Political compass test

[theVOID]

Unregulated capitalism in the banking industry came damn close to putting the entire world in the shitter. The answer is not to give the same assclowns free reign to do it again as the republicans ( a wholly-owned subsidiary of big business) and their Tea Bagging/Libertarian hangers on demand.

A shitload of them sitting in jail like Bernie Madoff is a much better idea.

Unregulated my ass Min, you're clueless if you think the free market would take such idiotic risks. The real problem is completely different and it was caused by the government regulating and financing investment banks...

The US govt guaranteed the loans of their subsidies Fannie and Freddy (Not private companies in any sense of the word) making it possible for them to take enormous risks that any private investment firm would never have done with it's own capital - "Too big to fail" ring any bells? Add to that the stupidly low interest rates and you've got a system where the taxpayer has offered to back up bad investments making people take way more risky investments than ever before.

Because the govt guaranteed their loans they were able to do all sorts of risky shit, like buying loans from other investment firms - This created a trend where the brokers didn't have to worry about giving loans to people who could afford to repay them because as soon as they had secured the loan they went hopping along to Fanny and Freddy with their loan agreements and sold them on taking their cut and then going out to find more property buyers and investors who couldn't afford to pay their loans after the teaser rates expired. Fannie and Freddy didn't give a shit that the loans they were buying sucked ass because the taxpayer was holding them up.

The easy availability of houses created a massive bubble - Demand for houses went through the roof and as demand increases so does supply and prices - Little to no money down, teaser interest rates of 2-3% and an imaginary rate of appreciation of 10-12% PER YEAR caused by the bubble being further inflated causing even more demand... The more the demand went up the more the prices went up, the more highly contingent jobs were created in home depo and building firms, furniture designers etc all because the supply had to catch up with the government induced demand.

People started buying and renting houses below cost because they were convinced that the appreciation would still turn them a profit, lower rents and higher prices meant even more contingent spending emerged creating another bubble in the home-ware and building trade seeing tens of thousands of people dedicating their time to a trade never actually had the demand they were told it had.

The government blew up the bubble and bubbles ALWAYS burst, it was only a matter of time before the Keynesian shit-storm picked up momentum and the bubble burst.

If the market was truly free there would have been no gamblers with safety nets, no quick profits, no cheap and easy money, no deposit free housing, no housing bubble, no stupid risk taking, no sub prime loans and no stimulus package to keep good on the governments promise.

And if you're comparing the bush era big government republican methodologies with the libertarian ideologies you're completely confused - Bush and Obama have pretty much the same fucking economic strategy, borrow and spend, completely the opposite of the libertarian cut and save strategy - The only difference between Obama and Bush at this point is Obama dug a four fold bigger debt-hole.

And lets not forget that the US public sector debt is currently at some 14 trillion dollars, about 300 billion away from the debt ceiling - To repay the debt they're 'quantitative easing' (printing money) to increase the money supply which decreases the purchasing power of the savings savings of every American (and everyone who owns US currency) who worked hard for their income and saved it.

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If you want social, scientific, and technological advance, you have to go with capitalism. Although I'm sure America wouldn't mind if European socialism stuck to its political and economic ideologies, abandoning the capitalist experiment and leaving America to dominate.

Before you go any further you might want to consider where America is right now and where they're heading - Step by step they get closer and closer to losing the social and economic liberties that made them so prosperous in the first place and heading for the same center-left sociocapitalism as practiced by the Europeans.

It will be China who dominates, they're heading towards economic liberty, the US is heading away from it.

All us fiscally prudent folk better pray for Ron Paul 2012

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I have no problems with normal capitalism, it makes a nice partner of socialism, the problem with america is that it wants to go 100% capitalism which is a terrible self destructive idea, like going 100/ Communism is
About 50/50 % is about right and fits with the concepts of european socialism

You mean those countries who have to keep borrowing cash to survive because their expenditure is far lower than production and savings? It's a great system if you want to owe your livelihood to China and the IMF.

And 50% socialism? That's a fucking absurd amount. You want the average tax rate at 50%? Wait, lemme guess, it's 20% for the poor and 70% for the rich right?

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Here's mine:

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Don't waste your breath DoA. Anti-government assclowns will always natter on about how great the unhindered market does. They haven't a clue that either extreme isn't good, only the belief that their extreme is good.

It does better than government guaranteed markets, you don't end up trillions in debt either.

And I wouldn't be so anti-government if they weren't so completely inefficient at spending. Just transferring funds between government departments costs money, it's like transferring a handful of sand from one pocket to the other, you end up dropping a significant amount of it on the way.

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Thank goodness almost none of you with disastrous left-leaning economic ideologies are anywhere near the authoritarian end of the spectrum, meaning you wouldn't want any of them implemented and enforced at the federal level.

{stands beside Adrian, looking nervously at these folk}

I wouldn't be so sure about that, they aren't exactly Chomsky style lefties.