01-09-2009, 12:57 PM | #76 (permalink) | |
MURICAN
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To Mr. Black Eyes: First of all, the ability for politicians to affect the economy is minimal at best! I HATE it when people blame broad economic problems on politicians, especially the President. What I was saying is that, on the margin, Clinton had more to do with it than Bush. When I say Clinton, I mean the entire Clinton government. I honestly don't think you can point a finger at a president for this and say with a straight face "He did it!". When I say Clinton did more, I mean that government, at the time, had the mindset that we needed to forcefeed home ownership to the masses (IE lowerclass people) who can't afford home ownership. We forcibly made getting mortgages artificially easy. That's what caused this. We artificially kept interest rates too low for too long as well... | |
The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them. |
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01-09-2009, 01:44 PM | #77 (permalink) | |||
Been told twice
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I'm not a Mister.
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But in the end it wasn't even foreclosures that caused the crisis at all. The crash has little to do with irresponsible borrowing. It has to do with irresponsible lending and the way debt is sold in the mortgage industry. I could spend the time to type out the full explanation for you, but Good Math, Bad Math does it better: What really created the disaster is a combination of leverage - that is, borrowing money to amplify an investment, and derivatives - fancy investments that are really nothing more than bets. Leverage is easy to understand, and it's easy to see how it leads to disaster. Suppose you've got $10,000 to invest, and there's a really good investment that you think is going to make around 5%. But you want to make more than 5% on it. Now, suppose that you can borrow money at 2% interest. So you borrow $90,000, and invest $100,000. You'll make $5,000 on the investment, and you'll owe $1,800 in interest. So your profit on your $10,000 has been increased from $500 to $3,200. Now, think of what happens if your investment, instead of earning 5% ends up losing 2%. You wind up with $98,000; you owe $91,800. Your loss has been amplified from 5% to 18%! ´ Investment firms were leveraging investments by a factor of close to 30 to 1. Then we get to the derivatives and related "financial instruments". A derivative is really a fancy term for a legal bet in the financial market. You think that some kind of asset is going to change value - so you bet that it will. It's called a derivative because its value "derives" from the value of the asset that the bet is related to. But you don't have to own anything to buy a derivative. It's really a pure bet. The payoff of a derivative is really just the odds on the bet. So essentially, investment firms were being high-class bookies. So, if you thought that the dollar was going to go down, and you wanted to make money off of it? Fine, no problem. No need to do something as complicated as pick a different currency, whose value you think will increase. Just make a bet: buy a derivative. If it's paying 2:1 - if the dollar goes down by 10%, you'll make 20%! Derivatives don't represent anything real - they're not built on buying or selling things that have real value: they're just a fancy form of gambling. The idea behind them is that they're like a kind of insurance. If you're afraid of the dollar going down, you buy some derivatives that will pay off if it does - so that you'll be protected. Someone will take your money if it goes up, in exchange for paying you if it goes down. The way that derivatives play into this isn't particularly simple - there are tons of varieties of derivatives, corresponding to gambles on different assets. But the key features are: 1. They're completely artificial. There is no asset, no fundamental value underlying a derivative, beyond the contract, which is basically like the ticket you get at a racetrack. 2. Since there is no valuable asset underlying a derivative, if a derivative goes wrong, you can lose everything. Now, here's where it gets interesting. Combine leverage and derivatives. You've got people buying derivatives, leveraged with huge loans - people borrowed money to bet on derivatives. And they used things like mortgage bonds as collateral on those loans. The problems here should be obvious. You've got people betting borrowed money in ways where they can easily lose everything, including the entire amount they borrowed. And they "secured" those loans using bad mortgages. So when a bunch of mortgages start to fail, suddenly you've lost the collateral on your bigger loan - and you're expected to pay that back. And lots of those derivatives were the basis of the "insurance" backing the mortgage bonds; so you had loans built on loans. Many of the big investment firms were letting people buy things like derivatives with as little as 3% down - leveraging an investment by borrowing 30 times the amount of the investment. And there's not just one level of this. There are loans to purchase derivatives based on assets that are based on loans to purchase other derivatives based on .... Each level of leveraging represents a dramatic increase in the amount of money at stake. So that original 10% loss on the mortgages can balloon by twenty to thirty times in one step of leveraging. Now consider that between all of the financial constructs that the big firms were working with, you could easily have ten or twenty levels of leverage (which were justified by fake "insurance", as I discussed in an earlier post), and you can start to see how losses that should have been no big deal can balloon into something like what we're seeing. | |||
01-09-2009, 05:56 PM | #79 (permalink) | |
Ahoy Fuckbag
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01-09-2009, 08:01 PM | #81 (permalink) |
MURICAN
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Twoblackeyes:
Don't post that garbage for me. I trade for a living. I am a professional trader. I understand the fancy words "leverage" and "derivatives." I know more about derivatives than you. Most of them are legitimate, your car insurance is a derivative... only it's way less transparent and less efficient than exchange traded derivatives! |
The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them. |
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01-09-2009, 09:01 PM | #83 (permalink) | |
Been told twice
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Quote:
You probably shouldn't be so proud of that. At least when I thought you were ignorant I pitied you a little. | |
01-09-2009, 09:23 PM | #86 (permalink) |
Ahoy Fuckbag
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I can't count how many times I have tried to explain the existence of this movie to people to no avail. Ninjaface you are proving to be a kindred spirit in the realm of all things awesome, I cherish you way more than IncredibleDork by far.
