Mick: The government and the financial industry were reckless, but at the end of the day, no one forced people to take loans they couldn’t afford. That’s why I say the entire culture is rotten from top to bottom. The top is merely a reflection of the bottom, and vice versa. The banks (and their executives) should have been allowed/made to fail. Likewise, the people with the mortgages should have been allowed/made to fail.
At the end of the day, bad housing loans would not have crashed the system. What crashed the system was the recklessness of the financial system. No one who is remotely informed or serious doubts that.
This thread is the financial equivalent of debating global warming. 
Let them eat cake!
MM: So all these cowboys on Wall Street went out in their posses and put guns to the heads of poor, innocent citizens and made them buy McMansions? Then, they again rode out to the McMansions and put guns to people’s heads, and made them use those McMansions as ATMs so they could buy Plasma Screen TVs?
You’re the one in denial.
I guess I’ll be one of the first ones shot when the revolution comes 
But it ain’t coming for a long, long, long time if the calibre of protester matches what I’ve seen on TV!! I’m surprised these people can even walk upright. 
I guess I’ll be one of the first ones shot when the revolution comes But it ain’t coming for a long, long, long time if the calibre of protester matches what I’ve seen on TV!! I’m surprised these people can even walk upright. [/quote]
cake and fruit loops! and puff puff pass.
At the end of the day, bad housing loans would not have crashed the system. What crashed the system was the recklessness of the financial system. No one who is remotely informed or serious doubts that.
[/quote]
So what is your informed and serious take on Fanniemai & Freddimac?
I don’t disagree with your comments about the financial system though. I lost about 10k because of derivatives. :bluemad:
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]MM: So all these cowboys on Wall Street went out in their posses and put guns to the heads of poor, innocent citizens and made them buy McMansions? Then, they again rode out to the McMansions and put guns to people’s heads, and made them use those McMansions as ATMs so they could buy Plasma Screen TVs?
You’re the one in denial.[/quote]
Give me a break. Bad mortgage loans and increased household debt was just the tip of the iceberg. They would not in themselves have caused the crash we are in. Recession yes. Major financial crisis: no.
The average person is suffering a disproportional amount of grief and hardship compared to their contribution to this crisis. Hence the anger and even righteous indignation.
Wonder how many of them thar protestors have (or even had) McMansions, plasma TV’s or otherwise were irresponsible in their spending.
MM: What do you mean by disproportional and contribution? At what point did they ever vote to increase taxes or lower expenditures of the government? At what point did they actually say, “No more pork for me or my electorate because we can’t afford it”? A what point did people stop to think that getting a loan for a house at five, six…ten times their annual income was a very bad idea? How is defaulting on a loan a person could never afford not disproportionate to the contribution? Isn’t the whole point of default that it’s meant to be painful, and therefore to be avoided by acting responsibly in obtaining the loan?
CraigTPE: If not McMansions and Plasma TVs then something else. Personal debt, both through mortgages and credit card debt, has increased markedly in the U.S. over the past decade. Savings rates were either close to zero, or even negative, during much of that time. Where did China’s economic boom come from? It wasn’t selling all that crap to its own citizens. The increases of consumption, be they in the form of food, clothing, flights, the square footage of houses, or anything else, in American society over the past decade is well documented. People have been spending like drunken sailors with money they haven’t had.
In none of this am I saying that the people at the top shouldn’t be held accountable. I’ve written before in other threads that I think that those guys should be stripped of their assets. Jail time should not be off the cards for many also. However, let’s not buy into this myth that Joe Sixpack didn’t play a very large part in all of this himself, and that he wasn’t just as greedy as Joe CEO. The only difference is that one had far more capacity to exercise his greed, but both did so to the best of their abilities.
Yeah, there’s plenty of blame to go around for Joe six pack, Banker Joe, and Joe Politician.
