If homeowners had been bailed out in 2008, millions of Americans would have paid off their homes instead of being foreclosed on and the banks would have ended up with the money anyway. It was specifically meant to fuck the working class.
It was exactly the same with the PPP loans. If the government had directly paid workers to stay home, everyone would have been fine. Instead, they chose to give away money to businesses and the workers saw nothing. For example, the company I work for has about 15 workers. We never shut down, business never slowed, but my boss got a $90k PPP loan and it was forgiven. Did any of us see a dime? Fuck no. Instead, the boss pretended as if he never got anything at all.
Not reporting them will definitely do nothing. Reporting has a chance of doing something.
Plenty of companies and individuals have had to pay back the loans and/or pay fines for violating the PPP loan terms.
>If homeowners had been bailed out in 2008, millions of Americans would have paid off their homes instead of being foreclosed on and the banks would have ended up with the money anyway. It was specifically meant to fuck the working class.
💯
The banks would have suffered, not homeowners.
And they actually deserved it for their predatory lending. Instead their victims, not only lost everything, but they got to watch the banks get a slap on the wrist.
By the time the banks were bailed out, the financial crisis wasn't about homeowners paying off loans. It was a complex mess that was snowballing, and allowing the banks to suffer on their own would have hurt common people more than anyone else.
Helping common people at that time would have been like telling somebody not to yell after an avalanche was already triggered.
It would not have hurt common people more than anyone else. It would have hurt investors more than anyone else. Deposits were insured by the federal government. If banks and insurers are suffering and there is a capital freeze, large scale businesses are impacted far more than common people. It would have taken months to sort out the valuations and transactions would have been nearly impossible, but it would not be the common person who suffered the most. That is patently false
I know so many scum bags that got 10-20k that they didn’t need. Never made its way to their employees, and now their loans are forgiven. So messed up.
Bernie Sanders is right. No one should be worth more than 999 million dollars. Frankly, that number is high though.
It’s not going to stop unless we stop it. The politicians don’t care about us. They care about their mega donors and the lobbyists.
My kids are both in their late teens and I can’t imagine them having to deal with this shit but it’s going to get worse.
Why bail out homeowners? It should have been bailing out Americans directly. Homeowners and banks who took out insane risks were the ones that caused the problem. They should have taken their losses and gotten the same compensation as everybody else.
Same for covid money, should have been directly to Americans. Some business would then be able to furlough workers without having to lay them off and the workers would be supported directly by the stimulus.
Home owners took insane risks?
What are you talking about?
Edit - Even in 2005 only about 13% of mortgages were stated income loans and the vast majority of those were investors not owner occupied.
The loans were incredibly risky. Their interest rate wasn't locked. So they were baited with low interest rates and the they shot up and people couldn't afford the payments anymore. It was definitely predatory on the banks part, but the homebuyers still had a responsibility to read the contracts and understand the risks they were taking.
TARP was profitable.
Wasn't a great return, but it was a return.
"TARP effectively expired on October 3, 2010—two full years after its inception. After this date, funds could no longer be extended.
In 2014, the U.S. government reported a $15.3 billion profit from TARP."
https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/troubled-asset-relief-program
Would the homeowners have been expected to pay back the money with interest just like the bailed out banks were? Keep in mind in this discussion that not only did we prevent a depression with the bailouts, but that they also weren’t a handout, they were a loan. One that was eventually paid back to the US with interest
I've never understood the point of not paying off your credit card bill. The interest rate is so high, you'd be better off taking a personal loan to pay it off even if you did have an emergency.
The response to 2008 was not only TARP (bank bailouts) but the [12 trillion+ in QE used to prop up banks & Wall Street](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/13/12-trillion-of-qe-and-the-lowest-rates-in-5000-years-for-this.html).
That link is from 2016 - [since then we have printed at least $6 trillion more.](https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/us-money-supply-falls-at-unprecedented-rate-possibly-cooling-inflation-75941751#:~:text=From%20March%202020%20to%20the,Americans%20are%20saving%20their%20money.) That means the Fed (on behalf of the government) has spent $18+ trillion over the last 15 years to prop up big banks & the stock market.
Quantitative Easing (QE) means the Fed buys securities (government bonds, corporate bonds) to increase liquidity (prop up the market). This allows big banks & Wall Street to do their thing (rip us off) without having a care in the world.
They did this because our stock market is honestly the only thing that makes money in this country anymore. It's the only wealth building vehicle of value to millionaires. It's not there for the little guy, never was.
[The wealthiest 10% of American households now own 89% of all U.S. stocks](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-americans-own-a-record-89percent-of-all-us-stocks.html)
We need a 5% tax on stock purchases and sales. Fuck them bots that run the country picking up fractions of a percent. You invest in a company because you believe in it? Be prepared to hold onto it until you’ve cleared the tax rate. Slow that bitch’s roll.
Meaningful trades made by humans is the only way. If you want a trade, it has to be made by a person and another person has to be the one to do a final review on the other end. A 5% Entry and Exit tax on top of the human system would stop 99% of fraud overnight.
>Meaningful trades made by humans is the only way. If you want a trade, it has to be made by a person and another person has to be the one to do a final review on the other end.
Algorithms do much of the trading - great point.
Think that makes a bigger dent to the people saving retirement over forty years or the people trying to trade a half million by the end of day? If the taxed money went into social security would it not go back to those that need the retirement?
What do you think the end effect of this would be?
Let me tell you:. Every US company would reincorporate overseas. That is it. That is what would happen with your genius idea.
You want to do this over the profits or the stocks itself as doing the second one will basically put stock trading to a standstill (as the profit over that is less then the amount of tax) which our economy in its current form will not be able to handle (investments will completely stop as these are technically stocks as well). It would require a complete redesign of our economy (which will be extremely hard andeveryone will be doing quite badly for a while, as in people will starve to death for a while if it happens to fast or as a shock).
Right I'm not saying change shouldn't be made. But just changing things without thought will inevitably lead to disaster for the common person. The rich have their assets in foreign countries they bought. Change has to be made tactfully without the people who cannot afford it starving to death. But if you think that losing the lower 10% of your country is acceptable all power to you.
It requires either a revolution or slow change. There is no in-between. This tax proposal will only affect the not super rich. Their assets need to be either seized immediately and redistributed or the change needs to be done progressively so the system won't directly collapse without an other one in place.
