Hint at What Caused the Financial Meltdown

[Gary Allan]

Originally Posted By: TooManyWheels
Originally Posted By: PandaBear


Most importantly everything must be ethical and legal. Greed and moral are mutually exclusive. .. Warren Buffet is greedy, but ethical/moral .


You are trying to redefine the word greed from the way it is commonly accepted, and contradicting yourself even within your own quote. Perhaps greed is not really the word you mean.


I agree. He's describing what can be termed "best self interest" ..or, if you're a sociologist/behaviorist "socialized defense mechanisms".

Greed, while still surely "exceeding the need" goes beyond what the product of it can produce by itself.

That is, there's nothing wrong with enjoying many things, but when you obsess on the acquisition of wealth for the sake of acquisition of wealth, then surely a different set of values are in place.

In terms of an enterprise, in the vacuum of ethical and moral conduct, wealth is a byproduct.

OTOH, you can merely worship money and sell your soul for it.

You don't have to be wealthy to be greedy. When you see someone poor who has this characteristic ..you properly identify it as a character defect. It's only the successful greedy person who seems to be admired.

 

[moribundman]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear
Let's make it clear on the definition of greedy.


No, let's not discuss your personal definition of the word greed," a word which already has a very clear definiton. You really ought to crack a dictionary on occasion. Maybe brush also up on your grammar skills. This may help you convey your thoughts and ideas in a more cohesive and clear fashion and may assist you in putting out less gibberish.

Wikipedia, while not my favorite type of popular source, but hey, let's go with it for simplicity's sake, presents an example of greed: a father buying himself a new car rather than fix the roof of his family's home

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: TooManyWheels


You are trying to redefine the word greed from the way it is commonly accepted, and contradicting yourself even within your own quote. Perhaps greed is not really the word you mean.



Ok, sorry, replace all my wording of greed with "return on investment" then.

 

[moribundman]

So it was merely an ESL problem after all.

 

[Hermann]

Did anyone watch Cramer on Mad Money tonight. This was allowed to happen by [deleted]

Edit:

Posts that include judgmental comments that name or imply political parties or name politicians are clearly over the P line. There are loads of places online you can post to your hearts content about politics an politicians. BITOG isn't one of them.

 

[Pablo]

Actually I'm not sure why and how long you will be allowed to get away with the political stuff.

Naked short selling never has been allowed and in fact was cracked down on a bit with the current SEC.

The removal of the uptick rule has been brought up how many times by Pablo here? It was removed July 2007. I still don't why, other than pride, why it has no been reinstated. It really is a good rule.

BUT that said - neither of these things actually CAUSED this credit meltdown. It started long, long ago. Think 25 or so years ago and was really set in motion in the 1990's, 1999 in particular and all those things did not mix well with the rules of 2000-2008. Either you or Cramer messed up the history a bit.......

 

[Audi Junkie]

It's interesting to me that the countries which lost much more market value than us were serious economic rivals. Russia lost 65+%, China was second at like 55% and a few others, I forget. US was near the bottom of the list at about $20%. Kinda makes you wonder how much is going on behind the scenes. Have I said too much?

 

[Gary Allan]

Quote:
Have I said too much?


In any global scale enterprise theater ..the lemmings are marched to the sea in sacrifice. Often the winner of the conflict is not a true victor ..oh ..almost never so ..but merely the one who left less bloodied in the exchange.


Shhh!!! Loose lips sink ships

 

[mechtech2]

The whole subject is political.

 

[Brett Miller]

I've been in banking for a long time and the other day a friend and I were discussing the current situation. A lot of banks forgot about conservative practices and moved into areas other than their core business.

 

[ZZman]

Making a reasonable profit or owning reasonable things are not greed. They are acceptable practices in life.

What is greed is making a profit at the expense of society. I.E: lets move our factory to China so we can make more profit or make our share holders rich. Lets destroy our middle class and screw Americans who need a good job. Or lets raise our gas prices because we hear there is a shortage.

