US House Limits Constituent Emails 581
Plechazunga passes along this note from The Hill: "The House is limiting e-mails from the public to prevent its websites from crashing due to the enormous amount of mail being submitted on the financial bailout bill. As a result, some constituents may get a 'try back at a later time' response if they use the House website to e-mail their lawmakers about the bill defeated in the House on Monday in a 205-228 vote."
Dear Constituent (a letter from your government) (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Constituent,
We know you are a human being, or at least you believe that matters to us, but sadly, our mailboxes are too small and cannot possibly handle the number of emails you people wish to send. We lose them anyway and we never read them so why bother. Also, when we built the mailboxes, we only anticipated hearing from 0.001% of our constituents, not this whopping 1.02% contact ratio we're experiencing!
We have assessed the situation and believe that you fall under one of the following categories:
1. You are whining about something that we did to hurt your feelings.
2. You want us to do something.
3. You have a complaint.
Here are some generic responses to help you cope:
Category #1: (You are whining about something that hurt your feelings.)
Sorry. Vote for me in 2008!
Category #2: (You want us to do something.)
We are already doing everything we can. KTHXBYE. Vote for me in 2008!
Category #3: (You have a complaint.)
GTFO. Canada is that way -------> Vote for me in 2008!
Therefore, while we will gladly take your taxes from you, we have some bad news. We can't hear you. La la la la la la la la what? can't hear you! la la la la la...
No no... that's all you have to say.
Besides, we'll do whatever we want to anyway.
Vote for me in 2008!
Kind Regards,
Your Douchebag Government
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:4, Informative)
I once sent my senator a letter that said, paraphrased:
I got a response that said, paraphrased:
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Interesting)
Hah! Yes, it was! It was when I wrote to tell her how boneheaded the Patriot Act was!
At least Boxer was good enough to respond with "I am sorry you disagree, but here's why I support it".
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:4, Interesting)
I sent Feinstein and Boxer letters a few years ago about copyright litigation. I got an email from Boxer's office that said "Thanks for your interest!." I got a personal, well reasoned response from Feinstein. She and I have written back and forth once a month ever since, sometimes with her emailing just to ask what I think about related legislation. For all I know it could be one of her staffers, but every email shows a lot of thought and is signed with her name.
Roy Blunt does that a lot (Score:3, Interesting)
so does Kit Bond when he bothers to respond to me. Claire McCaskill has only done that to me once IIRC, but it was on the FISA bill, so she can drown in diarrhea.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:5, Funny)
GTFO. Canada is that way ------->
Dude, you must be lost - that's the way to Mexico.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Funny)
Never should've taken that left turn at Albuquerque...
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a bit of an exaggeration. My congressman was saying on Meet the Press last Sunday that he was getting flooded with calls to his office by his constituents and that they fell into two categories (talking about the bailout plan):
"No"
and
"Hell no"
To be fair, he did vote against it. Personally I think that's the wrong vote to make since something drastic needs to be done. But he can truthfully claim that he was doing what the people he represents want.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, he did vote against it. Personally I think that's the wrong vote to make since something drastic needs to be done.
This reminds me of a slashdot sig I once saw:
The government: Something must be done, this is something, it must be done.
I will agree that something needs to be done. I don't think that the deal they had was it though.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems to have escaped most peoples notice that Asian banks are not participating in the current financial meltdown extravaganza and there is a reason for that.
The US banks have been behaving very very badly and have already been bailed out a couple of times in the past.
The "bubbles" you've had in the last two decades were the results of government bailouts designed to stave of a recession, and they worked. Sort of.
The problem is, if you keep bailing out these numbnuts they will just continue carrying on as before and you will continue having to bail them out and each rescue will be more flamboyantly extravagant than the last.
At some point you will HAVE to take your medicine and let things collapse. Economics is cyclical, you have periods of growth and periods of stagnation. You can't change that, no matter how much you might want to. The US government has been postponing the down cycle for years but all they have done is ensure that when the down cycle inevitably happens it will be a monster one.
If they get bailed out again this time, the next time will be even worse.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Insightful)
The worst thing is that the US has been telling other countries to "take their medicine" and learn to swallow their own economic crisises without goverment intervention.
It is no wonder that people in Brasil, Argentina and Mexico are now calling the bluff on US hipocrisy.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Insightful)
Good grief, I am aware that banks around the world have been affected by this problem, albeit mostly indirectly.
Banks all around the world lend each other lots of money all the time. The sub-prime problem is so huge that often these banks have been hit by holding loans that are two or more levels higher than the underlying sub-prime credit they can be traced to.
So, Bank A has a whole lot of poor loans based on the ridiculous idea that home prices will forever rise and that if their loser "ninja" customers default on their loans (which they will) they can swoop in and sell the house at a profit anyway. This is a great, if somewhat morally bereft plan until the prices of houses stop rocketing up.
But Bank A needs the cash to provide these loans so they turn to Bank B.
Bank B also sells access to this credit in the form of investments to other banks or firms who are not even aware that the investment they have is ultimately underwritten by Bank A and based on inherently bad loans.
Eventually the housing market collapses and Bank A follows and the flow on goes right out to the fringes.
Any falls on Asian banks pale into nothingness when compared to the US banking sector. Their falls are in sympathy with what is happening in the US, not as a result of their own bad practices.
If the banking and trading sectors weren't generally operated by 30 something whiz-kids who have no memory of past economics downturns then they wouldn't have fallen for the sucker idea that markets go constantly up in order to service their bottomless greed.
I say let them fall. The whole damn lot of them. Then we'll at least have a few more years before the next generation of whiz-kids come along to make the same mistakes again.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:4, Interesting)
Not that regulations helped this time around since they were neutered by the Republicans
I keep hearing people say this, but I've never seen anyone point to any specific deregulation. Please enlighten me.
It seems to me that this whole mess was largely caused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government sponsored enterprises. http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/09/distorting-history.html [blogspot.com]
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:4, Insightful)
Oddly enough, when I look up that Bill, I find it was approved by both Parties (90 votes for in the Senate, 343 in the House), and signed by a Democratic President (Clinton was President in 1999, remember?).
If it was an evil Republican plot to rob the dear people, then why did the "Defenders of All That is Good and Right" (aka the Democrats) approve it? Remember, most of them voted in favour of this also.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Interesting)
This act was also known as the Gramm Leach Bliley act [ftc.gov]. It was written by a Republican controlled congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
You may have heard of one of the sponsors, Phil Gramm [wikipedia.org]. He is the Gramm in Gramm Leach Bliley... He also wrote John McCain's economic policy and was John McCain's presidential campaign co-chair and his most senior economic advisor, until he made a gaffe on the campaign trail and said "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," and "We have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline." Whoops. I guess McCain had to let him go after he said that on national television.
