This. The real irony about the banks is that by heavily regulating banks and explicitly backing them, we also implicitly allow this sort of abusive behavior towards customers.
Well, no, because the problem is not the regulation, but the lack of enforcement of the regulation. And that happens because the political appointees who runt the agencies are too close to the banks they are supposed to be monitoring. If Wells is making changes to the loans without properly getting the court's approval, that's fraud on the court and clearly illegal. Getting a criminal proceeding against Wells or any of its employees requires the DoJ to agree to take action, which seems highly unlikely.
During the fallout from the housing bubble, it became apparent that many loans had not been properly transferred as they were sold from one investor to the next. The result of this was that many foreclosures were brought with essentially forged papers--servicers worked overtime trying to cover up broken paper trails. The courts in some states, esp. Florida, looked the other way as this bogus paper was passed in front of them.
In other words, regulation is a great system, except it always gets corrupted by the politics of the regulators?
I'm very supportive of regulating banks, both in theory and in reality. But we can't just wish away corruption and influence. Especially since so much financial activity is highly technical and the only people knowledgeable enough to create and enforce reasonable regulations are the same as the people conducting those activities that need to be regulated in the first place.
Like anything else, it's a political issue. Meaning: citizens have to give a shit about it, be informed, and be vocal about it with their representatives. Republicans in Congress just voted to roll back Dodd-Frank, and are aiming to get rid of the CFPB. Why? Because the CFPB is actually trying to protect people from shit like this.
Everyone is kicking the blame elsewhere. First, the banks, then lack of regulations, then too-much regulations, then imperfect regulations, then corruptible regulators, then finally the people that don't participate in politics.
The more I follow politics, and the media in general, I am leaning towards describing the entire thing as a giant soap opera where the media only "comments" or "gossips" instead of reporting facts and assigning provable blame. Everyone just passes off blame, no one really can hold anyone else accountable, and the cycle just repeats constantly. This is a fault of the system in that it allows blame to be passed along like that. The problem never really being addressed, just half-assed by each batch of politicians so that they can simultaneously take some blame, take some credit for trying, and also not be held accountable in any way.
One thing I've learned as I've grown older is that the penalties for these things are absolutely malleable and the law can say "no, there's no passing the buck, the bank is responsible." Or the consumer. Whatever the politics of the day say should happen.
>"ok, so we've abandoned the notion of objective truth and everything is all about the narrative."
Essentially, yes. Everything is relative, and since we have no base-principles to infer complex laws/rules/behavior from, we're constantly bickering with one another about minute details.
>"the interesting question is whether or not there ever really was a cycle where the citizenry were informed, and could collectively influence policy."
That's an interesting question. I can't say I can think of such a time. But I guess as a seemingly-intelligent and connected society with all of humanity's knowledge available at our fingertips, we should be striving for such a thing. Not defending an already-broken system just because we've decided it's "good enough".
It's nigh-impossible to actually do any sort of "corrective" maintenance on the system we have in place. Just look at Trump, or Brexit. The much-touted "checks and balances" is actively hindering his policies from being enacted (the one that got him voted in). Additionally, with Brexit, it's exposing just how complicated and intertwined global "contracts" and laws are between nations. In both cases we have giant behemoths of laws and processes in place to simply stunt any sort of correction or movement in any direction (whether good or bad). At that glacial pace, I don't think our life-spans are enough to see things through, or see drastic change or experiments when it comes to the models of government we've already-defined and have available.
The checks and balances you deride are not abstract concepts, words do not leap from paper and take action. The checks and balances you disparage are people who disagree, which actually is how it's supposed to work.
Daylighting, or "sunlight as disinfectant," is great in a world where shame works and the appearance of rectitude is valued.
But we are seeing in US politics a world emerge where shame doesn't work, where players don't even try to appear honest, and where the very idea of consensus factual external reality is under attach.
In such a world, it will take a lot more than daylight to nudge good behavior from folks. It will take actual fear of being sent to jail.
I hear ya. I don't know how we got to this state, and I'm active player. Complacency?
The silver lining is that Trump was a wake up call. Many, many of my non-political friends contacted me and asked "What do we do? How do I start?" Our boring party meetings have triple the attendance. Any thing that needs doing now gets done.
For my part, I started a book study group, mentoring my friends how to be activists. For example, an upcoming homework assignment is testifying at a public hearing (local city or county council). Most of us have never even attended a meeting before.
"Well, no, because the problem is not the regulation, but the lack of enforcement of the regulation. "
Problems in complex systems with large numbers of variables, attractors, etc are not solvable by just doing a single thing (if it was, it's not a complex system :P)
This kind of "if only x" thinking, IMHO, does not lead to actual solutions. It usually just leads to some other gravity well of the system, where now someone else says "if only y".
Prior to heavy regulation, we allowed the same sort of abusive behaviour, except it would be followed by a whole bunch of people, who had no hand in the impropriety, losing their life savings.
If you want to give ammunition to anti-capitalist movements, I strongly endorse returning to this model.
Of course, if you want to give ammunition to anti-capitalist movements, I also recommend that we continue to bail out the people who did have a hand in the impropriety.
No we don't. Nobody is responsible for this behavior except for the banks that do it. They are run by adults who are perfectly capable of taking responsibility for their actions.
A good primer, but more like SIGINT 101 CIRCA 1970. No mention of China, Iran, North Korea, or the use of SIGINT against terrorist or insurgent networks.
