Arrogance is not.

I believe in business and capitalism. But I also know when the system is broken.

You say you know the system is broken, fine, lay it out for me. Show me how the system is broken. I believe the system is broken but I want to hear you beliefs and opinions and most of all facts.

PBS? Nothing better?

But dont you think that the fact these abuses are known (and for the most part have been or are being prosecuted) indicates that the system is working? Man is not perfect, and no creation of man will be either. That is why we have checks and balances, and laws and punishment. Indeed, I guess I see the glass half full. Your proof that the system is broken is my proof that the system is working.

You will note that I cast no doubt, just asked PBS? As in these are widely reported and other sources available. PBS - for whatever good it is for - is not an in depth news agency. Period.



Wrong - You cant prosecute for loopholes - that is why they are called loopholes. You can only prosecute for violations of the law. Which has happened. Which means it worked. Man is not a bunch of saints. And as many Mother Theresas you have, you will get as many Ken Lays. that is why we have laws. And that is why it is working. Man cannot build a system (other than a totally totalitarian one and even then the abuses of the elite will not be stopped) that will not be abused. Remember the cliche about being "foolproof"? The problem is fools are ingenious.

THis is all well and good but it seems reading comprehension is still new to you.



Name them and the lies they told.



REally!!!??? Please tell me how you plan to stop people from breaking the law before they break the law? Are you suggesting we tap peoples phones and listen in just in case they are planning to break the law?



Okay here you go off the path of truth and light into the world of ignorance. As I stated before I own a real estate business. we all saw it coming and there was nothing that can be done to stop it. The reason you can’t stop it is because people will still find ways around the laws. For instance in my state it is illegal to sell a house to someone who can’t afford it. The only people who got hurt in the subprime market were the speculators that caused the bubble in the first place, and the people that did not do what they were told to do in order to get the loan.

No one cares about the speculators because they were not buying the houses to live in but to flip for profit. That makes it a business and businesses rise and fall all the time.

The other people were the dumb ones. They were given a loan for a house. They were told that they needed to pay down and get rid of their credit cards and to do this they got a loan for 125% of the value of the house. They were supposed to use that money to pay off and stop using their credit cards as well as their car loans. This is spelled out in big letters to ensure they understood that this was a condition of the loan. The get the loan and pay off their cards and their car. Then they take a vacation to where ever and used their credit cards to pay for it. They buy two new cars to go with their new home and all is well until the teaser rate ends two to five years later. Now they have to pay more because that was in the loan agreement and they can’t meet those payments so they lose the house. How is that the fault of government? How is that the fault of the lenders? The fault lies with the purchaser for not doing what they were told were requirements for the loan. As it stands only 4% of the loans are in default. That means that 96% of the loans are being paid on time. That is not a serious problem unless you want to eliminate the pain and suffering for all who are too stupid to do what they were told to keep the house.



These are not loopholes! They are specific plans set up to help people get a home if they want one but they have to follow the rules.

Country Wide Mortgage Company went after every poor person they could because the economy was going like gang busters and it would look real good if they were seen helping the poor own their first home. Again I stress that it is illegal to sell a home to someone that can’t afford it. Which means that each person has to prove they can make the mortgage payments without putting undue stress on their finances before the loan can go through. If the mortgage companies failed to do this due diligence they have to eat the loan. Oops! I don’t hear of them eating the loans but they are foreclosing on homes of people that don’t pay the mortgage.



Ok, pay attention here. Those people that want new legislation want the government to pick up the tab when they screw up and loan people money they should not have loaned money to. In short they want to make money and have no risk of any loss.

Now to be fair I will say that some mortgage brokers lied to get the mortgages through. Those people need to be found and arrested.

That is not what I said so it is not incorrect.



This is the reason you don’t put all your money into one basket. Diversification spreads the risk and minimizes the loss. Those that fail to learn that simple lesson pay the price. This is business, and all businesses have risk to them. The greater the risk the higher the profit, unless you are an idiot in which case you don’t deserve your money and the proof of that is the loss of that money. If you bet the house on double zero the odds of making it are poor but if you do it at the right time you win big. Ignorant investors are stupid gamblers. They are more interested in the payoff rather than the risk so they bet poorly. An example of that would be two weeks ago my girl friends and I went to a casino and we watched a man gamble. His strategy was sound and he was winning, not big but winning. Another man at the table was winning big with a different strategy and the first guy wanted to win like him so he changed his strategy. Thirty minutes later he dumped four grand and was broke. He did not understand what he was doing and lost all his money. The same is true with the stock market. If you don’t know what you are doing you will lose. Those that understood the market did not get involved in the mess so they did not get hurt. Those that were looking for the big payoff got burned. It happens all the time why is this time any different?



If you believe this then you are ignorant. 400 billion in losses in a multi-trillion market is not a large loss.



Not true the rise in gas prices are caused by a group of people that are allowed to speculate outside our borders. This was caused by President Clinton when he did away with the law prohibiting this action. He destroyed the safeguards in the system and now 12 years later we see the reason why that safeguard was put in place. Funny how you say the market has lost 400 billion dollars while the futures speculators have picked up just about that much money. Every time politicians screw with the market they do so to help their friends. When that happens we have these problems but the effects are not seen or felt for about a decade. President Johnson created the crisis in real estate that slammed the nation in the 70’s, President Carter screwed with the market and we ended up with the dot com bubble. President Clinton screwed with the market and we have the gas crisis. President Nixon did not or could not stop it. President Reagan was too busy trying to fix the economy to notice the markets because if left alone they will fix themselves. The Current President Bush likewise was distracted by terror since he did try to fix the system until the attacks of 9/11. Democrats have a nasty habit of screwing up the economy not because they are stupid, but because they are ignorant of how business works and they are only looking for political gain rather than actually fixing the problem. Every time they try to fix the system it gets worse because to fix one problem they break the rules of another part of the system causing another crisis down the road.



