tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53246864840716464.post3834813030098324029..comments2024-02-29T00:46:38.800-08:00Comments on Washingtons Blog: "In 2009, 45 Percent of Banks with Assets Under $1 Billion Increased Their Business Lending"Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53246864840716464.post-8511914838589321632010-12-11T18:22:28.429-08:002010-12-11T18:22:28.429-08:00"Lending is parasitic -at best".
That&#..."Lending is parasitic -at best".<br /><br />That's not totally correct: <b>at best</b> it serves to inject "virtual" resources (i.e. money, not too different from a rationing card, just less rigidly regulated) into the pioneering sectors of the economy. <br /><br />Of course all this requires the existence of markets and money and could, at least in theory, be implemented by some other means, more bureaucratic or even more directly democratic maybe. But within this paradigm, lending to creative actors is central to the economy. <br /><br />Additionally it also offers the possibility of less creative buying in advance, though this kind of credit has been brought to incredibly poisonous extremes, in destructive symbiosis with real state crazy speculation specially. <br /><br />I mostly agree with the rest of your comment, Anonymous, even with your claim of humans being largely irrational. However there is rationality and calculations indeed and those banksters have done their homework, even if ethics are, of course, out of their equations. As for the rest, rather than "The Shining", I imagine them better in "They Kill Horses, Don't They?", a great allegory of Capitalism.Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53246864840716464.post-76713776885024342762010-03-25T17:50:27.155-07:002010-03-25T17:50:27.155-07:00While this is all valuable information, I think th...While this is all valuable information, I think the conclusions are a bit strained, -even silly?<br /><br />Let us just see.<br /><br />1) Lending cannot drive an economy. Lending is parasitic -at best. Lending is one of those things banks do -to make money- when times are good. When times aren't good, banks lose money lending. -End of that part of the story.<br /><br />2) Stimulus cannot drive an economy. An economy typically grows more like a plant than a shock wave. The vast majority of the stimulus money (or bail-out money -as it were) has ended up in one of two places. First, overseas, -and- second, under the mattresses of Wall Street insiders who are awaiting the realization (called capitulation) that depressions cannot be chased away by economic stimulus.<br /><br />This was well-evidenced in the last great depression.<br /><br />3) Just because the smaller banks are lending more, doesn't necessarily equate to economic recovery -or its widely fantasized possibility. It actually means quite the opposite.<br /><br />The TBTF banks are in total control. Anyone who denies this, is caught-up in some kind of fantasy-land.<br /><br />The TBTF banks are racking up huge gains in the size of their importance, if not in the net nature of their solvency as economists and bookkeepers -like to measure it.<br /><br />When the time comes, (-shortly-), the most amount of money to be made in this "fragile" economy, will tempt the TBTF banks to again pull the trigger, firing the bullet, that dislodges the plug -only temporarily- covering the economic drain hole -they have exclusive control over.<br /><br />When they pull that trigger, the wisdom of the small banks will be flushed up in their red faces like a grouse from the bush. Their debtors will crumble by the wayside leaving these smaller (but just as greedy) banks -gaunt and sickly, easy targets and -cheap- acquisitions.<br /><br />The TBTF banks are right now rigging the system again -so that the greatest amount of money to be made, is going to be made by pulling the trigger and consequently -dislodging the plug again.<br /><br />Trust me when I say -this is not a long term wait we are in for -to verify- the veracity of what I am saying here about the other shoe dropping in this depression.<br /><br />We have all seen the chart of what happened during the so-called Great Depression.<br /><br />A lot of people made a lot of money then, as they will again this time, knowing exactly the timing of the repeated collapses that historically occur in depressions.<br /><br />Pardon my extemporizing here on human nature, and more particularly the nature of science as it has developed since the Enlightenment, -but- I think the common problem here is, -neither government, business, nor economists have a moral bone in their body.<br /><br />There is no -moral constant- to what these-often-fanatical-believers-in-the-scientific-methods-of-today ascribe to their delusional reality as they go about their daily chores in this fantastic and ongoing -Scientific Inquisition- that kills with such utterly reckless disregard -so very many innocent souls all over the world.<br /><br />Take off your blinders. You will see. Reality is not scientific at all, -not in any sense.<br /><br />Our reality is defined by human nature, which is still very primitive, crude, and disturbingly -irrational-.<br /><br />Jack Nicholson in -The Shining- when he's limping around the old place with his ax -comes to mind.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com