JDSmith, sorry to hear about you losin’ $10,000 due to derivatives. We lost some too when the wife assumed she was invested in something that was highly (and honestly) rated. Many people lost whether they were investing directly or just assuming that the pension fund, financial advisor or trusty bank manager were giving them honest advice or doing the right thing.
Of course the banks weren’t too worried about the shaky borrowers because the banks repackaged and resold the mortgages. People who weren’t qualified were happy to finally get theirs, and when the economy is doing well, no one wants to get left behind. Housing just goes up, right? 
But once those mortgages were packaged and the banks wrote computer programs that repackaged these into high-risk and (supposedly) low-risk packages, almost no one knew what they were sellin’ or buyin’ in the end.
It’s too bad that those ginormous executive pay packages encouraged excessive risk. So, how much blame can I put on the banks? And how much can I blame the borrowers and the politicians? Some, some and some.
But if you’re out $10,000 with no recourse, it’s frustrating to read about the more-responsible (for the crisis) banker getting a sweet bonus while receiving taxpayer funds. If I’m not bailing you out, I’m not going to complain about your bonus.
Disclaimer: I barely know what I’m talking about. :neutral:
Well, I was OK with it, as it was bought with profits taken from something else I owned. Netflix and Overstock or something, so that lessened the blow. But 10k on paper is still 10k. :aiyo:
Right, and they ended up buying the crap they sold months earlier. 
The big mistake though for the individual imho WAS the cheap mortgages. The banks made it FAR to easy to get the money that they should never have been qualified to get. And once they got a house, they needed to fill it with unnecessary shit, which they did, on credit, or HEY, look, a homeowner’s loan…
There were a lot of people who did not fall into this easy money trap. but they are pulled down by the cost of bailing everyone out, and the whole problem is exacerbated by the banks getting away with it and the gubmit doing fuck all to ensure it doesn’t happen again. :fume:
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]MM: What do you mean by disproportional and contribution? At what point did they ever vote to increase taxes or lower expenditures of the government? At what point did they actually say, “No more pork for me or my electorate because we can’t afford it”? A what point did people stop to think that getting a loan for a house at five, six…ten times their annual income was a very bad idea? How is defaulting on a loan a person could never afford not disproportionate to the contribution? Isn’t the whole point of default that it’s meant to be painful, and therefore to be avoided by acting responsibly in obtaining the loan?
[/quote]
Again, none of these things would have caused a major financial crises. None of these things would have caused unemployment to reach 10% and in reality closer to 20%. And finally I doubt that any of the millions of under 30s who have seen their future disappear had any contribution at all.
I know exactly how many people in the OWS movement feel. The reason I came to Taiwan in '96 is that Canada was in crisis and the best job I could get could not pay for my student loan. If I stayed in Canada I would have had to default as the interest rates were 11%. Not fun to have your future fucked up by an elite who have all the resources to ride out the crisis.
[quote=“jdsmith”]
The big mistake though for the individual imho WAS the cheap mortgages. The banks made it FAR to easy to get the money that they should never have been qualified to get. [/quote]
I’m glad they made it available and that stupid people overextended. Because of the economic slump and the housing crisis, our family’s been able to get an apartment in Hawaii that was $380,000 in 2005 for just over $110,000 now. 
Some good deals out there in places that will definitely bounce back.
I admit–I’m greedy
[quote=“Mucha Man”][quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]MM: So all these cowboys on Wall Street went out in their posses and put guns to the heads of poor, innocent citizens and made them buy McMansions? Then, they again rode out to the McMansions and put guns to people’s heads, and made them use those McMansions as ATMs so they could buy Plasma Screen TVs?
You’re the one in denial.[/quote]
Give me a break. Bad mortgage loans and increased household debt was just the tip of the iceberg. They would not in themselves have caused the crash we are in. Recession yes. Major financial crisis: no.
