Let Wall Street crack

The simple fact is that all tax money is taken illegitimately, since it is taken without direct consent, making any bail-out illegitimate by extention.

If the banks need money loaned to them, they are more than capable of writing to their customers and asking for donations, just as we are forced to kowtow before them if we ever need loans

Ohhh, but of course, if they did thay they would be answerable to the filthy poor that they screwed over, and that would never do would it?

Far better to use their government enforcers to simply take the money, and then get their puppets to explain why it "had" to be done.

Also worth bearing in mind that capitalist visions of banking aren't the only workable forms of banking.

But no one will employ you if you don't have a current account, forcing you to get one.
The government will not let your employer pay you unless he takes you income tax, forcing you to pay it.

The banks fold, and the government says if you don't have your money they forced you to give used to bail them out, you'll lose all the money in the current account you were forced to open.

Nice little extortion racket.

 

Not to mention that from a workers perspective, the mass loss of power from the rich can actually be turned to our benefit, since the loss of money does not necessarily entail the loss of production.

In south America where factories have gone bankrupt, workers have seized control of them, and reopened operations on a basis of direct-democracy, turning them back into functioning businesses, without loans from large central financial institutions.

If anarchists start organising now, there is no reason we couldn't see similar initiatives in the west, as businesses start to fold

 

Investors may not get there money back, but this money is going into the hands of someone who does not deserve it, and this is the key. This is where the robbery is occurring.

 

You can't pretend we don't have a progressive tax system or that there are no benefits for low income people in this country.

Got a link for that?

The money will be borrowed, and the expectation is that it will be paid back by the banks, with interest. So where's your high tax rise?

The problem is that you are using two accounting systems - on the one hand you pretend that money will personally be taken from you for this bailout, when in all likelihood your taxes will remain exactly the same - and on the other hand when the money is repaid by the UK banks you are pretending it has nothing at all to do with you. You are applying totally inconsistent, self serving logic.

How healthy is your business going to be if the entire banking system collapses? As I pointed out before, you want to pretend that the banking system never did you or anyone else any good, as if they just sit around making big bonuses.

Do you have to pay back your jobseekers allowance like the banks pay back their "bailout"?

Its not designed to protect banker jobs, its designed to protect a complete breakdown of the financial system. You'll see loads of bankers losing their jobs over the next year, starting with every single employee of Lehman.

It sucks that banks have to get bailout out, but the point is what's best for the economy as a whole. If you let the banking system fail out of spite, you'll find there's a lot more hardworking people who did nothing wrong that end up unemployed.

Because we don't want to set up a government bank (other than Northern Rock!). This crisis will pass.

Did Northern Rock and Lehman brothers have the government in their pocket?

I thought it was the poor protecting the rich. Has the story changed?

You are still suggesting that the a functioning banking system is of no relevance or importance, that it could completely break down without non-bankers being harmed. But it isn't like that is it?

How do you think insurance works? Insurance premiums are used to pay off claims. Do you think the entire insurance industry makes no sense?

 

You mean like the NHS is illegitimate?

Again you are making an argument based on spite, I'm asking you what's best for the non-banking part of the economy.

Filthy poor?

Populist rhetoric. Its fun.

Cool. Tell me another vision.

Yep.

Well no you can withdraw money from your current account and hide it under the bed if you like.

True, sort of - the FTSE doesn't dictate GDP. Although shares aren't just held by the rich - e.g. retirement savings.

I think you're talking about Argentina, where anarchists took control of bankrupted companies (i.e. seized/stole assets) and then ran it themselves and praised themselves for being so profitable. It would be like a taxi driver taking a loan and buying a taxi, and then his income is the fares less his loan payments. But then some anarchist steals his car and his fares equal his income and he says "see how much better anarchy is?"

As it turned out these anarchist enterprises eventually realised some loans would help them invest and grow and they felt it was terrible unfair that the capitalists didn't want to loan to thieves. Anyway Argentina is about to go broke for the second time in a decade.

I doubt that very much. There are anarchist collectives out there, very few internet forum anarchists want to join them.