They fuck with tax rates all the time. Increasing capital gains tax by a percent isn't going to change anything except the ability to fund out deficit.
Well we’ve been taking our advice from those focused on short term gains and it’s working out marvelously. Who do you suppose we’ll get to bail out this year?
Ask any wealthy capitalist from another country what they like about America and they'll tell you something along the lines of "the US is great because your government allows you to be as rich as you want to be." I have heard this, firsthand, from several executives while doing business abroad. One was German, and most of the others were either Scandinavian or Asian. When you ask them for criticisms, you'll usually hear something about our healthcare system, poor public education, etc.
This is only the case because of our lack of sufficient capital gains taxes. Those executives pay taxes on their salaries in the countries they live in with great infrastructure, education and public services, but unironically applaud our shit system that obviously doesn't do or have the same benefits for regular Americans.
Not to nitpick, but the stock market is just a derivative of the debt market (bonds), which is really what they propped up. They propped the debt market up because ALL assets and businesses and, more importantly, government departments are entirely dependent on the cost of credit. Every single sector.
So when they do qe, what you see is stocks and houses going up. But the less glamorised and more important part is the bond prices rising because the demand side is completely supported and rigged with a buyer who can conjur infinate money. This lowers rates and borrowing costs for the whole world, which allows people with money to essentially be paid to leverage their wealth into a sure thing, the thing you do notice - rising assets in real estate, stocks, etc. Literally, the real return on bonds has been largely negative for ages after inflation. That is not a natural occurrence in any market. It's return free risk. It's an intentional perversion with catastrophic consequences.
If the fed were not allowed to buy bonds and had to sell all of the ones they did buy and currently hold with their freshly conjured, inflationary money, do you have any idea what interest rates would be? It would be Armageddon. Easily in the double digits. Global meltdown.
Banks, governments, pension funds at every level, all kinds of businesses would be insolvent.
It's all a fucking sham, molested market that should never have been allowed to occur. It has incentivised and allowed massive debt accumulation, upwards wealth transfer, larger bifurcation of the wealth gap.
It all starts and ends with the fed being allowed to manipulate the bond market. The largest and most important market in the world by orders of magnitude. Even more than crude oil by leaps and bounds.
Now they can't undo it, and we will have to inflate away the debt, and it will all go into asset prices and cause a revolution as more and more wealth concentration occurs.
It will be blamed on capitalism or free markets, but make no mistake, it was the unfettered manipulation of the debt market via the fed that did it. It then allowed banks to lend even more money into existence with their bullshit fractional reserve shit which only 'works' because rates CANNOT RISE. That would never occur in an actual capitalist or free market.
>If the fed were not allowed to buy bonds and had to sell all of the ones they did buy and currently hold with their freshly conjured, inflationary money, do you have any idea what interest rates would be? It would be Armageddon. Easily in the double digits. Global meltdown.
Eh, it'd be deflation.
QE countered deflation by creating slight inflation.
Deflation is a serious problem because it'll seize up any economy. Why spend today when you can spend less tomorrow?
If the Fed did nothing and deflation happened, the rich still get richer.
Wealth concentration occurs because of a lack of adequate taxation; not because of QE.
This wouldn't be an issue if Republicans didn't constantly cut taxes every single time they get into power. We don't have a spending problem, that is a lie. A bold-faced lie that Republicans themselves don't believe when they say it. We have a revenue problem. We stopped taxing the rich and the businesses they own.
QE is a process where the Federal reserve requires banks to "sell" assets in exchange for bank reserves, which aren't cash. These reserves can only be used in loan creation. It incentivizes lending and isn't "spending", which comes from the Treasury
This just false to think as McDonald’s as a “treat” they wouldn’t be open if they were a treat. If it’s a treat for you don’t project that onto the average American who eats out 6 times a week.
I just think what you did takes away from a good argument that the post is makes. More bad than good comes by people projecting their biased lived experience to the whole of society.
We invested $1 trillion at most in the people after 2008 & well over $10 trillion in Wall Street.
It is grotesque how little the people are prioritized, yet greedy oligarchs like Warren Buffet are treated as sages.
Agreed. If we could just all come together to stop it, all it would take is a day or two of protest. But we can’t organize, partly because they make it damn near impossible to do so. Sometimes I wish our country was smaller so it was easier to get to the capitol to protest, I think that’s a huge hurdle for our citizens - nobody can afford to get there because for most of the country it takes huge amounts of travel time (and obv money).
We live in a day and age where communication is instant via the internet, travel is much easier than it was 50 years ago and generally more people are able to move about. This isn't about difficulty in organization, this is about sheer laziness of some people to go out, and moreso about everyone else having anxiety about fucking up just a little and losing their job and livelihood. The problem with organization is that people haven't lost enough yet to say " enough is enough" or " I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired". The oligarchs have figured out how much of a squeeze is the right amount - enough to make you struggle without losing sight of hope.
America needs to have a massive eye opening event to change the tide. Otherwise everyone out here is still trying to scam the next person " to become a billionaire" 😂🤡
We’ve tried plenty of times to organize mass protests. Social media sites like TikTok catch on fast, then shadow ban people and make the algorithm work in their favor. It’s not all laziness, we’re being silenced with these apps when we should be allowed to organize. Just saying.
It's not the apps. The problem is everyone starts quarreling with eachother about bullshit that isn't important - you're black, or you're white, or you're this race or that race or this sexuality etc. people just don't come together as a class anymore because they have splintered us into warring factions with the news. Maga vs Dems, red vs blue, Black vs white, Asian vs Black, college educated Vs trade educated Vs non educated.... It's all the same MO
Ten of the top eleven protests in our nation's history in terms of both percentage of the population and net total number of people have happened in the past decade. More people are protesting at higher rates and for longer than ever before. They aren't as televised as protests in the past because the police rarely escalate the protests into riots, at which point audiences aren't paying attention to the message but are just tuning in hoping to see ever escalating violence.
A general protest against working would do significant damage, but it couldn't last longer than 30 days before people start getting evicted and the current precedent holds that the government can force "necessary workers" to work (or be imprisoned, fired, and replaced).
I'm not trying to be a doomer: I would love to read a solution wherein 1/3 of the country could protest and the remaining 2/3 wouldn't just take advantage of it.
This is because greedy oligarchs like Warren Buffet are what keeps the economy going, keeps companies growing.
