DiabloWags said:
cbbass1 said:
DiabloWags said:
cbbass1 said:
You're also right, that it would be like "cutting off your nose to spite your face," except for the Government's handing out "free stuff", like they did in the wake of the 2008 crash. The banks who caused the financial crisis got a huuge bailout, and used the money to buy other banks & financial companies. But homeowners who were victims of bank & lender fraud got nothing.
If no one was held accountable in 2008, why not do it again?
I'm afraid your narrative is far too simplistic.
As predicted, you try to fit EVERYTHING in a nice, tidy, little, "box" of Capital vs Labor.
Never mind that banks like Wachovia ($307 Billion in assets) and Washington Mutual ($813 Billion in assets) were near collapse and literally taken over by the FDIC because of the housing market collapse.
Yes, and then Wells Fargo bought Wachovia for peanuts (after receiving a generous bailout), and JPM Chase bought Washington Mutual for peanuts, after receiving a generous bailout.
The FDIC made the depositors whole; but the people who were duped into buying an overpriced house . . .
Of course in your book, the buyer of the home (mortgage) can be a complete moron and assumes zero accountability or responsibility whatsoever.
I'm surprised that you didnt also blame the Federal Reserve during this time period for raising interest rates and causing these ARMS to become unserviceable by the Avg Joe who you claim was "duped".
I'm not absolving mortgage borrowers of their share of responsibility. When the Housing Bubble was inflating, 2002 - 2006, I did my best to discourage people from buying if they didn't have the income to make the payments. People should've known that "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."
The 2008 Financial Collapse was systemic. It started with the passage, under Clinton, of the
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (1999), which cancelled the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which prohibited banks from making risky investments with their depositors' money. The banks lobbied for this deregulation for years, and finally got it.
Many of the
bad loans that were made (& securitized as mortgage-backed securities [MBS]) would never have been made under the Glass-Steagall regulations. Before deregulation, if a bank made a bad loan, and the borrower defaulted, they would have to take the loss. After deregulation, lenders would make bad loans, collect the fees, bundle & sell the loans, and let other financial institutions service the loans & carry the default risk -- which they would ultimately pass on to U.S. Taxpayers.
Remember, too, that in 2002, the Bush administration kicked off a U.S. Taxpayer-funded Home Ownership Program to encourage more people to buy homes, even if they didn't have enough cash for a down payment.
Presiden George W Bush announces Home Ownership ProgramAt the time, most people still had faith that the Federal Government would never orchestrate a massive con on millions of working Americans. But that's exactly what they did. They used Taxpayer money to cover down payments, and then used taxpayer money to compensate the banks & financial institutions who lost money by gambling on all this activity.
You can blame the victims all you want, but the fact remains that in 2008, and now, you have sociopaths in charge of economic policy, and they're conducting another scam to enrich themselves at the expense of you, me, and America's workers & taxpayers.
The criminals weren't held accountable in 2008, and they aren't likely to be held accountable for this upcoming collapse. Their plan is already in place to increase their economic and political power, at our expense.
From the late 1800s until FDR's New Deal & Glass-Steagall, there was a financial collapse every 7 to 15 years. That's just the norm with unregulated,
laissez-faire Capitalism. The exception is the New Deal period, when banks were regulated, we had slow, steady growth, a stable environment for businesses and worker to do well, and a robust U.S. economy that was the strongest in world economic history. Until 1980...
When I got home from my poker game last night, my son was watching "The Big Short." It's definitely worth watching again as we head into yet another financial crisis.