Posted on 12/01/2008 5:19:57 AM PST by SittinYonder
President Bush told us last week that the “market is not functioning properly.”
On this, President Bush is correct, but for the wrong reasons.
A friend of mine who briefly dabbled in mortgage lending (he got into it just about the time the housing market collapsed, and has now moved on to a new job), said that when he got into mortgage lending his new boss saw the current problems coming. Companies were lending risky money on what they knew would be bad mortgages, his boss told him.
Lo and behold, here we are with a national housing market in the tank and major banks collapsing or selling for pennies on the dollar.
Anyone who cared to could have seen it coming. You can’t lend bad mortgages after bad mortgages – where the value of the mortgage was only a number on a piece of paper – resell those bad mortgages to larger banks looking to make big profits on risky investments and expect it not to turn into a train wreck. This train track built on worthless paper eventually is going to have to cross a ravine, and it’s at this point that paper doesn’t hold up and the train goes off the cliff.
Which is where we’re at now: The train is off the cliff.
I’m not panicked, and I will not make the outrageous claim that we’re facing another Great Depression – it’s not that dire, in my opinion. Certainly, it could get worse before it gets better, and like any small business owner, this current climate provides me with reason for concern.
Unfortunately in a crisis we have a tendency to look immediately to our government to help us. Our go-to guys here are George Bush, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank.
(Excerpt) Read more at theoconeeleader.com ...
So we were doomed before we even got started...
LOL ... That'd be my take.
These are not smart people with good ideas. They are policy makers elected for their ability to read a constituency, play to an issue and perform a speech. They are the worst kinds of leaches on society: Legacies elected less for their personal attributes and more for their “name recognition” or because of who their father was; career politicians who have spent the smallest portion (or none) of their careers in the private sector.
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