2 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

Anyhow sorry if I ruffled your feathers 

 

Mathew.... they have been ruffled many time before. But you are still my best pal in the land of the long white cloud. 😺

12 hours ago, dave2013 said:

Yes.  When I say "bail out the banks", that's what I mean, IE cover all the lost deposits.  The govt. should then put the bank into conservatorship, fire all the guilty executives, and let someone else buy the bank.

I think we're talking about different things and thinking they're the same. Bailing out the banks by covering lost deposits can be done two ways. The first way is to cover the accounts but not require the bank to consider them covered. I.e., "Here's a bag of no-strings cash."   That's what we did in the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis bailout. It's what allowed the banks to get paid for their bad mortgages, and then sell the houses that were mortgaged and get paid a second time while the former occupants became homeless.

The second way is to cover the accounts with the requirement that the bank consider the accounts covered, the easiest way being to give the money to the account holders and require that they cover the accounts with it.  We usually don't do it that way because we default to making sure the bank gets everything it wants without worrying about what happens to the people the bank has been actively screwing for years.

 

12 hours ago, dave2013 said:

The corrupt you-know-whos in govt. didn't hold the executives(donors) accountable like they should have back then.  They also failed to reinstate Glass-Steagall which was suggested at the time.

It is fine to let a bank or two go under as long as customer deposits are insured, which has happened a number of times recently.  The problem arises when it is a huge bank like Citibank or Bank of America - the FDIC doesn't have enough money to cover all the losses.  In that case the govt. should do whatever it can to alleviate the losses, even if it means using taxpayer money.  You can't risk a domino effect that results in a credit freeze and then takes the whole system down.

I don't disagree, but the government should also do whatever it can to alleviate the losses systemwide. The subprime crisis was a real tragedy. Predatory banks told people who were dumb with money that they could afford these mortgages. They couldn't, of course, but the banks didn't care because they assumed house prices would always rise with no volatility whatsoever, so they figured they'll get the downpayment and then foreclose once the customer started missing payments, sell the house for more than the mortgage was worth, and pocket the difference. Essentially, banks became buy-here-pay-here used car lots.

But when house prices did fall, who got blamed? The homeowners. They were greedy. They were stupid. They should have known they couldn't afford that house. It's all their fault.  You didn't hear much about the greedy banks who loansharked the gullible, and when we moved to fix the problem, we made sure the banks were made whole and then got to make more profit off the backs of their victims because we didn't care if the homeowners got screwed. It would have cost the same amount of money to bail the homeowners out, but instead we made sure the banks could keep making outlandish profits.

3 hours ago, martin-w said:

 

 Updates to Tesla self drive are via software updates. HW3 (more powerful computer) was envisaged to be capable of full self drive. Tesla have announced that if HW3 doesn't provide full self drive then free hardware upgrades will be made available. 

Tesla have announced a lot of things that never turned out to be true. I guarantee they are not going to retrofit a 2016 Model S with upgraded hardware for free when (if) they ever figure out how to actually make it work.

 

3 hours ago, martin-w said:

 

I don't recall Musk ever saying that. In fact I don't recall he stated a price for a ticket at all. But given the rate of progress of Starship and full re-usability and the fact that we are talking about 1000 passengers, I wouldn't right it off. But as we know, Mr. Elon is prone to exaggeration and stating best case scenarios. That's nothing new. 

He didn't state a price, he said it would be for the cost of an economy airline ticket. I looked up the prices.

1 hour ago, eslader said:

Tesla have announced a lot of things that never turned out to be true. I guarantee they are not going to retrofit a 2016 Model S with upgraded hardware for free when (if) they ever figure out how to actually make it work.

 

It's in writing. So if not there will be many law suits.

1 hour ago, eslader said:

He didn't state a price, he said it would be for the cost of an economy airline ticket. I looked up the prices.

 

When/if it comes to fruition he might be right. Starship is in the early stages of development. Future versions will be 150 tons payload. He does exaggerate so who knows, but his talent is employing the right people and getting things done.

He's not a qualified engineer, but I must say, his technical knowledge of Starship is impressive. There's a video on YouTube of him taking a Youtuber on a tour of Starbase. His knowledge of the engineering involved certainly wasn't lacking.

Same for Bezos when he took the same guy on a tour of Blue Origin. 

In terms of our debate... It's human nature, I guess, if you like someone then everything they do is good. If you hate someone then everything they do is bad. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

3 hours ago, eslader said:

But when house prices did fall, who got blamed? The homeowners. They were greedy. They were stupid. They should have known they couldn't afford that house. It's all their fault.

No, it wasn't all the fault of the borrowers, but most of them share some blame.  Most people aren't stupid, and many of those borrowers had to know that they were taking on too much.

The whole episode was like the Tulip Mania in the 1600s in the Netherlands.  Everyone, from the contractors, sellers, buyers, flippers(I can't stand these folks), real estate agents, appraisers, and banks were in on the money-making, greed-filled frenzy.

The banks should have known better, and likely did, but they were so greedy that they couldn't help themselves, and since they likely knew that they would be backstopped by the corrupt govt. if things went bad, they took the risk.

Dave

Going back to the drones..... https://www.newsweek.com/nato-ally-uk-drones-weapons-technology-2005171