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Dropline
Mountain climber
Somewhere Up There
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Nov 15, 2011 - 07:02pm PT
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Just a human interest tidbit. My accountant tells me I've fallen into the top 1%. Who knew? I don't feel very rich. Something most people are unaware of is there are many small time entrepreneurs out there whose income puts them in the top 1% but who have a ton of debt to service with after tax income, debt necessary to grow a small company. We pay lots of taxes and lots of debt but have little cash.
Mind you, I'm not complaining. I feel very fortunate to have been able to pay all my bills and make all my loan payments on time in these last few very erratic years.
My tax bill for this year is going to be a doozy though. Something like 150k. And where does it go? Bombs and other tools of gunboat diplomacy, an unending number of federal bureaucrat's life time pensions and health care benefits, and all manner of pork barrel projects. I don't object to social security because people have been paying into it, and I don't object to medicare and medicaid for people who truly need help.
What I do find annoying though is a bunch of obviously smart but also obviously unemployed people whining about the injustice of the system. Sure the wall street guys ripped off taxpayers. It's not the first time and it won't be the last. We need better laws and we need them enforced. Elect people who will prosecute fraudsters including politicians.
But really, if you want to address your own plight, stop blaming other people, and go out and get a job and if no jobs are available, make one. Difficult economic times are boon times for small business startups because of necessity. People with temerity, sac, suck it up and make it happen. People with less mental fortitude, or a sense of entitlement, whine.
OWS protesters, stop whining and get out there and do something that has value to someone else so you can make money and build a life rather than complaining about how you can't get the fat job with the fat benefits you wanted. Hanging around the park, smoking weed, and complaining isn't going to get you much other than a good swift kick in the butt from the overzealous NYPD.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 07:17pm PT
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OWS protesters, stop whining and get out there and do something that has value to someone else so you can make money and build a life rather than complaining about how you can't get the fat job with the fat benefits you wanted. Hanging around the park, smoking weed, and complaining isn't going to get you much other than a good swift kick in the butt from the overzealous NYPD.
Clearly you are naive. There is no way they can get jobs or make money. The "Banksters" are keeping them down.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 07:18pm PT
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There are entire communities which are now devastated due to an epidemic of foreclosures resulting in an abundance of vacant properties which has invited vandalism, theft, and a host of crime where heretofore there was no crime of consequence.
Thank you Community Reinvestment Act! The problem is not lack of regulation, it is ACTIVE government policy which caused this. Social programs for affordable housing and artificially depressed lending rates. Of course the private sector jumped in and tried to make a buck from these programs, what would you expect them to do? Regulation in such a distorted market is feeble. There is always a way around it.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 15, 2011 - 08:26pm PT
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fuking facts
I hate em
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 08:39pm PT
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You are NOT entitled to a house. You must EARN it. I don't have one yet,ya know why?
I thought it was unwise at the time to engage in those loans. Now that dipshits have tanked the market, I may be able to get in.
Not everyone is worthy of home-ownership. Stop living in a silly liberal Utopia.
Especially in the Bay. Very hard for mid-class folks like myself to own a home. Do I bitch? NO! You have to pay a price to live here. I'm working on it.
Fannie/Freddie gotta go.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 09:02pm PT
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blurring, do you remember that it was DEregulation that brought the house down? Of course not, you want LESS government regulation and big corporation driven free market capitalism. Morain.
How can anyone remember that, since it isn't true. The housing bubble came about through governmental market manipulation. First, through artificially low interest rates. Second through subsidized, low down-payment financing through Fannie and Freddie that would not have been available in an unregulated and non-governmentally manipulated market.
War,
We're entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have no entitlement to things from the government.
John
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theHammer
Sport climber
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Nov 15, 2011 - 09:45pm PT
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why don't you stop typing on the forum and climb a few NYC buildings to have fun while you protest?
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Jorroh
climber
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Nov 15, 2011 - 10:31pm PT
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Thats complete rubbish John.
The demand for motgages was fueled by the big investment banks. They were hell bent to buy up as many mortgages as they could, and most even started subsidiaries with the sole purpose of writing as many mortgages as possible with no, thats no not little, regard for the possibility of default.
The banks made tons of money collateralizing and selling off the resultant CDO's. The lower quality tranches that they couldn't sell were then repacked and magically appeared with AAA ratings to be more easily unloaded.
When there simply weren't enough mortgages to collateralize, the use of swaps and synthetic CDO's...(collateralized swaps for christ sake.) were used to keep the fees flowing at the cost (to society that is ) of a huge ratcheting up of leverage.
