WebsterMark wrote on 08/20/12 at 13:22:10:


I have a wise poor guy as a friend and I constantly argue but still love another wise but chronically unemployed guy. I empathise with them, but - I would take a loan from the bank, however I wont trust the CEO of that same bank with anything important.

The system has been co opted and the banks are the only place to go to buy anything. In India I have seen my grandpa build a house a few bricks at a time. Every month a wall would go up, then came the doors then the windows etc. I would really like to live that way and in a way I am trying. If everyone had to buy with the $ they had, and not borrow for everything, you do know that things will be a lot cheaper right ?

I work for a bank, and have for the last 10 years. Seriously they are crooks who will rob you if you looked away for a second. That is the Executives not the people who "own the bank". The bank is owned by you and several other share holders. The executives are employees who think they deserve to make 20 million a year when they had a disastrous year.

The landmark event was when lehmann brothers failed. The market and the govt panicked. Goldman Sachs was about to lose billions.
My thought at that time was, every progressive failure will have had less and less and less impact. The govt could have stepped in at the end, and the whole bailout will have been so much cheaper.

Anyway remember this, home loans are given out from the pool of deposits in the bank, and eventually underwritten by the govt. CEO's raid that pool as well as the pool of "fees and fines" charged by the bank. I'd cap off those fools @ X 100 or heck even less than that compared to the average salary. Including non employees who work in the many arms and legs of these beasts.

People can follow their principles only when they have a choice. Banks have a tight grip on the happenings of the world and at this point they have taken govt help (all of them) that they cant even say they are independent any more, so your moral high ground falls on its face even if you are living "bank free" ...

Cool.
Srinath.

Personally, I don't consider our highway system a waste of money.
hope you're not thinking I consider our highway system a waste of money. I don't. I think it's a perfect example of demand creating supply.
in this case, the demand to move across the country created the supply, the highway system.

I am not implying the highway system was a waste of $, but you can pretty well imagine how deficit hawks had they lived in that day would have pointed to this ditch and this road and that exit as a big waste and how the president is wasting your $$$.
Cool.
Srinath.