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It's pretty much like I said regarding small businesses: most of the acts of cruelty done against poor people are committed by the middle class/upper middle class.

I'm running into a lot more people agonizing about the economy. "If they'd just let everybody just got to work, maybe we could still salvage this" as the simple fix-it answer that only they're smart enough to consider. Gigantic blind spot for the "just the flu" pandemic that's seeing military convoys for coffins and seeing hospitals spill out into tents.

"Just give it to everybody and get it over with!"

A lot of the 'growth' has been companies borrowing cheap money to buy their own shares off the market, boosting the share price and allowing the execs to pay themselves their share-price incentivised bonuses, while dumping the debt on their shareholders.

The US market is based on speculative future share-price growth and few dividends. Fake growth tends not to rebound.
Other markets are a bit more rational, share prices are based on company value and steady dividends, in the long run they should rebound.

But yeah, it looks like company leaders who made bad calls are not going to be bailed out as last time and the time before.
This time its going to the hands of the people, although who we're all borrowing from I'm not sure.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Uzi wrote:

"guys, it's REALLY bad this time! seriously! my management consultancy are calling in another management consultancy and there's talk of 'corporate restructuring'! HR are sharpening their knives! and the central banks are saying they maybe won't just bail us out this time! they're talking about putting "the people" first! holy shit it's bad!"

I know you are being dramatic but stuff like this makes me so happy I work for the government and not a corporation. I don't ever want to go back to the private sector and be at the mercy of dumb ass managers and the fake numbers on Wall Street.

You do realize that government finances are cratering right now and they are going to try to claw back all the money you're making while sitting on your ass smoking weed, right?

No mac it's everyone else who is mad

uziq wrote:

Larssen wrote:

I don't know why you all keep insisting that wall street stocks are 'fake numbers' . This is real value being lost. Not just hedge funds but pension funds, banks, people's saving accounts. It's bad. Really bad.

because the growth has not been real, and evidently has no worth. it's bad, yes, but it's been bad sweeping all of the bad debt under the rug for the last 10 years, too, and letting the already-bailed-out institutions run away with more bad credit. really bad. what's bad is the fed bailing out the huge corporations again, and probably not instituting any legislation to stop practices like stock buyback. that's bad. it's just going to happen again and again and again.

the west's economic eminence is propped up by bad debt and immense corporate deficits. every time a crisis comes along to 'business as usual', the economy is going to try and deflate and let out all that bad gas trapped underneath the bedsheets. and these crises are only going to become depressingly more common. if it's not a pandemic, it'll be natural disaster, climate change, massive demographic change, etc.

nobody is clapping their hands with glee because johnny appleseed just lost his hard-earned savings account. of course this has human ramifications on a very personal level. but then again so did the financial crash, caused by banks, which wiped out half of greece's farmers and 'little guys'. weren't you just saying a few pages ago that it was totally necessary, and that the northern states in fact wanted to sado-masochistically 'inflict austerity' on the 'deserving' greek workers?

funny how your tone changes when it possibly affects your own balance sheet.

"guys, it's REALLY bad this time! seriously! my management consultancy are calling in another management consultancy and there's talk of 'corporate restructuring'! HR are sharpening their knives! and the central banks are saying they maybe won't just bail us out this time! they're talking about putting "the people" first! holy shit it's bad!"

My balance sheet is still relatively stable. I work with the public sector in critical stuff. Everyone else on the other hand...

My argument on the Greeks wasn't just one on 'sadism' it was also the lack of better options. Varoufakis' proposal to pump an even more obscene amount of money in the greek economy to 'stimulate' growth was even more uncertain and politically completely impossible. But what do I know, I'm not an economist so I'll refrain from strong judgments on this matter. I'm pretty certain I did so in the past as well. Doesn't mean I have no compassion for the average greek, but it's a fact the greek political class screwed over their own people through fraudulent behaviour in the EU.

On that topic I don't know enough about the current state of debt cycles of nations and large insurance companies/banks to comment meaningfully. All I know is that the stock market became volatile before the crisis in part due to economic uncertainty.

Uziq, I have no qualms in stating that I'm simply not knowledgeable enough in certain fields to hold long-winded debates on these matters or to evaluate chosen economic policy approaches on their merits. I strongly believe we'd all be better for it if we admit to our own ignorance here and there, as at the end of the day it's just not possible to be well-informed on every topic. There are too many seemingly intelligent people who feel they have or need to have opinions on literally everything by virtue of the notion that they're intelligent ergo that their opinions have great value (answer: probably not). Thereby also failing to recognise there's quite possibly yet smarter individuals who actually studied these subjects making the policies. Not to justify continued ignorance, but to recognise personal limitations and adjust our opinions accordingly.

Neither of us has an actually in-depth macroeconomics background, though I'm willing to bet I have a little more experience there, but only in very specific contexts. It was enough to realise that I'm not the person to answer for these issues and to understand that certain global systems are so fundamental they won't change even if 1 or 2 world leaders will it. Even if the majority wanted it.  Maybe you're now seeing that too by quoting two french presidents stating more or less the same shit within a span of 10 years. I put some faith in Macron on these matters considering his strong background in finance, but even for him seeing problems and being able to solve them are still two separate things.

Anyway, on the topic of big company bailouts. Whether we like it or not the large players in the private sector are vital to the well-being and stability of our societies. I'll be in agreement that we need to find our way to a more healthy public-private partnership and that we can do much better there drawing from Chinese or Singaporean examples etc, though I don't know what that should look like here or how to implement it. Maybe you can read a book or two about that instead of Hegel and Kant and share some newfound insights, or maybe just give it a rest and understand that things can be complicated and intricate to a degree untangling the mess is a process of generations, not weeks or even a few years.

Greece barely ever had an economy and the whole country is corrupt.
What benefit did anyone think pumping money in would produce?
And again it wasn't really Greece which was bailed out, Europe rallied round to bail out the German banks and hence the German economy.
As a thank you they flooded Europe with refugees, no wonder Brexit happened.

i meant i've not mentioned kant here in any context. not much room for discussions of the noumenon. hegel has been mentioned in passing with hsi relation to history, but mostly hegel gets mentioned to poke fun at jay, who once upon a time read a 2,200 word stub of an article and considered himself a hegel scholar. but thanks for the beginner's philosophy course. heard of descartes? yuuuuge celebrity.

right. so the greek farmers deserved their lot and had to tighten their belts to make up for it. but the financial institutions at the heart of the finagling, mismanagement, and bad debt were thrown money to rescue them from their sympathetic plight. got it.

please just don't act so confused or affronted when nasty right-wing thugs start sprouting from the soil like cadmus's teeth.

Any takeaways?

not as of late -- there's a quarantine on.

Last edited by uziq (2020-03-26 03:57:54)

Pasok wasn't solely responsible for the culture of clientelism that is endemic in those countries. you sound like a shill when you try to smear it like that.

uziq wrote:

so the greek farmers deserved their lot and had to tighten their belts to make up for it.

You can't just throw billions of euros at a country on the basis we need to protect them from themselves.

Maybe they'll pay more attention when they next vote in a government.

In America it is the small farmers and business owners who mostly support the Republican party and its economic policy that hurts average people. I wouldn't be surpirsed if it works the same way in Greece.