So how long before demand ramps up enough for banks to put pressure on ratings agencies and mortgage brokers to create more mortgages to turn into securities?
They probably all think they'll be smart enough to foist shit off on the next Bear Stearns.
For such smart people, I-Bankers are fucking irresponsible morons.
Two things. First you need to remember that when people were investing in the Securitized mortgages they knew what type of mortgage pools they were buying into. The theory behind buying the higher risk mortgage pools wasn't that each mortgage was as strong as the mortgages in the more expensive asset classes. It was that even accepting a higher risk of default, the size of the pools meant you would still win. This was their mistake, and it is in part on the rating agencies, who made these classes of securities look much safer than they really were.
Second, the guys making these investments weren't sitting in the corner offices. These were small, low prestige investment units that swelled in prominence at a frightening rate. To be honest, it kind of reminded me of looking at Maddoff's "returns" before the hammer fell.
Errrr, not really. They were buying AAA-rated pools that were actually crap. The AAA rating let people buy them in mass quantity as if they were T-Bills, while getting a better return. No one was checking the mortgage level tapes at the rating agencies or among the buyers to see they were actually filled with garbage.
Granted, I'm sure plenty of people knew what was really going on, but they were just making way too much money to care about things like "stability" when they could just blame the rating agency and say "THEY WERE AAA!!1"
You also say it wasn't corner offices buying them, but wasn't it the head of the AIG I-banking unit that SPECIALIZED in this stuff that caused all the trouble and brought them down? Yep. What about Bear Stearns? A few corner offices there; or were.
The mortgage backed CDOs being sold now are all being sold through private placement, to accredited investors who are required by law to be experienced in choosing investments and evaluating risk. For accredited investors, the most important functions of ratings are (1) reassurance and (2) investment allocation mandates (for example, an institutional investor may be limited to a certain percentage of unrated investments).
It is my understanding that at the start, the people training in the subprime CDOs were very junior, and that CDO investors in general were looked down on relative to other types of investors. This quickly changed as CDOs exploded in the 2000's though, and a whole generation of I-bankers set their sights on getting into those groups. That is how it went from the scrubs in the back to big business that tops guys were interested in.
Also, as I know most I-bankers are (in theory) smart, I'm assuming that all of them knew the garbage that was going into the "AAA" stuff, they were just confident enough they wouldn't be holding the bag when the music stopped. It was just greed that kept them investing in them. This is why I typically despise the term "Financial Innovation", as it's usually about repackaging turds and selling them as gold.
The banks were the biggest loser the last go around. But there isn't any reason that CDOs with mortgages that will continue to be paid are an especially bad thing to securitize. People securitize weird things all the time, like the income stream from apartment washing machines or the maintenance of airplanes. The problem last time arose when a class of assets were massively overvalued because the rating agencies assessed that they were safer than they actually were and then everyone bought them because why wouldn't you buy a AAA security with tremendous upside? That shouldn't happen again, but if it does, I will agree that Anton who falls for it is an idiot, and I will be happy to sell them my securitized income stream from tolls I collect from the Brooklyn bridge.
Hahaha.
No. We both know that this is crap.
the banks that went under were big losers. The ones that survived got even bigger and more above reproach for next time.
The banks were the biggest loser the last go around. But there isn't any reason that CDOs with mortgages that will continue to be paid are an especially bad thing to securitize. People securitize weird things all the time, like the income stream from apartment washing machines or the maintenance of airplanes. The problem last time arose when a class of assets were massively overvalued because the rating agencies assessed that they were safer than they actually were and then everyone bought them because why wouldn't you buy a AAA security with tremendous upside? That shouldn't happen again, but if it does, I will agree that Anton who falls for it is an idiot, and I will be happy to sell them my securitized income stream from tolls I collect from the Brooklyn bridge.
Hahaha.
No. We both know that this is crap.
the banks that went under were big losers. The ones that survived got even bigger and more above reproach for next time.
The biggest losers were probably people that took out mortgages right before the crash or really several years leading up to it and quickly found themselves totally, completely, hopelessly underwater basically overnight. My brother being one of them!
The banks were the biggest loser the last go around. But there isn't any reason that CDOs with mortgages that will continue to be paid are an especially bad thing to securitize. People securitize weird things all the time, like the income stream from apartment washing machines or the maintenance of airplanes. The problem last time arose when a class of assets were massively overvalued because the rating agencies assessed that they were safer than they actually were and then everyone bought them because why wouldn't you buy a AAA security with tremendous upside? That shouldn't happen again, but if it does, I will agree that Anton who falls for it is an idiot, and I will be happy to sell them my securitized income stream from tolls I collect from the Brooklyn bridge.
Hahaha.
No. We both know that this is crap.
the banks that went under were big losers. The ones that survived got even bigger and more above reproach for next time.
The biggest losers were probably people that took out mortgages right before the crash or really several years leading up to it and quickly found themselves totally, completely, hopelessly underwater basically overnight. My brother being one of them!
Ppbbthh... I took a mortgage out several years after the crash and I'm still barely above water. I'm really afraid congress is going to eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction; that'll cause prices to plummet again!
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
Ppbbthh... I took a mortgage out several years after the crash and I'm still barely above water. I'm really afraid congress is going to eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction; that'll cause prices to plummet again!
If they did that I think I'd just stop paying my mortgage once prices started to crater.
RedTide#1907 on Battle.net
Come Overwatch with meeeee
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
The banks were the biggest loser the last go around. But there isn't any reason that CDOs with mortgages that will continue to be paid are an especially bad thing to securitize. People securitize weird things all the time, like the income stream from apartment washing machines or the maintenance of airplanes. The problem last time arose when a class of assets were massively overvalued because the rating agencies assessed that they were safer than they actually were and then everyone bought them because why wouldn't you buy a AAA security with tremendous upside? That shouldn't happen again, but if it does, I will agree that Anton who falls for it is an idiot, and I will be happy to sell them my securitized income stream from tolls I collect from the Brooklyn bridge.
Hahaha.
No. We both know that this is crap.
the banks that went under were big losers. The ones that survived got even bigger and more above reproach for next time.
The biggest losers were probably people that took out mortgages right before the crash or really several years leading up to it and quickly found themselves totally, completely, hopelessly underwater basically overnight. My brother being one of them!
Ppbbthh... I took a mortgage out several years after the crash and I'm still barely above water. I'm really afraid congress is going to eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction; that'll cause prices to plummet again!
