Who Really Wrecked the Economy?

[GWV5903]

CRA was the seed to this, planted by Carter, enhanced by Clinton....

You do not give anyone a mortgage when all they have in the game is $500....

It really is that simple....

Not really that simple. None of that would have been possible without the Federal Reserve. Certainly what you said is true, but at the heart of the matter is the Fed.

I agree the Fed is a central part....

The CRA though opened doors that were never opened before, and for obvious reasons....

You don't offer crack to an addict, right? By the same definition, you do not offer a mortgage to a terrible borrower....

Where I believe Carter had good intentions based on his Habitat for Humanity involvement, Clinton's motives where purely political....

 

[geauxtohell]

I feel like a fool.

I clicked this link expecting some sort of academic discussion that pointed out how both parties are to blame, in which there is some merit in arguing.

Instead, I get a bunch of partisan dribble and selective amnesia. I am just certain that fighting two wars on loan had nothing to do with our economic woes. /sarcasm.

At this point, I don't blame the OP. I know she is a partisan hack that makes a habit of linking to other partisan websites/journals that support her preconceived notions.

Instead, I blame myself for thinking that this thread might be different.

 

[geauxtohell]

CRA was the seed to this, planted by Carter, enhanced by Clinton....

You do not give anyone a mortgage when all they have in the game is $500....

It really is that simple....

Damn this country for electing Carter and Clinton sequentially.

If only a true Republican president had come between them to stand up for conservative values and wreck this unholy organization known as the CRA.............

 

[8675309]

John Maynard Keynes
Occupation: Economist

The Keynesian response to a recession or depression is government action designed to encourage spending and discourage saving, and a key component is that the government’s central bank should lower interest rates when prices are too high and raise interest rates when prices fall. His advice to the British and American governments called for a massive public works program to emerge from the depths of the Depression, and he endorsed deficit spending as a response to recessions.

 

[midcan5]

Reagan started the collapse that became the 2008 Great Recession, regulatory structure is so destroyed today and greed so powerful a motivator, some predict another crash similar to the GD which was like the GR and similar to the S&L crash under Reagan/Bush Sr.

"A little more than a decade ago, Born foresaw a financial cataclysm, accurately predicting that exotic investments known as over-the-counter derivatives could play a crucial role in a crisis much like the one now convulsing America. Her efforts to stop that from happening ran afoul of some of the most influential men in Washington, men with names like Greenspan and Levitt and Rubin and Summers -- the same Larry Summers who is now a key economic adviser to President Obama."

Brooksley Born, the Cassandra of the Derivatives Crisis

"...Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1996-1999, wanted to regulate the financial markets that have caused us so much trouble, but Greenspan, Rubin, Summers, and Levitt stood in the way and would not allow it. I wonder if they patted her on the head as they explained "that they understood finance better than she did."

I have argued that the attitudes toward regulation were the biggest problem in creating this crisis, and this article reinforces that view."

Economist's View: "Credit Crisis Cassandra"


"Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability....We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks – when one fails, they all fall. The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crises less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur...I shiver at the thought." Nassim Nicholas Taleb


And check this out: http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/138954-five-zombie-economic-ideas-that-refuse-to-die.html

>

 

[Douger]

NOOP.
murkins wrecked the economy by trying to live like rock stars while earning a rock raker's salary.
Their masters offered a hit off the pipe and they graciously accepted.
Killing someone is murder.
Talking someone into killing themselves is an art.

 

[California Girl]

Reagan started the collapse that became the 2008 Great Recession, regulatory structure is so destroyed today and greed so powerful a motivator, some predict another crash similar to the GD which was like the GR and similar to the S&L crash under Reagan/Bush Sr.

"A little more than a decade ago, Born foresaw a financial cataclysm, accurately predicting that exotic investments known as over-the-counter derivatives could play a crucial role in a crisis much like the one now convulsing America. Her efforts to stop that from happening ran afoul of some of the most influential men in Washington, men with names like Greenspan and Levitt and Rubin and Summers -- the same Larry Summers who is now a key economic adviser to President Obama."

Brooksley Born, the Cassandra of the Derivatives Crisis

"...Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1996-1999, wanted to regulate the financial markets that have caused us so much trouble, but Greenspan, Rubin, Summers, and Levitt stood in the way and would not allow it. I wonder if they patted her on the head as they explained "that they understood finance better than she did."