I love it how the right-wing media is trying to spin this that "it's all Clinton's fault" when we have a law passed by a Republican controlled congress, written by McCain's senior economic advisor. I know you guys like to try and stretch the facts about everything, but the people are starting to get sick of all of the lies and deceit.
Let's face it, deregulation has failed our economy and our nation. Voting for John McCain would be putting the fox in charge of the hen house.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Informative)
I want some of whatever it is that you're smoking. The Repubs have been in control of both houses from 1994 up to 2006. It was only in 2006 that the Dems got the slimmest of majority in congress, and even still it is not a veto proof majority so they can't really do much except go along with Bush... I wish they would stand up to him a little more.
I would say that when you have the author of one of the worst finance bills in the history of our country that also writes the economic policy for a potential future President, that is a big deal . These guys are crooks, liars, and have been giving special perks to their cronies for decades now. We're just starting to see the real downside emerge.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Insightful)
Just as an aside - was it an executive order, or did both sides vote on this? If the latter, what was the breakdown (for vs against) for each side?
Blame Clinton all you like, but it's likely that both sides supported this, and the intervening Bush presidency did nothing to re-introduce those laws.
On this one, both sides are to blame, but your economy has been further stressed by massive war spending which certainly hasn't helped.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:4, Informative)
Please, find out how laws are made [wikipedia.org].
The president can only veto a bill, he/she does not make laws. A good president respects the democratic process and only vetoes a bill when there is extremely good reason to do so. It's only president Bush who has distorted the procedure with signing statements.
It's sad when a foreigner has to point out how your political system works.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Informative)
Theoretically yes. However, the president can also make signing statements that can dramatically effect how the law is interpreted and this president has used that power more than any other.
The president also makes executive orders which can be quite powerful. Guam became a part of the US via an executive order for example.
As for making laws, in modern history the initial budget proposals start in the executive wing and then are passed to their party's congressional leaders to revise before putting them to a vote. That's why we call the tax cuts 'Bush' tax cuts because they were proposed by his administration.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:5, Funny)
Are you Canadian by any chance ? I am in Canada and if I follow that arrow for a really long time I'll end up right back where I am.
How freakin' cool is that ? As you said, spot on!
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Informative)
Canada on the other hand has no business being a nice place to live. It's cold for much of the year, and in some places it's dark for almost half of it.
I'm pretty sure, on average, it's dark half the time everywhere.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:5, Funny)
F@#$, that's my problem. No wonder the Canada I found looks a lot like Mexico.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah... (Score:2, Informative)
Please shut up, we do not want to hear from you on important matters.
We know what's best, so just get over yourselves.
Signed
House of Representatives
Re:Yeah... (Score:2)
When the servers crash, nothing gets through at all. Is this not perhaps a lesser evil?
Crashed servers send their own message (Score:3, Insightful)
Especially if they're stupid enough to try to run the constituent email through the same mailserver (probably a MS Exchange box) that they use for their "business" email (ie, who's having lunch where, and which lobby is paying for it).
Re:Crashed servers send their own message (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Crashed servers send their own message (Score:3, Insightful)
That assumes competence at some level of government. I choose not to make such assumptions, and as a result, I'm not disappointed.
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
Could be.
However, I would like to see more of a "Due to the large volume of people wanting to communicate to their representatives on the bailout vote and other matters, we are greatly expanding and refining our e-mail services to ensure that your messages get through".
Notice, that I just wrote *is not* what they are doing.
I guess, to a degree, curbing the amount of traffic is like the bailout they are proposing, it is just a bandaid, doesn't actually solve the real thing that needs solving.
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know about our government, but IF 1% of the 250M Americans decided to write an e-mail over the last week (which means 2.5 million e-mails over 5 days or 500,000 e-mails per day or 21,000 e-mails per hour which should be about 1 Mbyte/minute) then I would be able to handle the load with 1 or 2 Postfix servers and of course a large enough storage. Heck, I'm currently processing about 1000 connections per hour for an organization (100 IMAP connections, website etc. included) on a 4 year old PowerMac G5 including amavis, clamav and spamassassin and the load is generally about 0.10.
Of course there would be congestion and the solution should already be scaled adequatly to support the 500-somewhat congress critters but that amount of traffic is nothing to write home about, much less a press report.
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please. I'm no fan of the government, but they're not in a position to just "fix" the problems with the economy, and they don't really need Joe Sixpack's crap advice piling up.
Of all the coverage I've seen on the current problems, hardly any of it actually hits the real roots of the issue. The 700,000,000,000 bailout is being pushed (hilariously) not because anyone who knows really thinks it'll solve the problem, but because the people who are pushing it know it will be perceived that way, and calm down the markets.
The whole issue revolves around the new FAS regulation from a year ago (157, if anyone cares) which required the banks to revalue their investment holdings based on the daily current market values, which, due to a current housing market glut, are tanking. In the long term most of these assets have a much higher (and more stable) value, but since they're being measured in the short term, these horrible reports are coming out and scaring the shit out of everyone.
Frankly, having the government snap up a chunk of semi-stable investments which, in all likelihood, will render an eventual profit isn't a bad deal if it will get all the goddamn market amateurs to stop having hourly shit-hemorrhages.
But all the average scmuck knows about the situation is that the government is going to "throw away" 700bil on something that will (depending on their view) save/destroy the economy. They've got no idea, no more than the better informed people who are pushing it, and their attempts to get in the way are just causing problems.
To use an IT metaphor; the mainframe has eaten itself, and you're trying to fix it, and you've got to do things that may or may not destroy data, but that have to be done regardless just to get the system running again. Is it productive to listen to all the people who have a stake in the data screaming their uninformed opinions? Not really. I think Congress is displaying a distinct lack of tact, but I've been known to tell a CFO to go fuck themselves sideways a time or two myself, and I'm finding it hard to blame them.
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Informative)
isn't a bad deal
other than the fact that they have no constitutional authority to do so...
Uh, READ the constitution first... (Score:5, Insightful)
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Amendment X.
There is something unclear about this? POWERS NOT DELEGATED, the key phrase. All that is not permitted explicitly is EXPLICITLY forbidden. There MAY be arguments as to the extent of the power of Congress which could be made with regards to commerce and regulating the money, but they are at best weak arguments. The point is, your analysis is simply wrong and not only directly contravened by the 10th amendment, but also discussed at length by the authors in the Federalist Papers (in all fairness Hamilton made some arguments similar to yours, but it is a dangerous position to take).
