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Not exactly. I happen to work for a bank. My employer was minimally directly effected by the housing market crash, but due to the intermingling that comprises

Not exactly. I happen to work for a bank. My employer was minimally directly effected by the housing market crash, but due to the intermingling that comprises the financial industry everybody was seriously hurt indirectly. They were forced to purchase, by the federal government, a major stock brokerage that was in serious trouble for pennies on the dollar and assume all their troubled assets. > Representative government" seems fine until one looks more closely at who is actually represented. When looking at current politics I find your statement incredibly strange. I used to think the Republican Party represented the wealthy and special interests (certain business interests as both major parties have their special interest priorities). That was years ago when they were the stronger and more dominant of the two US major parties, back when they had values and weren’t so hypocritical about them. But now they seemed to have strangely thrown away dominance for a failed bet on populism to energize some new core constituents to the disgust of everyone else. I have trouble finding who is actually represented by that, but then I guess a lot of people have that trouble which explains that parties atrophy.

jessaustin 5y ago
Were you working for the same bank 14 years ago? That would be an impressive sort of consistency. I think maybe not, however, because if you had been there your two-sentence synopsis wouldn't be quite so muddled. Did your bank hold assets the book values of which decreased in response to the events of 2007-8, or did its liabilities increase unexpectedly for the same reason? In that case, your bank was hurt directly. Otherwise, it wasn't hurt. Has anyone ever had to be "forced" to purchase anything for "pennies on the dollar"? Usually we are eager to purchase at 90% discounts. It's almost as if the story your bank tells its new employees is modeled after the story we all got. IME, when bankers don't make sense, they're lying. Over most of USA history, both parties active at any particular time serve the interests of capital. There are occasional exceptions (e.g. FDR), but now is not such an exception. It's silly to emphasize the difference between parties, but if we must do so the past two decades in which control of Congress and the presidency has passed back and forth are something of an anomaly. Before Bush the Lesser, the last time Republicans were in any sense "dominant" was under Hoover. The Democrats held the House for twenty consecutive Congressional sessions. If the stories you've been told, about your bank or about the USA political system or about anything else, don't make sense, then consider the possibility that those stories simply aren't true.
- austincheney 5y ago
  Very many of the non developer employees were there 14 years ago, so these stories of what the bank went through are more than vague rumors. > Has anyone ever had to be "forced" to purchase anything for "pennies on the dollar"? There is typically not much interest in the purchase of something with a high negative value even if highly discounted. That is why it was mandated by the government, so that a large solvent organization could assume another large groups insolvency before the insolvent group closes and strikes their assets.
- deleted 5y ago
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jessaustin 5y ago

Were you working for the same bank 14 years ago? That would be an impressive sort of consistency. I think maybe not, however, because if you had been there your two-sentence synopsis wouldn't be quite so muddled. Did your bank hold assets the book values of which decreased in response to the events of 2007-8, or did its liabilities increase unexpectedly for the same reason? In that case, your bank was hurt directly. Otherwise, it wasn't hurt. Has anyone ever had to be "forced" to purchase anything for "pennies on the dollar"? Usually we are eager to purchase at 90% discounts. It's almost as if the story your bank tells its new employees is modeled after the story we all got. IME, when bankers don't make sense, they're lying. Over most of USA history, both parties active at any particular time serve the interests of capital. There are occasional exceptions (e.g. FDR), but now is not such an exception. It's silly to emphasize the difference between parties, but if we must do so the past two decades in which control of Congress and the presidency has passed back and forth are something of an anomaly. Before Bush the Lesser, the last time Republicans were in any sense "dominant" was under Hoover. The Democrats held the House for twenty consecutive Congressional sessions. If the stories you've been told, about your bank or about the USA political system or about anything else, don't make sense, then consider the possibility that those stories simply aren't true.

austincheney 5y ago
Very many of the non developer employees were there 14 years ago, so these stories of what the bank went through are more than vague rumors. > Has anyone ever had to be "forced" to purchase anything for "pennies on the dollar"? There is typically not much interest in the purchase of something with a high negative value even if highly discounted. That is why it was mandated by the government, so that a large solvent organization could assume another large groups insolvency before the insolvent group closes and strikes their assets.
deleted 5y ago
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