Awesome.

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Shocking, I tell you, shocking!

Also, study politics. This kind of stuff worked before, and would work even better now if CEOs would take pay cuts instead of laying off workers. Y'know, kind of like what CEOs in other countries are doing.

@Snowspot: Scientology & Conservatism is all about attack, deflect, and never defend. Works great until you take over all branches of government and wreck everything.

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@Snowspot:

Well, for one, enough with the bailouts and stimuli. The government spending money never, ever, boosts the economy. Ever. It's when the government allows the market to decide the fates of businesses that the economy can actually turn around. Seriously, when the political higher-ups decide which investment firms live or die, or which banks close their doors, not only does that create a weird moral dilemma, but it also reeks of bias.

When the people (shocking, no) decide which businesses live or die by which ones earn there business, then we don't have to worry about freaking bailout draining all of the money we don't have in the first place. Who cares if Ford shuts down? So we all drive Hondas, big deal. They shouldn't make shitty cars if they want to stay in business. The government has its priorities all out of whack. It just needs to back out of economic affairs and let the market rebalance on its own.

Japan tried this same thing, about 2 decades ago. It prolonged their recession almost another decade.

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The government spending money never, ever, boosts the economy. Ever. It's when the government allows the market to decide the fates of businesses that the economy can actually turn around. -Gyaruson

That is quite possibly one of the most inaccurate sentences that has ever, in the history of mankind, been written.

You obviously know of this thing called the internet, since you're commenting on it. You should, therefore, know how easy it is to disprove both parts of your assertion. And I'm talking history, not right wing opinion, which has been in the serious business of rewriting history lately. They act as if we cannot research FDR, the New Deal, and WWII.

Japan's problem was that they were too timid; they were restrained by conservatives who didn't want to spend too much. You can't put a band-aid on a severed limb, any more than you can ignore it and hope the bleeding stops.

Who cares if Ford shuts down? So we all drive Hondas, big deal. -Gyaruson

The literally millions of Americans who depend on them for jobs. It's not just Ford, but all of their suppliers and all of the support businesses in those cities. They would vanish overnight.

The market is interested in only one thing: profit. The government is interested in the welfare of the citizenry. In some cases, these two interests can coexist, but in most, profit is taken at the expense of the people. So pardon me if I don't accept a Randian blind faith in the elite ruling class to do good by me while I worship them for their benevolence.

Market deregulation allowed naked short selling, predatory lending, and credit default swaps, all three of which are largely responsible for the current global collapse. The answer simply cannot be less regulation.

Sure, the government doesn't always to the right thing either, but at least I have a say ever year in who gets to govern. I never got to help pick the CEO of Bear Stearns or AIG.

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If Ford shuts down, yes people would loose their jobs. A lot of people. But people are already loosing their jobs, and their houses, and their cars because the government backs these financial institutions who give loans to every Tom, Dick and J'Vaugn who slap down twenty bucks. They do so because the government makes them so that they're not "discriminating". Ya know what? If you can't afford a $100,000 loan, you don't deserve one. Clear and simple. We've got these lenders going belly up because they're not getting paid back for the thousands of loans the given, which the government is forcing them to make. I'll paint you a picture.

The lender has a million dollars. It gives the applicant said million dollars. Now the applicant has 1 million and the lender has nothing. The applicant buys a house. Now both the lender and the applicant have zero dollars. The lender wants its money back (with interest) but the applicant has no money to pay them. This means both the lender and the applicant cannot pay their bills. Now, insert the government. The government swoops in and hands the lender another million dollars, no questions asked. So the lender takes that million dollars, turns around, and hands it to the next applicant. That applicant cannot pay the lender back. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Bailouts do not necessarily fix anything. They can help, but they do not always. To pay for these bailouts the rich get taxed up the asspipe. Anyone who makes more than $250,000 if I'm not mistaken (which I don't). Typical liberals, though. Leave the rich to fix everyone else's mistakes. Rather than implementing a system where people are given what they deserve, they get whatever they want and let other pick up the pieces of the wreckage.

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I don't claim to be any type of economist... -Gyaruson

I would suggest then, you refrain from making unfounded assertions about the mortgage markets and lending practices.

I'll paint you a picture. -Gyaruson

Allow me to borrow your brush.

Imagine that you found a way, thanks to industry deregulation sponsored by Congressman Phil Gramm in 1999, to profit from a mortgage default. Essentially, a bank gives out a mortgage it suspects the borrower won't be able to keep up with.

The bank then buys an insurance policy on that loan, so that if the mortgage holder does default, an insurance company will partially pay the bank reparations for their loss. Only now, thanks to the aforementioned deregulation, there is no limit to the amount of policies a bank could take against a single mortgage, so the bank insures the house several times over, well beyond its value.

There is a reason that in the chronology of this economic collapse it was insurance companies, not lenders, who went belly up first. It's because they could not pay the insurance claims to banks who purposefully over insured risky loans.

When the insurance companies were unable to pay, the lenders' liquidity dried up and they couldn't give out new loans. Because they took on too many risky loans hoping for a quick profit via insurance pay outs, they didn't have enough money coming in.

All of this could have been prevented with more, not less regulation, and in fact that regulation existed prior to 1999.

You're right, bailouts don't necessarily make things better, especially if they're like the Wall Street money grab that was perpetrated in the closing months of the Bush Administration.

Without regulation of those funds, they end up as corporate bonuses for failed executives, but with regulation, oversight, and transparency, those funds can achieve. They can open the credit market and help put money back into the economy which in turn will help increase GDP.

As far as the tax increases to pay for it, we're not even anywhere close to Regan level taxes, and he's the vaunted conservative idol. By all means, let's return to those rates, or Clinton era rates.

The marginal rate for money earned above $250,000 is going up 3%, or and extra $30.00 in taxes for every $1000.00 earned (and ultimately the marginal rates of other brackets are decreasing so one would have to earn more than $250,000 to actually see a tax increase).

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Holy crap.

Someone has done their research. Not that it will actually change his mind.

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That's the advantage of the free market, not that mistakes are never made, but that in the end the system will always guarantee they have consequences. Obviously, some amount of regulation is needed: to prevent fraud, and insure consumers know what they're buying.

However, that sort of oversight is sometimes better left to the private press, which, since it is composed of many separate individuals instead of the one huge entity that is the gov't, is harder to buy off.

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lol.. yeah scumbag, you probably know alot about politics and budgets and taxation right?

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Oh man, I just lollerskated all over that comment.

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Does anyone know if taxes are taken out of the cost of any DLC at the moment? Besides the share that has to go to corporate taxes.

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X(

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