Now, the facts are this, these are the people to blame for the housing crash;
1. Sub prime borrowers
2. Greedy bankers, mortgage brokers, mortgage lenders, etc.
3. Incompetent banking management
That's it, I'm sorry, that's the real world and it is that simple; People who are financial deadbeats and those that were stupid enough to lend them the money in the first place.
Alas, you can sympathize with me and my hopelessness about battling ignorance when you read the "comments" section below which belies the true intelligence of the American public and makes "Jay Walking" with Jay Leno, not a staged event. Here are some samples;
BLAME, I blame all the large corporations who send all there manufacturing overseas and failure to take care of the consumers by providing jobs here in the states. Then we can also look at the war, the president, oil prices, housing, There is to many factors to blame just one thing.
Yahoo! Finance User - Monday July 07, 2008 10:39AM EDT
Bush is the number one economy killer...6 billion a month for a unwinable war!!! Oil Monger!
evanbubbafoster - Monday July 07, 2008 10:48AM EDT
Congress and their ability to not care about anyone but themselves.
rlhoman - Monday July 07, 2008 10:51AM EDT
Alan Greenspan and his fellow bankers. Greed is king.
lade - Monday July 07, 2008 10:52AM EDT
Blame the mis led war. Country has spent over trillions on war instead of on its people. It is easy to blame outsourcing of manufacturing and service, where has the innovation been. Americal always innovated that is not true in today's day and age. May be someone needs to think of outsourcing innovation to other countries. We are still dependent on foreign oil. Back in 2001 there was a great push towards alternate energy, with the war euphoria, and the expectation that US will conquer Iraq the gas prices will drop to 50 cents. Well non of those happened and the reality is every one got affected.
invbanker81 - Monday July 07, 2008 10:52AM EDT
That's right, D.... The economy absolutely needs to be paying much more for the products that we buy so cheaply from China, India, and the likes. Maybe pay more for the computer that you are typing on. Just a thought...
stork2474 - Monday July 07, 2008 10:53AM EDT
Bush has killed the economy by wasting 1/2 Trillion dollars on a war that can't be won and never ends.
cherly.gerber - Monday July 07, 2008 10:54AM EDT
Yahoo! Finance User & Arthur M - Your clueless if believe Bush and the Republicans did this by themselfs, Name me a single issue tha you blame them for it and I'll show the Democratic blood all over it.
bigdaddyreid - Monday July 07, 2008 10:55AM EDT
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Greed!
b2u_today - Monday July 07, 2008 10:55AM EDT
Greedy politicians and us fools who keep re-electing them.
Interesting. Generally speaking, I try like all hell to avoid reading comments sections on popular sites or blogs - Yahoo! in particular. They're almost depressing.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I wonder if it's a natural sociological organization for humans to eventually sort themselves out in free societies such that the people who end up influencing others are the least educated.
I've made a habit out of driving by the college nearby and yelling out the window, "Look! Teenagers and college students with OPINIONS! HAHAHAHAHA"
Sigh.
Granted, I don't know *BOING* about economics, but I'll admit that up front and tell someone what I do know before engaging them argumentatively. The problem is that I find nobody else seems willing to be intellectually honest - either with themselves or with me. I can only carry an argument for so long before I just get tired of dealing with semantics and relativism.
Incidentally, have you ever gone through Obama's site and read through his actual issues? Most conservatives claim he's more enigmatic than anything, speaking emptily about "hope" and "change" but never numerating how. This is, in fact, how he talks in public, and how his fans speak as well (they are, after all, a bunch of ignorant *BOING* students and socialists). His site is actually quite clear and very concise on how he wants to do things. I think my favorites are things like making it illegal to fire striking employees (work one day, go on strike demanding double wages, accept, repeat) and stating that any employer who does not assist employees in healthcare be subject to additional taxes (unless said employer is under an unstated income range).
Someday I'd like to see some honesty. I'd like to see a liberal truly draft a bill that just said, "WE HATE WAL-MART."
But... I've always said.. if a liberal sorted out all the contradictions in their ideas, s/he wouldn't be a liberal anymore.
Bleh. That was a tangent.
These are the people who are going to be voting???? We are all doomed...
ReplyDeleteThe level ignorance is scary.
Wow, what a bunch of fools.
ReplyDeleteI'd blame lenders before subprime borrowers, mostly since the lenders are the professionals in this instance and one would *hope* they wouldn't be as stupid as the average subprime borrower.
I'm also blaming the Fed for keeping interest rates so damn low that money was literally free (when the fed funds rate is lower than the rate of inflation...), which is why bankers were so eager to lend money to anybody with a pulse in the first place.
Oh yeah, and they could repackage their crappy subprime loans as CDOs and sell them off to investors, which is how they got scattered all over the freaking economy. Investors who bought this subprime garbage share some of the blame as well.
I completely understand your frustration. It's amazing how people with BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) always bring up the war in Iraq or foreign oil for every ill under the sun.
ReplyDelete"But... I've always said.. if a liberal sorted out all the contradictions in their ideas, s/he wouldn't be a liberal anymore."
ReplyDeleteBeen there, done that, got the T-shirt. I can't believe it took as long as it did for me to see it, but I don't understand how liberals can put so much faith in the religious and sexual decisions of the individual, but place almost no faith in that same individual's economic decisions.
"Cheney and his OPEC Cartel"
ReplyDeleteOPEC is formed by countries that Leftists are constantly defending.
If you haven't seen this yet, you might be interested.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fin.gc.ca/news08/08-051e.html
http://www.teamfisher.com/blogs/norm_fisher/archive/2008/07/09/canadian-government-says-no-more-40-year-mortgage-for-you.aspx
The only people that are to blame are the banks that didn't practice proper risk management. They should fail for the incompetence but instead we will be bailing them out through the back door of Fan and Fred.
ReplyDeleteTheir comments might be ignorant or off the mark but they are near the mark in more often than you would like. Take for instance the market arbitrage, wages being stagnant while productivity soars, is a sign of deflationary wages for the working productive people that depend on their labor to live. So yes, the so called free trade is also to blame as people who would have otherwise been non-risks are every day becoming riskier to lend too. Of course if the banks and government hadn't acted like drunken sailors the last 20 years of market arbitrage would have ended far sooner. Now it ends with a bust of insolvency. Welcome to capitalism, this is where it always leads.
Enjoy.