And here comes one of the biggest fallacies in terms of Bernanke's logic. He is supposedly one of the preeminent thinkers when it comes to the reasons behind the Great Depression. Just because he has thought it about a lot does not mean that he has come to the correct conclusion regarding cause and effect. There are many many many supposedly "highly intelligent" people that come to wrong conclusions. In fact, given Bernanke's recent history of statements regarding the US economy, I would come to the conclusion that he has no idea what he is talking about. We are placing the entire future of the US in some person's hands who has no "stop-loss" in place and firmly believes he is "right". It is a recipe for disaster. We are going down in flames - it is just a matter of when the margin call comes.
The problem with this and all the previous titular heads of The Printing Press Inc. is that they're forgetful of their given duties. Their job description describes them as regulators, not firemen. And yet they always play the role of firemen and not regulators. Had they regulated properly in the first place, there wouldn't have been the inferno we have come to know as Great Recession.
Well, this is plain silly... Suggesting the Fed and the Treasury are one and the same just because the Fed owns a lot of Treasuries is rather absurd. Erm, do you happen to know the size of Lehman balance sheet in 2008 (with or without Repo 105, which is peanuts)? What about Bear and Merrill? Three of the five investment banks are gone. What's that in terms of failure rate? 60%? Point is that Wall Street actually paid a high price for the crisis, no matter which objective measure you use. It isn't anywhere near enough and, in some cases, it actually resulted in more concentration, which is a very bad thing. Well, it's not like this "crisis aid" was only offered to the large institutions. Sure, they took advantage of it disproportionately, since they had ginormous balance sheets to fund. All this means is that the industry is concentrated to an unhealthy degree, but I have already agreed with you on that.
Per Lehman, you mean the "cooked" balance sheet. I can't believe you're trying to steer me down that path. Anyway, yes, concentration of power is very bad. But only within the context of "too big to fail". Had Lehman, Merrill and Bear been broken up into baby Lehman and baby Merrill, etc. under antitrust, we might have fared better IMHO. Did Wall Street pay a high price for the crisis as you claim? Well, their stock prices tell me otherwise.
if we were to measure the amount of TOXIC SH*T on the books per capita.....wall street got off more than peachy king.
I am not trying to steer you down anything... I suggested that you look at the bank failures on and off Wall Street by comparing the assets of the failed banks in these two groups. For a broad comparison, $50bn or so in Repo 105 is irrelevant (as I have pointed out earlier). Anyways, according to the TARP report (as of Dec 2009), total assets of failed banks stood arnd $473bn. For contrast, official Lehman assets stood at $639bn, when it failed. 100% agree... However, that's one of 'em "woulda, shoulda, coulda" things, innit? Whose stock prices? LEH, BSC? Or maybe C and BAC? My point isn't that the price paid was enough or that they didn't deserve it. I am saying that objectively large banks and investment banks specifically, paid more than many others. Should they have paid more and should they be broken up? Hell, yeah, but that doesn't change the facts.
I respect contributions on other threads... which I monitor for trading reasons but do not contribute. but you seem to be a FED apologist... it says on the FED website the FED is owned by the regional FedReserved banks. So owns the regional federal reserve banks? its pretty clear to me the fed is reserve system is not publically traded. its not owned by the govt We can only guess... but its clear it must be at least part goldman and part JPM right? What percent do they own? Who else?
Just posted an example that a Parent Offers Body Parts To Pay Off Child's $200,000 Student Loans whereas governments are involved in giant multi-trillion dollars ponzi schemes. Why not governments donate $1 million to each and every citizen instead of continuing giant ponzi schemes
Oh no, we're not having this discussion again, are we? We're not gonna be discussing the Rothschilds and Alien Brtiney next, are we?