I was wondering how folks feel about the legalization of marijuana? Not as a criminal reform, but to stimulate the economy... If the state legalizes and licenses marijuana, so you can buy it at the local Qwik-E-Mart - with proper i.d., of course - are we just creating a new 'sin' that we can tax? Will it increase marijuana abuse? What about DWIs?
Now, don't get me wrong. I personally don't think that marijuana is as bad as alcohol when it comes to the damage it does to lives and societies. You don't see a lot of stoners getting into knife fights, not if it means getting off the couch. Marijuana has long been considered a gateway drug, and I tend to agree with that, in so much as once you use one illegal drug, it makes it that much easier to take the next one - not that smoking a joint on Monday guarantees you'll be shooting smack by Friday. So, if we remove the illegality, does that remove the gateway?
What do you think? Will legalization of marijuana create more societal cost than economic gain? Would you be more likely to smoke marijuana if it were legal? Should we all invest in Hostess and Doritos?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
125 comments:
Great post, JMF. Sure got quiet around here, didn't it? As Amandapants once so eloquently put it: bawk bawk. ;-)
In the 'education' thread, we were talking about the 'merit-based' system of funding. Let's apply that to the obviously failed "War On Drugs." Does it merit the money that has been spent and is continuing to be spent? Based on results, no. Escalating violence on the U.S. - Mexican border is just one of many symptoms of the War On Drugs' farcical ineffectiveness.
The left-wing liberal pinko William F. Buckley declared that the War On Drugs was lost...in 1995. So here we are 14 years later with no progress made. I think, like the "War On Terror," when your 'enemy' is only vaguely defined, and includes your own citizens, it is not a war that can be won.
Legalization of MJ, as well as other drugs, accomplishes 3 things: huge revenues for the federal government and their ever-expanding programs, the de-criminalization of an entire class of Americans who are 100% law-abiding except for the drug laws, and (as a corollary) it could help thin out our grossly overcrowded prisons.
Will it increase drug use to legalize? In the short term, perhaps. It's been postulated that the illicit nature of drug use is part of it's appeal, to some. I think it will therefore be a trade-off: some will stop because they no longer feel gangsta while smoking ganja, and some will start because it may become more socially acceptable. Like the police and the church, drugs do as much harm as good, and you can't do without any of them as a society, apparently.
I have to take the traditionally conservative view. Prohibition doesn't work, and it's wasting all of our tax dollars wastefully and destructively. I want that money to go to education, health care, economic programs, etc, not jailing the relatively innocent perpetrators of victimless crimes (compared to B. Madoff, for example).
Didn't George Carlin once say that mother's Milk was the REAL gateway drug? Nice one, George...
None other than the late great John Kaplan called the criminalization of marijuana "the new prohibition." I completely agree. Regulation and taxation are appropriate, illegality is not and was always a trumped-up affair. The only "gateway" aspect of marijuana is caused solely by the fact that it's illegal, and makes it easier for users to be willing to break the law. The corrosive effect of its illegality on people's willingness to break the law is the worst problem.
Suzabrother and I were talking about this the other day. I think it will be a HUGE revenue booster because not only will it generate revenue that is currently TOTALLY underground, but it will also reduce the number of people being arrested ($$). processed ($$) and sent to prison ($$) for BS marijuana posession. In addition, it'll probably boost our tourism a bit - people coming here to get smoke and get high.
I have heard the gateway drug argument before, but one colleague told me that he thought the "real" gateway drug was nicotine. Cigarettes. I tend to agree with that. I smoked a cigarette way before I ever smoked ganja. And that is how I learned to smoke.
Personally, I've almost totally stopped smoking - it has to be a special social occasion for me to smoke at all, and lots of times you forget that it's illegal here at all. The police don't often deal with it and I regularly smell it when I'm walking down the street. In fact, I have a neighbor (don't know who) but every day at about 3pm I'm smelling pot smoke. It doesn't bother me.
As a woman walking around on her own, I'm not worried about the crowd of guys passing a joint around and laughing, my concern is peaked by the bunch of drunk guys talking loud and looking for trouble - like a woman to harass or something to break or a fight to start.
As far as driving goes - I can't tell you the number of times I've made the drive from here to San Diego down highway 5 and seen people smoking out of pipes along the way. People drive stoned all the time. They probably shouldn't, but people who are stoned (I've noticed) tend to drive slower rather than faster. You should still get a DUI for doing it (as you would for driving under the influence of anything - including cold medicine).
Rant over. :)
I want to echo a point made by WT, namely, that the war on drugs has destabilized a number of Latin American countries, including Mexico. There's a great article in the current Rolling Stone talking about the problem. And there was a recent summit of former Latin American heads of state that called for a change in U.S. policy.
Well said, winkintiger. I agree that the war on drugs is a complete failure. I remember when George HW Bush (#41) started the CAMP program (Campaign Against Marijuana Planting) in the late 1980's and he was "shocked, just shocked" at the sudden increase in cocaine use. That old supply and demand rule came roaring to the fore and GHWB was clueless to the fact that coke stayed really cheap while his policies created expensive weed. (It might've also had to do with the fact that the CIA was in Latin American breaking US law in regard to the Contras... 1970's: Vietman = heroine problem; 1980's: Latin America = cocaine problem;
2001: Afghanistan = heroine problems again)
A certain percentage of human beings will always alter their minds. Hell, cows and koaloas and other animals get high too. Tens of millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens smoke a little weed and have no ill effects on society.
I know someone's going to scream bloody murder over the idea of more addicts created, but let's face it: alcohol and tobacco are legal and they create addicts, but we don't criminalize those items. We tried it and prohibition failed. It's time to admit the simple fact that marajuana doesn't belong on the same controlled schedule as heroine or PCP or Oxycotin or meth or valium. Pot became "bad" in the 1930's when it was discovered that many Mexican-Americans enjoyed a pipe now and again. It was criminalized in rather overt racist terms.
Marijuana grows naturally in Califormia, Kentucky, Georgia, the Pacific Northwest, all over the place. California could almost eliminate it's debt with the taxes from pot. (And we could bring new meaning to the "Buy American" phrase!) Let's decriminalize it and tax it like ciggies and booze. Anyone caught driving under the influence or supplying a minor should be arrested.
It's the number one cash crop in the state of California and we've been letting dealers make money while the taxpayers pay to keep 19 year old's in prison for 15-20 years. It's absolutely absurd. I don't agree on much with Tom Ammiano, but I had to say "it's about time" when I heard his proposal. The biggest cowards about the proposal are other politicians!
wv: "quaver" is what your hands do with you drink too much!
Good post, FH, and interesting discussion.
