dagblog - Comments for "Bailout II: The Sequel"

Dude. I can't argue this

quinn esq — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 23:38:18 +0000

Dude. I can't argue this stuff anymore. I think the particular arguments you took up were... absurd. The Mandela comparison. The discounting of historic moments. The idea that it's the LEFT that somehow hasn't done a strong enough intellectual articulation. I guess I just think these ideas are like... turnips off the truck. They're not of enough value to pursue further.

So... you're welcome to them, and welcome to broadcast them.

That's my perspective. Signing off. Hockey calls.

Oh, good; you're here. I

we are stardust — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 23:37:20 +0000

In reply to Well, my ears are

Oh, good; you're here. I won't have to talk to you in absentia.

I began to make some assumptions about your politics when you asked me about a Jack-bauer-esque scenario. Now I spent a good hour responding to your direct question to me. Just asking the question showed me a lot about how your mind seems to work, and I tried to address two possiblilities, then answer the question fully, in the best way I knew how. And yet you never came back to respond; I lost a bit of respect for you, to tell the truth. It was a time that you might have shown me where I was wrong, or ceded a point ot two, in other words, abandoned a conviction you hold dearly, even a bit...

I really dislike your take on Afghanistan; by and large, all you spoke about was the politics of Obama's choices, and I think that's a very wrong way to think about it, especially given that our behaviors around the globe seem to be aggravating far too many others on the planet. And I have been piqued that you seem to want to present a more adult position; others too, but they are not here right now, so I won't mention them by name.

And yes, reliance on the theme of 'political viability' to me seems weak, and negates any possibility that good leaders step up when the time is right, and articulate a message that involves the citizenry to help them push for positive change: it's not simple math, counting votes in Congress.

Obviously the overall system

Elusive Trope — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 22:56:56 +0000

In reply to Worse, it's the replacement

Obviously the overall system of how bank handled mortgages and the documentation was something on the level of a tragic slapstick comedy. And needs to be addressed through comprehensive legislation. The question, however, that will come out in the investigation is whether the banks were asserting ownership willy-nilly, the deep fraud, or asserting ownership of legitimate claims with fradulent documentation, the shallow fraud. Of course, I realize there are some here that say fraud is fraud. That point has been made clear. All I would argue is that this legitimate debate. But then again I'm just a fop so what do I know.

Well, my ears are

Elusive Trope — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 22:41:00 +0000

In reply to Anna. Two weeks ago I sold

Well, my ears are burning...And my personal response since I am being detailed here...

First off I would like to point out that "magic pony" was first rolled out as a way to mock my position, so I returned the flippant use of the pony. So to hold it against me is to say that pony mockery can only be used by those whom you agree with. So it would seem still you believe that is was okay to mock me, to talk down to me in a pompous manner, to treat me like a retarded child who had wandered onto the thread.

And as such, since it was obvious (to those reading the whole thread) that i was returning the volley, the point about believing world peace breaking out was to be taken as hyperbolic tounge in cheek. And then you stated later on, you didn't believe I believed in what I was positing and was doing it to just be antagonistic or whatever. But for this little remark suddenly I am making deeply sincere remark about how I see others believing.

And since we can agree it seems that the US should have some presence in the world, I fail to understand why it is so appalling to discuss the exact nature of that presence and the timelines around the movements of that presence. That I throw into the mix political considerations, and place some of the onerous onto the left for coming up with a well-articulated foreign policy in order to facilitate a more progressive foregin policy ultimately in the US, only leads to reactions of horror is still a bit of a mystery. But obviously many have a traumatic-like response to the phrase "politically viable" so I will consider strongly before using it again. But maybe that is part of the problem with the left: whether there is actual collective buy-in to views is irrelevant and not worthy of considering in the development of strategies of how we can in the long run implement a progressive agenda.

And of course, SA and the US are not apples to apples. But the fundamental concept of allowing those guilty of crimes committed while acting as agents of a government in order for the greater good is a valid argument. It is an argument, and therefore one can disagree, but to say that the only way on can approach it is through race is, well, lame. Basically it would seem to be a response of someone who doesn't want to have to consider the larger context of going after prosecutions and wants to merely view the issue in isolation.

And I wasn't discounting the importance of large-scale historic change, but rather pointing out that may not have the level of actual change that the impression of the myth creates in our consciousness. For example, aside from the carnage and misery the civil war created, it still took generations before we could as a nation, after a long intense fight that left more suffering and carnage sign something as simple as the Civil Right Act. The reason was although there was a victory on the battlefield, the paradigms of the individuals that make up the collective consciousness are relatively unchanged, or in some cases made worse because of the trauma of the conflict. In the case of the Civil War, the wounds of the loss still resonate throughout the South.

So there for the record my perspective on how this all went down.

Peace and Love.

Can we pursue moral and legal

DF — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 22:08:06 +0000

In reply to LOL! Decaf! Decaf!

Can we pursue moral and legal imperatives while stabiliizing the economy - both now and in the future? Yes, we can.

Anna. Two weeks ago I sold

quinn esq — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 22:07:03 +0000

In reply to From where I sit, AT's been

Anna. Two weeks ago I sold the 1st house I ever owned, left a city of colleagues and friends, moved 1,300 miles to Toronto, and joined up with my long lost and now-reunited sweetheart... after a brief, 30 year, "cooling off" period. One week ago, a truck arrived here with my stuff. Meanwhile, I've had to keep working, as well as get started on all the little things that need disconnecting and reconnecting. Oh. And day before I left, the confused Canadian IRS equivalent called me and thought they needed a few tens of thousands of dollars under some tax I don't actually have to pay.

