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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (777437)	3/30/2014 7:11:49 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574267

Hi mindmeld; Re: "Sure doesn't look to me like ZIRP helps the 99% very much."; Actually I have access to a universe where ZIRP didn't happen. Over in that universe the economy was even worse. People were rioting in the streets as businesses went bankrupt wholesale. By 2010 the only jobs left were in the Government but since there were no taxes to be collected the Government had to pay its employees in script, that is, in promises to pay "someday". These were worth only 25 cents on the dollar and so even the government employees were unable to make purchases. So ZIRP did help the 99%. You don't see rioting in the streets (remember those Youtube videos I linked showing your grandparents rioting in the 1930s?) now. People are not starving. Most companies are still in business. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back in the 1930s they ended up with zero percent interest rates even though they didn't pursue a quantitative easing. This is an historical fact, go look it up. You can get tables of interest rates from the St. Louis Federal Reserve. And as a result of the Fed not actively printing as much money as it could, the value of the stock market fell to 20% of its peak, despite the low interest rates. And you say that this would be better than what we have now? What would letting the stock market drop 80% do to help the 99%? Like Abraham Lincoln (or whoever) said, you can't make the poor rich by making the rich poor. It seems to me that your desires for punishing the 1% (by sending them through the experience of previous depressions) can only have an explanation as a deep insecurity. No, bankrupting the rich does not help the 99%. Bankrupting the rich destroys corporate America and makes the 99% unemployed. -- Carl