Lincoln never said the war was about Slavery. He even said that he would have kept slavery if it could end the war. Is was always just his way of using force to prevent the States from exercising their Constitutional right to ignore unconstitutional laws/taxes.


Lincoln never said it but dont you think a big reason the south wanted to secede (?sp) was because they wanted to keep slaves?

IT always makes my head tilt when I hear people claim the civil war wasnt about slavery..it was certainly a HUGE part of the motivation.

Interesting that you would use a government sponsored agency to verify a government claim. This is such a conflict of interest, it would never make it past any competent editor.

It was NOT a huge part of the motivation. Try reading Lincoln himself, not to mention the Confederate politicians and writers at the time. If your head tilts, it is due solely to your ignorance of history. I've given you enough reading work in this thread that it should cure you of your ignorance. If that doesn't work, let me know and I'll find some more for you to read.

Ayn Rand Caused Our Financial Crisis.

"Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself especially, are in a state of shocked disbelief."

So said former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan in his dramatic testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, as he was grilled by committee members on the causes of the nation’s financial crisis. Greenspan, whose laissez-faire capitalist leanings led him to reject decades of calls for more robust government oversight of financial markets, was repeatedly interrupted by the lawmakers in a contentious exchange that clearly shows the gloves are off in regard to the former chairman’s legacy.

In his startling admission, the former head of the Federal Reserve reveals that his long-held and controversial notion that enlightened self-interest alone would prevent bankers, mortgage brokers, investment bankers and others from gaming the system for their own personal financial benefit has, as the English say, come a cropper.

Bankers ruled by anything other than greed?

Where did Greenspan ever get that idea?

Ayn Rand.

To readers of Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand’s 1957 magnum opus, Greenspan’s hands-off philosophy of marketplace management sounds very familiar. At its core, the book supports a radically utopian political-economic system called Objectivism, which suggests that the morality of rational self-interest, as opposed to religious or government intervention, should be the foundation of the ideal political structure.

According to a short description of Objectivism given by Ayn Rand in 1962, "The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism … In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church."

In other words, Ayn Rand’s theory of the "morality of self-interest" exactly parallels Alan Greenspan’s testimony today about his now-shaken belief in the ability of "self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder’s equity."

Early in his career, Alan was an avid Rand acolyte, a frequent guest at the Manhattan salon of the novelist and philosopher, and those who gathered to hear the litanies of like-minded notables were loosely known as "The Collective." It was there that the Rand philosophy of Objectivism was discussed in the context of current events, world markets and religion.

Today, 40 years after the heyday of those gatherings, Greenspan surprised many with his "Yes, I found a flaw" response to a grilling from the Committee. Responding to the clear failure of the notion of "enlightened self-interest" to stop the cascade of financial catastrophies that have roiled world markets, he said, "That is precisely the reason I was shocked, because I’d been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”

Greenspan’s critics have long charged that his refusal as Fed Chairman to impose greater government regulations on mortgage lenders is one of the causes of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown.

Committee Chairman Harry Waxman (D-CA), in a heated exchange told the former Fed Chairman that he had "the authority to prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. You were advised to do so by many others, and now our whole economy is paying the price.”

Oh heavenly, no need to be condescending. I am more than capable of FINDING reading material. The issue is which reading material one gives credit. IN a previous post you question the motives of PBS when it comes to reporting on government, yet the READING Material you suggest is usually books from independent authors whose OPINIONS match your own. That is what most people do, find the AUTHORS whose pov will match what they already believe. I find nothing wrong with that but please do not imply I must be ignorant if I do not agree.

By near everyone's account, the current financial/economic situation is rooted in the subprime mortgage issue.

Please refer to the Community Reinvestment Act

Please also refer to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack and their outright refusal to correct the lending and underwriting practices despite regulatory pleas to do so.

Please also refer to the "system being gamed" as being set up outside of the natural constraints of the capitalistic values. Otherwise, let me borrow $10,000 from you without any assurances whatsoever that I'll be able to pay that money back to you at all.

Please also refer to the 2004 Hearings in Congress where Democrats outright LIED about the situation with the Housing Market, sliming the OFEO and those in Congress as racists. They were told what was going on and the footstomping of Democrats in congress, doing their very best to make it a racial issue, put a halt to attempts to put the regulations neccessary to perhaps put the brakes on steps Republicans in Congress (and the Bush White House, I might add) were calling for!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

the Civil War (or as we call it The War of Northern Aggression) was only partly about slavery. Eli Whitney's cotton gin was already appearing on the plantations and its generally accepted that slavery would have died out in another twenty years or so regardless of the Civil War

The Civil War was mainly about the States Rights versus the Federal Government.

