The Democratic Presidential Debates

Spiritual_Chaos said:

cp3iverson said:

I doubt I'm voting but i’ve personally met Biden several times. Like quite a bit actually.  This was long ago but he was always a very nice guy.  

It would definitely be strange to have known a president.  

Are you Aubrey Plaza?

https://youtu.be/GrUQYIwCN74

CM189191 said:

Spiritual_Chaos said:

https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1235696591681404929?s=20

Florida's primary must be coming up soon

mickeyrat said:

CM189191 said:

Spiritual_Chaos said:

https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1235696591681404929?s=20

Florida's primary must be coming up soon

it is.......

so the question is, whats the cuban to jewish ratio?

mrussel1 said:

static111 said:

mrussel1 said:

static111 said:

Banks actually forecast getting bailed out by the government in the event of a stock market collapse brought on by their own recklessness. There is a term used among the more powerful and influential to describe most of us, the Precariat, the precarious proletariat.  

Thanks for the fresh post.  I won't quibble with many of your points, even if I may not agree in full.  I will say your statement on banks is 100% false.  I work and have worked in senior roles that focus heavily on loss reserves, lending standards, recession planning, etc.  There is not one situation where we have ever forecasted government funds or counted on them.  In fact, the whole process is covered by Basel III rules, and was recently even enhanced on what is called the CECL accounting rules, which require banks to reserve even more than ever before.  And there are some very, very fundamental misunderstandings about TARP that I would be happy to correct if people ever have questions. 

Second, this term "precariat"...who are these rich and powerful people that describe most of us that way?  I have never heard this before.  

Precariat https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/why-precariat-is-not-bogus-concept/ a google search will get you more information if you’d like. That article seems to sum it up at a basic level.  

Financial institutions abusing the bailout https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/05/six-ways-financial-bailout-scams-taxpayers/

ultimately all banks and credit bureaus forecast being bailed out for poor decisions.  If this was a true capitalism all those financial institutions that are too big to fail would fail and be replaced by something else.  Since financial institutions doing business in the US know that they will receive a bailout based on every major disaster since the savings and loan scandal they effectively use the sure bet of a bailout life vest to take riskier decisions than they should that  benefit stockholders and the board of directors at the cost of taxpayers.

Okay, few things...
1. I am aware of the academic word 'precariat' which as you point out refers to that class of people just above the transient line.  The way you framed your original statement, I read it as though you're saying the "elites" use it as a slur, sort of like if I call the people who work for me "plebs" or "commoners".  The concept of precariat seems to have originated in a field of study, not in a board room or wine tasting.  

2. While I can't necessarily speak for every bank, I can have worked at or closely with at  least 7 of the top 10 largest consumer lenders (not institutional lending).  These companies absolutely do not include 'bailout' as part of their credit loss forecasting.  I can't say whether Freddie or Fannie do as I do not have deep experience in the mortgage space.  Now if you want to argue that credit risk decisions they make IMPLICITLY assume some sort of bailout, that's a fairly esoteric argument.  But there was a generation of leaders between the S&L bailout and TARP.  And the S&L business is nothing like large bank consumer lending.  I can tell you that in no way did I or anyone ever think about bailout when I was a senior credit officer.  And I held a very senior role at one of these institutions until 2010.  I worked through the the down turn in the early 2000's and the recession in 08.  It would be completely insane to assume that the gov't would bail out a bank individually. None of these banks would have been bailed if they were the only one and not associated with a total market crash.  I would have been walked to the door if I tried to use an assumption of gov't funding as part of vintage analysis. 

3. You need to draw a line between credit bureaus and banks.  From a business perspective they have zero in common.  Credit bureaus are simply data engines and repositories, a central place for lenders to essentially share information.  Large banks do not use credit scores.  I know that's counter to popular belief, but the sophisticated ones do not.  We had our own credit and risk modeling and we bought data from bureaus to feed our own algorithms.  Now I'm not saying that there was no overlap between the two.  Someone with a 785 is going to be a good risk generally speaking, but that's because of all of the underlying payment history, debt to credit ratios, debt to income ratios, etc., that drive the standard FICO scores.  

4. Regarding TARP, there's a lot to it, but most believe that all the banks needed the cash.  This is fundamentally untrue.  My bank did not.  We had enough in reserves to ride out the worst of the crisis and still keep the loan losses in line.  However, the Fed and the Bush and Obama administration did not want to signal to Wall Street which banks were strong and which were weak, creating a market run on those banks.  So many banks had to take the money and paid it back as soon as they were allowed to do so.  It's easy to speculate which ones needed it vs didn't, based on the numbers that were released in subsequent quarterly earnings.  Certain ones absolutely did, but it's nearly the number that anyone thinks.  And TARP was fully paid back even by the weakest banks, with interest.  Although if you calculate it, it was probably a minimal profit for the gov't/people.  

Whew.. that was a lot.  Wrote it while in a meeting.  It's a bit of a pet peeve to say the banks caused the crisis in 2008.  They didn't.  Everyone was complicit, from the buyer to the real estate agent, to the broker, to the bundler to the underwriter.  I can sleep at night knowing that neither I or my company ever had anything to do with mortgage lending and bundling.  

Spiritual_Chaos said:

pjl44 said:

https://twitter.com/zachheltzel/status/1235276855856390144?s=19

https://youtu.be/ViWpM4D5Ktw