157 in 2010, 92 in 2011

Ok so the remaining question I have is what kind of banks were these, were they big depositors during a lot of investment banking, etc.

We still don't know if they closed due to interbanking lending drying up, or because of a bad balance sheet.

If we had all that information I would not hesitate to agree that the repeal of Glass Steagal intensified the problem.

Commercial banks. In so far as I know for a variety of reasons. Commercial real estate defaults, lack of interbank lending, market exposure..... it was different from bank to bank.

Alas, the thread has gotten away from me. I have made an effort to skim through and have a few thoughts, however:

"If the Cato Institute was the home of principled libertarians, they probably would not have hired torture enabler John Yoo for the editorial board of their Supreme Court Review. "

The Cato Institute and its drones sold their souls long ago in order to be invited to DC cocktail parties. They have showed time and again their willingness to sell out whatever libertarian principles they have to be 'accepted' by the Ruling Class (Yoo being one among many cases in point); they are often derisively referred to as "Beltwaytarians" among those who are not so willing to 'compromise'.

Paleoconservatives (like Pat Buchanan) aren't libertarians. They're conservatives. Paleoconservatives approach political questions with a number of assumptions in hand (the inherent legitimacy of The State and most of its institutions, for instance), where libertarians do not. They also tend to inject their moral perspectives into political issues, which libertarians do not (while they may hold the same moral perspectives in their personal lives). Paleoconservatives have some overlap with Paleolibertarians (which is why Buchanan is a frequent contributor at lewrockwell.com, for instance), but the two are not synonymous by any means.

"Libertarianism is anarchism for the rich."

The last three years my income has put me just above the poverty line. I could qualify for food stamps if I wanted to. I remain a Libertarian (and have never applied for any kind of welfare), and many other libertarians I know are in similar circumstances the last few years. In my case, my recent poverty has served only to reinforce my libertarian views - despite my financial situation, taxes of all the various sorts remain my biggest expense by far, while millionaires and billionaires like Obama and Romney pay far less than I as a percentage of income.

"My issue with libertarianism is that it ignores non formal and non institutionalized forms of oppression."

I agree that this is a legitimate concern. But I'd rather fight non-formal and uninstitutional forms of oppression than the Government of the United States of America, which has nuclear ICBMs, taps on every phone and internet line in America, control over every paycheck of every wage-earner, advanced technological crowd control weapons, and millions of soldiers and police in its obedience. No matter how evil XYZ corporation gets, it will never have the legitimacy (and thus, supine obedience from the majority of the population) and power that the Federal Government of the United States of America commands.

"Curtailing the power of the federal government, while a laudable goal, just lessens the people's bargaining power with the banking, insurance, and energy industries, given the ease with which big money takes over state-level regulation and government."

The federal government does not 'protect' us from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Raytheon, Halliburton, CCOA, Lockheed-Martin, GD, Merck, or any of the other corporations who control The State and use it to exact wealth from the public to enrich themselves. The revolving door between government bureaucracies and the corporations they pretend to regulate make a mockery of any claim that the government protects us Little People. The best thing for us to do is drastically reduce the power of the corporate/government combine over our lives, not hope that we can someday elect some honest people who will appoint similarly honest bureaucrats to regulate these corporations who do not blink at paying million dollar bribes to these same people that pretend to represent our interest.

"Ron Paul only wants to limit federal power, he's okay with state level tyranny"

This is a slightly fair complaint. But it must be considered that Dr. Paul is running for federal office in a party and a country that frowns on freedom in general. I'm sure Dr. Paul would like to end all manner of tyrranical laws at the state/local levels, but his view of the constitution is one that gives the states broad authority to err on the side of both tyrrany and freedom. I think a decentralized federalist system is superior, since it is easier to "vote with your feet" if the border between tyrrany and freedom is a few hundred miles away rather than a few thousand miles away; millions of people have fled California in the last two decades for less taxed/fined/regulated states.