Even England and France supported and aided the South during the war

Greenspan Backs Obama Reform Effort


A keystone of Obama's Wall Street reform agenda is getting support from the unlikeliest of corners. Alan Greenspan, an acolyte of Ayn Rand and extreme free-marketeer, is backing one of the most far-reaching elements of the financial overhaul: the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

Greenspan told the Washington Post that pushing for the CFPA was "probably the right decision." Given the former Fed chairman's penchant for obliquity, the straight-forward endorsement takes on greater weight.

Wall Street and community bankers argue that the proposed agency will restrict financial innovation and otherwise inhibit economic growth. Those are the types of arguments that Greenspan was prone to make during his tenure as chairman, but the financial crisis has persuaded Greenspan that the "intellectual edifice" buttressing radical free-market ideology has, in his words, "collapsed."

Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), the lead backer of the CFPA in the House Financial Services Committee, recalled the Greenspan opposed consumer protections while he was chairman. "It's a dramatic turnaround from his public position and even more so, apparently, from what he was privately pushing within the deliberations at the Fed,".

Greenspan has acknowledged that the collapse has led to a crisis of faith. "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms," Greenspan said at a House hearing last October under questioning from Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).

"In other words," said Waxman, moving in for the kill, "you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working."

"Absolutely, precisely," said Greenspan. "You know, that's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well."

It's one thing to reject a failed ideology, but another altogether to embrace the kind of regulation represented by the CFPA. "He has already said that he erred in assuming that the market would take care of things--the Ayn Rand point of view--but this seems to go farther than he's gone before in calling for a new agency to protect consumers from financial products," said Miller.

I'd like everyone to parouse the following House Financial Services Committee collection of press releases. Committee Chairman Barney Frank was more interested in EXPANDING government subsidies for "Affordable Housing" and urging the President, ie George Bush, to drop his push for regulation on Fannie and Freddie than he was on focusing on the purpose of the committee he chairs, which is to keep an eye on the financial and housing.

http://financialservices.house.gov/press2004.html

Indeed in a letter from the Committee to the President, members write:

""Affordable housing is a critical issue for thousands of families across the country," said House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. "We call on the Bush Administration to work with us to find an appropriate balance for GSEs that includes both sound financial oversight and a vigorous affordable housing mission. One cannot come at the expense of the other.""

Well clearly, sound oversight came at the cost of promoting the Democrats' sacred cow / vote buying scheme otherwise known as "affordable housing"

I stand by the rest of the post that you didn't quote- DiLorenzo is a rightwing, League of the South nutjob with about zero peer review. You can believe what you like and express your opinion on here until the sun goes out, but it will still be only your opinion.

As for your reading list, I can find authors without agendas to counter any 'fact' the ones you read who share your agenda may spin.

As for the personal attack, you might want to read the TOU and the latest "Read before posting" note from the Admin.


-Kerry O.

That was not a personal attack. It was a criticism of your lack of scholarship and factual knowledge. There is a DRAMATIC differnece. I already read the TOU, thanks.

Further, DiLorenzo has been peer reviewed, FYI. He is a professor of Economics at Loyola College. He holds a PhD in economics from Virginia Tech. He is on the faculty at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute. Your criticisms hold no water.

Criticizing what you interpret as someone's lack of scholarship and knowledge is a personal attack.

From the latest "Must Read Before Posting":



I think it's pretty clear you went after the 'messenger'. Shall we let a mod decide if you went over the line?



Citations, please.



And once again, he is higher up in League of the South, whose mission statement doesn't exactly instill a lot of confidence in his impartialty.

Yanno, if this were a liberal professor who had written a book, we'd probably hear the same old conservative refrain how almost all college faculty are a bunch of statist liberals, yada, yada, and more yada. I have feeling it would get read no more than DiLorenzo's book (which, BTW, I couldn't find at Borders last night-- so much for a mainstream publication.)

Frankly, I have no need for a lession from DiLorenzo. I CLEPed the capitalism dealie from the trenches. To me, he's no different than uberhawk Newt Gingrich who loves to wax on and on and on about war, but never had the stones to put on the Green Suit. Just like Gingrich's work, it is PURE CONJECTURE.

