Glass-Steagle Reinstate Yes or no

[Christians4LessGvt]

BT....i'm not sure whether i support Glass-Steagle or not
it does seem on the surface it's best to keep things separate

But I also suspect it easy to blame a "boogey man" like
"oh if we wouldnt have abolished Glass-Steagle" we
woulda lived happily ever after".

Bullshit!

This reckless spending and growth of gvt was going to crash
and burn....spending millions, billions, trillions you dont have
will eventually blowup no matter what happens with Glass-Steagle.

So BT what do you think?

[Michael Tee]

<< If you are not free to be stupid you are not free at all.>>

I'd say that's a pretty doctrinaire and overly simplistic statement.

The fundamental freedoms that people have fought and died for were things like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, etc.  Freedom to be fleeced by Wall Street con artists is not usually included in those freedoms.

I think the country has recently abandoned (to the Patriot Act) the freedom to talk on the phone to anyone without fear of warrantless government snooping, the freedom to take out library books without fear of warrantless government snooping into your reading habits, etc.  They raised no fuss at all.  They sucked it up.  Somehow, plane, my gut feeling is that they could also give up the Freedom to Be Fleeced by Wall Street Crooks, an obscure and little-appreciated freedom that up to now nobody has given as an example of the kind of freedom that he was willing to die for.

Your stirring defence of the right to be stupid was pithy and catchy, but doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense when you think about it.  It's certainly one of the minor freedoms, many of which have all been cheerfully sacrificed without anyone feeling less free afterwards.

[Plane]

  All right MT lets say that for a month you only get to behave in ways that I think are smart.
   If during that month you miss an oppurtunity or two I will feel as if I had defended you from a cupple of mistakes woun't I?

     I might be even more conservative for you than I am for myself .

[BT]

I'm thinking we should reinstate it. Seems to have worked well for 50+ years.

I would like to dig deeper into why it was done away with. And i'd like a better understanding of why the dems think dodd frank is a valid substitute.

It could be that we have gone too far down the deregulation road for Glass Steagle to be effective now.

[sirs]

The conservatives love to flatter the American people:  "Oooooh, you people are so smart.  You're smart enough to buy stocks without having to look in the prospectus.  Smart enough to figure out which banks to trust with your money.  etc. etc."

But it's all bullshit.  They are nowhere near that smart and they shouldn't be allowed to make such decisions as they do without major governmental oversight and regulation of the individuals or institutions they are putting their trust in....they gotta be protected from their own stupidity.

BINGO, PRECISELY how I described the power liberal, and the danger in the loss of freedom by those who claim they're so much smarter than the rest of us peasants, and as necessary, dictate the how's, the when's, the where's, the how much, etc., etc., etc., that we're to live

Thank you Tee, I couldn't have summed it up better

[Xavier_Onassis]

There is plenty of stupidity in the posts of the self-appointed conservatives here. They clearly need to be defended from it.

[Michael Tee]

All right MT lets say that for a month you only get to behave in ways that I think are smart.
   If during that month you miss an oppurtunity or two I will feel as if I had defended you from a cupple of mistakes woun't I?

     I might be even more conservative for you than I am for myself .
==================================================================

plane, your analogy completely misses the point.  We are not talking about the government regulating the individual, but about the government regulating the institutions that the individual puts his trust in.  The individual (me, in your example) is too fucking stupid or pressed for time or whatever to do an adequate analysis of the books and track record of commercial bank A or commercial bank B.  He'll never know if A is imprudently run by a bunch of congenital gamblers who just got out of jail for fraud or if B is well run by a bunch of geniuses from the Wharton School of Business. with a stack of degrees and academic honours that is thicker than the Manhattan Telephone Directory.  So the government saves me the trouble - - IT monitors and oversees and regulates ALL of the commercial banks so that whichever one I ultimately choose, the odds are good that it won't be able to defraud me if the inspection and oversight are good.  Of course, some fucking crook is always going to find a new way to defraud the customer - - that's capitalism and the profit motive at work.  But as between UNREGULATED banking and regulated banking, the opportunities for fraud will be much fewer.  Consider that in 50 years of Glass-Steagall, no bank failures; ten or eleven years after repeal, too many bank failures to count.  QED

[Christians4LessGvt]

some information on Glass-Steagall Act

Who repealed the Glass-Steagall Act?

