Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

qman said:

Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

no one here has yet answered my question what the Fed did wrong during the crisis.

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I did.

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My apologies.  What did you say the Fed did wrong?

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amp244 said:

KauaiOrca said:

Stonehenge said:

Also, gold was trading at around 300 in 2000, now over 1100. That is more than a 366% increase in 15 years. How has the value of the dollar been? Not so good, it buys less now than in 2000

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I'll take the performance of stocks over the last 75 years over PM's.  Much more fun to invest in ... more challenging in terms of researching companies ...

As Buffett has said ... "we use near slave labor to dig up shiny rocks from the ground, melt them into bars, the stick them back into the ground again (in vaults) and guard them ... "

No dividend, not profits, no earnings ... just speculation, hoarding and massive manipulation.  Gold is really, at this point, a fringe currency.  No doubt money will be made and lost on it and I own a pound of coins I keep hidden away just in case ... but that's about it.

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Gold is not a currency anymore, and even on the most recent "gold-standards" it was held in reserves and the bank notes were tied to it indirectly. This is what kept the currency stable, the fact that you could take your bills to the bank and receive silver/gold for them. If other countries had the same system, then trade between nations was seamless.

Now, it is merely an investment instrument, but nobody invests in gold for a return. They invest in it as a store of wealth. If you want a return, hit the stock and bond markets. Stocks are much more intricate and in some instances, pay dividends, as you have noted. There are also some tax advantages of stocks over gold. But the advantage gold has over stocks is its value stability. No matter what happens to the dollar, to the stock market, or to the bond market, gold will always have value. So long as there is trade within an economy, gold will have value.

The bank of England knows this...

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Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

qman said:

Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

no one here has yet answered my question what the Fed did wrong during the crisis.

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I did.

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My apologies.  What did you say the Fed did wrong?

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amp244 said:

First off I never said, "hey look at this video of the Fed doing illegal shit!" which is apparently what you think I said.

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amp244 said:

He wasn't asking difficult questions, and it wouldn't be hard to figure out who got the money.

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qman said:

Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

My apologies.  What did you say the Fed did wrong?

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Rewarding poor behavior sets a horrible precedent. Having insolvency and bankruptcies is a part of business for everyone, including banks.

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qman said:

What did the bailouts do for the people getting kicked out of their homes?  Nothing, those distressed assets should have hit the open market at a major discount, it would have worked out just fine. That doesn't produce a economic depression.

So what did the bailouts produce?  The largest wealth and income inequality in 80 years.

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Stonehenge said:

Not nearly enough. I don't want just a tiny handful of politicians and power brokers knowing the facts, I want those facts published. As I already said, its not a problem to redact highly sensitive info of which there is little. The sensitive info they don't want to get out is the evidence of wrong doing. Where there is smoke there is fire and its been smoking like mad.

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Stonehenge said:

>We had a corporate takeover of government decades ago.  That's the biggest secret of all.

Yep, and the last few presidents have all been corporate shills and dirtbags. Hitlery or jeb would be the next in a long sleazy line. That's why I would settle for bern-out rather than either of them or biden for that matter. Trump looks to be the best, time will tell. If he is a good president he will help us a lot. I hope to see the fed audited, dirty deals exposed, and the tpp, ttip, tafta, etc ditched. Also the govt run like a business and an end to bribery.

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Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

amp244 said:

First off I never said, "hey look at this video of the Fed doing illegal shit!" which is apparently what you think I said.

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No, it's not what I think you said.  I asked you what they did wrong, and the video simply shows someone not able to answer a question about an investigation that was in process.

amp244 said:

He wasn't asking difficult questions, and it wouldn't be hard to figure out who got the money.

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No, it wouldn't be.  Are you saying they never got the answers?

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KauaiOrca said:

qman said:

What did the bailouts do for the people getting kicked out of their homes?  Nothing, those distressed assets should have hit the open market at a major discount, it would have worked out just fine. That doesn't produce a economic depression.

So what did the bailouts produce?  The largest wealth and income inequality in 80 years.

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How do you know it "would have worked out just fine?"  Bernanke said last year that 12 of America's biggest financial institutions were literally DAYS away from insolvency?  Would that have worked out just fine?  We're talking overnight insolvency for CITI, UBS, Deutche, BofA, and a bunch of others ...then the dominoes start to fall.

Bernanke had the data.  He was in a position to know.  He knew more than you and I did. 

