Will anyone ever trust American bankers, politicians, ratings agencies, reporters, auditors or regulators again?
Will you?
December 15, 2008
Soot and Ashes Serious Question of the Day
Will anyone ever trust American bankers, politicians, ratings agencies, reporters, auditors or regulators again?
Will you?
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40 comments:
never did!
NO, Never.
America IS Dead.
Ditto - never did trust any of them. Nor are there non-American counterparts any more trustworthy.
You already trust Obama. Foolish.
Of course they will trust America, our banking system, the Wizards of Wall Street, our media, our rating agencies, etc... because this entire economic downturn is blamed "on a crisis". The media spins this coming recession/depression as some unexpected unfortunate event just like a tornado or a hurricane flattening a town.
Even Alan Greenspan the guy who created this bubble testified in front of Congress and said "this is a once in a century credit tsunami".
This is all sickening. What amazes me is that America lived beyond it's means and now that the game is falling apart, we blame it on "a credit crisis", "the housing crisis", "the foreclosure crisis", etc... All of these so called crisis are the result, the symptom is that we lived way beyond our means. For the life of me I can't understand why the world still does business with us? We will end up defaulting on our debt and will get away with it too.
The whole thing was a scam, it still is, it will continue to be, in one way or the other.
"Will anyone ever trust American bankers, politicians, ratings agencies, reporters, auditors or regulators again?"
Yes. Right now suckers are being born across the nation who will grow up and believe again. Nay-sayers of this new generation will face derision as being cynical, paranoid, ill-educated, unsophisticated and naive. Nay-sayers will be told that "things are different now", or "we're learn from our mistakes", or "That was then, this is now." A few of this new generation, embracing Ayn Rand, will proclaim that if left alone, the markets will work for everyone and fraud and incompetence will reveal themselves of their own accord.
If I still have any teeth by then, I'll be grinding them as I rock in my rocking chair.
Um, why start now?
Americans need to get their heads out of their asses and stop worshipping their politicians, their presidents, their cops and their military as gods and heroes above reproach.
There are heroic public servants to be sure but no public servant is above reproach. As an example, there are many heroic military people that love their country and are heroic but soldiers have been misled into wars of conquest and plunder since the concept of war began.
The way the average American worships their president and military you would think America was a monarchical police state.
It's time to get your head out of your asses and question everything you hear from your public officials and from your media.
Al-Queeferoni,
How come you always single out the US when every single European bank, politician etc.
is even more corrupt then we are?
Anon said:
'This is all sickening. What amazes me is that America lived beyond it's means and now that the game is falling apart, we blame it on,'
hmmm didnt you just blame someone else in your previous paragrph?
Can you please explain how 'cheap money' = 'easy money'
Easy money had nothing to do with Greenspan..
Hedge fund crooks based in London would do the same whether the FED rates are 26% or 0%.
oz
Somewhat. It depends on what we do over the next year. Also we are far from the only parties to this mess. The banks and realtors in Europe were just as mendacious and shallow. They had a few more restraints on their conduct, but this event and Enron are demonstrating that the existing ideas on state and private regulation are not keeping pace with the speed at which financiers are "innovating".
We may see a world in which financial transparency becomes more mandatory (whether enforced by governments or investors/counterparties) and in which trust isn't as necessary.
This is a lesson intelligence services learned a long time ago. Trust often isn't sufficient. Metastability in markets and lack of cost-benefit for fraud prevention has obscured this fact until now.
I was speaking with a friend of mine who once worked in construction.
He tells me how upset and angry he is that he can't get a new job, while the few available construction jobs are taken up by illegals.
A friend of his, a construction supervisor who was responsible for finding him work, had to take more then a 50% pay cut, as well as traveling twice as far each way to work.
For every illegal who volunteers to work overtime without pay, wages will continue to drop in the construction trade for US citizens.
This unfortunately is very true, and unless Obama funds new infrastructure projects - where US citizens are given hiring preference and businesses are fined heavily who hire illigals - we'll never get many US workers back on their feet again with decent living wages.
I have nothing against a group of people who want to improve their livelyhood - but not at the expense of tax paying citizens.
Our friends to the south of the border need to start looking after their own people, provide them decent paying jobs.
If that is done, we won't need to waste any more money "protecting our borders" since their will be no more incentive by illegals to come over here.
Let's see what Obama does.
I believe the man is intelligent with a good head on his shoulders,
but talk is cheap.
No, and now every thinking American hates their guts! The cynicism and indifference that is needed to produce a sustained crisis of leadership is in place. Look at countries like Bulgaria and you'll see what's in store for the US. Bush will leave America knee-deep in s*t; during Obama's presidency the s*t will become waist-deep, then neck-deep.
Very little is said in the mainstream media about the harm and secrecy of the Federal Reserve, and about the harm of deficit spending. Props to Bloomberg for trying to sue these scammers.