Unlikely to happen, IMO. If it was on the horizon, it would have become part if the fiscal cliff rate deal. Even if they eliminate it, is expect a phase out, not an instant end to the deduction.
The banks were the biggest loser the last go around. But there isn't any reason that CDOs with mortgages that will continue to be paid are an especially bad thing to securitize. People securitize weird things all the time, like the income stream from apartment washing machines or the maintenance of airplanes. The problem last time arose when a class of assets were massively overvalued because the rating agencies assessed that they were safer than they actually were and then everyone bought them because why wouldn't you buy a AAA security with tremendous upside? That shouldn't happen again, but if it does, I will agree that Anton who falls for it is an idiot, and I will be happy to sell them my securitized income stream from tolls I collect from the Brooklyn bridge.
Hahaha.
No. We both know that this is crap.
the banks that went under were big losers. The ones that survived got even bigger and more above reproach for next time.
The biggest losers were probably people that took out mortgages right before the crash or really several years leading up to it and quickly found themselves totally, completely, hopelessly underwater basically overnight. My brother being one of them!
Ppbbthh... I took a mortgage out several years after the crash and I'm still barely above water. I'm really afraid congress is going to eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction; that'll cause prices to plummet again!
Unlikely to happen, IMO. If it was on the horizon, it would have become part if the fiscal cliff rate deal. Even if they eliminate it, is expect a phase out, not an instant end to the deduction.
Unless you grandfather in every last person who currently is taking advantage of the credit now for the life of at least their current loan, all you'll be doing is exchanging a rapid plummet in real estate prices for people who are in the actual middle/working classes with a huge wave of defaults for a steady decline in prices over whatever window for a steady stream of defaults and a more gradual, possibly snowballing decline in home values.
Probably about 80% of the people I know are house poor and either would eventually start accumulating (more) debt as the credit phased out or would either decide to walk away/take a bath in a sale as the value of their home went underwater pretty permanently.
RedTide#1907 on Battle.net
Come Overwatch with meeeee
It is kinda hard to not laugh in their faces after that. They're like my incarnated example of market failure.
You want to know something scary? Those same collateralized debt obligations are hitting the market again in a big way. Some are even getting rated again.
.......................
.......................
What the fuck?
People are really excited about them actually, especially the unrated ones which carry a higher potential upside. There is literally competition among investors to buy in, because they aren't being offered in large enough numbers to meet demand. The operating theory seems to be that all the bad risk is already gone. . .
I'd say that these investors have the memory of goldfish, but that would be a fucking insult to goldfish.
The banks were the biggest loser the last go around. But there isn't any reason that CDOs with mortgages that will continue to be paid are an especially bad thing to securitize. People securitize weird things all the time, like the income stream from apartment washing machines or the maintenance of airplanes. The problem last time arose when a class of assets were massively overvalued because the rating agencies assessed that they were safer than they actually were and then everyone bought them because why wouldn't you buy a AAA security with tremendous upside? That shouldn't happen again, but if it does, I will agree that Anton who falls for it is an idiot, and I will be happy to sell them my securitized income stream from tolls I collect from the Brooklyn bridge.
Hahaha.
No. We both know that this is crap.
the banks that went under were big losers. The ones that survived got even bigger and more above reproach for next time.
The biggest losers were probably people that took out mortgages right before the crash or really several years leading up to it and quickly found themselves totally, completely, hopelessly underwater basically overnight. My brother being one of them!
Ppbbthh... I took a mortgage out several years after the crash and I'm still barely above water. I'm really afraid congress is going to eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction; that'll cause prices to plummet again!
Unlikely to happen, IMO. If it was on the horizon, it would have become part if the fiscal cliff rate deal. Even if they eliminate it, is expect a phase out, not an instant end to the deduction.
Unless you grandfather in every last person who currently is taking advantage of the credit now for the life of at least their current loan, all you'll be doing is exchanging a rapid plummet in real estate prices for people who are in the actual middle/working classes with a huge wave of defaults for a steady decline in prices over whatever window for a steady stream of defaults and a more gradual, possibly snowballing decline in home values.
Probably about 80% of the people I know are house poor and either would eventually start accumulating (more) debt as the credit phased out or would either decide to walk away/take a bath in a sale as the value of their home went underwater pretty permanently.
Yeah, I'd have to look at my taxes over the last few years to really see the impact, but if ending the mortgage interest deduction was on the horizon, leading to a big drop in home values, I'd probably sell my house ASAP and get a 1 bedroom apartment for half to 2/3rds of my mortgage payment (I'm single, no kids). Or I'd have to find a roommate or two.
I swear to god, if you people crash the global economy again I'm going to just declare myself emperor and build a castle.
Do you need someone who knows just enough biology and chemistry to be called an alchemist for your court?
So these unrated securities, just a question, how do people know what the realistic risks and benefits they offer are? I mean that is suppose to be the job of the rating agencies, to allow people to negotiate the risk-reward equation with a professional guide. How is this any smarter then dropping a grand on a roulette table and letting it spin?
I hope to god any pensions that are still left are not allowed to buy these.
Edit: since the above was answered, who makes the prospectus and is it regulated as to accuracy and what can be omitted.
A prospectus is generally written to betray exactly as much information as required by law, no more no less, and these laws has in general gotten more stringent in the past five years.
That said, I'm no expert on CDOs, but I don't think the problem really is with whats in the prospectus, but how you price it. It doesn't matter if you know which mortgage backed securities are in your CDO (or which CDO is in your CDO because fuck keeping things simple), what you need is a model that accurately keeps track of how likely those MBSes are to go belly up, and how the probabilities of the various underlyings doing this corelate with eachother.
A proper rating agency takes one look at the mathematical clusterfuck that arises out of that and says "I have no fucking idea". Unrated means that guys whos sole purpose in the market is to figure out how likely something is to become worthless do not feel they can provide an accurate prediction. This is not an issue that has anything to do with how obvious the prospectus is.
AAA CDO of CDOs is what happends when the rating agency, instead of admitting ignorance, buys into whatever bit of half-assed bullshit the issuer deigns to supply the rating agency with, which the rating agency then cheerfully rubberstamps.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) claimed Tuesday that a Republican-led refusal to raise the debt ceiling could be a "wonderful experiment" in forcing the government not to spend money on "stupid things."
During an interview with conservative radio host Sandy Rios, Coburn downplayed warnings from economists, President Barack Obama and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have suggested that Congress' failure to raise the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit would prove economically disastrous for the nation. Coburn argued that because some entitlement payments would still go out amid a government shutdown or debt default, Republicans shouldn't fear a move to reject raising the debt ceiling.
