Computer Trading and Dark Pools 222
Bob the Super Hamste writes "CNN Money has an article on computerized trading; specifically, the non-public markets that are often used to execute orders. The company that the article discusses executes 1/8 of all stock trades in the U.S., or about 900 million trades a day. For comparison, the NYSE executes about 700 million trades. The article discusses 'dark pools,' or private markets where quotes aren't disclosed to the broader public markets. If the company is unable to fill an order from within its own dark pool, it will submit the order to the broader public market (13 public exchanges), as well as up to 20 other private dark pools. The quotes offered by the private dark pools, by law, have to be the same or a better quote than those offered on public exchanges. There have been recent questions about whether the quotes provided by dark pools have been the best for customers and there is a current investigation by FINRA into the methods used by market makers and dark pool operators to fill orders."
If the question is: (Score:5, Insightful)
If the question is, "are financial institutions doing the end run around public or private regulation for the purpose of screwing people, engaging in fraud, and dodging (necessary) liability?" the answer is always yes.
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The trades are reported, just like any other trade and will show up on the consolidated tape.
The dark pools are able to take advantage of some fine print in the regulations since the offers to buy and sell and not displayed. They can trade at price points between whole cents. They can also minimize the market impact of making a large trade. None of this will make much difference to a retail investor.
Unless you are building HFT system or making trades of more than a few 100k, you can ignore them.
Re:If the question is: (Score:4, Insightful)
If the question is, "are financial institutions doing the end run around public or private regulation for the purpose of screwing people, engaging in fraud, and dodging (necessary) liability?" the answer is always yes.
If Mitt had been elected, this would be cheered on by the Whitehouse as good and normal capitalist activity and the FINRA would be disbanded.
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That's because Mitt and the people who agree with him on economics are FUCKING MORONS.
If you got rid of FINRA, the entire stock market would be open for fraud by companies like Enron, and the whole market would be expected to become "Screw you, because I just did".
These guys want some drooling idiot version of anarcho-capitalism where if the bank rips you off from your
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So then bankers would become like the politicians? Say it ain't so!
Why be like them, it's cheaper to just buy politicians.
Remember when Post-2008 banking regulations were proposed, the sort which were enacted after 1929 when some of the same dirty practices were in effect? Didn't a whole load of House representatives object to and fight better oversight of banks? Sure makes you wonder who in their home districts they were pretending to represent. I'd have been down to my reps office with a boiling vat of tar and a bag of feathers had he tried that.
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That's because Mitt and the people who agree with him on economics are FUCKING MORONS. ...
That particular view of capitalism wants corruption, cheating, and outright theft to be rewarded, and is only advocated for people who would immediately start acting corrupt, cheating, and outright stealing. All these idiots who are worshiping at the altar of unrestricted capitalism basically want to get rid of the rules which keep them honest.
Umm, I think you just answered your own question: Mitt, who built his fortune on various forms of cheating and theft, wants to get rid of the rules that might stop him from continuing to cheat and steal. And he definitely doesn't want to be honest.
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No, at a certain point, it becomes about ego. "Look at all I own, I deserve the presidency." It's hard to imagine this, but there is such a thing as so much money that you can do whatever you want, period and Romney was well past that threshold. He didn't need more money. He needed a way to feed his ego when there were those who were richer than him.
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Please explain relevance? Especially given your ad-hominem that seems purposely unrelated?
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I'm fine with that form of anarcho-capitalsm because I presume it comes with enough lawlessness that I can reclaim (or attempt to reclaim) my funds through the barrel of a gun.
It's one thing to lie and cheat and then hide behind the protections of civil society, it's quite another to lie and cheat when there's no protection of civil society.
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And people like you are under the impression that government involvement is any better than no government involvement. Enron Happened. Housing Market Happened. Multiple other scams have happened, all under the watchful eye of Government. Yet I don't see you blaming government for their lack of oversight. I wonder why that is.
