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
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.
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.
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]
Be like McCain, phone it in. (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
Another Simple Solution (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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: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:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:2, Insightful)
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:2, Insightful)
You must be new here.
(BTW, I agree with you on principle, but certain opinions always get modded up or down, based on whether or not people agree with this opinions, and it has nothing to do with how the person presented those opinions. For instance, try suggesting that Windows is superior to Linux in every way, or that Apple sucks. See how you get modded.)
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: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: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:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:2, Insightful)
Quite right.
The idea here was that EVERYONE was supposed to get their ...you know, a bi-partisan sort of effort.
heads together and figure out a solution that EVERYONE
could live with...
There's probably enough blame to go around but NO ONE
should be feeling "proud" about any of these guys right
now. They were set to a task and failed to do it.
Ok, so the right answer isn't a "bail out". That doesn't
mean you end up at the end of the process with nothing
to show for it.
This was not the Texas Gerrymandering debacle.
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."
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:Think they read them anyway? (Score:3, Insightful)
If no one is willing to sell, is it really a market price?
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: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.
Well.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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: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: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:Yeah... (Score:2, Insightful)
1.) Those with the at risk mortgages realize that there is no way the congress wants to accept the negative press associated with them actually foreclosing on properties in serious default and continue missing monthly payments.
Or 2.) The market recovering and congress using the return on their investment to grow government even more, becoming even more intrusive in areas which do not concern them.
1.) Causes economic collapse and triggers a global depression. 2.) Would have a positive impact in the short term but the larger size of government could not be sustained causing the budget problems we see now to be compounded many times over.
Of course there is always a small chance that they buy the paper, tighten their belts and balance the budget in the short term, recoup their investment and then some, and use that windfall to pay down the ballooning national debt. Kinda like the chances of a spontaneous rectal-simian ballistic ejection.
Re:Crashed servers send their own message (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean, I can understand why you'd use fewer exchange servers than you probably should for budgeting reasons or some such, but I'd imagine the federal gov't has more than enough money to implement MS Best Practices.
Even if you were running the best/fastest/greatest/ZOMGLinux mail server out there, if you built it to handle a quota that is getting exceeded, it will fail, given enough excess.
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!!
Re:Think they read them anyway? (Score:2, Insightful)
I am 25. I have tons of friends who are my age and younger who have never owned, and had almost no hope of owning until now. Why are you trying to inflate the money supply at the expense of everyone just so YOU can retain the falsely inflated value of your home and 401K? You scumbag.
Congressman generally Do respond (Score:1, Insightful)
I am not particularly pro-politician, but it has been my experience that when the constituents make the effort to send a letter or email to their congressmen, they will receive a response.
In most cases the response may be written by an employee of the congressman, but the answer comes from them at some level.
In this bailout vote, almost all of the politicians who were in jeopardy of losing their seat because of the upcoming election listened to the messages as whole, and voted against this crazy bailout; although it was for reasons of self-preservation, instead of public interest.
Sure, their email system is not capable of handling mass emails from the 300,000,000 people in the U.S. that are pissed off about the proposed bailout, but seriously... how many systems could handle even 50% of that kind of traffic?
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, 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: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.
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.
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.
Another channel: Facebook (Score:2, Insightful)
We've got a list-in-progress of politicians pages here on our wiki [wetpaint.com] ... other links (and formatting cleanup) greatly appreciated.
jon
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.
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:The financial crisis is deliberate corruption. (Score:2, Insightful)
Except for the fact that the current crisis has little to do with deregulations or Haliburton and Oil and everything to do with the feds need to impose their will on the free markets, you're right on; oh wait that was your entire argument.
This mess was started with the CRA which was passed under Carter and made worse through the various programs that allowed Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to effectively rewrite the lending rules all on their own. Instead of people receiving loans based on their ability to repay, pressure was placed on banks to give loans based on race and financial status (and not in a good way).
CRA scores were used to prevent banks from expanding or merging making it almost a business requirement to give out loans to poorer or minority apllicants in order to get your score to an 'acceptable' level. ACORN was one of the leaders in applying this type of pressure. In fact, training the very people who helped make this a problem was one of Obama's 'community organizer' jobs (google Madeline Talbott).
Added to that was the gov't, through Freddie and Fannie, creating a market for what was essentially bad paper, by buying everything they could in order to raise homeownership rates (a policy started under Clinton but continued through Bush). A nice idea but not a very economically sound one.
Of course, for the past 8 years every time legislation for any oversight or any type of controls over Freddie and Fannie's out of control spending was raised (by Senate and House Republican's including John McCain and even the President) with this very problem being predicted, house Democrats killed the bills and claimed everything was good. That may have something to do with the excessive amounts of donations made to them from Freddie and Fannie employees and PACs or it may have to do with the fact that most Freddie and Fannie execs just happen to be Democrats.
And for the record, Haliburton has always received no-bid contracts, even under the Clinton administration. It has something to do with the fact they are one of only a very small number of companies in the world capable of providing the special services they do; in some situations they are the only company. That's not to say it's a good or bad policy, just that it's a fact. Sometimes the government needs something done quickly and spending 6-12 months running through the standard procedures just doesn't work.
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
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: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: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: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: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: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
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: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, 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:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:1, Insightful)
For those of us who aren't fucking retards, and know how to live within our means, the necessary credit crunch at the end of a credit bubble is of little consequence.
That is, unless all you whining fuckers that don't know how to manage money finagle the government into taxing those of us who were responsible to cover your ass.
This is getting resolved by market forces. All you idiots that made bad choices, bad investments, promised money you don't have and have no way of ever paying back, are getting exactly what you fucking deserve for all your damn lies.
You do not deserve the house you cannot afford. You do not deserve item you have to buy with a loan. You deserve to get a fucking job, save your money, and buy what you can with what you fucking have.
I do not deserve to pay for your irresponsible, me-first, entitlement attitude.
I for one, welcome some deflation. I have nothing to loose and everything to gain from it. And yes, I know what it entails. The magic trick my single-income family performs on a monthly basis is that we can subsist on less than -half- of my TAKE HOME pay.
And So to you, and all the dumbshits living in debt, I extend a hearty FUCK OFF.
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
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: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.