Maybe I'm just an idiot, Cavacava, so why don't you fill me in on the alleged contradiction.

the invisible hand — Question

There are plenty of very "visible hands" pulling the levers and turning the knobs of the economy without us worrying about the mysterious invisible ones. ACTUAL policy makers encouraged banks to expand the mortgage market. Actual and Specific bank employees applied the rules for someone with a pulse to qualify for a mortgage. Very real companies, and specific hands, gathered up worthless mortgages and bundled them up to sell as really valuable instruments. Actually people were asleep at the regulatory wheel.

Possibly. That doesn't mean the free market is to blame, though. — Thorongil

Possibly? Are you just being coy about this or really think that people are better off financially than 30 years ago?

The free market is not to blame per se; but, we've had neoliberal/laissez-faire/free market reign for a while now, during Bush, Clinton, and Dubya and now people are asking for more of it.

I guess I must have missed it. Clinton won the popular vote by around 2 million votes. — Cavacava

I don't think the rank and file of The People have necessarily moved to the right. Those who were on the political right 10, 20 years ago are still there. Those on the political left 10, 20 years ago are also still there.

What's right and what's left? Over all, Americans tend to be optimistic. Is that a feature of the left or right? Over all, Americans tend to think they can get rich (or richer, at least) if they try hard enough. Is that a feature of the left or right? Over all, Americans tend to be more or less tolerant of each other, regardless of race or religion. Is that a feature of the left or the right?

The Political Establishment has redefined what is left and right, pushing the midline toward the right. What was once considered liberal within the Republican Party is now out in left field (according to the far right wing). Liberal Democrats are now radicals, and so on. The shifts in the political establishment may not have all that much to do with what people actually think.

It's difficult to think about left and right after a long campaign (18 months, at least) of exaggeration, lies, misstatements, misrepresentations, propaganda, and even some truthful statements, here and there.

I'm nor sure whether a causal link can be seen between Reagan/Thatcher and 2008. Reagan's administration was followed by 3 different presidential administrations (Bush I, Clinton, Bush II) for a total of 20 years. As much as I disliked Reagan, I'm not sure I can blame 2008 on him. — Bitter Crank

I don't think the wording was appropriate. Rather we've already had 4, with an upcoming 5'th administration that believes that the free market is best left to do its own bidding, along with some Ayn Rand lovers (scary stuff). While the pie might have grown, there is less and less of the wealth being created available to average day Joe's. That isn't a good situation to be in.

That isn't a good situation to be in. — Question

No it is not. The pie has gotten bigger, and a very large number of people have discovered that their share of the pie is zero.

FREE MARKETS are a fetish of mainstream politics and economics. God might as well have forbidden any part of the political economy to be planned, structured, and operated for the benefit of the greatest number of people, as far as 'they' are concerned.

Then they shouldn't have gotten [mortgages] to begin with. That's an easy one. The government also shouldn't be forcing certain banks to offer risky loans to under-qualified people, which was the primary catalyst for the housing bubble and subsequent crash.

Yeah, but see that's the problem in a nut shell. Invisible hand didn't stop them from getting them. The idea that the CRA is responsible for the 2008 financial crisis is taken seriously by almost noone except those clamoring for a talking point. Where'd you come across it?

I don't believe this election was a shift to the right. It seems more like a shift away from political correctness, the assault on free speech, and the corruption and double standard by the elites. This seems more like a shift away from the elitist establishment in Washington D.C. thinking that they are smarter than all us citizens and know what is better for us, rather than toward or away from any political idea.

the CRA — csalisbury

The what?

Are you just being coy about this or really think that people are better off financially than 30 years ago? — Question

Well, technically they're not. Their incomes have risen. Have they risen as fast as in previous decades? No, so one could say that they're flat, which I've never denied. But you still haven't put your finger on the cause.

The free market is not to blame per se; but, we've had neoliberal/laissez-faire/free market reign for a while now — Question

And how do you define this slash marked collective? If the free market is not to blame, then it's not to blame, which pulls the rug out from under your main argument in the OP.

The way I read it this is what happened to the economy over the last 46 years, 1970-to the present:

The pent-up demand for housing, education, and jobs, largely unsatisfied since 1930, was resolved during a long post-WWII boom of prosperity and an increasing consumption of goods and services. Working class and middle class expectations were re-calibrated upwards. Economic expansion can not continue indefinitely. At some point during the 1970s, the economic tide shifted from an increase to a gradual decrease of upward mobility.

Aspirations, however, did not contract. As purchasing power fell, women who had not previously needed to contribute to family income, found it necessary to join the workforce. It wasn't that women were going back to work to buy scarce food. They joined the workforce to maintain upward mobility.