And if you think big government is okay, then you're probably fine with big government spying on people, targeting people by the NSA, IRS etc, while shirking any responsibility by sayin
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Housing Market Happened
The US government invented MBSs [wikipedia.org]. The US government made the MBS market via fannie, freddy and the whole clan of bubble inflating quasi-government enterprises buying trillions [wikimedia.org] in MBSs. Government is the reason mortgages became liquid assets. Prior to then mortgages were balance sheet assets held by deposit banks and Wall Street didn't get to play with them.
then you're probably fine with big government spying on people
These goose stepping lefties have no problem indulging double standards. They cheered Obama on as he created the CFPB [wikipedia.org] to sift through all electronic f
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Instead, Obama and progressives want some drooling idiot version of a "social market economy", which in practice means ineffective regulation, the occasional sacrificial lamb for propaganda purposes, and complete protection of these cozy little fraudulent oligopolies from competition through onerous regulation.
I can't speak for Mitt, but what I want is to get rid of the
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Might as well have said "If Emperor Palpatine was elected, he probably would have laughed that creepy little laugh of his and then destroyed Alderaan."
Yes, you're probably right. However, Mitt is not president. You don't need to worry about him being elected in 2012, because it's over. We still have lots of real problems.
To your point however, I also observe that Obama does not seem to have any problems with Wall Street practices either. It's almost like
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Re:If the question is: (Score:5, Interesting)
So to make sure I understand you correctly. What you are saying is Obama and his management of financial regulations is so pathetic, and shamefully corrupt; your only option is to compare his actions to other hypothetical time lines to make him look better. Got it.
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That pretty much sums it up. This comes from someone who voted for Obama in 2008, and voted Green in 2012, so I'm not exactly a rabid right-winger upset that Mitt didn't get elected. I'd vote for the Democratic party if it was still around.
Welcome to 2-party political reality (Score:2)
So to make sure I understand you correctly. What you are saying is Obama and his management of financial regulations is so pathetic, and shamefully corrupt; your only option is to compare his actions to other hypothetical time lines to make him look better. Got it.
Well, this is the shit sandwich that passes for political choice in our era. And this article about dark pools pretty much exemplifies exactly what is happening (and has been happening) in Washington DC - the public side is a side-show only dealt with by the power players when the real "behind closed doors" private power-trading doesn't pan out.
When this is the case and when the two parties are being bankrolled by the private dark-pool players... well, you see where this is headed.
Re:If the question is: (Score:4, Insightful)
If the question is, "are financial institutions doing the end run around public or private regulation for the purpose of screwing people, engaging in fraud, and dodging (necessary) liability?" the answer is always yes.
If Mitt had been elected, this would be cheered on by the Whitehouse as good and normal capitalist activity and the FINRA would be disbanded.
Well, if Obama had been elected, he would have just ignored the law anyway [washingtonpost.com]. Just like he did with his own health care reforms.
And then taken the Fifth [nytimes.com]. Just like his IRS attack dog did.
Then the most transparent administration evah would secretly transfer all records to the CIA [cbsnews.com] so they could avoid FOIA requests.
I guess it's a good damn thing Obama didn't get elected. Imagine those corrupt tyrants reading all your emails.
That could never happen in the US of A. There aren't that many USELESS FUCKING IDIOTS more than willing to be fooled over and over again, now are there?
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I wish I had mod points... because they would be yours.
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Re:If the question is: (Score:5, Insightful)
If the question is, "are financial institutions doing the end run around public or private regulation for the purpose of screwing people, engaging in fraud, and dodging (necessary) liability?" the answer is always yes.
And apparently after the financial meltdown of 2008 and the new rules surrounding those who are deemed "too big to fail", if the question arises regarding who will be punished for such activity to the point of preventing it from happening again, the answer will always be good luck with that shit.
Re:If the question is: (Score:5, Informative)
He said, "We may not always be able to prevent collapses, but any bank that is too big to fail (ie, any bank that takes government money) needs to be broken up and sold off in pieces to prevent it from happening again."
The way things are now, we're just waiting for another collapse. Nothing was fixed from the last time.
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Paul Volcker had the right answer, IMO.
It's a shame more people don't pay attention to Volcker.
/. commenters string together a series of cuss words and add the word "capitalist" and get modded up. Instead, how about we have an intelligent discussion about whether this trading practice promotes bad ethics or somehow hides information from customers or trading partners.
I also think it's a shame
Also, since this is supposedly a technology site, can we discuss whether the fact this trading is computerized somehow makes it unique from other
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Well, I understand the dislike for cursing in place of meaningful debate, but there's a lot of legitimate criticism to be had about modern incarnations of free-market capitalism, especially where social responsibility of investors/capitalists is a factor. I'm not saying there's a clearly better system, but there is a "religion of the free market" that reminds me a lot of how soviet true-believers used to think "true communism" was just around the corner.