I have argued that the attitudes toward regulation were the biggest problem in creating this crisis, and this article reinforces that view."

Economist's View: "Credit Crisis Cassandra"


"Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability....We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks – when one fails, they all fall. The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crises less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur...I shiver at the thought." Nassim Nicholas Taleb


And check this out: http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/138954-five-zombie-economic-ideas-that-refuse-to-die.html

>

Earlier in the thread, I laid out - admittedly in quite simplistic terms (in an attempt to make it understandable for the more economically challenged) - what started this and the steps taken by the Dems that brought us here. Don't misunderstand me, I think both parties played politics with the economy - which I personally find absolutely reprehensible. However, if it wasn't for Carter and Clinton - particularly Clinton - we would not be here.

He was the one who decided to use mortgages as a 'vote winning' strategy, and no one will convince me that he did not know the enormous danger that he was putting the country in.

 

[Toro]

I blame George Washington.

If you Americans just hadn't revolted, you'd still be in your rightful place under the British Crown, and this crisis wouldn't have happened.

 

[California Girl]

John Maynard Keynes
Occupation: Economist

The Keynesian response to a recession or depression is government action designed to encourage spending and discourage saving, and a key component is that the government’s central bank should lower interest rates when prices are too high and raise interest rates when prices fall. His advice to the British and American governments called for a massive public works program to emerge from the depths of the Depression, and he endorsed deficit spending as a response to recessions.

Yea, of course he would. It supports the Claward Piven strategy.

 

[Toro]

CRA was the seed to this, planted by Carter, enhanced by Clinton....

You do not give anyone a mortgage when all they have in the game is $500....

It really is that simple....

Damn this country for electing Carter and Clinton sequentially.

If only a true Republican president had come between them to stand up for conservative values and wreck this unholy organization known as the CRA.............

And again, there have been many laws passed since the 1970s affecting banking credit. So you can take every single one of them and say "That was the beginning of the housing crisis." The CRA is a convenient one, for obvious reasons.

 

[California Girl]

CRA was the seed to this, planted by Carter, enhanced by Clinton....

You do not give anyone a mortgage when all they have in the game is $500....

It really is that simple....

Damn this country for electing Carter and Clinton sequentially.

If only a true Republican president had come between them to stand up for conservative values and wreck this unholy organization known as the CRA.............

And again, there have been many laws passed since the 1970s affecting banking credit. So you can take every single one of them and say "That was the beginning of the housing crisis." The CRA is a convenient one, for obvious reasons.

The CRA just made it achievable. Clinton is the one who politicized the economy. There is no way around that. However, I don't hold him solely responsible - unlike the partisans - I see huge fuck ups from both parties that dragged us here. And, the huge fuck ups by the financial industry... and, the absolute greed of vast numbers of Americans who wanted to live like millionaires when they were not millionaires.

As has already been said, every American carries a share of the responsibility for this.

 

[sparky]

I feel like a fool.

I clicked this link expecting some sort of academic discussion that pointed out how both parties are to blame, in which there is some merit in arguing.

Instead, I get a bunch of partisan dribble and selective amnesia. I am just certain that fighting two wars on loan had nothing to do with our economic woes. /sarcasm.

At this point, I don't blame the OP. I know she is a partisan hack that makes a habit of linking to other partisan websites/journals that support her preconceived notions.

Instead, I blame myself for thinking that this thread might be different.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe2f_9I-W5U&feature=player_detailpage]YouTube - ‪Now - "Do Something"‬‏[/ame]

 

[Toro]

Damn this country for electing Carter and Clinton sequentially.

If only a true Republican president had come between them to stand up for conservative values and wreck this unholy organization known as the CRA.............

And again, there have been many laws passed since the 1970s affecting banking credit. So you can take every single one of them and say "That was the beginning of the housing crisis." The CRA is a convenient one, for obvious reasons.

The CRA just made it achievable. Clinton is the one who politicized the economy. There is no way around that. However, I don't hold him solely responsible - unlike the partisans - I see huge fuck ups from both parties that dragged us here. And, the huge fuck ups by the financial industry... and, the absolute greed of vast numbers of Americans who wanted to live like millionaires when they were not millionaires.

As has already been said, every American carries a share of the responsibility for this.