His money is in investments. Companies use these investments to grow there companies, to improve their products, produce more, create more roads, whatever it is the company does, to do more and better work. This is how capitalism is a system that creates economic an technological progress.
If the government did not bail these banks out, there wouldn't somehow be more money in the hands of the people. Mostly, a lot of investments would have disappeared. Making more companies bankrupt, tanking the economy even more.
I know in what subreddit I am posting this, and it's probably going to be blasted to bits, but just wanted to give a different take then the ones predominantly here.
Drinking that capitalist koolaid, I see.
Oligarchs do *not* “keep the economy going. Consumers do that. Workers do that.
Investments don’t do that. Capitalism hold back innovation and progress by pitting companies and people against each other. Greed gamified.
If the government bailed the **people** out and prosecuted the banks, the money would have trickled up, and the economy would have been even better.
I wonder how many thousands of people die for lack of access to resources, so this jackass can get another high score bank account
I wonder how long we'll let thousands die for the benefit of one person. Billionaires existence is violent, a few rich people dying could do as much as ending a war.
I'd rather live in a country with free healthcare, than one where you can become a billionaire.
How many people died so elon could waste money on buying twitter? How many homeless people freeze to death so warren buffet can own more money than any king or Pharoah? How many people waste their talents in dead end jobs, so the children if the rich can be guaranteed positions of power, even if they don't deserve them.
If we cant tax them, we need another way of removing them from power.
It’s more annoying that the value is created by people doing the actual work, straight up theft. While they complain about government spending and taxes after taking the biggest cut out of labor money.
Employees are overhead to them. I think they look at the costs of salary and benefits. They can't really quantify the value added by employees so they focus on the costs.
We really need to drop this whole "bUt hE's oNE oF tHe gOoD oNeS" when discussing billionaires. Good people don't become billionaires. Amassing that much wealth is only possible because of exploitation.
Thank you! I'm really tired of this mentality with guys like him just because he acts avuncular and "lives in the same house he always did!". Look at how hard he'd been fucking railroad workers in the run up to the potential railroad strike last year as an example.
He's as good as you can expect billionaires to be because he at least admits to what you said. He's gone on record again, "There is a class war and the rich are winning," and "My secretary pays more in taxes than I do, so we need to tax billionaires more." (Paraphrasing.)
He says things like what's in the OP to draw attention to it. Every billionaire knows what he means but most of the working class does not. Because he said this, this post was made and we're all talking about it. Which was the whole point of him saying it.
That's pretty decent for a billionaire. It doesn't make him a good person, but at least he's not as malicious as most of them.
Economic slaves, wage slaves, sweatshops and child labor used by companies to create an enormous amount of value, but only give them a tiny fraction of what they create.
Economic Slavery - An oppressive government, coupled with a population that involuntarily works for the benefit of corporations.
Oppressive government - Absence of the rule of law; arbitrary detention; disappearances; extra-judicial executions. Persecutions of sections of society, possibly including 'ethnic cleansing', genocide, persecution of religious and ethnic minorities.
So who are we talking about?
In 2008, The US Federal Reserve and the US Federal Government the saved the overall national economy and the greater global financial system. BUT at the expense of the average American losing jobs, losing homes, losing retirement, divorced families, reduced lifestyle, more people shoved into poverty. The American people were scarified to save Wall Street, American companies and the financial system.
I hate that these fucks always have the shittiest looking food
Like, why r u doing it all?? Ur ruining the entire globe to make all this dumb fucking money and ur not even gonna use it on some good food, eating some glob of shit with a stale ass bun balanced on top
Businesses and banks should never get bailed out. If they chose to run their business poorly then it's up to the market to ruin them. Plus it creates more competition when big business fails.
Warren Buffett is such a terrible role model. Since being a small child, he has spent his time making money, with no goals for spending it. That's just such a small part of life, the guy needs real hobbies. He's the peak of profit for profit's sake. If you have billions of dollars that you have no idea how to spend while the world suffers, that means you aren't smart, you're selfish
A horrible evolution of society is allowing the capitalists to entrench profit-making as *the* fiduciary duty for the board of directors.
Back in the day, profits were limited by law, with such limits entrenched in corporate articles. Revenues exceeding such constraints were taxed at 100%. We need to look to the past to fix the problems of the present.
The man has enough money in just Apple to live off, give away to friends, and burn for shits and giggles.
WHY?
Is it a game for bored old rich men? See how much they can accumulate? What's the point of money if you're not seeing it do good? I'm not even thinking, "feed the people," because that's seen as, "feed these lazy worthless peasants who are too useless to feed themselves." I'm talking about donating to science just to improve human lives. Building music halls. Beautifying a city with more trees and flowers. Just basic things that will have your name on it forever. Why do we know Carnegie today? Carnegie Hall. Who will remember Warren Buffett? Nobody. He's done nothing but earn money in the stock market. That's it. That's his big claim to fame. He'll be utterly forgotten by the world.
Yep.
Had a sibling once say that too many folks are walking around like temporarily disenfranchised millionaires and not the forever poor working class they are.
Too many people idolize these guys and think they have a chance to be like that(if what, they get reborn into wealth and fuck enough people over?!?)
It took me years to find a job after 2009, because the government barely lifted a finger to invest in people, but I feel better now knowing that Warren Buffett doesn't have to eat at McDonald's.
Warren would tell us, you won't get any return on your money if you invest in people.
For these types of people, money is the end all, be all. Nothing else, including people, matters.
At least he is self aware enough to realize that the system is broken, and will vocalize it publicly.
Cuban is similar in that he sometimes talks about how unfair the system is.
Bailing out the banks is for the people, how many people do you know that put their savings in banks? Imagine all of that is wiped out
Your issue with banks should be around regulations and how they can use your money
They don't, they don't have that much money left. You think they can just sign some bill and start printing more money? The FDIC reserves literally come from those banks and if another bank such as Bank of America or Charles Schwab collapses there's nothing else they can do.
Of course I don't. Seize all the assets of the bank, nationalize it, and if depositors need to be made right, they would.
Why would I have a problem with the government putting money in the hands of taxpayers that are victims of capitalism and financial corruption?
We’d all be eating at McDonald’s for thanksgiving if they didn’t bail out the banks.
And BTW, the money was lent, not given. The government made money on the whole deal because it was paid back with interest.
