Balanced Piece on Meltdown

[midcan5]

'How We Were Ruined & What We Can Do' By Jeff Madrick

"Charles Morris's informed and unusual book, The Trillion Dollar Meltdown, provides a decisive rebuttal to all such excuse-making and blame of "government." Morris makes it clear that it was an unquenchable thirst for easy profits that led commercial and investment banks in the US and around the world—as well as hedge funds, insurance companies, private equity firms, and other financial institutions—to take unjustifiable risks for their own gain, and in so doing jeopardize the future of the nation's credit system and now the economy itself. In fact, government-sponsored entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, did have a part in the crisis, but not because they were principally trying to help the poor buy homes. Rather, they were also trying to maximize their profits and justify large salaries and bonuses for their executives. They had been made into publicly traded companies in 1989."

How We Were Ruined & What We Can Do - The New York Review of Books

 

[dilloduck]

If many parties share the risk, this lowers the cost of borrowing and enables more people to buy homes and businesses to invest more in research, plants, and equipment.

I found this particular theory interesting. Sounds an awful lot like a ideology we are all familiar with.

 

[editec]

If many parties share the risk, this lowers the cost of borrowing and enables more people to buy homes and businesses to invest more in research, plants, and equipment.

I found this particular theory interesting. Sounds an awful lot like a ideology we are all familiar with.

Yes, the facts often do look like somebody's ideology, I agree.

That might be because some ideologies are based more on observation of the facts, though.

You see, some ideologies are reality based, and some are not.

Most of them seem to be a mix of reality-based thinking, and wishful thinking, however.

Extremes of both the far right and far left persuasions tend to have that fatal mix of reality-based ideas coupled with wishful thinking ideas, I've noted.

Pragmatists are my favorite ideologues.