TYT: Greece Falls: Is The US Next?

Run time: 05:43 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7qvszjzdg0   Posted on YouTube: May 13, 2010 By YouTube Member: TheYoungTurks Views on YouTube: 302   Posted on DU: May 13, 2010 By DU Member: The Northerner Views on DU: 987

 

Cenk, maybe if you get a lot more bulbs of your wattage you will begin to see the whole picture. The hedge funds ARE the big banks, they are all part of the 'Gulag Casino' as Max Keiser calls it. It's painfully obvious that you believe too much in capitalism to see its glaring flaws -- the "noose we will hang them with" as Lenin put it.

If you see vultures circling and don't hear any shooting, well that's your problem right there. You need to quit starving to death, grab the shotgun and have baked buzzard for dinner. If these hedge funds had a hefty capital gains tax, say twice the earned income tax rate, the governments would have the money instead of them and the governments would use it for their usual foolishness, you know, schools, roads, unemployment, health care, etc. Leaving the money on the table because some Croesus says "tut, tut, that would be class warfare" as he shovels it all into his purse is just plain dumb and stupid.

Right now, the buzzards are coming for Iceland and Greece, countries who don't have much reach to arrest and imprison bankers involved in control fraud. When they succeed at that, then they will sit in London and on Wall Street in security, knowing that no one dare arrest them for the economies they have crashed.

Cenk must be able to explain it to everyone.
Even the choice 17% unable to understand.

any topic. Unless the banks are separated from the hedge funds under penalty of life imprisonment, it will all collapse.

Cenk is always way too milquetoast, and likes to think himself of a luminary... when he is usually coming two dollars sort a day late.

I frankly I am not too fond of former conservatives (Cenk was one, as so was Arianna Huffington) trying to elect themselves as the spokespeople for the progressive movement. Not that I don't welcome the capacity for opinion change/evolution from some people who actually bother to think about issues.

Thom Hartmann on the other hand is thorough and has no problem calling things like they are, without having to resource to hyperbole... everyone of his positions is fully backed by actual research and understanding.

Cenk..the investment banks work for the hedge funds..hello Goldman Sachs/John Paulson. It's not ok for them to make money off of Greek debt at it's demise. It's not ok that Goldman helped the corrupt government hide their debt. They mounted an attack against the euro. And yes they can do the same thing here.

around the time they audit the fed might be a good idea? or am i missing something..

And voila, you start getting the picture.

Greece is not just an out-of-control clusterf*ck because they dare having a social safety network. Nothing of the sort. It is an engineered demolition charge intended to destabilize the EU. A strong Euro would put the last nail in the coffin in our status as a super power. The only thing we can export at this point, in which we have a clear leadership role (other than weapons, we're still the most advanced and the number 1 provider of armament to the world markets), is "creative" financial packages. And those debt packages depend exclusively on the strength/confidence in the dollar. A strong confidence in the Euro affects significantly the capacity of Wallstreet to sell and profit from their hubris.

The ironic/sad part is that had not the Central European Bank step in 2007/08 to buy untold billions of dollars, our economy would have been pretty much entered into a unrecoverable tailspin. Wether we like to recognize it or not, we are the proverbial scorpion who stings the frog who is trying to help him cross the river. We're sawing ill will at record pace: we pretty much make mortal enemies of most of the islamic world (Iraq and Afghanistan in particular), Chinese are positioning themselves into a direct collision path with us, and the Europeans will soon understand that friendship is a one way street for Americans the minute it becomes profitable for us to dump them.

We are a society which has evolved into a savage capitalist outlook, and savage capitalism is almost by definition sociopathic in nature. So yes, we are a functional sociopathic country. It is no coincidence we treat our weak and poor like utter ship... that is what a sociopath would do.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x464274

