Media company frenzy

[Herman Cain]

I've never been on the politics board. This is about as much as I'd care to handle.

.... though I applaud the debate strategy of saying, "I'll pretend you're another person who I debated on some other topic, therefore I don't need to explain my position on this topic."

Welcome aboard we need more diversity of thought.

[jesmu84]

Welcome aboard we need more diversity of thought.

Any of that diversity include the young women you get intentionally drunk so that you can have unprotected sex with them?

[dgies9156]

Like mu03eng, I'm right on board with this.

The thing I hate is those private and public organizations that would seek to eliminate the "protection" regulations for the sake of a penny.

I agree.

My only caution is the crazy a-s government bureaucrats who have no concept of reality and who try to push regulation beyond reasonable bounds for reasons only the deepest of the deep state understands. We want clean environments, protected natural lands, buildings where the back porches don't fall off or bridges that don't collapse. What we don't need is a deep state that doesn't know when to stop and thinks the only good regulation is the one that hasn't yet been promulgated.

The CFPB is an example. Senator Elizabeth Warren called for it during the Dodd Frank reform years out of a concern that people were too stupid to retain counsel or read the fine print before they bought houses or cars. Well, they were, but the question I raised then and now is whether the government's job is to protect people against stupidity. We ended up with Richard Courdray, who used the power of the government to shake consumer finance firms down for millions and stake a claim to the Democratic nomination for governor of Ohio.

In Tennessee when I was young, the government wanted to build a dam on the Little Tennessee River. Because of a silly fish called a snail darter, the dam was held up for years. It was feared, nonsensically, that the construction of the damn would caused the extinction of the snail darter. Turns out there's millions of 'em in Tennessee and nearby states.

[MU82]

Welcome aboard we need more diversity of thought.

Doesn’t matter whose tree it was . You were biased against Christ. You had other problems with prayer on your basketball team and your a self admitted athiest.  Just admit you have your set of issues before you cast aspersions on others.

Missed a chance to say it in the other thread before it got shut down by your ridiculous, inflammatory remarks, so I thought I'd better say it before you and Smuggles2 get this one shut down, too ...

1. I didn't realize Christ personally was in charge of putting Xmas ornaments in others' trees without permission. I learn something new from pretend people all the time.

2. I had no problems with prayer on my team. If you were a real person, you would be a liar -- just like your political hero.

3. Being an atheist isn't any more of an "issue" than believing in god is an "issue."

4. I wasn't "casting aspersions," I was stating a fact: You obviously are a make-believe person.

Have a lovely evening.

[TSmith34, Inc.]

Welcome aboard we need more diversity of thought.

Nah, what we really need are more MUFINY sock puppets.

[TSmith34, Inc.]

I agree.

My only caution is the crazy a-s government bureaucrats who have no concept of reality and who try to push regulation beyond reasonable bounds for reasons only the deepest of the deep state understands. We want clean environments, protected natural lands, buildings where the back porches don't fall off or bridges that don't collapse. What we don't need is a deep state that doesn't know when to stop and thinks the only good regulation is the one that hasn't yet been promulgated.

The CFPB is an example. Senator Elizabeth Warren called for it during the Dodd Frank reform years out of a concern that people were too stupid to retain counsel or read the fine print before they bought houses or cars. Well, they were, but the question I raised then and now is whether the government's job is to protect people against stupidity. We ended up with Richard Courdray, who used the power of the government to shake consumer finance firms down for millions and stake a claim to the Democratic nomination for governor of Ohio.

In Tennessee when I was young, the government wanted to build a dam on the Little Tennessee River. Because of a silly fish called a snail darter, the dam was held up for years. It was feared, nonsensically, that the construction of the damn would caused the extinction of the snail darter. Turns out there's millions of 'em in Tennessee and nearby states.

There is no such thing as the deep state.  It's fever dream of certain people looking to once again create boogey men to latch on to so that they can spew propaganda.