"There is nothing inherently evil about empires"

That is because all historians who write about those empires were beneficiaries of them. I'm sure if we could read the words of Vercingetorix or Boudicea or the headman of some Celtiberean village, we would all have a *very* different view of the ROman EMpire.

"in my mind the deciding distinguishing feature between the left and the right is the size of government. In that sense libertarian is far-right. These days "far-right" has connotations quite different, so the term is probably best not used, but yeah."

You have it backwards. The terms "left" and "right" originated from the court of Louis XVI in France before the Revolution. The Right constituted all those who benefited from The State - at the time, this was the landed nobility and The Church. On the Left were the petit bourgeois and working professionals, who were oppressed by the state and wanted to see it reduced in power and authority. The left are those who want more freedom from government; the right are those who like the government because they personally profit from it. In America, these terms have shifted about 150 degrees, but many libertarians still call themselves "classical liberals", and in other countries, the terms have maintained their polarity.

Iceland did it right. No bailouts for bank investors.
Iceland's currency has returned to stability while the Euro loses value regularly and faces extinction.
Iceland has 2% growth. The EU is in recession.
This should help the 8% unemployment.
Not letting private debt become public debt was the key for Iceland and it is the core of capitalism.
Bad business ventures must fail and fail completely.
People piss and moan all the time about the evil of corporations, but when a GM or an AIG is going to fail those same people (known as hypocrites) bailed them out.
Fuck poorly run businesses. Fuck them one and all. Let them fail. Let everyone who did business with them feel excruciating pain and anguish.
That pain and anguish will prevent the same thing from happening again.
These sickening bailouts and government intrusion into the market won't help anything but another bubble and financial disaster.

I like how Tolstoy glibly talks about how people can just leave if they feel tyrannized (which he of course means 'taxed', not actually oppressed). You know, this kind of movement actually happened. It was called the Great Migration. 6 million African Americans fled your anti-government southern utopias because they were terrorized by state governments for decades after Reconstruction ended. They were burned out of their homes by "anti-government" terrorists. That's the libertarian model for how their 'decentralized' utopia will work. Minorities, women, etc will be forced to evacuate, either via sheer terrorism or economic strangulation. And these are the same people who say blacks & Latinos control our politics, while the upper middle class white man has it rough.

Putin, in what possible way can a government that legislates who an individual can and cannot marry, hire, live with, or serve be considered libertarian? Excluding perhaps only the peacetime draft, legal segregation is the least-libertarian major policy at any level of American government in the last 100 years.I mean, read what you wrote. Being "terrorized by state governments" is by definition anti-libertarian.

The Girondins, - your liberals, fellow petty bourgeois types, were on the right. They ran the government. The Jacobins, Montagnards, etc the people who fought for the poor and working class, were on the left.

No it is not, because you libertarians have continuously campaigned to gut any federal legislation which would in the slightest way "infringe" on state governments ability to treat vulnerable groups of people like trash. You're the only sect that still argues against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in the South. Segregation was brought about by private industry, who sued to overturn federal civil rights laws that had been implemented during Reconstruction in 1875. The Supreme Court struck it down, and we had legal segregation from that day forward, at Big Capital's request. Segregation has always been defended by small government libertarians opposed to any interference in the affairs of state governments, citing the 9th & 10th amendments over and over again.

"way can a government that legislates who an individual can and cannot marry, hire, live with, or serve be considered libertarian?"

So you do or do not think that private industry should be allowed to racially discriminate?

And how are you going to ensure state governments follow rules about not implementing laws that discriminate if you do not have federal protections?

Anti-racism & federalism are 100% incompatible.

Putin, I believe you've confused "libertarian" with "federalist" or "conservative." Also, libertarians are not necessarily right-wing (although the most potent streak of American libertarianism has indeed been more conservative).