After legalization, will we have marijuana sommeliers -- weed stewards -- in the newly reopened smoking sections of some restaurants? Pre- and post-prandial recommendations? Glossy magazine advertisements and bright billboards? Weed critics? Weed snobs?
I guess such things are inevitable with mainstream commercialization. Ah, well.
And if consuming legal marijuana were good for the economy, I guess I would do my part . . . .
The war on drugs is America's other, other failed was. We could knock off some of our debt reduce crime by doing this. Regulate and tax marijuana. Eliminate cash. Don't convert large sums of cash into e-money. Develop non-addictive narcotics.
I'd guess that the tobacco companies would be all in in that. Soon we'd have a sort of hybid cigarette: the potarette. Tobacco cut with all trhe stuff that kills plus a little low grade marijuana...
Just what this country needs to take the collective mind off of our other problems.
Works for third world countries.
Greenwald from Salon on Portugal's experiments with decriminalization/illegalization...haven't read it yet, may not have time today. Just passing it on.
http://tiny.cc/Du5sA
Nice article, hartal. It echoes several of the themes Kaplan discussed.
Re: our discussion of immigration. Interesting recent piece in NYT. Dinner time. Thanks for telling me the last one was good; have to create time to read it carefully myself.
http://tiny.cc/0p9Jn
Complicated but the best analysis I have seen of the destuctive implications of the most recent financial innovations. By Gillian Tett of the Financial Times.
http://tiny.cc/z0sXR
I don't think I could be more likely to smoke marijuana if it were legal.
On drugs: Anybody know how Portugal deals with crack and crystal meth?
On the Financial Times article hartal recommended: Not so complicated. My background in finance is modest at best and it made sense to me. It's a plain language primer describing the way banks and investment houses created new products and a new global market to trade them in. One detail described, but unexplored in the article, is particularly interesting to me: new computer and communicaton technology made the new global market possible, but the new investment products were so indiscriminately forged that technology was not really capable of analyzing the risk of investing those products. As a result, investors banked on the reputation of the sellers. (It's from New York, must be ok. This the article does state.)
Amazing how this perverse, thoroughly unnecessary system sucked the money out of average people, like middle-class homeowners.
btw, wtf is Gillian Gett?
A couple of more points.
--Tett (Ph.D., award winning financial journalist) mentions how many of the derivative products proved to be illiquid, and were hidden in special vehicles. Memories of Enron's special debt vehicles. Must be the kind of thing that gets FH excited!
--Though a piece on financial innovation, note the analysis of the systemic global imbalance as the ultimate cause of the crisis. Implication here being that reform of the financial sector (banking and shadow banking alike) in regards to capital requirements and portfolio composition will not alone solve the problem unless the global imbalances are corrected.
"Ahead of the crisis, imbalances between savings and investment in national economies had grown unusually wide, reflected in large trade deficits and
surpluses. Four years ago today, Ben Bernanke, now chairman of the Federal Reserve, observed that there appeared to be a “global savings glut”,
particularly in fast-growing emerging economies and among oil exporters.
This glut pushed down risk-free rates on government bonds and induced a hunt for yield by investors. That yield hunt cut risk premiums and
contributed to a collapse of market discipline that reversed with devastating effect in mid-2007.
Indeed, there is a strong case to be made that the current crisis is in the strictest sense a crisis of globalisation, fostered and transmitted by
the rapid and deep integration of very different economies. Fast-growing developing countries with underdeveloped financial systems were exporting
savings to the developed world for packaging and re-export to them in the form of financial products.
Ken Rogoff, a professor at Harvard University, says the claim that this was sustainable assumed core financial centres – above all New York and
London – could create the financial products efficiently and without blowing up. They could not."
Of course not all the glut in savings came from rapidly growing countries with underdeveloped financial systems, e.g. Austria and Japan.
Friend of mine who lives in Vienna looks eastward for the source of most of that country's vulnerability.
"unless the global imbalances are corrected"
That's an impossible goal. Irresponsible financial promiscuity on a global scale turns out to spread disease. Big surprise. The fact that the foreign markets were vulnerable is not their "fault." They can't be brought "into line" if they're incapable of it.
And of course I can find out who the author is easily enough. The point is this: Why cite her by name on a blog like this if she's not a popularly known figure?
I just finished reading a fascinating article in Wired that explained how the banks ended up deciding that they could measure the risk involved in securitizing mortgages (tranching). Turns out it was based on a Gaussian copula function derived by a financial economist named David X. Li, that relied on correlations involving credit default swaps. What was most striking to me was how the market based on securitized mortgages exploded during the period from 2001 to 2007. It's this sort of thoughtful analysis that puts the lie to the right wing's bogus claim that the financial crisis was caused by Fannie and Freddie. Here's a link to the article: http://tinyurl.com/chaqm5
Uh, oh. Looks like we have someone knowledgeable about sophticated financing on the blog!
I'll check that out, dsg. Thanks.
I've learned a bit about finance litigating commercial cases (including securities fraud cases). But I have to admit that a bunch of my "knowledge" also comes from sources like Delillo's Cosmopolis (deserved better reviews) and Bonfire of the Vanities (deserved worse).
btw, I'd forgotten about Wired. I used to read it regularly in the late 90s--early 00s. I saw it shrink from 1 1/4 thick to 1/4 inch within a few months.
I'm getting Wired free right now, it's just something to read to fill time. And my financial savvy is minimal, it's just that the article explains what happened very well. I do know other people who ended up getting a lot of exposure to economic formulas in their MBA programs, and I've had some discussions about how little reality seems to exist in those formulas.
wv: antic
Take a look at Cosmopolis. The protagonist wends his way upstream through traffic in Manhattan to the neighborhood where he grew up, like a salmon going home. Meanwhile, he monitors his investments in the int'l currency markets on flat screens in his marble-floored stretch limo. Unaccountably, the formulae he had been using to amass a fortune in that market has ceased to work for him. If I remember correctly, he derived the formulae arbitrarily via mathematical analysis of curves found in the natural world -- the wing of an exotic bird, e.g.
wv: terse. Sorry, couldn't live up to it.
I think a lot of these economic formulae are born out of pure abstraction, but if it makes money, who cares about the impact on 'reality?' Supply-Side economics being just one example that people still cling to, despite it's being proven unworkable.
It would be better if we were all a bit more savvy about economics, especially those looking to invest. Not to keep harping on Madoff (then again, why not?) but he relied on the ignorance of his investors in order to run his scheme, describing it as "too complex to explain." Yet he had no shortage of investors, and his scheme turned out to be one-dimensionally simple. He even bilked the Girl Scouts of America, so to tie this thread back to the original topic: buy more Girl Scout cookies, not Twinkies and Doritos.