I understand your argument that regulations can go too far, though I disagree with the example you gave being an instance of it.  The financial industry had just come off of a period where they had crushed the economy, one large reason being because the had fleeced people with mortgage-backed derivatives.  It became another case of private profits but public pain as we (collective US we) then paid billions and billions to clean up the mess.

So yeah, I agree things can go too far, we probably just disagree where the line should be set.

You say it is not the government's responsibility to protect people from their own stupidity.  Your example, however, IMO is not about people's stupidity, it is about financial institutions intentionally preying upon people.

Do you think we should have seatbelt laws?  That is one I struggle with a bit internally.

[mu03eng]

There is no such thing as the deep state.  It's fever dream of certain people looking to once again create boogey men to latch on to so that they can spew propaganda.

I understand your argument that regulations can go too far, though I disagree with the example you gave being an instance of it.  The financial industry had just come off of a period where they had crushed the economy, one large reason being because the had fleeced people with mortgage-backed derivatives.  It became another case of private profits but public pain as we (collective US we) then paid billions and billions to clean up the mess.

So yeah, I agree things can go too far, we probably just disagree where the line should be set.

You say it is not the government's responsibility to protect people from their own stupidity.  Your example, however, IMO is not about people's stupidity, it is about financial institutions intentionally preying upon people.

Do you think we should have seatbelt laws?  That is one I struggle with a bit internally.

I don't think you can discount the governments role in causing that mortgage crisis. They were actively pushing for riskier and riskier mortgages (granted the whole derivative insanity was the main culprit) which by itself would have caused a significant housing bubble.

As far as seat belts, I guess I'd make the argument that not using seatbelts results in higher medical and emergency services. I think there are basic protections that should be expected to be in place, and as technology/society advances the absolute level of those protections gets higher. There really isn't an argument against seat belts infringing on liberty that exceeds the need for shared betterment.

[TSmith34, Inc.]

I don't think you can discount the governments role in causing that mortgage crisis. They were actively pushing for riskier and riskier mortgages (granted the whole derivative insanity was the main culprit) which by itself would have caused a significant housing bubble.

As far as seat belts, I guess I'd make the argument that not using seatbelts results in higher medical and emergency services. I think there are basic protections that should be expected to be in place, and as technology/society advances the absolute level of those protections gets higher. There really isn't an argument against seat belts infringing on liberty that exceeds the need for shared betterment.

Nice summary here: https://www.thebalance.com/what-caused-2008-global-financial-crisis-3306176

I would add, people are incented to do what they are compensated for.  Loan originators were being compensated on the volume of loans, not the quality.

Bonus:  If you go to the home page there is an article on "Money Lessons from Successful Millenials"

[dgies9156]

I don't think you can discount the governments role in causing that mortgage crisis. They were actively pushing for riskier and riskier mortgages (granted the whole derivative insanity was the main culprit).

Brother MUEng, I work in financial services. The financial crisis was caused by a combination of poor mortgage underwriting, caused by changing standards that reduced down payments to almost (and in some cases) nothing.  If you have no skin in the game, you have no incentive to keep, maintain or improve a home. Secondly, there were some biazzare mortgages created in California to deal with rising housing prices (i.e., payment option ARMs) that assumed real estate prices would rise forever.

Add to that a large number of middle class people who saw a shot of low interest rates in the 2003-2005 time frame and bought more home than their income justified and you have a prescription for disaster.

To the question Brother TSmith raised on the CFPB and the financial crisis, I'd argue there is another reason why we ended up with the CFPB and extensive new regulation. It's this: A generation ago (or maybe two generations ago depending on your age), a financial institution originated, serviced and held in their portfolio consumer credit. If a borrower ran into problems, they knew their banker and their banker knew them. If the borrower was of good character, made payments on time until a setback occurred and needed some help, the bank, savings institution or finance company often could help by delaying payments, modifying loan terms or relaxing covenants. They could do that because they owned the loan and they knew the borrower, probably from church, social or business functions or from the neighborhood.

