5 ms·

Disillusioned in Davos

35 points by jackgavigan 10y ago

ktRolster 10y ago
I am disturbed by (i) the spectacle of financiers who three months ago were telling anyone who would listen that they would never do business with a Trump company rushing to praise the new Administration He is surprised that bankers are in a hurry to put themselves in a position to make money?
- atmosx 10y ago
  Yeah, he had no clue that bankers are greedy, that's why he pushed the Glass-Steagall Act, but suddenly he became enlighten. Well good for him, didn't work out for tax payers, apparently. I wouldn't worry though, the market will regulate itself and if it doesn't, there's always tax payer money just around the corner, all financial institutions have to do is make sure they're on the right side of the tide (e.g. not Lehman, but Goldman).
  - ktRolster 10y ago
    Banking seems like an industry that is super ripe for disruption. A problem seems to be that it's based on trust (do I trust this person enough to loan them money), and once it is based on trust, that trust will be abused.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - leereeves 10y ago
      Disruption can be the problem. For example: mortgage backed securities and other innovations were a huge disruption to the traditionally boring banking business.
      - yummyfajitas 10y ago
        What's the problem with mortgage backed securities?
        leereeves 10y ago
        The 2008 financial crisis.
        yummyfajitas 10y ago
        I'm confused; mortgages have been securitized since 1968 and MBS have been common since the 80's. How did they cause a financial crisis 40 years later, and why did it take so long?
        aangjie 10y ago
        Maybe he meant CDOs or was it CDSs? It is harder to keep track of each new order of difference instruments that were built off mortgage. I wasn't aware of when mortgages were securitized, so I assumed that was true. Nevertheless, I think the point I made in my previous comment is true.
        leereeves 10y ago
        More specifically: subprime MBSs (and CDOs) Failure to rate them properly (giving them AAA ratings) led governments, banks, pension funds, insurance companies and other "safe" investors to invest vast sums, making that money available for subprime lending, leading to poor (nearly nonexistent) lending standards and the housing bubble, and when the bubble burst, forcing the government to eat private losses to prevent financial ruin.
        yummyfajitas 10y ago
        Why do you believe that in the absence of MBS, a failure to properly rate home loans would have let to a different result?
  - candiodari 10y ago
    I don't get it, if this is your opinion and this matters to you, you must truly hate Obama. Trump hasn't done anything yet, and what he has said is that he'll normalize interest rates and get banks back (closer to) fair dealing. Obama's government, for his entire term, kept injecting 0% loans into banks. Again, and again, uh-oh, "taper tantrum", even more, and again, and again, and again, and again. That wasn't enough, of course, Obama, in order to stop the still bleeding banks, he also made it far, far easier for Wall Street to "invest" in far undervalued real estate, which they gladly did of course, and made huge profits on. And half of middle America is paying 2-3 times (yes, times) the rent they'd otherwise would be paying as a result. And while Obama may not have created the debt slavery of student loans (which is what undischargeable loans were considered since the beginning of the modern era until, apparently, 2005), man did he expand it. It is a truly incredible amount if you look at it, the amount Obama discharged it by. Are we so sure that market self-regulation, which has flaws, is going to be worse than Obama's government regulating the banks every move, and giving them more and more, and then even more money every time a regulation even slightly misses it's purpose, which is very often ? And what did he use the government's percentage of all this extra money for ? Well to finance 2 wars and various skirmishes around the globe. "Surprisingly" this lead to an acceleration of income inequality in the US. We don't know this for sure, but from history we know that the odds far exceed 99.9% that all this money was malinvested, and has not in fact made life in the