Why I'm a conservative!

Indeed the Cooperative Credit Card is a Visa Branded Payment Service. I do hold such a card, fee-free, though I never use it - I have one just in case of emergency.

 

Pinkman's point about interchange fees is correct, with Visa Europe charging 0.3% on transactions. But just like prime mortgagees, we're not where the big money is made - that comes from debt, and that's where they want us - in debt to them. The Visa interest rate is usually around 20%, and credit card debt in the UK at the end of the 2016-7 financial year was £68 Billion, and that is generating an enormous amount of income for the finance sector.

Do you think the people or their banks are responsible for spending within their means?

Re housing: Do you think the CRA was bad legislation? Misguided? Nefarious?

Voices of concern had been raised by financial insiders, but the banks were making $Bllions and paying enormous bonuses to their executives. And the government was in the hands of the finance sector, who vigorously rejected any call for regulatory action. In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Alan Greenspan, chair of the Federal Reserve, denied that there was any danger and refused to even contemplate regulation.

Furthermore, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the government agency responsible for enforcing US federal securities laws, devising effective securities rules, and regulating the securities industry generally, was subject to dramatic cuts. Indeed, their enforcement division was reduced from a staff of 146 to just one person. That is quite some cut. So, the government securities watchdog was effectively silenced.

So, when those subprime mortgages began to fail, and fail they did, spectacularly, in 2007, foreclosures on properties shot up. Hundreds of thousands of houses across the US were either formerly repossessed or simply abandoned by their occupiers.

The housing market was suddenly flooded with vacant properties - too many for the market to process, and homes stood empty. Whole neighbourhoods were affected. House after house was left vacant, and neglect lead to decay, gardens growing out of control, petty crime and vandalism became an issue, and house values tumbled.

This triggered the the financial scandal that eventually broke in 2008.

Voices of concern had been raised by financial insiders, but the banks were making $Bllions and paying enormous bonuses to their executives. And the government was in the hands of the finance sector, who vigorously rejected any call for regulatory action. In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Alan Greenspan, chair of the Federal Reserve, denied that there was any danger and refused to even contemplate regulation.

 

Furthermore, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the government agency responsible for enforcing US federal securities laws, devising effective securities rules, and regulating the securities industry generally, was subject to dramatic cuts. Indeed, their enforcement division was reduced from a staff of 146 to just one person. That is quite some cut. So, the government securities watchdog was effectively silenced.

 

So, when those subprime mortgages began to fail, and fail they did, spectacularly, in 2007, foreclosures on properties shot up. Hundreds of thousands of houses across the US were either formerly repossessed or simply abandoned by their occupiers.

 

The housing market was suddenly flooded with vacant properties - too many for the market to process, and homes stood empty. Whole neighbourhoods were affected. House after house was left vacant, and neglect lead to decay, gardens growing out of control, petty crime and vandalism became an issue, and house values tumbled.

 

This triggered the the financial scandal that eventually broke in 2008.

What is your opinion of the CRA? Are you ok with redlining?

What is your opinion of the CRA? Are you ok with redlining?

All neoliberals and their supporters will try to distract, muddy the waters, confuse or derail any challenge to their doctrine by any means possible. They have no choice since the truth will never support their position. We can see this in Pinkman's attempt to inflate a minor detail of credit-card lending into a challenge to the premise of this thread. That strategy collapsed in what amounts to a slur on the poor in post #45. Not deterred, Pinkman now cites another minor detail, this time a negligible feature of the US mortgage market, the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act.

This legislation was enacted in a bid to stimulate commercial lending to low income families and to outlaw a practice known as 'redlining', which was deemed to constitute discrimination against people living in marginalised zipcodes.

However, the US Congress Financial Crisis Inquiry of 2009 found that the Community Reinvestment Act was not a significant factor in subprime lending or the criminal behaviour that led to the 2008 stock-market meltdown. There remain some unsavoury aspects in this finding, in particular the inquiry's lack of sufficient attention to allegations that the act had given the green light to predatory lending. That's the inherent weakness with state scrutiny of its own legislation. However, the fact remains that this issue was a trivial feature of the 2008 financial scandal.