What if Congress decides that 'the common welfare' would be served by having the FBI throw you in a pit for 30 years? Is that OK because 'hey, it is good for everyone else, and they can do whatever they think is good'. Sorry, not in my United States.
Exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
If you assume that Congress has UNLIMITED AUTHORITY, then why do we have a Constitution at all? The Constitution is a compact between the people, of the comity of the people, WITH EACH OTHER which vests certain defined and limited portions of the absolute sovereignty of the people in a Congress, etc. That power is clearly and explicitly limited. What part of 'reserved to the people' is not clear here?
When Congress assumes for itself powers not vested in it they are overthrowing the authority of the people. MY ancestors stood literally in the face of British cannon fire in order to guarantee EVERYONE the protection of those rights. Now, does anyone doubt that it does us dishonor if we fail to respect that? I WILL NOT yield those rights, not to Congress nor to anyone else. And if fools insist on giving them away, then I will withdraw my permission for those people to use those rights, and there is NO LIMIT to my right to do so, nor to the just means which I may avail myself of in that cause.
http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa00.htm [constitution.org]
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yay! Mod points for wishful thinking over law! (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, your understanding of the constitution is fundamentally flawed. It has a few things that it explicitly tells the federal government it can do, and the 10th amendment says, "If we didn't explicitly say you can do it, it's none of your business."
As pointed out by the above poster, the federal government *was* explicitly told that this is something they can do. The articles of the Constitution that he actual cited (as opposed to your general parapharsing) are known as the Taxing and Spending Clause and the General Welfare Clause in Constitutional Law. There is absolutely nothing in the bailout plan that was unconstitutional. Unwise or unfair, maybe, but not unconstitutional.
Furthermore, the 10th Amendment is generally considered to have little judicially enforceable restraint on Congress. Pretty much the only thing barred by the 10th Amendment currently is commanding the states to enact legislation or to enforce federal legislation (though the government is free to give incentives to do so with money spent under the Spending Clause). (See New York v. United States (1992).)
Everything else you've posted is just whining about the Supreme Court not interpreting the Constitution the way you wished they would. Well, too bad! The Constitution is what the body invested with the power to interpret it says that it is. (See Marbury v. Madison.)
In other words, when it comes to Constitutional Law: "Lurk moar, n00b."
Re:Yay! Mod points for wishful thinking over law! (Score:3, Interesting)
Like I said, this statement is unequivocally false.
One can make an argument that it's not. It's really no different from from the analysis you gave, except for your faulty assumption that the 10th Amendment has strong teeth. The Constitution grants the government several powers to pass laws (removing some rights from you) and the Bill of Rights takes several powers away from the government (granting some rights to you). What it says nothing about is left alone, presumably to the states.
The 10th Amendment has long been viewed as little more than an affirmation of the obvious and not a hard limit of restraint. Beyond the limits I've mentioned on compelling action from the states, it's toothless. That changed for a while with the Usery decision but was revoked by Garcia. O'Connor's decision in the aforementioned New York v. United States is the law on the 10th Amendment currently, and I've already explained how little it restrains Congress.
And despite your stunning ability to look up cases on the internet, the Congress still has to give lip service to a grant of authority before it passes a law. Usually it's the Commerce Clause, which after Wickard v. Filburn is ridiculously broad, but the Rhenquist court did manage to reign it in just a little bit. So no, Congress can't just go off willy nilly and do whatever it wants.
Maybe. Gonzales v. Raich 545 U.S. 1 (2005) blows most of Morrison out of the water by resurrecting the rational basis test and severely muddying the waters on what is and isn't economic activity. While Congress still applies the fig leaf of "that affects interstate commerce" to the legislation it passes, what exactly is interstate commerce is once again very broad. It's hard to reconcile Raich with Lopez in my opinion, given the government's argument in the latter case.
(I'm frankly surprised you know much about what the Rehnquist court decided though, given how wrong your 10th Amendment analysis is. I was providing links because I figured (based on 2/3 of your post) that you were talking out your rear end. I again recommend reading a Con Law textbook.)
And I stand by my analysis of the New Deal. Everybody knew it was unconstitutional. They just decided it was so extraordinarily important that they were going to do it anyway.
I assume you're referring to West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parish (1937). The only reason anyone would've considered the New Deal unconstitutional was because of Lochner, widely considered today to have been one of the most awful and ill-conceived Supreme Court verdicts of all time. Yes, the court was under pressure due to Roosevelt's threat to pack the court, but the writing was already on the wall with Nebbia v. New York, 3 years earlier, and even in striking down some New Deal legislation in United States v. Butler, the court upheld a relatively broad interpretation of the Spending Clause and General Welfare Clause. By the time Wickard v. Filburn was decided, the landscape had changed.
Honestly, the argument "they knew it wasn't Constitutional" presumes two things:
1) There is an inherent, natural law concept of constitutionality that objectively lies outside of the decisions of the Supreme Court.
2) That the Supreme Court chose to ignore that objective standard and place a politically motivated substitute that has no moral authority behind it.
Neither of these are the case. Constitutional is what the body reviewing constitutionality says it is. I may not like Scalia's grotesque reading out of the Constitution of the 2nd Amendment's militia requirement in District of Columbia v. Heller this year (making a mockery of his own touted philosophy of originalism), but that is the law of the land. That is what is constitutional, and all the whining in the world doesn't change that.
(And frankly, if you're honestly arguing that we should roll back our notion of Constitutionality to the pre-New Deal, Lochner era, I think you're a loon.)
Re:Yay! Mod points for wishful thinking over law! (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, congratulations, you've proved you have free Westlaw access, which means you're a student (but shame on your for not having Blue Book-correct cites; I hope you're not on Law Review), and so you deserve a little more respect that J. Random Slashdotter who thinks he knows the law. But you still have yet to refute my original point, which is that the 10th Amendment does not "just leave the rest alone." It says "the rest doesn't belong to the Federal government." Sure, you've shown that you favor a more expansive Commerce Clause than I do, but that's orthogonal to my point, which is that the 10th Amendment does, in fact, say something about it ("strong" teeth is your phrase, not mine). You're talking about matters of degree, which are up for reasonable debate. But like I pointed out, the fact that probably 9 out of 10 people in the U.S. don't even know there is such a thing as a 10th amendment is a pretty good indication to me that we've screwed it up. In any case, all constitutional theorists agree that the states have some powers reserved to them (if you can dig up a single remotely credible scholar who says otherwise, I'd like to see it; even Ginsburg will occasionally defer to the autonomy of the states).
