NSA's Coded Tweet Deciphered Using Online Tool

not sure what you mean.
that they try to impose their ideals on other people by force via voting? yes.

i dont vote, nothing i care about is going to be won with votes going a certain direction.
i've already won, because i just don't give a shit. i'm not going to ask politicians for freedom, i'm just going to take it.

government is reactionary and slow, markets are creative. they always win.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
government is reactionary and slow, markets are creative. they always win.
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And sometimes markets get too creative, trillions of dollars in wealth instantly disappears and millions lose savings and jobs. Much of what government reacts to are the creatively spectacular failures of the market. That's not to say that free market capitalism is inherently bad or evil, overall if the best economic system we have. But free markets aren't particularly good at managing systemic risk nor cleaning up the messes caused by excessive risk taking.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
i've already won, because i just don't give a shit. i'm not going to ask politicians for freedom, i'm just going to take it.
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And you're offended about the idea of going to jail? Anyhow, if you have Internets from prison, PM your address to me and I'll send you postcards of hairy French people under palm trees or something.
 
heatlesssun said:
And sometimes markets get too creative, trillions of dollars in wealth instantly disappears and millions lose savings and jobs. Much of what government reacts to are the creatively spectacular failures of the market. That's not to say that free market capitalism is inherently bad or evil, overall if the best economic system we have. But free markets aren't particularly good at managing systemic risk nor cleaning up the messes caused by excessive risk taking.
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Neither are governments.

We've had 6 years of zero percent interest rates. A gift to speculators. Its also driven people into the stock market that otherwise didn't want to invest.

As to the market, there is already a built in mechanism for managing bad speculators: money.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
As to the market, there is already a built in mechanism for managing bad speculators: money.
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Systemic risk involves much more than speculation. Every large and complex system has points of weakness and faults. Like free market capitalism, risk isn't an inherently bad or evil thing and capitalism CAN'T WORK without some risk. However risk has to monitored and mitigated and what frequently happens in the private sector is that proper monitoring and mitigation processes are not followed. And I agree that government isn't any better at this part, but when things blow up, these companies don't generally clean up their own messes without a lot of government help and moreover people will point a ton of fingers at government when a private business screws up.
 
of course they don't clean up. they should have failed.

government allows bad enterprise to survive.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
of course they don't clean up. they should have failed.

government allows bad enterprise to survive.
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And if government involves itself in the free market to address such problems, then they're wrong in your eyes for getting in the way of free market forces. I like the way you've managed to ensure that the government will certainly be wrong in your eyes no matter what it does or how it does it. I mean, who cares about thinking that through because putting all the pieces of individual thought together would expose too many holes in the critical thinking process. :D
 
aardvark sandwich said:
government allows bad enterprise to survive.
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That's not really true. Plenty of bad business go under all of the time, plenty of financial intuitions went under in 2008. Just ask Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers. But there are those businesses that are so large and complex that their failure would introduce tons of uncertainty to the point of regardless of political ideology of having to ask the question "Do we really want to go there?"

Unfortunately we live in an era of hyper-politicization where we substitute risk analysis with government bashing.
 
They can't be involved by definition. Sorry, i didn't invent the concept. Their involvement changes the dynamic and its no longer a free market. You disagree?

Did the government fix big banks? We have fewer of them now and they don't lend to the people government would like them to lend to.

I don't remember claiming the free market is a utopia. Its just honest economic pricing via objective prices.
 
heatlesssun said:
That's not really true. Plenty of bad business go under all of the time, plenty of financial intuitions went under in 2008. Just ask Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers. But there are those businesses that are so large and complex that their failure would introduce tons of uncertainty to the point of regardless of political ideology of having to ask the question "Do we really want to go there?"

Unfortunately we live in an era of hyper-politicization where we substitute risk analysis with government bashing.
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The SEC did a wonderful job preventing them from failing.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
And if government involves itself in the free market to address such problems, then they're wrong in your eyes for getting in the way of free market forces.
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Exactly! We have some very large and complex financial institutions that if government prevent from existing would be wrong to aardvark but if government props some of them up when they run into issues because quite frankly no one fully understands the full ramifications of letting them fail that's also wrong. It's a no win scenario either way.
 
Again, the free market does not prevent failure in the slightest.

That.

Is.

The.

Point.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
They can't be involved by definition. Sorry, i didn't invent the concept. Their involvement changes the dynamic and its no longer a free market. You disagree?

Did the government fix big banks? We have fewer of them now and they don't lend to the people government would like them to lend to.