You've way oversimplified the historical record of segregation in the South. Neither segregation nor legal disenfranchisement were created by private industry, that is ridiculously and obviously false. Why do you think the state governments had to pass laws requiring, say, segregated train cars? It's because folks were using integrated railroad cars. The most important segregation case, Plessy v. Ferguson, was brought the with the support of railway companies, who didn't want the cost and difficulty that segregation created. It's true that private companies didn't like the laws that led to the Civil Rights Cases, but surely you understand the difference between a law requiring racial segregation and a law requiring equal accommodation. I also think you fail to appreciate the difference between an outcome a person might favor and an outcome a person has the legal right to create through government action.

"And how are you going to ensure state governments follow rules about not implementing laws that discriminate if you do not have federal protections?

Anti-racism & federalism are 100% incompatible."

Also, this is pretty easy to respond to: they amended the Constitution, it's the 14th amendment. State governments have to protect the rights identified by the Constitution.

He ain't confused shit, man, he means the egregiously false BS he spews. Don't waste your time

Student Loans-the next bubble and source of our next financial meltdown and bailout.
All of that money, Trillions, being wasted on colleges and universities waste those funds in obscene amounts while raising tuition, hiring more administrators, and creating more worthless departments while they feed at the government trough of subsidized education.
If individuals want help with their education let them join the military and earn their education.
Using tax money to pay for an oversupply of PhD's is a horrible waste of funds.
People needs jobs not more offices in ivory towers for nitwits to hang paper on walls.

Yeah, who needs education.

Also, regarding states vs federalism, either way it is still an oppressive institution.

^^ I can't hear you over all the free education I'm getting right now.

"Also, this is pretty easy to respond to: they amended the Constitution, it's the 14th amendment. State governments have to protect the rights identified by the Constitution."

Yeah except that amendment was passed via military occupation after a long war in which slavers hiding behind federalism decided to launch a war that led to 600,000 deaths for the defense of chattel slavery. Ever since Reconstruction ended, the 14th amendment has been a joke, that's why it has taken *federal legislation* to ensure any rights are protected, which libertarians always object to. The 14th amendment has been used more often to defend 'corporate personhood' than any oppressed group. Try again.

"slavers hiding behind federalism"

Excellent, you are learning! You're entirely right to use the verb hiding, too, since most talk of states' rights was (and has been) a transparent cover for protecting slavery and oppression, cast off whenever it is no longer needed. See President Eden, Putin is fair-minded and will ...

"which libertarians always object to"

Oh well.

"Ever since Reconstruction ended, the 14th amendment has been a joke"

What?!?! The Fourteenth Amendment is the ENTIRE reason the Bill of Rights now applies to the states. With the equal protection and due process clauses it was basically a new Constitution.

Usually you're wrong on ideological grounds, here it's simple fact. Try again.

"Neither segregation nor legal disenfranchisement were created by private industry, that is ridiculously and obviously false."

It's only 'obviously false' among brainwashed libertarians who don't care about history and/or just make it up to suit their ideological purposes, while whitewashing their own sordid history.

The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was overturned because private enterprises discriminated against African Americans and those African Americans cited the Civil Rights Act as remedy. The Supreme Court in response ruled the Act was unconstituional. To pretend that private enterprise was fighting against segregation is just plain fucking historical revisionism of the highest order, ideological propaganda & and outright lies, denying agency to the victims and giving heroic status to the oppressors

Who were the plaintiffs in the 1883 case? I quote:

"These cases were all founded on the first and second sections of the Act of Congress known as the Civil Rights Act, passed March 1st, 1875, entitled "An Act to protect all citizens in their civil and legal rights." 18 Stat. 335. Two of the cases, those against Stanley and Nichols, were indictments for denying to persons of color the accommodations and privileges of an inn or hotel; two of them, those against Ryan and Singleton, were, one on information, the other an indictment, for denying to individuals the privileges and accommodations of a theatre, the information against Ryan being for refusing a colored person a seat in the dress circle of Maguire's theatre in San Francisco, and the indictment against Singleton was for denying to another person, whose color was not stated, the full enjoyment of the accommodations of the theatre known as the Grand Opera House in New York,
"said denial not being made for any reasons by law applicable to citizens of every race and color, and regardless of any previous condition of servitude."
The case of Robinson and wife against the Memphis & Charleston R.R. Company was an action brought in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Western District of Tennessee to recover the penalty of five hundred dollars
Page 109 U. S. 5
given by the second section of the act, and the gravamen was the refusal by the conductor of the railroad company to allow the wife to ride in the ladies' car, for the reason, as stated in one of the counts, that she was a person of African descent. The jury rendered a verdict for the defendants in this case upon the merits, under a charge of the court to which a bill of exceptions was taken by the plaintiffs. The case was tried on the assumption by both parties of the validity of the act of Congress, and the principal point made by the exceptions was that the judge allowed evidence to go to the jury tending to show that the conductor had reason to suspect that the plaintiff, the wife, was an improper person because she was in company with a young man whom he supposed to be a white man, and, on that account, inferred that there was some improper connection between them, and the judge charged the jury, in substance, that, if this was the conductor's bona fide reason for excluding the woman from the car, they might take it into consideration on the question of the liability of the company. The case was brought here by writ of error at the suit of the plaintiffs. The cases of Stanley, Nichols, and Singleton came up on certificates of division of opinion between the judges below as to the constitutionality of the first and second sections of the act referred to, and the case of Ryan on a writ of error to the judgment of the Circuit Court for the District of California sustaining a demurrer to the information."

So GFY, libertarians. You don't know what you're talking about.

"It's only 'obviously false' among brainwashed libertarians who don't care about history and/or just make it up to suit their ideological purposes, while whitewashing their own sordid history."

This from a Stalinist?

"Usually you're wrong on ideological grounds, here it's simple fact. Try again."

Right, as usual the Snitchvictus's of the world ignore the inconvenient fact that Jim Crow & the great ethnic cleansing of African Americans from the South co-existed very happily with the 14th amendment. Unless Snitchy is dumb/racist enough to think that Jim Crow was not an outrageous violation of the Bill of Rights within the states.

"This from a Stalinist?"

This is what Snitchy calls his intellectual and engaging contributions to discussions. 1...2..3...shout Stalinist or North Korea. That's all he's got.

BTW, American "Stalinists" fought against racial terrorism and apartheid in the South in the 1930s while the Mitch Daniels ass kissers of the day were snitching on anti-racists to the police.

Roberts, your definition of libertarian includes whom? Nobody but the Cato Institute? Has there ever been an actual libertarian in history? Or does your sect cite its birth as being in the 1980s?

Since you people hijacked the term from leftwing anarchists it's difficult to verify. But the libertarian hero of the 1960s was Barry Goldwater, a strident defender of segregation. Nobody among the anti-statist crowd was clamoring to oppose segregation in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

Keep calling me Snitchvictus. It just gives me a reason to explain why you do it. Putin33 provided a link to a beheading in a thread without telling people that's what it was. I think that's outrageous and not at all fitting with the community we have here. I informed a mod, not to get Putin33 banned, but so that the mods could formulate a policy on things like that. This place shouldn't turn into 4chan or some other shock site. And that's even leaving aside the fact that in the discussion he implied I was sympathetic to the be-header (a Croatian terrorist) just because I think there was a genocide at Srebrenica during the Bosnian War.

So yeah, keep calling me Snitchvictus. I'm glad I told a mod and I'm glad you give me opportunity to tell the members.


"ignore the inconvenient fact that Jim Crow & the great ethnic cleansing of African Americans from the South co-existed very happily with the 14th amendment. Unless Snitchy is dumb/racist enough to think that Jim Crow was not an outrageous violation of the Bill of Rights within the states"

They were struck down BECAUSE of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court in Brown v. Board revered itself from Plessy v. Ferguson when it came to whether segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Segregation is unconstitutional because of the Fourteenth Amendment! How can you say it isn't important? It probably the most important, and the best.