Now, setting aside my original point (which I think I may have mentioned you failed to address in your eagerness to unleash your KeyCite prowess), you raise some interesting philosophical points. Is there such a thing as "constitutional in the abstract?" Or is the Supreme Court always right because they go last? Is three generations of imbeciles enough because the Chief said so in Buck v. Bell? Or is it possible he's wrong, even if four guys in black robes agree with him? (Remember, Buck v. Bell hasn't been reversed, so eugenic sterilization is still constitutional). And what was that case with the separated parents and some random guy knockin' up mom, but the estranged husband was the father (it has nothing to do with the conversation, but it was kind of amusing in an embarassing Jerry Springer kind of way). Perhaps you and I just disagree about this on a fundamental level. I can certainly grant you that it's the law of the land, and I'm not saying toss out Marbury v. Madison. But Carnival Cruise Lines is the law of the land too, and that was kind of dumb (I'm sure you remember this case; it can't have been very long since you took Civ Pro) (and I'm even a fairly strong freedom of contract proponent). But then, I am also a loon, as you say. I'm not even entirely sure I agree with the vague "Correlative Rights" doctrine of Crandall v. Nevada. Even for a results-oriented decision, it seemed sort of unnecessary to make stuff up when they could have disposed of the case on Congress's plenary authority over interstate commerce. And don't get me started on the contortions we've had to do with privileges and/or immunities to avoid complete incorporation.
So I've got this loony theory that maybe the federal government should just do the stuff we told it to do in the Constitution, and then we should pretty much leave the states alone to govern themselves so the local people can have some control over their own communities, unless they want to do something in violation of the constitution (because, you know, privileges, immunity, the first eight amendments, Rep. Bingham and all that jazz). It's actually a pretty radical theory, especially if you're taking Con Law from the Ghost of William Brennan, as you apparently are. And really, I'm the first loon to think of it, except a couple of nobodies like Hugo Black and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and (really, if you break it down) John Marshall. And Scalia and Thomas to an extent. And we'll see about Alito.
So bottom line, there is a 10th amendment, you haven't proved otherwise, we disagree on a bunch of stuff that reasonable people can disagree on, you don't get full cites from me because some of us have to pay for Westlaw access, William Brennan is dead, and Hugo Black pwns a11 u SUXORZ!
Alright, let me get gritty here. (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, congratulations, you've proved you have free Westlaw access, which means you're a student (but shame on your for not having Blue Book-correct cites; I hope you're not on Law Review), and so you deserve a little more respect that J. Random Slashdotter who thinks he knows the law.
Damnation. You're a practicing attorney, aren't you? Alright, I've got to be a little more humble and back up my arguments a little more forcefully. (And I'm not following formal style because this is just an informal internet geek fight. I'll add some links for people who don't have access to services like Westlaw.)
It says "the rest doesn't belong to the Federal government." Sure, you've shown that you favor a more expansive Commerce Clause than I do, but that's orthogonal to my point, which is that the 10th Amendment does, in fact, say something about it ("strong" teeth is your phrase, not mine). You're talking about matters of degree, which are up for reasonable debate. [...] In any case, all constitutional theorists agree that the states have some powers reserved to them (if you can dig up a single remotely credible scholar who says otherwise, I'd like to see it; even Ginsburg will occasionally defer to the autonomy of the states).
I'd agree on the last point. New York v. United States [findlaw.com] 488 U.S. 1041 (1992) makes clear that Congress can't compel state action through promises of penalties. (See Part B(1) of the majority opinion). The rest of the opinion provides good support for the notion that even if you can't use the stick, you can use the carrot.
For Commerce Clause purposes, Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority [findlaw.com] , 469 U.S. 528 (1985) threw the Tenth Amendment out the window. The court rejected the standard introduced National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833 (1976) which required courts to examine whether a law passed by Congress interfered with "areas of traditional governmental functions."
"Our examination of this 'function' standard applied in these and other cases over the last eight years now persuades us that the attempt to draw the boundaries of state regulatory immunity in terms of "traditional governmental function" is not only unworkable but is also inconsistent with established principles of federalism and, indeed, with those very federalism principles on which National League of Cities purported to rest. That case, accordingly, is overruled."
Garcia at 531.
The problem following Garcia is that they never replaced the Usery standard with anything new! Blackmum explicitly refused to do so: "These cases do not require us to identify or define what affirmative limits the constitutional structure might impose on federal action affecting the States under the Commerce Clause" (Garcia at 556). No case following it has ruled that an exercise of Commerce Clause power violated the Tenth Amendment. Looking back to what preceded Usery, all we have is post-Lochner caselaw that treats the 10th Amendment as a mere truism.
For example, take the following frequently cited quote from United States v. Darby Lumber Co. [findlaw.com] , 312 U.S. 100 (1941) (which overturned prior precedent that gave effect to the 10th Amendment):
"The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment or that its purpose was other than to allay
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
The underlying problem is, house prices are *way* over-inflated. Inflation-adjusted, they peaked at *double* the historical norm, and all this mess started when they came back down just 10-30% (regional). There is a generation of people who honestly believe that house prices don't go down, and have made grave mistakes in their personal finances as a result. Nation-wide, house prices above about 3x the median hosehold income aren't sustainable, and we're still about 5x (and of course far worse in the housing bubble cities).
While there were certainly a subset of loans that were just bad - forged docs, impossible payments, etc, and that's what's causing this month's crisis, the problem is much deeper. There's an entire culture now of buying a house with a mortgage payment of 80%+ of your take-home pay, counting on cashing out equity every year because "house prices only go up". This isn't a problem the government can fix.
Sure, the governement needed to intervene to avoid a market panic, but really it just needed to "make a market" in these mortgage-backed securities, to allow them to trade at a value not absurdly depressed by that panic. That's not a $700B bailout, that's just splitting the difference between buyer and seller.
Long term, however, house prices are certain to fall back to sustainable levels, and anyone thinking "we just need to put this problem behind us so house prices can start rising again" is in a dream world. The governement isn't going to solve that problem, and shouldn't try. Do the minimum to stop the panic, and get out.
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Informative)
A few clarifications for you:
The monetary expansion that fueled the home-buying binge started in late 2001. Overnight rates went from 6.54% in 7/2000 down to .98% in 12/2003, and by 1/2002 it was down to 1.73%, and the biggest changes in interest rates were over. So that's a convenient place to base our estimates of the "normal" price.
The historical real increase in housing value has been about 1.5% over the last century. The CSXR was at 123.93 in 1/2002. And the CSXR peaked at 226.29 in 6/2006. Since then, it has come down to 178.46 in 7/2008. So we're only down about 21%. CSXR is nominal, and using CPI-U to deflate it, we get a real increase of 17.4% in home prices using a real Case-Schiller variable over 6.5 years. This implies about another 7% real decrease left before the "normal" price is reached.
