US Politics Thread

[Bigga]

When did a president last send anyone to jail?
That’s what the independent justice system is for you dummy.

Hahaha!!!!

So, what's the point in the Atty Gen, then, if they don't bring charges to banks fleecing citizens?

That would, effectively, be the arm of the President, so they action on his say-so or don't.

No such thing as an "independent justice system" when banks are bankrolled by taxpayer money on bailout. That makes it a governmental issue cos the Gov, supposedly, works for the people, elected BY the people, using the PEOPLE'S money to bail out businesses.

So, effectively, you as a class clown, are saying those enforced homeless people should have found their own money to take the banks to court.

Fucking hell, man, stop digging your idiotic hole!

 

[west didsblue]

This is kind of what I do for a living so let me just stress that there is plenty of blame to be apportioned to both parties as well as non-political entities including the Fed and homeowners themselves who ignored risks as well as unscrupulous lenders who took advantage of consumers. We could blame the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the CRA, Greenspan, decades of pro-homeownership policies/goals by presidents of both parties, and many, many other factors. Also we can thank an ex-Goldman Sachs Republican Secretary of the Treasury and Ben Bernanke for saving the nation and probably the world from a global depression
(though in hindsight also not fully grasping the risks headed in) and both parties for coming to their senses and passing TARP at the instant the car was about to pull a Thelma and Louise.

Politicizing the housing/financial crisis is, to me, like politicizing the pandemic. Now how we prevent such a catastrophe from happening again is an in-part political discussion, but causation of the last one is exceedingly complex.

Agree with all of that, and to be honest I don’t pretend to have the level of knowledge you clearly have, but I would reiterate that the underlying cause was inadequate regulation allowing all the people you mention to get away with it, for which the party in power have the greatest responsibility. Like you say though, ultimately it’s pointless politicising it.

 

[west didsblue]

Hahaha!!!!

So, what's the point in the Atty Gen, then, if they don't bring charges to banks fleecing citizens?

That would, effectively, be the arm of the President, so they action on his say-so or don't.

No such thing as an "independent justice system" when banks are bankrolled by taxpayer money on bailout. That makes it a governmental issue cos the Gov, supposedly, works for the people, elected BY the people, using the PEOPLE'S money to bail out businesses.

So, effectively, you as a class clown, are saying those enforced homeless people should have found their own money to take the banks to court.

Fucking hell, man, stop digging your idiotic hole!

You are doing a great job of demonstrating your ignorance. The AG’s role is to provide legal advice to the government. They don’t bring charges to banks or anyone.

Even when your’s and the bogan’s hero was in power after he spent 4 years stuffing the courts and the AG’s office with his own picks he didn’t manage to jail the one person he used to call for being jailed at every rally whereas no shortage of his supporters got jailed for criminal activities on his behalf. So no, Presidents or their political appointees don’t jail people and rightly so.

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

You are doing a great job of demonstrating your ignorance. The AG’s role is to provide legal advice to the government. They don’t bring charges to banks or anyone.

Even when your’s and the bogan’s hero was in power after he spent 4 years stuffing the courts and the AG’s office with his own picks he didn’t manage to jail the one person he used to call for being jailed at every rally whereas no shortage of his supporters got jailed for criminal activities on his behalf. So no, Presidents or their political appointees don’t jail people and rightly so.

One of the pillars of the US constitution is the 'Separation of Powers'.

 

[Bigga]

You are doing a great job of demonstrating your ignorance. The AG’s role is to provide legal advice to the government. They don’t bring charges to banks or anyone.

Stupid fool, you make my point. "Legal advice" would include whether the banks were guilty of white collar crime:






Pres/ Gov>Atty Gen>DoJ> State Attys who can prosecute. It's only a daisy chain of permission from the head. It's NOT INDEPENDANT like you would like to believe. It was a NATIONAL CRIME, ffs!!

That would be like soldiers allowed to do their own wars when stationed abroad and the Gov/ Pres not being involved.

