Did Male Bashing cause the financial crisis?
Stuart Schneiderman: "It wasn't an excess of testosterone that caused bankers to make imprudent mortgage loans. It was an excessive amount of Nanny state meddling in the marketplace, an excessive amount of imposed matriarchal values."
Labels: Male Bashing, recession
posted by Helen at 12:40 PM
28 Comments:
I read another article this morning along the lines of "did testosterone cause the meltdown?" with the same old claims that men are more risk-averse investors than women twisted around to make men the enemy.
What a silly arguement! Men may take risks due to testosterone--some men thrive on this--but the meltdown took place because the "nanny state" allowed regulations to be removed or circumvented. Even the free market guru wizard Alan Greenspan now admits this. Want more proof? Not one bank in Canada failed because all regluations were kept in place.
Tell me this, Fred...
Which Canadian banking laws would you want enacted in the United States? What would their effect be? How did these laws save Canadian banks?
fred, we have gone over this before. The Bush administration BEGGED congress to put tighter lending criteria on Fannie and Freddie. It is all on youtube. Barney Frank and others of his ilk are on video saying that further regulation is unnecessary and that both institutions are solid.
Here is the link big guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs
Watch and hear: Republicans calling for tougher guidelines, Maxine Waters (D) say that the institutions are completely sound, watch as Gergory Meeks (D) accuses the whistle blowers of incompetence, watch Barney Frank (D) say that there are no soundness problems with Fannie or Freddie (this was in 2004), listen as Ms. Waters says that 100% loans are a great innovation, and see Frank again say that there is nothing wrong with either Fannie or Fredie, so they do not need stronger regulation.
So if you say again that Freddie and Fannie were due to a lack of oversight and the Republican's fault, you are simply a liar and worth no more of our time.
I expect better of you. Time will tell.
Trey
Not only did the Bush Administration beg Congress to address Fannie and Freddie (to which they were accused of manufacturing a crisis and even accused of racism over it), it was the Clinton Administration that strong armed Fannie into sub prime mortgages. It was documented in the September 1999 New York Times as a move to help lower income families have homes.
It gets pinned on the "money hungry lenders" and "Bush Administration deregulation." Fact is, money hungry businessmen want to, well, make money, and loaning to people who are at a high risk to not pay it back is a lousy way to do that. Of course, it was government meddling that caused the mess. Funny how Clinton's screw up helped his party get elected in overwhelming fashion.
That is an interesting paradox: Don't loan it to poor and you are a spoiled rich man who won't help the little guy, but loan it to them and you are a spoiled rich guy who wants to make a buck off the little guy at the expense of the economy.
to illustrate; a man goes to the reading of his father`s will. his father isn`t dead but deathly ill and the family has gathered to find out who gets what.
a woman has been watching the heir throughout the reading, which prompts him to approach her and say, "soon i will be a wealthy man, why don`t we go out some time?"
she smiles and takes his card.
two weeks later she is his step mother.....
the message here is that women are much better money managers than men.
my ex still has a pair of flip-flops she bought when we first met nearly twenty years ago....and she lives mortgage free and wants more child support to help pay the mortgage on her investment property....
....god bless them.
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The community re-investment act pretty much required the banks to approve loans for all minorities AND women.
If a financial institution did refuse a loan women's groups and their allies like ACORN would picket and openly attack said bank. Look at the BoA Acorn thing for example.
Later legislation during Clinton's term allowed women to count child support and other entitlements as income, while making it illegal to count child care expenses as well expenses.
The single largest growth in home sales was to single women during the boom period.
The housing bubble and pretty much this whole over spending mess the US is in today is because of feminism taking over the civil rights movement and turning into it's own entitlement movement.
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It's not male bashing that caused the financial crisis, but George Baileyism; that loans aren't given based on sound financial criteria, including whether the recipient is fully capitalized, but on how good it makes the lender feel.
I'm fascinated by octomom. Today she is to be foreclosed on her $500,000 house, I guess her and her 14 kids will need to find a new place. But how did she get a loan in the first place? She financed numerous plastic surgeries through student loans, although she never was a student. How did that happen? I'm not sure about George Baileyism but I agree that many of the loans that were made over the last 10 years weren't based on anything that involved sound financial criteria. Male bashing had nothing to do with it.
From the article:
"The real flaw with biochemical determinism is that it does not distinguish between manliness and machismo. The latter, a caricature of what is involved in manly behavior, tends to prevail in cultures that are-- surprise-- matriarchal.
"When women are in charge, when women's values are imposed on men, then, men revert to more savage expressions of masculinity."
I find this interesting, but does anyone know if it's true. Where are the examples?
Mario,
The best example is black America, where the father has been obsoleted. No functional social goals for men (few in-the-flesh male role models) and gang warfare, fathering multiple children, mothers kicking fathers out of the family unit or at least not caring whether they are part of the kid's life.
I have never bought the argument of pedestalizers like Paul Greenberg that "women civilize men." Women "civilize" men in patriatchal societies that have concepts of morality and shame. In truth men civilize women; when morality is removed, the first people to go bad are the women, creating an environment where men can then live without responsibility.
Matriarchal societies - ones arranged around the natural wants of females - degenerate into hypergamy harems, where the women fight for access to the top 20% of men and the rest of the men are left to fend for themselves or yoked to be material providers for the machine. This is exactly what's gone on in the American college environment (with all of its bogus rape statistics and take back the night rallies, the women still line up for frat parties around the block) and to some degree in the free-sex young adult urban bar scene.