Over time it became increasingly difficult for families to maintain upward mobility even with second incomes. Changes in the economy began to cut away the ground under many working class households, and later middle class households too, and increasing debt or borrowing against assets was required to keep the hope of continuous improvement afloat. More and more people have since experienced downward mobility.

It is true that if consumption remained constant (no new house, no transfusion of new furnishings, no new huge flat screen TV, no boat, no second and third car, no big trips, no private school for the kids) households would have done better in the short run. They would have accumulated financial rewards. In the longer run (but not very long) this prudent thrift would backfire: The US economy is 70% (+/-) driven by consumption. If consumption stays flat, the economy goes into reverse.

Under no circumstances can we have everything: full employment, high consumption, no inflation, abundant savings, low taxes, economic growth, etc. That's just not the way economies work--especially when we engage in massive and wasteful government expenditures (like pointless ill-conceived wars) and massive diversion of wealth into the hands of very few people.

The economy of the US is partly driven by the needs of the many, and largely driven by the needs and wishes of the few. Besides us, there are almost 7 billion other people on earth trying to aspire to a higher quality life, and besides our wealthiest, the world has a larger super wealthy class that soaks up a lot of cash and directs economy policy this way and that, according to their wants and needs.

The what?

For real?

You sounded pretty confident when you said "The government also shouldn't be forcing certain banks to offer risky loans to under-qualified people, which was the primary catalyst for the housing bubble and subsequent crash."

How much research have you actually done on this topic?

Right. I don't think either the Treasury Department, Housing and Urban Development, or any other agency "FORCED" banks to make loans to people who could not conceivably maintain the loans, let alone repay them.

"Expansion of home ownership" has been a quasi-national policy, but there are obvious limits. The poor can not buy homes. Renting, in many locales and circumstances, is preferable to ownership (particularly in dense urban areas). If home ownership is desired, it is also over-rated. Owning a house is a fairly efficient way to provide shelter, but it entails costs and labor that renting does not. If the roof starts leaking in my house, I have to deal with it, whether I like it or not. If I don't want the stored value of a house to deteriorate, I had better call a roofer, and find the money to pay him. The tax advantages of a mortgage are not available to people with lower incomes.

Bank officers and real estate companies worked together to push home ownership into a financial layer of the population that was more victimized than anything else. Then they packaged up the worthless mortgages into disguised quality paper and sold it abroad. It wasn't only the poor who got sucked into this scheme. Quite a few better off people also bought into more expensive housing with higher mortgages than they could really afford.

When the shit hit fan (as it always does, eventually) the financial system was shocked and froze up. The victims of the scheme lost large amounts of cash and/or asset value, as the market prices plummeted back towards a more sustainable level. A lot of people walked away from what they had "owned" and each borrower/buyer left behind cash they weren't going to recover.

You should have prolly written it out instead of using an acronym, :D

Perhaps, but, man, you'd assume that someone making the sweeping claim that the catalyst of the 2008 financial crisis was government-enforced lending to subprime borrowers would be familiar enough with the oft-acronymized Community Reinvestment Act to get the reference. Right?

Perhaps, haha. Economics can be a dreadful business, so I can't blame anyone for not going balls deep into it in order to have a more informed opinion.

I remember the act, but the acronym was not clear to me at first. Sue me.

Heh, I guess the context clue of 'the thing you claimed caused the 2008 financial crisis' was insufficient.

Its empire baby, and this train ain't stopping until she derails. Trump being friendly with the Russians is just an acknowledgement that the empire is growing and you can't play cutthroat poker with China alone. We've built up the Chinese infrastructure as fast as possible, while the Russians have always had their own and by playing the three off of one another the monkey can chase the weasel forever. In the wild west cutthroat poker is always played with guns and the US has the serious firepower at this table. Your money is only worth what the guy with the gun says its worth, but you still require growth and progress in order to maintain that position. You can describe it as a dysfunctional relationship resembling the Three Stooges comedy and Trump embodies that equation.

Of course, academics have been increasingly complaining that Three Stooges and high tech don't mix, but academics have never been famous for their sense of humor.

I don't understand the recent shift to the right of the political spectrum. — Question

I'm far from convinced that there needs to be an explanation of this. The right I have always believed to be the natural home of the human being. I'm not saying that it's morally or ethically or politically superior in any way. It's simply where human beings are most comfortable irrespective of whether policies make sense or leaders are entirely possessed of their faculties or ethical mores stand up to scrutiny. It's where they inherently feel they belong.So explanations are required only on those rare occasions when there is a popular swing to the left. The question you need to be asking is why the left could not sustain the progress it made, how it lost its converts, and why it could not stop them turning tail and running for home.

It's my opinion based on my rather superficial understanding of evolutionary game theory that altruism and cooperation are always the better options in the long run than the rancid shit people like Kissinger (or rather Dr. Strangelove) pulled off in the Middle East.