@ crabapple: "There's not a hungry person on this planet whose hunger can't be attributed to government interference."

Please provide evidence to support this absurd statement.

You can't prove a negative. Show me a hungry person who is hungry for reasons not including government interference.

Are you saying you made a statement you can't prove?

@ crabapple: Let's start with an example close to (my) home. In the UK in the past 2-3 years, hundreds of thousands of people have turned to charity-run food banks because they are facing hunger. The red cross is distributing food aid to families in the UK for the first time since WWII.

Wrongly or rightly, this hunger crisis in the UK has largely been blamed on the global financial crisis, which was primarily caused by the markets (and in particular, by irresponsible behaviour by the banking sector).

Discuss.

And the global financial crisis wasn't because individuals weren't greedy and took mortgages beyond their means? So because an individual takes on too much personal debt, and then pays the consequence for that decision, and it's the rest of society that must cover for their mistake.

Sure, the Finance company's also benefited at the time, but they also are paying for their mistake. Many of them are bankrupt & out of business now. But they didn't 'con' the home buyer at all. When you buy a house, you know full well what you're doing, and if your mortgage is half of your take home pay, then you have a problem -- you don't need an agency telling you that.

the irresponsibility is not only on the banks, it was these same peoples greed to leverage debt they couldnt afford in the first place, and then get blown out

> by irresponsible behaviour by the banking sector).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard

> Are you saying you made a statement you can't prove?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence#.22You_can.27t_prove_a_negative.22

@ ag7433 and crabapple: Please explain how poor people's hunger in the UK was caused by "government interference".

This is the claim crabapple made. Defend it.

(looks both ways)
(slinks away in the shadows)

@crabapple

but your statement and jamie's reply isn't asking you to prove a negative. He's asking you to prove that govts are responsible for worldwide lack of distribution of food resources, not a lack of govt or corporate intervention. Are you being willfully dense?

Either way, it's a ridiculous point that's disproven by 2 seconds of googling

http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveodland/2012/03/15/why-are-food-prices-so-high/

market factors are largely responsible for food distribution and people's inability to reach or purchase food, not government intervention. You should have known making such a broad, sweeping statement about global factors had no way of standing up to scrutiny, but I don't think honesty or integrity is very high on your priority list.

"the irresponsibility is not only on the banks, it was these same peoples greed to leverage debt they couldnt afford in the first place, and then get blown out "

you're not very familiar with the practices of banks before the 2008 crisis are you? Most of the major banks practiced predatory lending, where people were manipulated and straight up lied to about their ability to leverage debt and maintain their economic situation

This, coupled with borrowers naturally wanting to improve their circumstances, and focusing on the positives they were being TOLD, are what led to people taking on more than they could afford, not people willfully being greedy and purposefully taking on more to..crash the market?

www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/articles/?id=2124
http://www.realestate.com/advice/predatory-lending-and-mortgage-crisis/

not to mention that much of this predatory lending was focused on lower income and poor minority neighbors, places where people would not understand the bank jargon or money lending practices being used, and largely trusted their loaners to see them through. Instead those people got foreclosed and kicked out on the street, their savings and mortgages literally evaporating while banks got free govt money and no criminal charges.

> but I don't think honesty or integrity is very high on your priority list.

I stand by what I said. Did you look at the link I posted? Moral hazard was created by government. Without government guarantees and bailouts bad banking practices would lead to failed banks.

Or let's talk about corn subsidies. Does subsidized corn production not lead to too much corn? Could that farmland not have been used to raise more diverse crops much more suited to the needs of the human population?

Or let's just get down to the bottom of it all and admit that there is no way to show that pure unbridled market dynamics lead to any kind of unwanted problems, because there are no pure unbridled market dynamics to use as an example. Government has its hand in everything. We have no untainted sample to work with.