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That's why you run into problems discussing social responsibility, it has too many definitions. Much like morality and ethics.
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If the question is, "are financial institutions doing the end run around public or private regulation for the purpose of screwing people, engaging in fraud, and dodging (necessary) liability?" the answer is always yes.
But that's the "free market" at work. How dare you suggest that taking advantage, even extremely unfair advantage of suckers is somehow wrong. That's just..., just... un-American.
sounds familiar (Score:2)
Why is this making me think of private torrent trackers?
Dark pool, eh?? (Score:2)
That's going to be the new financial mumbo jumbo that will destroy the economy again in another 10 years or so??
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Re:Dark pool, eh?? (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't really any voodoo here, and it is something stock brokerage companies have been doing for decades or even from the very beginning. If you have two customers where one customer is trying to unload some stock and another is trying to buy the same issue of stock.... why not simply exchange the stock certificates between the two customers without having to go through the big stock exchange?
The point is that these trading companies sometimes have thousands of trades going on all of the time, sometimes with customers having "put" or "stop" orders in place to buy or sell at certain prices. On the whole it really does make the markets much more efficient because the only time you go to the "big boards" is when you have a large number of your customers either all trying to sell or buy a particular stock issue.
This is certainly not something that will "destroy the economy", but rather that it will even help make the "economy" run even better by making sure that those who are either buying or selling shares can get the best possible price among the most number of people who may be interested in either buying or selling that stock. It also keeps stock brokerage costs down, thus lowering your fees for making an individual transaction. In other words, this makes it much easier for "ordinary people" to get involved with the stock market if you really care to do something like that. The New York Stock Exchange was explicitly set up with this kind of arrangement in mind, where people "with a seat" would carry on major transactions on behalf of trading companies, and ordinary people would contract out with those trading companies if you wanted to make occasional trades or buy in low volumes.
That there are problems with brokers and reasons to be concerned about how they are handling your money is something to be concerned about, the mere fact that "dark pools" exist isn't one of those things to panic over. If they didn't exist, all trades would need to happen on the major exchanges and would be a whole lot more expensive with much higher fees. The end result is that it would cause the world economy to collapse if they were outlawed or something else equally stupid. That brokerage houses should be expected to be honest to their customers is what this whole story is about, not the existence of these trading environments.
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this is /.
all banks and financial institutions are the devil!
how dare you explain how things work in reality without hyperbole and fear mongering!!
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Unless you have anything to back up any of your statement, which for the uninformed, may otherwise look believable, or even plausible?
His statements are backed up by the observations of the new upper middle class slashdot that you didnt grow to be a part of. You see, when you earn a decent living it is in your best interest to learn the mechanics of stock trading, which most of the successful on slashdot have done.
Brokerage houses arent magic undecipherable black boxes. Not only can you actually learn the mechanics of how they work, its actually easy to do so. Try the public library, or this new fangled internet thing. I've known that
How is computer-trading different from telegraph? (Score:2, Interesting)
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When telegraph was first used to pass data (both trading orders and share price-affecting information) around, I'm sure, it was also seen by some as "dishonest", "unscrupulous", and "disadvantaging small players"...
The difference you are looking for is between "telegraph" and "network", and "human" and "computer", not between "computer" and "telegraph".
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The similarity you are missing is that in both cases new technology was/is used by some traders to gain advantage over others. In both cases the advantage thus gained is deemed — by some — to be "unfair", immoral, and — if they could do anything about it — illegal.
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How is computer-trading different from telegraph?
When telegraph was first used to pass data (both trading orders and share price-affecting information) around, I'm sure, it was also seen by some as "dishonest", "unscrupulous", and "disadvantaging small players"...
Now I'm disappointed. When I saw the title, I thought there was gonna be a funny punch line.
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The confused seem to think that its wrong if a brokerage is a middle-man in the trade, but somehow right if the exchange is the middle-man in the trade or if nobody is a middle man in the trade.
Its quite clear that they are simply afraid of what they dont understand, but instead of taking the (quite minimal) time to learn about the subject, they spread nonsensical FUD.
Fun with names (Score:4, Interesting)
Junk bonds, liar loans, "derivatives", "subprime", EFTs, dark pools, etc. Yes, it's a new bubble. Yes, the regulators are 45 steps behind.
