Income inequality helped cause the crash

[Truthmatters]

How income inequality contributed to the Great Recession | Till van Treeck | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

 

[Avatar4321]

They are wrong. Dishonesty, corruption, carelessness, and pride caused the recession.

 

[California Girl]

'Comment is free'.... one gets what one pays for.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Yes, and cow farts cause Global Warming

 

[SniperFire]

Yes, and cow farts cause Global Warming

I think it is dinosaur farts now.

 

[saveliberty]

"Higher inequality, combined with easy credit, can pressure the lower and middle class to keep up with consumers at the top"

So poor people trying to act like they were rich is the wealthy's fault?

 

[Staidhup]

How income inequality contributed to the Great Recession | Till van Treeck | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Now that's a creative interpretation of bubble economics, too bad it fails to pass muster with reality.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Yes, and cow farts cause Global Warming

I think it is dinosaur farts now.

Jurassic Cows

 

[Katzndogz]

There is no such thing as income equality, any more than there is such a thing as talent equality or work ethic equality.

 

[yidnar]

How income inequality contributed to the Great Recession | Till van Treeck | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

idiots borrowing more than they could handle is what caused it !! now you want affirmotive action for people that take out loans ??

 

[francoHFW]

From the article:

The idea that the Great Recession of 2008 may have been caused not just by careless banking but also social inequality is currently all the rage among macroeconomists.

Much of the impetus for the current debate stems from the widely discussed 2010 book Fault Lines, written by Raghuram Rajan, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. Rajan argues that many lower- and middle-class consumers in the United States have reacted to the stagnation of their real incomes since the early 1980s by reducing saving and increasing debt. This has temporarily kept private consumption and thus aggregate demand and employment high, but also contributed to the creation of the credit bubble which eventually burst.

Yup 30 years of voodoo adds 273% to the richest's wealth, screws the non rich and the country. The dupes and the non rich borrow to keep up the dream. The super Pub morons then destroy the financial markets. (and the stupidest wars ever)...

Total greed and incompetence. And you morons want to do it AGAIN. PFFFFFT!

 

[francoHFW]

Of course there's income inequality, shytteheads, just not the WORST income inequality (and upward mobility and lowest taxes on the rich) since the 20's, and THAT Pub depression. Pub dupes, stupidest voters in the world. Worst Party too, pandering to the greedy stupid rich.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Fannie and Freddie were the binary financial black holes at the epicenter of the 2008 meltdown. They need to be consolidated and liquidated ASAP

 

[Quantum Windbag]

How income inequality contributed to the Great Recession | Till van Treeck | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

You should have read the article, not just the headline.

 

[DiamondDave]

Editorial opinion drivel

 

[francoHFW]

Fannie and Freddie were the binary financial black holes at the epicenter of the 2008 meltdown. They need to be consolidated and liquidated ASAP

Horseshytte dittohead- After 20 years of handling 80% of home loans, F+F all of a sudden handled 20% in 2003-2006. They got in late and and were nothing compared to the big banks. Read something, dupe.

 

[whitehall]

God help us if we are ever offered "income equality" by the government. How did it work out after the Bolshevic revolution? Oh, today's progressives can do it better? No thanks.

 

[francoHFW]

The “Big Lie,” in a nutshell, is that the 2008 financial crisis was caused not by Wall Street’s shady lending practices or exotic (and ultimately worthless) financial instruments but by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were forced by the government’s expansive housing policy to make riskier and riskier loans. Because it conveniently lays the blame for the recession at the feet of the government, the Big Lie is a conservative favorite. The problem is, it’s not remotely supported by facts. Morgenson finds it ironic that “Washington’s push to increase homeownership opened the door for companies to sell poisonous and tricky loans that have now imperiled many of the most vulnerable,” yet private lenders were the ones to pioneer these poisonous loans, and made more of them than Fannie or Freddie ever did. Joe Nocera, a colleague of Morgenson’s at the Times who got his start as a business reporter, summed it up quite nicely on Dec. 23 when he stated that conservative scholar Peter Wallison “almost single-handedly created the myth that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the financial crisis.” Almost, because Wallison had a passel of partners in crime, including the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Congressional Republicans looking for any excuse to attack Fannie and Freddie, and — though he doesn’t mention her — Gretchen Morgenson herself. The Times evidently has a policy against speaking ill of one’s co-workers, as demonstrated by Paul Krugman’s wink-wink-nod criticism of David Brooks’ economic ignorance (“as some pundits have said . . . .&#8221, but Morgenson and her bestselling book Reckless Endangerment are pretty hard to overlook. Reckless Endangerment is the Big Lie writ large — 352 pages large — and has been parroted as gospel by the news media despite an overwhelming consensus by mainstream economists that federal housing policy had almost nothing to do with the financial crisis.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Fannie and Freddie were the binary financial black holes at the epicenter of the 2008 meltdown. They need to be consolidated and liquidated ASAP

Horseshytte dittohead- After 20 years of handling 80% of home loans, F+F all of a sudden handled 20% in 2003-2006. They got in late and and were nothing compared to the big banks. Read something, dupe.

Fannie and Freddie had de facto AAA credit rating and were so desperate for paper that they accepted No Income No asset paper and stuck an AAA rating on it.

Banks had to sell them paper to keep their CRA in good order

Since when is 1/5th of a market not a big deal? Oh right, when you're a fucking ignorant moron, that's when

 

[CrusaderFrank]

The “Big Lie,” in a nutshell, is that the 2008 financial crisis was caused not by Wall Street’s shady lending practices or exotic (and ultimately worthless) financial instruments but by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were forced by the government’s expansive housing policy to make riskier and riskier loans. Because it conveniently lays the blame for the recession at the feet of the government, the Big Lie is a conservative favorite. The problem is, it’s not remotely supported by facts. Morgenson finds it ironic that “Washington’s push to increase homeownership opened the door for companies to sell poisonous and tricky loans that have now imperiled many of the most vulnerable,” yet private lenders were the ones to pioneer these poisonous loans, and made more of them than Fannie or Freddie ever did. Joe Nocera, a colleague of Morgenson’s at the Times who got his start as a business reporter, summed it up quite nicely on Dec. 23 when he stated that conservative scholar Peter Wallison “almost single-handedly created the myth that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the financial crisis.” Almost, because Wallison had a passel of partners in crime, including the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Congressional Republicans looking for any excuse to attack Fannie and Freddie, and — though he doesn’t mention her — Gretchen Morgenson herself. The Times evidently has a policy against speaking ill of one’s co-workers, as demonstrated by Paul Krugman’s wink-wink-nod criticism of David Brooks’ economic ignorance (“as some pundits have said . . . .”), but Morgenson and her bestselling book Reckless Endangerment are pretty hard to overlook. Reckless Endangerment is the Big Lie writ large — 352 pages large — and has been parroted as gospel by the news media despite an overwhelming consensus by mainstream economists that federal housing policy had almost nothing to do with the financial crisis.

"These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis" -- Democrats 2008