"We’re going to collect $200 billion a month if in fact the government were to not extend the debt limit,” Coburn told Rios. “Social Security would be paid, Medicare would be paid, the essentials would be paid. It’s the non-essentials that wouldn’t be paid, it’s the $250 to $300 billion a year in stupid things we do that we wouldn’t pay. It’s the programs that aren’t an absolute necessity that wouldn’t get funded, the things that would be a necessity would get funded.”
Coburn continued, seemingly urging lawmakers consider a vote against a debt ceiling increase.
“It might be a wonderful experiment, regardless who wins the next election or not, just to see if we could live on the money that’s coming into the Treasury and not have to borrow against the future of our children,” the Oklahoma Republican said.
...
Some people are just stupid.
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SerukoFerocious Kittenof The Farthest NorthRegistered Userregular
Yeah, I'd have to look at my taxes over the last few years to really see the impact, but if ending the mortgage interest deduction was on the horizon, leading to a big drop in home values, I'd probably sell my house ASAP and get a 1 bedroom apartment for half to 2/3rds of my mortgage payment (I'm single, no kids). Or I'd have to find a roommate or two.
I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment (weirdly enough I'm in somethign of a similar situation, if the US economy goes down the tubes I'd probably make more money). I would like to add the following two points to it.
Generally for people in the middle class of the US
1. The largest investment they own is their home.
2. The largest tax breaks they get are loan interests on home and student debt, child credits/dependents, and not having to pay taxes on their work related health insurance.
---
Those points being made, ACA has provisions to increase revenue by taxing some health insurance plans as income. I believe that comes into effect his calendar year, but it may very well be next year. Payroll taxes have gone up, or if one prefers returned to their pre-holiday levels, decreasing discretionary income for the middle class by another 1-2 percent. The US economy is a consumer economy. This means consumption will be hit by 1-2 percent +aca increases.
The President has shown a willingness to offer small reductions in social security benefits.
If you forecast continued weak growth in US GDP (and everybody is) and then you subtract a couple of percent of consumer spending then just right there, with nothing else you're in real danger of turning your magical 2.5 percent GDP increase into a .5 GDP increase which is a recession.
Create further problems by lowering home prices once again and raising revenues while negatively impacting consumer spending through an decrease or an elimination of the mortgage interest tax deduction and the US is in real trouble.
Ripple effects through construction, finance, credit interest increases on consumers are not hard to see following. Which all means a bigger recessions.
---
I'm not saying any of that will happen. But I think every credible talking head is saying it could, by which I mean Krugman's Army.
It would only take a little more compromise to bleed the US recovery out, which no rational human being really wants.
Seruko on
"How are you going to play Dota if your fingers and bitten off? You can't. That's how" -> Carnarvon
"You can be yodeling bear without spending a dime if you get lucky." -> reVerse
"In the grim darkness of the future, we will all be nurses catering to the whims of terrible old people." -> Hacksaw
"In fact, our whole society will be oriented around caring for one very decrepit, very old man on total life support." -> SKFM
I mean, the first time I met a non-white person was when this Vietnamese kid tried to break my legs but that was entirely fair because he was a centreback, not because he was a subhuman beast in some zoo ->yotes
Man, every time I realize that a large portion of the people running our government think we don't actually need a government I get a little more depressed than I did the time before.
Thankfully, the GOP did poorly in the last round of elections because most of those fools believe we shouldn't have any regulation to prevent shitty securities from crashing the economy. Now we just need to hope the people running things see that this shit is happening and regulations get tightened a little more so that the chucklefucks investing in this shit only burn down their financial assets without touching the global economy in the process.
HAHAHAHA
HAHAHA
HA
That's not how things work in this country. We had a global crisis. That is worth a coupon for one (1) batch of regulations aimed at fixing something vaguely related to the crisis. We already blew our coupon, so we're stuck with what we have until after the next crisis. Then we can try again.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) claimed Tuesday that a Republican-led refusal to raise the debt ceiling could be a "wonderful experiment" in forcing the government not to spend money on "stupid things."
During an interview with conservative radio host Sandy Rios, Coburn downplayed warnings from economists, President Barack Obama and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have suggested that Congress' failure to raise the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit would prove economically disastrous for the nation. Coburn argued that because some entitlement payments would still go out amid a government shutdown or debt default, Republicans shouldn't fear a move to reject raising the debt ceiling.
"We’re going to collect $200 billion a month if in fact the government were to not extend the debt limit,” Coburn told Rios. “Social Security would be paid, Medicare would be paid, the essentials would be paid. It’s the non-essentials that wouldn’t be paid, it’s the $250 to $300 billion a year in stupid things we do that we wouldn’t pay. It’s the programs that aren’t an absolute necessity that wouldn’t get funded, the things that would be a necessity would get funded.”
Coburn continued, seemingly urging lawmakers consider a vote against a debt ceiling increase.
“It might be a wonderful experiment, regardless who wins the next election or not, just to see if we could live on the money that’s coming into the Treasury and not have to borrow against the future of our children,” the Oklahoma Republican said.
...
Some people are just stupid.
What, you don't like wonderful experiments in ending the world economy?
Also wonderful experiments in math that is wrongy wrong wrong wrong.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) claimed Tuesday that a Republican-led refusal to raise the debt ceiling could be a "wonderful experiment" in forcing the government not to spend money on "stupid things."
During an interview with conservative radio host Sandy Rios, Coburn downplayed warnings from economists, President Barack Obama and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have suggested that Congress' failure to raise the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit would prove economically disastrous for the nation. Coburn argued that because some entitlement payments would still go out amid a government shutdown or debt default, Republicans shouldn't fear a move to reject raising the debt ceiling.
"We’re going to collect $200 billion a month if in fact the government were to not extend the debt limit,” Coburn told Rios. “Social Security would be paid, Medicare would be paid, the essentials would be paid. It’s the non-essentials that wouldn’t be paid, it’s the $250 to $300 billion a year in stupid things we do that we wouldn’t pay. It’s the programs that aren’t an absolute necessity that wouldn’t get funded, the things that would be a necessity would get funded.”
Coburn continued, seemingly urging lawmakers consider a vote against a debt ceiling increase.
“It might be a wonderful experiment, regardless who wins the next election or not, just to see if we could live on the money that’s coming into the Treasury and not have to borrow against the future of our children,” the Oklahoma Republican said.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) claimed Tuesday that a Republican-led refusal to raise the debt ceiling could be a "wonderful experiment" in forcing the government not to spend money on "stupid things."