The average person is suffering a disproportional amount of grief and hardship compared to their contribution to this crisis. Hence the anger and even righteous indignation.[/quote]
It’s all part of a complicated whole and you can’t fix it properly without looking at multiple parts. The very ideology at the heart of it is wrong and needs to be rooted out, just the same as the Communist ideology was rooted out in the Soviet Union.
[quote=“Cornpone Hercules”][quote=“jdsmith”]
The big mistake though for the individual imho WAS the cheap mortgages. The banks made it FAR to easy to get the money that they should never have been qualified to get. [/quote]
I’m glad they made it available and that stupid people overextended. Because of the economic slump and the housing crisis, our family’s been able to get an apartment in Hawaii that was $380,000 in 2005 for just over $110,000 now. Some good deals out there in places that will definitely bounce back.
I admit–I’m greedy [/quote]
Yes people always forget there are winners and losers, and a slump actually offers a chance for the new generation or people who were lucky or wiser to benefit and a country to become more competitive. I don’t think you are greedy, just making a smart choice. It will certainly make for an exciting vacation.
Until the system becomes stacked against the losers, in favor of the winners.
But don’t a lot of Democratic Party supporters on Forumosa always use comedians such as Maher or Stewart or Mercer (the latter if expats are Canadians) when discussing political issues? Why not use another comedian such as Stern? His samplings are pretty indicative of this crowd IMHO.
What also amazes me is the protesters’ use of the word “greed” when describing Wall Street.
Isn’t the worse kind of greed the kind where you covet or want to damage something that someone else has? :loco:
These people want what the 1% have or even a lifestyle that most upper middle class people have, but don’t want to work towards getting it. They are lazy and likely want to steal. Why do they critcize Wall Street greed when they share the same trait? Doesn’t that make them hypocrites?[/quote]
There’s nothing wrong with using a comedian in a comedy program, no! But we shouldn’t use that material for serious debate, IMO.
The people who were greedy by wanting more just wanted “the American dream” that they had been sold on or had bought into. The good life. They felt entitled to it.
The whole thing about credit is a big problem in the US, on both Wall Street as well as Main Street.
But the point about Occupy Wall Street is NOT that people want to take the money from the bankers; it is that the bankers f*&ed up and got bailed out, while the hoi poi f&*ed up and lost it all. That is fueling the sense of injustice.
And there is a vast sense that the professional money managers took advantage of people’s ignorance on the mortgage thing (and yes, the people should have known better) and then took huge risks that backfired, causing the 2008 crash.
In sum:
-
Wall Street caused the 2008 crash by selling irresponsible amounts of leveraged debt. Main Street and the entire world is suffering from that now, big time.
-
They got bailed out, “we” didn’t.
That’s why people are pissed.
Let me help you out with that one. First of all, the government don’t print money. They gave that privilege away to the Federal reserve and its owners…whoever they are nowadays.
Secondly, printing money has nothing to do with allowing the public to buy stuff they can’t afford. Not specifically anyway. The printing of money has everything to do with putting everyone into a state of perpetual debt, thus putting the Fed and its banks into a position where they own or have “rights” to everything of value. This is the only reason that the Fed operates its services for FREE! How kind of them!.
[quote=“headhonchoII”][quote=“Cornpone Hercules”][quote=“jdsmith”]
The big mistake though for the individual imho WAS the cheap mortgages. The banks made it FAR to easy to get the money that they should never have been qualified to get. [/quote]
I’m glad they made it available and that stupid people overextended. Because of the economic slump and the housing crisis, our family’s been able to get an apartment in Hawaii that was $380,000 in 2005 for just over $110,000 now. Some good deals out there in places that will definitely bounce back.
I admit–I’m greedy [/quote]
Yes people always forget there are winners and losers, and a slump actually offers a chance for the new generation or people who were lucky or wiser to benefit and a country to become more competitive. I don’t think you are greedy, just making a smart choice. It will certainly make for an exciting vacation.
[/quote]
True. We’ll be heading back to NY in the near future and although we’re not looking to buy, it may become a no brainer not to.
Niiice work there CP!