As for the Stalinist, you claimed libertarians "whitewashing their own sordid history," yet you, a Stalinist, do exactly what you accuse libertarians of doing. It's even worse since "libertarianism" is much more of a tendency than a set ideology. There is no Libertarian Pope. All you really need to believe in to be a libertarian is to give paramount importance to individual liberty. The actions of some racists in the 19th century has no bearing on what someone calling themself a libertarian does today.

Of course the apologists for the American higher education system hide behind the all encompassing banner of "education" just as monotheists hide behind the banner of "God" or "Allah."
What a inept defense of a bureaucratic establishment that is so bloated that it charges tuition rates that have risen at anywhere from two to five times the rate of inflation for the last three decades.
A bureaucratic establishment that turns out far more degree holders than job openings in their fields. Why would you take money from students to train them when no jobs awaited them.
The oversupply of majors, depending on the particular field, ranges from 25% in history to 60% in esoteric majors.
All on the taxpayer nickle.
And all justified in one word "education."
Do we need intellectuals. Of course we need true intellectuals.
Do we need the masses of substandard sheepskin bearers being cranked out of today's institutions who can't repay their outrageous tuition debt!

Putin, again, there's a big difference between between a law requiring racial segregation and a law requiring equal accommodation. You're right, private businesses did oppose the civil rights acts. But they also opposed the laws codifying segregation.

"Roberts, your definition of libertarian includes whom?"

Libertarian is a very broad term, that's the point I am trying to make. It stretches from Lysander Spooner to Lew Rockwell, from Henry David Thoreau to Ayn Rand. Some are racists, but most are not. Gary Johnson and Jim Gray, who are probably going to be the LP nominees for President and VP, are pretty cool guys. I suppose a person could be a libertarian and still be for legal segregation, but the cognitive dissonance would be difficult to overcome. I like the example of Barry Goldwater for our earlier discussion: he was personally not racist, supporting the NAACP and desegregation in Arizona, but also thought that the Civil Rights Act went too far. A libertarian is against expanding government power, that's it.

More important for our purposes is what is not libertarian: wanting to expand government power.

"They were struck down BECAUSE of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court in Brown v. Board revered itself from Plessy v. Ferguson when it came to whether segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendm"

80 years later. And it took another 10 years before the Civil Rights Act ended Jim Crow, so Brown v. Board did not end segregation. Try again. Meanwhile virtually every person who has brought up a racial discrimination case with the 14th amendment has been denied justice, while corporations have given a litany of personhood rights from this amendment.

"And that's even leaving aside the fact that in the discussion he implied I was sympathetic to the be-header (a Croatian terrorist) just because I think there was a genocide at Srebrenica during the Bosnian War."

More lies. The very people beheading villagers from the protection of the UN safe zone at Srebrenica are the people you called a victim of 'genocide' there (Oric's thugs), when civilians were evacuated from the area and the only people found dead had military uniforms and died in a firefight. But you just spout garbage and expect no accountability.

"yet you, a Stalinist, do exactly what you accuse libertarians of doing."

I'm correcting the historical record from dittoheads who never read a State Department press release or approved US history book that they didn't think was the gospel truth. It must be hard to stomach that the people who saved the world from the most genocidal and racist regime the planet has ever seen were the 'Stalinist' Soviets, and the people who agitated to end racial apartheid in the United States were also 'Stalinists', like WEB DuBois, and the militants in the trade union movement in the US South. The people who ended the hegemonic legitimacy of scientific racism in this country were "Stalinists" like Franz Boaz.

So it's clear that you need to concoct whatever lies you can to slander the name of the only ideology that has ever emancipated people from barbaric inequality, since your ilk have done absolutely nothing for anybody except keep them in bondage.