I think the primary cause of the Financial Crisis lay at the feet of the Fed, not either of the political parties, though both contributed to some extent. Bubbles have multiple causes, not one. But political people look at the world through a political prism and want to ascribe political explanations to things that occur, whether its appropriate or not, and especially explanations that confirm their own biases. And it doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum they are on.

The problem I have with the CRA explanation is that I can't find a single shred of data to back it up. The only arguments for the CRA are these Chaos Theory type of arguments, like above, saying "They lowered lending standards. Here's a timeline." Now, maybe that's right, I don't know, but there have been many other laws passed in banking since the 70s which had a greater affect on credit availability than the CRA. The only difference is that no one has created a timeline for those changes to trot out when needed.

Plus, my own personal experience is that it seems like a politically convenient explanation. I had literally hundreds of conversations with bankers, securities analysts, strategists, consultants, derivatives traders, mortgage investors, executives etc. about the Housing Bubble when it was happening, and not once - not one single time - did I ever hear of the CRA as a cause for what was occurring. Now, maybe I'm talking to the wrong people, but I was actively betting against the housing bubble, and made money doing so, and never in my years of watching the craziness of home prices did the CRA come up. I only started hearing about it once people started looking for scapegoats after the bubble collapsed. People always look for scapegoats after bubbles collapse. Today is no different. And in the conservative political echo chamber, the CRA is a convenient scapegoat.

But I will happily change my mind if someone can back it up, starting with at least a bit of data.

 

[PoliticalChic]

I blame George Washington.

If you Americans just hadn't revolted, you'd still be in your rightful place under the British Crown, and this crisis wouldn't have happened.

OK...now you've asked for it....and you're gonna get it:

1. On February 7, 1792, a proclamation offered at least 200 acres to every family of newcomers, as long as they took an oath of allegiance to the King. In the US, speculators charged $2-$3/acre in NY and Penn.

2. In 1796 the British surrendered forts at Detroit, Niagara, Oswego, and Michilimackinac to American garrisons.

3. Upper Canada grew from14,000 in 1791 to 75,000 in 1812. In 1805, Julian Niemcewicz saw American emigrants preparing to move to Canada: “Thus having struggled for nine years to shake off the English yoke, and having shaken it off, they go of their own free will to submit themselves again. I believe that, were they to learn that even Hell there were lands producing excellent wheat and corn and at six cents an acre, despite all the flames and all the torments, they would give up their liberty and equality to go and settle there.”

4. In 1798, Benjamin Mortimer, a Moravian missionary, discussed the people living in Canada: “Most of the inhabitants of Canada are emigrants from the United States; but no sooner did we enter the country, than we perceived that some difference exists between their national characters. In the States, the principal subject of conversation in most public companies which we entered, was the quality of lands. From Tioga to Buffaloe every traveler is supposed to be in quest of them; and little else is cared about, if bargains of that kind can only be made or disposed of to advantage. In Canada, the settlers are more humble in their views. They are mostly poor people, who are chiefly concerned to manage, in the best manner, the farms which have been given them by government.”

5. Prospects for farming were more difficult than in the States, as the route to the Atlantic was more expensive and more difficult, and ice closed it entirely in the winter. Thus, settlers had to accept a lower standard of living than in the US. That prospect screened out ambitious men.

6. Further sorting of the population was based on the British view that true loyalty required the Anglican faith, which reinforced a social order premised on inequality and deference.

a. Officials tolerated churches which kept to their communities, such as Quakers, Mennonites and Dunkers. And the Presbyterians got a pass as the national church of Scotland. And German Lutherans, as being similar theologically to Anglicans.

b. Catholics, among the Francophones, agreed to cooperation with the Anglicans, in seeing that both religions “strenuously uphold subordination of civil ranks, monarchy, and ecclesiastic monarchy.” Such a partnership would “ensure subordination in a country receiving daily swarms of republicans into its bosom.” Healey, “From Quaker to Upper Canadian: Faith And Community Among Yonge Street Friends, 1801-1850,” p. 41.

c. Both Anglicans and Catholics shared a contempt for the Baptists and Methodists, whose plain style and itinerant preaching seemed to threaten the social order. They equated evangelicalism with republicanism, and even barred evangelicals from performing marriages.