Absolutely ridiculous! The Pres always knows about/ decides these kind of matters. Same as pardoning prisoners; why would a Pres commute sentences and not decide if bankers should be prosecuted for crimes against the people??

Your logic is dumb.

 

[west didsblue]

Stupid fool, you make my point. "Legal advice" would include whether the banks were guilty of white collar crime:

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Pres/ Gov>Atty Gen>DoJ> State Attys who can prosecute. It's only a daisy chain of permission from the head. It's NOT INDEPENDANT like you would like to believe. It was a NATIONAL CRIME, ffs!!

That would be like soldiers allowed to do their own wars when stationed abroad and the Gov/ Pres not being involved.

Absolutely ridiculous! The Pres always knows about/ decides these kind of matters. Same as pardoning prisoners; why would a Pres commute sentences and not decide if bankers should be prosecuted for crimes against the people??

Your logic is dumb.

I see you’ve spent all day looking it up but still can’t get it right. AG decides whether banks are guilty of white collar crime?? No need for judges and juries then.
Clueless.

 

[lasereyes]

“Pretty much the same thing”. He did, eh? Where? When?

And the CDC said that about masks, and he repeated it. The CDC was wrong.

But I suppose if Biden had said in May, “Yo, bitches, the CDC is wrong! Keep your masks on, everyone!”, we’d all be here talking about how right he was, what a superior scientific genius he is.

Who's saying the CDC are any yardstick of anything? They have been all over the shop over the past 18 months. Both CDC and BIden strongly conveyed the impression that you are immune if you have been vaccinated. Which was never the case. Conveying false certainty is also disinformation.

 

[lasereyes]

If you were in possession of any knowledge at all about the global financial crisis of 2007/8 you would know that it occurred during a second consecutive Republican administration and its main cause was insufficient and inadequate regulation which even the dumbest would know is the responsibility of the party in office. For the majority of this period and in the critical years in the run up to the crisis Congress had a Republican majority changing to a Dem majority only months before the crisis struck. No one in their right mind would apportion blame to the Democrats.
Presumably that’s why you are.

Several inaccuracies here:

1. Inadequate regulation was one of many causes of the Financial Crisis. The baseline factor was homeowners borrowing way more than they could afford. Without that, there would have been nothing for banks to leverage and no opportunity for subprime structured products. Financial illiteracy and the failure of legislators and educators to address this was and remains a major problem.

2. Lack of regulation was consciously fueled by both parties. Arguably the biggest issue was the de-regulation of Fannie and Freddie, which was championed by Barney Frank who was concurrently receiving campaign donations from those same entities. Glass-Steagal was repealed in the late 1990s when Clinton was President. Both parties were and are ridden with special interests and bear responsibility for what happened.

3. Democrats took the House and Senate in the 2006 mid-terms which was almost 2 years before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the culmination of the crisis. There were no statements and no proposals by Democrats around growing risks or inadequate regulation either when they were in the minority or when they took control.

 

[SWP's back]

You are doing a great job of demonstrating your ignorance. The AG’s role is to provide legal advice to the government. They don’t bring charges to banks or anyone.

Even when your’s and the bogan’s hero was in power after he spent 4 years stuffing the courts and the AG’s office with his own picks he didn’t manage to jail the one person he used to call for being jailed at every rally whereas no shortage of his supporters got jailed for criminal activities on his behalf. So no, Presidents or their political appointees don’t jail people and rightly so.

I was curious as to what you were arguing (as it’s all very simple stuff) to hit “see ignored content” and fuck me. He’s not been taking his smart pills has he. He really should stop digging.

 

[SWP's back]

Who's saying the CDC are any yardstick of anything? They have been all over the shop over the past 18 months. Both CDC and BIden strongly conveyed the impression that you are immune if you have been vaccinated. Which was never the case. Conveying false certainty is also disinformation.

Not quite the same as saying “covid was over” when 200,000 positive tests were taking place per day allied to 4,000 daily deaths. But false equivalency is always fun.