During an interview with conservative radio host Sandy Rios, Coburn downplayed warnings from economists, President Barack Obama and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have suggested that Congress' failure to raise the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit would prove economically disastrous for the nation. Coburn argued that because some entitlement payments would still go out amid a government shutdown or debt default, Republicans shouldn't fear a move to reject raising the debt ceiling.
"We’re going to collect $200 billion a month if in fact the government were to not extend the debt limit,” Coburn told Rios. “Social Security would be paid, Medicare would be paid, the essentials would be paid. It’s the non-essentials that wouldn’t be paid, it’s the $250 to $300 billion a year in stupid things we do that we wouldn’t pay. It’s the programs that aren’t an absolute necessity that wouldn’t get funded, the things that would be a necessity would get funded.”
Coburn continued, seemingly urging lawmakers consider a vote against a debt ceiling increase.
“It might be a wonderful experiment, regardless who wins the next election or not, just to see if we could live on the money that’s coming into the Treasury and not have to borrow against the future of our children,” the Oklahoma Republican said.
...
Some people are just stupid.
I would like to fly to the moon. And set up a permanent base there, with a mining operation. I will mine moonrocks from dawn until dusk, and cart them back and forth across that great, barren surface until at last, after decades, I will have reformed the moon into the shape of a giant hand.
I will build a massive rocket booster on the far side of the moon, as big as Texas, and I will fire up that rocket. With it, I will pilot my great, hand-shaped moonship into the surface of the Earth, right into the giant poster of Jean-Luc Picard's face that I will have spread across whatever remains of our United States.
It will be the greatest facepalm the galaxy has ever known.
And it will still not be big enough for what Tom Motherfucking Coburn said up there.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
The banks were the biggest loser the last go around. But there isn't any reason that CDOs with mortgages that will continue to be paid are an especially bad thing to securitize. People securitize weird things all the time, like the income stream from apartment washing machines or the maintenance of airplanes. The problem last time arose when a class of assets were massively overvalued because the rating agencies assessed that they were safer than they actually were and then everyone bought them because why wouldn't you buy a AAA security with tremendous upside? That shouldn't happen again, but if it does, I will agree that Anton who falls for it is an idiot, and I will be happy to sell them my securitized income stream from tolls I collect from the Brooklyn bridge.
Hahaha.
No. We both know that this is crap.
the banks that went under were big losers. The ones that survived got even bigger and more above reproach for next time.
The biggest losers were probably people that took out mortgages right before the crash or really several years leading up to it and quickly found themselves totally, completely, hopelessly underwater basically overnight. My brother being one of them!
People who took out loans on houses they expected to keep for the long-term, with mortgages they were comfortable paying, aren't necessarily doing poorly. It sucks, and I'm sure they wish they had some equity, but owing a quarter-mil on a $100k house isn't much different than owing a quarter-mil on a $400k house, unless you want to sell it.
The biggest losers, if we're going with real estate, are the folks who purchased a house right before the crash using a shitty variable-term mortgage with the idea of doing a re-fi in a couple years after they'd built up some equity, because they could barely afford a house outside the ghetto as it was, and if prices kept going up they'd pretty much never be able to buy a house.
And then a year after they bought their overpriced house, the market ate itself. And then the bank was all, "Okay, time to recalculate your payments - oh, hey, look, they're going to rise by 50% now! Cool!" And when you asked if you could maybe work out a deal, because you wanted to keep the house but you couldn't manage those payments, they said, "Fuck off." And when you tried to short-sell, they said, "Fuck off." And when you foreclosed, they sued you for the balance paid in full.
Those people are probably not doing so well.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) claimed Tuesday that a Republican-led refusal to raise the debt ceiling could be a "wonderful experiment" in forcing the government not to spend money on "stupid things."
During an interview with conservative radio host Sandy Rios, Coburn downplayed warnings from economists, President Barack Obama and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have suggested that Congress' failure to raise the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit would prove economically disastrous for the nation. Coburn argued that because some entitlement payments would still go out amid a government shutdown or debt default, Republicans shouldn't fear a move to reject raising the debt ceiling.
"We’re going to collect $200 billion a month if in fact the government were to not extend the debt limit,” Coburn told Rios. “Social Security would be paid, Medicare would be paid, the essentials would be paid. It’s the non-essentials that wouldn’t be paid, it’s the $250 to $300 billion a year in stupid things we do that we wouldn’t pay. It’s the programs that aren’t an absolute necessity that wouldn’t get funded, the things that would be a necessity would get funded.”
Coburn continued, seemingly urging lawmakers consider a vote against a debt ceiling increase.
“It might be a wonderful experiment, regardless who wins the next election or not, just to see if we could live on the money that’s coming into the Treasury and not have to borrow against the future of our children,” the Oklahoma Republican said.
...
Some people are just stupid.
What, you don't like wonderful experiments in ending the world economy?
Also wonderful experiments in math that is wrongy wrong wrong wrong.
Wrong.
HEY GUYS I HAVE A WONDERFUL IDEA FOR AN EXPERIMENT
LET'S TAKE THE OPERATING CODE FOR ONE OF OUR NUCLEAR MISSILE SILOS AND PUT A DIVIDE-BY-ZERO IN THERE.
JUST TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS
IT WILL BE A GLORIOUS EXPERIMENT TO SEE IF WE ALL FUCKING DIE
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) claimed Tuesday that a Republican-led refusal to raise the debt ceiling could be a "wonderful experiment" in forcing the government not to spend money on "stupid things."
During an interview with conservative radio host Sandy Rios, Coburn downplayed warnings from economists, President Barack Obama and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have suggested that Congress' failure to raise the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit would prove economically disastrous for the nation. Coburn argued that because some entitlement payments would still go out amid a government shutdown or debt default, Republicans shouldn't fear a move to reject raising the debt ceiling.
"We’re going to collect $200 billion a month if in fact the government were to not extend the debt limit,” Coburn told Rios. “Social Security would be paid, Medicare would be paid, the essentials would be paid. It’s the non-essentials that wouldn’t be paid, it’s the $250 to $300 billion a year in stupid things we do that we wouldn’t pay. It’s the programs that aren’t an absolute necessity that wouldn’t get funded, the things that would be a necessity would get funded.”
Coburn continued, seemingly urging lawmakers consider a vote against a debt ceiling increase.
“It might be a wonderful experiment, regardless who wins the next election or not, just to see if we could live on the money that’s coming into the Treasury and not have to borrow against the future of our children,” the Oklahoma Republican said.