Are you really an economics professor? you seem badly uninformed about this. The banks just couldn't write loans quickly enough, the reason that they were all functionally insolvent is that they were sitting on so many mortgages, CDO, swaps, synthetic Cdo's etc.. waiting to be pushed through their fraudulent system onto unsuspecting pension funds, etc.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 11:18pm PT
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Jorrah,
What you saw differs greatly from what I saw. If the governmental manipulation had not occurred, none of the private secondary markets would have been around. If this stuff was so profitable, how come so many financial institutions were in trouble?
I realize leftist orthodoxy requires you to believe that all of this was a plot by "the 1%" to rob everyone else, but that's not my religion. The facts that I saw, that caused me to predict the meltdown in writing to clients years before it happened, had a lot more to do with fundamental market distortions.
And it wasn't just a few of us that saw this. The Wall Street Journal's editorial pages had warnings of what was happening for years, with particular warnings about the Fannie and Freddie. I find it ironic, to put it mildly, that the alleged cure to the economic and financial ills is legislation named after Dodd and Frank, two of the lawmakers most responsible for the excess.
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 11:39pm PT
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There are, um, some evidentiary problems with your source, Dr. F. The housing bubble started long before any federal preemption of housing laws in 2004.
Glass-Steagall's repeal had nothing to do with the problem, despite the repeated insistance of the leftists. I am unaware of any peer-reviewed empirical study showing any connection whatsoever between those two events.
But then again, whenever we start with statements to the effect that "Wall Street is feeding you all a big lie," I see reason enough to be suspicious. Where were all these geniuses in, say, 2003, when I put my money where my mouth was and we put our house up for sale? 20/20 hindsight is wonderful because it relies on counterfactuals.
Nice try, but no cigar.
John
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Nov 16, 2011 - 12:05am PT
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F*#king amazing to see that people can't see blame for the housing crash lies on both sides.
Yeah get rid of govt. programs to help people get houses...
I bought my last house with over 20% down. My current house was FHA and with a seller concession I got into it for very little out of pocket. My credit is impeccable and thanks to government programs I was able to buy a distressed property that otherwise would have sat on the market unoccupied bringing down the market. Sure some people should not get loans, but in my case the FHA benefited me and the market.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Nov 16, 2011 - 12:29am PT
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So to answer your question, yes, corporations have constitutional rights, and those rights include not only the right to due process and just compensation, but freedom of expression. Anything else puts the government in charge of what people hear. Nothing could be further from the intent of the First Amendment.
John
I'm sorry, John. As your side is so famous for stating: Please QUOTE where in the Constitution the word "Corporation" appears, and quote where the Constitution specifically enumerates those rights.
As your side so often likes to say, if it is not in the Constitution, it is not a Constitutional Right. Your buddy Scalia says so all the time.
If that is the test your side uses, then lay it out.
What is hard to swallow is the repeated accusations of conservatives that liberals are "constitutional activists" that make up constitutional rights that are not obviously and clearly written there, but then turn around and simply make things up, like they did in Bush v. Gore.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:10am PT
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I'm sorry, John. As your side is so famous for stating: Please QUOTE where in the Constitution the word "Corporation" appears, and quote where the Constitution specifically enumerates those rights.
A year before I started law school, Mr. Justice Blackmun was one of the judges in our moot court competition. One of the advocates was arguing for a particular consitutional position, and Justice Blackmun interrupted him to ask "and just where do you find that in the Constitution, counsel?" The hapless competitor responded "The same place you found a right to privacy in Roe v. Wade, your honor," and then paused long enough for the full, terrible, impact of what he said to sink in.
Fortunately, I don't need to make the same argument.
United States Constitution, Amendment I:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to assemple, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
You will note, Ken, that nowhere does the First Amendment restrict freedom of speech or freedom of the press to individuals, to citizens, or to anyone or anything else. It says, simply, that Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech, or of the press."
I think the onus is on those who claim that Congress may make a law abridging freedom of speech or of the press to show where the Constitution authorizes such action.
John
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Jorroh
climber
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:17am PT
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Hard of reading John?..how come the banks got in trouble...
I restate
"Are you really an economics professor? you seem badly uninformed about this. The banks just couldn't write loans quickly enough, the reason that they were all functionally insolvent is that they were sitting on so many mortgages, CDO, swaps, synthetic Cdo's etc.. waiting to be pushed through their fraudulent system onto unsuspecting pension funds, etc."
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:35am PT
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A year before I started law school, Mr. Justice Blackmun was one of the judges in our moot court competition. One of the advocates was arguing for a particular consitutional position, and Justice Blackmun interrupted him to ask "and just where do you find that in the Constitution, counsel?" The hapless competitor responded "The same place you found a right to privacy in Roe v. Wade, your honor," and then paused long enough for the full, terrible, impact of what he said to sink in.
Fortunately, I don't need to make the same argument.