 

You're dodging the point that I made here, it is you that is trying to change the argument, namely, that a massive bail-out plan will inevitably increase the tax burden on the country, and this will have a knock-on effect on the poor.

On Question time both the labour and tory representatives refused to rule out tax-rises.
And there is simple logic here, the labour government does not have 500 billion pounds "spare" that constitutes almost our entire yearly tax revenue


Our yearly spending already over-spends our income by 100 billion.
Since the banks will be in no immediate position to repay the loan, and the government cannot pull the loan money out of thin air, the only way to cover the costs will be through tax-rises.
When the banks finally pay it back, I will not personally see that extra tax money returned to me, instead it will be kept by the government

Do you have even the slightest evidence for that? Or did you in fact just pull it out of thin air?
\

No, my logic is consistent. I am differentiating between money in my pocket, and money taken from my pocket by the government.
If the government taxed me extra (a very high certainty) then I have directly lost wealth I would otherwise have had.
If the banks pay it back, I will still not have that wealth, the government will, and they will spend it as they see fit. Meaning the government profits, but I personally do not
The government is not me, it is a collection of people hiding behind pseudo-legitimacy claiming to act on behalf, despite my never having asked them to do so.

You may as well say that if a gangster extorts money from me, but spends a fraction of that extorted money back on me (but only on what he decides I need, not on what I myself would spend it on), that I am somehow "getting my money back" or benefitting from the "exchange".

You are assuming that the current banking system is the only viable one, or that bailing them out is the only way of securing the economy.
Since the government will steal the money anyway, and since they claim they are doing it so that the banks can lend to businesses, why does the government not directly lend to small businesses, and cut the banks out of the equation?
The answer is that super-rich run the government, and want to see their banks saved, even if it is at the expence of the poor.

You are also being selective about which parts of my post you answer, if the banks need our money, they are more than capable of contacting their private customers and asking for loans, state-intervention is hardly the only option here.
Banks would rather take public money indirectly through the government, because they know this way that people will have no real choice in whether or not they help.

Most people don't even get given a jobseekers allowance, or if they do, not nearly enough to live on. They get told by smug middle-class people that they should "get on their bike" and pull themselves up by their bootstrings, and will be given a patronising lecture of self-sufficiency every week that they try to claim it.

If the banks ask for Corporate welfare, there are virtually no questions asked, the government can't bail them out fast enough.

And the silliest part is, it isn't even working, the banks are still apprehensive about lending and calling back their own loans.
It seems they lack the same mercy as the government when it comes to what they lend.

 

Any money taken involuntarily is illegitmate, yes, it is theft.
There are workable anarchist alternatives to a centralised state healthcare system, these are in fact where the very concept of the NHS evolved from.

Not only is the NHS funded with money taken involuntarily, but it gives the state wrongful claims over the freedom of it's citizens, providing them with arguments in favour of intervening in our lifestyles on "health" grounds.

How is my argument based on spite?
I'm suggesting that the banks should be subject to the same basic conditions of everyone else, that they should have to gain their money legitimately.
How is wanting autonomy over the wealth I produce "spite"?

Making snide comments in the hope that I won't notice you evaded my point, also fun.

Free Banking, Cooperative Banking... You are aware that this is the anarchist board right?
It might help you keep up with discussion if you researched Anarchist theory before storming in

No Hiptastic, I cannot withdraw my tax-money, it is taken illegitmately, and even if I withdraw my savings from my bank-account, the government would still insist my tax money is used to protect my bank...

Again, Anarchist board, so your premise about theft is not going to be taken as axiomatic here.
Very few anarchists are going to be sympathetic to the argument that seizing control of the means of production, that cannot conceivably exist or function without them, after they have been relinquished by "owners" is theft.

It's more like a man who owns more taxis than he is able to use, getting a taxi driver to drive one of his cabs for him for 10 years, with the driver producing many times the cost of the original taxi, but only being allowed access to a fraction of that wealth, based on a superstitious/mystical conception of absentee-ownership, that he forced to accept because of economic coercion. Suddenly finding that the "owner" is bankrupt, and simply taking what is rightfully his (the taxi cab) and carrying on doing what he has always done.