Of course, that "normal" doesn't account for the financial panic, which dries up mortgage lending, depressing demand. Stopping the panic is a far bigger issue today - this is the heart attack caused by the lifestyle. You give lifestyle advice after the shock panels.
While also correct that wages haven't gone up enough to justify housing values with historical home-to-income ratios, that is because medical insurance is a much larger component of compensation than it was a decade or two ago.
Housing prices will probably bottom in less than 12 months, and we'll see people happy to buy again once it hits the bottom. But I doubt speculators will be in the housing market since few people will have the bankroll and credit rating to get attractive loan terms on multiple properties like in days of yore.
Countrywide, Indymac and New Century are good examples to mortgage lenders of what will happen if you act like them. A couple new laws on mortgage exposure disclosure, and a lot of jail terms for fraudulent lenders and borrowers should keep the market realistic.
Re:The government can fix that. (Score:5, Informative)
I'd settle for a regulation saying businesses may not enter into financial negotiations they do not, at that time, have sufficient verifiable assets to support.
You might still take a hit if housing prices drop a few percent and lenders who made reasonable lending decisions find themselves stretched, but you would be unlikely to see the kind of major players failing that we have seen recently.
Perhaps more to the point, you wouldn't get the sort of silly leveraging that has been going unchecked in the financial services industry for years, where no-one could really keep the promises they were making. That is how you get companies "too big to fail", which then need government intervention that is completely unjustifiable in a sane world, because while the mega-businesses deserve to fail and their investors deserve to lose out, the collateral damage to the innocent bystanders in the rest of the economy is nasty.
There are all these clever analyses flying around about what went wrong and how to fix it, but it seems to me that the basic problem has simply been allowing businesses to make promises they cannot keep.
Re:The government can fix that. (Score:3, Insightful)
That would cause fairly large problems actually.
In 2004 the SEC removed the "Fixed Leverage Rule" for a handful of investment banks. That rule stated that they had to have 10% of their holdings in liquid assets...A safety net basically. You know what banks those were? Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns.
That was pretty fucking stupid of the SEC, eh? Those jokers put that extra 10% into the market, and at the first downturn, they fucking crashed because they had no assets.
But then look what happened. The traditional banks jumped on the assets. Bank of America, Citigroup, Mitsubishi Financial--all traditional banks with large chunks of liquid assets--they jumped in and bought assets cheap, and they're going to reap HUGE gains from their foresight, and, indirectly from a very sensible piece of regulation.
You can't expect a bank to have 100% of what it needs on hand. It just doesn't work that way. 10% is plenty, and the proof of that is how well the traditional banks are weathering this.
Re:The government can fix that. (Score:3, Insightful)
Regulation might help here, but sadly, regulation also got us into this mess. Regulations to create "affordable housing" strongly incented lenders to give loans to people who couldn't qualify for Fannia Mae criteria, and congresscritters (Barney Frank, I'm looking at you) called "make it illegal for the bank to write a mortgage unless certain criteria are met" racist.
In a time and place where the congress is calling holding people to reasonable credit standards racist, the banks were under a lot of regulatory pressure to offer these weak loans (which of course lead to house prices doubling - yay for affordable housing that I can't afford). Of course, plenty of banks are doing just fine right now, so the regs can't have been that bad, but it's worth remembering that the problem with regulation is it hurts a lot more when market forces correct bad ideas.
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you fault Congress for actually listening to it's constituents?
Sometimes, yes. A panicking Wall Street is no better than a panicking constituency. Wall Street is interested in saving it's own neck and big paycheques. The people, meanwhile, are, apparently, primarily interested in sticking it to Wall Street at any cost. Both are completely irrational, and neither should be unquestioningly heeded.
'course, that presumes that government is a) capable of handling this crisis, and b) able to remain above the fray. Unfortunately, the odds of both of these things are approximately zero.
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
The only way this plan wouldn't lose the taxpayers vast sums of money, would be if Hank Paulson was much better at valuing these things, using other people's money, than people out there who would be spending their own money.
I don't believe it. Sounds like BS to me.
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Interesting)
And you think this should be the government's job?
Congress has been Slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Congress has been Slashdotted (Score:2)
Most of the Congressmen I've called also have voicemail's that are completely filled up.
Don't dare complain about it either! To them (Keith Ellison's staff) it isn't their job to clear the voicemail after business hours.
Re:Congress has been Slashdotted (Score:5, Insightful)
Complete awesomeness!!!
I'd like to see Congress and the Senate Slashdotted handily for every bill up for a vote, well at least the really big ones. I don't really care if the bill is just about congressional medals or something similar.
When it becomes common in the House and Senate for a legislator to take the floor and start off by saying "my constituents have been very clear on this matter via email and telephone..... I vote xyz" then we might consider that we have representative government.
Re:Congress has been Slashdotted (Score:5, Insightful)
"Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion"
- Edmund Burke
I would not want to live in a world where representatives vote solely based on the opinions of their most vocal (and therefore usually most extreme) constituents. It's bad enough that most of them allow themselves to be so influenced by their most generous contributors.
Re:Congress has been Slashdotted (Score:3, Funny)
ducks...
sorry
I have never been more proud to be a republican... (Score:5, Insightful)
then I have this week. And by republican i mean REAL republican, not a neo-con like in recent years. Regardless of the fact that some house republicans were going to vote for it, it was enough in the end that an individual's ego made them stick to their principles.
Re:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:2)
How is that different from a Libertarian?
Re:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:5, Funny)
Libertarians smoke pot.
Re:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:4, Informative)
Not all of us do.
Well.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well.. (Score:4, Funny)
Republicans want into your bedroom. Democrats want into your wallet. Libertarians want neither.
Republicans want into your bedroom? Fuck it, I'm voting for Palin!
Re:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:4, Insightful)
But here goes: I have to say a big thank you to the house republicans. They did the right thing, which this time was the conservative thing by voting against the stupid bailout.
Now the the real issue
System engineers are working to resolve this issue and we appreciate your patience.
So what are they doing to fix this exactly? Hoping everyone looses interest so they don't have to increase their capacity? I dunno if thats gonna work - people seem pretty pissed (I am one of those people by the way).
Re:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. I consider myself a Goldwater republican, but it's gotten to the point where people ask my affiliation, I mumble something about being a Libertarian and change the subject.
Good on the House Republicans...
Re:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:4, Insightful)
I must agree. Conservatives and frightened Democrats prevented a massive take-over by the political class.