US better. I mean, we're not 100% sure of course, but come on. Put another way, if this is the debt acceleration that resulted in wise investments, then people 50.000 years from now will be learning in kindergarden how smart not just Obama, but all of America was during this period. But ... that's not the case, and this money was mishandled, wasted and outright lost, I'm sure, in at least some cases. So very soon we'll be penning in the 3rd very surprising massive crash of the economy in the computer age into the history books. Obamacare is not financially viable. Sorry to point out the obvious, but it didn't matter who was elected. Hillary was going to repeal Obamacare as well. I realize this goes against public perception and her promises (except when she was speaking to wall street), but aside from the fact that it's a necessity, there were democrat-leaning press articles about it for the past year and a half. Yes she would probably have masked it and distorted the change, but it just can't survive. You'd think liberals would have issues with this guy. But he's really eloquent. And I have to say, he is. I really admire this about Obama. Of course comparing him with Republican candidates one might point out that he usually successfully finishes sentences successfully, very much unlike republican presidents. Also, compared to other democrats he's great. Clinton is passable (his wife is a better speaker in my opinion, but nowhere near as good as Obama). But even viewed by himself he is a great orator. I actually enjoy listening to his speeches even when I've just spent hours researching how the information in them is (partially) misleading. But boy, he can pick the one positive statistic out of a sea of bad news and make you feel good about the country and the world. Man, do I want this guy to help me run a company. He is also a very open and direct symbol of the values of America. Equality for one. He is black. Equality in other ways : he was certainly not part of the establishment of American politics, he was a small-time community organizer from Chicago ... and it is actually possible to grow from that into president. Wow ! Well done ! Again something very admirable. I would like to stand by what Hillary said after the election about Obama "boy, will we miss him. Boy, for the next 4 years will we miss him". I will. Very sorry to see you go, Obama. America's standing in the world got serious bonus points just because of you and that was great ! But when it comes to what he's achieved ... I have to say, I'm not happy. Not happy at all.
- edblarney 10y ago
  "He is surprised that bankers are in a hurry to put themselves in a position to make money?" It's not just bankers, it's almost every kind of business and political entity. Moreover, we shouldn't be so cynical. They are the government that the people elected, and it's time to move forward. They have already shown themselves to be not particularly ideological on many issues, and willing to work on a lot of stuff. Clearly, there will be boundaries and hopeless causes, but it'd be unwise to push arbitrary antagonism. Example: the Affordable Healthcare Act will be repealed, which is sad, but you know, it was far from perfect, and the current administration if very sensitive to the optics of 'taking away people's healthcare' - and some of the limited proposals have some positive elements, such as 'buying across state lines' (I know that one is complicated ...). Obviously, if you're in the business of stopping CO2 emissions, it's going to be painful, but on many fronts, there's opportunity for progress, even if you don't like the new government.
gorbachev 10y ago
"the unwillingness of business leaders who rightly take pride in their corporate efforts to promote women and minorities to say anything about Presidentially sanctioned intolerance" Remember this when Silicon Valley leaders lick his boots.
leereeves 10y ago
> Businesses who get on the wrong side of the new President have lost billions of dollars of value in sixty seconds because of a tweet. #fakenews? The story linked from that remark is about the cost of the F-35, with no mention of a personal vendetta ("getting on the wrong side of the new President").
drinkjuice 10y ago