To say that the banksters are the "shooters" doesn't scratch the surface unless you consider the DEREGULATION that has allowed all of this "Shock Doctrine Capitalism" (Naomi Klein's book title).
If the 80% of Americans do not unite real soon and take to the streets to demand equality with the other 20% (really about 1-5% of the "ruling elites") who are Screwing us and the world economy so bad, then what you see in Greece (reactive protests instead of the proactive demonstrations we need now), will be nothing in comparison. As another poster put it "Feudalism 2.0" is coming soon to a city near you. Just 1 million of the millions of disenfranchised Americans, could stop this. If we organize and protest around the country. We would get "emergency bank regulations" and just about anything we demanded. The politicians would shit their pants. We should demand all money out of politics, universal healthcare, a real progressive income tax like we had in 1970. Hell, our wages haven't gone up. The CEO pay has risen by 100x what it was then, yet our top tax rate is 35%. That is whether you make 200,000 a year or 2 trillion a year. In the last 30 years everything has been done with one goal in mind. Increasing the riches of the wealthy, while robbing the poor and (once) middle class. If we do nothing to prevent this "mother of all Depressions", then it will happen soon. These (in my book, sociopathic crooks) are bragging about how they are going to "take us down after Europe." Cenk thinks these guys are just "smart", I say they are a huge part of the problem. GREED. We have allowed (and rw'ers even encouraged) the deregulation of "the market." This is just what happened under Hoover, but on a much larger scale. It's all for the banksters and the corporations and "Feudalism 2.0" for the masses. Germany and France have kept their manufacturing base, strong Unions and Universal healthcare, because the people demanded that, rather than letting wealth accumulate in the hands of a very small minority. Our future is bleak as hell and unless we can all come together and forget the "keep them arguing" issues like gay marriage and abortion, we don't stand a chance. Our economy will look exactly like the economies of the third world after the CIA got finished with them. We must organize and non-violently have mass protests. Not ten thousand, but at least 1 million strong. Hell, we've got three million (at least) prisoners in America. Let's save our country and fix it at the same time. Greed driven, unregulated Capitalism is like evolution on steroids. Very Ugly....
Don't forget, we gave these people the money to do this to us. It's like paying for your own "hitman." Organize Now.

they create a situation in which that institution or government's security becomes less and less attractive to investors. They complicate an existing problem.

California has many, many extremely wealthy residents. If the state were to tax them fairly, it would not be near bankrupt.

Instead of increasing taxes on wealthy residents, the City of L.A., for example has permitted the electric and water companies to raise rates on those necessities. That taxes the poor on absolute necessities.

Instead of increasing taxes on wealthy residents, cities threaten to raise the amounts that must be paid for traffic tickets. Again, that is not a fair way to raise money. Make some poor guy who parks in the wrong place (where maybe he used to be able to park without being ticketed) and he has to pay the same fine as someone who lives in the best part of Beverly Hills. The poor guy may have to go without eating for a day or so thanks to the fine. The rich guy just laughs off the amount he pays on the ticket.

Instead of shorting the U.S. treasury, these guys should be paying their fair share of taxes so that the U.S. treasury doesn't go bankrupt.

and part of being a normal functional human being is having the capacity for empathy.

If you look at this from the perspective of a sociopath, their actions make perfect sense.

For example, I work at a national lab administered by the UC here in Cali. Now, the UC system is probably the top public university system in the world, bar none. And for the most part is one of the best investments (in terms of returns) the state has ever made. Now, with the current budget crisis... the governator had two choices: make the super wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share of taxes (and there were analysis in which superhabits could be reached if that was the case, even under the current recession. Or leave the tax cuts/structure as it stands and instead try to raise money by selling bonds.

When one sells bonds, one has to use something of value as collateral for people to have confidence in the repayment of the bonds by the state. So one of the things that always springs to mind when it comes to California to raise money via public debt is its crown jewel: the UC system. Wallstreet looks at it, and says... that is a nice University System you got there. However, you need to make some changes in order for me to consider buying your bonds. And Wallstreet loves nothing more than budget cuts and salary/workforce reductions: increase return with less investment (Again, you have to see this through the eyes of a socipathic system such as capitalism which is only concerned with profits, so you do and operate with only a single guide: do anything that increases profits regardless). So California went ahead and basically put all the UC employees in either furlough status, required severe salary cuts, or started firing a lot of personnel regardless of their importance (as long as it did not affect at the regent level, who btw got salary raises across the board even as budget cuts were announced). In other words, Wallstreet demanded California strangled one of its golden egg laying gooses, in order for them to buy bonds.

It makes no sense whatsoever if you are approaching these types of situations with common sense, and looking at the future. Wallstreet/finances are sortshigted and only cares about making the most profit, even though it that ends up killing them. They operate with the same rational approach, as a crack head approaches life before withdrawal is about to kick in and their only priority is to get a hit, no matter what has to be done or who has to be hurt.