I don't remember claiming the free market is a utopia. Its just honest economic pricing via objective prices.
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Yes, I absolutely agree with you. A totally free market has no government intervention whatsoever. Stuff happens as it happens and no, they didn't completely fix things so that everything is operating in an economic ideal. I'm pretty sure that just isn't gonna be possible at all in a totally free market, a centrally managed economy, or anything else on the economic spectrum in between. Just like you, I think there's no utopian solution.

I also think that taxation of companies and citizens represents government meddling in the free market, but I don't see how there's a workable societal model that protects the general welfare of any given civilization from a well-organized threat aside from some sort of governmental institution (the type of government isn't as important in that statement as is the fact that one has to exist). If we had no government, we'd have no overall organizational structure to act in our own defense or to manage things like infrastructure in a standarized manner. The basic thing is that we have to have some way of getting organized together and funding whatever thing it is we create through taxes and therefore, we have to have that organization meddle in the free market so that it no longer is free in the most pure sense.

Yeah, it's sometimes broken and sometimes there are dumb things that happen, but I'd hate to see what would become of the place without the nation being organized and generally directed to act as a mostly unified whole by our government. That'd seriously suck.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
The SEC did a wonderful job preventing them from failing.
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Wrong agency. The Federal Reserve actually had and has the power to oversee mortgages and just didn't do it until of course 2008. Part of managing risk within any company is 3rd party auditing of processes and procedures. I'm not saying that government does a great job of it but someone has to do it and the better that type of work is done the better it is for all.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
Again, the free market does not prevent failure in the slightest.

That.

Is.

The.

Point.
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I understand thus my discussion of risk. The point I'm making is how does the market address catastrophic failure? You can't suddenly have trillions of dollars in loses and millions of lost jobs and then just say "Well that's how the market works. Everyone go back to your lives."
 
heatlesssun said:
I understand thus my discussion of risk. The point I'm making is how does the market address catastrophic failure? You can't suddenly have trillions of dollars in loses and millions of lost jobs and then just say "Well that's how the market works. Everyone go back to your lives."
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Why not?

It makes perfect sense to me. It would be a reminder not to participate in such risky things. However bailing them out tells them to go do it again. If there is no brutal consequences for such bad behavior, why would they ever stop acting badly? Answer = They won't.
 
JaiWebb said:
Why not?

It makes perfect sense to me. It would be a reminder not to participate in such risky things. However bailing them out tells them to go do it again. If there is no brutal consequences for such bad behavior, why would they ever stop acting badly? Answer = They won't.
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I think the problem they thought they would avoid was widespread civil unrest and rioting that would result in people getting hurt or killed because of economic disruption. Maybe it wouldn't have happened, but it also could have and people might have been kinda upset if their government sat by and did nothing at all while it was happening.
 
JaiWebb said:
Why not?

It makes perfect sense to me. It would be a reminder not to participate in such risky things. However bailing them out tells them to go do it again. If there is no brutal consequences for such bad behavior, why would they ever stop acting badly? Answer = They won't.
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So the local baker should go under because his town or area gets hit particularly hard by bad behavior he had nothing to do with? This is completely out of line with conservative principles or just about anyone's for that matter. Paying for the mistakes of others just doesn't sell.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I think the problem they thought they would avoid was widespread civil unrest and rioting that would result in people getting hurt or killed because of economic disruption. Maybe it wouldn't have happened, but it also could have and people might have been kinda upset if their government sat by and did nothing at all while it was happening.
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Just let stuff collapse, the market doesn't prevent failure. Whatever happens let it happen as long as there is no government intervention that's interfering. Seriously, this is nothing but a political fantasy. When it hits the fan, not even most conservatives would just want everything just spiral out of control.
 
heatlesssun said:
Just let stuff collapse, the market doesn't prevent failure. Whatever happens let it happen as long as there is no government intervention that's interfering. Seriously, this is nothing but a political fantasy. When it hits the fan, not even most conservatives would just want everything just spiral out of control.
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I don't wanna get into party politics, but it was a conservative-led administration that started the bailout stuff. I think that kinda economic disaster pretty much demanded that party lines go away.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I don't wanna get into party politics, but it was a conservative-led administration that started the bailout stuff. I think that kinda economic disaster pretty much demanded that party lines go away.
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I agree. What happened in 2008 was VERY, VERY bad. And the funny thing is the company that was the single biggest recipient of government aid was AIG, not a bank but an insurance company. Government certainly didn't do proper oversight and added fuel to the fire particularly with Fannie and Freddie helping in creating the housing bubble. I just don't think government inaction here was an option after the mess started blowing up though because of the almost limitless uncertainty of the situation. And of there's one thing free markets don't deal with, it's vast amounts of uncertainty.
 