You can't make liquid financial markets safe. You can only outlaw them after they emerge, and unless you're willing to employ gulags and torturers you can't prevent them from emerging.
This is why you're supposed to keep your pension funds, endowments, real property and other critical assets out of liquid markets. It is disappointing that doing this means they're not going to grow 8% a year, but juicy returns require big risks.
We use to understand this but hey, working for a living sucks so abso-fucking-lutely everything has to be hung out on the precipice to return enough dosh. So we employ righteous hyper-statists to punish anyone that might jiggle system a bit and upset all that tasty income. Every few years a new regulatory regime blossoms on top of all of the existing ones to make sure nobody tampers with the magic money faucet.
Keep printing Ben. There aren't enough lawyers on the planet to keep that bubble under control.
Re:Fun with names (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why you're supposed to keep your pension funds, endowments, real property and other critical assets out of liquid markets. It is disappointing that doing this means they're not going to grow 8% a year, but juicy returns require big risks.
When the pension funds, endowments, etc were buying up various mortgage-backed securities, they were buying what they were told was AAA-grade investments. That's the same grade the rating agencies give US Treasury bonds (actually, for a little while it was a better grade than US Treasury bonds), and even now US Treasuries are pretty universally perceived as the safest investment on the planet. Another way of saying this: The big banks took turds, worked with the rating agencies to polish them up really nice, sold them as gold, and then successfully ducked responsibility when it turned out that they were still turds.
And yes, there were US federal regulatory agencies that at one time would have stopped this. They didn't, and it's a disgrace that they didn't, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have the agencies, it means that the people who didn't do their jobs at the agencies should be fired and replaced by people who will do their jobs, and the bankers who committed these kinds of fraud should be spending a while in PMITA prison so that they will be less tempted to do it again.
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Actually, it was slightly more problematic that you describe.
The pension funds, endowments, etc, are required to invest a large portion of their money in securities that are AAA-grade because that is what was required by their charters because the need to reduce their risk profile. As it stood, GNMA (the government backed version of mortgage securities) effectively created a non-treasury AAA-grade mortgage-backed security that had an artifically higher rate than treasuries (both govt backed, but one based
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That doesn't change the story too much: Either the banks and rating agencies hid what they were doing from big investment managers, or banks and rating agencies and big investment managers hid what they were doing from the ordinary people that ostensibly owned the assets.
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unless you're willing to employ gulags and torturers you can't prevent them from emerging
I wasn't aware the SEC employed gulags and torturers. Is there an SEC gulag hidden deep in the interior of Alaska, of do they just rent space at Gitmo?
So we employ righteous hyper-statists to punish anyone that might jiggle system a bit and upset all that tasty income.
Being a philosopher means never having to address reality. Which one are you a fan of, Ludwig, Murray? To avoid ideological cognitive dissonance ignore the fact that between 1933 (Glass-Steagall) and 2007 we had the greatest amount of statist intervention, and the most stable and trusted financial markets in history. Many fortunes were made off it too. The wh
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I wasn't aware the SEC employed gulags and torturers.
I wasn't aware the SEC was effective.
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If you look at the history of the SEC, it was effective for many years. Starting from Reagan erra to now, the SEC has been slowly stripped of their power. SEC was effective in the past. SEC can be effective again, if they are given the power to go after the bad guys and new leadership is installed in the SEC.
Thanks for the effective rebuttal. Quoting in full just to get it off score 0. To the best of your knowledge, back when the SEC was effective, did they employ "gulags and torturers"? I though it was mostly people in suits, but Tailhook doesn't seem to think that could possibly have been effective. Cognitive dissonance and all.
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Here is a NYT headline from 1970; "Sluggish S.E.C. Is Facing A Pile of Unsettled Issues; Many of Critics in Securities Industry Blame Chairman Budge."
Wow, criticism of a government agency. Stop the presses! One headline is clear proof that the SEC was completely ineffective.
I read the Madoff investigation transcripts.
Really? All of them? Suffer from insomnia much?
BTW, the Madoff case does backup the "Reagan started the decline" idea, since they started investigating Madoff in '92.
No lack of money.
The SEC has been progressively defunded over the years.
There's nobody home. A bunch of empty suits.
So you're saying we need a stronger, more effective SEC? I agree.
