Poirot - Those at the apex of libertarian capitalism who drive the markets caused the GFC with their insatiable appetite for derivatives manufactured from sub-prime mortgages...but tell me if you think I've got it wrong.

If that is your take on it

On the other hand i would say the following

Buyer beware

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is

Point of interest

I previously raised the point that there were poor risk mortgagees, demanded by Democrats under their support ofr affirmative action, to use TBC phrase “Blacks-Hispanics and women” getting loans. These were the “sub-prime” which your use of the term “sub-prime” refers

The point with sub-prime is

They are a bigger risk

The pay higher rates of interest

They walked away from their financial liabilities and obligations, under the jingle-mail rules

The folk who owned these mortgage derivatives, if they did not understand what a “sub-prime” was should not have bought them in the first palce

I would further note banking institutions like Lehman brothers, a key [promoter of derivatives was one of the first casualties of the derivatives collapse

Similarly, Merrrill Lynch also went to the wind.

On another note, the business world has always been vulnerable to get-rich-quick schemers. Fact of life, happens in communist countries too, not just capitalist systems

I would note Enron was a case in point

I would also note it was the wicked capitalist George Bush who was in the Ovsal office when the sub-prime collapse, the product of Clintons stupidity, hit the fan but it was GWB who signed into statute the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation.

The role of auditor is an important one. It is the auditor who is supposed to represent the interests of share holders and creditors and check the operaton of the executive.

Arthur Andersens was the audit firm, ruined beyond recovery, by their failure of obligations with Enron

Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Andersens, those who disobey the rules of financial good-governance lose everything.

When the same happened in collectivist government, there is just another coverup

Severin
“talk of "the alternative" - what exactly are you referring to?”

I’m not talking of an alternative – Squeers and you are, but we’ve having trouble getting the details out of you.

Ultimately there are only two possibilities: private ownership of the means of production, or something else.

However full public ownership of the means of production has been demonstrated to be non-viable both in theory – by the economic calculation argument – and in practice – by the 100 million deaths under communism and socialism in the 20th century.

Thus because of the failure of full socialism, people’s hopes turn to *partial* public ownership and control. The idea is that this will “balance” the alleged defects of purely private ownership. This is the so-called “mixed economy” and “public/private partnership” model that is standard in all western democracies.

There are two main problems with this model. Firstly, the defining characteristic of fascism *is* public/private partnership. The German model of socialism - national socialism – was that legal title is left in the hands of private owners; and the state just issues rules conditioning any and every aspect of production that it feels like. That’s the system we’ve got now! The *name* doesn’t change these economic fundamentals.

Secondly, this public-direction-and-control-of-private-ownership model is what is currently displaying all the problems that people blame on “capitalism”.

Some people say the problem is “unregulated capitalism”, “unfettered”, “unbridled” “extreme” capitalism and so on.

But let’s just take a look at some of the government departments ruling over us now, which are inconsistent with the basic institutions of capitalism of individual freedom, minimum coercion, minimal taxation, sound money, private property, consensual transactions and free markets: www.australia.gov.au

And that’s only one of three layers!

I challenge anyone to even identify the names of all the departments, policies, laws and programs whose sole purpose is to override the operations of capitalism and its fundamental institutions.

You couldn’t do it! By the time you had made a comprehensive list they would have added to it!

Which are we closer to now: the libertarian ideal of a society based on “unfettered capitalism” – or government “balancing” private ownership with public direction and control, and using “public/private partnerships” for socialist purposes?

Compare with Marx’s ten commandments in the Communist Manifesto: http://www.libertyzone.com/Communist-Manifesto-Planks.html

In fact the state now controls and directs private production in far more ways than Marx even imagined. The state takes 40 percent of GDP and spends *all* of it on forcing prices to something other than they would be in a free market. Handouts to multinational corporations; permanent inflation; the Federal Reserve or RBA; the GFC; the housing bubble; cosy cartels of big corporations licensed by government and protected from competition by a thousand regulations; institutionalised unemployment; pink batts fiascos; unsustainable benefit schemes; permanent war in third world countries; and endless schemes for the expansion of government control of everything…
these are all the outcomes of the idea of governments supervising and balancing capitalism.

The problem is that the critics of capitalism keep blaming capitalism for the problems appearing under their own preferred solution.

Yet the libertarian argument against such interventions is precisely that they will produce the kinds of outcomes with which the critics of capitalism are so unhappy.

The only alternative to more freedom, is to keep approaching even closer to full-blown socialism by way of more government taxing, spending, debt, inflation, privileges for corporations, warring and arbitrary political control of everything.

Since full socialism is impossible, all alternatives to economic and social freedom eventually morph *and must morph* into some form or other of fascism, because there’s *nothing else they can be* if they are not to be full socialism on the one hand, or capitalism on the other.

But if they can, what is it that alternative?

Peter Hume... the Capitalism you long for does not exist, has never existed, and will never exist.

Nobody, apart from you and Stern, and maybe Yabby, want a world as you describe, with absolutely no rules, regulations or boundaries.

And neither would you, if it were to descend on us.

In fact, no 'capitalist' today could survive without all the handouts they get.

They would all fail, because they'd have no idea how to operate.

The other issue, which you would not want to unleash, I suspect, is that we would have to have absolute freedom of travel, everywhere, with no national boundaries at all.

And that would not be welcomed by most people, with the way we have been forced into believing in nationalism and national sovereignty.

Are you about to explode, and prepared to, those myths?

Peter Hume:
<Ultimately there are only two possibilities: private ownership of the means of production, or something else.

However full public ownership of the means of production has been demonstrated to be non-viable both in theory – by the economic calculation argument – and in practice – by the 100 million deaths under communism and socialism in the 20th century.>

Gawd, Peter Hume,
you're like an intelligent version of Stern!
Can I enquire into the logic behind your bipolar ultimatum above? The next bit of tripe is even worse; public ownership was tried and failed so that's that; let's stick with the monumental failure that is capitalism then?

Thanks TBC for the breath of sanity!

Peter Hume,
I'll make you a challenge,
you write an article on your defence of the current system (or whatever you want to call it), and I'll write one in defence of Marx. Not Marxism, mind you, or Stalinism or Maoism et al, but Marx's philosophy. We can work out time frames, terms etc too if you like.
What Ho?

Yoicks tallyho Squeers... a spiffing idea, wot?

I'm not sure though, that the Blue Team can disengage 'Marx' from their view of Gulagism and understand that 'being a Marxist' is not the same as 'supporting Stalinism'.

I think that might be the first (and quite significant) hurdle to overcome.