7. In leaving the United States for Upper Canada, an emigrant exchanged the assertive liberty of republican citizens, enacted in elections and elected office, for the passive benefits of British citizens: cheap land and low taxes.

a. British officials treated criticism as sedition. In fact, petitions for land had to be deferential, even obsequious.

b. In 1799 there was only one paper, the “Upper Canada Gazette,” which depended on an official subsidy, combined with strict censorship. In 1795, NY State had 31 newspapers.
(From the book, “The Civil War of 1812,” by Alan Taylor)


Consider this a three finger snap in a z-formation!

 

[PoliticalChic]

I feel like a fool.

I clicked this link expecting some sort of academic discussion that pointed out how both parties are to blame, in which there is some merit in arguing.

Instead, I get a bunch of partisan dribble and selective amnesia. I am just certain that fighting two wars on loan had nothing to do with our economic woes. /sarcasm.

At this point, I don't blame the OP. I know she is a partisan hack that makes a habit of linking to other partisan websites/journals that support her preconceived notions.

Instead, I blame myself for thinking that this thread might be different.

Congratulations on composing your most perceptive statement to date:

"I feel like a fool."

So, based on your post, and others of your persuasion, the new fall back position is "well, so it was us, but the other side deserves contumely, as well..."

At the risk of a redundancy of CG's post, let me provide some further detail, and then see if you can find any errors in this "academic discussion" which will, overwhelmingly, make the case of convicting the Left!

a. Congress passed a bill in 1975 requiring banks to provide the government with information on their lending activities in poor urban areas. Two years later, it passed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which gave regulators the power to deny banks the right to expand if they didn’t lend sufficiently in those neighborhoods. In 1979 the FDIC used the CRA to block a move by the Greater NY Savings Bank for not enough lending.

b. In 1986, when the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) threatened to oppose an acquisition by a southern bank, Louisiana Bancshares, until it agreed to new “flexible credit and underwriting standards” for minority borrowers—for example, counting public assistance and food stamps as income.

c. In 1987, Acorn led a coalition of advocacy groups calling for industry-wide changes in lending standards. Among the demanded reforms were the easing of minimum down-payment requirements and of the requirement that borrowers have enough cash at a closing to cover two to three months of mortgage payments (research had shown that lack of money in hand was a big reason some mortgages failed quickly).

d. ACORN then attacked Fannie Mae, the giant quasi-government agency that bought loans from banks in order to allow them to make new loans. Its underwriters were “strictly by-the-book interpreters” of lending standards and turned down purchases of unconventional loans, charged Acorn. The pressure eventually paid off. In 1992, Congress passed legislation requiring Fannie Mae and the similar Freddie Mac to devote 30 percent of their loan purchases to mortgages for low- and moderate-income borrowers.

e. Clinton Administration housing secretary, Henry Cisneros, declared that he would expand homeownership among lower- and lower-middle-income renters. His strategy: pushing for no-down-payment loans; expanding the size of mortgages that the government would insure against losses; and using the CRA and other lending laws to direct more private money into low-income programs.

f. Shortly after Cisneros announced his plan, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac agreed to begin buying loans under new, looser guidelines. Freddie Mac, for instance, started approving low-income buyers with bad credit histories or none at all, so long as they were current on rent and utilities payments. Freddie Mac also said that it would begin counting income from seasonal jobs and public assistance toward its income minimum, despite the FHA disaster of the sixties.

g. Freddie Mac began an “alternative qualifying” program with the Sears Mortgage Corporation that let a borrower qualify for a loan with a monthly payment as high as 50 percent of his income, at a time when most private mortgage companies wouldn’t exceed 33 percent. The program also allowed borrowers with bad credit to get mortgages if they took credit-counseling classes administered by Acorn and other nonprofits. Subsequent research would show that such classes have little impact on default rates.

h. Pressuring nonbank lenders to make more loans to poor minorities didn’t stop with Sears. If it didn’t happen, Clinton officials warned, they’d seek to extend CRA regulations to all mortgage makers. In Congress, Representative Maxine Waters called financial firms not covered by the CRA “among the most egregious redliners.”

i. Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) shocked the financial world by signing a 1994 agreement with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), pledging to increase lending to minorities and join in new efforts to rewrite lending standards. The first MBA member to sign up: Countrywide Financial, the mortgage firm that would be at the core of the subprime meltdown.

j. A 1998 sales pitch by a Bear Stearns managing director advised banks to begin packaging their loans to low-income borrowers into securities that the firm could sell. Forget traditional underwriting standards when considering these loans, the director advised. For a low-income borrower, he continued in all-too-familiar terms, owning a home was “a near-sacred obligation. A family will do almost anything to meet that monthly mortgage payment.” Bunk, says Stan Liebowitz, a professor of economics at the University of Texas: “The claim that lower-income homeowners are somehow different in their devotion to their home is a purely emotional claim with no evidence to support it.”