Sorry I disagree with you. We had this problem in the 70’s and we had this problem in the 80’s and the 90’s and now. Each time it got “fixed” and we still have the problem. Let the markets settle it and it will go away. Had President Clinton not done away with the laws preventing speculators from doing what they are doing now the price would still go up but not as sharply. The safety net is gone and the only way to put it back on the mend is to drill domestically for oil or we will never get out of this mess.

Please do! Let’s see, we want to not drill for oil so we can use bio-fuels so the price of food and fuel go up. Then we have floods. This is a surprise that happens every year. I watch the news all winter long and read about record snow falls, (during global warming) then when spring comes we have the thaw and surprise! Flooding. How no one could have predicted the floods that happen every year for the past few decades that I have been monitoring this surprisingly annual event is beyond me. News Flash!!!! Snow melts when it gets warm. News Flash!!!!!! Developing nations cut into the supply of goods and services previously not tapped causing a rise in prices for those goods because there is less to go around. Drill for more oil and there is more to go around the price falls. As long as the supply remains the same it does not matter if you conserve or not the price will continue to rise because the rest of the world is not going to conserve so what we don’t use will just be grabbed up by the developing nations and the price will rise if not remain constant. Econ-101 this concept seems new to people in the news media and environmentalist who want us to cripple our nation to save a planet that one third of the planets population is not going along with the program. China and India represent one third of our population and they said they will not stop polluting, or building, or growing. With that going on conservation means nothing on a global scale.

This is true. And it is not going to be some government mandate that pushes us to conserve and be more efficient in our use, but the high price. In the end, this upheaval may be a good thing. One of the beefs about China and India is their extremely low cost of production. We cannot compete because no one here is going to work for $1.25/day. But that is just one cost of production. The high price of fuel is going to get many entrepreneurs to look for more efficient and cheaper ways to produce the same things. It will probably not be in China or India that these innovations come from because even with the expensive oil, they are still cheaper and can pass on their costs to the consumer.

It will be where the cost of labor is high, and therefor the cost of fuel is one factor that can be cut. ONce that happens (whether in Europe, Japan, or the US), they will adopt it quickly, and the balance will shift (not permanently - the only constant in life is change). But enough. This will make us cleaner, and cheaper in many areas for at least a time to come. And without the government mucking things up.

High gas prices are the nasty tasting medicine. Necessary to instigate the change that will come. And in the end, better for us. And it happened not because anyone thought we should conserve, but from a combination of greed on the part of OPEC, and the law of Supply and Demand.

One other note. Wells are capped when the price to pump the stuff is not economically feasible. Not to drive up the price. There are too many producers, and the allegations of price gouging and collusion have been investigated out the wazoo by the clowns in DC - without ever finding any basis for prosecution.

Only in concept now, unless you consider the third world. But the statement in itself is correct, even if there is no where to find it in practice.

There's a lot of countries that have higher gas prices than we do that have higher economic growth numbers than we do. They drive smaller more efficient cars and have structured their energy sources around what is available to themselves. The US economy is about to tank because too many politicians are pandering to special interests and care more about their reelections than what is happening to the country.

Australia, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Korea, Poland, Singapore, Taiwan.

Many of the countries having slightly less growth than us have more manageable debt levels so they will be able to ride out the current global slowdown better than we will.

In any case what troubles me are the trade deficit, govt deficit, and national debt. The Fed has their hands tied because of the credit problems the subprime market is causing so they hesitate to raise interest rates even tho inflation is about to spiral out of control. The last decade of government stupidity is about to deal a serious blow to the economy.

My mistake you did answer the question. Israel has inflation that will break your heart and survives by our buying of goods from them. Ireland, also survives from our companies putting up plants in that wonderful country and buying the goods they make. Hong Kong is not a nation it is a city in China. You may remember that the UK gave it back in 1999. Korea when I lived there for two years was nice and growing I can believe that but don’t forget the huge boost of funds provided by the US. Taiwan gets huge support from US. Singapore I don’t know because I have not lived there.



I hope you are not talking about the global slowdown that started in 1972 that has hit every nation in the world? The one where we came out of it in the 80’s went back into it in the 90’s and just pulled ourselves out of it again? That global slow down? The global slow down that has decimated Japan for the last 20 years? The one where only nations that did business with the US prospered and those that did not were hurt badly? That global slow down? The global slow down that economist call a world wide depression? That global slow down? Funny how the ones you name are all heavily dependant on selling goods to the US for their economy and if that is true then their great economies are dependant upon our economy supporting them. Logic would suggest that they are not in better shape than we are.



I fail to see how when Mr. Bush took office and provided tax relief that the interest rates dropped from around 10% to 4% and have gone all the way up to the nose bleed section of 7% in comparison to when Mr. Carter was president and we had interest rates at 19%. Let me see… Nope not spiraling out of control so far. That is 3% below what he started with almost 8 years ago. While Mr. Carter went from 8% to 19 percent in just four years he was able to accomplish this by raising taxes. The last time the interest rate was at 6% Kennedy was President. So our economy is must be doing well because other nations can’t make the claim that they have been able to drop interest rates that low because they refuse to lower taxes. Had President Clinton not raised taxes we would have even lower interest rates.



That depends on who wins the Congress in the next election.