Folks, it's a credit bubble. It's not the first and it won't be the last. There are no innocents; individuals have been racking up debt with large, adjustable, flex-pay, no money down liar loan mortgages, second mortgages, equity credit lines and third mortgages. They've been voting for members of both parties to make it happen; the left does it to buy 'low income' votes and the right does it for their Lehman buddies.
Credit bubbles pop. At some point the accumulated crap must be flushed. That doesn't mean we must turn our Government into the investor of last resort. That's exactly how Fannie and Freddy got us here.
Some fraction of all debt is presently considered 'toxic.' 30 seconds after that $700 billion gets legislated into existence the fraction of 'toxic' debt will multiply; the banks will be happy to invent as much 'toxic' debt as your Government thinks it can get away with buying.
Screw that. I'm not under and mountain of debt and I'm not afraid of those of you who put yourselves under one. Life is too short to live in fear of morons.
Re:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:5, Interesting)
Wake up sleepy head! It's a credit crunch.
The well of easy short term credit has dried up. Financial institutions are currently experiencing a rather nasty bought of collective hysteria and as a result are grasping too tightly to what money they still have. They're not loaning any money to one another because they're afraid they and all their buddies are going to go belly up like Lehman Brothers in the very near future. They all need they all need every penny they have to pay off the loans they already took out from each other, because now they wont lend to each other because they're all afraid they'll all go under.
Confused? That's because you think that modern financiers are either rational or competent at what they do. They are neither.
It doesn't matter what the bill was about. The purpose of the bill was to act as a placebo for hysterical traders who literally have no idea what is happening and who cannot be relied upon to either calm down or trade rationally. I don't mean collectively speaking. I mean on an individual basis. That bill was a mass Valium prescription for a mass of people who are a danger to themselves and society. Taking it away was like dosing a crazy person with amphetamines, putting them in room 101, then giving them explosives and a loaded shotgun. Predictably, the traders and money men completely lost the run of themselves, and had a good old fashioned Panic Attack.
This is not getting resolved by market forces. This is not going to correct itself. This cannot be left to the whims of Wall St, unless you think its a good idea to leave the world's financial systems in the hands of people with the mentality, reasoning and emotional state of a crashing meth junkie. Wait as long as you like, there's nobody home.
No. This is going to require some good old fashioned Government Intervention. There's that taboo word. I'll say it again to drag Slashdot even further into disrepute. This Crisis Needs Government Intervention . You can deny this fact while you wait for your local junkies to start scrubbing the pavements out of civic responsibility, or you can wake up to reality and help clean up the mess that your mistaken opinions helped create.
Re:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:5, Insightful)
"This Crisis Needs Government Intervention."
I don't think that is a given. We probably could go with either:
A. A huge government intervention
B. No government intervention
I favor B. I think it will be fine if all the businesses and individuals that did stupid, risky things end in total ruin. That's what you get and deserve when you taken excessive and misguided risks in a free market. I think the bailout plan proposed by the Bush administration is mostly designed to bail out their fat cat Republican constituency before Bush and Paulson are kicked out the door. That is why they wanted $700 billion NOW, with no oversight, so they could blow it all bailing out their friends before Obama gets in the white house, and the orgy of cronyism and leeching off the government the last 8 years is over, or at least it switches to a Democratic orgy. It looks a lot like the bailout was a last orgy of wealth redistribution to the wealthy and as is typical for the Bush administration they used fear mongering to try to shove it through Congress without anyone questioning. Its cool it did get questioned and I hope Congress holds their ground though I doubt they will.
It might actually be good if American business and American people can't get business loans, credit cards, mortgages or home equity loans. I saw earlier today that the "average" American is carrying a $10,000 balance on their credit card. That is insane. I have a $0 dollar balance on my credit cards and so do a lot of others so that probably means the credit junkies are carrying $20,000 on their credit cards probably at a steep interest rate. In the last 10 years or so the savings rate by the average person in China has risen from like 30% to something like 45%. During the same period the average savings rate for an American has plunged to 0%. We don't save everything. The little we do save is canceled out by staggering debt burden.
The U.S. desperately needs to go cold turkey from their credit addiction, business, individual and government. Seizing of the credit markets is a sure way to make it happen. I'm really glad I no longer get 3 credit card offers in the mail every week. That was insane.
A complete freeze in our credit markets may actually start compelling American people and businesses to live within their means, as in don't spend money you don't have. If you want to buy something work for it first.... gasp. It may hammer the housing and auto industries.... tough.
The silver lining in the housing crash is home prices in the U.S. were astronomically inflated. If they crash 30-50% that will just bring them down to a sane level. It totally needs to happen, its not a bad thing. Sure its going to hammer people's net worth but if your net worth came from riding a housing bubble then it was a sham in the first place. The same can be said for the stock market. There is no law that says your stocks have to always go up/ If you've invested in the stock market for a while you made a lot of money, tough luck that you've lost 20% this year. Deal with it, stop whining and stop expecting the government to FORCE the stock market to always go up. Real markets don't do that. They should only go up when your businesses are really profitable and productive. Most American companies really aren't.
Bottom line is most Americans were engaging in a giant Ponzi scheme the last few years, a lot of you made a lot of money on it. It crashed. Ponzi schemes always do. If you were taking out huge home equity loans, flipping houses, etc. its time to take your medicine for doing something foolish.
Meanwhile we need to learn to make things again, we need to learn skills that have real economic value on the global stage. We need to rebuild our infrastructure and break our dependence on imported oil. Seriously, you aren't entitled to money for nothing and chicks for free no matter what the song says. The rest of the world is eating your lunch and unless you get off your butts and do something worthwhile you a
Re:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:3, Insightful)
We (as represented by Andrew Carnegie) tried that already; the result was what we call the Great Depression. The problem is that it is not just (or even primarily) the "Republican fat cats" who "did stupid, risky things" who will suffer. Most have them have stupidly and riskily amassed large fortunes in safe assets like US treasuries. The people who will suffer most are everybody else - i.e. you. If the government waits to act until its constituency figures this out (because tens of millions of them are out of work), the resulting depression will be much worse than it need have been.
Re:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not a Republican. You're a fiscal conservative as am I. While there are some like us in the Republican party, certainly more than there are in the Democrat party, we're still a minority voice within the party. So much so that I don't consider myself a Republican anymore. There are very few Republicans like Tom Coburn in the Senate and Ron Paul and Jeff Flake in the House that are truly fiscal conservative today and were truly fiscal conservatives during their years in the majority. Most of the party just plays it lip service when it suits them.
