Moonbox

Wtf are you even talking about? That doesn't even make sense. They did not state that they were willfully deceiving homebuyers. That's called fraud. Listening to Alan Greenspan weigh in on this is absolutely laughable. Time Magazine lists him as #3 on the list of people most responsible for the financial collapse. It was under his benign influence that the sub-prime fiasco was allowed to happen and he allowed it and encouraged it. As for mortgage agreements being indecipherable, that's retarded. Basically all a homebuyer needs to know on his mortgage is how much the mortgage payment is going to be and how long it will take to pay off. That is ALL he needs to know to determine whether he can afford the mortgage or not. It wasn't indecipherable banking language that confused the poor homebuyers into complicated agreements where they had no idea what they'd be paying month to month. The mortgage agreement says: "Your payment is 'X' dollars monthly" and the homebuyer signs on to that. Homeowners were signing the mortgage agreements and defaulting DESPITE their payments not going up. You don't need to be a financial expert to buy a home. It's REALLY simple stuff. The problem is systemic and across the entire population. It's a shining example of why regulation is required in the financial industry. It shows us that, if not restrained, greed will eventually blow up in everyone's faces. It blows up in shareholders' faces, in blows up in employees' faces, it blows up in the government's face and it blows up in the average persons' face as well.

She's not naive. She's out of touch and full of herself. Her whole party is out of touch.

The distinction is illusionary. The lenders were not deceiving the homebuyers. The lenders were just irresponsible. They didn't tell the homebuyers that the mortgages were affordable for ever and that they would never be foreclosed on. They told the homebuyers that they could approve them for x-sized mortgage. Many of the homebuyers likely lied when it came to their income, because they didn't have to confirm it down south. People act like the home buyers were helpless baby rabbits who had no choice and couldn't do basic math and budgeting. They were greedily trying to get themselves into homes that they couldn't afford realistically and the mortgage lenders greedily wanted to give them mortgages that were unacceptably risky. The banks screwed themselves just as badly as the homebuyers did. It was bad for both groups. I'm sure there were tons of executives and brokers who profited in terms of bonuses, but they were doing what their shareholders and directors were telling them to.

I would say in most cases you're right. Both parties can carry the blame but they also both got screwed in the end. The banks lost billions and billions over it. A lot of the people went bankrupt. Greed punished both of them. You can paint the banks as evil bogeymen all you want, but don't act like the people buying the houses are people we should feel sorry for.

Food motivates her I think. Food and the sound of hot air escaping her body.

Yeah...I bet. What are your terms? Do you keep your money under a mattress? LoL This is where you show you have absolutely no freaking clue how the banking system works. The vast vast vast vast majority of lending dollars DO NOT come from the Bank of Canada. You really really really don't know anything about banking. Look up what fractional reserve banking is. Maybe that will help you not embarrass yourself here.

How much money did they invest? Answer that or your number means nothing. Would you be happy if you invested $10,000 and earned $100/year on it? Similarly, would you be happy if you invested $10,000,000,000 and only earned $1,000,000. They're the same thing.

That's what happens when I take too long to respond.... Sorry. No I'm merely suggesting that, as a business (rather than a charity) the companies are there to make money. The banking industry in Canada is actually extremely competitive and there's always choice for the consumer. If you have a 28% interest rate on a credit card, you could always go to your bank or another and ask for a consolidation loan which would have a lot lower rate. If the other bank (who is always hungry for business) declines your loan application, that's a pretty good indication that your interest rate on your credit card is pretty justifiable because you're a credit risk. Your half a billion dollar figure is very interesting, but let's put it into perspective. For all we know, Mastercard could have $40 billion invested in Canada, in which case a return of $415,000 / quarter just plain sucks. That's a 4% return per year on the stock market. You can find GIC's that make more money. Get me a stock market report on Mastercard Canada and then maybe we can decide if your number means anything. You say that it doesn't sting when the credit card companies lose a few thousand here and there, but it definetly does when thousands and thousands of people are defaulting, which happens every year. The risk is HUGE.

I think you've made it completely obvious that you have no idea how the banking system works. The highest cost of doing business for a credit card company is people not paying back the balances and defaulting on the debt. The amount of credit cards that get written off or go to collections is staggering and when it happens it's usually a total loss for the bank. A low interest credit card is usually offered to clients who are very unlikely to default on their debts. Someone who has a relationship with the lendor (long time client), background assets and high income is usually the type of person who gets such a credit card. Personally I am pretty sick of it. It's largely money down the toilet. Welfae, as far as I'm concerned, should provide food and shelter and perhaps help finding a job (if looking). Disposable income for smokes and booze really isn't one of my concerns. Yep. They'd look after themselves. Overnight you'd see millions of credit cards revoked for anyone marginally risky and nobody with an under $40,000 income or security would ever have one. Nope I'm suggesting they're a business and looking to make money instead of a charity for poor people to get emergency money cheaply when they need it. Also, nobody is forcing the poor to borrow at 20% interest. They do that alllll on their own. Work hard, use your eductation (if you have one) and maybe one day you can! That's the beauty of this country!

If there was any real possibility of a coalition with the NDP, Liberal numbers would drop off a cliff. A huge portion of the Liberals' base is still the red conservative, particularly in urban/ethnic communities, who generally abhor the NDP platform. The Liberals would lose the GTA overnight if Ignatieff did as the OP suggests.

Get off your high horse. It's hypocrisy for the Liberals to attack the Tories on minor scandals when Adscam is still hanging over their shoulders. Only a moron would pretend that politics isn't purely a game of comparison.

Any rebuke by a committee of opposition members is going to be seen for what it is - a rebuke by a committee of opposition members.

