We didn't learn a thing from the housing bubble

[Mac1958]

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Absolutely amazing how so many people are comfortable blaming the biggest, widest, deepest, most complex financial collapse in history on one person or one cause.

It's just a wee bit more complicated than that.

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[Agit8r]

There were numerous contributing factors to the housing collapse. The most malicious was the upward manipulation of the LIBOR rate in 2006. That those worthless pieces of shit haven't been broken on the wheel, or at least guillotined, should anger everyone.

 

[The Rabbi]

They would not have been capable of causing such a catastrophe without government.

The catastrophe was caused when the industry was de-regulated.

When and how did that happen, genius? Mortgages are among the most regulated products out there. Have been for years.

 

[editec]

We've been getting a lot of refi offers lately. A lot of ARM's, they always emphasize in bold letters we'll be able to skip up to two payments, and they always encourage us to consume the difference on our note rather than save it.

I ask of the loan industry and government - did we not learn anything from the housing bubble? Its like it never happened! These guys are ready to do it all over again.

Why shouldn't they try it again? They know big daddy government will be there to catch them if they fall.

Yup.

We should have let everything fail, let the chips fall where they may. It would have hurt more in the short term, but we would have been a lot better off in the long term.

Yeah here's the thing...the BANSTERS have so intertwined their fate with that of our economy that had Bush II and then Obama's administrations "..let the chips fall where they may"?

nearly bank in the Western world would have gone belly up and FDIC (and its variants) WOULD have been on the hook for an unknowable TRILLIONS (probably hundreds) of dollars.

I mean nobody would like to have seen the bastards suffer the fate you propose more than I would, WQ, but it would have caused a let the chips fall where they may depression that would beeen SO bad than within DAYS you wouldn't have been able to find food on the shelves at your store, you banbks would have been closed, you employers would have been OOB and life as we know it would have ended.

My major complaint isn't that the government stepped in, its HOW they stepped in and WHO they saved by doing so.

Seriously, some people needed to go to prison.

The fact that they did not shows us who OUR government (both parties) takes orders from.

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

What "shitty idea" was that? Loaning money to people regardless of race? Because that's all the CRA does. So unless you're suggesting loaning to blacks is the cause of the recession I don't know what it is you're even talking about.

No, loaning money to people who couldn't afford to pay it back, simpleton. Does everything have to be about race to you people?

There's no law requiring banks to loan money to people who can't pay it back.

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

There were numerous contributing factors to the housing collapse. The most malicious was the upward manipulation of the LIBOR rate in 2006. That those worthless pieces of shit haven't been broken on the wheel, or at least guillotined, should anger everyone.

Most malicious perhaps but the housing bubble was already set to burst in 2006.

 

[kaz]

They would not have been capable of causing such a catastrophe without government.

The catastrophe was caused when the industry was de-regulated.

When and how did that happen, genius? Mortgages are among the most regulated products out there. Have been for years.

You're absolutely right, but you can't get anywhere with an ideologue.

 

[The Rabbi]

The catastrophe was caused when the industry was de-regulated.

When and how did that happen, genius? Mortgages are among the most regulated products out there. Have been for years.

You're absolutely right, but you can't get anywhere with an ideologue.

And he's left the discussion. Typical shoot n' scoot.

 

[S.J.]

What "shitty idea" was that? Loaning money to people regardless of race? Because that's all the CRA does. So unless you're suggesting loaning to blacks is the cause of the recession I don't know what it is you're even talking about.

No, loaning money to people who couldn't afford to pay it back, simpleton. Does everything have to be about race to you people?

There's no law requiring banks to loan money to people who can't pay it back.

Your ignorance is profound, isn't it?

Community Reinvestment Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Avorysuds]

Obama has done everything in his power to build another housing bubble... You voted for him twice.

 

[Billo_Really]

When and how did that happen, genius? Mortgages are among the most regulated products out there. Have been for years.

The Gramm-Bliley bill.

 

[The Rabbi]

When and how did that happen, genius? Mortgages are among the most regulated products out there. Have been for years.

The Gramm-Bliley bill.

LOL! Your'e so ******* predictable. It's like the sun setting.

Yeah, there was no deregulation in the mortgage industry that led to this.

 

[editec]

I just reread this entire thread.

What I find is that many of us definitely understand some of the problem and how it happened.

Some of us apparently think the government is at fault.

You are 100% correct.

Some of us apparently think that the private bansters are at fault

You are 100% correct.

Seriously, do we NOT ALL UNDERSTAND that it took Fannie and Freddy allowing subprime mortgages to be bundled with their bonds, to also allow private banks to use those SAME standards to EXASCERBATE the problem as they topo sold bonds bundled with subprime mortgages?

This disaster is the result of a government failing that was created by a government controlled by the private banks.


And, as evidence to support that narrative, I ask you this

When the shit hit the fan who got bailed out?

The BANKS, not the people, not the society, but just the MASTERS of our government...the banks!

 

[zeke]

Here is what really caused the housing crash:

Home loans didn't bring on the recession; gimmicky financial instruments bloated to 100 times their value are what caused all this pain.

Wall Street turned a few million home-loans into what Warren Buffet called "economic weapons of mass destruction," cratered the global economy and then, when the bubble burst, turned around and insisted on a massive bailout courtesy of the American tax-payer.

The entire subprime mortgage market was worth only $1.4 trillion in the fall of 2007, and that includes loans that were up-to-date. As former Goldman Sachs trader Nomi Prins noted in her book, It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street, the federal government could have bought up every single residential mortgage in the country – good, bad and in between – and it would have cost a trillion less than the bailouts.

Short of that, notes Prins, if the crisis were really about people buying McMansions that they couldn't afford, “we could have solved it much more cheaply in a couple of days in late 2008, by simply providing borrowers with additional capital to reduce their loan principals. It would have cost about 3 percent of what the entire bailout wound up costing, with comparatively similar risk.”

What brought down the global economy was as much as $140 trillion worth of financial gimmickery built on top of the mortgage industry. It was the alphabet soup of the credit meltdown – the CDOs, default swaps and other derivitaves that made less than a trillion dollars of foreclosed loans into an economic weapon of mass destruction that would cost the American economy alone $14 trillion in lost wealth.

More: The Absurd Zombie Lie About the Economy Right-Wingers Desperately Cling To -- And Why It's Totally Wrong | By Joshua Holland/Alternet

Amazing how the stupid fuks that think the housing collapse was all the fault of Fannie and Freddie and the CRA just slide right on by when this kind of info comes up.

They really are clueless about how the housing mess developed and who made hundreds of millions of dollars off of it.

 

[Mac1958]

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The Meltdown was a massive, group effort. It took decades to create. It was as much cultural as political.

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