Well tell that to Ron Paul. The point is that he thinks that homeopathy is a valid alternative to what he calls "
allopathic medicine" (a word used by believers in homeopathy for modern medicine).
For clarification, I found a transcript of his remarks
here:
I think that the above makes clear that he is a believer in homeopathy as well as "holistic and nutritional alternatives to current medical care." It also makes it clear that he believes that doctors shouldn't be required to have a license to practice medicine.
I personally think homeopathy is bunk, woo, whatever ... OTOH I have absolutely no interest in using the force of government to support a version of the medical "one-true-faith". The fact is that governments have repeatedly made vast and serous error in declaring one medical practice valid and others invalid. To my mind it's arbitrary and certainly totalitarian for a government to make such decisions. Exactly to that extent I support these alternative belief systems and oppose anyone who would seek to use the power of state to abolish them.
About 98% of our Congress proclaim a belief in deist woo. Many have espoused beliefs what I consider social woo - clear violations of the social contract. So why are you selectively picking on RPs reputed support in homeopathic woo when the topic is economics ? Are you equally concerned that our president believes that a Jewish son of a carpenter was divine, cured ppl by miracles, and further claims that modern US physicians prefer to perform amputations for profit motives ? The woo-believing, contra-factual believing president then proposes a vast overhaul of the medical services delivery system. Where is your proportional outrage there where the president's clear and present woo is directly related to his agenda ????
No - your ire is quite selective against those who are not of your political clan.
I've seen no evidence at all that Ron Paul is an expert on the Fed. Quite the opposite ...
I see no credible evidence the RP is an anti-semite, which didn't prevent you from proposing a vile, unevidence character assassination in post #69. Go away potty mouth.
Er, mortgage securitization by commercial banks? Am I missing something?
Yeah - you are missing something. COMMERCIAL banks have been permitted to engage in non-trivial amount of mortgage securitiization since 1987 change to GS. I see absolutely no coherent argument that the same amount of securitization would not have taken place via the investment banks alone even if the Commercials were still restricted to a 5% share as pre-1987. Lehman did (investment bank issuing MBAs) as a large player, others did too. Why wouldn't the IBanks take up the slack if the market forces were the same and the CBanks were prevented ?? Makes no sense.
Again - once the motivations were present in the form of an accepted miscalculation of risk, then the rest was inevitable. The securitization could have been outside US jurisdiction and that would only have modestly changed the total damage. You can't regulate gravity away.
Now I agree that the FDIC is foolish to insure commercial bank accounts where the bank is allowed to take "excessive" risk, but such is the nature of bureaucracies.
That's a bit of a distortion of what I said. So to clarify, Ron Paul's Libertarian version of reality is a bit more loony than your average Libertarian. I just listened to a Ron Paul interview a couple hours ago on this subject on the news. Paul doesn't discuss the issues, he spews his version of reality and continually laughs claiming his view is the only reality and there is just no question about it. Any challenge is simply dismissed and he again repeats his dogma. There is no discussion supporting why his version is correct, Paul simply declares it is.
Yeah - that's so different from other politicians. Like for example the president. Every other word from this highly acclaimed orator is "uh" and he spins he recent losses in Congress as due to the populace not understanding ... right. He was as adept as any other politician at giving the answer he wants to spew regardless of the question asked. Ron Paul is not among the worst half of slimey spin-master politicians.
Of course RP isn't presenting for his positions in an interview; it's silly for you to expect that. In case you haven't noticed, any real argument in the mainstream media is dissembled into small and easily mischaracterized bits and then lampooned for the ignorami. So for example Rand Paul states the arguable proposition that the Federal government overstepped it's bounds by forcing private lunch counters to de-segregrate and this is then characterized as Rand Paul is a bigoted racist who would have oppose the civil rights act. Or Paul Krugman makes some mal-statement about "death panels" and Fox plays it in a loop for a week as proof the government plans for death panels as part of health care.
Nope - there is a very good reason why nearly all politicians spew only well digested pablum in interviews, and why they try to present only the polished sides in debate (or else avoid debates).
You'll have to read to understand any politicians at any depth. OTOH they often lie in their writings too. I suggest you lookup up Obama's campaign energy "bluebook" on the wayback to see a steaming pile of half-aked baloney - abandoned on day 1.
