{"id":190909,"date":"2009-10-15T15:42:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-15T20:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/10\/15\/signs-of-the-apocalypse-20\/"},"modified":"2009-10-15T15:42:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-15T20:42:00","slug":"signs-of-the-apocalypse-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/10\/15\/signs-of-the-apocalypse-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Signs of the Apocalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img361.imageshack.us\/img361\/8089\/pigflies25729338.gif\" style=\"margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;\" \/>Alan &#8220;Bubbles&#8221; Greenspan is saying that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=email_en&amp;sid=aJ8HPmNUfchg\">regulators should consider breaking up the large banks<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>Those banks have an implicit subsidy allowing them to borrow at lower cost because lenders believe the government will always step in to guarantee their obligations. That squeezes out competition and creates a danger to the financial system, Greenspan told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf they\u2019re too big to fail, they\u2019re too big,\u201d Greenspan said today. \u201cIn 1911 we broke up Standard Oil &#8212; so what happened? The individual parts became more valuable than the whole. Maybe that\u2019s what we need to do.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I would note that Greenspan&#8217;s mentor, Ayn Rand, saw the breakup of Standard Oil as evil, with the wealth of the &#8220;prime movers&#8221; being confiscated by the &#8220;parasites,&#8221; &#8220;looters,&#8221; and &#8220;moochers&#8221;, to use her terms (from the Wiki on <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Atlas Shrugged<\/span>, I read <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Virtue of Selfishness<\/span>, and that &#8216;s quite enough Rand for me&#8230;It was worse than reading Emanuel kant)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alan &#8220;Bubbles&#8221; Greenspan is saying that regulators should consider breaking up the large banks: Those banks have an implicit subsidy allowing them to borrow at lower cost because lenders believe the government will always step in to guarantee their obligations. That squeezes out competition and creates a danger to the financial system, Greenspan told the &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1004,985,1164],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance","category-regulation","category-teotwawki"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190909"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}