thought-provoking

Also, the subprime issue wasnt finding MORE borrowers, it was the number of subprime loans defaulting.

He was a most prescient philosopher. I first read him when I was eleven.

And, regarding subprime loans, I'll never forget Angelo Mozilo addressing his minions--hundreds of enthusiastic loan officers (self included) 'eager' to hear what he had to say. I remember the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as Mozilo adjured us to look at the subprime market "differently," so that we could "tap into" the historically under-served subprime market. (And, it was a wee bit more complicated than "more" borrowers OR loans defaulting.)

Subprime loans even targeted especially African-American populations with these loans even on individuals who would have qualified for a traditional loan.

CNN sucks but this was one of the first links I found and the spin is really remarkable I had to post (I'm very familiar with the issue)

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- During the housing boom, mortgage lenders were doling out the dough, giving loans to people who could never have qualified before. (fails to mention the subprime loans given out those who could have qualified)

Now, homeowners and government officials are increasingly taking these institutions to court, alleging unfair and predatory practices. While many of these suits are still winding their way through the legal system, some banks have already settled for millions of dollars.

The defendants include the biggest names in the business -- from Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) to Countrywide Financial to Citigroup (C, Fortune 500).

"Borrowers are looking to the legal system for help in keeping their houses," said Gary Klein, a partner in Boston-based Roddy Klein & Ryan, which focuses on consumer law. "There are more cases pending than I've ever seen in my 23-year career."

Homeowners are seeking the courts' help either individually or as part of class action lawsuits. With foreclosures continuing to rise, borrowers are looking to force banks to modify unaffordable loans or to stop them from foreclosing on homes. Often, they also seek money.

To be sure, banks have faced unfair lending lawsuits for years and have paid millions of dollars in settlements. But the recent housing boom was fueled by questionable and exotic loans that many borrowers had no hope of repaying.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/08/news/economy/Predatory_lending_lawsuits_increase/?postversion=2009100817

Where's "ghetto loans" and "Subprime Danny" of Quicken Loans?

are the passengers still dead?

like the countries of western Europe with single payer healthcare — a prime example of socialism at work and existing with and within profit-making, strongly unionized corporations.

Pure capitalism by itself will eventually, as Marx foresaw, feed on the very things that sustain it — i.e, the middle and working classes.

Who can deny that that is happening here as hundreds of thousands of middle class jobs have been off-shored leaving previously employed people unemployed or underemployed and scraping by with little or no disposable income to sustain the essential engine that drives capitalism — consumption.

The economic elites are doing well and seem to not be concerned, at least the clueless ones are.

The smarter ones are well aware of how humongous income disparity is a recipe for disaster and revolution, which is why they are buying up huge tracts of land in other countries and making sure they have private jets and air strips at the ready

No one would say Norway has done away with capitalism or even restricted it. But their tax system is more on the "socialist" type side. They have a population who generally do very well.
If you drop capitalism totally, you WILL get failure. Venezuela is a good example. Govt takeover of everything, forced pricing, etc. Resulting in short term gains for the poorest which is soon followed by a drop in standard of living for everyone else until everyone is equally miserable. Look at the difference in the 2 koreas. Night & day. Japan compared to neighboring countries.
The Soviet Bloc countries all had done away with capitalism. Compare them with the rest of Europe back then.
No contest

we're on the same page.

We're in agreement then that pure, unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism, because of its max-profit motive, will eventually go through all resources, both human and natural/environmental and burn itself and the planet out, right?

And you cant keep raising prices and wages indefinitely either; its almost like a ponzi scheme

but are seldom good at solving current problems. Goes for Marx, Jesus, whoever. Definitely some kernels of wisdom and some general truths, but times change and people change, and the great people of the past dealt with the problems of their own times, not with ours. The amount of transliteration and selectivity you have to apply to make a historical figure relevant usually renders such an "appeal to authority" suspect.

Last edited Tue Jun 2, 2015, 07:51 AM - Edit history (1)

as a solution to "current problems." Did you find him difficult to read?

I have to say I was never too fond of him, though he presented some very original and valuable points. In his defence he did solidly establish a perspective that was very much absent or considered trivial up to his time. One problem I had was his tendency to absolutes - lots of "never" and "always". People who think and write in absolutes are generally wrong on the details, and more wrong as time goes by.

There is a Cornell West video I'd like to find right now but those that fully understand his contributions are usually few qualified academics but this is where social democrats or "Democratic Socialists" differ on Marx as they believe differently as "the only way" but any model still depends on humans hence the USSR and "communist morality" -- the same ones he calls correctly on exploiting workers for profit (it really is horrifying on a global scale) but the fall of capitalism -- especially lassez-faire capitalism inevitable leads to its own collapse.

Capitalists or business have used some of his economic models to their advantage -- he correctly calls a lot of things.

Rec

in the year Edison began to investigate the thermionic valve. The wire photo was still uninvented in his day, as was the Maxim gun. Alaska, Arizona, the Dakotas, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming were not yet states. Becquerel had not discovered radioactivity nor had Röntgen discovered X-rays. Freud had not yet turned to the study of neurology; Ivanovsky had not yet found a non-bacterial pathogen. Wilhelm II had not become kaiser nor Nicholas II tsar. Leopold II of Belgium had not yet consolidated his hold on the Congo.

This matters because Marx regaerded himself as a scientific thinker; and if that view is correct, we should expect much progress in that science since Marx's death over 130 years ago. Marx, of course, was a very complicated man: morally outraged by the condition of the proletariate, a tireless polemicist and organizer, a journalist, willing to spend countless hours pouring over news and technical reports to try to understand conditions, and a student of economics and history. Unlike some of the folk who seized upon his work, Marx was no ideologue: as he himself famously said, Ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste

Marx provided us with a program, class analysis, for understanding social forces and the ways consciousness is produced to support or oppose particular class interests -- but when conducting this analysis himself, he was often careful to take into account local peculiarities such as tradition or mythical histories. The program is useful, if one is willing to engage in the constant tedious hard work involved; it becomes merely laughable, if one wants to adopt only general conclusions, based on Marx's work over a century ago, because the social structures and economic organization of the Western world today are not entirely comparable to the world Marx studied. In particular, Marx was interested in the urban proletariate partly because, in the industrialized world of his day, the urban proletarian represented a potentially powerful group that could be organized. Whether industrial workers should be the primary focus of organizing in twenty-first century US, however, is less clear, because the US has automated or off-shored much of its industrial production; and these circumstances may promote the importance of international organizing

Marx's remark "mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve" might profitably be read as advice: good scientific knowledge does not merely give us "rational explanations" but actually empowers us to do certain things. We should attempt, at every moment, to solve the tasks we can actually solve; should always ask what obtainable knowledge could allow us to solve other tasks; and should pursue TH AT knowledge