k. Any concern was quickly dismissed. When in early 2000 the FDIC proposed increasing capital requirements for lenders making “subprime” loans—loans to people with questionable credit, that is—Democratic representative Carolyn Maloney of New York told a congressional hearing that she feared that the step would dry up CRA loans. Her fellow New York Democrat John J. LaFalce urged regulators “not to be premature” in imposing new regulations.

l. In July 1999, HUD proposed new levels for Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s low-income lending; in September, Fannie Mae agreed to begin purchasing loans made to “borrowers with slightly impaired credit”—that is, with credit standards even lower than the government had been pushing for a generation.

m. In 2004 Congress pressed new affordable-housing goals on the two mortgage giants, which through 2007 purchased some $1 trillion in loans to lower- and moderate-income buyers. The buying spree helped spark a massive increase in securitization of mortgages to people with dubious credit.

n. In October 1994, Fannie Mae head James Johnson had reminded a banking convention that mortgages with small down payments had a much higher risk of defaulting. (A Duff & Phelps study found that they were nearly three times more likely to default than conventional mortgages.) Yet the very next month, Fannie Mae said that it expected to back loans to low-income home buyers with a 97 percent loan-to-value ratio—that is, loans in which the buyer puts down just 3 percent—as part of a commitment, made earlier that year to Congress, to purchase $1 trillion in affordable-housing mortgages by the end of the nineties. According to Edward Pinto, who served as the company’s chief credit officer, the program was the result of political pressure on Fannie Mae trumping lending standards.

o. In 1992, the Boston Fed produced an extraordinary 29-page document that codified the new lending wisdom. Conventional mortgage criteria, the report argued, might be “unintentionally biased” because they didn’t take into account “the economic culture of urban, lower-income and nontraditional customers.” Lenders should thus consider junking the industry’s traditional income-to-payments ratio and stop viewing an applicant’s “lack of credit history” as a “negative factor.” Further, if applicants had bad credit, banks should “consider extenuating circumstances”—even though a study by mortgage insurance companies would soon show, not surprisingly, that borrowers with no credit rating or a bad one were far more likely to default. If applicants didn’t have enough savings for a down payment, the Boston Fed urged, banks should allow loans from nonprofits or government assistance agencies to count toward one. A later study of Freddie Mac mortgages would find that a borrower who made a down payment with third-party funds was four times more likely to default, a reminder that traditional underwriting standards weren’t arbitrary but based on historical lending patterns.

p. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus launched Hogar in 2003, an initiative that pushed for easing lending standards for immigrants, including touting so-called seller-financed mortgages in which a builder provided down-payment aid to buyers via contributions to nonprofit groups. As a result, mortgage lending to Hispanics soared. And today, in districts where Hispanics make up at least 25 percent of the population, foreclosure rates are now nearly 50 percent higher than the national average, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

q. Republicans and Democrats, meanwhile, have scrambled to reignite the housing market through ill-conceived tax credits and renewed federal subsidies for mortgages, including the Obama administration’s mortgage bailout plan, which recalls the New Deal’s HOLC. Behind these efforts is a fundamental misconception among politicians that housing drives the American economy and therefore demands subsidy at virtually any cost. Our praiseworthy initial efforts—to eliminate housing discrimination and provide all Americans an equal opportunity to buy a home—were eventually turned on their heads by advocates and politicians, who instead tried to ensure equality of outcomes.
Obsessive Housing Disorder by Steven Malanga, City Journal Spring 2009


I must admit, thought, a giggle or two to see one of your aspect using the term "academic discussion"....
...you fit into an "academic discussion" like Edgar Winter fit in with the Wu Tang Clan….

 

[sparky]

a myoptic attempt at racializing the housing bubble , inclusive of a timeline completely devoid of key legislative acts such as Glass Stegal ( i mean, if you really want to put Clinton down fer chrissakes!) , or any other 'banking legislation' that allowed for toxic fiscals

 

[Trajan]

CRA was the seed to this, planted by Carter, enhanced by Clinton....

You do not give anyone a mortgage when all they have in the game is $500....

It really is that simple....