Blaming the FED for the failures of Congress is nice and it fits some really intriguing conspiracy theories about global banking families, but the truth is, both democrats and republicans resisted putting in place effective oversight of Wall Street and the ratings companies that would have prevented it.  If just the ratings agencies had been honest, this would have been averted.

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Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

qman said:

Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

My apologies.  What did you say the Fed did wrong?

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Rewarding poor behavior sets a horrible precedent. Having insolvency and bankruptcies is a part of business for everyone, including banks.

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I completely agree with you here.  Except when businesses are so big, their failure would cause the collapse of the entire economy.  Congress is at fault for allowing 'too big to fail', not the Fed.

qman said:

those distressed assets should have hit the open market at a major discount, it would have worked out just fine. That doesn't produce a economic depression.

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I disagree with you, because there were so many derivatives tied to those assets.

qman said:

So what did the bailouts produce?  The largest wealth and income inequality in 80 years.

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I don't think the bailouts are at fault for the inequality.  The bailouts prevented an economic depression.  Congress (not the Fed) should have done a LOT more for Main Street with the money that was being spent.

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qman said:

Let the big banks fail, so what?  Let those stock and bond holders suffer the ramifications of their poor investment.  Again, other financial institutions would have bought up the distressed assets, that's how capitalism works.  You do realize many banks did act responsibly waiting for the crash to buy up those assets?  Their reward, a big kick in the ass from the Fed and their buddies.

Banks can fail, it's NOT the end of the world. What are you going to support when the next financial crisis hits the financial sector? I assume more of the same since the ends justify the means in your mind.

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KauaiOrca said:

qman said:

Let the big banks fail, so what?  Let those stock and bond holders suffer the ramifications of their poor investment.  Again, other financial institutions would have bought up the distressed assets, that's how capitalism works.  You do realize many banks did act responsibly waiting for the crash to buy up those assets?  Their reward, a big kick in the ass from the Fed and their buddies.

Banks can fail, it's NOT the end of the world. What are you going to support when the next financial crisis hits the financial sector? I assume more of the same since the ends justify the means in your mind.

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As much as I admire the bravado of the "let them fail" chant ... I think you may be under estimating how interdependent our financial system is and what is meant by systemic failure. 

Bernanke said there was virtually NO LIQUIDITY in the markets.  Where would the investors have gotten the money and credit to purchase these distressed assets?  Most of their money would have been vaporized.

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amp244 said:

And you are all placing the blame on congress, but they are mere pawns in the scheme. The heart of the problem is the Fed. They are the policy setters, they are the ones pulling the strings. Congress has less than an hour to read the bailout bill of 1000+ pages and then vote on it. They don't have a say in anything that goes on regarding the economy. That's why a few of the ones who aren't completely compromised are so damn pissed.

So lets draw the connection. Federal Reserve is owned and operated by its private member banks ie: mega institutions on Wall Street. Wall Street controls the Federal Government. The Government delegated its constitutionally granted powers to coin money, over to the Federal Reserve who carries out what the government would have done, in complete secret. The Fed is responsible for setting policies which affect interest rates and the actions of the mega wall street institutions which just so happen to own and operate it. Congress has absolutely no say under this system. They are the ones to blame on the surface of things, but the Fed, and more specifically the multinational bankers who control it, are the actual source of the problems. These people run our country from the shadows and have no affiliation to it whatsoever.

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qman said:

Not everyone was insolvent by any means, reward the responsible and prudent, instead they got punished. 

We know the deal, the concentrated power by the "too big too fail" banks creates a situation that scares the shit out of everybody when their needs are not met, nothing more than a 2 year old throwing a temper tantrum.

You guys want to break them up after the fact, how are you going to break up something you made even more powerful?  Not gonna happen.

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KauaiOrca said:

amp244 said:

You should all do yourselves a favor and read this essay by Alan Greenspan written way back in 1966 arguing a link between a gold standard and economic freedom. I think this will do a lot to help you all truly understand the argument for a gold standard.

http://www.321gold.com/fed/greenspan/1966.html

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That ship sailed a long time ago ... we are not going to any gold standard now or in the future.  That's not to say that a competing commodities backed currency won't be introduced, because it might ...

The world was a different place in 1966 ... no personal computers ... no online trading ... Currency trading was nothing like it is today ... The global trade situation had hardly gotten started in terms of what we have today.

We live in an era of options ... currencies, stocks, bonds, derivatives, commodities, PM's and internet based currencies ... Gold's importance has gone down, now up.

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