Forum Post: Suggested Demands
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 6, 2011, 1:30 p.m. EST by marisw
(5)
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Forgive all low and middle income mortgages written during the bubble.
Forgive student loans.
Because (1) and (2) means you have to bail out the banks again, do it but this time impose real pay caps (e.g., no more than $100K per person), claw back bubble era bonuses and fire everyone even remotely close to senior management during the bubble.
Regulate banks like public utilities. That means that they can be either publicly or privately owned, but the rates that they are allowed to charge customers are set in the same way that the government sets the rates for public utilities like water, gas, sewage, and electricity. After all, money IS an essential public resource just like water, gas, and electricity and shouldn't be under the thumb of any private interest. This includes investment banks, commercial banks, and electronic payments systems such as VISA and Mastercard.
Expropriation of all assets and a maximum income cap at the level of prevailing national median income as the sole punishment for white collar crime (i.e., no jail time, but you lose everything and are not allowed to earn more than the rest of us again for the rest of your life).
Require people earning more that $250K per year to disclose all their assets and income publicly annually including tax returns so that the public can scrutinize this information for signs of crime and corruption that may elude enforcement agencies.
Impose a financial transactions tax to reduce speculative trading and force Wall Street to internalize the massive social costs of speculation.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/What-the-Wall-Street-Protesters-Should-Demand/197562666981794
1 2 & 3. are kind thoughts but have no real world application, bailing out a person is no better than bailing out a company, a free market must be allowed to succeed and fail on it's own, it's an important part of a market evolution. When we start "forgiving debt" and bailing out whether it's business or a person we start trying to manipulate the market and thats not how its intended to work, thats not how it should work.
and believe me! i would love for your first 3 steps to happen, but i know it's not for the good of the market and the people. It will inevitably cause another collapse
Actually, bailing out homeowners and students is good for the market. When people have too much debt, they stop buying. And when people don't buy, markets don't function. Bail out the consumer and rejuvenate the market. And by rejuvenating the market, you generate the added value needed to pay for the bailout. That's the beauty of it.
Simply not true, you add an influx of currency to the consumer and the currency loses it's value and everything goes up in cost. Trying to manipulate a free market is why were in this mess, companies must be allowed to fail in order for other companies to compete and spring up in their place. People must be allowed to win and lose. It's how a free market works, it's how evolution works, government has no place in the market whether it's our side or theirs.
Completely agree with you. Getting government out of the market is the only way to end this mess. People seem to be angry at the free market and capitalism, when in reality they should be angry at corporatism and unprecedented government spending. Adding a bunch of new legislation is simply feeding the beast that gave birth to the monster. We think corporations are financially irresponsible? Take a look at our government and our federal banking system. At least corporations aren't creating money out of thin air.
But in forgiving debt you are not adding any additional currency to the system. You are simply freeing up the consumer to spend the money he has in the market instead of paying it to the banks in the form of debt payments. So you don't have to worry about inflation.
It's not that simple. Money represents debt, that loan you were given (we were given) is debt, that debt was used to pay car companies, colleges, home owners, etc and the money paid back to it is going into the system help pay off that debt (even though it never does which is a whole nother discussion). To simply say you no longer have to pay this debt back effects the entire system and makes the debt worthless which in turn makes the dollar worthless. And it is influx in consumer currency, not because they are printing more money, but because if 1,000,000 people no longer have to pay $100 a month on a student loan to pay back debt, thats an extra 100,000,000 of consumer currency flooding the market every month, and thats an extremely low number, it's probably be more in the billions a month
Well, sure. That's why (3) says that you have to bail out the banks as a consequence of forgiving the mortgage and student loan debt. I thought your argument was that forgiving student loans increases the money supply. Now it seems like what you're saying is that it reduces the money supply. And the answer is not with a bailout. As for your point about "100,000,000 of consumer currency". Well, yes! That's the point! Forgiving consumer debt means that millions of consumers start spending again. Which means businesses start producing for them again. And that means economic growth.
That is my argument, if you forgive the debt that money represents then that money is worthless, and if we start pumping vast amounts of worthless money into our system we're going to end up like Japan and spending $20,000 on a tshirt.
so if someone already paid off their student debt do they get the money back or are you in effect punishing them. They are forced to pay twice, once for their own debt they struggled with and then you are taking their money (what little it is) to pay for other people having theirs written off.
Two thoughts. (1) Yes, people who have already paid their student loans should be reimbursed by the government. This would provide an excellent additional stimulus for the economy. (2) Not that you were implying this, but obviously it wouldn't be correct to say you shouldn't cancel student debt going forward because some students have already paid. That would be like saying that you shouldn't stop a thief because he has already robbed someone. Obviously stopping the thief is always good, even if some people have already "paid" him and must pay again via taxation for the policing services that catch the thief.
When you say, "Reimbursed by the government" you realize that the only way the government gets any money to reimburse with is to take it from the citizens. So if I already paid off my student loan, you are going to pay me back by taking more of my money and then giving it back to me, less the portion needed to pay off everybody else loan?
8) Sentence all Enemies Of The State to ten years hard labor in the Gulag.
Sounds good to me. I add one more though, END the Friggin WARS IMMEDIATELY and bring home our troops!!