I present to you, the new Healthcare plan!!

Fannie and Freddie's biggest supporters have been Democrats. Bush introduced legislation to get a better hold on things in 2003 ... but who likes a party pooper? Essentially no one supported it and it died quietly.

I wouldn't say Clinton was a principle in the collapse, but it was liberal thinking that government can provide something to people even though they haven't earned it that was the heart of the problem. Bad loans were the seeds the bankers subsequently used ... making risky financial instruments even riskier. Everyone involved was enjoying the party but then everything went kablooey and took out the credit markets.

Every time something gets better and cheaper, it's the private sector that does it. People shopping for the best service at the best price drives prices down. Top-down government planning is as bad as a private sector monopoly ... rife with inefficiency and corruption. Quality is poor and prices go sky-high. Cost containment invariably involves rationing ... which increases mortality rates.
 
I think it has more to do with being able to make money off nothing that was the problem.
These guys who sell the loans to people for housing aren't even bankers, they're salesmen. They get paid according to how many loans they can sell. Just how is that supposed to bring about any sort of responsible loan policy?
This was an article written in 2005 about such an individual:
http://www.realestatejournal.com/buysell/mortgages/20050721-anders.html
It just shows you what kind of person sells these loans and how. And it was written before the crisis hit. You be the judge of how this is responsible lending.

Bror, have you even been understanding what I'm getting at?
And no, what you say is not necessarily true. It is true when there is a lot of competition and the supply outstrips the demand. But when demand far exceeds the supply, the scarcity of the product compells companies to in fact drive prices up and the quality down. That's why a government alternative is important, because it gives a limit as to how bad the quality to price ratio can be for the private sector.

An example would be Microsoft which charges OUTRAGEOUS prices on its products because it practically monopolizes the market. I just hope that an alternative OS can be successful. I don't use Microsoft Office if I can help it, rather I use Open Office. Yes, it's produced by Sun Microsystems, but a government funded project for a free Office Software could have also been successful and could have given small businesses a great alternative to the overpriced Microsoft Office. Whereas these kinds of free software depend on a company to suddenly pump out something for one reason or another, government funding for free alternatives or cheap alternatives for things people use every day can work well as well. Do I expect this government funded software to be better than Microsoft Office? Hell no. But if Microsoft Office's price is hiked far too high, I would have a decent alternative to turn to which is free.

Another example would be the privatization of water in Bolivia:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050214/shultz
"In Cochabamba five years ago, the water contract with Bechtel and the Abengoa Corporation of Spain paved the way for rate increases of double and more for poor water users.Those steep and sudden price hikes, needed in part to finance the 16 percent annual profit demanded by the companies, led to citywide protests and eventually to Bechtel's and Abengoa's ouster.The Bolivian government declared martial law in an effort to save the companies' contract, leaving one teenage boy dead and more than 100 people wounded."
It was a major World Bank **** up and showed what happens when the most basic needs are controlled by a for profit business.

Do I think that everything should be government planned? Hell no. The government is not that smart and like you said, it is inefficient and quite wasteful (again, for the reasons I explained earlier). But it is stable, gives people more options (if used with along with the private sector, not as a replacement of it) and certainly keeps private companies from conducting ridiculous price hikes.
 
Yes Redneck, I understand what you are saying. The archetype of the individual who invents complicated and esoteric investment instruments as a legal scam is nothing new. A form of this was all the buzz in the 80s ... see Mikchael Milken and his "junk" bonds. This is a newer form of the same financial trend. And I agree that they are largely to blame ... as do most people ... and derivative reform is already being worked on.

But if it were not for these sub-prime loans, you would not have the collapse and the lack of confidence to the extent we have now where no one trusts their balance sheet because the "bad" loans were mislabeled as "good" ones by the people repackaging these loans. If there were no bad loans ... the subprime mortgages - Courtesy of the Community Reinvestment Act ... repackged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ... this would not be any where near the problem it is today. If the banks hadn't bowed to pressure by the government to make these bad loans, the derivative failures would have been a very limited problem.

I agree with you about monopolies ... and hate MicroSith Corporation. Vista is the answer to a question nobody asked ("How can I get a busy operating that is more confusing to navigate and eats up 25% of my RAM?") and Word and Excel are getting increasingly gimmicky and harder to use to produce basic work.

As far as competition, some competition is better than no competition. Personal health savings accounts would encourage people to shop around for basic health care ... and drive prices down. What government run health care will be is a government run monopoly ... the worst of both worlds.

The Bolivia example looks like they turned over the system to one private company ... making it a government created monopoly. Also compettion won't work unless it's real competition ... free from cartels and price fixing. In the case of simple, fungible products like water and electricity, if you can't have true competition, it's best to have a government regulated utility with as much openess as possible ... make salaries, management stock disclosures, etc ... public knowledge. And make the rate package subject to approval by state/county/regional legislators.

In New York State's experiences in the past 15 years, we have shut down operations such as bakeries and office supply warehouses because it was much cheaper to order these supplies from private vendors ... even after their profits are added into the equation.
 
Demand would have been less if the financial loan standards hadn't been forced down by Clinton. Businesses exist to make profits & some decided the high risk/high profit was worth it. They should have been left to crash & burn, though.
 
mmarsh said:
They did actually when Medicare and Medicade were first designed under FDR, they were very good programs. Unfortunately all programs need to be updated every few decades or so, and while Social Security was revised under Nixon Medicare and Medicade never were which is why they are falling apart.

So these were great programs, only that they are in need of a massive overhaul.
Click to expand...

I have a feeling that it won't take as long to screw this one up as it took the other ones.
 
mmarsh said:
They did actually when Medicare and Medicade were first designed under FDR, they were very good programs. Unfortunately all programs need to be updated every few decades or so, and while Social Security was revised under Nixon Medicare and Medicade never were which is why they are falling apart.

So these were great programs, only that they are in need of a massive overhaul.
Click to expand...

"The Medicare and Medicaid programs were signed into law on July 30, 1965. President LBJ is pictured at the signing ceremony in Independence, Missouri at the Truman Library. Former President Truman is seated beside him. LBJ held the ceremony there to honor President Truman's leadership on health insurance, which he first proposed in 1945.".....

"The most significant legislative change to Medicare--called the Medicare Modernization Act or MMA--was signed into law by another President from Texas, George W. Bush, on December 8, 2003. This historic legislation adds an outpatient prescription drug benefit to Medicare and makes many other important changes."

Source: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/History/

Hopefully President Obama's Plan incorporates Medicare and Medicaid rather than reinventing the wheel.
 
Obama's former personal doctor comes out in opposition to ObamaCare, sighting the mess that Medicare is. If the Govt can't handle that, they certainly can't handle anything bigger.
 
Chukpike said:
"The Medicare and Medicaid programs were signed into law on July 30, 1965. President LBJ is pictured at the signing ceremony in Independence, Missouri at the Truman Library. Former President Truman is seated beside him. LBJ held the ceremony there to honor President Truman's leadership on health insurance, which he first proposed in 1945.".....

"The most significant legislative change to Medicare--called the Medicare Modernization Act or MMA--was signed into law by another President from Texas, George W. Bush, on December 8, 2003. This historic legislation adds an outpatient prescription drug benefit to Medicare and makes many other important changes."

Source: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/History/

Hopefully President Obama's Plan incorporates Medicare and Medicaid rather than reinventing the wheel.
Click to expand...


Something tells me that this health care plan might flatten the wheel we already have.
 
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