Wednesday, October 15, 2008

The Absurdity of the Bailout

One of my favourite economists, Peter Schiff, wrote an article entitled Just stop paying your mortgage. The title is not a joke. He is being 100% honest with this advise for the millions of Americans who own houses, facing forclosure or not. Blatantly uncovering the complete absurdity of the bail out, Schiff writes the following gem with complete honesty:

If your mortgage does become the property of Uncle Sam, the growingly popular impulse to “just walk away” should be replaced by “just stay and stop paying.” No one will throw you out. After a few months, or years, of living payment free, you will get a call from a motivated government agent eager to adjust your loan into something affordable.

To bolster your bargaining position it will help to be able to claim poverty. As a result, if you have any savings, spend it soon, before they call. Buy a bigger TV, a new wardrobe, or better yet, take a vacation. After the hardship of spending all of your refi cash, you probably deserve it. If you have any guilt just remember, Washington argues that consumer spending is the best way to stimulate the economy. Living beyond your means is a patriotic duty.

If you do get the opportunity to live for a while with no mortgage payment, don't make the tragic mistake of using your extra cash to pay down your credit cards. As the growing level of credit card defaults will soon push credit card companies into bankruptcy, we can expect a similar bailout plan for American Express and Discover Financial. When that happens, expect massive balance reductions for Americans who can demonstrate the inability to pay. The bigger your balance, the greater the benefit.


I thought Canada was socialist, but my government doesn't promise me a house. I call shananigans! If only the NDP were elected last night maybe then the government would promise me a house. Ah well, I guess for now we will have to continue dealing with those insane conservatives who believe people should pay less taxes and take care of themselves; truly absurd.

29 comments:

Douglas Porter said...

What is absurd is the fact that you still haven't figured out that the "financial markets" are the result of economics. Not the other way around.

Josh said...

Economics is a field of study.

Chris said...

Wrong. Economics is the reality that people live everyday. Its original meaning was "management of the household".

Josh said...

Still, I never said economics is the result of financial markets.

Chris said...

Then your focus is in the wrong place. At best, the financial systems should be of secondary interest.

Josh said...

I think a government nationalizing the entire financial industry should be the first interest.

Blueskyboris said...

Unfortunately, it is the result of something that is not your chief interst.

Josh said...

huh?

Blueskyboris said...

Job losses.

Josh said...

Job losses wouldn't be a problem if there was a free market. There would be lots of job.

Josh said...

You say that all politicians are republicans, but since Wilson the country has steadily become more socialist, and the gap between the richest and the poorest has grown steadily as the middle class has shrunk. Especially over the past 60 years. How do you reconcile that?

Douglas Porter said...

Lots of slave wage jobs, you mean. What's the population of the world, Josh?

Douglas Porter said...

The capitalists have always been capitalist-welfare statists, Josh. That's one of the reasons why they needed to create the FED. Control the money supply and you help any company associated with that power.

In terms of social services, the country has steadily become less socialist. Most of FDR's initiatives were later stopped and Clinton, who is supposedly a democrat, made some of the deepest cuts to social services since Regan.

The middle class began to shrink after 1981. After Regan started his campaign against unions in favor of big business. So, for forty years, from 1940 to 1980, the middle class grew. 1981 marked the highest year of unionization and the first year of decline. Why, Josh? Do you know why?

Josh said...

Government spending has been steadily increasing for the past 80 years, government is growing. They have become more socialistic, just not in the way you might think they should.

Chris said...

Bigger in favor of the capitalists is called 'state capitalism", Josh, not socialism. State capitalism is only "socialistic" when it helps ailing capitalists. Hence the bailout was welfare socialism for the capitalist class.

Sheldon Furlong said...

hard to tell sometimes if you two are not arguing just for the sake of arguing. Entertaining but just rhetoric.

All Western democracies are socialist. Corporate welfare is the backbone of most governments.

I say withdraw all business subsidies and bailouts. Stop all forays into foreign countries by military personell. Stop all aid to all countries.

Fund to the highest degree true effective social services, tariff the incoming goods from any country attempting to undersell an item manufactured in our country. Ensure natural resources are favored in cost and availability. to Canadian owned manufacturing. Shun globalization and create a local need fr local people to manufacture locally.

Globalization and NAFTA is draining our resources and if we do not put a stop to it the long run for your grandchildren looks bleak.

Josh said...

"I say withdraw all business subsidies and bailouts. Stop all forays into foreign countries by military personell. Stop all aid to all countries."

Hmmmm Ron Paul has been having an effect...

