The Anti-Greenspan

Am I reading and listening to the same media sources as the person who beleives that the Clinton's are getting more praise and media coverage than President Elect Obama? This must be wishful thinking. President Elect Obama was left with a mess. I am convinced that he will do everything in his power to clean it up. Who cares who it is patterned after. It certainly cannot make matters worst.

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You know ,I have a question. Is this the Obama White house or the Clinton White House ? Who gets most of the coverage or praise is the Clinton's. If we liked their Whitehouse,why didn't we just elect Hillary. Her and Bill seems like they are still the top Dods and Obama is just along for the ride and the free rent.

I love reading comments from an Ayd Rand-acolyte, complaining about not being able to count on the government for there retirement.

Whatever happened to the courage of your convictions? Even if the government had invested that money with Warren Buffet over the past 40-years, an Objectivist would not take that money, right? An Objectivist would see that money as having been stolen from them by the government; you can't turn around and live off the proceeds of a theft and call yourself holy now, can you?

PART 2:

I could go on and on here. The private lenders and borrowers of bad mortgages, and any fraudsters that may have operated, are just the superficial face of the financial debacle. Their irresponsible behavior need not be excused to understand that it was taking place within the context of a myriad of market-distorting government interventions, which DOES NOT constitute laissez-faire in any way, shape, or form.

Any semblance of a free market in finance, housing, and the mortgage market have long since disappeared behind decades of ever-growing government efforts to "encourage" homeownership. The veritable conveyor belt of imprudent credit expansion revolving around the housing bubble is a creation of government, and wouldn???t have been able to remotely approach today's levels in a free market. In a free market, bad private financial practices are regularly weeded out by bankruptcy, foreclosure, and investment losses long before they can infect the entire system. The common denominator of the entire financial crisis is the government.

This massive financial crisis represents the collapse of a heavily regulated and controlled financial industry operating in a housing and mortgage sector beset by massive government intervention. It is not a failure of a non-existent free market. The alleged "deregulation" is no such thing. There can be no deregulation as long as the government retains its market-distorting regulatory powers, WHETHER OR NOT it happens to have exercised them in some particular way or not (as the scapegoat-seeking Greenspan well knows). The pseudo-deregulation blamed for the crisis is just a rationalization for expanded government control over the economy, to the detriment of individual rights.

As to the continuing efforts to discredit Rand and Objectivism by linking them to Greenspan, it's getting old, and it won???t work. Ideas cannot be refuted without openly confronting them, something Rand's detractors steadfastly refuse to do. Any link between Greenspan and Objectivism has long since been severed when Greenspan accepted the job of monetary dictator in 1987.

It's risk verses prosperity. With more regulation the chances and impcact of a meltdown decrease, so does economic potential. America's lack of government oversight has made us the superpower we are and put us in a higher risk catagory then other governments. More oversight may prevent further econic crisises (though not guarenteed) but also makes us more reliable on th government. If we have to rely on the government who can't balance a budget to make every economic decision we are all doomed

Mr. Kellard, I don't follow the logic here. Banking, housing, insurance, stock markets are most heavily regulated regulated markets. Regulations are to prevent a meltdown. A meltdown is occurring. The most that can be concluded from this is that regulation (or the regulations in place) are insufficient to prevent a meltdown, not that regulation caused the meltdown. Because said meltdown occurs at the same time as markets are regulated is not sufficient to establish as causal link, or as millions of freshmen at colleges and universities have discovered "correlation is not causation."

As I asserted in my original post, banking, housing and insurance have long been *the most* regulated areas of the economy, yet LasVegsLaw claims that it was a *lack* of regulation, including on Wall Street -- another highly regulated market -- that caused the economic meltdown. Thus he believes even more regulations are needed in already heavily-regulated markets.

His solution is, quite simply, more of the same irrationality that got us into this mess. At what point do those who cry for more regulations face the reality that if regulations are designed to stop the defrauders and the financial meltdowns, then why are we seeing more of these cases at the same time we *add* more and more regulations? You???d think they???d see some kind of pattern here, but they don???t subscribe to the law of cause and effect. And due to this evasion, they regard the stock market as nothing more than ???gambling.???

Mr. Kellerd's assertion tha"[T]the econimic meltdown in the U.S. was essentially caused by government intervention and regulation, not lack thereof." I assume he is referring to the impetus by government going back to the Clinton administration to "relax" lending standards so that more people could acquire homes. I either case his assertion is pure poppycock.

