Warren Buffett: In the 10 years since financial panic, we've learned we're 'all dominoes' spaced closely together

The 2008 crisis revealed how vulnerable the U.S. "economic machine" is to any one part failing, according to the billionaire investor. Buffett says regulators did a "heroic" job in the immediate wake of the crisis, which started a decade ago this week. The 2008 financial crisis revealed just how vulnerable the U.S. "economic machine" is to any one part failing, according to Warren Buffett. Ten years ago this week, it wasn't just any part. The failure occurred in the over-leveraged banking system, which was awash in toxic subprime mortgages that were packaged, and then bought and sold over and over on Wall Street as mortgage-backed securities. The values of those mortgage-backed securities plummeted when the red-hot housing market turned and many people, who couldn't afford the home loans in the first place, started to default. "What we all learned in that particular panic is that we're all dominoes. And we're all very close together," said the billionaire investor, whose Berkshire Hathaway made key investments Goldman Sachs and General Electric after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. At the time, those investments, which were clearly crafted to be favorable to Buffett, were seen as a vote of confidence even as the destructive ripple effects of the banking and housing crises were only starting to take hold. Speaking with CNBC as a part of its "Crisis on Wall Street: The Week That Shook the World" documentary, which premieres on television Wednesday night, Buffett said many Americans were left flat-footed when the crisis hit. "All they knew is they did nothing wrong and their world was falling apart." Buffett said the pressure to fix things was "huge" on regulators, including then-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, then-New York Fed President Timothy Geithner, then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and then-President George W. Bush. "They did a heroic [job]," Buffett said. The government quickly stepped in and bailed out the financial system, giving rise to the term "too big to fail" and the argument was there no other choice but to save the big banks to prevent cascading failures. The Fed, meanwhile, starting cutting interest rates and taking extraordinary measures aimed at helping to boost the crumbling economy and nose-diving stock market, which bottomed out in March 2009. There's been debate ever since on whether the government should have stepped in, and whether the Fed coddled the economy with near zero percent rates for too long after the crisis. Fast-forward a decade, the current bull market in stocks last month became the longest since World War II. The Fed is in the midst of hiking rates and unwinding its $4 trillion-plus in assets that ballooned during and after the crisis. Economic growth has started to really pick up, while job gains and the unemployment rate have been heading in positive directions.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/09/10/warren-buffett-2008-financial-crisis-showed-we-are-all-dominoes.html

Editorial: The lesson of United 93

There are things that you can’t take back. Fire a bullet and it goes forward. Strike a match and it will burn. On September 11, 2001, the dominoes started to fall at 5:43 a.m. when two men checked in at the US Airways ticket counter in Portland, Maine. A small plane took them to Boston. They boarded another aircraft at Logan International Airport, bound for Los Angeles. Instead, it ended its journey, and the lives of its passengers and many others, buried in the heart of the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. A similar itinerary took another Boston flight into the South Tower. A Dulles plane aimed at the Pentagon.

United 93 should have left Newark Airport at 8 a.m. There was lots of traffic. It was delayed until 8:42 a.m., according to the 9-11 Commission’s 2004 staff report. It was not at cruising altitude when the first tower started to burn, when the first victims were gone. At 9:03 a.m., the second plane hit the World Trade Center. Everyone with a television watched. No one knew that Dulles flight had already been hijacked. At 9:08 a.m., United grounded flights in the New York area. It was 26 minutes too late for United 93. It was another 20 minutes before four hijackers took control of United 93. Nine minutes later, the Pentagon was in flames.

Something could have been done at so many points along the way to stop any of the horrible things that happened that day. The knives on the hijackers could have been found by security. Delays could have been longer. Information could have been relayed faster. Shock could have paralyzed someone or adrenaline could have spurred reaction in just the right way.

It didn’t. Except on United 93.

The last of the four planes to take off, with one already used as a weapon, United 93 had 33 passengers, five flight attendants and 2 pilots, in addition to the hijackers. In a world connected by phones and internet, they were not cut off from what was making the world watch the skies. They found out about New York and Washington. The passengers on United 93 refused to be the bullet fired from a gun. They chose, instead, to be the match that struck a flame. They burned fast and bright and instead of becoming a weapon against another high profile target and an instrument of murder, they opted for martyrdom, taking back the plane and burying it in a Somerset County field. Events happen around us. Sometimes we can’t see the bad stuff soon enough to prevent it. Sometimes it’s too late to stop it.

