So, lawyers and economists are corruptable but engineers aren't?<p>The only difference between this and a crackpot is that the domain is stanford.edu and not geocities.com.<p>There's so much wrong here that I can't even figure out where to begin. Most points are based on distorted facts, contains fallacies, ignores realities, and so on.<p>There are some reasonable ideas (standardized mortgages) that I've heard elsewhere, but a lot of it is crap.<p>#1 fixes what, exactly?<p>#2 is reasonable.<p>#3 is just ranting about credit cards. the fees may be egregious but someone does need to get paid to run the machinery. of course, it should be a fixed cost per transaction and the machinery should be less complicated. but it's not related to the actual crisis.<p>#4 just moves the problem.<p>#5 is just painful.<p>#7 are you kidding?<p>#8 is just silly. and I work there.<p>#9 is more pain.<p>#10 is not the problem either. It's that there's multiple processes. It was leverage and VAR that hurt, not the raw gaussian mis-approximation (although it didn't help.) The markets are gaussian (well, GARCH) short-term, but the regime shifts and changes are the output of another process.<p>A more reasonable solution going forward is going to be a) transparency in financial instruments for consumers, b) strict guidelines about new kinds of financial instruments, and c) leverage restrictions on financial organizations.<p>I think that simultaneous failures of other industries due to lack or loss of flexibility will have to be dealt with in different ways.
<i>New tax bracket, 90% tax bracket for anyone making more than the president of the USA -- retroactive two years. Rates were higher than that in 1963 (historical rates).</i><p>Bad idea. Besides being in very poor form (changing the rules after the fact), retroactive taxes will snare people who made perfectly reasonable financial decisions given the rules at the time, but would now find that they don't even have the money to pay their (retroactive) taxes.<p>As for 90% taxes on high income, I'd prefer that they simplified the tax code and got rid of loopholes.
You can't be a libertarian and a socialist at the same time. Libertarianism is against coercion whereas socialism (excepting voluntary socialism - eg hippy communes) is a forced system of banning voluntary trade.
The 90% tax bracket is too much, that actually does make people not want to work. 65-70% would be better, or just actually closing all of the tax loopholes.
"Institute a 10% tax on landlords that flows into a federal savings account in the name of the renter. The renter can draw from his account only for a home mortgage, or at his retirement."<p>So landlords raise rents 10% (or more) and the effect is simply forced savings. Why not just make the SS tax rate 10 percentage points higher? Ridiculous.
That would be fantastic, you know, if the banks didn't already rule the world. Do you think that banks are going to let software replace them? I have a hard time believing that this would come to fruition with anything less thank a full on revolution.<p>That said, I would wholeheartedly support such a revolution.