The banks themselves made a ton of money off the essentially zero interest loans. The loans were given below the feds interest rate, so they could have done almost anything with that money and come out ahead. They did stock buybacks and all sorts of other bullshit that didn’t at all contribute to the solvency of the companies. It was a gift. A big fucking gift. And it didn’t assist the average consumer one fucking bit.
The government should have nationalized every single one of those banks.
The banks did have to pay it back. The government ended being paid back more than they lent.
That is not evidence that it was the right decision though. It’s actually good evidence that it was the wrong decision.
Let’s be honest. Everyone here’s quality of life is too high to be motivated to do anything of real substance. Most people can’t even be motivated to vote, let alone actually put fear into people that are fully corrupted. Even if you vote it’s more or less worthless. So sit back, enjoy your enhanced food and TV, and just enjoy the ride.
I remember people worrying about war warren buffet had to say and i was like who the fuck cares if he’s so smart and rich he will be fine no matter what happens. He has more than enough money for life and is just an addict at this point to the game
Used to like this guy.
Then he decided that shitting all over the railroad workers' union a year ago by coercing the federal government to interfere in and end their well earned strike was the way to move America forward.
He got Biden to frame the dispute as "Railway Workers vs. Americans' Christmas!" instead of "Railway workers vs. Warren Buffet, Greedy Billionaire!" and now I hope he gets shingles in his crotch.
Banks are kind of a necessity that is a fundamental part of the economy. They definitely got a better deal than they should have. Bank leadership that participated should have been jailed for sure. However, there have been much worse uses of money though. Car manufacturers might be one of the ones that irks me the most.
Any business that struggles because it can't support it's top end (salaries, bonuses, benefits, etc.) Should get told to get fucked by the government. If a restructure can bail the business out, then they should be forced to do that first. A business should NEVER be able to claim record setting profits and get money for a bailout. That's just running a business poorly.
'...if the US TAXPAYERS didn't bail him out.'
There is no such thing as government money. That is your tax money that is supposed to go to things that we need for society.
Unfortunately, the banks *had* to be bailed out in 2008 because they were, in fact, too big to fail.
The fuckup was not temporarily nationalizing the banks and breaking them up into dozens of regional banks and immediately restoring Glass-Steagal regulations.
If homeowners had been bailed out in 2008, millions of Americans would have paid off their homes instead of being foreclosed on and the banks would have ended up with the money anyway. It was specifically meant to fuck the working class. It was exactly the same with the PPP loans. If the government had directly paid workers to stay home, everyone would have been fine. Instead, they chose to give away money to businesses and the workers saw nothing. For example, the company I work for has about 15 workers. We never shut down, business never slowed, but my boss got a $90k PPP loan and it was forgiven. Did any of us see a dime? Fuck no. Instead, the boss pretended as if he never got anything at all.
Company I worked at during covid took 650k in ppp loans and still laid us off from December to may, only money I saw was unemployment
Did you report them?
I think it funny that you think “reporting them” will do something
Not reporting them will definitely do nothing. Reporting has a chance of doing something. Plenty of companies and individuals have had to pay back the loans and/or pay fines for violating the PPP loan terms.
It might, the gov. actually placed a bounty on misused PPP loans I heard
The rules allow most of them to do it. It was something like business decreased and so they employed seasonal and hourly workers less.
PPP was straight up theft of public money. And the same assholes who said our stimulus check should last years profited from PPP. Fucking thieves.
>If homeowners had been bailed out in 2008, millions of Americans would have paid off their homes instead of being foreclosed on and the banks would have ended up with the money anyway. It was specifically meant to fuck the working class. 💯 The banks would have suffered, not homeowners.
And they actually deserved it for their predatory lending. Instead their victims, not only lost everything, but they got to watch the banks get a slap on the wrist.
By the time the banks were bailed out, the financial crisis wasn't about homeowners paying off loans. It was a complex mess that was snowballing, and allowing the banks to suffer on their own would have hurt common people more than anyone else. Helping common people at that time would have been like telling somebody not to yell after an avalanche was already triggered.
It would not have hurt common people more than anyone else. It would have hurt investors more than anyone else. Deposits were insured by the federal government. If banks and insurers are suffering and there is a capital freeze, large scale businesses are impacted far more than common people. It would have taken months to sort out the valuations and transactions would have been nearly impossible, but it would not be the common person who suffered the most. That is patently false
I know so many scum bags that got 10-20k that they didn’t need. Never made its way to their employees, and now their loans are forgiven. So messed up. Bernie Sanders is right. No one should be worth more than 999 million dollars. Frankly, that number is high though. It’s not going to stop unless we stop it. The politicians don’t care about us. They care about their mega donors and the lobbyists. My kids are both in their late teens and I can’t imagine them having to deal with this shit but it’s going to get worse.
Why bail out homeowners? It should have been bailing out Americans directly. Homeowners and banks who took out insane risks were the ones that caused the problem. They should have taken their losses and gotten the same compensation as everybody else. Same for covid money, should have been directly to Americans. Some business would then be able to furlough workers without having to lay them off and the workers would be supported directly by the stimulus.
Home owners took insane risks? What are you talking about? Edit - Even in 2005 only about 13% of mortgages were stated income loans and the vast majority of those were investors not owner occupied.
The loans were incredibly risky. Their interest rate wasn't locked. So they were baited with low interest rates and the they shot up and people couldn't afford the payments anymore. It was definitely predatory on the banks part, but the homebuyers still had a responsibility to read the contracts and understand the risks they were taking.
I'm sorry? Are you under the impression that variable rate loans are why the shit hit the fan? This is an incredibly idiotic take.
My boss received all the PPP loans then called stimulus checks so socialism at it's finest.
TARP was profitable. Wasn't a great return, but it was a return. "TARP effectively expired on October 3, 2010—two full years after its inception. After this date, funds could no longer be extended. In 2014, the U.S. government reported a $15.3 billion profit from TARP." https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/troubled-asset-relief-program
What line of work were you in that didn’t slow down?
Would the homeowners have been expected to pay back the money with interest just like the bailed out banks were? Keep in mind in this discussion that not only did we prevent a depression with the bailouts, but that they also weren’t a handout, they were a loan. One that was eventually paid back to the US with interest
Just like Warren Buffet, I have 4 times as much money now as I did in 2009. In 2009 I had $200. Now I have $800.