 

[lasereyes]

Not quite the same as saying “covid was over” when 200,000 positive tests were taking place per day allied to 4,000 daily deaths. But false equivalency is always fun.

Since you mention false equivalences, what was the relevance of bringing Pompeo into a discussion of the current Afghan debacle?

 

[SWP's back]

Since you mention false equivalences, what was the relevance of bringing Pompeo into a discussion of the current Afghan debacle?

Are you fucking kidding me? He was the one Trump sent to sign the peace treaty with the Taliban and mastermind of the US pull out. Are you really that thick?

 

[ChicagoBlue]

Hahaha!!!!

So, what's the point in the Atty Gen, then, if they don't bring charges to banks fleecing citizens?

That would, effectively, be the arm of the President, so they action on his say-so or don't.

No such thing as an "independent justice system" when banks are bankrolled by taxpayer money on bailout. That makes it a governmental issue cos the Gov, supposedly, works for the people, elected BY the people, using the PEOPLE'S money to bail out businesses.

So, effectively, you as a class clown, are saying those enforced homeless people should have found their own money to take the banks to court.

Fucking hell, man, stop digging your idiotic hole!

You are struggling to keep an independent Judiciary and Executive Branch separate….I believe the term you used was “class clown.”

The AG is the Attorney General OF THE UNITED STATES, not the President. The President has his own attorney called the General Counsel.

The banks fall under the auspices of the Treasury Department, and, to some extent, the Federal Reserve. The President makes those selections, but they’re approved and overseen by Congress.

Congress can take up the case of their constituents against the banks, if they do choose, and can change the laws under which they operate, but lawsuits seeking recompense are often private issues taken by law firms on contingency. However, if an issue is large enough, or the class action covers a significant enough segment of the population, the Oversight Powers within Congress have the right to act independently or in concert with lawsuits.

The AG doesn’t work for the President…or didn’t until Trump tried to make him his bitch…but for the USA. Trump openly admits he didn’t understand what powers the President had and didn’t have when he won the election. Further proof of his, and millions of Americans’, idiocy.

 

[ChicagoBlue]

Are you fucking kidding me? He was the one Trump sent to sign the peace treaty with the Taliban and mastermind of the US pull out. Are you really that thick?

As they say in court:

Asked and answered!



“What can WE do for YOU? Would you like your country back? How does May sound?!”

 

[SWP's back]

As they say in court:

Asked and answered!

View attachment 24471

“What can WE do for YOU? Would you like your country back? How does May sound?!”

So the answer was “yes he really is that thick”. The Trump apologists we get from time to time on here are never the ones on the right hand side of the IQ bell curve are they.

 

[Afterthefact]

Nothing to do with the argument at hand, but for clarity - I’m pretty sure the US Attorney General is part of the executive branch, is a member of the president’s cabinet, and is the head of the justice department (including the FBI); the attorney general represents the United States in legal matters, and the prosecutors in the justice department that he/she oversees bring cases and charges - the biggest in the United States - all the time against crimes, individuals, and institutions of all stripes to include those enmeshed in terrorism, drugs, organized crime, and white collar/financial crime.

That is all under the direct authority of the president of the United States and the executive branch that he or she commands and has authority over.

Meanwhile the judicial branch is, in simple terms, the courts and judges (with Supreme Court being the top rung), who in addition to processing all of those cases also weigh the constitutionality of decisions in the courts, actions and orders of the president and the whole of the executive branch, and the legislation and laws created by congress/legislative branch. (In the legal arena one of the executive/judicial distinctions/separations is that presidents can appoint/nominate both federal US attorneys and federal judges, but can only fire the attorneys, not the judges...and congress has oversight of all of those appointments and nominations via the confirmation process.)

again, not a commentary on the particulars of what any of you are discussing, but it is all to say that the president does have substantial legal powers.

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

Who's saying the CDC are any yardstick of anything? They have been all over the shop over the past 18 months. Both CDC and BIden strongly conveyed the impression that you are immune if you have been vaccinated. Which was never the case. Conveying false certainty is also disinformation.

