Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: 1970--protesters seize computer center Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 10:22:40 -0800 Organization: Wheeler&Wheeler Lines: 63 Message-ID: <87ziwc3rin.fsf@garlic.com> References: <47f7fb8a-cf50-4dc6-a80a-770de14c9d6a@googlegroups.com> <20160105000414@news.eternal-september.org> <20160105134231@news.eternal-september.org> <20160106215925@news.eternal-september.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="9a6c8ce24fcd2caeb84dd64e0fa6007c"; logging-data="27265"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+nJKUipZEVCue0N3IrtIQuWLwnAkX5DJg=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.5 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:xAm5l+q0uu0DjL69gTHVsbrEgCc= sha1:2c55aML4YvfkICPMNWI3WxOEbhk= Xref: csiph.com alt.folklore.computers:156403 Dan Espen writes: > So, ultimately, you equate "the welfare state" with gangsterism. > I'm finding that hard to understand, given our current examples of > Sweden, Denmark, etc. (high welfare) vs. the US (less welfare). welfare is usually considered gov. handouts ... in the US, they have carefully controlled the definition of equating welfare to what kinds of gov. handouts .... frequent US press is misdirection and obfuscation away from the truely massive gov. handouts. 2001-2008, wallstreet did over $27T in (unsupervised) securitized loans and mortgages ... creating the financial mess last decade ... with lots of collateral damage (trillions disappearing into peoples' pockets). http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo Major enabler was paying for triple-A rating (when both the sellers and rating agencies knew they weren't worth triple-A) ... which also enabled no-documentation, liar loans. From the law of unintended consequences, later the "too big to fail" have to set up the "robo-signing mills" to fabricate the missing documents. The "too big to fail" are then fined tens of billions in dollars ... funds that were supposed to be administered to aid the victims of these scams ... however very little of the funds make it through the operations setup to administer the fines/aid to the victims. http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail Supposedly TARP is setup to help replenish the trillions in funds that "disappear" ... but with only $700B appropriations, it would barely make a dent. For the real bailout they use the Federal Reserve to provide tens of trillions in ZIRP funds ... with the "too big to fail" clearing $300B/year (as well as trillions to buy the off-book toxic assets). A rather modest drop in the corporate welfare bucket was that paying for triple-A rating enabled the industry to no longer care about borrowers' qualifications or loan quality. However, they then found that they could do securitized loans designed to fail, pay for triple-A, sell to (another class of) victims and take out CDS gambling bets that they would fail (creating enormous demand for bad loans/mortgages). AIG was the largest holder of these CDS gambling bets and was negotiating to pay off at 50cents on the dollar ... when the sec. of treasury steps in and forces them to sign a document that they can't sue those making the bets and also pay off at face-value. The largest recipient of TARP funds was AIG (which may have been the whole idea in the first place) and the largest recipient of face-value payoffs is the company previously headed by the sec. of trasury. http://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/corporate-welfare/corporate-welfare-statistics-vs-social-welfare-statistics/ GAO in the 90s was asked by congress to look at indirect corporate welfare ... specifically illegal aliens were being paid substandard wages by corporations ... and what it cost the gov. in social welfare programs to make up the difference (GAO then calculated approx. $10K/year/person). The interesting thing as I've been able to find a more recent GAO report updating that data. They whole illegal alien issue has had a lot of obfuscation with all the corporate lobbying on the issue. old posts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#81 illegal aliens http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#61 Horrid thought about Politics, President Bush, and Democrats http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#70 Zakaria: Only China can save Europe http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#7 Mandated Spending -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970