United States Constitution, Amendment I:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to assemple, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
You will note, Ken, that nowhere does the First Amendment restrict freedom of speech or freedom of the press to individuals, to citizens, or to anyone or anything else. It says, simply, that Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech, or of the press."
I think the onus is on those who claim that Congress may make a law abridging freedom of speech or of the press to show where the Constitution authorizes such action.
John
Well, this sounds exactly like the reasoning used in the lawsuit just filed, alleging that Seaworld has abridged the 13th amendment by ENSLAVING orcas. They state that there is nothing in the amendment that restricts that amendment to humans. Sounds like you would support that legal action.
Every legal scholar I've heard comment on it finds the argument laughable.
But of course, you quoted PART of the amendment. It actually says, NOT so simply:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
No doubt the founders wanted to avoid the confusion that you apparently have, as to whether a block of wood is what is intended to have the right to free speech. So they told us:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is there REALLY any doubt who the founders were establishing these right for???
It says it in about as black and white as I can imagine: The people and their descendents. Not a block of wood. Not a corporation, which certainly did not exist at the time of the founding......you canNOT advocate that they meant that, when it did not exist.
Not if you are a "strict constructionist".
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:35am PT
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I am, apparently, hard of both reading and spelling, Jorroh, since I not only missed your explanation (I stopped reading when the "are you really. . ." language started-- my bad), but misspelled your handle. My apologies.
I don't buy your explanation for the simple reason that if these products were so lucrative, there should have been enough earnings to weather the loss on the last go-round. The institutions that failed (or should have failed if we didn't bail them out) bet too heavily on the junk they and others peddled, and did so over extended periods of time.
I also agree that the rating agencies had a lot of culpability here, too. That's one of the reasons I find the restrictions on which ratings agencies to employ in Dodd-Frank so curious. Why entrench by legislation and regulation the very "watchdogs" who were blind to a risk that a simple economist (and, at the time, bankrtupcy lawyer) from Fresno clearly saw, viz. that the major risk was from a stop in real estate inflation, not just from flakey borrowers? The loan pools diversified the latter risk, but did nothing for the former, and much greater, one.
Ultimately, though, I guess I'm just tired of the facile allegations of criminal activity and fraud, in the face of zero prosecutions and convictions. If you read my explanation of why I no longer practice law, you know that I had to face the federal prosecution juggernaut. If you think a federal prosecutor in this administration has evidence of criminal wrongdoing on Wall Street and is exercising prosecutorial discretion not to bring charges, then we really do live in different worlds. The prosecutors with which I am familiar would all give their eye teeth to bring such a prosecution. If they haven't done so, it's because they don't have the goods.
And contrary to what some have inferred, existing securities laws have more than sufficient criminal and civil penalties to exact retirbution and compensation for any alleged wrongs. The theory you espouse isn't flawed theoretically, but empirically, the evidence underwhelms.
Again, sorry for my lazy reading, and for my misspelling of your handle.
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:48am PT
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Ken, as you know, I quoted the entire First Amendment, and then excerpted the part with freedom of speech and of the press. If the First Amendment is restircted to natural persons, why does it read "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, rather than place "the right of the people" before the prohibition on abridgment of freedom of speech and of the press?
Your meaning requires a Constitutional re-write; mine does not. More importantly, the intent of the restrictions on communication is precisely to prevent the spread of political ideas. Nothing could be more inimical to the spirit and letter of the Amendment.
To answer your Thirteenth Amendment/Orca argument, the definition of a "slave" is, according to Webster, "A person who is the property of and wholly subject to another." [emphasis supplied] The Orca suit loses because the amendment, which states that slavery shall not exist in the United States, by definition does not apply to non-human organisms.
John
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:50am PT
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Just a human interest tidbit. My accountant tells me I've fallen into the top 1%. Who knew? I don't feel very rich. Something most people are unaware of is there are many small time entrepreneurs out there whose income puts them in the top 1% but who have a ton of debt to service with after tax income, debt necessary to grow a small company. We pay lots of taxes and lots of debt but have little cash.
What kind of debt related to the operation of a company is paid with after-tax dollars? It is paid with pre-tax dollars.
You need to fire your accountant, and get one who is competent. The 1% is not based upon gross earnings. It is based upon NET earnings, and cash in the pocket. Your guy doesn't know his business.
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apogee
climber
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:58am PT
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I know this is a silly oversimplification, but it's feckin' funny. And maybe a little bit true?
John, you take a high road, but politics strives for the lowest possible. And that means $. Which means your ideals will be left to rot on the side of the road as the politicians ride in the pocket of the corporate megarich as they fly in their private jets to the next post-G8 summit meeting party.
Corporations are not people. They really, really aren't.
People are people.
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