Still want a free market and Internet?

Yes yes, buy a Porsche, crash it, then claim it was a Ferrari and blame it on the engineering.

The global credit meltdown is a result of massive credit expansion in protected banking and insurance markets. The system in no way resembles a free market, and this is easily demonstrated: Attempt to start a bank, insurance company, or lending agency and see what you come up against. Laws, laws, and more laws. You need a billion dollars and a team of high class lawyers to start a bank or an insurance company which can compete in the actual marketplace. Half of that is for bribes alone.

State socialism caused this mess, and your implicit answer 'more socialism' will just exacerbate it. If *real* competition were allowed in the banking and insurance markets and indeed in the currency market -- the market for designing and printing money -- then this all would have been averted.

But no. If I print my own money (say Yandros Dollar Bills or Yandros Gold Coins), start a bank, or start insuring people, I go to prison for counter-fitting or loansharking. That coupled with artificially low interest rates and a decoupling from the gold standard has lead to massive credit expansion and huge inflation and huge mal-investment, which has now turned red on the books as the asset markets begin to slump. And instead of letting the individual companies fail, your lovely socialist dictatorship you call 'democracy' has decided to nationalize all the debt -- effectively stealing (more of) your money (from your bank account) to pay for someone else's bad debt.

How do you like them apples?

What ever you're smoking roll me one.

The problem was letting people fill their own pockets with money they do not have and will not earn. While they got rich the rest of us will be left to pick up the tab. It was the "free market" that got us into this mess. The idea that more people should be able to get into banking to make it easy shows how flawed your argument is. More people with less control in banking will make it better. Please stop smoking what you are and let your brain restart.

Your idea works if all the people who come in are honest and think long term. Sadly the truth is the opposite. If you can't trust Government to regulate you certainly can't trust Corporations to self regulate.

I never used the word protected. I said controlled. The people who got us into this mess should be the main ones to suffer. The CEO's of companies losing money that got bonuses, the ones who got shares in the companies they were able to inflate the book value of and sell before the truth was discovered should all be held responsible.

Freedom works if everyone is responsible.

Paul, i am sorry but i dont think you are seeing it....the world changes everyday, and you must change with it and adapt to new ways of doing business. No body is stealing ( at least not in the right minds if they want to still be around and not in jail or completely broker ). I believe you are referring to " Tube " sites. Well Tube sites are a new way of doing business online....major changes causes chaos, chaos cause more new opportunities. You just need to understand where things are going and be there to grab the opportunity! :-)

Read this ; http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?t=853335

Things change the way they are in life everyday! Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.

The market isn't the one forcing you to pay for the government's purchase of bad debt. And the government's control over interest rates is what caused the bad debt in the first place.

Re-opening the banking industry to full competition and individual bank-monies (rather than government issued fiat currency) would prevent the economic super-cycles we call great depressions by letting the market even out the bumps -- and indeed letting bad lending practices occur and those responsible go bankrupt.

All of the banks are insolvent -- all of them! Its how the system works. They are allowed to print more credit than they have with the fed (more than 10 times more) and the government supports them in doing this.

It's the government which created the controlled market.
It's the government which forced everyone to use paper currency.
It's the government which set the rediscount rate artificially low, causing the massive credit expansion in the first place.
It's the government who allow the individuals involved to hold a limited liability status.
And now it's the government who is going to steal from you to clean up their mess.

So how is it the market's fault? The government intervened, and now the government cleans up its mess, all with your money. Maybe you should blame the government?

I agree, it's not a free market at all, and there were regulatory bodies in place but they all failed. Bad policies also added fuel to the inevitable fire.

However, I think that true free markets are only possible in theory when dealing with complex societies. If it could exist, it would have drawbacks too. But less/limited government is a realistic goal. The battle between total individual freedom and government control is probably an eternal one.

Minarchism ftw.

Isn't it obvious all the OECD nations are going to get together now and form some sort of socialist pact like the EU, to regulate all banking in the west / first world. And they'll do it under the guise of helping 'ordinary people', but it will actually be a cartel operation between welfare states to eliminate tax competition (tax havens) and setup a new banking system so that this can happen all over again.

Without tax and currency competition the government(s) of the world can inflate the currency to infinitum. Credit expansion orders of magnitude larger than even the current climate.

So get ready to pay 70% income tax and have to fill out dozens of forms every month to justify your business operations to the central authorities...

It's (government, socialism, welfare) all just a big scam, and you're not in on it.

I suppose that's a possibility though I'm not sure that it's obvious or destined. I think you and I will be long dead before that comes to fruition, assuming that's the direction things are headed. This isn't the first time the market has had a downturn.

I'm all in for a free market and a non censured internet.
I think it is already too regulated with gambling online as one example.
If the market is bad and you are strugling you need to change your business to adapt instead of complaining about factors you can't change anyway

And it won't be the last.

I still dont buy into this all started 15 to five years ago, and that the super inteligent bankers really didn't understand this product of secureing mortgages and packing them into bonds/securities, and then classifying them as AAA bonds.

Yes we always need to adapt to meet changes. So do you think having to adapt to someone stealing content is good for an industry? I do not include just us in porn.

If you have no credible argument scare people with lies. Or take one argument through to a ridiculous conclusion. Backed up by scares.

And it won't be the last. If the highs are very high the lows are very low.

I see the bill has been passed and it seems the free market you all support is not as free as you would like. It will cost a lot to put right over the next few years. Still think free is best?

I'm not advocating communism or even socialism, just some controls on what bankers can do with our money.