[Plane]

All right MT lets say that for a month you only get to behave in ways that I think are smart.
   If during that month you miss an oppurtunity or two I will feel as if I had defended you from a cupple of mistakes woun't I?

     I might be even more conservative for you than I am for myself .
==================================================================

......We are not talking about the government regulating the individual, but about the government regulating the institutions that the individual puts his trust in.  The ......

    Now there is a distinction without a diffrence.
     If you wanted the sky dive and I allowed you to skydive , but not from any aircraft or great hight am I really allowing you to skydive?

      I don't mind rules that expose fraud or even punish theft. It is rules that enforce your "smart" on my "stupid " that I don't like.

[sirs]

     If you wanted the sky dive and I allowed you to skydive , but not from any aircraft or great hight am I really allowing you to skydive?

      I don't mind rules that expose fraud or even punish theft. It is rules that enforce your "smart" on my "stupid " that I don't like.

BINGO

As would most rationally minded folk

[Xavier_Onassis]

Preventing banks from offering risky investments is not the same as preventing people from taking risky investments. Anyone can buy stock on margin, invest in options, sell short, trade in hog bellies and so on. There is an infinity of risky investments, including lotto tickets and one-armed bandits.

It is more like preventing people from buying chocolate bars laced with rat poison, or eating poisonous fugu (blowfish).

Do we allow banks to place one-armed banks in the lobby?

[Michael Tee]

 <<If you wanted the sky dive and I allowed you to skydive , but not from any aircraft or great hight am I really allowing you to skydive?>>

That's another false analogy.  The proposed regulations don't tell the depositor what size of banks he can put his money into.

To keep your analogy true to the situation at hand, it would have to be like this:  If you wanted to sky-dive, I have required all sky-diving companies to register with the government, demonstrate compliance with government regulations at the time of registration and submit to regular inspections, testing etc. to satisfy government regulators that the operation is safe.  I would prohibit any company or individual NOT registered with the Federal Sky-Diving Commission (the FSDC) from offering or providing sky-diving to anyone, under strict and severe sanctions.  Whatever sky-diving provider you choose is up to you, as long as it's registered.  If you want to let your unregistered cousin take you up to the top of the Empire State Building so you can sky-dive from there with a home-made chute of bedsheets sewn together by your cousin's girlfriend, you can't do it - - I've infringed on your freedom to sky-dive with an unregistered sky-diving service.  Know what?  BFD.  Who gives a shit?  The freedom you lost was a lot less important than the ones you cheerfully gave up for the Patriot Act, so suck it up, freedom-lover.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Any regulation that would have prevented the present recession would have been worthwhile, regardless of whose alleged rights it trod upon, because the result was that by allowing a few peddlers of bogus mortgages to make huge bonuses, it caused many people who never had one thing to do with Wall Street to lose their jobs and lose their homes. No matter how much it might thrill you to catch TB and cough all over the Children's Ward, it should be illegal.

[BT]

some information on Glass-Steagall Act

Thanks CU. I'm really not interested in pinning the tail on the donkey, i'm interested in the why's and wherefores and how legislation from 80 years ago is still relevant today or whether something that provides the same protections but allows for additional flexibility is the better idea.

Somewhere between the spincycles is a kernel of truth.

[Plane]

Any regulation that would have prevented the present recession would have been worthwhile, regardless of whose alleged rights it trod upon, because the result was that by allowing a few peddlers of bogus mortgages to make huge bonuses, it caused many people who never had one thing to do with Wall Street to lose their jobs and lose their homes. No matter how much it might thrill you to catch TB and cough all over the Children's Ward, it should be illegal.

   "Any" has got to be the wrong word.
     A regulation requiring 50% downpayments on all mortguages would have done it.

     There is such a thing as overregulation, even if you can't beleive it possible to over do.

      Lets suppose that all Spanish teachers were required to be certified by Spain itself, could there still be enough?