...
Some people are just stupid.
What, you don't like wonderful experiments in ending the world economy?
Also wonderful experiments in math that is wrongy wrong wrong wrong.
Wrong.
HEY GUYS I HAVE A WONDERFUL IDEA FOR AN EXPERIMENT
LET'S TAKE THE OPERATING CODE FOR ONE OF OUR NUCLEAR MISSILE SILOS AND PUT A DIVIDE-BY-ZERO IN THERE.
JUST TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS
IT WILL BE A GLORIOUS EXPERIMENT TO SEE IF WE ALL FUCKING DIE
I would think it would just blow up a missile base somewhere in North Dakota. We'll survive.
On a things we are actually spending money on related note: we tested like a 30,000 pound conventional bomb this week, designed pretty explicitly to attack the place where Iran stores enriched uranium.
Which doesn't sound like a bad idea AT ALL.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) claimed Tuesday that a Republican-led refusal to raise the debt ceiling could be a "wonderful experiment" in forcing the government not to spend money on "stupid things."
During an interview with conservative radio host Sandy Rios, Coburn downplayed warnings from economists, President Barack Obama and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have suggested that Congress' failure to raise the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit would prove economically disastrous for the nation. Coburn argued that because some entitlement payments would still go out amid a government shutdown or debt default, Republicans shouldn't fear a move to reject raising the debt ceiling.
"We’re going to collect $200 billion a month if in fact the government were to not extend the debt limit,” Coburn told Rios. “Social Security would be paid, Medicare would be paid, the essentials would be paid. It’s the non-essentials that wouldn’t be paid, it’s the $250 to $300 billion a year in stupid things we do that we wouldn’t pay. It’s the programs that aren’t an absolute necessity that wouldn’t get funded, the things that would be a necessity would get funded.”
Coburn continued, seemingly urging lawmakers consider a vote against a debt ceiling increase.
“It might be a wonderful experiment, regardless who wins the next election or not, just to see if we could live on the money that’s coming into the Treasury and not have to borrow against the future of our children,” the Oklahoma Republican said.
...
Some people are just stupid.
I would like to fly to the moon. And set up a permanent base there, with a mining operation. I will mine moonrocks from dawn until dusk, and cart them back and forth across that great, barren surface until at last, after decades, I will have reformed the moon into the shape of a giant hand.
I will build a massive rocket booster on the far side of the moon, as big as Texas, and I will fire up that rocket. With it, I will pilot my great, hand-shaped moonship into the surface of the Earth, right into the giant poster of Jean-Luc Picard's face that I will have spread across whatever remains of our United States.
It will be the greatest facepalm the galaxy has ever known.
And it will still not be big enough for what Tom Motherfucking Coburn said up there.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) claimed Tuesday that a Republican-led refusal to raise the debt ceiling could be a "wonderful experiment" in forcing the government not to spend money on "stupid things."
During an interview with conservative radio host Sandy Rios, Coburn downplayed warnings from economists, President Barack Obama and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have suggested that Congress' failure to raise the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit would prove economically disastrous for the nation. Coburn argued that because some entitlement payments would still go out amid a government shutdown or debt default, Republicans shouldn't fear a move to reject raising the debt ceiling.
"We’re going to collect $200 billion a month if in fact the government were to not extend the debt limit,” Coburn told Rios. “Social Security would be paid, Medicare would be paid, the essentials would be paid. It’s the non-essentials that wouldn’t be paid, it’s the $250 to $300 billion a year in stupid things we do that we wouldn’t pay. It’s the programs that aren’t an absolute necessity that wouldn’t get funded, the things that would be a necessity would get funded.”
Coburn continued, seemingly urging lawmakers consider a vote against a debt ceiling increase.
“It might be a wonderful experiment, regardless who wins the next election or not, just to see if we could live on the money that’s coming into the Treasury and not have to borrow against the future of our children,” the Oklahoma Republican said.
...
Some people are just stupid.
What, you don't like wonderful experiments in ending the world economy?
Also wonderful experiments in math that is wrongy wrong wrong wrong.
Wrong.
HEY GUYS I HAVE A WONDERFUL IDEA FOR AN EXPERIMENT
LET'S TAKE THE OPERATING CODE FOR ONE OF OUR NUCLEAR MISSILE SILOS AND PUT A DIVIDE-BY-ZERO IN THERE.
JUST TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS
IT WILL BE A GLORIOUS EXPERIMENT TO SEE IF WE ALL FUCKING DIE
I would think it would just blow up a missile base somewhere in North Dakota. We'll survive.
On a things we are actually spending money on related note: we tested like a 30,000 pound conventional bomb this week, designed pretty explicitly to attack the place where Iran stores enriched uranium.
Which doesn't sound like a bad idea AT ALL.
It's fine as long as it's the brown people being irradiated. Next up from Bethesda, Fallout: Tehran.
The banks were the biggest loser the last go around. But there isn't any reason that CDOs with mortgages that will continue to be paid are an especially bad thing to securitize. People securitize weird things all the time, like the income stream from apartment washing machines or the maintenance of airplanes. The problem last time arose when a class of assets were massively overvalued because the rating agencies assessed that they were safer than they actually were and then everyone bought them because why wouldn't you buy a AAA security with tremendous upside? That shouldn't happen again, but if it does, I will agree that Anton who falls for it is an idiot, and I will be happy to sell them my securitized income stream from tolls I collect from the Brooklyn bridge.
Hahaha.
No. We both know that this is crap.
the banks that went under were big losers. The ones that survived got even bigger and more above reproach for next time.
The biggest losers were probably people that took out mortgages right before the crash or really several years leading up to it and quickly found themselves totally, completely, hopelessly underwater basically overnight. My brother being one of them!
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) claimed Tuesday that a Republican-led refusal to raise the debt ceiling could be a "wonderful experiment" in forcing the government not to spend money on "stupid things."
During an interview with conservative radio host Sandy Rios, Coburn downplayed warnings from economists, President Barack Obama and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have suggested that Congress' failure to raise the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit would prove economically disastrous for the nation. Coburn argued that because some entitlement payments would still go out amid a government shutdown or debt default, Republicans shouldn't fear a move to reject raising the debt ceiling.
"We’re going to collect $200 billion a month if in fact the government were to not extend the debt limit,” Coburn told Rios. “Social Security would be paid, Medicare would be paid, the essentials would be paid. It’s the non-essentials that wouldn’t be paid, it’s the $250 to $300 billion a year in stupid things we do that we wouldn’t pay. It’s the programs that aren’t an absolute necessity that wouldn’t get funded, the things that would be a necessity would get funded.”
