Bernie promises to "break up" big banks as President

[JustWinBaby]

(01-07-2016, 12:55 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Sanders also said he would fight to reinstate the part of the Glass-Steagall Act that separated commercial and investment banking.

That's really all that needs to be done.  And probably should be done.  Or just raise reserve requirements (oh noes - too simple and easy!!!)

[Belsnickel]

(01-09-2016, 09:50 AM)JustWinBaby Wrote: That's really all that needs to be done.  And probably should be done.  Or just raise reserve requirements (oh noes - too simple and easy!!!)

Simple and easy means that it is harder to make a political circus out of it. Therefore it will not happen.

[CageTheBengal]

(01-07-2016, 02:07 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: We have such an interesting culture here. We are a developed, western nation but because our country was essentially founded on the idea of hating taxes we don't want to pay for anything. I often wonder what the attitude towards taxation is like in countries with a higher tax rate and all of the services that it affords them.

When I started first learning about government in elementary school it didn't take me long to realize taxes aren't the worst thing in the world. In fact they can *gasp* be good! There's nothing evil about the concept.

I think if a lot of people learned about subjects like taxes before hearing what their mom, dad, or dog thought there wouldn't be all of these pre conceived notions about certain topics that leads toward uneducated bias. Some people are so influenced by the world around them they can't see the forest through the trees.

[JustWinBaby]

(01-09-2016, 09:55 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: Simple and easy means that it is harder to make a political circus out of it. Therefore it will not happen.

Precisely.  You need a boogeyman in order to be able to scare people about a boogeyman.

Sanders doesn't talk about simple deleveraging, just that he wants to do basically the same thing by breaking them all up into litle pieces...because going after the "big, evil, greedy rich bankers" plays better on the campaign trail.

[fredtoast]

(01-09-2016, 05:37 PM)JustWinBaby Wrote: Precisely.  You need a boogeyman in order to be able to scare people about a boogeyman.

Sanders doesn't talk about simple deleveraging, just that he wants to do basically the same thing by breaking them all up into litle pieces...because going after the "big, evil, greedy rich bankers" plays better on the campaign trail.

Bernie was not the one who came up with the phrase "too big to fail".

[JustWinBaby]

(01-10-2016, 01:41 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Bernie was not the one who came up with the phrase "too big to fail".

And that phrase is pretty awful.

For starters, the first two bulge bracket banks WERE allowed to fail - Bear and Lehman.  It was only industry-wide contagion and frozen credit markets that forced the Fed to step in.  And the taxpayer made money on those bailouts.

Chrysler has been bailed out before, and both time the govt made money.  Same with GM, when you include the costs to the taxpayer of letting them go under.  But in those cases it was less about "too big to fail" and more about a battered economy not able to absorb that.

Airlines are pretty big and they go bankrupt all the time.  Enron and Worldcom were huge bankruptcies.  The Fed can't step up in extreme scenarios as the lender of last resort without having, you know, companies to lend to.

[fredtoast]

(01-10-2016, 05:54 PM)JustWinBaby Wrote: And that phrase is pretty awful.

I agree with this also.