amongst thinkers and talkers, etc.

The regulatory capture provided to the fed. res. banking system with their monopoly money, aka constitution-cheating contract law debt notes, is a major source for all the other problems, in many areas of society.