Damn this country for electing Carter and Clinton sequentially.

If only a true Republican president had come between them to stand up for conservative values and wreck this unholy organization known as the CRA.............

And again, there have been many laws passed since the 1970s affecting banking credit. So you can take every single one of them and say "That was the beginning of the housing crisis." The CRA is a convenient one, for obvious reasons.

maybe the reason is, they are obvious, again-

1972 Chairman Oakley Hunter joins Fannie Mae. On February 15, Fannie Mae makes its first conventional mortgage purchase, marking the beginning of a truly national secondary market for conventional mortgages.

1976 For the first time, Fannie Mae purchases more conventional loans than FHA and VA loans.


do we really need to define moral hazard?

now in fairness the hazards in the 70s were not as prevalent or or, better to say had not yet wreaked havoc on the scale that would wake us up sufficiently to the danger so in one sense I don't blame carter. They took time to dig in and the possible damage took time to reveal itself, so, like it or not someone put the housing industry in overdrive.

However- I simply refuse to believe that a guy as smart as Clinton et al, didn't understand that risk, is well, risk.

Forcing credit markets who operate on gauging risk to extend it beyond its calculation for good risk. Risk was banished from the equation in the search for a wedge to give out more stuff to more people despite historical credit actuarial means mechanisms that would have prevented such....I know, you know this.

Like it or not, you and I both know that when the gov. signals to institutions that they want something, they are willing to fund it and whats more, guarantee it, despite the so obviously poor judgment, credit risk benchmarks, mathematically ridiculously low skin in the game responsibility thresholds for purchasers and moral hazards involved, you are going to get more of it....

remember this?

OFHEO report-
Report of the Special Examination of Fannie Mae

“By deliberately and intentionally manipulating accounting to hit earnings targets,” the report says, “senior management maximized the bonuses and other executive compensation they received, at the expense of shareholders.”

this was submerged by headlines over....wait for it.....Enron.Talk about the dog that didn't bark.

In any event, we are now supposed to all atone and eat our own because well, we cannot surface any original sin, that you see is kept holy only for evil corporations like Enron et al.

In addition, in that because craven Republicans eventually went along, despite the fact yes fact that we all know once started any gov. benefit that becomes a new mean ( most especially when the holy word- 'minority' is in the mix) has slim to no chance ( and slim is outta town) of ever being walked back, we now decide that all blame is equal.....

No, not buying it, not that it matters, we are here and it is now, but that is not a true or factual view, thats like saying yea, I tempted the lion with meat and when it ran out, it ate me too, so the lion shares the blame. Thats intellectually dishonest imho.

 

[Trajan]

a myoptic attempt at racializing the housing bubble , inclusive of a timeline completely devoid of key legislative acts such as Glass Stegal ( i mean, if you really want to put Clinton down fer chrissakes!) , or any other 'banking legislation' that allowed for toxic fiscals

glass-steagall was a hey we depository institutions want in on the game too and a rep. creature ( becasue they controlled congress at the time, so they were lobbied for its enactment) that clinton signed after being passed by congress, that, is a rep. responsibility.....one of the lines of reasoning for dropping GS that these instit. would engage in low risk inv. vehicles and diversify, wrong on both counts as risk benchmarks had already by and large been destroyed and hey when the feds will guarantee your losses, why not jump in on a hot market with both feet?.

 

[Wiseacre]

Who shall be held blameless?

I do not believe anyone can claim innoncense here, it's merely a question of degree. If anyone wants to blame one group over another, have at it. My own interpretation is that we elect presidents, senators, and congressmen and women to preclude such events to the extent possible. And they didn't do it, in fact they instigated it, made it worse, and refused to properly manage it.

 

[California Girl]

Who shall be held blameless?

I do not believe anyone can claim innoncense here, it's merely a question of degree. If anyone wants to blame one group over another, have at it. My own interpretation is that we elect presidents, senators, and congressmen and women to preclude such events to the extent possible. And they didn't do it, in fact they instigated it, made it worse, and refused to properly manage it.

I agree, and I have constantly maintained that both parties are responsible, the banks are responsible, and Americans themselves are responsible. Plenty of responsibility for everyone for this fiasco. However, when certain idiot left wingers refuse point blank to acknowledge their party's responsibility, someone needs to point out historical facts to put them straight.

Many posters here have a habit of ignoring context in their enthusiasm to beat up the other 'side'.