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MrHoatzin

Bailout Graphic

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Saw the attached on Boing Boing earlier. Generally this bailout talk lacks perspective. This is a diagram comparing the bailout sums to other major US expenditures in the last 206 years.

This is neither the lassez-faire capitalism that the Right claims to espouse (since the govt is meddling in business at an unprecedented scale, right as said lassez-fare policies caused the mess in the first place), nor socialism that the Left fancies so much (since the government doesn't get to own squat of what it spends on). This is madness.

The most annoying part of the whole thing is that the entirety of the expenses is just smoke and mirrors that are supposed to prop a system based on hot air to begin with. What I mean by this, is that with utter destruction of manufacturing in this country we've created an economy based on selling abstract credit products to municipalities, Asian nouveau riche with lots of money and nowhere to put it, and miscellaneous small tater investors. Now the people in power are trying to start this same imaginary money machine back up again. First Bush dumped a shit ton of no-strings attached cash on the banks and their cousins, then Bama let the banks declare whatever they wish as the true worth of their distressed assets. This whole bullshit is making money look more and more valueless.

I see is a middle-road, middling, bullshit plan where no one is spending any political capital on anything actually ballsy or worth doing. I don't know exactly what this would be. It just seems that nothing being done is doing any substantive good. If anything, it is just buying time.

Thoughts?

post-10-13375603115859_thumb.jpg

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This is neither the lassez-faire capitalism that the Right claims to espouse (since the govt is meddling in business at an unprecedented scale, right as said lassez-fare policies caused the mess in the first place), nor socialism that the Left fancies so much (since the government doesn't get to own squat of what it spends on).

Thoughts?

Well it'd be the Keynesian approach of government inserting cash to kick-start an economy in risk of massive contraction. What alternative do you suggest? I agree that the details of the bailout weren't great but the general strategy seemed sound (hell Vince Cable advocated it), get out of the crisis then look at reform.

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As soon as these people are on their legs they will start lobbying for the preservation of the status quo from two years ago (with its fictitious-money-based prosperity). And they are the problem. Just like there is grim future for health care reform as long as insurance companies call the shots and as long as the entire medicine sector is being run as a for-profit business (what with supply/demand and bartering not really working in the context of HELP ME NOT DIE TOMORROW, DOC).

It's like shoveling coal into the Hindenburg engines. Or something like that. :shifty:

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I might be too french but they could at least control the companies or seize some part of them to check that they're not putting the money in the wrong place... which they apparently did is what I heard.

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No matter how hard I try, I just can't wrap my head around the world of economics/finance, etc...

I mean, that might be because it's unnecessarily complex system, devised by charlatans/bullshit artists to sustain and further their own wealth and power - but that's the lazy man's take I'm sure...

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Political debate aside, that graphic doesn't seem to account for inflation or the financial capacity of the country at the time. It'd be interesting to see those numbers compared against, say, the GDP at the time, then those ratios used to generate the blocks.

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Political debate aside, that graphic doesn't seem to account for inflation or the financial capacity of the country at the time. It'd be interesting to see those numbers compared against, say, the GDP at the time, then those ratios used to generate the blocks.

You should stop being a programme sometimes, life's easier that way... But what you said is very interesting nonetheless. :D

I mean, that might be because it's unnecessarily complex system, devised by charlatans/bullshit artists to sustain and further their own wealth and power - but that's the lazy man's take I'm sure...

Or maybe it's because such a system has to take into account a HUGE number of possibilities and it's not really the system which is, as the law, only comprise of a definite but gigantic number of rules and mechanics governing them and the only almost infinite thing here is the way they are combined to each other.

In short, on the economic system there isn't really any conspiration, it's mainly that it's so big that it must have flaws of all kind. The conspiration is when people try to make it look so complex that it can't be understood but it's another story.

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No matter how hard I try, I just can't wrap my head around the world of economics/finance, etc...

I mean, that might be because it's unnecessarily complex system, devised by charlatans/bullshit artists to sustain and further their own wealth and power - but that's the lazy man's take I'm sure...

I feel similarly. It all seems kind of weird an alien to me. I find the whole subject kind of depressing for some reason. Perhaps I have an innate pessimism about it.

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Political debate aside, that graphic doesn't seem to account for inflation or the financial capacity of the country at the time. It'd be interesting to see those numbers compared against, say, the GDP at the time, then those ratios used to generate the blocks.

I just double checked the cost of Louisiana and it came down to 15,000,000 of then dollars. The square for the Louisiana purchase on this graph is bigger than the template 50 billion in the center, so I am guessing the stuff is actually adjusted for inflation.

That said, comparing against the GDP would be interesting voodoo, actually, but somewhat moot.

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Are the amounts in that diagram corrected for inflation? <-- oops, never mind. That's insane. I'd heard things similar to this, but not seen any visualisations of it. I'm incredibly shocked that it was possible for entire countries to get looted like this.

Now the people in power are trying to start this same imaginary money machine back up again.

Well here's to a great 2010... ¬¬

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Political debate aside, that graphic doesn't seem to account for inflation or the financial capacity of the country at the time. It'd be interesting to see those numbers compared against, say, the GDP at the time, then those ratios used to generate the blocks.

I've been thinking about this all day yesterday. Why stop at adjusting for GDP of the country at the time the purchase was made. Why not compare all of these against a GDP equivalent of a purchasing power of any one individual. Or any one household. Might make for an enlightening, educational diagram. How does the national debt compare to a debt of an individual? Is the Louisiana purchase like buying me buying a new car, or a new house in the fancy part of town?

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No matter how hard I try, I just can't wrap my head around the world of economics/finance, etc...

I mean, that might be because it's unnecessarily complex system, devised by charlatans/bullshit artists to sustain and further their own wealth and power - but that's the lazy man's take I'm sure...

They're called Hedge Fund Managers, whatever the fuck that means.

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