And to further tie it together, I stumbled across this song quote which seems apt:
"Put your stuff on the Market
Like the millionaires do
Put your stuff on the Market
And make a million too..."
-"Weed Smoker's Dream" -The Harlem Hamfats (1936)
I tried to keep up with this thread but...I...I mean...it was...
I'M SO WASTED!!!
Dudes and dudettes, we should, like, totally, do it mahhn.
Cuz if we, like, legalize weed, right? Then we can, like,...make, like...you know. Like. No seriously.
We could...like...
Yeah.
What were we talking about?
Wait, wait, wait, this is the one where they're doctors!!!
YAH!!!
Ted, is that you?
http://tinyurl.com/39yvdf
Interesting article but it is a bit confusing.
It does not seem that Li's gamma itself created the Triple A ratings for the first tranche--that was the function of the bond rating agencies. So it seems misleading to say that the equation has created the mess.
Second, if investors thought the possibility of a generalized defaults were so unlikely, then why did they buy so much insurance in the form of credit default swaps?
At any rate, loved this paragraph:
"The relationship between two assets can never be captured by a single scalar quantity," Wilmott says. For instance, consider the share prices of two sneaker manufacturers: When the market for sneakers is growing, both companies do well and the correlation between them is high. But when one company gets a lot of celebrity endorsements and starts stealing market share from the other, the stock prices diverge and the correlation between them turns negative. And when the nation morphs into a land of flip-flop-wearing couch potatoes, both companies decline and the correlation becomes positive again. It's impossible to sum up such a history in one correlation number, but CDOs were invariably sold on the premise that correlation was more of a constant than a variable."
But if investors did not take seriously the possibility of a high correlation among assets due to a generalized economic downturn, then why did they buy so much insurance in the form of credit default swaps?
dsgonzale6 wrote about the Wired article: "Turns out it was based on a Gaussian copula function derived by a financial economist named David X. Li, that relied on correlations involving credit default swaps." I get the Gaussian may refer to a distribution, the copula loosely to correlation but I don't see how they come together to produce the scalar. Will have to look into it. Also as the article explains it, the correlation was not among CDS's but a multitude of individual mortgages of different lengths, qualities, geographic points of origins. But I guess even CDS's could have been bundled and sold.
WT - LMAO!!!
Economics - yawn..... I know it's important, but lord, it is D-R-Y!
I think it's fair to say that the firms marketing the tranches used the formula to assess the risk, and the rating agencies relied on that risk assessment to rate the bonds. Re credit default swaps, it seems that they were popular because (a) it's safer to have a way to mitigate your risks and (b) they were less regulated than other means of risk mitigation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_default_swaps#History
Hey, FH, you're the controller!
Try again: http://tinyurl.com/d9rkmf
About the CDS... I don't it was the correlation among them as bundled in some kind of instrument that produced the scalar generated by the Gaussian copula formula. At least that's not how it was explained the article. So that's why your comment is throwing me.
As I understand it (and again, I admit that I have minimal financial savvy), the credit default swaps are a separate and distinct financial instrument from the mortgage backed securities. But Li developed a formula using data about credit default swaps to perform a risk assessment analysis of the tranches. To me, it all seems way too ephemeral, but what do I know?
Yeah, the copula's the only interesting thing about it.
So Li was interested in how strongly individual mortgage defaults are correlated, and to estimate that he uses data from CDS.
I could not tell from your initial formulation whether you were also talking about a scalar for a bundle of CDS given how they are correlated, and the reason I was interested is that they may now be a bigger problem than the mortgage backed securities--at least that seems to be the case with AIG.
So in some ways the article seems behind the crisis given its focus on the liquidity of the mortgage backed securities where the most severe problem may be in the inability to pay on the CDS's. Of course that is the consequence of higher than expected default rates on the mortgages underlying the mortgage backed securities on which people purchased insurance.
So here's the money paragraph:
"Using some relatively simple math—by Wall Street standards, anyway—Li came up with an ingenious way to model default correlation without even looking at historical default data. Instead, he used market data about the prices of instruments known as credit default swaps.
If you're an investor, you have a choice these days: You can either lend directly to borrowers or sell investors credit default swaps, insurance against those same borrowers defaulting. Either way, you get a regular income stream—interest payments or insurance payments—and either way, if the borrower defaults, you lose a lot of money. The returns on both strategies are nearly identical, but because an unlimited number of credit default swaps can be sold against each borrower, the supply of swaps isn't constrained the way the supply of bonds is, so the CDS market managed to grow extremely rapidly. Though credit default swaps were relatively new when Li's paper came out, they soon became a bigger and more liquid market than the bonds on which they were based.
When the price of a credit default swap goes up, that indicates that default risk has risen. Li's breakthrough was that instead of waiting to assemble enough historical data about actual defaults, which are rare in the real world, he used historical prices from the CDS market. It's hard to build a historical model to predict Alice's or Britney's behavior, but anybody could see whether the price of credit default swaps on Britney tended to move in the same direction as that on Alice. If it did, then there was a strong correlation between Alice's and Britney's default risks, as priced by the market. Li wrote a model that used price rather than real-world default data as a shortcut (making an implicit assumption that financial markets in general, and CDS markets in particular, can price default risk correctly)."
It seems like the logic here is the logic of big numbers. One can't judge default risk for individual mortgages given the randomness of individual mortgage defaults, but once has such a huge market of instruments that try to estimate the risk of default on a single mortgage, then there is enough data to calculate individual mortgage risks and how they correlate with one another.
Oh well the article poses some good intellectual puzzles; it also shows that way too much of our brainpower has gone into the innovation of the technologies (the physical information tech as xootsuit noted and the equations, also a kind of technology that allowed a product to be produced) that helped to turn capitalism into a casino.
Given the implosion of Wall Street--just yesterday, it seems, 40% of total profits were in the financial sector, I believe--it seems likely that the demand for info tech will fall. Whatever role Reagan's militarism played in demand for Silicon Valley goods that was soon eclipsed by demand from the financial sector. So it's possible that it's time to start shorting tech stocks; and there may be reason to fear a protracted residential and commercial real estate slump in Silicon Valley. I truly hope not, but the writing seems to be on the wall. T
To me, and maybe I'm simple-minded, the question is why was so much capital invested in these sorts of instruments rather than in things that were more, well, real?
Go back to the original article in the Financial Times that started the discussion. The investment houses saw an opportunity: create new products and a new market for trading those products that the existing regulatory regimes wouldn't be able to evaluate, much less regulate. Talk about free enterprise.