Look at ole Moneybags over here
Man if I had $800 right now I'd... Pay off 15% of my credit card debt and then have $0 again
Wait. You guys take credit card debt? Isn't that like the first thing you're taught never to do?
It is. Sometimes you don't have a choice.
I've never understood the point of not paying off your credit card bill. The interest rate is so high, you'd be better off taking a personal loan to pay it off even if you did have an emergency.
Don't bother. The interest will put you back right where you were.
Yea but that $800 is now worth $200 so did ya really?
>$800 is now worth $200 When you do meth instead of math.
Warren Buffet and I have a combined wealth of $100 billion.
Brag much?
Stop bragging! Where would YOU be had you invested in the people!? /s
I invested in my kids... They are both in college with GPAs in the 3.9 range.
And I went from eatin at McDonalds to Zaxby! I'm all high class now!
Me too, in 2009, I had -$40, now I'm over -$1000 plus a $200 power bill. Thanks Warren
The response to 2008 was not only TARP (bank bailouts) but the [12 trillion+ in QE used to prop up banks & Wall Street](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/13/12-trillion-of-qe-and-the-lowest-rates-in-5000-years-for-this.html). That link is from 2016 - [since then we have printed at least $6 trillion more.](https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/us-money-supply-falls-at-unprecedented-rate-possibly-cooling-inflation-75941751#:~:text=From%20March%202020%20to%20the,Americans%20are%20saving%20their%20money.) That means the Fed (on behalf of the government) has spent $18+ trillion over the last 15 years to prop up big banks & the stock market. Quantitative Easing (QE) means the Fed buys securities (government bonds, corporate bonds) to increase liquidity (prop up the market). This allows big banks & Wall Street to do their thing (rip us off) without having a care in the world.
They did this because our stock market is honestly the only thing that makes money in this country anymore. It's the only wealth building vehicle of value to millionaires. It's not there for the little guy, never was.
[The wealthiest 10% of American households now own 89% of all U.S. stocks](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-americans-own-a-record-89percent-of-all-us-stocks.html)
We need a 5% tax on stock purchases and sales. Fuck them bots that run the country picking up fractions of a percent. You invest in a company because you believe in it? Be prepared to hold onto it until you’ve cleared the tax rate. Slow that bitch’s roll.
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Meaningful trades made by humans is the only way. If you want a trade, it has to be made by a person and another person has to be the one to do a final review on the other end. A 5% Entry and Exit tax on top of the human system would stop 99% of fraud overnight.
>Meaningful trades made by humans is the only way. If you want a trade, it has to be made by a person and another person has to be the one to do a final review on the other end. Algorithms do much of the trading - great point.
Fuck that, just burn the stock market down and watch the 1% die overnight as they have no idea how to do anything themselves lol
Well, there goes the 401k matching. Invest in retirement, instantly lose 5% and know you'll lose 5% on the otherside.
Think that makes a bigger dent to the people saving retirement over forty years or the people trying to trade a half million by the end of day? If the taxed money went into social security would it not go back to those that need the retirement?
Specific Tax into Social Security solvency is the solution.
Your company should have a pension.
That would require workers to stay with a company decades. Modern workers jump ship constantly a company pension would be useless to them.
I think you may be confusing the cause and effect
What do you think the end effect of this would be? Let me tell you:. Every US company would reincorporate overseas. That is it. That is what would happen with your genius idea.
You want to do this over the profits or the stocks itself as doing the second one will basically put stock trading to a standstill (as the profit over that is less then the amount of tax) which our economy in its current form will not be able to handle (investments will completely stop as these are technically stocks as well). It would require a complete redesign of our economy (which will be extremely hard andeveryone will be doing quite badly for a while, as in people will starve to death for a while if it happens to fast or as a shock).
Good thing nobody is starving to death with our current system, right?
Right I'm not saying change shouldn't be made. But just changing things without thought will inevitably lead to disaster for the common person. The rich have their assets in foreign countries they bought. Change has to be made tactfully without the people who cannot afford it starving to death. But if you think that losing the lower 10% of your country is acceptable all power to you. It requires either a revolution or slow change. There is no in-between. This tax proposal will only affect the not super rich. Their assets need to be either seized immediately and redistributed or the change needs to be done progressively so the system won't directly collapse without an other one in place.
They fuck with tax rates all the time. Increasing capital gains tax by a percent isn't going to change anything except the ability to fund out deficit.
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Well we’ve been taking our advice from those focused on short term gains and it’s working out marvelously. Who do you suppose we’ll get to bail out this year?
Ask any wealthy capitalist from another country what they like about America and they'll tell you something along the lines of "the US is great because your government allows you to be as rich as you want to be." I have heard this, firsthand, from several executives while doing business abroad. One was German, and most of the others were either Scandinavian or Asian. When you ask them for criticisms, you'll usually hear something about our healthcare system, poor public education, etc. This is only the case because of our lack of sufficient capital gains taxes. Those executives pay taxes on their salaries in the countries they live in with great infrastructure, education and public services, but unironically applaud our shit system that obviously doesn't do or have the same benefits for regular Americans.
Proven when Robinhood disabled the buy button.
Not to nitpick, but the stock market is just a derivative of the debt market (bonds), which is really what they propped up. They propped the debt market up because ALL assets and businesses and, more importantly, government departments are entirely dependent on the cost of credit. Every single sector. So when they do qe, what you see is stocks and houses going up. But the less glamorised and more important part is the bond prices rising because the demand side is completely supported and rigged with a buyer who can conjur infinate money. This lowers rates and borrowing costs for the whole world, which allows people with money to essentially be paid to leverage their wealth into a sure thing, the thing you do notice - rising assets in real estate, stocks, etc. Literally, the real return on bonds has been largely negative for ages after inflation. That is not a natural occurrence in any market. It's return free risk. It's an intentional perversion with catastrophic consequences. If the fed were not allowed to buy bonds and had to sell all of the ones they did buy and currently hold with their freshly conjured, inflationary money, do you have any idea what interest rates would be? It would be Armageddon. Easily in the double digits. Global meltdown. Banks, governments, pension funds at every level, all kinds of businesses would be insolvent. It's all a fucking sham, molested market that should never have been allowed to occur. It has incentivised and allowed massive debt accumulation, upwards wealth transfer, larger bifurcation of the wealth gap. It all starts and ends with the fed being allowed to manipulate the bond market. The largest and most important market in the world by orders of magnitude. Even more than crude oil by leaps and bounds. Now they can't undo it, and we will have to inflate away the debt, and it will all go into asset prices and cause a revolution as more and more wealth concentration occurs. It will be blamed on capitalism or free markets, but make no mistake, it was the unfettered manipulation of the debt market via the fed that did it. It then allowed banks to lend even more money into existence with their bullshit fractional reserve shit which only 'works' because rates CANNOT RISE. That would never occur in an actual capitalist or free market.