As interesting as SIGINT against terrorist networks sounds, I assume most of this is classified -- since the cells are already known to operate smaller, and likely more difficult-to-intercept networks than nations, they'd probably adapt fairly quickly if it were revealed how they're being eavesdropped on.
I would imagine that since groups like ISIS aren't running their own cell networks, it would be very easy for government groups to locate anyone using those networks. Satellite phones can be just as easy to find too. The only way to really hide is just blend in with the normal cell noise of a city, use encrypted messaging, and hope no one is connecting the metadata dots to find you.
Mexican drug cartels have been found to be running their own cell networks, so the idea that ISIS or any other well-funded group could do the same is not outside the realm of possibility. Of course, from a SIGINT perspective, cell towers are pretty hard to hide.
Requiring employers to shop for and provide health insurance is only going to complicate the already complex system and lead to crappier less competitive outcomes.
What? How can you put Manning in the same category?
Sure he established the trend and legitimized Wikileaks, but most of what he released was tactically valuable to enemies of the U.S. Arguably Manning did endanger the lives of U.S. service members and for that I will have a hard time forgiving her/him.
If you don't think that Pakistani and Iranian intelligence did not pass along the lessons learned to insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan then I don't know what else to say other than this:
What you neglect to mention is that Europe and the US had high import taxes to protect their industries from eachother.
Somehow the US still managed to become a superpower. China will be fine if it can transition to a better system of government. Globalization doesn't seem necessary for a country with a huge domestic market.
Demanding better working conditions for Foxconn employees is called having a conscience not hypocrisy.
Ok the historian in me has to say something. The US is only a superpower because we pilfered an incredibly large and resource-rich land mass and had incredibly good geopolitical luck during World War One and Two. And that involved dropping a nuclear weapon on a civilian population. Those circumstances are NOT repeatable.
> China will be fine if it can transition to a better system of government.
lol, so the one that brings more and more people out of poverty everyday should suddenly change and adopt the American style of government where more and more people are ending up in poverty? Genius idea mate...
I know this comment has been downvoted, but I think in light of current events it does deserve merit. China has managed to do a spectacular job of lifting its populace from abject poverty... while spectacularly abusing human rights and flagrantly violating rules of law and due process. But the American system, if it continues to be dominated by rich oligarchs...how does it work for the benefit of its weakest citizens? I really hope that it does not turn out that way, but you can't deny that it isn't a possibility, with the current US president calling the media "Enemy no.1", not having any respect for independent judiciary, attacking other religions etc.
I purposely came off rude in my comment - probably contributed to the down votes. But I do think it's a big worry for many people here in the west when an ideology that is diametrically opposed to what we are use to over here is not only succeeding but thriving. It feels like people here have already given up; on Reddit, the buzzword is now basic income (i.e., give me free stuff). Pew survey shows Americans are essentially expecting to regress while people in China are very optimistic.
People want change, but they're unwilling to consider anything else - democracy, like all systems have pros and cons. Learning from the successes of China doesn't automatically mean adopting the full ideology.
^ I was listening to this earlier and I can't help but point out the creeping government overreach in all aspects of our lives. We drop bombs at the drop of a hat, and send people to prison for thought crimes.
I really hope everyone can see that we must roll back the powers of the federal government, or it is going to roll over us.
My problem with this is that people get a perception that just rolling back the powers of the federal government is good in general and also that it would be easy. This is not necessarily the case, but it allows groups that would benefit from a weaker federal government to prosper (sometimes at the expense of the people) because one part of the federal government is getting to powerful or is not transparent enough. This allows for a divide and conquer approach in areas like the environment, discrimination, labor rights etc.
The federal government isn't simply going to give up authority, and if it does it will likely be to the economic benefit of the organizations that lobbied for it in the first place (EPA cuts for example). If you want change, simply grumbling about the federal government is not going to help. It will take concerted effort to push candidates in one of the parties to take these issues seriously and to get elected on them.
Absolutely. Trump took over at the helm of a government with unprecedented surveillance capacity, highly militarized police, secret court systems, the ability to indefinitely detain and kill its own citizens without trial, and every precedent to engage in congressionally unauthorized warfare all over the world and sell weapons to the most brutal regimes imaginable.
Not to mention a web of military contractors, weapons manufacturers, intelligence agencies, and armed forces that often operate above the law and outside the control of the government itself. The US government has been captured by people in the business of war and 'defense'. Don't expect the feeble US media to mention that though, even the liberals prefer to wax poetic about blowing things up in destitute third world countries:
> I really hope everyone can see that we must roll back the powers of the federal government, or it is going to roll over us.
Local and state law-enforcement agencies absolutely do this sort of thing (and pretty much every other horrid thing that federal LE does) as well -- not just federal law enforcement.
I think you might be underestimating the impact of slackening demand. Emerging market airlines put in a ton of orders over the past 10 years, now we're seeing them slash airfare prices and/or cancel orders due to continued pressure. You can also point to state-owned/supported enterprises in the Middle East and China which are terrible allocators of capital and have therefore encouraged the glut. Nevermind the strategic imperative of the U.S. and Europe to have exclusive access to a producer of worldwide transports during times of war.
There are many examples of duopolies who do just fine. I think you are ignoring the negative influence of ambitious countries in this industry.
