frank miller

[Joseph Tracy]

I agree with this, and the question is still whether what was done addressed the problem or just  rewarded it  with vain hopes it doesn't happen again. It rewarded fraud. What we did was nationalize the toxic assets. We should have nationalized the banks that  were failing, got rid of the decision makers who made the mess, hired good people and motivated them with more modest rewards for the desired outcomes.  There are other options that could be considered too. There is an article in Sapiens that talks about an interesting alternative:


Imagine that during a crisis similar to the one in which we are now mired, sixteen businessmen got together to decide what they could do among themselves. They or their clients had each received a notice from their respective banks that their credit line was going to be reduced or eliminated; hence bankruptcy was only a question of time. They realized that business A had needed the bank loan to buy goods from business B, which in turn needed money to buy stuff from its own suppliers. So they decided to create a mutual credit system among themselves, inviting their clients and suppliers to join. When business A buys something from B, A gets a debit and B the corresponding credit. They created their own currency, whose value was identical to the national money, but with the interesting feature that it didn’t bear interest.

66The country’s banks mounted a massive press campaign to try to squelch this revolutionary idea. Miraculously, that campaign failed, and this little system saved the businesses involved at the time. A cooperative was set up among the users to keep the accounts dealing with that currency. Soon participants could also borrow from that cooperative in that currency at the remarkably low interest rate of 1% to 1.5%. All such loans need to be backed by inventory or other collateral. Over time, the system grew to include up to one quarter of all the businesses of the entire country.

67Sixty-five years later, an American professor performed an econometric study proving that the secret for the country’s legendary economic stability was that strange little unofficial currency, circulating among businesses in parallel with the national money. That country’s well-known economic resilience was usually credited to some mysterious and unknown national characteristic. Whenever there was a recession, the volume of activity in this unofficial currency would expand significantly, thereby reducing the recession’s impact on sales and unemployment. Whenever there was a boom, business in national currency expanded, while activity in the unofficial currency proportionally dropped back again. The surprising implication of this study is that the spontaneous counter-cyclical behavior of this little “unorthodox” system actually helped the central bank of the country in its efforts to stabilize the economy.

68This story is not an urban legend, but the true story of the WIR system. The country is Switzerland and the sixteen founders met in Zurich in the year 1934 and the system is still operating today. The annual volume of business in the WIR currency is now about $2 billion per year. The American professor is James Stodder from Rensselaer University. His remarkable quantitative study uses more than 60 years of high quality data to prove the points made in this story (Stodder, 1998; 2000). The WIR system is also now accepting deposits and making loans in Swiss Francs, as well as in WIR (Studer, 1998). Interestingly, a proposal has recently been made in the Swiss Parliament to have the government accept payment of taxes in the WIR currency, as a way to dampen the effects of the banking crisis on the overall economy. Such a measure would indeed be the most powerful way for the Swiss government to support a more widespread acceptance of the WIR in all segments of society.

69It is proposed here that businesses take the initiative of creating such Business-to-Business (B2B) systems at whatever scale makes most sense to them. The big advantage, compared to what happened in Switzerland, is that with what is available with today’s information technology tools, setting up such a system can be achieved in a fraction of the time and costs of what it took in the 1930s.

On Nov 30, 2011, at 6:44 PM, Robert Mahnke wrote:

> Just in case someone isn't tired of this topic yet, Yglesias explained this better today:
> 
> [S]ome kind of intervention to prevent bank failures is inevitable in a modern economy. The important thing to realize is that it's more than bankers who have something on the line. Firms accumulate money at different times from when they accumulate expenses. That means that to run a business, you need someplace to park your funds when you don't need them or someplace to get extra funds when you do need them, or both. That place can be a formal, regulated bank or it can be a part of a "shadow banking system." But either way, a place that's in the business of paying you for the privilege of storing your funds there or charging you money to borrow funds is, in effect, a bank. And banks are subject to runs and panics. If people think that other people are going to pull their money out of the bank, then everyone does rush to pull their money out of the bank and the bank fails. If the bank fails, then a company that's been storing money to make payroll at the end of the month is going to have no money and won't be able to pay its workers. If the bank fails, then a company that needs to borrow some money to buy supplies in order to meet a big contract won't be able to deliver on the contract. Both companies are going to have to shutter their doors, which is going to have additional negative consequences throughout the economy. No real world government is going to let this happen, nor should any real world government let this happen. The real issue isn't "to bail out, or not to bail out" it's what kind of supervisory regulation do you do in advance and how exactly do you deal with institutions that are in need of a bailout. 
> 
> http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2011/11/30/the_inevitability_of_bailouts.html
> 
> 
> On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:54 PM, Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com> wrote:
> "But what is the benefit apart from giving taxpayer money to failed
> institutions led by liars and ultra rich con men?"
> 
> Separate and apart from the money that financial institutions received
> from the government, but as a direct and foreseeable result, the
> taxpayers received a huge benefit, relative to what could have
> happened, in that a collapse of financial institutions would have had
> a massive effect on the rest of the economy.  My point is not that we
> are better off when the 1% get free money; it's that we are better off
> when the government averts a financial crisis.
> 
> Matt Yglesias puts it well here:
> 
> http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2011/11/28/how_the_fed_s_generosity_made_13_billion_for_america_s_biggest_banks.html
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 11:26 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> >
> > On Nov 21, 2011, at 10:37 PM, Robert Mahnke wrote:
> >
> >> "It's the movement that was born when first Bush, then Obama and a
> >> majority of Congress supported bailing out the banks even though the
> >> polls said that the majority of Americans were opposed to this."
> >>
> >> I think we should all be grateful that the banks were saved, because
> >> the financial mess that we've been through would have been even worse.
> >> But the mistake the feds made was in not taking the equity.  They
> >> should have saved the institutions and left them owned by the federal
> >> government, a la Sweden.
> > That was a huge mistake  which covered and hid a great deal of  worthless assets and retained a lot of greedy cheats;  it fully nullifies any benefit. But what is the benefit apart from giving taxpayer money to failed institutions led by liars and ultra rich con men?  This was socialism for billionaires, eat pepper spray for anyone  who says wait a minute. I can live without any of these banks, they do not serve anyone but themselves The bonuses of these hogs should be pulled out of their swiss and Cayman bank accounts and distributed among the people whose investments they squandered.
> >>
> >> On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 8:42 AM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> >>> I'm also confused by the statement: "just people crying and wallowing, and making the lives of many hardworking lower and middle class Americans that much more difficult."
> >>>
> >>> I've seen site-fuls of construction workers stand up and cheer and fist-pump as OWS marchers went by.  I've seen kitchen-workers come out and applaud, and retail clerks and cab drivers and truck drivers.  Unions representing service employees and pilots and teachers and nurses have been out in full force, marching and lending meeting spaces to the movement.  Obviously, no has benefitted more from the Occupy movement than the police, who are getting hefty overtime checks - because of decisions made by Mayors, not marchers.  The officer who arrested me whispered that he supported what we were doing.  He said he was struggling to make his mortgage payments and had lots of unemployed people in his family.  Even the sadistic security guards at the jail said they agreed with what we were doing.
> >>>
> >>> Lots of people have drawn comparisons between OWS and the Tea Party movement.  Their members have no love for each other, but they are, in fact, two wings of the same movement.  It's the movement that was born when first Bush, then Obama and a majority of Congress supported bailing out the banks even though the polls said that the majority of Americans were opposed to this.  The Tea Party blames the government, OWS blames the banks, but they're united in their outrage.
> >>>
> >>> Laura