But if there is one enduring lesson to take from United 93, it is that it is never too late to take the information you have, the knowledge that something horrible is happening, and change the outcome, even a little bit, even if it’s only better for someone else.

https://triblive.com/opinion/editorials/14066638-74/editorial-the-lesson-of-united-93

Reddit bans Qanon subreddits after months of violent threats

Reddit was key to Qanon’s emergence from the fringe corners of the internet and into more mainstream conspiracy and far-right media circles. Reddit banned its largest community focused on the fringe conspiracy theory Qanon on Wednesday, claiming the subreddit was cut off “due to repeated violations of the terms of our content policy.” The community, called /r/GreatAwakening, had more than 71,000 subscribers making over 10,000 comments on average per day before it was banned. A backup subreddit, /r/the_greatawakening, was also banned, along with 17 other Qanon focused communities, including r/BiblicalQ and r/Quincels.

The subreddit, which is a term for the common interest groups that make up Reddit, has been host to a stream of violent threats based on the conspiracy theory — despite repeated calls from the community’s moderators urging them to stop, particularly in recent weeks. Qanon devotees falsely believe that President Donald Trump is secretly waging a war with special counsel Robert Mueller to take down a global pedophile ring led by Hollywood celebrities and the Democratic Party, most notably Hillary Clinton. Threats to kill Clinton pervaded GreatAwakening earlier this month when users were incensed by a Qanon-based theory that she was somehow causing military planes to fall out of the sky. GreatAwakening members implored the community to “kill all enemies” eddit was key to Qanon’s emergence from the fringe corners of the internet and into more mainstream conspiracy and far-right media circles. An investigation by NBC News found that moderators moved Qanon posts from 8chan, a hard-to-navigate internet message board used mostly by trolls and younger people, to Reddit, making it accessible to a larger, older, and less internet savvy audience of conspiracy theorists. From there, Qanon crept to Facebook, where it continued to grow.

A spokesman for Reddit confirmed the banning in a statement to NBC News. “As of September 12, r/greatawakening has been banned due to repeated violations of the terms of our content policy,” the spokesperson said. “We are very clear in our site terms of service that posting content that incites violence, disseminates personal information, or harasses will get users and communities banned from Reddit." In March, Reddit shut down the original Qanon subreddit, /r/CBTS_stream, for the same reason, after it was found to be “encouraging or inciting violence and posting personal and confidential information.” Reddit also banned its moderators from the site. The group had more than 20,000 subscribers at the time. The Reddit ban will hamper the Qanon theory’s spread and splinter its followers, but it is not a death knell for the theory’s faithful community. Tens of thousands of users congregate on Twitter and in closed Facebook groups dedicated to QAnon. One of the most popular, named “QAnon Follow The White Rabbit” has more than 51,000 members. Thousands of others gather on Discord, a gaming-focused chat service that hosts channels like QNN, Q Central, and Patriot’s Soapbox, the chatroom for a 24-hour livestreamed YouTube channel for the dissemination and discussion of Qanon topics. In August, as media coverage of Qanon increased, several of the largest Qanon Facebook groups changed their names, fearing the platform would ban them. When no action was taken, the groups reverted to their original names.

Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim from 2016, was filled with racist and antisemitic posts at the time of its banning. Last October, Reddit banned a community devoted to Pizzagate, a smaller conspiracy theory that also alleged Clinton was running a child sex ring out of the basement of a pizza shop that had no basement. Qanon’s basic tenets hinge largely on the belief that the Pizzagate conspiracy was real all along. Qanon believers have grown increasingly restless in recent weeks as several prophecies of “Q,” the purported government leaker sharing secrets to Qanon followers on 4chan, were proven wrong.

“Q” posted on 8chan shortly after Reddit’s action, aligning the ban with Alex Jones, who along with his website Infowars were recently removed from Facebook, Google, Twitter and Apple. On its last day, r/GreatAwakening users had reverted to rote conspiracy talking points from years’ past — claiming 9/11 was an inside job, and that the Anthrax investigation was covered up by Mueller. It is unclear precisely which post or comment was the final straw for Reddit’s ban.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna909061

>>2998356

Well that isn't surprising, we knew this was coming, effort to shut down knowledge is fierce right now. They will lose!

>>2998369

>>2998409

Nice!

>>2998284

I agree it's an attempt to discredit, we knew this would be coming…it was just a matter of when.

>>2998520 Meant this for >>2998491

It just amazing to me how stupid these people think we really are, we have known for years what criminals they are the problem we have always had, is no one standing up to it…