If there wasn't all of this public outrage at the bailout and if this wasn't right before Congressional elections I'm afraid you wouldn't see as many Republicans stand up for fiscal sanity. Where was this new found love for fiscal discipline during the Bush years when Republicans had control of the White House and had majorities in both Houses of Congress? They allowed the size of government, the size of the deficit, the size of the total national debt, the size of entitlement programs, and the size of future unfunded liabilities to grow at a rate not seen since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society Programs of the 60's. That is the exact opposite of fiscal discipline. That's fiscal insanity. Especially when you consider that Social Security and Medicare are basically both ponzi schemes that only work if the working population stays larger than the population of retirees and we already know that isn't the case with the baby boomers.
If the Republicans were in the majority now in Congress I question whether the majority of the party would be against this bailout. After all, if a serious economic downturn occurs people tend to blame the party in the majority and even though the public may blame Republicans for this mess right now if things still look bad a year or two from now and Democrats are still in the majority you can be sure the voters will begin to revolt. It benefits Republicans to oppose this measure because they are in the minority and won't be held accountable for the economy if it's still bad and Democrats remain in control a year or two from now. They can afford the courage of their convictions because it won't hurt them politically. I highly doubt if they'd be so willing to do the same if they were in the majority and were worried about the political impact of an extended downturn.
I'm firmly opposed to this plan but I understand that not passing it means tougher times in the short and possibly medium term in order to have a better fiscal and economic position in the long term. Adding another 700 billion in debt on top of the 11 trillion we're already in debt is fiscal insanity when you consider the looming bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare. In order to be healthier in the long term we can't keep adding to the debt, we must start reducing it and that means no bailouts and it also means cutting spending. Not reducing the rate of growth, but cutting spending to free up the funds to begin paying down the debt. It may even mean reverting back to the tax brackets that existed in the 90's. None of these are popular, but they are necessary, and I highly doubt Republicans would have the will to advocate for any of them if they were in the majority and we're primarily concerned with short term conditions so they could remain in power rather than worry about medium and long term conditions.
I have a new policy when it comes to voting for Senators and my Congressman. I'll always vote for a true fiscal conservative but if neither candidate in the race is a fiscal conservative then I'll vote against the incumbent, whatever party he or she may belong to.
Re:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:4, Interesting)
thank goodness you said that. I keep wondering why conservatives vote for Republicans. Republicans aren't conservative! They never have been! Reagan grew the government three times as fast as Clinton! Bush is the most spendy President we've ever had (literally)! How far back do you have to go to find a Republican who was actually a fiscal conservative? There certainly hasn't been one in the last fifty years. If you're conservative, then for the love of all that is holy please start voting for conservatives, instead of Republicans!
Re:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:3, Insightful)
Bush proposed it. I don't know if it is fair to say that Republicans tried to push it through, when by percentages they have been the ones most opposed to it.
Re:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:3, Informative)
That fact escaped you, or are you going to be like the rest of the herd, ignore history as recent as last week, and pretend this was a Democratic proposal?
Speaker Pelosi gave a rousing speech in favor of this monstrosity; President Bush did so, as well. Guess which party has clean hands in all of this?
Re:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess which party has clean hands in all of this?
Mine! Woo hoo, Green Party!!
Ron Paul Republican vs. Bush/McCain Republican (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it the norm here for pro-Republican to be insta tagged as Trolling?
I guess not. Grandparent is back up to (Score:5, Insightful) as I post this. I guess the "And by republican i mean REAL republican, not a neo-con like in recent years" identified teknopurge as a Republican from Ron Paul's wing of the party, not Bush/McCain's gang of neo-con-men.
La la la la la (Score:2)
... we can't hear you ! la la la la la la .... something about blood of tyrants and patriots comes to mind.
So? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is just good system administration happening. The systems can't handle the load so the admins have programmed the mailservers to drop a percentage down /dev/null until the load drops back to manageble levels.
My mail server (and almost certainly yours) has many such throttles built in, It will stop accepting mail if the load average is too great, if available mail spool is too low, etc.
Yet another win for open government! (Score:5, Informative)
The government is supposed to work for us; until we limit how often lobbyists talk to them, what right do they have to limit how much we talk to them?
Think they read them anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that they're all probably receiving thousands of e-mails asking them to reject the bailout, I doubt they're really doing much with them. I'd actually be surprised even you get the standard form-letter reply if they're so overwhelmed.
But I think the overall message is clear. It's not a cacophony, it's thousands of people singing the same message: reject the bailout or we'll reject you in a few weeks!
Ultimately, they're doing the worst possible thing right now, which is preserving the hope of a bailout. This leads to a further credit freeze, because banks won't sell their troubled assets at the (very low) market price because there's still the possibility that they'll be getting a much better price from Uncle Sam.
If you want to free up credit again, we really need one of the presidential candidates to stand up and say, "There will be no bailout." That will force banks to start doing transactions again. Some might go under, but that's OK. We just need to end this idea that a bailout might happen, because right now that uncertainty is what is preventing people from liquidating their assets.
--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation. [nerdkits.com]
Re:Think they read them anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to free up credit again, we really need one of the presidential candidates to stand up and say, "There will be no bailout." That will force banks to start doing transactions again. Some might go under, but that's OK. We just need to end this idea that a bailout might happen, because right now that uncertainty is what is preventing people from liquidating their assets.
There are at least 4 Presidential candidates that have stood up and said no to the bailouts (Nader, Baldwin, Barr and McKinney). They also called for the Federal Reserve to be audited. It is just too bad none of them are taken seriously.
I also find it funny that the FED pumped into the financial system almost $700 billion last week and $630 billion yesterday, yet the mainstream press focuses on the "bailout" bill as if that money is really going to do anything. The fact of the matter is the "bailout" bill goes far beyond giving out $700 billion. It is essentially making the treasury/FED a 4th branch of government.
Re:Think they read them anyway? (Score:3, Insightful)
I see this said often, as though the Federal Reserve system has never been audited before. It's audited anuually by the GAO and each reserve bank is audited by independent outside firms. So if this is apparently not sufficient, who is good enough to do the audit and how would their results be different from the results of the existing auditors if they both use generally accepted accounting guidelines?
Re:Think they read them anyway? (Score:3, Insightful)
If no one is willing to sell, is it really a market price?
Re:Think they read them anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's probably some noise from wall street types saying 'bail us out'. But, yeah, the bailout is completely ridiculous so the vast majority are against it. Aside from the companies that made bad investments and will go bankrupt (good), the thing the say they are worried about is liquidity drying up. Lets look at this by analogy... I think this is fairly accurate:
Say you have a $10,000 credit limit on your credit card. Due to the economy the company is concerned if you can repay, so they reduce your limit to $1,000. That's fine if you pay off your debt every month, but if you already have $6000 on it then you are completely screwed -- you have to pay $5k on your next month's bill, and you obviously don't have it.
