bick2

Nationalizing Bank Losses

Don't be particularly quick to blame taxpayers except in the sense they elected incompetents..

Most of the mortgages that are in default should have never been offered. Anything that was subprime was subprime because the tried and true criteria could not be met. People were lied to in huge numbers to move these mortgages. Adjusters caved to bank pressure to upscale home values beyond reason. And then there was that disaster in 2004 where the SEC allowed investment banks to double their leverage, which created a big cash infusion into MBS's generating a big market for these subprimes. Right there is the reason subprimes went through the roof in 2004-6. And of course the ratings companies - roll up a bunch of subprimes and voi la you have AAA. Yeesshhh.

The big causes for this were greed on the part of some (not all) banks, and totally stupid regulatory policies.

On Jan 31 08:18 PM TPoise wrote:

> This is probably going to offend many people, but I will go ahead
> and say it since not many are willing to stay it:
>
> You can blame the banks all day, but the people who lied on their
> mortgage applications, speculated, or stopped paying the mortgage
> are mostly also tax payers. I agree it is unfair that the majority
> of Americans are responsible, but the problems of a few are causing
> the assets to become 'toxic' and default. So don't put all the blame
> on "greedy Wall Street", that's an easy cop-out. Someone needs to
> blame the greedy "investor" who used their house as an investment
> vehicle.