VitalSigns posted:

The compensation scheme bank executives set up for themselves incentivizes them to not give a gently caress about the long-term health of the company as long as the short term income from their huge long term risks allows them to justify paying themselves massive performance bonuses.

Did you just fall off a turnip truck.

absolem posted:

See, now you've entirely misrepresented my stance. Maybe I didn't simplify enough for you-
The government did dumb things, the banks did dumb things, and consumers did dumb things. The dumb things rested on the incorrect ideas that money should be cheap, that everyone should own a home, and that there would always be buyets for products everyone thought were dumb 10 years ago. You can't lay the entire blame on one group and you can't declare anyone that went along with it innocent. Innocents would be consumers that didn't overextend themselves, bankers that recommended against over investment into subprime packages, and government types that didn't push for low rates and higher home ownership. It isn't the fault of the poor, anymore than it is the fault of the rich. The blame lies on a set of individuals and not with groups. Home ownership isn't right for everyone and it isn't safe to assume that a home will be a good investment.

absolem posted:

It isn't the fault of the poor, anymore than it is the fault of the rich. The blame lies on a set of individuals and not with groups.

nutranurse posted:

Seems like, but rather accurate if we can believe TNC's evidence.

absolem posted:

I agree that there was a lot of bank-regulator nonsense going on, but you have to think about what banks (or businesses in general want). They want to make as much money as possible. Now, most of the time they realize that that is best accomplished by being cautious, which is why they have all those risk experts and such. However, in this case they managed to be convinced (by themselves and the regulators) that there would always be buyers for these packages, which is patently false. Banks would have been more cautious if they hadn't expected to be saved. The synthetic derivative market is predicated on risk in that all banking is, but putting huge numbers of contracts together in order to achieve some sort of average risk per package that then can obfuscate the scope of the package tends to allow for more risk. Another thing to remember is that most every bank that helped make this mess had people at it who knew this much subprime stuff was a bad idea and said so, just like there were consumers who realized that they couldn't actually afford things that were being sold.

quote:

I understand that startlingly few of you know anything about economics and that you probably don't care to learn.

quote:

Poor people did not cause the financial crisis. You can't go around saying X group is at fault for Y or people with A skin color should pay back people of B skin color for the wrongs done to them. We are individuals and are not guilty of the wrongs of people who look, talk, act, or spend like us.

absolem posted:

I understand that startlingly few of you know anything about economics and that you probably don't care to learn.

computer parts posted:

Based on the article, while there was/is definitely racially discriminatory policies at all levels and there was at least some collusion in some regional areas, it doesn't sound like it was necessarily a nationwide phenomenon.

Granted, that could be more because there was enough discrimination at one level that discrimination at other levels in a given region wasn't necessary (e.g., racist housing policies in a city keeps black people out, therefore a local white nationalist group doesn't need to develop to further keep them down).

computer parts posted:

it doesn't sound like it was necessarily a nationwide phenomenon.

SedanChair posted:

https://mises.org/the-turnip-truck

Caros posted:

Just one more thing before I go out for a while.

I find the simplest way to look at the bank-consumer relationship as that of an Adult and a Child. Sure there are some stupid adults and some precocious and smart children, but by and large the Adult knows a lot more than the child, and should be the more responsible of the two when it comes to danger. Your typical bank is far, far more financially knowledgable than your typical consumer, most consumers simply trust their bank when they are told something because they are the experts. If you go to the bank to get a mortgage you expect that the bank isn't going to be trying to screw you by putting you into a brutal ARM, or trying to encourage you to buy a house that you can't possibly afford.

absolem posted:

It is not immoral to be lucky, to take advantage of asymmetric information, or to use the unpleasant circumstances of others for personal gain.

Who What Now posted:

Really loving weird that there is a 1:1 correlation of people responsible for the financial crisis and people who are rich, isn't it? But naaaah, poor people are just as responsible as rich people! How dare anyone say such nasty things about the glorious job creators.

Miltank posted:

What if we just took Coates's argument to its logical conclusion and gave reparations of various degrees to the families of wage earners?

