yestrusocialist
No bio...
User ID: 2545
yestrusocialist
5mo ago
The bill of health wasn't false. It's trivially easy to take a cdo prospectus and simulate what happens in the event of a catastrophic drop in house prices.
It's just that everyone - buyers, sellers, rates, regulators, all assumed that this was a very low probability event. Reality turned out to be worse than nightmare/worst case scenarios in various stress tests cooked up by regulators.
The sellers (who are often accused of fraud) kept the risky tranches on their books while selling the safe ones - the opposite of what one would do if they knew the risk.
yestrusocialist
5mo ago
Trump deserves significant credit" surprised me, a little, since Democrats didn't shy away from giving Trump credit for Operation Warp Speed,
Wait what?
Who is the most mainstream Dem you can cite who acknowledges Trump saved millions of lives and got a vaccine out at a speed they previously categorized as "misinformation"?
yestrusocialist
6mo ago
Maybe the CEO is a specialist in managing decline.
A regular CEO might be able to extract $10B profit from a declining company, but he can extract $15B before it dies. If I were on the board of a declining company, I would surely want to hire this guy.
yestrusocialist
6mo ago
For my stocks, at the moment they vest (a taxable event) a fraction of them are sold and the proceeds are given to the IRS as tax withholding. This is pretty common in the US.
No extra forms. It goes on my W2.
yestrusocialist
6mo ago
So a single struggling group of radio stations decided to stop playing the Dixie chick's. The big one (clear channel) did not.
Certainly not a situation like, e.g., Kanye getting cut off by his record label, radio, social media, streaming and his bank.
I'd definitely call the latter censorship, particularly given that we know the govt is often pressuring these "private" companies behind the scenes. (I am not aware of Bush doing that, though Obama + Biden definitely did.)
yestrusocialist
6mo ago
The Dixie chick's were never censored. Bush said they are free to speak their mind. Their label kept selling their albums, their concert tours continued, and major media gave them plenty of press to explain themselves and get their ideas out.
Some of their fans didn't buy more CDs. That's not censorship.
Renaming French fries to freedom fries in the congressional cafeteria isn't censorship either.
yestrusocialist
7mo ago
Ali is not uncommon in the US, and doesn't have any Islamic connotation Every single one I've met is a much less hot version of her:
The Dixie Chicks were not cancelled in any meaningful sense. What happened to them was:
- Their record label continued to sell their albums, and to fund the production of more albums
- Their concert tour continued as scheduled. Extra security was provided in response to potential threats by disgruntled randos.
- Some radio stations stopped playing their songs, others did not. At the time radio stations had very little concentrated ownership or control, apart from ClearChannel (which did not stop playing their songs).
- The mainstream media was happy to give them multiple opportunities to air their views, including letting them appear naked on the cover of entertainment weekly
- Some of their fellow artists supported them, others expressed disagreement and criticism
- Some of their customers got angry and stopped purchasing their CDs
- George Bush said they are and should be free to speak their mind
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks_comments_on_George_W._Bush
Pretty much any cancelled conservative would have been extremely happy to receive this treatment. From what I can tell, George Bush is right - this is basically how freedom of expression should work. Say what you want but don't complain about a moderate decrease in sales.
For comparison, Milo was:
- Banned from all major social media (which didn't really exist at the time of the Dixie Chicks controversy)
- Had his books cancelled
- His speaking appearances were cancelled by institutional gatekeepers, with threats by disgruntled randos occasionally cited as a pretext
- Mainstream media did not give him high profile appearances where he could express his views or defend himself
Kanye suffered all this, in addition to having his bank accounts closed (retaliation for saying Jews control the banks, which they obviously don't).
yestrusocialist
8mo ago
The guy working the counter at Mcd is not the modal poor person or recipient of benefits. The modal person is on welfare, (fraudulent) disability or similar who does not work at all and is not looking for work.
We don't need them, unless "we" = left wing politicians who harvest their votes or perhaps educated leftists gaining money/status from fake jobs servicing them.
The rest of us would be better off without them.
yestrusocialist
11mo ago
Malaysia has.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahathir_Mohamad
I have seen a theory that some of it was intended to create a (nonexistent) Jewish scapegoat for Malay ethnic mobs to distract them from (very real) Chinese and Indians they were currently targeting.
Similarly, "Black americans stop beating up Asians. Your real enemy is the Uzbeks."
I don't think you quite understand what was done. The risk reduction comes from being in the senior tranches and taking losses last.
This happened. Folks owning the senior/low risk tranches lost the least, exactly as CDO sellers promised. (This is quite mechanical and unsurprising.) The stress tests at the time did not assume uncorrelated losses - that's dumb, even for a regulator.
CDO sellers who kept the junior tranches (I.e. first losses) went bankrupt. Why would they do that if they were selling the senior tranches with a false bill of health?
More options
Context Copy link