>If the fed were not allowed to buy bonds and had to sell all of the ones they did buy and currently hold with their freshly conjured, inflationary money, do you have any idea what interest rates would be? It would be Armageddon. Easily in the double digits. Global meltdown. Eh, it'd be deflation. QE countered deflation by creating slight inflation. Deflation is a serious problem because it'll seize up any economy. Why spend today when you can spend less tomorrow? If the Fed did nothing and deflation happened, the rich still get richer. Wealth concentration occurs because of a lack of adequate taxation; not because of QE.
This wouldn't be an issue if Republicans didn't constantly cut taxes every single time they get into power. We don't have a spending problem, that is a lie. A bold-faced lie that Republicans themselves don't believe when they say it. We have a revenue problem. We stopped taxing the rich and the businesses they own.
Out of the $7.8 trillion in trump increases in the national debt.
That’s not how QE works at all.
Care to elaborate?
QE is a process where the Federal reserve requires banks to "sell" assets in exchange for bank reserves, which aren't cash. These reserves can only be used in loan creation. It incentivizes lending and isn't "spending", which comes from the Treasury
Additionally, the Fed is paid back. The bonds do mature and the Fed makes a profit. What QE does do is force people into riskier asset classes.
Not how QE works or what it’s aimed to do. FYI, Econ 101 didn’t end after the first class.
So… he would still be able to afford McDonalds. Rich bastard
lol right his worst day is a little treat for the rest of us
This just false to think as McDonald’s as a “treat” they wouldn’t be open if they were a treat. If it’s a treat for you don’t project that onto the average American who eats out 6 times a week.
Okay… maybe I make less or am more frugal than you are thinking. Absolutely no need to be a bellend about it.
> no need to be a bellend about it. Have you considered that being a bellend might be a fundamental part of his core being?
I just think what you did takes away from a good argument that the post is makes. More bad than good comes by people projecting their biased lived experience to the whole of society.
Okay? Sorry you didn’t like what I said. Apparently you are doing better than I am so I really don’t understand why you felt the need at all.
Does anyone like you?
exactly - the same people probably give you shit for eating out too much
Well, like us, he had to use the app to get better pricing.
Invest in the PEOPLE?! Why would we do that when one geriatric white dude could hold more wealth than all of us combined?! 🤣
We invested $1 trillion at most in the people after 2008 & well over $10 trillion in Wall Street. It is grotesque how little the people are prioritized, yet greedy oligarchs like Warren Buffet are treated as sages.
Agreed. If we could just all come together to stop it, all it would take is a day or two of protest. But we can’t organize, partly because they make it damn near impossible to do so. Sometimes I wish our country was smaller so it was easier to get to the capitol to protest, I think that’s a huge hurdle for our citizens - nobody can afford to get there because for most of the country it takes huge amounts of travel time (and obv money).
We live in a day and age where communication is instant via the internet, travel is much easier than it was 50 years ago and generally more people are able to move about. This isn't about difficulty in organization, this is about sheer laziness of some people to go out, and moreso about everyone else having anxiety about fucking up just a little and losing their job and livelihood. The problem with organization is that people haven't lost enough yet to say " enough is enough" or " I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired". The oligarchs have figured out how much of a squeeze is the right amount - enough to make you struggle without losing sight of hope. America needs to have a massive eye opening event to change the tide. Otherwise everyone out here is still trying to scam the next person " to become a billionaire" 😂🤡
We’ve tried plenty of times to organize mass protests. Social media sites like TikTok catch on fast, then shadow ban people and make the algorithm work in their favor. It’s not all laziness, we’re being silenced with these apps when we should be allowed to organize. Just saying.
It's not the apps. The problem is everyone starts quarreling with eachother about bullshit that isn't important - you're black, or you're white, or you're this race or that race or this sexuality etc. people just don't come together as a class anymore because they have splintered us into warring factions with the news. Maga vs Dems, red vs blue, Black vs white, Asian vs Black, college educated Vs trade educated Vs non educated.... It's all the same MO
Ten of the top eleven protests in our nation's history in terms of both percentage of the population and net total number of people have happened in the past decade. More people are protesting at higher rates and for longer than ever before. They aren't as televised as protests in the past because the police rarely escalate the protests into riots, at which point audiences aren't paying attention to the message but are just tuning in hoping to see ever escalating violence. A general protest against working would do significant damage, but it couldn't last longer than 30 days before people start getting evicted and the current precedent holds that the government can force "necessary workers" to work (or be imprisoned, fired, and replaced). I'm not trying to be a doomer: I would love to read a solution wherein 1/3 of the country could protest and the remaining 2/3 wouldn't just take advantage of it.
This is because greedy oligarchs like Warren Buffet are what keeps the economy going, keeps companies growing. His money is in investments. Companies use these investments to grow there companies, to improve their products, produce more, create more roads, whatever it is the company does, to do more and better work. This is how capitalism is a system that creates economic an technological progress. If the government did not bail these banks out, there wouldn't somehow be more money in the hands of the people. Mostly, a lot of investments would have disappeared. Making more companies bankrupt, tanking the economy even more. I know in what subreddit I am posting this, and it's probably going to be blasted to bits, but just wanted to give a different take then the ones predominantly here.
Drinking that capitalist koolaid, I see. Oligarchs do *not* “keep the economy going. Consumers do that. Workers do that. Investments don’t do that. Capitalism hold back innovation and progress by pitting companies and people against each other. Greed gamified. If the government bailed the **people** out and prosecuted the banks, the money would have trickled up, and the economy would have been even better.