Biden conveyed it because the CDC did. Did I not make that clear before when I said, “The CDC said that, and he repeated it”? Do you think Joe’s secretly conducting his own research in the West Wing somewhere and independently confirmed the CDC’s findings?

He “strongly conveyed the impression that you are immune”? I don’t think he ever did and I still see no “basically said the same thing” as Trump evidence.

We are talking about science so let’s not make up data and let’s do proper research.

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

Several inaccuracies here:

1. Inadequate regulation was one of many causes of the Financial Crisis. The baseline factor was homeowners borrowing way more than they could afford. Without that, there would have been nothing for banks to leverage and no opportunity for subprime structured products. Financial illiteracy and the failure of legislators and educators to address this was and remains a major problem.

2. Lack of regulation was consciously fueled by both parties. Arguably the biggest issue was the de-regulation of Fannie and Freddie, which was championed by Barney Frank who was concurrently receiving campaign donations from those same entities. Glass-Steagal was repealed in the late 1990s when Clinton was President. Both parties were and are ridden with special interests and bear responsibility for what happened.

3. Democrats took the House and Senate in the 2006 mid-terms which was almost 2 years before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the culmination of the crisis. There were no statements and no proposals by Democrats around growing risks or inadequate regulation either when they were in the minority or when they took control.

This is a much better post than your CDC one FWIW, though I think the GSEs role in the crisis is nearly always overstated. Private label MBS had far, far worse delinquency rates; the GSEs were late to that game and came because their market share was threatened and because those loans were — originally at least — so profitable. Consumers and their greed share some blame, though it's a lot harder for homeowners to borrow "way more than they could afford" without entities willing to lend them way more than they can afford. There's a chicken-or-egg argument in there somewhere.

What is clear is that these products probably don't get invented without a secondary market to buy them. Lack of regulation in the shadow banking system — to your point, left unchecked by both parties (“Nobody wanted it [regulation]. We were all making too much money” someone once said) — was like building a house without a foundation in hindsight. Whether out of greed for more contributions, ignorance or sloth, both parties share the blame for that, and if you want to say maybe Barney Frank more so as member and later Chair of the House Financial Services committee (albeit in 07 when it was already too late), I could quibble but you might be right.

As a securities analyst with some professional pride in my objectivity, I want to blame the milquetoasts at the ratings agencies who whored themselves out for fees . . . but they were a symptom, not a cause. Caveat emptor.

 

[Bigga]

I see you’ve spent all day looking it up but still can’t get it right. AG decides whether banks are guilty of white collar crime?? No need for judges and juries then.
Clueless.

That's not what I said, tool.

You should read what I FIRST said. The second thing would have been a NO-BRAINER for guilt.

I see you still can't acknowledge your own bullshit on who does what in the US justice system!!

Clown.

 

[Bigga]

You are struggling to keep an independent Judiciary and Executive Branch separate….I believe the term you used was “class clown.”

The AG is the Attorney General OF THE UNITED STATES, not the President. The President has his own attorney called the General Counsel.

The banks fall under the auspices of the Treasury Department, and, to some extent, the Federal Reserve. The President makes those selections, but they’re approved and overseen by Congress.

Congress can take up the case of their constituents against the banks, if they do choose, and can change the laws under which they operate, but lawsuits seeking recompense are often private issues taken by law firms on contingency. However, if an issue is large enough, or the class action covers a significant enough segment of the population, the Oversight Powers within Congress have the right to act independently or in concert with lawsuits.

The AG doesn’t work for the President…or didn’t until Trump tried to make him his bitch…but for the USA. Trump openly admits he didn’t understand what powers the President had and didn’t have when he won the election. Further proof of his, and millions of Americans’, idiocy.

So, basically, banks are okay to fleece the taxpayer on a national cos nobody won't go to jail for it.

Cool to know you have a shitty system where nobody represents the people.

Your system is a casino where the house always wins.