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posted by
martyb
on Friday March 30 2018, @07:36AM
from the change-is-not-necessarily-for-the-good dept.
from the change-is-not-necessarily-for-the-good dept.
10 Years Since The 2008 Financial Crisis
The financial crisis and the massive federal response reshaped the world we live in. Though the economy is in one of its longest expansions and stock indexes have hit new highs, many people across the political spectrum complain that the recovery is uneven and the markets' gains aren't fairly distributed. The Wall Street Journal takes a look at some of the most eventful aspects of the response and how we got to where we are today.
America lost a lot of strength and stability, there were no consequences for the most egregious offenders, and those involved are now part of the regulatory capture in the financial markets.
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How the World has Changed Since 2008 Financial Crisis
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* m2 stares at the monitor... it looks like a hamburger...
m2 - that's a bad sign
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @08:43AM (8 children)
(Score: 4, Informative) by RamiK on Friday March 30 2018, @05:01PM (5 children)
True so far.
Nope. That's the 1933 Glass–Steagall Act trying to draw the line between the private savings & loans account owners and the wall street speculators that caused the 1929 collapse. The problem back then was that when the market collapsed, the banks collapsed as well hurting private people that couldn't withdraw their money and then buy stuff which just kept going... Since no one could (and still can't) stop scams and over-speculations, the act was designed to limit their damage to just the finance sector by forcing banks to keep enough money at hand to give people cash when something like that happens.
The 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley act came about following the Enron & friends series of financial frauds to (futilely) try and get the financial sector to stop scamming and crashing every other year. The problem that forced governments to start paying attention to those sectors was that pensions circa the 80s and 90s started investing in risky stocks instead of government and quality corporate bonds. So, when so many companies crashed in '02, governments realized they can't make them accountable for their crimes and high-risk investments since they got so many people (read: investors) by the balls.
Unfortunately, the '08 frauds proved the '02 act wholly insufficient: Both banks and the markets keep scamming people and still get away with it by expanding their operations to such huge proportions no one dares making them accountable. And as for why I speak in present tense, see Apple and how governments are desperately trying to keep it afloat through every possible means.
Personally, I feel the real collapse is going to happen when automation will end-up directly cutting jobs WHILE reducing the market price of automobiles since fleets and large leasing buying groups will leverage their position for lower and lower prices until the profit margins will minimize. But that's mid 2020s so we have some time...
compiling...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 30 2018, @05:57PM (4 children)
Don't worry, they'll divide the market between customers with purchasing power and the rest of the world - the rest of the world will continue to keep the sector profitable because: no power.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday March 31 2018, @09:47AM (3 children)
What "rest of the world"? Once you take away driving licenses and personal insurances our of the equation, nothing holding back fleets of self-driving cars from replacing private transportation. They can scale everything from maintenance to production in ways private individuals can't match even before discussing the possibility of them opening their own production lines. And once parking becomes and issue cities will close down the roads while offering exclusive contracts to manage traffic congestion while offering lower rates for residents. e.g. In Europe and Asia you can find cities with bicycle renting services running this model successfully competing against the price of owning bicycles...
compiling...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday March 31 2018, @01:51PM (2 children)
Do you think that automakers aren't out in front of this? Why do you think that every self-driver incident makes world news? I think human-driven vehicles have at least another 50 years on the roads for the very reason of entrenched interests wanting to keep them there, from automakers all the way through the road construction and insurance industries.
If you've shorted insurance companies because you think that auto-insurance's days are numbered, be prepared to cover that short for a long, long time.
So popular in the wet season.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday March 31 2018, @09:40PM (1 child)
No they're not. Both the US government and the automakers/aviation learned their lesson from the Japanese automakers invasion and will not lobby, or bend over to lobbying trying to legislate technology away. The press releases are related to managing the stock market from getting too caught-up in a long term production (as opposed to technological) supremacy struggle while expecting short-term gains. If anything, the permits are being given prematurely as the tech isn't quite road-ready as it should be since the anxiety levels about developing a production capabilities gap is high in DC corridors nowadays. Instead, the response has been to fight against Chinese steel and aluminum subsidizes. It started with Obama's challenges to the WTO and progressed to more aggressive tariff wars moves by Trump.
Since automobiles, aviation, pharmaceuticals and heavy-silicon aren't in the same level of play we tend to observe a move and generalize it as policy. But still, overall the trend has been to stop legislating barriers as a default.
But admittedly, it's not a two part conflict. Some companies are lobbying one way. Some nations are lobbying another way. There's different industries and different news outlets with different ties and different interests all running their own angles and reaching government in different ways. Still, as long as China prevents rich Americans from buying Chinese factories, I believe the general political agenda in the States will stay combative and competitive. Aligning interests and all that...
compiling...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday March 31 2018, @10:45PM
Thank the senile reality show producer/star for that.
Try explaining that to the tweet-for-brains CinC.
Agreed. Back in the early 1900s, the saying was: "X hundred million Chinese can't be wrong" - and the general concern was that with their sheer numbers they could march through our cities and take over, not and unfounded fear if you look at Tibet. Through the Cold War, they were less of a concern, but the population imbalance didn't go away. Now that we're mostly coming around to the idea that nobody is going to nuke anybody else into oblivion (though, I see that rhetoric cranking up from Carrot-top's buddies and the media lately) the a realization that 1.4 billion is a lot bigger than 350 million is starting to take hold again with economic worries.
Complex, highly multi-dimensional problem, with many chaotic elements.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by khallow on Friday March 30 2018, @08:03PM
To the contrary, it was quite legal. And such securities are lower risk than taking on random individual loans with the same level of care. Sorry, it wasn't criminal activities or complex securities that caused the real estate crisis, it was the ability to borrow $50 in extremely low interest rate loan for each 1$ of assets owned.
The whole point of Sarbanes-Oxley was theater, the appearance of caring. My view is that the vast majority of financial law is an utter waste, more useful in creating large multinationals, stagnant economies, and gullible plebes, than in doing anything to protect us from economic crises or fraud.
Are we talking about the same crises? What shipping industry is banking?
My take is that these recessions and crises that result from asset bubbles would be way less of a problem with higher reserves and margin among banks and investors. And that would be most of my fix right there. I don't want to eliminate recessions since I think they serve a valuable role in long term economics, I just want to make sure they don't generate chain-reaction collapses.
(Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Friday March 30 2018, @09:19PM
Yes, it was legal. It still is legal.
Seriously how could the parent be marked informative when it was WRONG from the first sentence to the last???
And those high risk loans were MANDATED by government program set up first by Carter, and expanded by Clinton. MANDATORY loaning to people with no visible means of support.
Read your history before modding some random rage post as informative.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.