Actually European Mercantilism operated much like the OP stated. The English started with the idea that they shouldn't buy more from someone than they sell to them. It was the reason they build their navy to challenge the Spanish Armada. Today's economy couldn't be any different, aside from the fact that the the poor and middle classes are still applauding while the wealthy continuously screw them. Instead of making this election about corporate tax cuts, why not make it about opposing the telecom oligopoly and rebuilding our manufacturing industries. That's far too involved for the average voter I suppose....

Your idea defeats the purpose of world trade altogether. The idea is to create economies of scale and have different areas building expertise and volume in different products. One country might not need anything from another, yet that other country may need something from it. Where the problem lies in unfair 'advantages' developing nations have in terms of labour costs and in the west's exploiting of these nations. If you want to solve the problem, you have ensure that there is a relatively level playing field. Either you insist on fair employment standards for foreign labour or you impose tarrifs. That's really the only way North Americans with (barely) high school educations will get their monkey jobs back pressing buttons and lifting stuff.

No that's not what we heard. We were told that the amount of money spent on contract employees went up by 78%. As far as I know nothing was said about how much these employees cost compared to their public sector counterparts. Even if the up-front costs were a fair bit higher, they'd likely be cheaper in the long run because we all know the golden pension and the benefits public sector employees enjoy is what ends up costing us the most.

That was really awkward to watch. The reports were out to fry Ignatieff on that.

Canadian Extreme Wrestling Party - 225 Bloc Quebecquois - 60 Whatever else is left - How many seats are there again?

Yep. Is it a coincidence that Barack Obama, for example, bailed out the UAW members and their pensions after they ran the companies they worked for into bankruptcy? Could it have had anything to do with the fact that Obama's biggest campaign contributor was *gasp* the UAW? Election contribution limits help keep politicians honest.

Nobody can really play the hypocrisy card here Jack lol. None of them have shown themselves above the smear campaign.

The electorate eats this stuff up unfortunately. Dumb ads for dumb people I guess.

/yawn. Another completely riduculous and totally pointless rant. It's almost like you post here to practice your creative writing 'skills' rather than to say anything worthwhile.

Most recent polls suggest Harper will stay as a minority but McGuinty is almost certainly finished. Ontario is slowly turning into hostile territory for Liberals.

The grammar police! Ha! Well, let me explain. Hilariously, in this sentence, is describing the subsequent adjective, which in turn is describing the word 'spoken'. In English, when you say, "He's well-spoken." That usually means "He's articulate and speaks intelligently." Poorly spoken, on the other hand, would mean the opposite. In this case, it's also funny, thus I added hilariously. Basically what I'm saying is that it's really funny seeing all the dumb things you post. My personal favorite was when you told us that the amount of tory/ndp threads was indicative of how afraid those groups were of an election, when you all by yourself probably post more than half of this forum combined. You make me laugh buddy!

I'm sorry bloodyminded, but you're just digging deeper and deeper into semantics. I'll start by saying analogy isn't taboo in my mind or anyone's. We all use it. Sometimes they can be very apt at clarifying confusion, particularly in the legal system (precedence). I'm sure you'll consider that a massive victory for justice by getting me to admit that, but again you'd just be playing with semantics. I'll let you feel you've proven something. On the other hand, I will maintain that analogy is, the vast majority of the time (bolded so you don't get confused) abused and poorly formed in persuasive arguments and can easily be picked apart to show that the writer/speaker has nothing more intelligent to say. I still think it's really funny that you chose to bring this up on this thread. You just couldn't wait!@ First of all, you've decided that simple use of metaphor in every day speech is the same thing as analogy in persuasive arguments. There's a pretty big difference, for example, between me saying, "She's a fox" and me trying to argue selective design by comparing the world and its ecosystems to a carefully crafted machine. Read a few things by David Hume and maybe you'll appreciate what I'm talking about. In the first example I'm using a clichéd metaphor to explain that I find a woman attractive (tbh I don't even understand the metaphor but that doesn't matter). There's nothing to argue there. It's just a metaphor. On the other hand, assuming I was a religious nut, and I tried to assert that the world was designed by an intelligent being because all of its inhabitants and ecosystems functioned just like a well-oiled machine, I'd be presenting an analogy. Hopefully you can tell the difference now because thus far you seem to really struggle with it. Let's move on from there now shall we? No. An analogy falls apart way before you bring up selectivity and hypocrisy. It's interesting that you bring up selectivity when discussing bad use of analogy, because that's usually where they fall apart. Your gangster analogy that you defend, for example, holds no water because not only have you not supported the analogy with a rational argument, but it's far easier to think of differences between them than similarities. Other than your opinion that they're bad people and you find it helpful to your argument to project the image of Al Capone and Tommy Guns on western governments, how is the analogy in any way apt? If you seriously want to persuade anyone with your analogy and if you're going to back it up, you have have some reasoning behind it and some pretty strong links between whatever concepts you're comparing. I can compare trying to get you to understand the difference between simple metaphor and inductive analogy is like teaching a monkey to write. They're both very difficult and since they share that characteristic my analogy is a valid argument. That's what you're saying. You're saying that your analogy was valid because your argument wasn't hypocritical??? It's no wonder you're struggling to connect the dots on this if you think that. Hypocrisy has nothing to do with it.

The British weren't interested in the Arrow. They were interested in the Iroquois engine tech and even then only briefly because they had their own project coming to product shortly after the Avro would have entered production. I'd say it's more likely because it was back in the 1950's and we had no internet then, along with the fact that most of what has been written by the Arrow since then has been written by former employees and people enchanted by the legend of the craft the Arrow never really was. There's definetly something to be said of that. The Canadian government absolutely screwed Avro and it was THEIR fault that they had them focus on designing and building a plane they wouldn't need.