BTW, you might want to re-check Rand's "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal". Re-read the chapter on Conservatism. Giving credit where credit is due, she sure nailed the movement, even back then.


-Kerry O.

Not in any legitimate debate society or organization. If pointing out ignorance and incorrect points is disallowed (known in formal debate as "point taking"), it renders debate pointless. If all you want is a useless organ of information/"infotainment" that may or may not be true, the MSM is more appropriate for you.

I hate when those bastards the CEOs get millions and millions in bonuses while their companies are struggling between death and life !!!. Another capitalism hole with no rules and no regulations to protect the investor and the public . The boards make their own rules and get away with anything and everything .

While i agree that it's sick when CEO's get their millions while their companies are falling, i disagree that it's due to lack of regulation.

This would not have been possible if the government hadn't protected these establishments from the market itself.

One need only look back to the Great Depression and the stock market crash of 1929, when short selling and buying stocks on margin caused major havoc in the financial system, to see that some regulation is a Good Thing(tm).

The public deserves a banking system that can be trusted with their savings, and the only way to build that trust is for the government to backstop it with the full faith and credit of the United States government. Such a backstop, however, creates the condition known as 'moral hazard', where unscrupulous or greedy people looking for ways to circumvent the regulations to game the system essentially make risky bets that they don't have to pay off when they lose.

If the damage was confined only to the people making these risky bets with THEIR OWN MONEY, I doubt anyone would be in favor of more regulation. But just as a complusive gambler can devastate a family, these people need to be reined in. They cause damage to the financial infustructure of the society that the free market can only exacerbate.

Regulation will always be a slippery slope proposition, but it beats chaos and the ruination that people who hide behind the 'free market' flag can cause if not restrained. Look behind that flag with critical eyes and you'll usually find rentseeking behaviour and monopolistic intent instead of innovation and prosperity for the many.

-Kerry O.

Since the free banking period of the US did not see any such crashes, your assertion is speculative at best. We also don't find such crashes and unsustainable booms in the periods before the dollar was removed from an objective measure (such as gold).

"One need only look back to the Great Depression and the stock market crash of 1929, when short selling and buying stocks on margin caused major havoc in the financial system, to see that some regulation is a Good Thing(tm)."

Your assertion here ignores a much larger crash that had occurred in years prior, but self-corrected. The '29 crash was so spectacular because of a number of factors.

Leading up to '29, there was a series of smaller boom/bust cycles-1819–1820, 1839–1843, 1857–1860, 1873–1878, 1893–1897, and 1920–1921. In each case, government had generated a boom through easy money and credit, which was soon followed by the inevitable bust.

The spectacular crash of 1929 followed five years of reckless credit expansion by the Federal Reserve System under the Coolidge administration. In 1924, after a sharp decline in business, the Reserve banks suddenly created some $500 million in new credit, which led to a bank credit expansion of over $4 billion in less than one year. While the immediate effects of this new powerful expansion of the nation's money and credit were seemingly beneficial, initiating a new economic boom and effacing the 1924 decline, the ultimate outcome was most disastrous. It was the beginning of a monetary policy that led to the stock-market crash in 1929 and the following depression.

I have a number of other statistics I can cite if you are interested.

I'm not. The flaw in yours and Ron Paul's plans is that the entire amount of gold ever mined is insufficient to back the amount of specie in circulation today in the U.S., let alone the whole world.

Besides, you took off on a wild tangent of the theme of my post, which was regulation and its role in curbing destructive human behaviour, in this case, the corrupting influence of easy money created without work. Work and productivity should be the only 'standard' currency, and by that measure, the American worker should be the most prosperous in the world because she is the most productive. When given a fair break, Yankee ingenuity is alive and well, thank you very much.

-Kerry O.

I used to think this as well.

But, this depends on the gold to dollar ratio. You can divide the total supply of gold infitesmally.

The really nifty thing about the gold standard is the fact that inflation, instead of working only for the politically connected, would work for the average person instead. As production increased, and the money supply stayed the same, Americans would temporarily be allowed to buy more products for their money, until their wages adjusted. Now, we have the opposite. Temporarily Americans are able to buy fewer products for their money, until their wages adjust.

But i, and Ron Paul, do agree the system isn't perfect. The only perfect system would be to allow the creation of money only when a product gets created. Unfortunately this is a nearly impossible feat as the U.S. government would have to keep track of virtually every product ever made. And this would provide that the printing of this money would never be taken over by a corrupt organization. You bring up a good point of productivity. This is a point many people miss when they talk about money.