I remember killing time on a plane some years back by reading an article about the exotic new derivatives just popping up. The author clearly was trying to generate excitement.
The other side of the global savings glut is a dearth of profitable real investment opportunities. But then raises the question of how to explain the dearth.
*
Many warned the bond rating agencies not to put too much faith in Gaussian copula formula. The sense I get from the article is that there was a demand not only for a method to price the risk of the MBS but to have the instruments priced such that they would appear to be safe and efficient assets.
The formula did just that, so that is why it was accepted by the bond rating agencies which are just wings of the whole financial industry that wanted to wanted new liquid instruments to trade and MBS's wouldn't have been liquid without good bond ratings.
It just speaks of widespread corruption
*
It really does seem that America's specialness as a world power is now over. Our Supreme Court hardly raised a word about torture and the suspension of habeas corpus for years and the American people re-elected Bush after Abu Ghraib. We lost tremendous moral capital all around the world even while idiots like Debra Saunders was cheering our descent into barbarism on. Now our vaunted financial system which we touted over Asia's crony banks has been revealed as one huge fraudulent business.
We are probably in the early years of the Chinese century, as Kishore Mahbubani argued in a recent Newsweek (and see today's NYT piece by Bradisher on the rise of China).
We are no longer a special power in any one's eyes, and our political openness as represented by Obama's victory just does do enough to recover our special standing.
sorry it was garbled. I gotta go.
Here's part of a passage from the Financial Times article that caught my attention yesterday:
"An instrument known as 'collateralised debt obligations of asset-backed securities' was a case in point. This gizmo turned up in the middle of this decade when bankers created bundles of mortgage-linked bonds, often intermingled with other credit derivatives. . . In 2006 and early 2007, no less than $450bn worth of these 'CDO of ABS' securities were produced.
"[S]ince most banks had no market price for these CDOs (or much else), they typically valued them by using theoretical calculations from models. The result was that a set of innovations that were supposed to create freer markets actually produced an opaque world in which risk was being concentrated – and in ways almost nobody understood. By 2006, it could 'take a whole weekend' for computers to perform the calculations needed to assess the risks of complex CDOs, admit officials at Standard & Poor’s rating agency."
JMF: It doesn't HAVE to be dry, nor does any subject. It all lies in how it is taught. This is actually the value in Jim Cramer's show; not as a way to pick stocks, but as a way to become more informed as to how the market works, while avoiding dryness.
WV: shille (Who, me?)
If you want to avoid dryness, don't forget to hydrate while using marijuana (had to bring the thread back to the topic!).
I forgot to post this earlier. If you want the definitions or history behind any of these economic terms, this site kicks Wiki's every ass:
http://www.econlib.org/index.html
As Tett explained in her last piece, the theory behind modern financial innovation was that it was spreading credit risk round the system instead of just leaving it concentrated on the balance sheets of banks.
And today she writes:
"But the AIG list shows what the fatal flaw in that rhetoric was. On paper, banks ranging from Deutsche Bank to Soci̩t̩ G̩n̩rale to Merrill Lynch have been shedding credit risks on mortgage loans, and much else. Unfortunately, most of those banks have been shedding risks in almost the same way Рnamely by dumping large chunks on to AIG. Or, to put it another way, what AIG has essentially been doing in the past decade is writing the same type of insurance contract, over and over again, for almost every other player on the street.
Far from promoting “dispersion” or “diversification”, innovation has ended up producing concentrations of risk, plagued with deadly correlations, too. Hence AIG’s inability to honour its insurance deals to the rest of the financial system, until it was bailed out by US taxpayers."
winkingtiger, you do know that you have provided a link to free market extremists and gold bug fanatics. I do know trust those led by Ludwig von Mises.
harry, you don't have to 'know trust' the entries at EconLib, I just thought I'd provide a useful link. Shouldn't we hear from all sides in this issue, or is yours the sole voice allowed?
WV: tunts
You know what's starting to bother me from everyone's posts?
I mean besides the fact of JM's point on post that this is all dull and dry?
Not one of these posts show any modicum of knowledge of what a *bank* is. A bank. A bank!!
AIG is not a bank! Wachovia was a *savings* bank that tried to be a comglomerate. It was the comglomeration of *financial institutions* and the insistance for higher revenue, no matter the cost that had holding companies of *banks* (and by the way, banks having a holding company used to be a tax write-off. IN THE '80's!!!) and the resutling avarice thereof that caused this problem by using this holding company to go into insurance and investments without the knowledge or ability to hire people with a conscience to know how to make a profit and still be a decent/humane corporation.
But it wasn't *banks*.
Not pure and simple, retail/commercial banks.
It is a complete lack of knowledge of facts and corporate structure to keep blaming *BANKS*.
I'm not blaming the posters here. But the posters here have been so deluded with misnomers that they don't know the difference.
The majority of the 50,000 *actual* retail/commercial banks in this country are decent, well run, honest institutions that are just trying to help and, yes, make a profit.
Nothing wrong with that.
Please, all of you, be judicial when you use the term *BANK*.
Banks aren't the problem.
Greed and avarice are the problem. Stupity is the problem. Wanting something for nothing is the problem. Ripping off naive fellow citizens is the problem.
All the "de-regulations" barely touched *BANKS*.
All these fucked up corporations, for the majority:
(pause while I catch my breath. And then ready to yell:)
ARE NOT RETAIL/COMMERCIAL BANKS!!!!
It's when they get so big they become greedy comglomerates.
`
Okay. Sorry for the rant. Anyone want a Guiness?
Already got the Guinness, thanks! (to avoid dryness) ;-)
I don't recall using the word 'bank' in any of my posts, Ted. And all of these corporations such as insurer AIG didn't seem to know the definition of the word 'bank' either, judging by their actions, no?
To address DSG's point about "why not invest in something more 'real'"...the 'real' offers 10% returns, the 'abstract' 50%, and Greed is reigning. What happens next? Downward spiral plunge...
We are not talking about commercial banks, Ted Spe but investment banks, the shadow banking system (the auction system for securities, hedge funds) and financial companies like AIG which provided insurance in an unregulated market. What the hell are you ranting about? Why are you getting involved in a debate you don't care understand? You do this all the time, and the next step in this manic dance is a torrent of abuse against me. Go to bed now.
No winkingtiger we don't have time to debate about whether we need to go back to the gold standard or abolish the minimum wage and unions.
