Posted on 09/23/2008 10:47:24 PM PDT by Kaslin
You may be right. But I just don’t know because I’ll admit many of these arcane and esoteric high finance complexities are over my head. I only know what some experts tell me in layman’s language that I can understand. And many are saying that it was a combination of greed, political pandering to minorities, and just plain bad economic planning and structuring. They also say that the “predatory lender” line has been greatly exaggerated to scapegoat and distract from the real problems.
Of course, if you flipped this on its head, and said that banks took poor people's deposits and loaned it to scoundrels that were bad credit risks, liberal heads would EXPLODE. Then factor in that liberal policies are the reason that banks did this.
It’s probably a bit of both. I think the door was opened by these ridiculous mortgages to people who had no possibility or even intention of repaying them, but once housing started to spiral upwards, speculators took advantage of the easy mortgages and just loaded up on houses. Somewhere at the start of this, I read that many of the foreclosures were on homes that were not the primary residence of the owner.
Accountability was removed from the system by the federal government in order to to facilitate loaning people money for homes who couldn't afford it. It then infected the entire system.
State and local governments didn't offer up any warnings. They were more than happy to increase property taxes as fast as values went up.
The easy money tempted regular home owners with poor choices and many made poor choices.
“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” - Ronald Reagan.
Leave it to IBD to print the truth
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