Coburn continued, seemingly urging lawmakers consider a vote against a debt ceiling increase.
“It might be a wonderful experiment, regardless who wins the next election or not, just to see if we could live on the money that’s coming into the Treasury and not have to borrow against the future of our children,” the Oklahoma Republican said.
...
Some people are just stupid.
What, you don't like wonderful experiments in ending the world economy?
Also wonderful experiments in math that is wrongy wrong wrong wrong.
Wrong.
HEY GUYS I HAVE A WONDERFUL IDEA FOR AN EXPERIMENT
LET'S TAKE THE OPERATING CODE FOR ONE OF OUR NUCLEAR MISSILE SILOS AND PUT A DIVIDE-BY-ZERO IN THERE.
JUST TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS
IT WILL BE A GLORIOUS EXPERIMENT TO SEE IF WE ALL FUCKING DIE
This sounds like the start of a really good Neal Stephenson article.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) claimed Tuesday that a Republican-led refusal to raise the debt ceiling could be a "wonderful experiment" in forcing the government not to spend money on "stupid things."
During an interview with conservative radio host Sandy Rios, Coburn downplayed warnings from economists, President Barack Obama and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have suggested that Congress' failure to raise the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit would prove economically disastrous for the nation. Coburn argued that because some entitlement payments would still go out amid a government shutdown or debt default, Republicans shouldn't fear a move to reject raising the debt ceiling.
"We’re going to collect $200 billion a month if in fact the government were to not extend the debt limit,” Coburn told Rios. “Social Security would be paid, Medicare would be paid, the essentials would be paid. It’s the non-essentials that wouldn’t be paid, it’s the $250 to $300 billion a year in stupid things we do that we wouldn’t pay. It’s the programs that aren’t an absolute necessity that wouldn’t get funded, the things that would be a necessity would get funded.”
Coburn continued, seemingly urging lawmakers consider a vote against a debt ceiling increase.
“It might be a wonderful experiment, regardless who wins the next election or not, just to see if we could live on the money that’s coming into the Treasury and not have to borrow against the future of our children,” the Oklahoma Republican said.
...
Some people are just stupid.
What, you don't like wonderful experiments in ending the world economy?
Also wonderful experiments in math that is wrongy wrong wrong wrong.
Wrong.
HEY GUYS I HAVE A WONDERFUL IDEA FOR AN EXPERIMENT
LET'S TAKE THE OPERATING CODE FOR ONE OF OUR NUCLEAR MISSILE SILOS AND PUT A DIVIDE-BY-ZERO IN THERE.
JUST TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS
IT WILL BE A GLORIOUS EXPERIMENT TO SEE IF WE ALL FUCKING DIE
I think you have to calculate the price versus reward here.
I mean, is it too high a price to die from nuclear fallout, just to see the same thing happen to the dipshits who thought it was a good idea? Shit, I've got nothing to lose and nothing to prove, but that guy, hooo boy that guy, the irony would stack so high it'd singlehandedly construct a spacebridge long enough to stretch out towards infinity and out the other side, poking us in the ass.
I think that's a cheap price for a spacebridge, in fact, the dipshits getting screwed would just be a sweet little bonus!
Zephiran on
Alright and in this next scene all the animals have AIDS.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) claimed Tuesday that a Republican-led refusal to raise the debt ceiling could be a "wonderful experiment" in forcing the government not to spend money on "stupid things."
During an interview with conservative radio host Sandy Rios, Coburn downplayed warnings from economists, President Barack Obama and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have suggested that Congress' failure to raise the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit would prove economically disastrous for the nation. Coburn argued that because some entitlement payments would still go out amid a government shutdown or debt default, Republicans shouldn't fear a move to reject raising the debt ceiling.
"We’re going to collect $200 billion a month if in fact the government were to not extend the debt limit,” Coburn told Rios. “Social Security would be paid, Medicare would be paid, the essentials would be paid. It’s the non-essentials that wouldn’t be paid, it’s the $250 to $300 billion a year in stupid things we do that we wouldn’t pay. It’s the programs that aren’t an absolute necessity that wouldn’t get funded, the things that would be a necessity would get funded.”
Coburn continued, seemingly urging lawmakers consider a vote against a debt ceiling increase.
“It might be a wonderful experiment, regardless who wins the next election or not, just to see if we could live on the money that’s coming into the Treasury and not have to borrow against the future of our children,” the Oklahoma Republican said.
...
Some people are just stupid.
I would like to fly to the moon. And set up a permanent base there, with a mining operation. I will mine moonrocks from dawn until dusk, and cart them back and forth across that great, barren surface until at last, after decades, I will have reformed the moon into the shape of a giant hand.
I will build a massive rocket booster on the far side of the moon, as big as Texas, and I will fire up that rocket. With it, I will pilot my great, hand-shaped moonship into the surface of the Earth, right into the giant poster of Jean-Luc Picard's face that I will have spread across whatever remains of our United States.
It will be the greatest facepalm the galaxy has ever known.
And it will still not be big enough for what Tom Motherfucking Coburn said up there.
To be fair, he probably thinks it a stupid thing to let moochers and lucky duckies live to see another day, so he might be "evil" but he is rational and his position is internally consistent
A core belief of the Tom Coburn mindset is that the government is spending enormous amounts of money to do nothing useful. He genuinely thinks that we're spending $200 billion+ a month on nothing in particular, just huge buildings full of bureaucrats I guess. He believes that because that ridiculous fiction represents the only conceivable world in which his ideology makes any sense.
A core belief of the Tom Coburn mindset is that the government is spending enormous amounts of money to do nothing useful. He genuinely thinks that we're spending $200 billion+ a month on nothing in particular, just huge buildings full of bureaucrats I guess. He believes that because that ridiculous fiction represents the only conceivable world in which his ideology makes any sense.
Of course, even in the fevered dreams where that is true, it's deliberately fucking over the apparently tens of millions of bureaucrats that depend on the federal government for employment, thereby sending unemployment skyrocketing and worsening the recession!
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) claimed Tuesday that a Republican-led refusal to raise the debt ceiling could be a "wonderful experiment" in forcing the government not to spend money on "stupid things."
During an interview with conservative radio host Sandy Rios, Coburn downplayed warnings from economists, President Barack Obama and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have suggested that Congress' failure to raise the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit would prove economically disastrous for the nation. Coburn argued that because some entitlement payments would still go out amid a government shutdown or debt default, Republicans shouldn't fear a move to reject raising the debt ceiling.