> It is a lesson of human experience whether the issue is playground bullying, Enron or Europe in the 1930s that the worst outcomes occur when good people find reasons to accommodate themselves to what they know is wrong. Hannah Arendt mentioned something like this in an interview, how many of the intellectual friends (or maybe rather acquaintances; intellectuals, anyway) she had had in Germany were very apt at coming up with all sorts of "high minded" things about Hitler. You know, cutesy salon talk, theories, predictions. She found this grotesque, obviously. I am often reminded of this when reading HN. And frankly, I find this circus about Trump mostly circus. I mean, what is the difference between him and other presidents or people who ran? That he is openly gross? That he doesn't sugar coat me-first fascism? That he makes the underbelly visible? You know what's worse than talking shit about women or foreigners? Killing them in the thousands and millions. But oh boy, just nobody say "pussy", nobody be a racist, and of course, nobody call anyone a Nazi or something. America, the country where it's leadership this and excellence that, with glorification of the military as bookends. Where people excuse pushing for putting the whole of humanity into a little glass bottle and smashing it on a rock with the fact that this or that isn't unleashed on Americans, or not on Americans yet, or to lesser degree, yet. This becomes even more obvious when some people do what they consider making a moral point. Like that Streep Oscar acceptance speech. All that compassionate work Hollywood is doing, awww. Are those baby shoes, or is that really the best you've got? Even the post by Summers essentially boils down to: > It is to enabling if not encouraging immoral and reckless policies in other spheres that ultimately bear on our prosperity. If that is your main concern, I'm not impressed. If your problem is that you might get put in a train cart, and not that others have already been put in one and tortured to death at their destination, while their murderers still show off the gold they extracted from their teeth at gala dinners, you are not measurably better, not compared to others. You're the front organization, compared to which the more radical inner circle can consider itself more hardcore, you're the fake representation of an outer world, to steal another thought from Arendt which I do think applies. And it's a bit like using terrorism or pedophiles to push totalitarianism -- how could anyone criticize that? How could anyone criticize people criticizing Trump for being racist or whatever? Well, they're the good cop to the bad cop, made more effective by having no clue that's what they are. They mean well, which makes it more important to insist on the point. Good luck I guess.
MrQuincle 10y ago
I don't think it's the job of foreign leaders to tell the American people that they elected an individual with certain character traits or history. There are many foreign leaders who are not as nice, benign as we would hope they would be. The extreme action would be an intervention. This will only be done if 90% of the US population is suffering and asking for help. Even if there would be camps where people would be murdered, the world will not interfere. An isolationist policy very likely allows the rest of the world to refocus. By making the US less dependent on the world, the world will become less dependent on the US. The ties between Europe and Asia will become stronger and I'm curious what that will bring.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
  I dont believe he's referring ti fireign leaders as much as he's referring ti American bankers and business leaders.
MrQuincle 10y ago
I don't think it's the job of foreign leaders to tell the American people that they elected an individual with certain character traits or history. There are many foreign leaders who are not as nice, benign as we would hope they would be. The extreme action would be an intervention. This will only be done if 90% of the US population is suffering and asking for help. Even if there would be camps where people would be murdered, the world will not interfere. An isolationist policy very likely allows the rest of the world to refocus. By making the US less dependent on the world, the world will become less dependent on the US. The ties between Europe and Asia will become stronger and I'm curious what that will bring.