Winkingtiger, see, that type of greed started in the '80's. I was working at a bank (and yes, a real bank) and we had some investments maturing. I was only 19 years old but the CFO (in those days, called Cashier of the bank. The only important corporate title was that he was a Senior Vice President, which is a corporate tile recognized by the UCC) trusted my instincts and asked me to re-inevest the money. And I did. In fact, I think it was in a Fannie Mae (FNMA) bond. And I got a (don't remember the actual rates so I'm just using these as an example) 12% return for the investment. And the president of the bank came to me and said "Ted, you could have gotten a 14% return if you invested in GinnieMae!!!".
Ya see? We didn't lose money. But the President thought we did because I could have gotten 1% more if I invested in saomething else!
No one was satified with actually making a profit. That wasn't good enough. If you didn't make a *bigger* profit in a shorter period of time, they felt you lost money.
Insanity.
And you might notice, I used the word "President" twice and didn't write Chief Executive officer (CEO).
See, that's another annoying thing about corporate America. CEO is just an honorary title. It means nothing under the UCC. It just makes people feel better about their importance. Same as "First Vice President". Means nothing.
It all became a joke.
And it must stop.
But that doesn't mean we need to make all Wall Street worker or people who run or work at banks the enemies.
They aren't.
It's unstoppable, perhaps, but the basic greed of individuals who fell they can take shortcuts to wealth a opposed to work and therefore fight and advance de-regulation...
That's the problem
Let's see you treat the idea of opportunity cost as nonsense--nay, insanity. You had a high school education and you were making portfolio decisions for the bank? And then you say that you are defending the banks but then you blast them. Go to bed Ted Spe. This is not going to end well.
Ted, that was very well put, and it's nice to get an 'inside' view from someone who actually knows what they're talking about.
Look, copula is still interesting. Let's hear some more about copula.
Ted, obviously we don't know much about what we're exploring. So far, we've read and discussed two pretty good articles.
btw, I hope you weren't working behind the counter at the BofA branch in lower West Berkeley in the early 80s. I had some nasty run-ins with those helpless people. More than once a kid working as a teller had to run for managerial help. Eventually, I just started going to the branch in North Berkeley. In rich neighborhoods, BofA treated customers better. . . .
I read both the Wiki and EconLib entries on Copula... pornographic in it's excitement!
It would seem in the 'bank's (sorry, Ted) interest to value all of their paper at the same rate, be it good or bad, as far as selling it off is concerned (this only applies to the Houses that have more collateral in loans than in real investors). Their overvaluation of their own paper has caused any sort of economic recovery to be even slower than it might have been otherwise, IMO. Of course, if a bright light was shone on some of their books, they might be proven insolvent, so their reluctance is natural.
Li's scheme seems counter-intuitive actually, but there's money to be made on devaluation of loans as well, just as the UltraShort instruments make money by betting against the Market, in theory. And I wish they'd go far far away, because in a panic-driven market, they are only exacerbating the problem.
Xoot remarked earlier how technological advances allowed these new systems to be put in place, but were strangely incapable of calculating the risks involved, which put me in mind of a quote from Kurt Vonnegut:
"The main problem with society is that man's knowledge of the physical world has outdistanced his knowledge of himself."
Human nature doesn't change, only the externals...
Also, I accidentally linked to EconLib's main page, not the 'encyclopedia' section, which was what I was recommending, and as far as I know, has no bias to left or right, and has better detail in it's historical entries than Wiki. The editorial page obviously does have a bias, but I wasn't recommending that. I'm sure it confused no one except harry, but I apologize anyway.
"Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Thought that was a pretty good one...
Interesting stuff, WT, and well written, too.
But let's get back to basics. As Greider explains in this week's The Nation, obviously drawing from the deep conceptual work of D'Arista, the central culprit in the current financial failure is the Federal Reserve Bank. The Fed has . . . . :)
FH -- I know many lawyers who belie that lawyer's clever dictum daily.
Thanks Xootie... and point taken. Everyone who knows me knows I usually don't go on and on.. but I think it's important we get our collective heads around these concepts (and not be unknowing victims) before we're all living in cargo-container "Geithner-Villes."
Oh, no, WT. The gratuitous citations to obscure scholars had no bearing on your commentary.
Thanks winkingtiger. Andu most of you all have valid points. But what caused the problem and what the stimulis will accomplish is something that I can't go in on right now because my computer konks out after about 20 minutes every time.
As for you hartal, your ignorance is as overwhelming as the stench of a hooker who combines perfume with bowel imperfections.
It's too bad you don't have a glass stomach.
So the next time you stick your head up your ass, you could see through.
Oh, no, Xoot...I knew that wasn't aimed at me, I just agreed with it. And Ted, that must suck, I'd flip my wig if my computer was doing that.
Lagniappe Dept.: We will know within a year or less if the stimulus plan has succeeded or failed, that's the good news. I think that's why Bernanke was making noises the other day about 'the recession ending by the end of 2009.' That seemed a bit optimistic to me, but it is only March, and then there's the psychological effect of such a statement, the results of which I think we've been seeing in the market recently.
BB also mentioned reinstating the Uptick rule, which would severely curtail short-selling, although it wouldn't ban it outright (as the Brits have done, why can't we?). All of that might help to settle down the Market, but there's other problems in the economy, outside of Wall Street, and that's a whole other thread... good night and Erin Go Bragh! ;-)
One more take on David Li and the Gaussian copula function.
http://tiny.cc/EzNWC
Article mentions that the formula did not take into account tail dependency, meaning that it did not factor in the probability of an extreme swing in psychology, the kind of irrationality that Keynes insisted characterized financial markets and has found theoretical articulation in the latest book by Berkeley's Nobelist George Akerlof Animal Spirits (cowritten with Robert Schiller). I have read about a third of it.
I'm going with Ted on this. If forced to choose where to apply one's high school education between the precision of a Swiss timepiece and a clunky, but functioning septic system, well, let's just say that my gut always knows what time it is.
TooSense, I don't know where all this high school education stuff is coming from. At what point did I say I had a high school education? I was kicked out of high school in the 10th grade.
Two years in a row.
Ted, whether your high school education was incomplete is of little consequence. I'm assuming you attended high school in California, of course. ;)
Greider may still be ranting about the Fed and the secrets of the Temple; and perhaps D'Arista has some good ideas for reform.
But Greider loses credibility because the Fed is clearly taking more radical actions than he imagined that it would. Bernacke has thrown caution to the win, promisculously created money and let the dollar fall in relation to a given quantity of gold.
See the analysis in today's NYT:
http://tiny.cc/SFmrs
I don't think the question is at this point what more could the Fed do and what it could have done esp in relation to the shadow banking center.
The point now is that the Fed is doing as much as Greider could have hoped for, and it may prove not be enough.