Mayor Dave posted:

He specifically talked about how blacks were excluded from the two major federal programs that encouraged home ownership, not to mention that redlining happened in pretty much every urban area.

loquacius posted:

Basically my take on this is that it's really immoral and horrible that our underclass is defined so strongly along racial/ethnic lines, and I'm in favor of any program that could manage to fix that, but I'm also having trouble with the idea of telling a poor white family "sorry, your specific underclass status isn't part of this particular problem but I'm sure we'll get around to helping you eventually." I do, however, recognize that (a) the reason I'm having trouble with that is that I am a huge loving pussy, and (b) the only way to solve a problem of disproportion is with a disproportionate solution.

SedanChair posted:

That's all great though, because

absolem posted:

It is not immoral to be lucky, to take advantage of asymmetric information, or to use the unpleasant circumstances of others for personal gain.

loquacius posted:

Basically my take on this is that it's really immoral and horrible that our underclass is defined so strongly along racial/ethnic lines, and I'm in favor of any program that could manage to fix that, but I'm also having trouble with the idea of telling a poor white family "sorry, your specific underclass status isn't part of this particular problem but I'm sure we'll get around to helping you eventually." I do, however, recognize that (a) the reason I'm having trouble with that is that I am a huge loving pussy, and (b) the only way to solve a problem of disproportion is with a disproportionate solution.

This entire post is basically just pointless handwringing but I'd feel a lot better about an America where black people didn't have as lovely a deal as they do now and am in favor of any reparation-like programs that could address it as long as the job of defending that program falls to someone else.

Caros posted:

You fucker. You actually got me with this link. Because of course Mises.org would have a response to the 'you fell off the turnip truck' fallacy.

quote:

New experience can force us to discard or modify inferences we have drawn from previous experience. But no kind of experience can ever force us to discard or modify a priori theorems. They are not derived from experience; they are logically prior to it and cannot be either proved by corroborative experience or disproved by experience to the contrary. We can comprehend action only by means of a priori theorems. Nothing is more clearly an inversion of the truth than the thesis of empiricism that theoretical propositions are arrived at through induction on the basis of a presuppositionless observation of "facts."

VitalSigns posted:

quote:

No, he acknowledged that blacks are statistically far more likely than him to be in positions of poverty, and that he as a white male has a huge advantage of privilege. But it's not his fault that this is the case, and it would be immoral of him to not happily play his hand he was dealt through sheer luck*.

*In this analogy his deck consists entirely of single-suited Jack through Aces, ensuring a royal flush nearly every time, while a black person's deck only has a single card, if that.

silvergoose posted:

I'm sorry, but a royal flush is ten to ace, not jack to ace. God.

BUSH 2112 posted:

It's great when people saunter in and say "oh, it's clear that you know nothing about economics and you don't want to learn " Actually a lot of us do understand your little quasi-religious pseudoscience.

Who What Now posted:

Goddamnit, I was just going back to edit that and now you've caught me!

nutranurse posted:

So are you denying the existence of a White Society, one which has actively colluded on levels ranging from the individual bashing in some black guy's head to the FHA redlining blacks out of equitable housing opportunities, that puts whites before everyone else?

amanasleep posted:

Exactly ... society).


I agree here that the politics of Reparations are toxic. And the same forces that prevent effective Federal fiscal response to the recent financial crisis also have prevented effective reparations by other names.

Effective reparations, in my view, are:

1. Ending mass incarceration. This is the largest single method of continuing oppression. I think that whatever other 3rd way garbage the Obama Admin subscribers to, they are pretty serious about getting at this one. I expect it to be a major issue in 2016. Clemency and sentencing changes are good tools here.
2. Creating economic opportunity. This will be delayed politically until it can be enacted for all Americans. But it cannot be too soon for this. Politically, we need class consciousness to replace race consciousness. Americans banding together by economic status has powerful social desegregation effects.
3. Fixing the mortgage system. Home ownership is economically neutral for the country and subjects us to property bubbles from time to time, but it is a very powerful economic benefit for the lower classes. If we enact powerful antidiscrimination rules into this industry we can do a lot of good.
4. Primary Education Reform. End the community funding of education by local real estate taxes, which is the number one tool of oppression of the lower classes through denial of resources. The Feds could end this problem tomorrow by blanketing the school districts with Federal billions that they didn't have to deathmatch each other for. Education funding should be based on need, and poor and oppressed students have greater needs. Not much to cheer about here, R's and D's both love "education reform" that emphasizes "choice" (read: defunding poor school districts) and "standards" (read: defunding poor school districts) and oh by the way they agree to gently caress all teachers forever. Maybe DeBlasio can get something started as he's the first nationally known D to buck this trend.
5. Higher Ed Financing reform. Already a big national issue with solid D support. I expect big stuff on this in 2016 and cheaper college helps the oppressed more.