The state going bankrupt would be a question of state-socialism, not anarchism

There are rural anarchist communes, but most western anarchists tend to be syndicalists.
Your point here is superfluous

 

speak for yourself!

 

Personally, I don't think the idea of banks asking customers directly for money is such an unworkable one.

If my bank sent me a letter, asking for a sum from my monthly paycheque, helping it out, that would later be repaid in full with interest matching the rate of inflation, or repayment in shares in the bank. I would not refuse them it.

It would make the bank directly accountable to those people giving the loans, and create a large block of direct public ownership, paving the way for bank-reform.
It would be a great deal more humbling for a bank, to think they had to approach their customers in such a way, and might make them less arrogant about how they behave with our money in the future.

 

Well no as I explained about a dozen times, we are not giving this money to the banks, we are loaning it to them. The money in turn will be borrowed by the government - unless you are telling me taxes are going to double this year? And there's no reason to believe it will be paid for by lowering the personal allowance or raising the basic rate.

You gone from "guaranteed to rise exponentially" to "the government said taxes will need to be raised heavily", and now when it comes time to back that up is transforms into "refused to rule out tax rises".

No, debt, as I explained. Do you really think taxes will double this year?

You are still trying to argue it both ways at the same time.

Its blindingly obvious - don't you realise that governments run deficits? Like I said - are you seriously arguing that taxes will double this year?

If the government gets all the money back and then just goes and spends it while keeping taxes back, then yes. But as I said, its going to be raised by borrowing, and then repaid, I don't expect to see huge volatility in tax rates as a result of this package.

I don't need to argue a false analogy. If you are completely opposed to all taxes and all government services, fine, but otherwise your argument does not hold.

I'm waiting for you to tell me about the other viable banking system.

Because governments are even worse at banking than banks are. And creating an entirely new, temporary banking system is a ridiculously inneficient response to a problem which will pass.

Again, this is populism, not reality. Its not just the super rich that own shares in banks. Its not the super rich that have bank deposits. And its not just the super rich that would lose if the banking system collasped. You know they did let the banks collapse in the great depression, it didn't work out so well for the poor.

So they can call up the guy then loaned £250,000 to buy a house and say "can we borrow £250,000 from you? What do you think he would say? He's going to say he doesn't have £250,000 lying around and if he did he would have never taken a mortgage in the first place. I dont see your poiny here.

They'd rather go to private investors, and many of them did early in the crisis, but as things got worse private capital fled in panic. It looked like it was let the banking system collapse, or inject public capital. Interestingly Barclays still seems determined to go it alone.

But they don't have to repay it do they?

Like Lehman? Like Northern Rock, where shareholders lost 100% of their money? Can you please explain how "no questions asked" and "they can't bail them out fast enough" fits in with the evidence of banks failing and shareholders losing 100% of their money?

There's nothing that can stop some credit contraction. The object is to stop the kind of massive indiscriminate contraction that lead to the great depression.

If they lend recklessly they're going to be repeating the same mistake again. The economic outlook is much worse now, lending is much riskier.

Does this bailout suck? Would it be better if we could just let all the banks fail and all the bankers lose their job if that didn't affect the rest of us? Is it unfair that banks get bailouts other industries don't?

Yes.

Is the bailout in the best interest of the economy as a whole?

Yes.

 

Massively increasing our national debt, and who will the government borrow the money from? the banks?
Other governments, trying to bail out their own banks.
The final bill for this will fall at the feet of tax-payer

No, I am making a perfectly reasonable point, that you are failing to comprehend. Let me spell it out clearly.

There is a tangible difference between money in the government pocket and money in my pocket

Money for this bail out will come from the tax-payer, it will be taken from our pocket. It will never be paid back to us, it will only be paid back to the government.
The government is not me, I will not ever regain the money that I have earnt, and has been taken by the government

Care to bet some money on that? Cos I'll need the cash when the taxes go up and I beat you
yes, the government already has a large debt, and bug debt increases lead to tax increases.
In a time when the global market is in crisis, increasing the level of our debt can hardly be construed to be wise.