Today, as Brother MUEng points out, we have derivatives. We've sliced and diced the risk and cash flow so much that nobody really knows who owns what. The authority of a loan servicer is severely limited by contract and the servicer's job is collect and forward payments. If loan goes bad, nobody tries to work it out by rescheduling payments, forebearance or other efforts. They turn it over to Special Assets and foreclosure begins.

The federal government's unfortunate consumer finance regulation basically sets the ground rules that regrettably replaced the common sense of a prior generation of bankers. This is the dirty underside of convenience-based, digitized banking in which computers, robots and scoring programs make credit decisions and politicians rather than prudent financial standards, decide the winners and losers.

[TSmith34, Inc.]

Brother MUEng, I work in financial services. The financial crisis was caused by a combination of poor mortgage underwriting, caused by changing standards that reduced down payments to almost (and in some cases) nothing.  If you have no skin in the game, you have no incentive to keep, maintain or improve a home. Secondly, there were some biazzare mortgages created in California to deal with rising housing prices (i.e., payment option ARMs) that assumed real estate prices would rise forever.

Add to that a large number of middle class people who saw a shot of low interest rates in the 2003-2005 time frame and bought more home than their income justified and you have a prescription for disaster.

To the question Brother TSmith raised on the CFPB and the financial crisis, I'd argue there is another reason why we ended up with the CFPB and extensive new regulation. It's this: A generation ago (or maybe two generations ago depending on your age), a financial institution originated, serviced and held in their portfolio consumer credit. If a borrower ran into problems, they knew their banker and their banker knew them. If the borrower was of good character, made payments on time until a setback occurred and needed some help, the bank, savings institution or finance company often could help by delaying payments, modifying loan terms or relaxing covenants. They could do that because they owned the loan and they knew the borrower, probably from church, social or business functions or from the neighborhood.

Today, as Brother MUEng points out, we have derivatives. We've sliced and diced the risk and cash flow so much that nobody really knows who owns what. The authority of a loan servicer is severely limited by contract and the servicer's job is collect and forward payments. If loan goes bad, nobody tries to work it out by rescheduling payments, forebearance or other efforts. They turn it over to Special Assets and foreclosure begins.

The federal government's unfortunate consumer finance regulation basically sets the ground rules that regrettably replaced the common sense of a prior generation of bankers. This is the dirty underside of convenience-based, digitized banking in which computers, robots and scoring programs make credit decisions and politicians rather than prudent financial standards, decide the winners and losers.

Good stuff dgies

[mu03eng]

Brother MUEng, I work in financial services. The financial crisis was caused by a combination of poor mortgage underwriting, caused by changing standards that reduced down payments to almost (and in some cases) nothing.  If you have no skin in the game, you have no incentive to keep, maintain or improve a home. Secondly, there were some biazzare mortgages created in California to deal with rising housing prices (i.e., payment option ARMs) that assumed real estate prices would rise forever.

Add to that a large number of middle class people who saw a shot of low interest rates in the 2003-2005 time frame and bought more home than their income justified and you have a prescription for disaster.

To the question Brother TSmith raised on the CFPB and the financial crisis, I'd argue there is another reason why we ended up with the CFPB and extensive new regulation. It's this: A generation ago (or maybe two generations ago depending on your age), a financial institution originated, serviced and held in their portfolio consumer credit. If a borrower ran into problems, they knew their banker and their banker knew them. If the borrower was of good character, made payments on time until a setback occurred and needed some help, the bank, savings institution or finance company often could help by delaying payments, modifying loan terms or relaxing covenants. They could do that because they owned the loan and they knew the borrower, probably from church, social or business functions or from the neighborhood.