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>>> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>> I appreciate you telling something about yourself and I agree with some of what you are saying. We do need to adjust our daily lifestyles to collectively bring down fossil fuel use, to grow food locally, to be more creatively self reliant, to create more friendly peaceable communities.  But all of that will make little difference if there is not serious political change in the direction  and structure of national and global politics and economics . The power and will of fossil fuel, Medical, mining, financial industries and war industries has shown no regard for human justice or the health of the biosphere. They own the political process in the US. You can see their tracks in the Iraq war, the gulf oil spill, the financial fraud, and unchecked global warming and a long history environmental desecration and bloody coups and wars. There is no meaningful opposition to their control of both parties. Occupy wall street is an attempt to set an example of public resistance to this situation. It is part of a long history of public demonstration and non-violent resistance which has over many years been a key part of creating and maintaing the post colonial, post WW2 democratic middle class societies in much of the world and of the inclusion of women and minorities as full citizens. Such demonstrations are continuing to move things in that direction now in Islamic nations.
> >>>>
> >>>> Personal " attacks".  Nobody in this discussion has literally attacked anyone else. The attack word is overblown..What we are talking about  would more accurately be called  personal criricism. From my POV it starts with your characterizing a movement of thousands of people with blanket phrases like" just people crying and wallowing, and making the lives of many hardworking lower and middle class Americans that much more difficult.", "the OWS folks, like little kiddies, are drawing attention to their selves and not an "issue", "their plan is not even half-baked, its foolish and silly.", "Occupy folks are just looking to get media attention, which is what there true goal is... attention." And all of this in defense of Frank Miller's hateful statement on OWS.
> >>>>
> >>>> Well I happen to know several occupiers and your description is a set of loaded personal criticisms that pretends to see others motives and is offensive and wrong.  I questioned your motives and your qualification to make these judgements, letting you know how it feels to be the object of such personally pointed tactics.  Not so pleasant. Neither do I like phrases like "they are the product of a lack of conceptual thinking and speak more about the spitter rather than the target" no "ad Hominem" there? How about your description of Naomi Klein as not a real thinker? Not a personal insult? Have you read The Shock Doctrine?  Are you really sure this constitutes  reason, not a"personal attack". People get defensive for different reasons; personal  and political connections to OWS for me, perhaps your admiration for Frank MIller and your offense at the ideas of people like Moore or Klein. Its part of the baggage that often comes with a passion for ideas.
> >>>>
> >>>> Maybe we could both agree to try for greater civility and to focus on ideas and arguments, and avoid personal criticism.
> >>>>
> >>>> On Nov 19, 2011, at 8:56 PM, Michael F wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Ian,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Not resignation, just changing targets; politiicians and us as a
> >>>>> collective whole.  Politicians make the laws, and our lifestyle have
> >>>>> grown so materially indulgent that we don't know up from down, forward
> >>>>> from backward.  If we don't readjust or daily livestyles it doesn't
> >>>>> matter who we march on or sit-in on.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Joe,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Maybe, my reasoning is "weak" in your estimation, but at least it is
> >>>>> reason, unlike your personal attacks.  A defense of Frank Miller and
> >>>>> others who question these OWS folks is necessary.  It seems to me as
> >>>>> if you are questioning nothing and only subscribing to what a weakly
> >>>>> fashioned, supposedly radical group is selling.  Unfortunately, your
> >>>>> desire to attack "me" and not my account of the situation has
> >>>>> prevented us from having any good disucussion.  I'll assume that as a
> >>>>> listserv you guys know each other.  Here's my intro.  I am a
> >>>>> registered democrat, 34 year old white male middle school ELA teacher
> >>>>> in the East Bay with a girlfriend who teaches Spec. Ed.(no kids).  I
> >>>>> also coach football and basketball, when not doing that I tutor
> >>>>> intervention reading level students at my middle school.  I sit in on
> >>>>> my upper level Lit and Philosophy courses at UC Berk and have
> >>>>> published some pieces from time-to-time.  Why my background effects my
> >>>>> "reason" or "contribution" to discussion, I have no idea.  But, for
> >>>>> some reason attacking each other is what is done around here.  I only
> >>>>> jumped in on this dialogue to defend Frank Miller with reason, rather
> >>>>> than ideology.  By the way, I am not a Struassian, but I have read and
> >>>>> confronted him, unlike most of media pundints who attempt to demonize
> >>>>> him.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> As for my disrespectful tone, the OWS folks have caused property
> >>>>> damage and are hurting the regions that need the most help.  I've been
> >>>>> seeing with my own eyes for the past few weeks.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Mike
> >>>
> >>>
> >
> >
>