Defender of the Faith
"Hundreds of billions of long-term debt and equity capital that underpinned the Wall Street-based speculation machines would have been wiped out, including huge amounts of stock owned by executives and insiders. Such a result would have been truly constructive from a societal vantage point. It would have implanted an abiding 1930s-style generational lesson about the deadly dangers of leveraged speculations."
"The decline in bank numbers, from a peak of more than 18,000, has come almost entirely in the form of exits by banks with less than $100 million in assets, with the bulk occurring between 1984 and 2011. More than 10,000 banks left the industry during that period as a result of mergers, consolidations or failures, FDIC data show. About 17% of the banks collapsed."
"Yes...but there are worthy creeds and unworthy ones. 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,' is still the best way for a civilised community to get along. The more you depart from it, the worse off you are."Capitalism works the same way. The further you get away from truly free enterprise the more cronies and zombies (people who live at others' expense) you get...and the less well the whole system works."Envy is a fact of life. You can't eliminate it. But it has different results depending on what kind of a system you have. Trying to keep up with the Joneses in a capitalist society drives people to work harder, invent things, and helps everyone be better off."In a crony capitalist society, envy leads people to take advantage of the system. But it doesn't stop everyone else from working hard and inventing things...not completely."On the other hand, the closer you get to true state-backed, command economy, the closer you get to North Korea!"Some goals you want to work towards. Others, you want to work hard to stay away from."