FINRA? (Score:2)
there is a current investigation by FINRA
FINRA tries to pass itself off as an independent regulator of the financial industry.
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Just take a look at the firms that make up FINRA [finra.org] and you will see what a farce it is to use FINRA and financial industry regulation in the same sentence.
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The real "independent" body is the SEC [wikipedia.org] but they seem to want to sit on their hands waiting to get cycled back into private industry where they can make real money instead.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
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I keep hearing this, but nobody seems willing to provide the evidence. Can you cite a recent example? The "flash crash" on May 6, 2010 prompted the standardization of trade bust rules, which AFAIK shut down any discretionary-bust shenanigans.
You are wholly incorrect on this. Market making is the practic
It's about prices. (Score:5, Informative)
I worked at a dark pool.
When a whale buys or sells a sizable amount of stock in the public market it moves the price. When they execute the trade it doesn't happen all at once but in blocks. When bids and offers are made other players in the market see it and they try to jump on. This moves the price. The whale would like the price not to move so they can maximize profit. When trades are executed in a dark pool the market doesn't see the trades until they clear at the end of the day. Who trades in a dark pool you might ask? Other whales. Stocks traded in a dark pool are usually fairly distributed between groups of buyers and sellers so no one trading party has an advantage.
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When a whale buys or sells a sizable amount of stock in the public market it moves the price. When they execute the trade it doesn't happen all at once but in blocks. When bids and offers are made other players in the market see it and they try to jump on. This moves the price. The whale would like the price not to move so they can maximize profit.
In other words, the great defenders of the Free Market don't want the markets to function if it'll cost them. In a market, if somebody is buying a lot of X, I would expect the price to go up. Supply and demand is a key part of capitalism. By your account (and I have no reason to doubt it) the dark pools defeat the purpose of a public stock exchange, which should let everybody see the prices and volumes at any time. Market theory says markets function best when everybody has as much information as possible,
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In other words, the great defenders of the Free Market don't want the markets to function if it'll cost them.
no, in other words they want a free market where A can sell to B without C sticking his nose into it.
That thing you call an exchange is a market, but its not the only market.
Is it your intent to claim that when two people trade amongst themselves that that is not a free market? Really?
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Is it your intent to claim that when two people trade amongst themselves that that is not a free market?
You're using the shopworn libertarian/market-fundamentalist rhetorical trick of talking about it like it was a couple of regular Joe's doing a little exchange. Guess what, I don't think garage sales should be regulated. Sell that old rocking chair and the lawn dart set for whatever you like. No sales tax either. Golly Homer, how are things around the pickle barrel these days? Should we play checkers today, or put on some bespoke suits and trade a few billion in equities?
Corporations (not "two people" as you
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The stock markets that effect my retirement and my employment? Not so much.
You want the benefits without the risks.. we get it.. you think there is a free lunch, built on the efforts of others, and that you are entitled to it.
You aren't. You are a thief.
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whomever said the whales are the defenders of the free market? you're getting causes and effects reveresed, and confusing the open stock exchange (ie, walls treet) with a the ideal of a "free market". the phrase you want is rational self-interest
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It was meant ironically.
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For every dark market whale buyer who doesn't want the price to rise, there's a dark market whale seller who doesn't want the price to fall. If they get together quietly on the side and trade, it doesn't effect you at all.
Bull. For example, if a whale had to buy through the exchange, I could take advantage of the price rise as an opportunity to sell.
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You know who are against dark pools? HFT firms; because they believe dark pool remove information from the markets.
And they're right. Not that I think HFT traders should be able to buy their special privileges so they can front run, but the basic objection is completely legitimate.
Stop this shit. (Score:2)
It's called speculation for a reason.
A long term investment in a company that you believe has a bright future: yes, please.
Speculation to make some quick money: die die die.
Dark pools? I don't even want to know what kind of shady way THIS is to ruin the already corrupt financial system.
And while I have the undivided attention of the NSA: Banks and stock markets. That's where you will find terrorists that ruin whole societies.
Leave the poor investors and traders alone (Score:4, Insightful)
Because unregulated markets always work the best. Disregard the panics of 1819, 1825, 1837, 1847, 1857, 1866, 1873, 1874, 1884, 1890, 1893, 1907, and the Great Depression. Those were just anaomolies, as were the crashes which occurred as the market regulations were dismantled starting in the 1980s. The unregulated market is always the best.