35 points by jackgavigan 10y ago

I am disturbed by (i) the spectacle of financiers who three months ago were telling anyone who would listen that they would never do business with a Trump company rushing to praise the new Administration He is surprised that bankers are in a hurry to put themselves in a position to make money?

atmosx 10y ago
Yeah, he had no clue that bankers are greedy, that's why he pushed the Glass-Steagall Act, but suddenly he became enlighten. Well good for him, didn't work out for tax payers, apparently. I wouldn't worry though, the market will regulate itself and if it doesn't, there's always tax payer money just around the corner, all financial institutions have to do is make sure they're on the right side of the tide (e.g. not Lehman, but Goldman).
- ktRolster 10y ago
  Banking seems like an industry that is super ripe for disruption. A problem seems to be that it's based on trust (do I trust this person enough to loan them money), and once it is based on trust, that trust will be abused.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - leereeves 10y ago
    Disruption can be the problem. For example: mortgage backed securities and other innovations were a huge disruption to the traditionally boring banking business.
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      What's the problem with mortgage backed securities?
      - leereeves 10y ago
        The 2008 financial crisis.
        yummyfajitas 10y ago
        I'm confused; mortgages have been securitized since 1968 and MBS have been common since the 80's. How did they cause a financial crisis 40 years later, and why did it take so long?
        aangjie 10y ago
        Maybe he meant CDOs or was it CDSs? It is harder to keep track of each new order of difference instruments that were built off mortgage. I wasn't aware of when mortgages were securitized, so I assumed that was true. Nevertheless, I think the point I made in my previous comment is true.
        leereeves 10y ago
        More specifically: subprime MBSs (and CDOs) Failure to rate them properly (giving them AAA ratings) led governments, banks, pension funds, insurance companies and other "safe" investors to invest vast sums, making that money available for subprime lending, leading to poor (nearly nonexistent) lending standards and the housing bubble, and when the bubble burst, forcing the government to eat private losses to prevent financial ruin.
        yummyfajitas 10y ago
        Why do you believe that in the absence of MBS, a failure to properly rate home loans would have let to a different result?
- candiodari 10y ago
  I don't get it, if this is your opinion and this matters to you, you must truly hate Obama. Trump hasn't done anything yet, and what he has said is that he'll normalize interest rates and get banks back (closer to) fair dealing. Obama's government, for his entire term, kept injecting 0% loans into banks. Again, and again, uh-oh, "taper tantrum", even more, and again, and again, and again, and again. That wasn't enough, of course, Obama, in order to stop the still bleeding banks, he also made it far, far easier for Wall Street to "invest" in far undervalued real estate, which they gladly did of course, and made huge profits on. And half of middle America is paying 2-3 times (yes, times) the rent they'd otherwise would be paying as a result. And while Obama may not have created the debt slavery of student loans (which is what undischargeable loans were considered since the beginning of the modern era until, apparently, 2005), man did he expand it. It is a truly incredible amount if you look at it, the amount Obama discharged it by. Are we so sure that market self-regulation, which has flaws, is going to be worse than Obama's government regulating the banks every move, and giving them more and more, and then even more money every time a regulation even slightly misses it's purpose, which is very often ? And what did he use the government's percentage of all this extra money for ? Well to finance 2 wars and various skirmishes around the globe. "Surprisingly" this lead to an acceleration of income inequality in the US. We don't know this for sure, but from history we know that the odds far exceed 99.9% that all this money was malinvested, and has not in fact made life in the US better. I mean, we're not 100% sure of course, but come on. Put another way, if this is the debt acceleration that resulted in wise investments, then people 50.000 years from now will be learning in kindergarden how smart not just Obama, but all of America was during this period. But ... that's not the case, and this money was mishandled, wasted and outright lost, I'm sure, in at least some cases. So very soon we'll be penning in the 3rd very surprising massive crash of the economy in the computer age into the history books. Obamacare is not financially viable. Sorry to point out the obvious, but it didn't matter who was elected. Hillary was going to repeal Obamacare as well. I realize this goes against public perception and her promises (except when she was speaking to wall street), but aside from the fact that it's a necessity, there were democrat-leaning press articles about it for the past year and a half. Yes she would probably have masked it and distorted the change, but it just can't survive. You'd think liberals would have issues with this guy. But he's really eloquent. And I have to say, he is. I really admire this about Obama. Of course comparing him with Republican candidates one might point out that he usually successfully finishes sentences successfully, very much unlike republican presidents. Also, compared to other democrats he's great. Clinton is passable (his wife is a better speaker in my opinion, but nowhere near as good as Obama). But even viewed by himself he is a great orator. I actually enjoy listening to his speeches even when I've just spent hours researching how the information in them is (partially) misleading. But boy, he can pick the one positive statistic out of a sea of bad news and make you feel good about the country and the world. Man, do I want this guy to help me run a company. He is also a very open and direct symbol of the values of America. Equality for one. He is black. Equality in other ways : he was certainly not part of the establishment of American politics, he was a small-time community organizer from Chicago ... and it is actually possible to grow from that into president. Wow ! Well done ! Again something very admirable. I would like to stand by what Hillary said after the election about Obama "boy, will we miss him. Boy, for the next 4 years will we miss him". I will. Very sorry to see you go, Obama. America's standing in the world got serious bonus points just because of you and that was great ! But when it comes to what he's achieved ... I have to say, I'm not happy. Not happy at all.
edblarney 10y ago
"He is surprised that bankers are in a hurry to put themselves in a position to make money?" It's not just bankers, it's almost every kind of business and political entity. Moreover, we shouldn't be so cynical. They are the government that the people elected, and it's time to move forward. They have already shown themselves to be not particularly ideological on many issues, and willing to work on a lot of stuff. Clearly, there will be boundaries and hopeless causes, but it'd be unwise to push arbitrary antagonism. Example: the Affordable Healthcare Act will be repealed, which is sad, but you know, it was far from perfect, and the current administration if very sensitive to the optics of 'taking away people's healthcare' - and some of the limited proposals have some positive elements, such as 'buying across state lines' (I know that one is complicated ...). Obviously, if you're in the business of stopping CO2 emissions, it's going to be painful, but on many fronts, there's opportunity for progress, even if you don't like the new government.

