So, How Bad Is It?
Posting at Naked Capitalism “George Washington” has an extensive comparison, Underneath the Happy Talk, Is This As Bad as the Great Depression?
The bottom line is that in some ways our current situation is worse than the Great Depression. The fact that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has just increased its monitoring of the long term unemployed from two years to five, should give you some idea of what they expect.
Duncan Black [Atrios] continues to bring up the problem of unemployment almost every day, and, today mentioned the banks fraudulent taking of property and the Federal failure to deal with foreclosures.
Wall Street caused the problem, and they are not being held to account for their fraud. Throwing money at them without any real reform or accountability for what they did, only ensures that they will do it again. Why wouldn’t they? They know the government and taxpayers will bail them out and they get to steal a lot more money before the next collapse.
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I just watched Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (Wall Street 2) the sequel movie to the original Wall Street. I didn’t know what to expect, I hadn’t even heard about it until I saw it at the cinema last night! 🙂 It was a surprising commentary on the current disaster, which I guess should be no surprise.
WIKI: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
I was very surprised to see that Michael Moore had absolutely nothing to do with the movie! 😆
The movie also seems to be a hit with some (non cool-aid drinking) Business/financial blogs like this from Business Insider – Clusterstok:
The 10 Best Quotes From Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps
here’s a few other quotes:
Gordon Gekko: Someone reminded me I once said “Greed is good”. Now it seems it’s legal. Because everyone is drinking the same Kool Aid.
Gordon Gekko: The mother of all evil is speculation.
Gordon Gekko: Bulls make money. Bears make money. Pigs? They get slaughtered.
Gordon Gekko: Money is a bitch that never sleeps!
Gordon Gekko: Idealism kills every deal.
Jacob Moore: If it weren’t for people who took risks, where would we be in this world?
Some truth in movies… what a concept! 😉
It makes me wonder though… with so many indications of how bad things are, why are so many people in denial about it? *shrug*
It’s an Oliver Stone film, which can mean a great deal or nothing, depending on his attitude on a subject. He is very capable of dealing with complex subjects in an intelligent manner, but he occasionally goes off-track into the weeds with conspiracy theories.
Anyone who can balance their checkbook should be able to figure out what happened in the meltdown, yet I hear people who for years were saying “the price of houses is absurd” acting like they have no idea what occurred.
As for taking risks – whose money is at risk? That’s the key point. The traders on Wall Street aren’t risking their own money, they are gambling with other people’s money. What do they care if they lose a few bets? For them it probably evens out over the year. It’s the clients that pay the penalties – working people hoping to retire on the proceeds of their 401K. People forget that traders are paid for trading, not for making money. The firms make their money no matter what happens.