So the Paulson plan is basically to buy off that $5k of debt so companies don't just go bankrupt right away.
Ok, well that's dumb because those companies are operating in the red anyway. They aren't healthy companies making profits, so they are just going to deficit spend again once some of their debt is lifted off. Instead, the lenders should rewrite the mortgages, either by the government leaning on them or by mandate... take the amount people owe on a mortgage and let them pay it over twice as many years, make it fixed rate, etc. Then the bailout can be paying lenders part of the difference.
Problem solved for homeowners (who eventually refinance into a shorter mortgage once prices come back), problem solved for banks, problem solved for everything derivative from mortgages.
Tell me where I'm wrong.
Yes, OK (Score:5, Informative)
A bank "going under" does not take all the depositors' money with it. If bankrupt, the bank is given time to reorganize and recover intact. If sold or taken over, assets, which include bank accounts, investments, and deposits, are sold to another company which will maintain the customers. There is also FDIC and other regulations in place to ensure you'll get your money back unless you did something stupid.
The days of "sorry, no money, we're closed" are gone (unless we suffer a vast & total meltdown of our economy, which is still far off).
Re:Yes, OK (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly... banks should be allowed to fail, just like any other business. The deposits are protected anyway.
I love the way they're trying to say that banks will stop lending money. That's how they *make* money - a debt to us is a credit to the bank - the more loans they have the more asseets they have to play around with (provided they're loans to people who can pay them back.. but if a bank is loaning to someone who can't pay they didn't do their due dilligence and deserve everything they get).
Re:Yes, OK (Score:3, Informative)
That's how they *make* money - a debt to us is a credit to the bank
I had to watch this video [google.com] twice, but once I did, I understood a lot more about what the bank does or does not have to have in its vault to be able to make loans. Very educational (assuming it's true).
Re:OK? (Score:3, Informative)
They do. Usually they shut down the bank on Friday night, and you have the money in a new bank account on Monday morning.
In the case of WaMu, they shut it down on Thursday night, and you had the money in a Chase account on Friday morning.
In the case of Wachovia, it was shut down on Monday morning, and you got your new account with Citi that very same morning.
In England, Bradford & Bingley was shut down on Sunday night, and the money was sitting in Abbey National ready to withdraw on Monday morning.
Be like McCain, phone it in. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Be like McCain, phone it in. (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the Congressmen I've called within the past week have gone to voicemail, which is full of course.
How lobbying works (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about how email lobbying works, but I've been involved in lobbying campaigns before. When you call a representative's office, you tell them you're for or against the bill in question and say which way you want them to vote on it. The operator say "OK, I'll let him know." They then count the number of people calling in on either side of the issue, and pass that info on to the representative. Of course you can't send bribes by phone, so whether or not this is effective is open to debate.
I think it's interesting that what is normally a dry subject is generating so much public interest. I'm glad to see the American public sitting up and taking notice of important things for a change instead of just vegetating in front of reality TV and celebrity gossip while politicians try to take money out of the public's pockets to cover their own failure to properly regulate the finance industry. Maybe there's hope for American democracy yet.
From the other side (Score:5, Informative)
I've been involved both in lobbying and in a Congressional (House) office (as an unpaid intern). Constituent contacts really do matter: a significant fraction of the staff's time is spent reading and distilling these letters for the Congress(wo)man. On this issue, the letters are nearly universally against the rescue package, which is the only reason Congress went against the opinions of the vast majority of economists (my favorite is Paul Krugman [nytimes.com]) to vote down this bill. If you think your voice doesn't matter to your Congressman, you're crazy, even though (s)he won't always agree.
I know this is hard to believe, but direct bribes don't work. Organizing large numbers of constituents to call/email a Congressman does often work, largely because it demonstrates that you could also organize voters to challenge the Congressman at the ballot box. (That kind of organization takes money, so if anyone wants to consider that a bribe, fine; I consider it democracy.) However, an office will get tens or hundreds of copies of the same form letter from large numbers of constituents; those identical letters count less (though not hugely less) than personally written letters or phone calls.
(As of 4 years ago, when I interned in DC, phone calls, emails, faxes, and snail-mail letters count equally, but snail-mail letters take multiple weeks to get to the DC office because of anthrax-related security. Letters from in-state but out-of-district are read but carry less weight than contacts from constituents and are unlikely to get a response; letters from out-of-state or without a name and mailing address go straight to the recycling bin.)
Re:How lobbying works (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been looking at it this way:
1. Banks screw over gullible subprime buyers with shit mortgages that they know can't be paid back.
2. Banks screw over other banks by selling those shit mortgages to them.
3. The top shareholders who know the true value of these shit mortgages get out while they're ahead and walk away billions of dollars richer because they know someone's going to notice this eventually.
4. The banks that stayed thought they could keep duping people indefinitely but were finally left with all these shit mortgages and their businesses begin to crumble.
5. The economy tanks as it notices that banks are failing because of the shit mortgages.
6. The banks tell the government, "Hey guys, we need round about $700 billion to stay alive or else your economy is going tank further. Nevermind that it was our fault, just fix it for us, mkay"
Now, here's what I take away from that:
If we do nothing, some more banks fail and the economy continues to dive and the average citizen takes a financial hit until the market bounces back, which it will eventually.
If we hand over a $700 billion check to the banks, they continue to operate and the economy *might* bounce back a little quicker. But--and here's the rub--that $700 billion comes from taxpayers like you and me. So we still take a hit. And who does this $700 billion go to? Rich Wall Street types so they can continue doing their business and keeping the profits in the end.
I don't know about you, but as an average citizen, I feel like I've gotten screwed either way. The latter way twice. Since I have a good mortgage and a good job at a privately-held company that's doing great, I would much rather see the country take a little bit more of an economic hit than reward a bunch of rich bastards for first screwing over poor would-be homeowners and then the world's economy.
Try back at a later time.... (Score:4, Funny)
Ummm yeah... (Score:3, Funny)
Phone calls always worked better.. (Score:3, Funny)
Besides do you really think they read the majority of mail they get?
I emailed a member of congress once... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I emailed a member of congress once... (Score:3, Interesting)
I e-mailed my state senator about a year ago regarding the tech tax that the state had just passed. I got a follow up call from the senator himself the following day on my cell phone. What was particularly notable was that the day of the follow up was Thanksgiving. They definitely care when they're contacted, especially about hot-button issues.
Patently Unconstitutional on its Face! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Financial bailout bill? (Score:3, Funny)
Give me $700 Billion ..... (Score:3, Funny)
... and I bet I could get the government some infrastructure that can handle the load
Another Simple Solution (Score:2, Insightful)