Or I buy a vehicle I really can not afford by paying on it with a 6 yrs loan! But, because I am greedy I want to trade it at 3 yrs for a loss!

Or I do not want to buy a starter house at first, NO, I deserve a really nice house. Since I can not afford it the normal way I
will take a chance with risky loans.

The U.S has become a society of "Me" not "We".

 

[TooManyWheels]

I agree that the emphasis on personal gain at the expense of everyone else is the essence of greed. When you engage in activities that are designed to profit one person without profiting others (zero-sum transactions), the whole society suffers, by definition. For the whole society to prosper we need to think about activities that make the economic pie bigger (all individuals, all nations), and not about taking other peoples' slices.

We have been fed the meme that pure self-interest benefits everyone, but that concept doesn't even make sense from a simple linguistic point of view - the words contradict each other, as do the underlying concepts.

 

[Gary Allan]

The "bigger pie" concept is a great notion, and I would have projected it to be a sensible path.

Have you ever wondered why others envied ..and even hated us. We sat here and said "Go find your own prosperity! Leave us alone to enjoy our bounty!!". Well, now we know why they were not able to find their own prosperity ...because we soaked up all the global bounty. Only our degradation enabled them to sit at the same table.

Now technology compensated a good bit. Our standard of living was maintained even though we were poorer/less wealthy. That progression didn't continue ..and as we can see, the global resource pool cannot expand infinitely. Since we were stagnant on any real R&D into true civilization-wide technological advancements ...we've gone (basically) nowhere in terms of "revolutionary" ..we've just refined stuff that we already had.

All we learned is time compression while not moving at all.

 

[kelpie]

I'll take a stab at this issue with my limited financial experience but self-proclaimed above average common sense:
1. Jobs going overseas causing loss of good paying jobs.
2. Overinflated housing prices caused by artificially lowered interest rates.
3. National debt and trade deficit.
4. Last but not least speculators in the housing mkt.

 

[Tempest]

This has been caused by the government actively trying to give away houses to those that can't afford them in order to buy their votes.
It is that simple.

 

[Gary Allan]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
This has been caused by the government actively trying to give away houses to those that can't afford them in order to buy their votes.
It is that simple.


Oh, and you can narrow our entire "condition" ..from the beginning of time to that one simple element?

Amazing, pal!

..but while you're there

It seems like some of those who ended up with the bacon are your heralded upper tier nobility.

Are you saying that they did nothing more than their appointed task in capitalizing on the flaws and fattening their wallets? Did they get taxed for the full amount of their compensation packages? Commensurate with the amount of sustenance that they extracted from the economy?? ...with their "income" being typically 25% of their "gain in wealth"??

While you assert that they "need help" ...they appear quite willing and able to "help themselves" to quite a bit.

Now if you're blaming government ..I'd say that these types were true blue recipients of the assistance that you insist that they deserve.

We got our outcomes as a result.

 

[TooManyWheels]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
This has been caused by the government actively trying to give away houses to those that can't afford them in order to buy their votes.
It is that simple.


Lowering the price of something so more people can afford it, and lying about the income of those who wish to buy subsidized goods are two very different things. Our current problem is largely caused by the latter behavior. I have to question the motives and intelligence of those who can't or won't make the distinction.

 

[Gary Allan]

Well, I think it comes down to "figures don't lie ..but liars sure do figure".

 

[Tempest]

Quote:
lying about the income of those who wish to buy subsidized goods

Please define.

 

[Tempest]

Quote:
Oh, and you can narrow our entire "condition" ..from the beginning of time to that one simple element?

I could, but posts that name names get deleted around here.

Quote:
It seems like some of those who ended up with the bacon are your heralded upper tier nobility.

Again, I would love to name the real names, but there is too much P in the answer for the Mods.
The names are NOT in the public sector.