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Re:"have to be the same or better" (Score:5, Informative)
How can a quote be "better"?
Well, Slashdot quotes would be better if we could specify who we're quoting, but you probably meant a market "quote". Assuming TFS means "bid or ask", it's better if it's better for each party trying to trade. That doesn't mean that either the buy or the seller is getting a bad price.
The usual state of a market at any given moment is that a "bid-ask gap" exists - when the best price someone is willing to buy at is lower than the best price someone is willing to sell at, so no trade can happen just at that moment.
Market makers make their money in between the bid and ask, by doing "time arbitrage" (not strictly arbitrage, because they carry risk). For example, if in the instant you can buy for 102, or sell for 100, the market maker might make a better offer: "you can sell to me for 100.50". He's hoping a buyer will come along before the price moves much to who he can say "you can buy from me for 101.50". Those prices are better than anyone else is offering, and still the market maker makes money - at the risk of the price moving enough where he takes a loss.
Re:"have to be the same or better" (Score:4, Interesting)
I heard a funny story about the 1929 stock market crash, where in the middle of all of the sell orders somebody on the exchange decided to write up an "ask 1" order for 1000 shares of a major company that had been trading at about 50 dollars previously.... sort of as a joke just to see if anybody was that desperate. The shock was when the bid was accepted as there were order in to sell at any price.
Your general explanation here is spot on though. It is one of the ways that traders can make money for themselves if they spot a large gap and can identify a potential trend in the near future. This is also a good thing so far as it does make the markets much more efficient, noting that traders don't hang onto shares of companies like this.... their only motive is just to buy the shares and unload them a short time later. It helps the markets because it can help smooth out the ups and downs of the market and make it possible for trades to actually go through when people want to buy or sell their shares instead of needing to wait.
Re:"have to be the same or better" (Score:5, Interesting)
My problem with this is, you can't say what the "market" price is when so much of the bidding is in dark pools. You can't look at a 1/8 or smaller sliver and say "that's the market price" - your participation in that market would have changed the price.
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And that's a very good point. You have to depend on cross-market arbitrage to keep prices fair - and there's a real financial incentive to market makers to perform that arbitrage. If there's some hidden incentive here to not do so, it could really distort markets (no clue what that could be, but you can't trust these guys).
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>> How can a quote be "better"?
Size.
Try moving 1,000,000 shares when the bid/offer on a listed exchange is for 10,000 and see what final price you can get.
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It is legalese - in other words, if you give a buyer a lower (better) price than offered, or a seller a higher (better) price than bid, then the regulators won't come after you.
It is the complementary case where you give a buyer a higher (worse) price than offered or a seller a lower (worse) price than bid that attracts regulatory attention.
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This usage of "better" is completely standard, and it's always from the point of view of the liquidity taker: A quote is better if it gives the other side a better deal. This is consistent with common language usage.
In other words it means "higher price if it's a quote to buy, lower price if it is a quote to sell". "Better" is a much better word.
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If the quote is eitehr higher or lower than the visible market rate, either the buyer is being underpaid, or the seller is overpaying, neither situation is "better".
So much evidence of a complete lack of knowledge of the market in a single sentence.
Re:lower costs (Score:4, Interesting)
The government isn't just regulating stock markets because they want a cut.
They regulate them because there is a widespread opportunity for fraud and the bullshit from the Asset Backet Paper Commodities which were worthless but some how were getting passed off as AAA debt. It was a shell game of moving around the money until it was someone else's problem.
This isn't trying to "satisfy a market demand", this is trying to sidestep the entire market and play under a different set of rules than everybody else.
Banks and their high-frequency trading is just trying to take a cut out of the market before anyone else gets a chance. Why should trading institutions have privileged access to the market to pad out their own bottom line and skim the money off before everyone else can?
But, based on your posting history, you probably think it should be perfectly OK to manipulate the markets for their own ends.
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Of course they shouldn't. But they have those privileges courtesy of government regulations, regulations which make it next to impossible for new competitors to enter the market and offer cheaper and better service. Financial regulations prev
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So, in effect you're saying "since government can be inefficient, we should scrap all rules which keep corporations from committing outright theft"? Yeah, that'll fix the problems.
You're an idiot.
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You are under the mistaken impression the government stops fraud, while at the very same time, saying that it didn't stop fraud. Tell me again how that works?