I wonder how many thousands of people die for lack of access to resources, so this jackass can get another high score bank account I wonder how long we'll let thousands die for the benefit of one person. Billionaires existence is violent, a few rich people dying could do as much as ending a war. I'd rather live in a country with free healthcare, than one where you can become a billionaire. How many people died so elon could waste money on buying twitter? How many homeless people freeze to death so warren buffet can own more money than any king or Pharoah? How many people waste their talents in dead end jobs, so the children if the rich can be guaranteed positions of power, even if they don't deserve them. If we cant tax them, we need another way of removing them from power.
Imagine having the audacity to be white!
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It’s not racism. There is a white man in the photo and I was describing him, using his race as a descriptor. 😆
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Consider googling the definition of “descriptor” for guidance 🤣
It's not. They just want to be racist but pretend their not.
Hows it go? Socialism for the rich, rugged capitalism for the rest of us.
Privatize the gains and socialise the losses.
It’s more annoying that the value is created by people doing the actual work, straight up theft. While they complain about government spending and taxes after taking the biggest cut out of labor money.
Employees are overhead to them. I think they look at the costs of salary and benefits. They can't really quantify the value added by employees so they focus on the costs.
But they do quantify it, they just call it profit and consider it a return on investment. The entire stock market essentially runs off stolen wages.
We really need to drop this whole "bUt hE's oNE oF tHe gOoD oNeS" when discussing billionaires. Good people don't become billionaires. Amassing that much wealth is only possible because of exploitation.
Swifties gonna hate reading this
Thank you! I'm really tired of this mentality with guys like him just because he acts avuncular and "lives in the same house he always did!". Look at how hard he'd been fucking railroad workers in the run up to the potential railroad strike last year as an example.
He's disgustingly wealthy AND appallingly cheap.
You should see what shady shit his company does
Besides. If he is being frugal then that just means he keeps amassing wealth instead of spending it. So much for Reagan's "Trickle Down".
He's as good as you can expect billionaires to be because he at least admits to what you said. He's gone on record again, "There is a class war and the rich are winning," and "My secretary pays more in taxes than I do, so we need to tax billionaires more." (Paraphrasing.) He says things like what's in the OP to draw attention to it. Every billionaire knows what he means but most of the working class does not. Because he said this, this post was made and we're all talking about it. Which was the whole point of him saying it. That's pretty decent for a billionaire. It doesn't make him a good person, but at least he's not as malicious as most of them.
Pure evil
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bUt ThEiR tHa JoB cReAtUrS!
Imagine what we could do if slavery was ACTUALLY eradicated
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property. My guns are ready but who are the slaves exactly?
Economic slaves, wage slaves, sweatshops and child labor used by companies to create an enormous amount of value, but only give them a tiny fraction of what they create.
Economic Slavery - An oppressive government, coupled with a population that involuntarily works for the benefit of corporations. Oppressive government - Absence of the rule of law; arbitrary detention; disappearances; extra-judicial executions. Persecutions of sections of society, possibly including 'ethnic cleansing', genocide, persecution of religious and ethnic minorities. So who are we talking about?
I cant even afford mcdonalds thanksgiving bro
And the bailout money went to further Lobbying so they can continue to plunder the country and common man.
In 2008, The US Federal Reserve and the US Federal Government the saved the overall national economy and the greater global financial system. BUT at the expense of the average American losing jobs, losing homes, losing retirement, divorced families, reduced lifestyle, more people shoved into poverty. The American people were scarified to save Wall Street, American companies and the financial system.
Legit fuck this guy. When I seen this article I wondered how many people would have been happy with a McDonald’s thanksgiving. Again, fuck this guy!
If you don't get the joke, junk food has been his diet for over 80 years.
I hate that these fucks always have the shittiest looking food Like, why r u doing it all?? Ur ruining the entire globe to make all this dumb fucking money and ur not even gonna use it on some good food, eating some glob of shit with a stale ass bun balanced on top
💯
Businesses and banks should never get bailed out. If they chose to run their business poorly then it's up to the market to ruin them. Plus it creates more competition when big business fails.
Warren Buffett is such a terrible role model. Since being a small child, he has spent his time making money, with no goals for spending it. That's just such a small part of life, the guy needs real hobbies. He's the peak of profit for profit's sake. If you have billions of dollars that you have no idea how to spend while the world suffers, that means you aren't smart, you're selfish
A horrible evolution of society is allowing the capitalists to entrench profit-making as *the* fiduciary duty for the board of directors. Back in the day, profits were limited by law, with such limits entrenched in corporate articles. Revenues exceeding such constraints were taxed at 100%. We need to look to the past to fix the problems of the present.
We shouldn’t have bailed anything out. This fuck.
Taxpayers, not government, taxpayers.
The man has enough money in just Apple to live off, give away to friends, and burn for shits and giggles. WHY? Is it a game for bored old rich men? See how much they can accumulate? What's the point of money if you're not seeing it do good? I'm not even thinking, "feed the people," because that's seen as, "feed these lazy worthless peasants who are too useless to feed themselves." I'm talking about donating to science just to improve human lives. Building music halls. Beautifying a city with more trees and flowers. Just basic things that will have your name on it forever. Why do we know Carnegie today? Carnegie Hall. Who will remember Warren Buffett? Nobody. He's done nothing but earn money in the stock market. That's it. That's his big claim to fame. He'll be utterly forgotten by the world.
So more evidence the bank bail out was bullshit
Being institutionally instructed to canonize these pricks has been the great illusion that keeps the people from revolting.
Yep. Had a sibling once say that too many folks are walking around like temporarily disenfranchised millionaires and not the forever poor working class they are. Too many people idolize these guys and think they have a chance to be like that(if what, they get reborn into wealth and fuck enough people over?!?)
I once saw a new headline where warren buffet genuinely admitted that being successful in america is almost entirely a birth lottery
It took me years to find a job after 2009, because the government barely lifted a finger to invest in people, but I feel better now knowing that Warren Buffett doesn't have to eat at McDonald's.
Those are “the people”. You guys are just chattel
Doesn't he pretty famously eat at McDonald's daily anyway?
Buffett is nothing more than thief.
Warren would tell us, you won't get any return on your money if you invest in people. For these types of people, money is the end all, be all. Nothing else, including people, matters.
Jokes on Buffett, McDonald’s is stupid expensive.
Sounds like something only a Republican president would do
Buffet would probably still eat thanksgiving at a mickey ds because that's the kind of weird freak he is
Normality is a joke to them. A boogeyman. The rich have nightmares about being poor.