"We’re going to collect $200 billion a month if in fact the government were to not extend the debt limit,” Coburn told Rios. “Social Security would be paid, Medicare would be paid, the essentials would be paid. It’s the non-essentials that wouldn’t be paid, it’s the $250 to $300 billion a year in stupid things we do that we wouldn’t pay. It’s the programs that aren’t an absolute necessity that wouldn’t get funded, the things that would be a necessity would get funded.”
Coburn continued, seemingly urging lawmakers consider a vote against a debt ceiling increase.
“It might be a wonderful experiment, regardless who wins the next election or not, just to see if we could live on the money that’s coming into the Treasury and not have to borrow against the future of our children,” the Oklahoma Republican said.
...
Some people are just stupid.
What, you don't like wonderful experiments in ending the world economy?
Also wonderful experiments in math that is wrongy wrong wrong wrong.
Wrong.
HEY GUYS I HAVE A WONDERFUL IDEA FOR AN EXPERIMENT
LET'S TAKE THE OPERATING CODE FOR ONE OF OUR NUCLEAR MISSILE SILOS AND PUT A DIVIDE-BY-ZERO IN THERE.
JUST TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS
IT WILL BE A GLORIOUS EXPERIMENT TO SEE IF WE ALL FUCKING DIE
First thing we should stop spending money on are congressional salaries, since they clearly aren't worth what we're paying them.
0
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HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) claimed Tuesday that a Republican-led refusal to raise the debt ceiling could be a "wonderful experiment" in forcing the government not to spend money on "stupid things."
During an interview with conservative radio host Sandy Rios, Coburn downplayed warnings from economists, President Barack Obama and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have suggested that Congress' failure to raise the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit would prove economically disastrous for the nation. Coburn argued that because some entitlement payments would still go out amid a government shutdown or debt default, Republicans shouldn't fear a move to reject raising the debt ceiling.
"We’re going to collect $200 billion a month if in fact the government were to not extend the debt limit,” Coburn told Rios. “Social Security would be paid, Medicare would be paid, the essentials would be paid. It’s the non-essentials that wouldn’t be paid, it’s the $250 to $300 billion a year in stupid things we do that we wouldn’t pay. It’s the programs that aren’t an absolute necessity that wouldn’t get funded, the things that would be a necessity would get funded.”
Coburn continued, seemingly urging lawmakers consider a vote against a debt ceiling increase.
“It might be a wonderful experiment, regardless who wins the next election or not, just to see if we could live on the money that’s coming into the Treasury and not have to borrow against the future of our children,” the Oklahoma Republican said.
...
Some people are just stupid.
What, you don't like wonderful experiments in ending the world economy?
Also wonderful experiments in math that is wrongy wrong wrong wrong.
Wrong.
HEY GUYS I HAVE A WONDERFUL IDEA FOR AN EXPERIMENT
LET'S TAKE THE OPERATING CODE FOR ONE OF OUR NUCLEAR MISSILE SILOS AND PUT A DIVIDE-BY-ZERO IN THERE.
JUST TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS
IT WILL BE A GLORIOUS EXPERIMENT TO SEE IF WE ALL FUCKING DIE
First thing we should stop spending money on are congressional salaries, since they clearly aren't worth what we're paying them.
The fact that they get to vote on their own pay and benefit increases is hilariously awful.
"The country is in a recession and most people are without healthcare. TIME TO PAY OURSELVES MORE AND HAVE INCREASED MEDICAL COVERAGE!"
Posts
Also, as I know most I-bankers are (in theory) smart, I'm assuming that all of them knew the garbage that was going into the "AAA" stuff, they were just confident enough they wouldn't be holding the bag when the music stopped. It was just greed that kept them investing in them. This is why I typically despise the term "Financial Innovation", as it's usually about repackaging turds and selling them as gold.
That's my understanding. Besides, military expenditures would never be cut even if they are "discretionary".
In a shut down, we stop paying mandatory expenses too.
the banks that went under were big losers. The ones that survived got even bigger and more above reproach for next time.
The biggest losers were probably people that took out mortgages right before the crash or really several years leading up to it and quickly found themselves totally, completely, hopelessly underwater basically overnight. My brother being one of them!
Ppbbthh... I took a mortgage out several years after the crash and I'm still barely above water. I'm really afraid congress is going to eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction; that'll cause prices to plummet again!
If they did that I think I'd just stop paying my mortgage once prices started to crater.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
Unlikely to happen, IMO. If it was on the horizon, it would have become part if the fiscal cliff rate deal. Even if they eliminate it, is expect a phase out, not an instant end to the deduction.
Unless you grandfather in every last person who currently is taking advantage of the credit now for the life of at least their current loan, all you'll be doing is exchanging a rapid plummet in real estate prices for people who are in the actual middle/working classes with a huge wave of defaults for a steady decline in prices over whatever window for a steady stream of defaults and a more gradual, possibly snowballing decline in home values.
Probably about 80% of the people I know are house poor and either would eventually start accumulating (more) debt as the credit phased out or would either decide to walk away/take a bath in a sale as the value of their home went underwater pretty permanently.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
I'd say that these investors have the memory of goldfish, but that would be a fucking insult to goldfish.
Yeah, I'd have to look at my taxes over the last few years to really see the impact, but if ending the mortgage interest deduction was on the horizon, leading to a big drop in home values, I'd probably sell my house ASAP and get a 1 bedroom apartment for half to 2/3rds of my mortgage payment (I'm single, no kids). Or I'd have to find a roommate or two.
That said, I'm no expert on CDOs, but I don't think the problem really is with whats in the prospectus, but how you price it. It doesn't matter if you know which mortgage backed securities are in your CDO (or which CDO is in your CDO because fuck keeping things simple), what you need is a model that accurately keeps track of how likely those MBSes are to go belly up, and how the probabilities of the various underlyings doing this corelate with eachother.
A proper rating agency takes one look at the mathematical clusterfuck that arises out of that and says "I have no fucking idea". Unrated means that guys whos sole purpose in the market is to figure out how likely something is to become worthless do not feel they can provide an accurate prediction. This is not an issue that has anything to do with how obvious the prospectus is.
AAA CDO of CDOs is what happends when the rating agency, instead of admitting ignorance, buys into whatever bit of half-assed bullshit the issuer deigns to supply the rating agency with, which the rating agency then cheerfully rubberstamps.