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01-09-2009, 09:27 PM | #88 (permalink) |
Level 20 Holothetan
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I don't wear panties any more. I have an erection the whole time I wear them. Its embarrassing. Especially at funerals. But at least I can still pick up chicks at the funeral just like in the movie Wedding Crashers.
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Last edited by ninjaface; 01-09-2009 at 09:29 PM. |
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01-14-2009, 03:24 AM | #94 (permalink) |
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Saw this one last night. It's kind of along the same lines as American Beauty (made by the same guy), but not nearly as good. Then again, AB is a pretty high standard. I could see Blonde and Repug going for this one, but wouldn't be surprised if a lot of you wouldn't really like it. Just watched this one now. Not as moving as other WWII/Holocaust movies, but still very good. This one goes kind of along the same lines as Schindler's List in that "one saves many" sense. Again, not as good as SL, but that's a brutally high standard. So long as I'm talking about Holocaust movies, I'd recommend this one: It was made in the 90s and isn't terribly well known due to the fact that it's an Italian movie with English subtitles. Without spending a whole lot of time thinking about it, this might be a good candidate for some type of a "best movie you've never heard of" award... though I'm sure at least a few of you have heard of it. Lastly, the Pianist staring Repug is also very, very worthwhile. ------ I saw the first two movies listed in this post streamed online at Watch Movies Online For Free Full Movie Downloads. They seem to have an incredibly wide range of movies, all streamable. The quality isn't always that great, especially on the ones that are still in the theaters, but it's usually passable. |
Last edited by Ugly Bastard; 01-14-2009 at 03:27 AM. |
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01-14-2009, 10:25 AM | #95 (permalink) |
I like dirt.
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Good recommendations. I didn't know Roman Polanski directed The Pianist, I should check that out. All I remember about when Life is Beautiful came out is Roberto Benigni winning the Oscar for best actor (didn't realize he directed and wrote it, too) and acting like a jackass. I've wanted to see Defiance, too. Daniel Craig's pretty good. I have little interest in Revolutionary Road, but I'll probably check the other three out. Thanks.
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02-17-2009, 12:02 AM | #96 (permalink) |
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Two things.
1. Saw this one today and it was very solid. I'm a huge Clive Owen fan and this one delivers big time. 2. Trailer for new Tarantino movie "Inglourious Bastards" looks super good: |
02-17-2009, 10:07 AM | #97 (permalink) |
I like dirt.
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Taken. If you haven't seen Taken, then you're missing out.
Inglorious Bastards will be pretty interesting, though. Most of the faces I recognize in the trailer I think of from comedy roles. I expected it to just be a bunch of bad-asses in killing Nazis, but it may be more humorous, maybe like Kill Bill instead of Reservoir Dogs? |
Last edited by tonguegina; 02-17-2009 at 10:11 AM. |
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02-17-2009, 03:43 PM | #99 (permalink) |
I like dirt.
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Stylistically. Reservoir Dogs was a much darker grittier film, despite a few humorous lines. Kill Bill, on the other hand, had a lighter and more fun mood to it. A perfect example is the use of blood. Both have plenty, but look at their applications. The two instances with the highest volume of blood in Reservoir Dogs are when the cop is getting the shit beat out of him (and eventually his ear sliced off) and Mr. Orange lying on the ground in agony throughout the entire film. Both are to raise tension. When I think about blood in Kill Bill, I think about O-Ren Ishii chopping off the dude's head and the massive amounts of blood that spurt out in a humorous fashion (or the guy she stabs in the anime portion) or even when the Bride slices off the top of her head. It's funny, not like when Orange is shot in the gut and he's screaming in the back seat. That wasn't really funny.
I expected Inglorious Bastards to be more like Reservoir Dogs, but I think it will be more like Kill Bill. At least stylistically. |
02-17-2009, 03:59 PM | #100 (permalink) |
Spice Master
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Yeah, when The Bride gets shot with rock salt, beat the crap out of, and buried alive, that was hilarious!
I'm just saying, both movies had their funny parts. Madonna joke was funny. Commode story was funny. Nice Guy Eddie/Vic Vega rapport was funny. |
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