We're on the anarchist board... You have to pretty much take it as read that I don't support ANY government spending. This isn't the same as not being in support of things like health spending, it simply means I am opposed to our current illegitimate system of organising such things.

I think we have established that it does

No you aren't, I covered this in my last post. I haven't suggested that the government takes over the bank, why would an anarchist suggest this?
You seem to have a very hard time accepting that someone on the anarchist board would in fact be opposed to the government.

No, because the problem will pass and come back again. Reforming the banks to prevent this would solve the problem

I have provided alternatives to letting the system collapse. I've already pointed out that if they wished the government could do this without bailing out the banks. The reason they won't is because they are in the pockets of the super-rich, who control the majority of the nations wealth, and make lucrative donations to all the major political parties.

No, they could ask customers (of which they have several thousand) for small loans, taken out of weekly earnings etc.
My point here is that this would leave the banks directly accountable to those they borrow from, those they borrow from would actually get their money back, and all the money would be gained voluntarily (legitimately)

I've paid a lot more in tax than I've ever received from Jobseekers Allowance, so this is a dubious statement at best. And given that it is impossible to live on the scant JSA, eventually everyone on it will have to to start working in tax-generating jobs again, or face starvation. An ultimatum the bank-managers have the luxury of avoiding

The government DID intervene in Northern Rock, and will no doubt turn a tidy profit from it after the crisis subsides.

Channel 4's recent Dispatches episode showed that banks weren't even lending to profitable manufacturing businesses, despite receiving this bail-out.
The banks aren't just contracting, they are wholesale failing to keep their ends of the bargain.

Every act of atrocity ever commited started with the words "it's for your own good"

Using stolen money to bail out the banks is not a legitimate solution, or even the only solution.

 

Alas, I have to run, duty calls. It's not just me being rude if I don't reply any more tonight
I'll try and get back to any more replies later this week
Thanks for the interesting debate-matter,

 

This just means we have to pay more taxes in the future does it not? There is interest on this borrowed money that will have to be eventually paid. There is no running from debt. Especially 700 billion dollars worth.

Well, for one thing, one absent of a central bank, one absent of government reserve requirements, no government limits on the size of banks, that includes how large or how small a bank can be, no legal tender laws, no government charters of banks, no government established currency. I’m sure I could go into more detail but it would be more of the same.

Agreed, people of all wealth statuses have shares in banks as well as deposits, but you cannot deny that there is a collusion of interests between powerful bankers and the state, and this is more than just populism here. The past careers of many White House cabinet members and officials shows this. Hank Paulson and many congress members who have pushed for the bailout are perfect examples.

When one gets this high up, the distinction between private and public employee seems to disappear or become nothing more then a formality.

I don’t this particularly does your argument much good to be honest. Why do you think private capital fled? I would say because it recognized the faultiness of making any such investment in these banks and companies whose assets were so rotten.

In fact, so much so, that it took the government, an institution of force, to get this money into these institutions. What does this say about how productive these investments/bailouts are?

Any institution that receives billions when it otherwise wouldn’t from the government will start to lend out recklessly. I can guarantee you that when a 700 billion dollar bailout appears, there will be reckless spending.

I don’t think anyone is expecting this crisis, if allowed to happen without any government intervention, to only affect CEOs and chairmen. Of course it will effect employees and shareholders, but I still don’t think that is a reason that a bailout should happen. And saying that THAT is a reason the government should intervene is indeed populist. At least from the perspective that many people I’ve heard approach the problem seem to do it.

I do not think the bailout is in the interests of the economy as a whole. Why is taking 700B productive dollars and giving them to unproductive bankers a good idea for anyone?

"Credit freezing up" merely means that making loans is risky. Until the financial climate is easier to deal with, loans should not be made. Government coercion in the form of a loan is not the answer.

 

Of course you can be in favor of health spending. But from reading some of your posts, it seems that you are advocating some kind of government health spending, and this might cause some kind of confusion.