"Fund to the highest degree true effective social services, tariff the incoming goods from any country attempting to undersell an item manufactured in our country. Ensure natural resources are favored in cost and availability. to Canadian owned manufacturing. Shun globalization and create a local need fr local people to manufacture locally."

*sigh* The problem here is that you assume an elected body would ever do these things with the power given to them; and even if one elected body did, the next elected body probably wouldn't. The problem is that the power should not be in place for any single body of people to regulate. Politicians do not fix problems, people fix problems.

There should be free and open trade with all countries. Unfortunatly today, all trade is managed by agreements like NAFTA that were hammered out by big business, not the people. Government should not have the power to create these agreements. People should have the right to trade with any country they chose. This would allow people to properly sell their goods for an agreeable price and bring wealth into the country. And you're right, agreements like NAFTA hurt us, you're right about that.

Douglas Porter said...

Indeed, Dad. And this policy would in turn force the Chinese to produce locally and nationally and hence develop their own economy.

Douglas Porter said...

"*sigh* The problem here is that you assume an elected body would ever do these things with the power given to them; and even if one elected body did, the next elected body probably wouldn't. The problem is that the power should not be in place for any single body of people to regulate. Politicians do not fix problems, people fix problems."

And people act through politics. The problem is the apolitics of the boomers and our generation. We are not willing to take violent action to change our political institutions. Even the French, who regularly strike on the national scale are not willing to take the actions to stop the slow decline of what they have built. We are at a crossroads. Either we shore up the political import of the actions of the earlier generations and FORCE the politicians and corporations to erect trade barriers and tariffs, at the end of the present period, the Chinese Manufacturing Periode, Americans will living on wage levels presently prevalent in Turkey and Russia.

"There should be free and open trade with all countries. Unfortunatly today, all trade is managed by agreements like NAFTA that were hammered out by big business, not the people. Government should not have the power to create these agreements. People should have the right to trade with any country they chose. This would allow people to properly sell their goods for an agreeable price and bring wealth into the country. And you're right, agreements like NAFTA hurt us, you're right about that."

I love idealism. It's so pretty.

Douglas Porter said...

Josh still won't answer my question: How many people in the world, Josh?

Josh said...

"FORCE the politicians and corporations to erect trade barriers and tariffs, at the end of the present period, the Chinese Manufacturing Periode, Americans will living on wage levels presently prevalent in Turkey and Russia."

The high barriers and tariffs have something to do with the great the depression...like being one of the major causes?

Someone has the manufacture goods, and if americans won't do it the Chinese mise well. Nike doesn't sell sneakers to just rich americans. By manufacturing sneakers with workers who are willing to work for lower wages, they can then market and sell their sneakers to other poorer countries around the world and make more money.

Nations only become rich when they can sell goods to other nations. Tariffs and barriers will only make a country poorer.

Chris said...

No, the unrealistic reparation payments for Germany's role in WWI coupled with a limited amount of gold caused the GD.

Chris said...

There wasn't enough gold in Germany to make the payments and the allies didn't want them paying in goods. This caused a massive contradiction in the markets.

Josh said...

It was actually mainly caused by the boom in the 20s that was caused by poor monetary policy on behalf of the Fed...a long with poor monetary policy during as they tried to keep prices high as they are right now. But tariffs and barriers erected at the beginning didn't help.

Chris said...

Sorry, the FED wasn't lending like it did since the 1995 revisions to the CRA. 9000 PRIVATE banks failed due to bad decisions and no insurance.

Trade between the allied countries and Germany and Hungary basically stopped, because the allies didn't want the reparations paid in trade. Accepting such would have given their industries too low of a price for their goods. As I said before, Germany didn't have enough gold to pay the reparation payments, so this, along with the Western countries refusal to accept payment in the form of goods, caused large part of the continental market to slow down or even stop.

Chris said...

People should pay less taxes and take care of themselves? LOL, what if their employers want to pay them a lot less, too? Oh yeah, that doesn't factor into the market evangelist's argument!

Josh said...

"what if their employers want to pay them a lot less, too?"

then noone would have any money to buy anything and their employers would go out of business.

Douglas Porter said...

So? Small business owners are morons. They don't understand that they have to pay higher wages for this reason. IE Cookie and Garth complaining. And I'm beginning to wonder how many of the corporations understand this? I would say not many. I think the corporations think a luxury economy will keep them a float just as well as a democratic economy.

Chris said...

Yes, the luxury economies of the slave era worked quite fine for a long, long time.