Government doesn't stop crimes by regulations, it just makes the market less efficient.
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It's not just government/regulation costs. It's the same behavior when stolen merchandise is sold. That is, some percentage of the population is willing to benefit personally from crime no matter how much value is destroyed in the process.
Re:Trusting banks (Score:5, Informative)
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Obama got a second term because he had a highly effective organizing and propaganda machine, and because he lied over and over again and told everybody what they wanted to hear.
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Don't forget using the IRS to harass and gather information about the strongest opposition his party faced in the 2010 election.
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Obama got re-elected because lake or hate his policies, at least he's not a complete diplomatic embarrassment.
Romney was completely unelectable, and the US political system only has room for two candidates. Which shouldn't surprise anyone as 2012 was a poor year for a Republican candidate strategically (defeating an incumbent is always hard and people largely saw Obama as cleaning up Bush's mess) so it shouldn't be surprising that they could only field candidates that don't quite grasp strategy.
Of course it's harder to win against an incumbent, but it's been done many times. GHWB in '92, Carter in '80, Ford in '76. At least the R's could have tried. Instead they ran Gordon Gecko in the middle of a financial mess. They might as well have run ads that said "don't vote for us" or just sat out the election. As much as I dislike the 2 party system, it's much better than a 1 party system. That's what the R's gave us in 2012.
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That and we got a good look at his opposition. The Republicans put on a clown show in 2012 with the candidates trying to out-derp each other to appeal to the far-right religious nutjobs that make up the Republican base. I don't see that changing any time soon.
To be fair, that was only the warmup act. They wound up running Gordon Gekko [wikipedia.org] in the midst of the worst job market since the Great Depression. I wonder why they lost?
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They lost because fewer and fewer people in this country are willing to take personal responsibility and have out sourced all such things to someone else, generally some level of government. And a fair amount of religious bigotry, racism and election fraud. But mainly it's the first thing.
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They lost because fewer and fewer people in this country are willing to take personal responsibility and have out sourced all such things to someone else, generally some level of government.
So they should have voted for Mitt Romney? Nothing more revoltingly hypocritical than someone who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth preaching the virtues of personal responsibility. If he's so opposed to government handouts, why don't you ask him why people have to pay higher taxes on their labor earnings than he does on capital gains, why the government subsidizes leveraged buyouts by allowing a company to deduct interest payments regardless of how irresponsibly leveraged they are, and why when the
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Your post is really fucking confused. I didn't restate what Mitt Romney said, I answered the question asked: "I wonder why they lost?" If you don't like the answer that's fine but don't put my words in someone else's mouth. For whatever else anyone claims the fundamental principle of the Democratic party is that you don't have to be responsible for anything.
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Because those Bush years of steady 5-6% high unemployment were horrible, no? Those Bush years where a majority actually had a full-time job were bad, right? Look how work force participation has fallen off a cliff starting, oh, around 2009 or so.
If you've got the balls to learn something, I'll clue you in on something called cause and effect. That awful unemployment rate was caused by the financial crisis of 2007–08 [wikipedia.org].
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Sad attempt at deflecting the issue. It hasn't been 10 years, let alone 20. Did you think that the biggest financial crash since the Great Depression wouldn't affect employment and the economy in general for some years after? If the 22nd Amendment didn't exist and Bush had been elected for a third term, do you think he would have waved his magic wand and fixed everything in short order?
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The real irony of this whole stupid discussion is how little the president's influence on economic affairs even is. Tryi
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Most people would think that five years is enough for someone's successor to begin to take responsibility for the state of things
So why didn't you ask about five years? Obama has been in office almost that long. Instead you asked about absurd numbers like ten or twenty. Why? And don't give me any bull about "I wanted to see what you thought was appropriate" nonsense. If that had been what you wanted to know, you could have asked. You're backpedaling.
However yes, Obama certainly has had an effect on the economy, by this point and for several years. He certainly could have done better (I'm not a big Obama fan, especially when it comes
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The real problem with the It's All Bush's Fault!(*) argument is that Obama asked for this job. The democrats asked for this job. It's one thing if you were conscripted, it's something else entirely to volunteer to take charge.
* - also note that it's fairly disingenuous to blame the president when there are 534 other elected assholes who had a hand in the mess and a bunch of them are still there still fucking things up.
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