As to stuff about raising national consciousness, it's all true but I don't think things will ever go in that order. Oppressed people generally have to fight their way to equality ("fight" in the MLK sense AND the Malcolm X sense - equality movements need their dignified peacemakers to legitimize the movement and their militants to kick people in the rear end and provide contrast). First you get them to release you from bondage, then to stop beating and killing you, then to let you own something and raise your family, then to admire your elites, then to intermarry, then to live and work side by side, then to extend the ladders of opportunity. All the while your home-grown strivers are out there, earning moral legitimacy and pushing back against the continuing reactionaries who want to pull everybody right back down to 1859.

None of this is right. It's wrong and unjust in every step. The only thing that's good about it is the possibility of progress.

BUSH 2112 posted:

It's great when people saunter in and say "oh, it's clear that you know nothing about economics and you don't want to learn " Actually a lot of us do understand your little quasi-religious pseudoscience.

absolem posted:

I am not denying that whites are priviliged, in general. I am not denying that coercive and later plain stupid policies were implemented. I am denying that those things mean any person who hasn't acted coercively should be held responsible.

absolem posted:

The first part of your post is so backasswards that I'm not going to go into it except to say that we are all being coerced

Miltank posted:

What if we just took Coates's argument to its logical conclusion and gave reparations of various degrees to the families of wage earners?

Caros posted:

Again you start in with this horseshit?

You are right insofar as you can say that no group is entirely blameless. The US shouldn't have kept interest rates so low, and some consumers probably should have been better off about their decisions. However, while you can't say anyone is blameless, this truth is in the middle bullshit seems to imply that blame is spread equally, which is just factually untrue.

For starters, consumption was driven by the banks. Once the banks realized this was making them lots and lots of money they began to heavily push home ownership on consumers. Now the reason I blame the banks for this is that unlike your typical consumer, they are far more financially literate. If you are a gardener making 30,000 a year and the citibank comes to you, or sends you a piece of mail and says you can buy a $250,000 home, why wouldn't you take it? This is Citi, the largest bank in the country. If they are offering you a loan clearly you can pay it, because why would a billion dollar bank offer you a bad loan?

Predatory lending was a huge aspect of the crisis, and even in instances where it was not the banks are more responsible simply by dint of being the ones with the knowledge to know that this was stupid. When banks started issuing NINJA (No Income, No Jobs or Assets) loans to anyone with a pulse (or even without) they became the driving factor of the market. At any point the bubble could have been slowed or popped early simply by acting in a responsible manner rather than a feeding frenzy.

And of course you continue to gloss over the securitization chain which was ultimately the driving force responsible for the bubble and for its heinous impact on the world economy. Simply put the banks would never have inflated the home bubble to the extent that they did if they had been regulated in this aspect (which they vehemently opposed). The whole bubble was predicated on the fact that the banks could give a mortgage and then get it off their books within a few weeks instead of a few decades, and the only reason they were capable of doing so was the fraudulent process that gave us Collateralized Debt Obligations and Credit Default Swaps and the like. Talk about these and we might take you even vaguely seriously.

Fried Chicken posted:

Still waiting to hear how anyone other than the banks is responsible for bundling up the mortgages as securities, fraudulently rating them, and trading on them at a 30:1 leverage ratio. Because that's where the real trouble was and I am very interested to hear how you completely absolve them of any responsibility so you can maintain your worldview

Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:

Tell us more about the non-aggression principle.

Who What Now posted:

^^^^^^^^
" How come whites don't get to benefit from reparations, too?! "

Jesus Christ, listen to yourself.