Scary as hell.
hartal, give a rest. Take a self-help class in humor.
btw, hartal, will you do me a favor and register your screen name? As it is, anyone -- even the odious yogi sonofabastard -- could sign on as you and post crap. If you register and sign in and post, we'll know your posts are really your work.
TooSense,
You're right but vocabularily wrong.
It's not where I attended High School. It's where I didn't.
Which is still California. So I guess you're regionally right.
`
And, my dear sweet hartal, on your last post,...I'm actually going to throw in a dove of peace here...I've done this before and you have abused the peace but I'll try once again... You seem to think you are far superior to me. And even if it's true...and it's not...it's rude.
Please...haunt someone else.
When you post something I know not of, I shut up. But when you post something I *do* know about, you don't seem to know what you're talking about except touting the things you've read that you have a gut feeling is right.
But without facts.
I'm handing over a DOVE here. So please take it in the right context.
And please, please, please, remember...sometimes, you're wrong. I realize that's a hard concept to take but...sometimes it's true. Especially with no LIFE EXPERIENCE!!!
And, again, jut reading shit in newspapers and the net and liking it and assuming it's true?
Fat drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, young man. It will just make you hated
Not always. Not always.
But more often then you could ever guess.
Ted Spe, you wrote: "And I did. In fact, I think it was in a Fannie Mae (FNMA) bond. And I got a (don't remember the actual rates so I'm just using these as an example) 12% return for the investment. And the president of the bank came to me and said "Ted, you could have gotten a 14% return if you invested in GinnieMae!!!"."
I'm confused about this. The rate of return seems pretty high for non junk bonds, but I'll leave that aside. Given the better govt guarantees on Ginnie Mae bonds, why were they giving a higher rate of return than the probably more risky Fannie Mae bonds? Genuinely curious, so I am glad that you have life experience and knowledge of this area.
Ted, between displays of credentials and common sense, I tend to be more impressed by the latter.
What do you do when there is neither?
I think this thread could use some mellow shit.
Oh on whether we should be angry at the banks, well, James Galbraith, probably inspired by Ted Spe's incisive analysis, argues that we should be careful not to scapegoat them. James Galbraith's underlying theory here is the post-Keynesian one of endogenous money (that is banks are really money lending institutions but actually money making institutions and they make money upon the private demand for it for the purposes of profitable expansion):
"In banking, the dominant metaphor is of plumbing: there is a blockage to be cleared. Take a plunger to the toxic assets, it is said, and credit conditions will return to normal. This, then, will make the recession essentially normal, validating the stimulus package. Solve these two problems, and the crisis will end. That’s the thinking.
But the plumbing metaphor is misleading. Credit is not a flow. It is not something that can be forced downstream by clearing a pipe. Credit is a contract. It requires a borrower as well as a lender, a customer as well as a bank. And the borrower must meet two conditions. One is creditworthiness, meaning a secure income and, usually, a house with equity in it. Asset prices therefore matter. With a chronic oversupply of houses, prices fall, collateral disappears, and even if borrowers are willing they can’t qualify for loans. The other requirement is a willingness to borrow, motivated by what Keynes called the "animal spirits" of entrepreneurial enthusiasm. In a slump, such optimism is scarce. Even if people have collateral, they want the security of cash. And it is precisely because they want cash that they will not deplete their reserves by plunking down a payment on a new car.
The credit flow metaphor implies that people came flocking to the new-car showrooms last November and were turned away because there were no loans to be had. This is not true—what happened was that people stopped coming in. And they stopped coming in because, suddenly, they felt poor.
Strapped and afraid, people want to be in cash. This is what economists call the liquidity trap. And it gets worse: in these conditions, the normal estimates for multipliers—the bang for the buck—may be too high. Government spending on goods and services always increases total spending directly; a dollar of public spending is a dollar of GDP. But if the workers simply save their extra income, or use it to pay debt, that’s the end of the line: there is no further effect. For tax cuts (especially for the middle class and up), the new funds are mostly saved or used to pay down debt. Debt reduction may help lay a foundation for better times later on, but it doesn’t help now. With smaller multipliers, the public spending package would need to be even larger, in order to fill in all the holes in total demand."
Gee, Hartal, a civil war? Ya think? Now you know why the libs wanna take away our guns. Do you know why the second amendment was written?
You give the commoners enough ammunition, and they will fire.
We're a freedom-loving people that are willing to shed blood to preserve our rights and we'll only tolerate so much.
Actually Obama supported a bill opposing emergency presidential powers to seize all weapons. Of course the civil war scenario is far fetched, but the dominant metaphor for society is not a thermostat (homeostatic regulation, e.g. the system will return itself to normal levels of economic activity) but an avalanche (positive self reinforcing feedback that takes us away from the equilibrium point).
You obviously don't know Americans very well, do you? Ever talk to the kind of men that own guns?
I know Americans as well as anyone, having been born and raised here. I have talked to all kinds of people who own guns. I worked in inner city schools until one of my tutees had a hit on him for taking part in a gang killing. My wife hunted with her grandfather. How well do you know Americans? How well do you understand your Pope's teachings? How well thought out is your conception of the freedom that you champion?
I saw there was a handful amount of new comments so I thought I'd catch up. We're talkin about guns now?
I'm sorry. I can't...no, I won't bother reading all the details. Frankly, boring.
But hartal, I see you asked a question about GNMA rates and something else that I couldn't bother with looking down all the way on this thread again.
See, that's what's called a metaphor.
I do not remember if it was GNMA, FNMA, FreddieMAc, BernieMAC, the Fed Fund rate or LIBOR.
If that's your concern, you're completely missing the point.
What I was saying was that the CEO felt that earning 12% when we could have earned 14% represented a loss of 2%.
The burgeoning incoming attitude of greed was my only point. I was not trying to display fidelity to the intristic facts that occured in the banking industry investment rates in 1981.
Sorry if I was unclear.
Well it did represent a loss, and your strategy makes no sense since you could have had a higher rate of return and more safety as well. But you say it's all a metaphor.
But your metaphor (sic) makes no sense to me.
Are you saying that the financial sector maximizes profit while the industrial sector is satisfied with a moderate rate of profit? Or are you saying that all sectors maximize profit and that you want them to make only a reasonable profit? Then how do you determine what a reasonable profit is and how would you make sure firms don't make more than that? Or are you saying that financial capitalist cut corners in order to make the highest profit? But then you are not criticizing profit making but deregulation (there is a shadow banking and insurance industry that does not meet standards). Is that what you are criticizing? Or do you think that because banks make unusually high profits they could do with less and then lower the interest rate, which would in turn stimulate the economy. But the problem right now--and this is why you should have read the passage from Jamie Galbraith--is not , first and foremost, high interest rates and unwilling lenders but insolvent borrowers. And to that extent your focus on what you apparently take to be the unique greed of the banks (and I hope that this is not tied to any kind of anti Semitism but too often such discourses have been) you are not getting at the roots of the problem today.
