Should the Causers of Recessions/Depressions Hang?

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I'm normally anti-death penalty, but on this issue I could make exceptions... Not so much for 'crashing' the economy but that the practical effects on some people's lives from this won't be trivial. I.e. If you shoot someone and they die, it's murder. If you steal their retirement and they die because they can't afford their meds anymore, then it's somehow not a big deal. And even if you do it to thousands of people.

Random slogans aren't really what most people call an idea. I mean, revolution and uprising are the most concrete things you mention, and you do not describe the workings of a post-revolution system at all, but just assume it will be grand and glorious.

exactly.

ehh, to be a 17-year old naive idealist again...

If being old means accepting unfairness and authority without question, well, I'd rather be 17.

Capitolism is like the democracy of economics, that is to say, the worst form of economics, except for all the other systems.
That said, we need a LOT more control on the top executives of companies, and 90% of the current batch needs to go to jail, since many of these greedy (expletive deleted, i can't think of a word strong enough in ANY language) drove their companies into the GROUND, and then asked for more money.
Special mention goes to the CEO and upper managment of GM, they're ALREADY asking for more money.
I say, either A: throw them in jail for life and let them rot. or B: seize ALL their assets, and leave them out on the street, and hope a hobo stabs them. This applies to ALL management of ANY company that's needed bailing out.

You're dodging the issue. You have not proposed a credible solution to the problem, and that is the issue that other people are having. Anna-banana just made fun of the fact that you had no solution, only catchy words, so this isn't a matter of "I'm noble" this is a matter of "I believe something without any foundation because it feels good", and people usually do not respect that.

No, you have a right to question, but when someone asks you for your solution, they do have a legitimate question for your own beliefs.

yes, that is what should be done, but in practice there is no way to do it- they have their money hidden in places where no one would be allowed to "seize" them, like Zurich and Cayman Islands. so the only way is to not let them enjoy any of it = spend the rest of their lives in jail (which also would be impossible, their money inevitably would buy them freedom).

Fairly simple (if not nessicarily LEGAL) way to do it. Simply hold them without bail or parole. There'd be pretty much nowhere worth running to that doesn't have extradition to the united states at that point.

On the other hand, maybe we just need a real-life version of the punisher to take care of it. Any voulenteers?

Quite true... I would ask the OP who we should hang first, the tens of thousands of people who bought houses they could not afford? The millions of students who took out student loans and then were unable to repay them? The millions of people who took on more credit card debt than they could handle? The legislators who enacted laws making it easier for people with low incomes to get credit? These are the people who are responsible for the current situation.

Those few criminals who managed to briefly hold vast sums of other people's money havent affected the economy much at all, since most of the money ends up getting recovered in the end.

Who does more harm, the guy who goes out mugging old ladies, and leaves several of them hospitalized in order to take from them small sums of money which are never recovered, or the slick investment banker who exploits the greed of people with more money than sense, physically harmes noone, and returns most of the money in the end?

Which one should get the harsher prison sentence?

ah yes, but US is not Belarus... so I guess you'd have to find some other solution.

Capitalism is the only system of economics that functions with human nature. The problem with communism is that people have no incentive to do more then the bare minimum.

Obviously capitalism can't be fully unregulated, since they leads to "rule by cooperation", but with the proper safeguards in place to stop business dishonesty and employee abuse it works extremely well. If these safeguards aren't in place then the system can indeed collapse.

Giving greed a free ride instead of trying to curb it. GENIUS!

EDIT: BTW, how is this system going to work? A constant economic growth is a logical contradiction.

But there is more than just two unique economic systems, and to simplify the issue to just that (either capitalism or communism), which seems many people are inclined to, would be incorrect.

Ok. You still don't have a counter-proposal. Not only that, but really, greed is just a human quality, so why not give it a free ride if it can be useful?

Constant economic growth does not contradict any logic at all. The issue is likely that you are not drawing a distinction between intensive and extensive growth. The former is where growth is a result of improved use of resources, like better skills and technology, and the latter is a result of getting more resources. If there were only extensive growth, then constant growth would be a contradiction, but given intensive growth and the large number of things we do not know but that could probably be found useful, there is a big margin for the economy to continuously grow.

My counter proposal is....capitalism

We banged on about it but never had it. We never will truely (obviously) but we need to learn about what we do have and what we actually want and, then devise the required regulation.

We did have regulation and protections in place at the time of the crash. It was regulation and protectionism that props up corporatism, so it didn’t help one bit, on the contrary.

The current form of 'capitalism' is corporatism, simple as that. Without corporate protectionism and the legal framework that supports these, the corporations would die out. They are very inefficient/have massive diseconomies and are bad for innovation. Sometime burring it for decades (run flat tire anyone?), and rarely doing any initial research, spending a lot of their time chewing up the courts and ever-greening patents that they should not own in the first place. They simply would not exist for long without the advantage we give them.

There is so much talk of completion but really businesses aim to avoid it, especially corporations, but competition is good for consumers (and humanity) and we don't have nearly enough of it.

@ the OP if you hanged all those responsible you would make Madame Defarge look like a moderate libertarian