Today, as Brother MUEng points out, we have derivatives. We've sliced and diced the risk and cash flow so much that nobody really knows who owns what. The authority of a loan servicer is severely limited by contract and the servicer's job is collect and forward payments. If loan goes bad, nobody tries to work it out by rescheduling payments, forebearance or other efforts. They turn it over to Special Assets and foreclosure begins.

The federal government's unfortunate consumer finance regulation basically sets the ground rules that regrettably replaced the common sense of a prior generation of bankers. This is the dirty underside of convenience-based, digitized banking in which computers, robots and scoring programs make credit decisions and politicians rather than prudent financial standards, decide the winners and losers.

*clapping emoji*

One thing this does invoke is that the insertion of technology into previous human to human interactions/transactions has an intangible negative impact. Loan Servicing, Conversations(twitter), etc all have in some ways gotten worse as the result of technology. It's almost like we have to be more deliberate about the application of technology, spend a little more time asking if we should do something as opposed to can we do something.

[dgies9156]

It's almost like we have to be more deliberate about the application of technology, spend a little more time asking if we should do something as opposed to can we do something.

Brother MUEng03, this is an outstanding point worthy of much more discussion that it generally receives.

We all learned of the capital/labor trade-off in economics class. Technology is capital used to replace labor more efficiently. We see it in financial services; we see it in airlines; we see it in almost any form of customer service; and, we see it in government service. We sell technology because it is a lower cost and "the customer won't know the difference."

And, of course, it's less exepnsive.

This poster flies a lot. On days when our country's spacious skies are cloud free, the automated airline system works remarkably well. I can literally get on an airplane in Chicago and go anywhere and the first person I see is the flight attendant working my cabin. We line up; we take off; we fly; we land; and, we unload. No customer service needed.

But, let's now say there's a thunderstorm in Houston, blizzard in Chicago and fog in Newark (or, if you prefer, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Chicago and Philadephia). It's actually happened and airline operations are a nighmare. Technology can't keep up; it can't render advice; and, it's not programmed to send you to Delta for an alternative trip home. So what's a person to do?

Scream!

Unfortunately, if your competitor has replaced people with artificial intelligence and automation, you are at a competitive disadvantage. To go back to my first comment, people generally aren't willing to pay for service anymore. Perhaps that's reason why Wal-Mart florishes and Sears will soon be out of business.

[rocket surgeon]

 All great stuff dog!  Didn’t Moody’s and Fitch create little grab bags of surprise inside debt packages?  Ya had to buy one to see what was inside?  Kinda like a high stakes storage wars eyna?

[MU82]

The main thing I remember was Cramer screaming BUY BUY BUY Bear Stearns up until about 10 seconds before the company collapsed and started to take most of the economy with it.

[Herman Cain]

Nice summary here: https://www.thebalance.com/what-caused-2008-global-financial-crisis-3306176

I would add, people are incented to do what they are compensated for.  Loan originators were being compensated on the volume of loans, not the quality.

Bonus:  If you go to the home page there is an article on "Money Lessons from Successful Millenials"

That article has a complete lack of understanding of how the financial world works. For example Hedge Funds do not create and sell Mortgage Backed securities as they allege. 

[WarriorDad]

That article has a complete lack of understanding of how the financial world works. For example Hedge Funds do not create and sell Mortgage Backed securities as they allege.

That may be the case, but that site correctly stated a big part of the financial crisis started by Phil Gramm and Jim Leach with their stupid Financial Modernization Act.  John Dingell correctly predicted it would lead to major problems, which it did.  We aren't clean on this either, as our guy signed the damn thing into law.  Huge mistakes.

[dgies9156]

That article has a complete lack of understanding of how the financial world works. For example Hedge Funds do not create and sell Mortgage Backed securities as they allege.

Yea Herm but it's a known fact that the Hedge Funds didn't do their due diligence either. And without the hedge funds buying and selling crap masquerading as investment grade securities, you have a far less severe economic downturn. And, we recover sooner!