All neoliberals and their supporters will try to distract, muddy the waters, confuse or derail any challenge to their doctrine by any means possible. They have no choice since the truth will never support their position. We can see this in Pinkman's attempt to inflate a minor detail of credit-card lending into a challenge to the premise of this thread. That strategy collapsed in what amounts to a slur on the poor in post #45. Not deterred, Pinkman now cites another minor detail, this time a negligible feature of the US mortgage market, the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act.

 

This legislation was enacted in a bid to stimulate commercial lending to low income families and to outlaw a practice known as 'redlining', which was deemed to constitute discrimination against people living in marginalised zipcodes.

 

However, the US Congress Financial Crisis Inquiry of 2009 found that the Community Reinvestment Act was not a significant factor in subprime lending or the criminal behaviour that led to the 2008 stock-market meltdown. There remain some unsavoury aspects in this finding, in particular the inquiry's lack of sufficient attention to allegations that the act had given the green light to predatory lending. That's the inherent weakness with state scrutiny of its own legislation. However, the fact remains that this issue was a trivial feature of the 2008 financial scandal.

Bankers make money from me even though I don't accrue debt because they receive interchange fees from my transactions and subscription fees for using their services.. They don't lose money because I don't default. The idea that bankers dislike customers like me because they make no money from me is absurd. If there weren't customers like me the banking industry would have collapsed proper.

My wondering if consumers should show fiscal responsibility amounts to a slur does it? Right-O.

I mention the CRA and redlining because you hadn't in any part of your previous mewlings. Not even to provide some background context to your argument. You don't see a link between legislation to stop redlining and sub-prime mortgages then? Nothing at all? Interesting......

To be honest, I'm not sure you knew what the CRA and redlining were. The fact you only bring them up after I mentioned them merely suggests you did a bit of frantic Googling before replying. Can you point to where I said the CRA was responsible for the financial crisis? You didn't answer whether you thought redlining was ok either.

I find it very amusing but largely contrary that you are happy to accept the opinion of the US Congress. You probably know some economists have argued otherwise. That's assuming you knew what the CRA was, but like I say, I am unconvinced because your later reply seems a bit Wikipediary to me.

Notice how Staunton, feeling aggrieved that the whole world doesn't agree with him, now accuses me of being a neoliberal or a neoliberal supporter and accuses me of using slurs for asking a reasonable question. How sad. I was just about to take him seriously.

Not.

Posts containing personal comments and insults have been removed.

If you can't post in a civil manner then it's probably better if you don't post at all.

Thank you.

Voices of concern had been raised by financial insiders, but the banks were making $Bllions and paying enormous bonuses to their executives. And the government was in the hands of the finance sector, who vigorously rejected any call for regulatory action. In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Alan Greenspan, chair of the Federal Reserve, denied that there was any danger and refused to even contemplate regulation.

 

Furthermore, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the government agency responsible for enforcing US federal securities laws, devising effective securities rules, and regulating the securities industry generally, was subject to dramatic cuts. Indeed, their enforcement division was reduced from a staff of 146 to just one person. That is quite some cut. So, the government securities watchdog was effectively silenced.

 

So, when those subprime mortgages began to fail, and fail they did, spectacularly, in 2007, foreclosures on properties shot up. Hundreds of thousands of houses across the US were either formerly repossessed or simply abandoned by their occupiers.

 

The housing market was suddenly flooded with vacant properties - too many for the market to process, and homes stood empty. Whole neighbourhoods were affected. House after house was left vacant, and neglect lead to decay, gardens growing out of control, petty crime and vandalism became an issue, and house values tumbled.

 

This triggered the the financial scandal that eventually broke in 2008.

