Charlsie sent this Op-Ed today and I agree with it 100%:
I’ll say this upfront: I hope the titans of finance who expect us little people to save them are ashamed of themselves. But at the same time, in painting Main Street solely as a victim of a rapacious Wall Street, we are being hypocritical.
We are all to blame.
Step back. The securities that are poisoning the financial system are made up of mortgages and home equity lines that are going sour. . . . “Innovation” on Wall Street meant that the institution that made the loans could sell them off, and bankers could carve up those loans into new instruments, which they in turn sold to investors around the globe, with the result being that no one felt responsible for ensuring that the person who got the mortgage or the credit card or the home equity loan could actually pay for it.
But who made the decision to take on that mortgage she couldn’t really afford? Who lied about her income or assets in order to qualify for a mortgage? Who used the proceeds of a home equity line to pay for an elaborate vacation? Who used credit cards to live a lifestyle that was well beyond her means? Well, you and I did. (Or at least, our neighbors did.)
Amen.
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Oh, bullshit.
There is nothing wrong with profit. Profit means the transaction was mutually beneficial. I/We/Whoever isn’t responsible for this mess because we got a good loan and benefitted from lower interest rates. The people responsible are the ones who got loans that they couldn’t pay back, the people who issued loans to people who couldn’t pay them back, the politicians and lawyers who forced those banks to issue those loans, the institutions that bought those loans as investments thinking they were safe without actually doing their due diligence, and the politicians who set up Freddie such that the more they insured the more their exec’s would get paid, regardless of whether Freddie had the means to actually insure those assets.
I’m tired of all this “we’re all to blame” crap. The breadcrumbs have been laid out. We know why this happened. Now that the bailout’s passed, the time for playing nice is over. It’s time to kick ass and take names. And by that I mean naming names, and making sure they don’t have a job anymore (whether by voting them out in the case of pol’s, or by letting their companies declare bankruptcy and find new leadership in the case of executives)
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:21 pm
You probably ought to read the whole thing before you get pissy.
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:46 pm
I did read the whole thing. I reserve the right to complain about any work either in whole, or, in part.
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Well, you went off on a tangent that I don’t think the author would disagree with, at least judging by the article, so I think your complaints might be a little misplaced.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:05 pm
I think this is pretty spot on, especially the point about personal responsibility.
Corporate greed did what corporate greed always does - it exploits opportunities. Many, many people who have been foreclosed upon never should have bought a house in the first place.
In that regard, it’s somewhat like drugs (follow me here). Drug pushers are bad people. But noone ever held a gun to my head and told me I had to do a drug. They don’t do that for a reason… they don’t have too… because there’s always some sucker out there who wants it.
Now, the people who lied to get loans or get them approved, the people who truly commmitted fraud (if a customer did not read what they signed, that is not fraud, if after a customer signed a document it was altered that is fraud) need to be hunted down and prosecuted. That goes for everyone from the former homeowner through the loan originator to as high as can be traced.
Unfortunetly I don’t think that will happen. This bailout has “moral hazard” written all over it in big, black letters.