Shorter? I'm not keeping track or playing cop on DagBlog's threads this past while. Rereading your link, KGB was pulling tails, but he's a big boy, and you all sorted it out. No damage to A-Trope that I could see. I admit, the whole episode rather passed me by.

As for when I did drop in on A-Trope, the reason was simple. His argument was appalling, and his tone was worse. You can dislike it, but I asked him straight up to stop lecturing us like retarded children.

Why did I say this? As follows: A big chunk of those on DagBlog log are international - me, Orlando, Wolfrum, acanuck, etc. Many others are well-educated, cosmopolitan, veterans and Jewish. And please note, many of those he talks with are to the LEFT of AT, arguing for more "progressive" positions.

So what does AT say to us? "Quite frankly the magic pony in the room is that somehow if the US just ignored the world, peace would suddenly break out...."

Now. Is there anyone here you'd like to name who appears to believe that the world who go all peaceful & hallelujah if the US withdrew? Whaddya think? Any of us living in other nations who think all would be peaceful and easy if the US went home? Any Jews who'd think that the US is the root of all world evil? etc.

In short, he was either being an incredibly lofty fuck with us, and talking to us like children... "magic pony" and all... or he was in some personal mood which left him not paying full attention. I argued the first, and then eventually stepped out of the fray by pointing to the second possibility.

His other arguments were - in my books - of equal virtue. Obama's failure to prosecute anyone for anything was translated into the grand peace-making measure of Mandela, which I have to say I found staggeringly offensive. The comparison is utterly ludicrous, and - I think - can only be made if one is primarily thinking in terms of race.

He then accused me of not providing enough substance, this after I linked him to a whole blog I'd done on it, which he showed no signs of having bothered reading.

And further down, he argued for the basic unimportance of so-called large-scale historic change, as exemplified in the American Revolution, Civil War, New Deal, etc. Blah.

So from that, you've decided I'm picking on him? When I locked antlers with him the once?? And ad hominem? Things like that "magic pony" line aren't speaking down to people? Or pompous - but utterly empty - lines like "politically viable?"

Get serious Anna. If I argued with you and said your ideas were the equivalent of wanting a magic pony, you'd feel fairly talked down to. And then if I started in with demanding that you outline, in full detail, your views - and please make sure they're "politically viable" - how pompous would you think I was?

He had a bad week, and was being a twit. And I wasn't piling on in this blog, as you can see.

And I hope he's happier and cheerier in the future, because he said he was hellaciously down. As I hope you have a good evening and a great weekend.

I'm off to watch some hockey, so goodnight to all. q

You don't have to save

DF — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 21:58:10 +0000

In reply to I'd like to see some

You don't have to save insolvent and woefully irresponsible firms to keep pension funds whole. That's how it fits.

From where I sit, AT's been

anna am — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 20:26:00 +0000

In reply to Bailout II: The Sequel

From where I sit, AT's been pretty surrounded generally. But I guess from where you sit, you see things differently.

From where I sit, your taking of AT to task wasn't simply calling him out on a bad argument either. You seemed to veer a bit more ad hominem than that, quite a bit offended by AT's tone and approach. I'm sure he doesn't need me to speak for him on this issue, and I'm not trying to. I just bring it up because it struck me that, while you can get pretty heavy duty about a basically really nice guy's tone, stuff like kgb's commentary under this post the other week, just went right by you. No comment there. Not even a brief hiatus in the swinging from the chandeliers.

http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/john-madden-host-meet-press-6409

Nice to have things in perspective. Lovely lovely to you too, Quinn.

Upthread, a couple of posters

Doctor Cleveland — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:51:00 +0000

In reply to Bailout II: The Sequel

Upthread, a couple of posters made the excellent point that many mortgage-backed-securities are owned by pension funds.

Here's the deal: to the extent that pension funds own actual mortgages, they're in trouble. But mostly they don't. They generally own securities backed by mortgages.

To the extent that they own mortgage-backed securities, as many many other investment entities do, they likely have an opportunity to make lost money back by forcing the issuing banks to buy back the improperly-constructed securities for the original purchase price. But this only happens in the Second Financial Crisis scenario, in which someone is on the hook to make good on a trillion dollars of mortgage-backed paper instead of $150 billion in actual mortgages.

Pension funds can sue for massive refunds, but only in a scenario in which hedge funds and other investment firms are doing the same, and the whole system becomes dangerously unstable. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

Worse, it's the replacement

Doctor Cleveland — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:45:05 +0000

In reply to "in the vast majority of

Worse, it's the replacement documents that were being forged by the "robo-signers."

When banks were missing documents, they could submit sworn affidavits saying that they've checked the underlying paperwork. What banks actually did was employee a bunch of entry-level people to sign documents saying "we have the paperwork." But the people signing those affidavits didn't actually see the underlying documents they were swearing that they had checked out. They just signed the statements, hundreds at a time.

The question isn't even whether they were right or wrong. The question is whether banks are required to prove anything at all. If courts accept affidavits signed by bank employees who are lying, because "it's only a technicality," then the banks are also free to make stuff up. If you're just going to assume they're telling the truth, you give them permission to lie.

When a bank can claim your home just by asserting that it owns it, without providing any documentation but its own perjured say-so, we're done with actual capitalism and moving on to feudalism with neckties.