JaiWebb said:
If it's too big to fail it's too big to exist.
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I work for one of these "too big to fail" institutions. The problem isn't so much the size of any one institution, it's that our financial system is full of very complex relationships. It's very difficult to isolate all of the impacts that a failure of one of these institutions has on the economy because they are so interwoven into the economy. Splitting them up is difficult because they have so many processes and procedures and systems that are interrelated.

What is ironic about this is that conservative agendas made it easier for these kinds of very large and complex financial institutions to exist. So on one hand they made them easier to exist but then want nothing to do with the consequences when they have problems. I actually have no problem with these kinds of institutions existing as long as they are well and effectively regulated. One good thing about 2008 is that all of these too big to fails had to come up with living wills. You simply don't hang a "Gone out of business" sign on every Wells Fargo branch.
 
The stock market, as it exists right now, is a fantasy. The government makes bubbles worse. Student loans, housing, QE, pick your poison. Everything the government touches is poisoned.

The government directly causes malinvestment. And it rewards bad behavior. It delays progress and recovery in the business cycle. It is the worst possible combination of factors.
 
heatlesssun said:
I work for one of these "too big to fail" institutions. The problem isn't so much the size of any one institution, it's that our financial system is full of very complex relationships.
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All I'm hearing is excuses for people to get away with corrupt things. Let it fail next time. Maybe that will teach everyone on both sides so it doesn't happen again. Protecting bad guys is bad no matter how you word it.
 
Its not as if a bank failing = the existence of all banking.
They would be re-built, but the risk analysis would be improved. And of course they would be re-built according to the market demand.

Thats how things improve.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
Its not as if a bank failing = the existence of all banking.
They would be re-built, but the risk analysis would be improved. And of course they would be re-built according to the market demand.

Thats how things improve.
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bah. "the end of existence..", sorry.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I don't wanna get into party politics, but it was a conservative-led administration that started the bailout stuff. I think that kinda economic disaster pretty much demanded that party lines go away.
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I hate both parties. They are a stupid thing to pledge allegiance to.

Its all rent-seeking bullshit. :)
 
JaiWebb said:
All I'm hearing is excuses for people to get away with corrupt things. Let it fail next time. Maybe that will teach everyone on both sides so it doesn't happen again. Protecting bad guys is bad no matter how you word it.
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There's a problem with that. People die and forget and history repeats itself. Teaching people a lesson, while it's something that feel like the delivery of justice for doing something wrong, doesn't at all promise that it won't happen again and shouldn't be justification for letting there be a potentially huge, damaging societal impact when institutions like those crumble.

Yeah, you've got a point that big companies that can take civil stability down along with them as they fall are dangerous, but the fact is that they exist and unless there are some pretty drastic upheavals in how business is allowed to work (which requires regulatory intervention from the government) the status quo isn't gonna change anytime soon. Therefore, it seems pretty reasonable that we take the best of the choices we have now in order to keep things in order and working so people can buy their 80 inch TV they think they need and they don't have to rough it with only 40 inches.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
I hate both parties. They are a stupid thing to pledge allegiance to.

Its all rent-seeking bullshit. :)
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I don't really care about parties, but a lot of people, I'd even say the majority of the US, identifies with one of two polarized opposite platforms. I think that speaks pretty negatively about humans and their stupidity in general and less about a problem with the institutions humans make to organize themselves into some sort of group.
 
when the stupidity is allowed to buy exclusive economic privilege, that's where the problem is. hence, free markets.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
when the stupidity is allowed to buy exclusive economic privilege, that's where the problem is. hence, free markets.
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Free markets don't have a history of being more effective at preventing those kinds of problems than any other economic model since people generally determine whether a person who is financially successful or is also stupid based solely upon their personal opinion which is rarely considerate of or even loosely rooted in factual data.
 
JaiWebb said:
All I'm hearing is excuses for people to get away with corrupt things. Let it fail next time. Maybe that will teach everyone on both sides so it doesn't happen again. Protecting bad guys is bad no matter how you word it.
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Of the five largest banks in the country, each of them individually has a direct financial relationship with nearly 1 in every 2 households. I'm not trying to explain away corruption. Indeed that's kind of a big part of risk mitigation and vigorous 3rd party oversight. I have no problem with people going to jail. But jail time has nothing to do with the issues of complexity that I'm talking about nor solves the issues of how one would just let a bank that has that much exposure simply fail nor how you'd break it apart when sold off from a failure.
 
heatlesssun said:
Of the five largest banks in the country, each of them individually has a direct financial relationship with nearly 1 in every 2 households. I'm not trying to explain away corruption.
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Too big to exist. They're making bad choices on the backs of the masses, unacceptable, no matter how you word it.
 
since the liability changes considerably in a free market, the government fails at protecting people from 'the bad people' entirely. the idea of government oversight is a joke.
 
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