Quote from Burtakus:
I would not say that he is a loser. It's just a different philosophy.
One philosophy is based on personal responsibility and personal freedom and the other based on institutional responsibility and institutional freedom.
In general my observations are:
Those that can prefer personal freedom and are willing accept the responsibility that goes along with it.
Those that can't prefer institutional responsibility and do not object to institutional freedom.
What really concerns me is that the USA is rapidly leaning toward institutional responsibility and the reduced personal freedoms that come attached.
Your "observations" have little to do with reality.
The simple fact of the matter is that life doesn't work like some idyllic Utopian fantasy laid out in a future history novel.
In real life there are bad actors who are going to trample over another's personal freedoms, behave irresponsibly and do Bad Things(tm).
Seriously, do you honestly think that any loan originator would have written the object of this thread a mortgage if there was a regulation in place that required the loan originator to hold the paper until a payment history of 24 consecutive months of on-time payments were recorded before they could re-sell it to Wall Street?
And how, exactly, would that sort of regulation reduced my personal freedom?
If the SEC had not allowed the IB's to gear up to 30:1 leverage, combined with a regulation like the above, do you honestly think that BSC, LEH and MER would have still blown up?
And how, exactly, would that have reduced my personal freedom?
Do you think that the mess that is AIG could have happened if there was a regulation that required reserves for each CDS written, just as there is for insurance and one that prohibited the writting of a CDS unless it was directly matched to a bond?
And how, exactly, would that have reduced my personal freedom?
Look, I'm not asking for, nor do I want a Nanny State. I also find the PATRIOT to be morally repugnant and a glaring example of reprehensible power grab.
Just the same, we do need laws to keep wonton greed in check and more importantly, we need to find the backbone to cull the herd of these assholes not slapping them on the wrist as is the norm today.