POWAH! UNLIMITED POWAH!

We need to ban currency!

No.

um, no. god caused the recession as punishment for this country's rising tolerance of the homophiles. it has nothing to do with bernanke (who is, in fact, a god-fearing republican).

Bernanke's also a Jew.

Quote from: Meta Cognition on December 22, 2014, 08:11:56 PM

Quote from: Fagcicle on December 22, 2014, 08:09:25 PM

- Beginning of economic policies that directly led to the Great Recession

*leaves thread*

Not today.

Oh come Meta.

I made a separate thread, just for you babe.

I see this a lot - people blaming a president they don't like for ultimately being responsible for our generation's version of the Depression. The problem, however, was monetary policy.

People have a tendency to view various presidents as responsible because they think the financial crisis caused the recession, which is simply false. So, accordingly, they look to the flagrant and abhorrent uses of deregulation under presidents like Reagan and Clinton. I can understand why people have this confusion of causation, but it simply isn't correct.

Financial crises - at least those which accompany recessions - are usually caused by the recession itself. Financial crises, on their own, are never enough to push a country into recession. So, I'll emphasise it again - bad monetary policy caused the Great Recession.

Specifically, tight money did. The mortgage crisis would've still likely been a thing, but it would've been nowhere near as severe as we've seen. Some time in 2007, the Federal Reserve slammed on the breaks and caused a drop in the growth rate of the monetary supply - they did this in response to an oil shock. Unfortunately, this meant monetary policy was too tight in relation to the needs of the economy, and caused nominal income to begin falling.

The recession actually began about six months prior to the financial crisis (the beginning of which was marked by the failure of Lehman Brothers), but was actually pretty mild. This falling nominal income, however, makes it difficult for people to pay back loans and leads to bankruptcies and causes financial crises.

The subprime mortgage crisis likely would've been a thing on its own, without falling nominal income, but it wouldn't have been anywhere near as severe as what we've experienced. Tight money, quite seriously, exacerbated the crisis. Like I said, financial crises are usually a response to recessions, and are never enough to cause them - this has been vindicated time and time again from 1929 to 1987.

If you want to blame anybody, then it was Ben Bernanke who was chairman of the Fed at the time - although you can't really hold him to account.

Why the fuck is this stickied?

2014 was legitimately the worst year of my life pretty much from start to finish.

Maybe disbelief implies an active disbelief (like that of a militant atheist) and "lack of" implies passivity.

That's essentially the distinction he was applying, but I don't see any linguistic basis for that being "officially" true.

Who says there's a distinction?

The way I see it, if I'm super technical about it... "disbelief" implies knowledge of the concept's existence. "Lack of belief" implies... lack of knowledge. So like... a baby lacks belief in God. I disbelieve in God.

Or maybe "disbelief" implies a level of reluctance to believe in something. Like, "I averted my eyes in utter disbelief." But I think the same connotation can be granted to "lack of belief" as well.

It seems more like a semantic confusion of the English language than anything else.

I've literally just endured an hour-long debate with a guy about the nature of atheism v. agnosticism because he thought I was claiming "lack of belief" equaled a "belief in the lack of". When actually I was just using the word "disbelief" in exactly the same way he was using "lack of belief".

Apparently there is a distinction between the two, but I honestly don't see it. A disbelief in God is exactly identical to a lack of belief in God, and doesn't necessitate a belief in God's non-existence.

At least, that's how I see it.

ITT: TBlocks gest NTR'd as Meta wins Korra the Whorra.

What do you mean win?

Opening my wallet hardly constitutes a victory.

I love you.

This one guy fucking said:

God (for obvious reasons), Jesse Ventura (for letting me think other views), my teachers (for letting me be educated), my grandparents. These are just one off the top of my head.

I'm fucking dead.

Shut the fuck up, Challenger.

Stop being so goddamn happy all the time. It triggers me.

fuck off gatsby