He made about as much sense as your goddammed yapping hound.
I'm sure a 6th grader who sat in on a Physics 408 lecture would feel the same way.
I see no way that individual investors, even those who were duly diligent, could have predicted and avoided the problems surrounding the financial crisis of 2008.
You're kidding, right?
{Neither wealth nor the burden of debt is distributed evenly across households. Hence, the spending effects of changes in these influences also will not be evenly distributed. For example, increased debt burdens appear disproportionately attributable to higher-income households. Calculations by staff at the Federal Reserve suggest that the ratio of household liabilities to annual after-tax income for the top fifth of all households ranked by income rose from about 1.1 at the end of 1998 to 1.3 at the end of 2001. The increase for the lower four-fifths was not quite half as large.
Although high-income households should not experience much strain in meeting their debt-service obligations, others might.
Indeed, repayment difficulties have already increased, particularly in the subprime markets for consumer loans and mortgages. }
Alan Greenspan - 2002
FRB: Testimony, Greenspan -- Monetary policy and the economic outlook -- April 17, 2002
{House prices are of interest to you and me as
home owners/buyers, but what matters for the
economy is residential investment: new homes and
improvements to existing homes. A collapse of this
component of GDP has always led the way into
recessions, has contributed directly about half of the
GDP reduction, and more indirectly. This sector is
absolutely critical in the next several years. Can it
keep percolating along, or will we have a long overdue
“consumer cycle” led by a collapse in residential
investment?}
http://iona.ghandchi.com/UCLA/Bubble.pdf
The fundamental collapse of the investment banking sector and the good hard tug it gave on the leg of the traditional banking sector when it went under was beyond the ability of the Motleyfool reader to predict. You just didn't have the visibility. By the time you realized there was a problem the DJIA was in four-figure range and you were wondering whether it was time to get back in.
Utter bullshit, as the cites above and thousands more demonstrate. You are engaging in historical revision, flat out rewriting of history.
More regulation? Maybe. Different regulation, more stringent enforcement of existing regulaton? Maybe.
Maybe.
No regulation? Effing nuts, that is.
Who suggested no regulation? Laissez Faire does not mean that prohibitions against fraud and coercion are ignored.
The primary institutions who perpetrated fraud were the FRB, Fannie, and Freddie. The only difference between Franklin Raines and Bernie Madoff is that Raines had political protection from Dodd and Frank, the two crooks whom your party now touts as protectors.
Oh, and this isn't partisan blather;
{"OFHEO's mission is to ensure that (Fannie and Freddie) operate in a safe and sound manner," the agency's director, James Lockhart, said in a statement. "That cannot occur without corporate management providing prudent and responsible leadership and setting the appropriate ethical and overall 'tone at the top'."
Fannie and Freddie both had multibillion-dollar accounting scandals that stunned Wall Street and brought record civil fines against them in settlements with the government.
The amounts that Raines, Howard and Spencer are paying under the settlement are far less than what the government was seeking when it sued them in December 2006. OFHEO sought fines of around $100 million against the three and restitution totaling more than $115 million in bonus money tied to an improper accounting scheme.}
Business & Technology | Franklin Raines to pay $24.7 million to settle Fannie Mae lawsuit | Seattle Times Newspaper
Raines is a proven crook, as are Dodd and Frank.
This wasn't "the market" or "speculation," this was flat out fraud, starting with the FRB. More regulation? Hardly helps when the "regulators" are the main crooks.
This is what I love about you of the left; your guys steal us blind under the color of authority, then you demand that if we "only had more regulation" they wouldn't steal so much.
It's like the commercial says - "When an investment lacks discipline its rarely this obvious" - and that's true...
What continues to annoy me is how many people still consider the crisis of '08 to be a "subprime mortgage crisis caused by CRA". That's obviously not an accurate picture. The Oliver-Stone-notion that people who were personally irresponsible are to blame for this and they're the ones who are suffering is equally ludicrous. The collapse of the housing market in '08 affected all of us.
Put that in your MBA and smoke it.
Many people consider the Malibu fires to be a crises of matches caused by lighting brush on fire, but a little match won't destroy hundreds of homes and millions of acres, right?
CRA was the match.