You say you have knowledge and life experience in this are as compared to me. You are however clearly a faker.
As for the drug thread, note that Obama has appointed Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske as the new drug czar. He seems to have put a low priority on marijuana offenses, work on addiction rather than just criminalization. he in short may be an extraordinary pick.
I didn't mean people that owned guns illegally, Hartal. I'm talking about people that are law-abiding citizens-the quiet ones upon whose back this country was built. More than likely, you've only "heard" or "read" about this kind. And it's probably a good guess that you're as knowledgeable about their true frame of mind as you are about Catholicism.
And one more point. Just because Obama didn't sign into effect a law seizing guns doesn't mean he's for upholding the second amendment. Just like because you managed to be born in this country and your wife hunted with her grandfather means you understand all aspect of the American people. stica
Seriously, some Thai stick could really help this thread out.
Dsg, after the week I've had, I , personally could smoke a whole thai stick. Have you got any? I'd be glad to compensate you handsomely for it.
And Hartal, you boneheaded moron,judging by what you claim is your background--a first generation American--I disagree. You can't possibly understand Americans as well as some people.
WV: texuarist--I am so, so into it.
You're a dumb nativist. Knowledge of America does not run in the blood, and America, esp. California, is comprised of a lot of first and second generation Americans. How well do you know this America--Indo American, Chinese American, Latino. Not well, Miss Gina. Moreover, to know America is to know its history of exclusion. To know America is to know those who laid the infrastructure for America--its railroad system--were then kicked to the curb. Of all this you evince no knowledge, so you don't America in its complexity and diversity as I do. What you seem to know is an apologetic view of the antebellum South.
I posted: What I was saying was that the CEO felt that earning 12% when we could have earned 14% represented a loss of 2%.
hartal posted:Well it did represent a loss, and your strategy makes no sense since you could have had a higher rate of return and more safety as well.
`
uh huh. Beautiful. That makes you the biggest FUCKING, ASSHOLY hypocrite that anyone has ever had the misfortune to encounter.
But I have to admit. I admire the chutzpah and the fact that you're capable of sucking your own dick. Can't be easy.
If I had mentioned the CEO's investment strategy was my idea, you would have called me greedy and unconscienceable and stated I was one of the reasons we are in the trouble we're in because merely making a profit wasn't good enough. We had to have more.. But, no.
You've contradicted everything you've ever said about big business and government to merely dis me.
Which shows, you don't believe in anything you say or write or plagirize or cut and paste.
You just want to be an annoying asshole.
Well, believe me.
You *are* an annoying asshole.
In the words of your hero.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
Ted - is it 'assholy' or 'assholish'? Sweetie, why does Hartal get under your skin so badly? You are definitely not at your best when you engage him...and I much prefer you when you're not down in the muck.
JM.
I'm sorry. I broke a promise to you.
But when you're fat, drunk, ugly and stupid as I am, it's just there. The funny thing is...I don't even get any satisfaction out of it. So it's superflous. I would much rather just, truly, beat the shit out of him. I mean, really. Physically. With this aluminum baseball bat I'm buying tomrrow
;)
Again. My apologies, my sweet hostess, and to all the rest of you.
Tarzan shut up now!
BTW. That was an apologetic but also a vicious post I just made. But truth be told, I typed it right after getting a phone call from a friend who works at City College of San Francisco. There has been a number of armed robberies at City (yes, gun involved) not on the campus but while you're leaving and walking to your car. 3 young males. Only one with a gun (but, hell, that's enough). One guy who was a victim was also beaten.
You all here are enlightened folks and chances are you might take night classes. Cuz you're all ALWAYS looking for enlightment.
So be careful. I know of 4 incidents in the last 3 months.
Be careful if you're taking any classes there. try to walk in groups.
It's not funny.
Oh, but Ted, those angry boys are the real backbone of America...the rest of us meanies have just excluded them after they built the railroad system upon which America was founded. The first 200 hundred years and Western history and culture had nothing to do with it. They're just claiming their much deserved stake--don't you know that?
Really, now, what we should be doing is kowtowing to Swami Hartal and his revolutionaries.
And you are not fat, ugly, drunk and stupid...but I'm sure Hartal is as foul and moronic looking as he talks.
gina, I have to admit, that's funny. A bit...well you know I enjoy any moment that reminds hartal that he's such a f******g asshole but I promised to be good.
You and I have not always gotten along but hartal's rudeness and misogyny towards you is incomprehensible. It has a taint of...closeted misguided anger?
Sorry. Sorry. I promised JM i'd stop
But sadly, I wasn't being funny about City. I'm serious. If any of you are taking night classes, like I am, at City, there's 3 folks holding folks up, gun point. Bullets? I don't know. But they physically hit one guy that I know about. Not on campus, but while you walk to your car. So try not to walk alone. Two are African American and one is Latino. One robbery, the two African Americans stated to the latino "Shoot the bitch" but he didn't.
Shit. Thank God.
Really. Be careful my friends.
Thank you, Ted. I'm actually a very nice and agreeable person when I'm not defending the unborn and my children.
And as for Hartal, he's just a dull, clueless thug with an inferiority complex about his color. I believe that most Americans are willing to overlook the color of a man's skin in favor of examining the contents of his soul...which is what he really ought to concern himself with.
I used to go to City College...it's not exactly in the best area.
If you mean by my inferiority complex, my hatred of the irrationality, prejudice and ignorance that is destroying our country, then, yes, I hate what you and TedSpe represent. Ted Spe does not know what he is talking about in spite of the common sense and life experience that he claims to have. I have links to absolutely wonderful introductions to the credit and general financial crises but with this crowd I am not sharing. TooSense, Winkingtiger, xootsuit, dsgonzale6, and FH will have to shut the dummies up first. Oh, get straight who built the railroads.
"I would much rather just, truly, beat the shit out of him. I mean, really. Physically. With this aluminum baseball bat I'm buying tomrrow."
FH, dsgonzale6 and xootsuit are lawyers. I suggest that you ask them what the appropriate thing to do is. My suggestion: block Ted Spe's IP address from this blog immediately.
Here is the content policy: "VIOLENT CONTENT: Users may not publish direct threats of violence against any person or group of people."
Such a threat has been made. It is robbing me of my mental peace. I demand that TedSpe be banned from blogging immediately. That is, not only do I demand that his post be removed but also do I insist that he not be allowed to post. I also believe that his threat is a disguised form of hate speech, though that may not be provable at this point.