The securities industry spends a fortune bolstering the public image that putting money into the stock market, bond markets, commodities markets and othes is "INVESTING". Those of us who have any real finacial and econimic expertise (I am a CPA,1970/MBA,1971) understand that the securities markets are just a form of gambling. The public relations is keep bringing in the new suckers for the pros (investment bankers, hedge funds, bank trading rooms and like) to pick over. I live in Las Vegas and have served in executive management in the casino industry. Everyone knows the casinos ALWAYS win. EVERY casino protects itself by setting a house limit for the maximum bet at every type of game. The is called "Risk Management" Brokerages and banks are supposed to have risk managers and risk management guidelines. The reason for the current economic meltdown is that these institutions and specifically those that regulate them failed to set any kind of reasonable risk management standards for, not only credit extension, but the insurance of those risks now know as completely unregulated Credit Swap Derrivatives that our government regulators REFUSED to regulate in the face of dire warnings of what eventually did happen could happen.

Once the credit extensions reached a default level that was fully predictable, unless you assumed that housing prices would absolutley continute to increase forever in the face of the historical data of the US housing markets (think 1991), we all came to find out that the vast majority of major financial institutions were so unreasonably leveraged the did not hold the liquidity to meet their credit swap obligations (thats the counter-party). Then these institutions became afraid to lend even to each other and the credit markets froze, and have not substantially thawed.

It is the lact of regulation and intervention, not the opposite, that puts us in the situation we are today.

Mr. Kellerd's assertion tha"[T]the econimic meltdown in the U.S. was essentially caused by government intervention and regulation, not lack thereof." I assume he is referring to the impetus by government going back to the Clinton administration to "relax" lending standards so that more people could acquire homes. I either case his assertion is pure poppycock.

The securities industry spends a fortune bolstering the public image that putting money into the stock market, bond markets, commodities markets and othes is "INVESTING". Those of us who have any real finacial and econimic expertise (I am a CPA,1970/MBA,1971) understand that the securities markets are just a form of gambling. The public relations is keep bringing in the new suckers for the pros (investment bankers, hedge funds, bank trading rooms and like) to pick over. I live in Las Vegas and have served in executive management in the casino industry. Everyone knows the casinos ALWAYS win. EVERY casino protects itself by setting a house limit for the maximum bet at every type of game. The is called "Risk Management" Brokerages and banks are supposed to have risk managers and risk management guidelines. The reason for the current economic meltdown is that these institutions and specifically those that regulate them failed to set any kind of reasonable risk management standards for, not only credit extension, but the insurance of those risks now know as completely unregulated Credit Swap Derrivatives that our government regulators REFUSED to regulate in the face of dire warnings of what eventually did happen could happen.

Once the credit extensions reached a default level that was fully predictable, unless you assumed that housing prices would absolutley continute to increase forever in the face of the historical data of the US housing markets (think 1991), we all came to find out that the vast majority of major financial institutions were so unreasonably leveraged the did not hold the liquidity to meet their credit swap obligations (thats the counter-party). Then these institutions became afraid to lend even to each other and the credit markets froze, and have not substantially thawed.

It is the lact of regulation and intervention, not the opposite, that puts us in the situation we are today.

The economic meltdown in the U.S. was essentially caused by government intervention and regulations, not their lack thereof. For many years now, banking, housing and insurance have been the most regulated areas of the economy.

As to Mr. Greenspan, the philosophy he put into practice is the opposite of capitalism. Back in the 1960s, Ayn Rand taught him why capitalism requires that there be a wall of separation between economics and state, and why the Federal Reserve, as the state???s central economic planner, must be abolished. Yet Greenspan went on to become the Fed's leader and champion -- keeping interest rates artificially low and manipulating the money supply. So he long ago rejected Miss Rand's philosophy of Objectivism -- and now he and all of us are paying the price for it.

JOSEPH KELLARD
East Meadow, NY

The economic meltdown in the U.S. was essentially caused by government intervention and regulations, not their lack thereof. For many years now, banking, housing and insurance have been the most regulated areas of the economy.

As to Mr. Greenspan, the philosophy he put into practice is the opposite of capitalism. Back in the 1960s, Ayn Rand taught him why capitalism requires that there be a wall of separation between economics and state, and why the Federal Reserve, as the state???s central economic planner, must be abolished. Yet Greenspan went on to become the Fed's leader and champion -- keeping interest rates artificially low and manipulating the money supply. So he long ago rejected Miss Rand's philosophy of Objectivism -- and now he and all of us are paying the price for it.

JOSEPH KELLARD
East Meadow, NY

The Greenspan model definitely does not work when bankers get all the upside from risk taking and taxpayers take the downside.

Regulate, regulate, regulate, regulate, regulate, regulate regulate, regulate, regulate, regulate, regulate, regulate, regulate.