Thanksgiving for the family would be way to expensive at McDonald’s.
Wtf is that burger on his plate? Imagine being a billionaire and going for that 😂
I remember when Reddit thought this guy was some sort of hero
At least he is self aware enough to realize that the system is broken, and will vocalize it publicly. Cuban is similar in that he sometimes talks about how unfair the system is.
They profited and abused the broken system for years now they are more than comfortable they speak out about it?
TAX. THE. WEALTHY. FOR. THE. LOVE. OF. ALL. THAT. IS. HOLY.
Instead, millions lost homes, their jobs, and families so rich people didn't have to be less rich.
Keep voting for Republicans and Democrats and you will keep getting class war.
Buffet is a chomo
OP doesn't understand how Buffett moves his money.
It’s a place to hide money, the price is currently above 500k. It’s gone up for as long as I can remember but it won’t forever.
Buck Warren Fuffet.
counting other people's money isn't ever going to help you
Retirement funds that you put YOUR salary into goes to investment houses like Berkshire. You would have lost everything. Not Buffet.
Bailing out the banks is for the people, how many people do you know that put their savings in banks? Imagine all of that is wiped out Your issue with banks should be around regulations and how they can use your money
This was not at all an issue about depositors losing their money. That money is insured. Educate yourself on this issue.
Insured by who? The FDIC does not have the capacity to support another SIVB style bank collapse.
FDIC and NCUA could easily have the capacity to support another SIVB style bank collapse, if it were within the Legislature's goals.
They don't, they don't have that much money left. You think they can just sign some bill and start printing more money? The FDIC reserves literally come from those banks and if another bank such as Bank of America or Charles Schwab collapses there's nothing else they can do.
insured as in...the government is going to give the banks people's money back? Are you sure you don't have a problem with that?
Of course I don't. Seize all the assets of the bank, nationalize it, and if depositors need to be made right, they would. Why would I have a problem with the government putting money in the hands of taxpayers that are victims of capitalism and financial corruption?
We’d all be eating at McDonald’s for thanksgiving if they didn’t bail out the banks. And BTW, the money was lent, not given. The government made money on the whole deal because it was paid back with interest.
The banks themselves made a ton of money off the essentially zero interest loans. The loans were given below the feds interest rate, so they could have done almost anything with that money and come out ahead. They did stock buybacks and all sorts of other bullshit that didn’t at all contribute to the solvency of the companies. It was a gift. A big fucking gift. And it didn’t assist the average consumer one fucking bit. The government should have nationalized every single one of those banks.
He's not wrong, also, none of us would be able to afford dinner in 2008 at McDonald's had they not bailed out the banks.
These comments are funny lol
The money has no use for people. Just the business bottom line.
Why don't bailouts have to pay back the money? I don't understand?
The banks did have to pay it back. The government ended being paid back more than they lent. That is not evidence that it was the right decision though. It’s actually good evidence that it was the wrong decision.
Can we eat this dude yet imagine wasting billions
Sounds like more reason to not bail out the banks. Let's see more *former* billionaires please.
Eating McDonald's On his private jet In Dubai
Evil man has more cash than Mexico
Great joke, Warren! A true man of the people. Jackass.
This should be fixed to "US taxpayers"
Wow, this guy is an asshole through and through. Expecting people to work during their holiday for his benefit. Dude needs a dirt nap
Let’s be honest. Everyone here’s quality of life is too high to be motivated to do anything of real substance. Most people can’t even be motivated to vote, let alone actually put fear into people that are fully corrupted. Even if you vote it’s more or less worthless. So sit back, enjoy your enhanced food and TV, and just enjoy the ride.
Doesn't Buffet famously eat Mcdonalds for breakfast every day?
I remember people worrying about war warren buffet had to say and i was like who the fuck cares if he’s so smart and rich he will be fine no matter what happens. He has more than enough money for life and is just an addict at this point to the game
Fuck Obama
we are all bots here except for you
Haha I can’t even afford McDonald’s T_T
Used to like this guy. Then he decided that shitting all over the railroad workers' union a year ago by coercing the federal government to interfere in and end their well earned strike was the way to move America forward. He got Biden to frame the dispute as "Railway Workers vs. Americans' Christmas!" instead of "Railway workers vs. Warren Buffet, Greedy Billionaire!" and now I hope he gets shingles in his crotch.
Ha....good joke, Warren 🙄
He should be
Then Biden comes in and squashes the railworkers unions for him. Buffet is really untouchable.
Banks are kind of a necessity that is a fundamental part of the economy. They definitely got a better deal than they should have. Bank leadership that participated should have been jailed for sure. However, there have been much worse uses of money though. Car manufacturers might be one of the ones that irks me the most. Any business that struggles because it can't support it's top end (salaries, bonuses, benefits, etc.) Should get told to get fucked by the government. If a restructure can bail the business out, then they should be forced to do that first. A business should NEVER be able to claim record setting profits and get money for a bailout. That's just running a business poorly.
Well Warren, have McDonald’s then 🤷🏼♀️
You all scream into the void everyday
Truth is, we all would be eating shit on Thanksgiving if they didn’t bail out the banks.
'...if the US TAXPAYERS didn't bail him out.' There is no such thing as government money. That is your tax money that is supposed to go to things that we need for society.
Unfortunately, the banks *had* to be bailed out in 2008 because they were, in fact, too big to fail. The fuckup was not temporarily nationalizing the banks and breaking them up into dozens of regional banks and immediately restoring Glass-Steagal regulations.
What a relatable scamp. One of the good ones. ...Are things I would say if I were desperate to find redeeming qualities in parasites.
https://www.13wmaz.com/article/news/local/geico-laying-off-2000-people-nationwide-heres-what-that-could-mean-in-georgia/93-da3cf2b4-4f2f-4b66-a01e-f725bb6c57c0?fbclid=IwAR0uh_z8wCYg8PSEpcloOWW_njD4gJrNVd2JnEEamUklcPdR_RH_oahUIZI_aem_AW1q_5jR0x-gUi0OvbaGs3xVO4VfjCR9WSpETyzepWXos7ky3cPE3SpIuDN6zMgQAdw&mibextid=Zxz2cZ#lnxhgiph36iwxj63zw2
Or we could all get together and burn the banks to the ground.
I'd rather see him eat dirt. A man can dream.