Mario:
There will always be a segment of the population that feels their bad behavior is not their fault. Men behave badly because women don't act right. People are fat because of their big bones and genetics. Women behave badly because of men. Adults commit crimes because of unlucky childhood. Everyone has an excuse. Biochemical determinism, psychological predisposition, cultural pressure.....whatever. It becomes so tiresome.
One study of the effect of matriarchal social organization on male behavior is Michael Carroll's "The Cult of the Virgin Mary." I have some problems with Carroll's psychological explanations for the phenomenon, but he does offer some useful sociological analysis of how men behave in families where the father is an ineffective provider. He emphasizes especially those Southern European cultures where the cult of the Virgin was most influential. And it is worth noting that the word machismo comes to us from those cultures.
With regard to Fred's statements above, many have responded already, but I've long thought this article offers a succinct explanation of the sources of the problem (in terms of Nanny state meddling, etc., as opposed to the general allegation of excessive de-regulation).
But if one really wants to get technical, this Cato report is one of the most detailed and informative explanations I have seen.
If women ran Wall Street then it would not exist. No woman would take the risk to create it.
It was women who were the overwhelming voice that brought on prohibition. Talk about the road to my condo being paved with good intentions! The US has still not learned the objective lessons of that monumentally stupid social experiment. You'd all be so much better off if you just stopped worrying about offending women, gays, minorities, etc., and focused on offending seriously stupid people. If a certain demographic happens to form the majority of stupid people, then good. Some earnest shaming and public humiliation only motivates people to better themselves.
Prohibition. Wow. If they gave out awards for thermonuclear stupid, Germany would have won for the Holocaust, and the US would have won for Prohibition!
You want to know how to spot thermonuclear stupid? Someone stands up and says, "I have a great idea to put an end to this awful problem!"
99% probability: moron.
Notice that NO ONE -- EVER -- asks if something failed becuase of an excess of estrogen.
Cham-
"There will always be a segment of the population that feels their bad behavior is not their fault."
It is always the individual's responsibility for their own behavior. But, when predicting likelihood of behavior within a group, things like biochemical determinism can be quite valuable (and interesting). Understanding how environment can influence the likelihood of choices does not absolve the individual for the responsibility of those choices.
For example, a criminal is not excused because they were from a single-mother household; but, at the same time a greater percentage of single mother households will increase the incidence of young people deciding to become criminals. Therefore, if we, as a society, wish to reduce the number of criminals a good way to do so would be to disfavor single motherhood, which may even have a greater return on effort than dealing with the individuals who turn to crime in a more generic fashion (e.g. using greater sentences to disincentive criminal behavior).
Notice that NO ONE -- EVER -- asks if something failed becuase of an excess of estrogen
Well, let me go on record then in saying that the Boston Bruins season is a failure for that very reason.
* Excess of Estrogen *
And more important--Estrogen deficiency.
I was never a high-testosterone guy. Didn't hang with the jocks much. Love to cook.
Wasn't too surprised when I hit 60 and the doc said hormones are all screwed up. He put me on several, including testosterone.
Didn't notice anything different for many months as my testosterone levels tripled and quintupled. Then, one night, no lead in the pencil.
"What gives, doc? You've got me on testosterone."
"Well, the body converts excess testosterone into estrogen," he explains. "We'll fix that with this prescription. It'll knock back the estrogen a little."
I got six teeny tiny little pills about this size--O. I was supposed to take HALF of one every other day. I popped half of one thinking nothing of it and went to the grocery store.
Next thing you know, I was having the most lurid fantasies. It was embarrassing and even frightening. I blew off my other errands and went straight home.
Having testosterone levels fluctuate all over the map--nothing. Estrogen goes up a smidge--impotence and a strong desire to chat and cuddle. Estrogen goes down a tad--raging sex fiend.
I have a new respect for estrogen and what women deal with when it varies.
Cult of the Virgin Mary? I declare BS. Religious women who honor Mary love family and children and God and home and motherhood...and St Joseph.
Religious men who honor her value the same.
In southern Europe, ascendent secularism and anti-religious movements are responsible for the socialism and the nanny state. NOT a strictly Catholic thing--you're totally ignoring the UK and Scandinavia.
Cult of the virgin mary...that's hysterical.
They're a cult of pedophiles. Look what happened in Ireland.
Sick pedophiles and irresponsible old men preying on superstitious dullards.
My daughter really walked into it this morning. She was talking about her latest debate team topic, can female rappers reduce the virulent patriarchy of the rap world.
Wow. Rap is the offspring of matriarchy, not patriarchy. The undersocialized boys who write the misogynistic lyrics had no father in their home, they are the fruit of a world without grown up men.
The lecture went on, and she took it rather well for 7 in the morning, but it was interesting how incensed I got by a debate team question. It is just part of being sick of the lies against men, against conservatives, against Christians, against, in essence, me.
So teach your children well.
Trey
and don`t tell your daughter they can be better athletes than the boys.
they will believe you.
my son, who just turned 11 had to play the under 14 girls last week and he was in tears after the game after being punched, kicked, scratched and otherwise bullied for 90 minutes while the girl`s mothers watched thier little princesses get beaten 17-0
and i`m a mysogynist?
jeez ladies, stop setting your girls up for things like this, and abusing my boy....
Doc, that match sounds like a disaster. I bet it is something you never repeat.
Trey
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