This again suggests some kind of government policy. I assume by reform you are strictly speaking removal of all coercive government policies and abolition of all non legitimate ownership titles? Something along those lines correct?

Reform along the lines of what we see happening now is clearly what we want to avoid.

 

Won't be able to respond for a few days at best. But the contradiction in

was something I was going to ask about.

 

Well it only presents a contradiction if you work from the premise that the only way you'll ever get people to spend money on mutual healthcare is if you coerce them.

An anarchist need not have any qualms about a group of people voluntarily pooling their funds under agreed conditions in order to pay for group welfare. such organisations are to a great extent what the modern NHS evolved from.

For me, the principle differences are that it is entirely voluntary, you don't have to join if you don't want, and such organisations would tend to be more decentralised and subject directly to their funders.

So if I don't like a practice of the healthcare organisation, such as refusing operations to the overweight or smokers, I can stop giving them my money.

Anarchists aren't opposed to social cohesion or organisation, they are opposed to illegitimate governing bodies empowered by coercion.

So I don't oppose spending money on health, I oppose governments taking my money without my consent, and deciding for themselves how to spend it on health, and then telling me what my own health priorities are, not to mention spend a vast quantity of that money on the monolith of a bureaucracy propping it up.

Take Robin Hood, he steals from the rich and gives to the poor.
Just because I support helping the poor, doesn't mean I support violence against the rich by logical extention.

see?

 

Bonsai:
I'll try and keep things short, because I tend not to read long postings (hint, hint).
I don't like government enforcers and I don't like total freedom. Total freedom has to be seen to be believed. Go to an unsupervised campground and listen to assholes with boom boxes playing hard rock and loud all terrain vehicles and too much booze, and look at their litter, then tell me about total freedom.

On the other hand, we've got people in the Canadian government using taxes to buy submarines and state of the art helicopters. Why? To prevent Denmark from taking over Hans Island, an uninhabited heap of ice and rock at latitude 80 degrees north. Or, using taxes to invest in junky movies so that all worthless films we see won't be made south of the border. Or, using taxes to provide golden parachutes to Conservatives and other MPs and Senators (not to mention MLAs) when they retire.

So, we need a little government, but not nearly as much as we've got.

 

The trouble with this argument for me is that those noisy campsites are under the regime of law-enforcers.
The trouble is it's a bad neighbourhood.

We see about 1 policecar every 3 months in my village, and yet we have none of those problems.

Communities like that exist, but on the whole, they are preserved and protected by the state. Without government, they would either reform themselves, or self-destruct

 

My point is that it is collateralised lending. There is no chance the whole bill will end up with the taxpayer.

They are borrowing the money and lending it to the banks or investing it in the banks. If the loans/investments are not repaid, and if the collateral doesn't cover it, taxpayers have to pay for the remainder.

I'll bet you a $100 donation to hipforums that taxes do not double this year or next.

Collateralised debt. It is an important distinction.

Not according to Keynes. He would say that government fiscal contraction during a recession would amplify the recession.

That's more about being an ideological purist than an anarchist, I'd say.

That is very vague and contradictory.

What was the banking system you suggested?

I have an easy time accepting that you are an ideological purist. I have a harder time accepting that it is the right approach to this crisis.

Except that banking system crises predated the Fed, fiat money, and everything else that you are opposed to.
I have provided alternatives to letting the system collapse.

Your solution was silly populism.

More populism.

You know this would not work.

That makes no sense. The people that borrow suddenly have so much money they can bail out their lender? Its like donating blood when you are bleeding to death.

Who paid for your eduation and health care? Who polices your streets and so on?

The idea is that if the banks all collapse, more jobs will be lost in other industries.

I doubt it! And you skipped over this issue of what happened to Northern Rock managers and shareholders. There's all going to be out of luck in the end.

There is going to be a contraction either way. The argument is that it would be much worse without the bailout.

That's nice but many things for your own good were started with the words "its for your own good". After all you're telling us anarchy is for our own good.

Sorry for the delay.