Ron Smith talk show host

[Prince]

I love this guy. He does a local radio show in Baltimore. Listen to this rant. He was in rare form here.

RANT

LOL! Great stuff.

I think Doug would like this.

[Prince]

another

That Empty Bag of Tricks
Thursday, January 31, 2008

[spaceboy761]

another

That Empty Bag of Tricks
Thursday, January 31, 2008

I'll mostly agree with this segment. Speaking as someone who entered Wall Street a month before 9/11 and watched all of this crap unfold, I will say that interest rates were held unsustainably low way too long by your friend and mine Alan Greenspan. It became WAY too easy to borrow money and that just enticed too much reckless spending. The only thing that I disagree with is the idea that our appetite for debt is fueled by our insatiable desire to spend. I would say that our appetite to spend was fueled by the allure of artificially cheap credit. Same idea.

Everyone in the business knew it was a load of shit, but consumers lapped it up like puppy dogs because that's what consumers are bred to do and the government was totally cool with it since they were primarily concerned with financing their own reckless spending (Iraq and inappropriate tax cuts) and were more than happy to let the lender's money roll in. Said money was mostly in the form of every currency on the planet not named the American dollar and our currency took an absolute beating accordingly. So the process continued for like six years until it finally bit us a few months ago and those of us that had front-row seats weren't exactly shocked.