gorbachev 10y ago

"the unwillingness of business leaders who rightly take pride in their corporate efforts to promote women and minorities to say anything about Presidentially sanctioned intolerance" Remember this when Silicon Valley leaders lick his boots.

leereeves 10y ago

> Businesses who get on the wrong side of the new President have lost billions of dollars of value in sixty seconds because of a tweet. #fakenews? The story linked from that remark is about the cost of the F-35, with no mention of a personal vendetta ("getting on the wrong side of the new President").

drinkjuice 10y ago

> It is a lesson of human experience whether the issue is playground bullying, Enron or Europe in the 1930s that the worst outcomes occur when good people find reasons to accommodate themselves to what they know is wrong. Hannah Arendt mentioned something like this in an interview, how many of the intellectual friends (or maybe rather acquaintances; intellectuals, anyway) she had had in Germany were very apt at coming up with all sorts of "high minded" things about Hitler. You know, cutesy salon talk, theories, predictions. She found this grotesque, obviously. I am often reminded of this when reading HN. And frankly, I find this circus about Trump mostly circus. I mean, what is the difference between him and other presidents or people who ran? That he is openly gross? That he doesn't sugar coat me-first fascism? That he makes the underbelly visible? You know what's worse than talking shit about women or foreigners? Killing them in the thousands and millions. But oh boy, just nobody say "pussy", nobody be a racist, and of course, nobody call anyone a Nazi or something. America, the country where it's leadership this and excellence that, with glorification of the military as bookends. Where people excuse pushing for putting the whole of humanity into a little glass bottle and smashing it on a rock with the fact that this or that isn't unleashed on Americans, or not on Americans yet, or to lesser degree, yet. This becomes even more obvious when some people do what they consider making a moral point. Like that Streep Oscar acceptance speech. All that compassionate work Hollywood is doing, awww. Are those baby shoes, or is that really the best you've got? Even the post by Summers essentially boils down to: > It is to enabling if not encouraging immoral and reckless policies in other spheres that ultimately bear on our prosperity. If that is your main concern, I'm not impressed. If your problem is that you might get put in a train cart, and not that others have already been put in one and tortured to death at their destination, while their murderers still show off the gold they extracted from their teeth at gala dinners, you are not measurably better, not compared to others. You're the front organization, compared to which the more radical inner circle can consider itself more hardcore, you're the fake representation of an outer world, to steal another thought from Arendt which I do think applies. And it's a bit like using terrorism or pedophiles to push totalitarianism -- how could anyone criticize that? How could anyone criticize people criticizing Trump for being racist or whatever? Well, they're the good cop to the bad cop, made more effective by having no clue that's what they are. They mean well, which makes it more important to insist on the point. Good luck I guess.

MrQuincle 10y ago

I don't think it's the job of foreign leaders to tell the American people that they elected an individual with certain character traits or history. There are many foreign leaders who are not as nice, benign as we would hope they would be. The extreme action would be an intervention. This will only be done if 90% of the US population is suffering and asking for help. Even if there would be camps where people would be murdered, the world will not interfere. An isolationist policy very likely allows the rest of the world to refocus. By making the US less dependent on the world, the world will become less dependent on the US. The ties between Europe and Asia will become stronger and I'm curious what that will bring.

FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
I dont believe he's referring ti fireign leaders as much as he's referring ti American bankers and business leaders.

MrQuincle 10y ago