The Business Theologists March On

2:47 pm EST March 22nd, 2009 | News | 8 Comments

Bruce McQuain at QandO:

Business takes a hard look at the potential and when there doesn’t seem to be any, it pulls back. Government, on the other hand, decides it believes something has a future and spends money to try to make their belief a reality.

[sarcasm] And that friends, is why when business saw the real estate and mortgage market going insane, they pulled back and reconsidered their investments. Surely what they didn’t do was put up billions and billions of their investor’s money in what amounted to be gigantic excrement piles of mortgage-backed securities and the like. That’s why no companies needed to be bailed out by the federal government, and certainly no banks have gone out of business due to the mania that never happened. [/sarcasm]

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8 Responses to “The Business Theologists March On”

  1. ed says:
    March 22, 2009 at 3:02 pm

    Pseudo-libertarians are even more annoying (not to mention numerous) than actual libertarians. Which is to say: pretty motherfucking annoying.

  2. C.S.Strowbridge says:
    March 22, 2009 at 3:27 pm

    He’s half right.

    Businesses say, “Will there be a profit?”

    Government says “Will this be good for the country in the future?”

    Sadly, today too many businesses are saying, “Will there be a profit? Any profit? Short term profit at the expense of long term sustainability? Anything to make me look good now, so I get a bigger bonus?”

    And this is not an anti-business bias. We need businesses, but we need them run well. However, right now all the incentives are for short time illusionary profits at the expense of the long term outlook.

  3. El Cid says:
    March 22, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    The people in the financial ‘industry’ doing the betting with the crazy fake investment instruments accurately gauged that they, the bettors, faced no real risk whatsoever.

    Sure, their corporations went in the hole technically, even before bailouts, and they were putting all kinds of other peoples’ investments at risk, but the key people faced no real risks. None. They still don’t.

    We incentivized them to do it. Let’s all not act so surprised that they did.

  4. Adam Herman says:
    March 23, 2009 at 12:37 am

    Let’s see. Businesses are run by human beings. Government is run by human beings. Not surprisingly, both tend to make a lot of mistakes. And both were knee deep in the mortgage meltdown.

    I realize liberals have an interest in portraying this as caused by free markets, but government was encouraging subprime lending, interest-only loans, and the running up of home prices. It’s not like the government saw a problem and then acted. No, they acted long after the problem exploded, like they usually do.

    Here’s the real difference between business and the government: business saw the meltdown and began reassessing lending practices. Government saw the meltdown and decided the solution was to try to prop up housing prices and encourage more subprime lending. And they DEMAND to know why this lending isn’t going on.

  5. Enlightened Liberal says:
    March 23, 2009 at 8:05 am

    Shorter Adam: Barney Frank! Coloreds buying houses! Go Galt!

  6. El Cid says:
    March 23, 2009 at 9:20 am

    Here’s the real difference between business and the government: business saw the meltdown and began reassessing lending practices.

    Yeah. Business saw the meltdown and began pushing out subprime loans faster than ever, and then bet even more money on the fake, non-regulated credit default swap industry. And you shits were in charge of the ENTIRE government, all 3 branches, when the shit went whacked.

    All you idiot right wing assholes trying to blame this on Fannie and Freddie go straight to hell.

  7. C.S.Strowbridge says:
    March 23, 2009 at 11:31 am

    Adam: “I realize liberals have an interest in portraying this as caused by free markets, but government was encouraging subprime lending, interest-only loans, and the running up of home prices.”

    Really? How were they doing that?

    “It’s not like the government saw a problem and then acted. No, they acted long after the problem exploded, like they usually do.”

    And when they act before the problem gets out of hand, you people attack them for interfering with the free market. You can’t attack the government for acting too soon and then attack them for not acting soon enough.

    “Here’s the real difference between business and the government: business saw the meltdown and began reassessing lending practices.”

    Really? How did they do that? They only change their business practices once the meltdown began. And they only changed their business practices because the old ones were not working anymore. They couldn’t bundle bad loans and sell them, because no one was buying.

  8. Sean D. Martin says:
    March 23, 2009 at 3:12 pm

    CSS: Businesses say, “Will there be a profit?”

    Government says “Will this be good for the country in the future?”

    Sadly, today too many businesses are saying, “Will there be a profit? Any profit? Short term profit at the expense of long term sustainability? Anything to make me look good now, so I get a bigger bonus?”

    Alas, government has their own version of that short sighted view in politicians who look only toward what will benefit them in the next election. It is extremely rare that you find the pol who acts without considering how their decision will play with the home viewers and what effect that may have in the next election.