Really loving weird that there is a 1:1 correlation of people responsible for the financial crisis and people who are rich, isn't it? But naaaah, poor people are just as responsible as rich people! How dare anyone say such nasty things about the glorious job creators.

absolem posted:

we are all being coerced.

absolem posted:

The bottom line really is that banks felt secure doing truly stupid and sometimes downright wrong stuff. Why they felt that way is because 1) Their pay structures were/are hosed up and 2) they thought they'd be protected by the gov't. Its tragic that regulation messes stuff up just enough to start a snowball and when we go full crisis mode the gov't steps in and fixes poo poo by saving the morons. I still maintain that all three axes of stupid were necessary for the crisis, but it is definitely fair to rank the banks as more culpable than consumers (the gov't is just as bad though, for regulating and then saving them).


I don't absolve them of responsibility, see above

nutranurse posted:

The logical conclusion to TNC's argument is that the federal government research how to set up a reparations programs (which can be anything from monetary to New Deal-type programs) and white America as a whole acknowledge the awful side of this country's past. You're the one who beelines to reparations = lump sum payment, probably because most people would agree that such a lump sum payment would be ineffective towards combating systematic racism in this country and ultimately an empty gesture. Stop being so disingenuous and willfully misrepresenting the essay.

Fried Chicken posted:

So the logic of the libertarian argument for opposing government on the basis of it being a continuation of violating initial rights applies only when it makes your life easier, and not when it comes to how you are exploiting others?

Fried Chicken posted:

The Community Reinvestment Act specifically exempted the banks from having to participate, it had nothing to do with commercial real estate (which was a huge part of subprime market), FHLMC didn't get into the subprime business until after the peak of the sales, and absolutely none of this pushed the banks to bundle them into securities, fraudulently rate them, and then over leverage at more than 30:1 on them


The financial crash is separate from what set it off, which was the popping of the housing bubble. It took time for that to move through the system. The Austrian predictions came in 2006-2007. The housing bubble popped in 2005. Seeing the dominos are falling once you knock them over is not useful forecasting.

VitalSigns posted:

Haha.

"White people don't exploit black people anymore!"

"Also, it's totally fine to profit off of the hardships of a marginalized and oppressed group, sorry black people weren't born lucky like me, but I'm not about to stop oppressing them as long as I benefit!"

In the same loving post.

VitalSigns posted:

So when black people are denied jobs or an equal education and the benefits are lavished on white people, that's not a thing we should stop or correct, because it's non-coercive?

I also love how white people suddenly realize coercion is wrong juuuuuuuust when we start talking about redistributing the wealth their families accumulated through coercion.

Fine, let's do this the Libertarian way: come in with an army, confiscate the wealth of the country, distribute it how we please, ban white people from accessing the courts, then wait 80 years and it's all good again because no one alive was old enough to have participated in coercion and that's all in the past. But it's a shame that happened, we know better now. Ah noble Libertarian justice

Caros posted:

As for the latter bit, you are still benefiting from the wrongs done to them, and as such should be obligated to help narrow the gap between those who were historically slaves and those who are now merely driven into poverty and horrible conditions by policy and negative stereotyping.

Jagchosis posted:

Holy gently caress. Incredible.

Here is your analysis:

Step 1: Mortgages to poor people
Step 2: ?????
Step 3: Mortgages are a systemic contagion

I would write a rebuttal but your "analysis" has been rebutted by economists and financial experts about as much as "there is no anthropogenic climate change" has been by scientists so whats the point

TLM3101 posted:

I am seriously going to print this out and frame it on my wall as the clearest loving example of bougie, wanna-be radical and vacuuous pseudo-intellectual drivel. It's almost platonic in its perfection.

Fake edit: Aaaand now you're blaming poor people for the financial crisis. Holy poo poo.

Fried Chicken posted:

His argument is about the ongoing wrongs, not slavery, so your entire point is contingent on either having not read the essay or having deliberately missed the point.

Miltank posted:

One class of society had been hosed over by another class of society and is
put at a distinct disadvantage because of it. This is true of wage earners and doubly true of black wage earners. Literally everyone who thinks about it for five seconds knows that race based reparations are a terrible strategy for attaining social equality.