It is, as anon at 7:38 said, as though the there were nothing wrong with the institutions of the US, and the crisis were caused by unfavorable economic circumstances.
I wish Merry Christmas to you all. Whip out your credit cards and shop. The future of the American economy depends on you. Consume for Christmas, it's Christian and patriotic! Consume for Jesus!
HAHA, YOU TOOLS! THE CONSUMER POWERED ECONOMY IS DEAD! IT WAS A SCAM!
Keith,
I know this is off-topic but I don't know where to post it:
How would you comment on the fact that the US dollar has been gaining value with respect to the Euro, but not with respect to the Yen?
Here's a chart from Yahoo finance to illustrate the point:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6loy74
You hit the nail on the head, Anon 7:38. The politicians and the media act like this mess is an external event or an act of God. Bazooka Hank said TARP would "unclog the pipes of the financial system". I guess he and Kashkari are the "new White House plumbers". No one ever talks about heads rolling, which is exactly what needs to happen before trust can be restored.
It's got nothing to do with trust - if people start seeing others making money they will jump back in - they might be a bit more wary, but they will still jump back in. In fact, like seals in the arctic, they will have to jump back just to get by - and when they do, the killer whales will be waiting to feed on them.
Yes. Right now suckers are being born across the nation who will grow up and believe again. Nay-sayers of this new generation will face derision as being cynical, paranoid, ill-educated, unsophisticated and naive. Nay-sayers will
Wooooo back buckeroooooo. There are very few people under the age of 45 that even understand the word honest or hard work. They will raise their litters to be like them, lazy, smarmy shitbags. No need to be long winded. I think most people here see this. Now that the free money has stoped raining from the sky do to the miricle (HAAAA) of securitization collasping, we can see reality return in all of it's horrible splender.
God I was sick of hearing about how smart all these ankle biting punks were. Sign your name and the bank makes you rich. All wanna be lazy punks deserve a nasty protracted spanking.
Has someone - ANYONE? - checked on our Social Security account?
Is it still there??
Was it ever really there???
Has it been a Ponzi all along???
If that's gone, we haven't even begun to fathom the meaning of the word F**KED.
Game over for at least a generation.
sure they will. americans have short-term memories and once this passes and they can start buying their mocha cafe lattes at starbucks again they'll forget everything. wash, rinse, repeat.
I never did trust them. So I don't intend to start now.
Johnny Lunchpail and Sally Housecoat still trust bankers, politicians, ratings agencies, etc. They have no choice.
It is very much an Animal Farm situation, where the pigs have created a system too complex for most of us to understand. The average american has no choice but to trust that things will work out for the best as they are being led to the glue factory.
I'll tell you something folks, and I'll make it as clear and simple as possible. After GM and Chrysler, Boeing is next.
They don't need trust if the military back them. You can be as crooked as you want if you have taken a third of the proceeds and devoted them to a massive military and secret police machine whose iron grip is felt in every remote corner of the earth.
Of course, you have to keep the barbarians on the other side of the Rhine, cause if they have all spent their lives dreaming of your head on a stick, you know what happens when your guard is down...
Until the suckers in foreign countries wake up and quit funding this giant ponzi scheme we actually might actually be able to prolong this for a while. I am in awe how many dumb foreigners are still willing to throw good money after bad. Especially the Arabs and Chinese seem to be slow learners when it comes to figuring out when to cut your losses.
Wake up folks...
It's not the Americans who did this..
It was the BRITISH EMPIRE and their international bankers who controlled the american banks!!!
Trust ever again? never trusted them in the first place. at least not the way you are talking about. I listen to what they have to say but then run it through a "they are pretending to look out for you, but really are out for their own interests" filter.
never trust any one in a suit my friends.Run away as fast as you can.
Anonymous oz said...
Anon said:
'This is all sickening. What amazes me is that America lived beyond it's means and now that the game is falling apart, we blame it on,'
hmmm didnt you just blame someone else in your previous paragrph?
Can you please explain how 'cheap money' = 'easy money'
Easy money had nothing to do with Greenspan..
Hedge fund crooks based in London would do the same whether the FED rates are 26% or 0%.
oz
December 15, 2008 8:41 PM
Oz, I didn't blame any specific person. But I blamed anyone (the Nick's of the world) who lived beyond their means, people who knew they couldn't afford a house but did it anyways, etc...
The Fed lowered interest rates to continue the party when they knew the party was about to be over (i.e. the stock market bubble and tech stock bubble was about to collapse thus they made the cost of money/interest rates lowered and thus another bubble, the real estate bubble started).
Easy money had nothing to do with Greenspan? Are you kidding me? This idiot went before Congress and actually encouraged people to get adjustable mortgage loans! He also talked about the "financial innovations" that allowed people to buy a bigger/grander home they can afford. Greenspan even talked about the wonders of people taking out HELOC loans! God, were you sleeping the last 15 years Oz?