I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment (weirdly enough I'm in somethign of a similar situation, if the US economy goes down the tubes I'd probably make more money). I would like to add the following two points to it.
Generally for people in the middle class of the US
1. The largest investment they own is their home.
2. The largest tax breaks they get are loan interests on home and student debt, child credits/dependents, and not having to pay taxes on their work related health insurance.
---
Those points being made, ACA has provisions to increase revenue by taxing some health insurance plans as income. I believe that comes into effect his calendar year, but it may very well be next year. Payroll taxes have gone up, or if one prefers returned to their pre-holiday levels, decreasing discretionary income for the middle class by another 1-2 percent. The US economy is a consumer economy. This means consumption will be hit by 1-2 percent +aca increases.
The President has shown a willingness to offer small reductions in social security benefits.
If you forecast continued weak growth in US GDP (and everybody is) and then you subtract a couple of percent of consumer spending then just right there, with nothing else you're in real danger of turning your magical 2.5 percent GDP increase into a .5 GDP increase which is a recession.
Create further problems by lowering home prices once again and raising revenues while negatively impacting consumer spending through an decrease or an elimination of the mortgage interest tax deduction and the US is in real trouble.
Ripple effects through construction, finance, credit interest increases on consumers are not hard to see following. Which all means a bigger recessions.
---
I'm not saying any of that will happen. But I think every credible talking head is saying it could, by which I mean Krugman's Army.
It would only take a little more compromise to bleed the US recovery out, which no rational human being really wants.
"You can be yodeling bear without spending a dime if you get lucky." -> reVerse
"In the grim darkness of the future, we will all be nurses catering to the whims of terrible old people." -> Hacksaw
"In fact, our whole society will be oriented around caring for one very decrepit, very old man on total life support." -> SKFM
I mean, the first time I met a non-white person was when this Vietnamese kid tried to break my legs but that was entirely fair because he was a centreback, not because he was a subhuman beast in some zoo ->yotes
HAHAHAHA
HAHAHA
HA
That's not how things work in this country. We had a global crisis. That is worth a coupon for one (1) batch of regulations aimed at fixing something vaguely related to the crisis. We already blew our coupon, so we're stuck with what we have until after the next crisis. Then we can try again.
Though we did get the CFPB, because Elizabeth Warren is a badass.
What, you don't like wonderful experiments in ending the world economy?
Also wonderful experiments in math that is wrongy wrong wrong wrong.
Wrong.
I would like to fly to the moon. And set up a permanent base there, with a mining operation. I will mine moonrocks from dawn until dusk, and cart them back and forth across that great, barren surface until at last, after decades, I will have reformed the moon into the shape of a giant hand.
I will build a massive rocket booster on the far side of the moon, as big as Texas, and I will fire up that rocket. With it, I will pilot my great, hand-shaped moonship into the surface of the Earth, right into the giant poster of Jean-Luc Picard's face that I will have spread across whatever remains of our United States.
It will be the greatest facepalm the galaxy has ever known.
And it will still not be big enough for what Tom Motherfucking Coburn said up there.
People who took out loans on houses they expected to keep for the long-term, with mortgages they were comfortable paying, aren't necessarily doing poorly. It sucks, and I'm sure they wish they had some equity, but owing a quarter-mil on a $100k house isn't much different than owing a quarter-mil on a $400k house, unless you want to sell it.
The biggest losers, if we're going with real estate, are the folks who purchased a house right before the crash using a shitty variable-term mortgage with the idea of doing a re-fi in a couple years after they'd built up some equity, because they could barely afford a house outside the ghetto as it was, and if prices kept going up they'd pretty much never be able to buy a house.
And then a year after they bought their overpriced house, the market ate itself. And then the bank was all, "Okay, time to recalculate your payments - oh, hey, look, they're going to rise by 50% now! Cool!" And when you asked if you could maybe work out a deal, because you wanted to keep the house but you couldn't manage those payments, they said, "Fuck off." And when you tried to short-sell, they said, "Fuck off." And when you foreclosed, they sued you for the balance paid in full.
Those people are probably not doing so well.
HEY GUYS I HAVE A WONDERFUL IDEA FOR AN EXPERIMENT
LET'S TAKE THE OPERATING CODE FOR ONE OF OUR NUCLEAR MISSILE SILOS AND PUT A DIVIDE-BY-ZERO IN THERE.
JUST TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS
IT WILL BE A GLORIOUS EXPERIMENT TO SEE IF WE ALL FUCKING DIE
I would think it would just blow up a missile base somewhere in North Dakota. We'll survive.
On a things we are actually spending money on related note: we tested like a 30,000 pound conventional bomb this week, designed pretty explicitly to attack the place where Iran stores enriched uranium.
Which doesn't sound like a bad idea AT ALL.
Coming Summer 2015, Directed by Michael Bay
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
It's fine as long as it's the brown people being irradiated. Next up from Bethesda, Fallout: Tehran.
that's me!
This sounds like the start of a really good Neal Stephenson article.
I think you have to calculate the price versus reward here.
I mean, is it too high a price to die from nuclear fallout, just to see the same thing happen to the dipshits who thought it was a good idea? Shit, I've got nothing to lose and nothing to prove, but that guy, hooo boy that guy, the irony would stack so high it'd singlehandedly construct a spacebridge long enough to stretch out towards infinity and out the other side, poking us in the ass.
I think that's a cheap price for a spacebridge, in fact, the dipshits getting screwed would just be a sweet little bonus!
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.
To be fair, he probably thinks it a stupid thing to let moochers and lucky duckies live to see another day, so he might be "evil" but he is rational and his position is internally consistent
</SKFM>
I like to think that he thinks all non-SS/Medicare/Military spending is dumped into a giant pit and set on fire.
Of course, that'd be disingenuous, because it implies he is in the possession of the ability known as "rational thought".
Look, no one is suggesting that we shut down the money pit. It's an American tradition.
Of course, even in the fevered dreams where that is true, it's deliberately fucking over the apparently tens of millions of bureaucrats that depend on the federal government for employment, thereby sending unemployment skyrocketing and worsening the recession!
As a Divide-by-Zero, i
Offhand what's the percent of the budget that isn't military, social security, or medicare? 20%?
First thing we should stop spending money on are congressional salaries, since they clearly aren't worth what we're paying them.
The fact that they get to vote on their own pay and benefit increases is hilariously awful.
"The country is in a recession and most people are without healthcare. TIME TO PAY OURSELVES MORE AND HAVE INCREASED MEDICAL COVERAGE!"