You and I agree more than we don't but on this one, the hedge funds should have paid someone expert in mortgages to do some decent due diligence. The funds were too much like everyone else of whom I speak in that they were too damn cheap to do what they should have done.

Period. No debate there!

[jesmu84]

Yea Herm but it's a known fact that the Hedge Funds didn't do their due diligence either. And without the hedge funds buying and selling crap masquerading as investment grade securities, you have a far less severe economic downturn. And, we recover sooner!

You and I agree more than we don't but on this one, the hedge funds should have paid someone expert in mortgages to do some decent due diligence. The funds were too much like everyone else of whom I speak in that they were too damn cheap to do what they should have done.

Period. No debate there!

As is commone nowadays, if you can make a quick buck, nothing else matters.

Government, through policy and tax, need to de-incentivize short term gains and promote long term profits/growth.

[TSmith34, Inc.]

That article has a complete lack of understanding of how the financial world works. For example Hedge Funds do not create and sell Mortgage Backed securities as they allege.

Oh, Tex/Gus/MUFINY/Herman...investment banks have hedge fund divisions.  Somebody doesn't know how the financial world works indeed.

[WarriorDad]

Appears Comcast is out, and Disney will acquire Fox.

[MU82]

Appears Comcast is out, and Disney will acquire Fox.

Comcast did a nice job of "playing chicken" and pushing up Disney's price to get Fox, which could limit Disney's ability to make further acquisitions.

Also, it appears Comcast will get all of Sky, a communications company Disney had wanted.

Biggest beneficiaries were Fox shareholders. Long-term, I like this move for Disney though.

Not that I'm an expert ... but at least I didn't say to run from DIS when it was under 90, like Smuggles did.

[mu03eng]

This is DIS loading up content for their streaming service in 2019. Smart play, they pull content from competitor (Netflix and Hulu) and use it to build their own audience. DIS is now one of the few content providers that has enough content to deliver a stand alone service. Now that Netflix is in the content generation business, it will be very interesting to see them go at each other.

I'm hopeful that as the content generators start to fracture into their own services that will create competition that'll drive down the prices of streaming services generally. Too early to tell though.

[dgies9156]

Comcast did a nice job of "playing chicken" and pushing up Disney's price to get Fox, which could limit Disney's ability to make further acquisitions.

Also, it appears Comcast will get all of Sky, a communications company Disney had wanted.

Biggest beneficiaries were Fox shareholders. Long-term, I like this move for Disney though.

Not that I'm an expert ... but at least I didn't say to run from DIS when it was under 90, like Smuggles did.

When you have capital and access to capital markets the way Disney does, I would not be overly concerned about other opportunities. If they make sense economically, Disney will be a player.

[jesmu84]

This is DIS loading up content for their streaming service in 2019. Smart play, they pull content from competitor (Netflix and Hulu) and use it to build their own audience. DIS is now one of the few content providers that has enough content to deliver a stand alone service. Now that Netflix is in the content generation business, it will be very interesting to see them go at each other.

I'm hopeful that as the content generators start to fracture into their own services that will create competition that'll drive down the prices of streaming services generally. Too early to tell though.

Ha! Doubt it. Everyone hated cable because they paid $100 for channels they didn't want. Now, every company will have their own streaming options. WE'll have to pay 10 people $10 each to watch our stuff. It's going to be awesome.

[brewcity77]

Ha! Doubt it. Everyone hated cable because they paid $100 for channels they didn't want. Now, every company will have their own streaming options. WE'll have to pay 10 people $10 each to watch our stuff. It's going to be awesome.

I always felt that cutting the cord was something that had some long-term risk as far as cost savings, especially once Netflix and Amazon launched streaming. When I looked at cord cutting a few years ago, if I wanted comparable services (HBO, Showtime, Netflix, full sports, etc) it was going to cost me as much or more than it was if I went with a cable company. Now that everyone is launching their own streaming services, the price will only rise.