Quite a few American cities have large areas of blight classic examples been Baltimore , Cleveland East, Detroit houses can be brought for a dollar from the banks but the land taxes can be has much has sixty thousand dollars plus repairs on top making it less than worth while . A few take the plunge to rent the houses out . The American economy is all over the place many here think it will collapse at any time . Going back to the abandoned neighborhoods the weird thing is the city still pays for the street lights to be on even though no one is living their.

Disaster!

The sleaze and corruption of the mortgage market finally rocked the US economy. In March 2008 major investment bank Bear Stearns imploded and was acquired by J P Morgan Chase at a bargain basement price. Then in September another giant of the investment banking world, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy, triggering the biggest stock market fall in history as traumatised shareholders began to offload their holdings. Major investment bank Merrill Lynch was taken over by Bank of America, and AIG, the largest insurance company on earth, had to be bailed out by the Federal Reserve.

The economic scandal inevitably became a political crisis. US Secretary of the Treasury (and former CEO of Goldman Sachs), Henry Paulson, forced through emergency legislation that authorised a $700 billion bailout, courtesy of the taxpayer.

And thanks to all that public money, the nine banks that received bailout assistance, prominent among which was Goldman Sachs, were able to pay out bonuses of over $32 Billion to their executives.

Quite a few American cities have large areas of blight classic examples been Baltimore , Cleveland East, Detroit houses can be brought for a dollar from the banks but the land taxes can be has much has sixty thousand dollars plus repairs on top making it less than worth while . A few take the plunge to rent the houses out . The American economy is all over the place many here think it will collapse at any time . Going back to the abandoned neighborhoods the weird thing is the city still pays for the street lights to be on even though no one is living their.

Thank you crookedspire for your chilling update on the state of US cities. It makes sombre reading.

We're a lot better off now though.... Because the government SAYS we are...

Like.... When you go to the Doctor.... "You need 5 a day" Because the government SAYS so

"You need to drink less than x units of alcohol" Because the government SAYS so

etc etc....

Just "Because the government SAYS so" doesn't mean it is correct does it?

Afterall Hitlers Government said they should persecute ethnic minorities...

In retrospect it wasn't right was it?

(OK that was a bit extreme, but NEVER make the mistake of trusting what the government states is right........... because it is only "right£ from THEIR point of view.

The trouble is that the Conservative Party is no longer conservative. They are now neoliberal, which is an entirely different form of politics, and have been since the early 1980s. Indeed, neoliberalism is significantly at odds with traditional small 'c' conservative values.

 

It gets even more bewildering if we turn our gaze towards Tony Blair and New labour. Whilst the Conservatives had transformed themselves into neoliberals, Blair's project was, of all things, fundamentally neoconservative.

 

And the difference? Well, neoliberals are strangely utopian - they believe that neoliberalism, or free market economics, is inevitable and unstoppable, it will come about of its own momentum. However, neoconservatives are slightly more pragmatic and believe that the road to the globalised free market needs a helping hand - a few wars, misuse of state power to weaken the laws of the land, political policing...

But the neocons were/are equally as ideologically driven as neoliberals, ie. introduce democracy at any cost, hence the wars that you mention, 100% and absolute support for Israel in the Middle East, win at all costs. Surely all that is ideological.

Neoliberalism with its "trickle down economics" was just the rich and the powerful's way of maintaining power and giving an ideological veneer of respectability to their self interest. Hayek and Freedman may have been sincere in their beliefs but powerful opportunists used them for a plain old power grab.

Eg Institute for Economic Affairs, Adam Smith Institute, Heritage Foundation

---------- Post added 27-06-2017 at 19:52 ----------

Neocons, reference to the Bible as support for Israel ( George Bush)

Mr Corbyn's Labour is the way forward. Tories = selfish tossers who value money above humanity.

May's Torys = selfish

---------- Post added 27-06-2017 at 21:06 ----------

Yes, let's all be poor. I'd vote for that.

When everyone is poor, no one is poor