Viva la legalization!

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

Who's that, John Milton? I think he might be talking about Milton Friedman. Still, I have to say that making government decisions based purely on ideology is generally a bad idea. You need to look at both the short and long term effects on the country that will result from those decisions.

Exactly. I think Obama has that capability, he actually is intelligent.

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

That's exactly right, Dr. Pot. The problem is, politics is power and money driven. We are constantly dealing with the unintended consequences of policies pushed forward by the "Do Gooders." The housing debacle and the collapse of the lending institutions is a prime example.

Vi

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

Free and open markets are the only way to sustained prosperity. Any deviation becomes less efficient and more costly.


out.

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...out
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You haven't countered nothing, because the points you made are not valid, you are basing your counter on information you don't understand, regardless the accuracy of the information, because it does not state what you are saying.. (Brazko)

Practically every serious economist I've heard from has said that the only thing that could have prevented the housing bubble is increased regulation in the financial sector, concerning mortgage-backed securities. However, the Democrats didn't push for regulation because they were happy that so many people were able to get houses and Republicans didn't regulate it because they oppose regulation in general. But in this situation, only a few economists were sounding alarms, and these guys were the doomsayers who were always sounding alarms and weren't usually right.

See, this is a good example of pure ideology.

The problem with purely free markets is that you get some people who collaborate (whether intentionally or not) to bid up the price of a stock or commodity, and then when other people get on board, they sell what they have, the commodity price plummets, they make boatloads and screw the later investors.

Regulation is often needed because of the many situations that can arise in which people end up screwed despite everyone acting in their own interests. You learn about that stuff in basic economics.

Well, I dare say that you need to hear from some more serious economists ... at least some that are not of the Keynesian school.

The Democrats didn't push for regulation because they were on the take from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Sen. Chris Dodd, the head of the banking committee was the largest offender along with Barney Frank ... and even Barak Obama.

The Republicans ... G. Bush and Sen. McCain tried to get congress to put regulations in place to stop the unsound mortgage backing at Freddie and Fannie, but were blocked by the Democrat majority. The housing debacle was caused by the "progressives" (socialists) in our government ... the liberal congress and senate, with their mantra that "everyone has the right to home ownership."

Vi

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

By 'Keynesian school' do you mean anyone still alive that has or recently had any actual responsibility in the financial industry? Do you know of any economists who disagree? (note: Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, et al. are not actually economists)

Everyone does have the right to own a home... if they can pay for it. And Fannie and Freddie weren't the major cause of the housing bubble, check out this graph:



The problem was asset-backed securities, which spiked starting around 2003. Fannie and Freddie were actually losing their share of the housing market since then.

i.e. they finaly figured out gold is just a lump of shiney yellow metal.