I did at one time...when I was like 16. But then after that, people said I developed an "attitude problem".
"You used to be such a happy-go-lucky kid", they said.
But you know what? My attitude is only as good or bad as the environment. In this toxic environment, my attitude becomes toxic. I see reality, I don't sugarcoat anything.
Just look at how people worship Obama. "If I help him out, he'll help me out. I don't have to worry about paying my mortgage, anymore."
Remember that lady?
You think Obama is a smart man who's thinking straight? Well, the Federal Reserve is the biggest threat to America right now - and Obama's going to encourage them to print money like there is no tomorrow. He's not even lying about it.
After the money bomb fails and the IPCC predictions for the coming decade are ALL wrong, then people will begin to believe the truth. Both sides lie like dogs.
This time around, history is well documented. John Lennon and Barrack Obama's vision of a socialist utopia will turn out to be the same bad trip Karl Marx had. They all inhaled. That was the whole point. The hippies inherit the earth. God help us.
keith, what about the realtwhores? you were right when you said they'd go back to their former jobs as hookers...this, from a December 14th Las Vegas Sun article on the hooker business in Sin City:
"Meanwhile, more women reportedly are getting into the business, which creates a classic supply and demand squeeze. An escort agency owner told the Sun he’s getting about 40 interested applicants every day, the majority of whom are women running from the wreckage of lost finance jobs. Maybe you’ll buy an evening with Rebecca. She’s been a call girl in Las Vegas for several years, after leaving a job in finance behind. Winters are always slow, she says, but overall, the money is good. How good? Her best month was $32,000. An average month is more like $15,000."
A "finance job"?...right...a realtwhore!
"I see naked people"
-Warren Buffet 2008
Anonymous said...
I'll tell you something folks, and I'll make it as clear and simple as possible. After GM and Chrysler, Boeing is next.
Did you read this in the tea leaves?
.
NO!
.
p.s. Never did.
Never did...never will!
Fight Club (ending)
It's right there on the money itself. "In God We Trust." Period.
It never said anything about the Fed.
You'd be surprised at who trusts America, Keith.
I'm not rich, but because we cashed out of the housing bubble in time, liquidated my wife's University of California retirement benefits early and did some other entirely legal financial moves, we had enough money that we could set up a Swiss account. Our bank guy LOVES the U.S. And so does his assistant, although for a different reason.
Our main bank maggot is a 40-something SchweizerDeutsche who lived in Virginia for a number of years. He believes in the innate goodness of America, and thinks that the Bush atrocity years were just an irregularity. When we go to Zurich or do business by phone, Mrs. Bukko and I are always lambasting the latest corruption and predicting doom. He humours us because we're fun to talk to, but he doesn't buy into our gloom (even though we've been right about the overall course of events.) He's confident the U.S. will bounce back.
I think he's naive, but he's been right about currency patterns and tempers our paranoid reactions, so we're keeping him.
I suppose a banker has to be optimistic. If he followed your tack, he'd just say "Sell everything! Buy gold! Prepare to flee to the Bat Cave!" There's no fee money flowing to the bank that way. So it's bias toward positivity.
His assistant, a younger fellow, also German Swiss, thinks the U.S. is crap. His father lives in North Carolina and has some sort of business there with more than 1,000 employees. The assistant has told us about the waterhead workers his dad deals with. He sees Americans as boobs, and the government as corrupt.
But he is also keen to continue doing business in America. It's a land of many resources, a big market of relatively wealthy and free-spending people. In short, there's money to be made in the U.S. for him, even though he acknowledges it's deteriorating. So he has faith while acknowledging the warts.
Of course, Aussies are big believers in the U.S. They tend to suckle on the colonial overlords, and now that Pommie-land is second-rate, they have faith in the U.S. security tit.
Obama is popular here. When we tell our local friends that "O" is no leftist saviour, they look at us like we're just sour apples. We immigrate bashing Bush, and now we're tarnishing the un-Bush? We're some of the most anti-American people we meet.
You see, people WANT to believe that there's a good country left in the U.S. If they totally lost faith, it would be admitting how f@cked the world is. That's too depressing for most humans. So the trust will continue until the U.S. does something so horrible, like nukes a billion people, that it can no longer be overlooked.
Wanting to believe the US is not deeply corrupt is also the main force keeping the 9/11 from blowing up. The loosest stone in that wall is WTC7, and if anybody can explain that without a bullsh1t whitewash, I'll shut up. I'm a combustion engineer and what passed for an "explanation" there was a complete crock of you know what.
But the pain of investigating would hurt more than the benefit of the truth, not just the US either, so I think they are right in covering it up for a generation or two.
you forgot realtors
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