To be specific and address your question, how has poor people's hunger in the UK been caused by government interference... what I'm saying is that you can't know. I mean the United Kingdom kind of has the longest history of heavy-handed government ever. So tell me exactly how was the Govt of the UK not at the scene when these people somehow got hungry?

govts having a hand in the market through subsidization or regulation does not make it the govts fault when people go hungry. That's like saying it's the govts fault, or the govt was directly involved, every time there's an automobile accident.

and no dude, I didn't look at your wikipedia link. Mind throwing out something more substantial so you at least look like you've read more on this topic beyond fwd:fwd:fwd emails

@ chairman---you are a giant moron...in any given contract it takes two---the banks might have offered the money, but i takes a douchebag to take it....the fucktard who takes a $500,000 loan and olny makes $40,000 a year is just as responsible as the idiot bank for giving it to him...then this asshole who borrowed money he could not afford in the first place, refied his home sucked the cash out and bought cars and TVs and went on trips, and when it finally went belly up he declared bankruptcy to get away from his debt-----\

No Chairman you are the IDIOT

you should not talk about things you dont understand

you're literally making up welfare queen scenarios to justify your point of view. Here's the real data, from the links I posted that you clearly didn't even open

"Figure 2 shows that excess foreclosures came primarily from younger, relatively affluent households, a finding more consistent with the overreaching hypothesis. In particular, the group with the largest number of excess foreclosures was 07X, Cash & Careers. This Generation X group was the most prosperous of the generation of adults born in the mid-1960s and early 1970s. Out of the first 10 PersonicX groups with excess foreclosures, Cash & Careers members ranked first in average household income ($59,500), net worth and years of education (14.8). The second most-overrepresented group in terms of excess foreclosures was 02Y, Taking Hold. These were Generation Y households with an average age of 27.8 years, second-highest average income ($55,500), third-highest net worth and fifth-highest education level (14.1 years). These two groups' characteristics were consistent with our expectations of households that are most likely to overreach."

so no dude, the majority of people getting foreclosed on were decidedly middle-class Gen Xers who were totally fine with taking larger mortgages. The second largest group, those younger people, were likely to increase their income as they aged and settled further up the career ladder thus were also fine with taking on larger mortgages.

When it comes to those outside the middle class, bank practice was to extract payments over time as people were unable to keep up, NOT that people were out spending all their cash on extra shit they didn't need

"Their example goes like this: A predatory lending company lends money to a woman with poor income prospects, knowing, based on extensive market data, that her income stability is poor, and the risk of default is high. When trouble comes, the woman must deal with the lender, facing the prospect of immediate foreclosure. The lender, like a payday loan company, generously offers her the ability to refinance at a lower payment – but at worse terms than before. Meanwhile, this woman would make more and more payments on a home that the lender knew full well she would be unlikely to keep. At the end of the day, the lender got as many payments as they could extract – and fully expected to eventually own her home anyway."

You clearly have zero idea how financing before the crisis actually worked and are totally fine with drinking whatever kool-aid you've been fed. You can call me an idiot but you literally do not have to take my word for it. Look at the research for yourself.

you are an idiot, if you think accepting monies that you cant afford just because its offered to you, based on your own naiveté is OK- you have been drinking the leftist cool-aid too long---i have been in the financial; industry for 25 year---go stuff it----i know exactly what went on

you....do know what a mortgage is right? People taking on large amounts they can't afford now, but pay off overtime, is completely the norm.

If you've been in finance for 25 years you'd be throwing something a bit more substantial than ad hominems my way I think. How about some data? Links? anything??

You work in the financial industry as what, exactly, ssorenn? What is your job, since you asked me about mine?

I presume that since you can barely string a sentence together, and don't know how to use punctuation, that perhaps you are a janitor in a small provincial bank.

jamie, you piece of worthless shit who just a gopher boy for a little local govt...sad for you....and if you had read your own thread, Putin asked that question and i answered it...go back and read it shitstain

Why yes. So you did. You're a commodity trader.

Yeah.

Of course you are.

The janitor's job must have been taken already.

i dont have to go quote anything chairman---i lived it----a morgage is based on income and the idea you will have assets and incomes to pay the lending establishment back their money plus interest----chairman you probably dont know what it is or how they work, which is why you ask stupid questions

Jamie, its going to bring me great joy and i travel the world and know that your stuck in your little shithole of a town collecting govt wages from an employer you hate so much

you're free to debunk anything I've posted but you haven't done it yet.

What do you mean, an employer I hate?

Why would I hate my employer?

oh thats right Jamie, your the douchebag that cant even get laid by ROSIE