Ted Spe, since you have made this threat, would you now disclose your full name and address. Thanks.
Hartal - You probably don't spend much time at the "Giants Splash" blog on SFGate. I believe that Ted's comment about the bat was a caal back to something that caused quite a ruckus over there. It was a bad joke, and of course sounded like a threat, as you aren't in on the joke.
Ted...I'm wagging my finger at you (tsk, tsk) I think it would be nice if you apologized to Hartal, so I am not forced to take his request under advisement. I would miss you very much if you were no longer a part of the Brushfires family.
No, FH, he made the threat as an act of (insane) revenge for what had happened at City College. I had nothing to do with that.. He makes no mention of the Splash blog. I do not understand why you would miss him. He is stupid, dishonest and violent. At any rate, I think he should disclose to me his name since he has made a threat; and if any of you know who he is, you should tell me before he hurts me. I don't think anyone here would want to be implicated in any act of violence.
By blog policy he has lost his rights to post, and should be removed immediately.
Vincent Chin, dot busters. No one should dismiss what Ted Spe said as a joke.
Do I really have to say anything other than people should mellow out? I've had enough this week of stepping into ugly personal situations where I would just as soon not step. Life had been more or less peaceful, and I would prefer that it revert to that state. Would everyone please just chill?
Yes, dad. Please make Hartal go away. I like Tedspe much, much,much better. In fact, I quite dislike Hartal and every thuggy thing he stands for. He's done nothing that I can see to deserve to be called an American. All he does is spread his vile bigoted hatred of anyone and anything that represents the white culture, like we owe him something because he's a pitiful minority. Why, I wonder, did he marry a white woman and then proceed to make a slave of her while he picks fights with whitey in the blogosphere? What a lucky woman. I mean really, while she's doing all the shit work in the family, the Lord is attending to his business...just like a slave owner in the antebellum south that Hartal loves to yap about so much.He impresses no one and accomplishes nothing but making himself look like an ignorant ass.
In fact, if I had an aluminum bat I would want to do the same thing. I guess you'll have to ban me too, ferret.
Again: chill. No threats, no bans, just chill. Nobody can claim total innocence here, so let's just let it all pass and chill. Can I be any clearer?
Well I see your predicament dsgonzale6. Not too long TedSpe was the sole person supporting you in your failed attempt to win a debate with me about the self deportation of illegal aliens. Now he has proven himself capable of making a criminal threat in the course of argument. There is nothing I said that justified such a threat. You should know that. FH is also committed to reporting such an illegal threat to the owners of this blog.
I apologize for my violent posts. They weren't threats. It was just blow hard crap. But I apologize. I thought i explained but apparently that didn't come off.
So again.
I apologize to everyone
I still need your name. It's one thing to post anonymously for the purposes of informal internet chat and debate. It's an altogether different thing to make violent and illegal threats without giving one's real name. So please tell me who you are.
Once FH apprises blogger.com of what you have said--and she is duty bound to do so--you will also have your blogging access blocked.
Just so you don't threaten me again, do understand that I shall not block your IP account and that this is something that you have done to yourself.
Lastly there is no meaningful difference between threats and blow hard crap.
Thanks hartal for your understanding, ever present open mind and thoughtfullness.
You are such a silly, silly person. Here's once again why you're so ignorant. You can't get a restraining order against someone who states something, in the heat of anger, "I could kill you!!" Especially on the internet.
There's a number of lawyers on this thread so you can ask them.
Of course, our beloved hostess could always block me.
I wouldn't be happy about that...but she always has that right.
But I tell you what, sweety.
Give me *your* phone number and address and we can discuss this.
Like gentlemen.
In the meantime, I'm going to keep my promise to our beloved hostess, follow her advice and ignore you for now on. So this is my last response.
Nothing but love, petunia, nothing but love.
False premises. Who doesn't understand what chill means?
By saying chill you have not said that you have observed an illegal violent threat made against me (and it follows a series of outbursts against me) and that FH is duty bound to report this to blogger.com so that they can take the proper actions against TedSpe.
This is serious and dangerous. He seems already to know (or rather thinks he knows) the law about restraining orders. That should again raise the alarm bells.
I request that TedSpe make his name public. Anyone who makes such threats no longer has the right to anonymity.
Note that he asked for my address. That should scare the hell out of Jean Ferretti and DS Gonzale. Please say and do the right things. Report him immediately, and if anyone knows what his name is, please tell me immediately.
One of the sentences in one of my recent posts was incorrectly punctuated. It should have read: "No 'threats,' no bans, just chill."
No, you're just covering your tracks. You witnessed an illegal violent threat. And you did not act as an Officer of the Court should have at that point.
C-H-I-L-L.
There aren't enough sticks in Siam to chill out this troll, DSG. And by mentioning 'sticks' I am NOT making a threat of violence. Just to be clear to the irrational.
You would be the troll if you could understand the economics that makes sense to you is in deadly combat with the politics and economics that the moderator set up this blog to espouse. But you have zero political sense, winkingtiger. Perhaps like LaSalle you get your news from Lou Dobbs. Do you know what the moderator and her hero Thom Hartman thinks of Dobbs and his followers, like you and the website that is your sum knowledge of economics? You're the troll, an unwitting one most probably.
Thank you for proving my point, harry.
I can't thank you for confirming yet again that you don't understand even the most lines of political conflict. But you still blog on politics.
And I can't stand Lou Dobbs, although since that doesn't fit your incredible arrogant assumptions about me (and everyone else), I'm sure you'll ignore that.
"Most lines" What does that mean? You grow incoherent.
Basic lines. So you hate Dobbs and take your direction from that website? You're lost, winkingtiger. Try to develop a coherent point of view. And I think you all look like fools for having nastier things to say about me than TedSpe. As I have said, you all have the qualities of a Palin rally, though you'll tell me that you hate Palin. You only think you do
I read many political websites, harry. Once again, you're assuming a lot. Thank you though, for clearing up that sentence so I can follow your meaning. Bye for now.
I've addressed all the matters that related directly to me as much as I care to, and I am not going to get in the middle of this argument. Again, I say to everyone, chill. I'm seriously tempted to post my state bar information if this keeps up so people can deal with me through that venue; I am absolutely certain that I have no reason to worry about my bar card.
Oh the reason you have nothing to worry about is not that you did act responsibly as an Officer of the Court--you clearly did not as you don't know enough about Ted Spe to have been reasonably certain that he was not serious about the threat that he did make. The reason you have nothing to worry about is I have no time to pursue the matter.
Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Post a Comment