Read about the “gamblers” from the guy who wrote Liar’s Poker. See, where in all this, one could ever get the idea that poor bullied little bankers were the cause of the meltdown.
What you are missing is this: The Bankers NEEDED bad loans so they could bet against them. When the loans tanked, they made money. Read above where one guy discovered this and couldn’t believe what was going on wasn’t illegal.
Imagine this. You get to bet on whether somebody’s house burns down. Wouldn’t it be cool if you sold houses with really faulty wiring. And it was legal to do so?
parsy, who says it should have been illegal
You again make my point as does the article. Government failed - maliciously.
Rather than provide proper regulation, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, et. al. were taking the liars and crooks donations. And following their lefty ideology they were using their power to socialize the housing market - redistributing real estate wealth from rich to poor. See NR article below.
And to trivialize the government bullying bankers simply shows that you have just a blind faith and love for the State and Big Brother. Who is on the One’s enemies list? Who’s next for you to sit in the show-trial jury and condemn? Oil companies? Health Care Companies? Doctors who charge too much for removing a foot? When will it be Parsy’s turn for bullying?
Hmmm, who else has been bullied lately? Toyota? GM bond holders? News Companies? Radio personalities? Coal companies? Spitzer and his ‘legal’ bullying terminally executed a company in my town for the most trivial legalistic transgression. Guess that’s ok, they were jobs in Wisconsin, not on Wall St.
——”You get to bet on whether somebody’s house burns down. Wouldn’t it be cool if you sold houses with really faulty wiring. And it was legal to do so?” -—
And in a country of laws the only way you could sell the house is if you paid off the city building inspector.
Growing up in Chicago, that’s how its done. And if you have ever lived in a country of corruption, like Haiti, you would know that the government failure to enforce building codes leads to death from failing buildings.
http://article.nationalreview.com/374045/planting-seeds-of-disaster/stanley-kurtz?page=3
At this point, both ACORN and the Clinton administration were working together to impose large numerical targets or “set asides” (really a sort of poor and minority loan quota system) on Fannie and Freddie. ACORN called for at least half of Fannie and Freddie loans to go to low-income customers. At first the Clinton administration offered a set-aside of 30 percent. But eventually ACORN got what it wanted. In early 1994, the Clinton administration floated plans for committing $1 trillion in loans to low- and moderate-income home-buyers, which would amount to about half of Fannie Mae’s business by the end of the decade.
Not only wasn't it illegal but...
Crucial to the passing of this Act [Gramm-Leach-Bliley] was an amendment made to the GLBA, stating that no merger may go ahead if any of the financial holding institutions, or affiliates thereof, received a "less than satisfactory [sic] rating at its most recent CRA exam", essentially meaning that any merger may only go ahead with the strict approval of the regulatory bodies responsible for the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA).[17] This was an issue of hot contention, and the Clinton Administration stressed that it "would veto any legislation that would scale back minority-lending requirements." [18]
...it was made a requirement by the Feds.