4TJefferson's Comments (687)

“Fiscal conservatives were there during the W years too. Then as now no one is listening.”

“It's not republicans. Fiscal conservatives - wall street journal readers, for example - are programmed to react against any kind of financial regulation or tax. Your expect that. What's unexpected is the fierce and largely fact-free attack from people who are fed their opinions from places like this very website. For example, people are really upset that loans are not easy to get right now - but loans from banks are only down 2.8% from last year. The difference is that we've tightened rules about letting short-term investments ride while market values change overnight. That's the very scary 'shadow banking system' by the way. It was both a source of corruption and of easy money for loans to businesses, you and me. There are a bunch of liberals that want to have both the easy money and tight rules that punish the people who create the conditions that make the easy money possible. Of course, that's impossible. They think that if they get somebody in power who really, really wants these impossible things to be true, then the impossible will become possible.”

“And your point is?”

“GO KEITH !!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“I believe that if we did raise the interest rates a tad, 7.5% for homes, many of the folks borrowing money to invest badly could have been averted the housing meltdown. Also, so many people would not have taken all those teaser rates on credit card accounts. The only reason that interest rates stayed low was to keep the consumer consuming and not saving. If I could get a better rate on CDs I would definitely pull money out of the market to pad my losses. Interest rates do effect consumer/savers behaviors and the last two decades have created a terrible mess when they go artificially low. The Fed should be accountabl­e...it should have started with Greenspan though...B­ernanke is just an inheritor of bad monetary policy like Obama inheriting the Bush/Pubie mess of a failed economy and two ill pursued wars.”

“Every day.”

“She is a full time job out of office. Think of the drama we would have to endure on the use of her photos were she now in office as vice president.”

“Quite true. She could be behaving similarly to Biden and embarrassing us all.”

“I think they're stalling so the economy either tanks or continues to stall.”

“All true. But also one of the great mysteries in history is that only a very small percentage of Americans were invested in the stock market in 1929 yet the crash took down the ENTIRE COUNTRY! The reasons were the unforeseen connected force multipliers in the economic structure at the time. Today it is true we have much quicker intervention by the machinery we have now. The world is much bigger. But are there hidden force multipliers and amplifiers out there under the surface like the CDS fissionable falling dominoes in September 2008? Everyone on Earth understands that event now. But what could be the next unforeseen break because of the lack of transparency? I hope everything is fine....bu­t who can be sure in this opaque riotous trading free for all?”