Posted on 11/23/2008 3:32:59 PM PST by BuckeyeTexan
WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledges he was wrong in believing that there would be limited fallout to financial markets from risky mortgages that soured after the housing market's collapse.
"I and others were mistaken early on in saying that the subprime crisis would be contained," Bernanke said in an article in the Dec. 1 issue of The New Yorker magazine.
"The causal relationship between the housing problem and the broad financial system was very complex and difficult to predict," he said in the piece titled "Anatomy of a Meltdown."
Subprime mortgages made to people with tarnished credit or low incomes were especially hard hit once the housing boom went bust. Foreclosures spiked and financial companies wracked up huge losses as these investments turned bad.
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(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Cramer: “HE HAS NO IDEA”.
Bernanke: “I HAVE NO IDEA” (14 months later).
No problem. Just give the two TRILLION dollars back and we’ll call it “okay”. :D
This doesn’t seem like rocket science. My husband and I have been talking about the potential problems with this stuff for several years.
He’s wrong on so many counts it’s frightening.
He was wrong to think the subprime problem could be contained. He’s wrong to believe (if it’s what he really believes) that the subprime problem was a cause for what we’re experienceing (as opposed to just a symptom of a more serious underlying condition). He’s wrong on what can be solved and how to solve it.
He’s one of the most expert students of what went wrong during the Great Depression, so he won’t make the same mistakes they did in the 20’s & 30’s. He wants to make his own creative mistakes.
First of all Cramer had no idea either.
When the first subprime guy went down in feb 07, he went prattling on for 5 months about subprime being contained and it was only going to be 200 billion.
2nd, what we are facing is not just subprime but the big 3 blowing up, china’s growth cooling, europe blowing up, hedge funds overspeculation, fraud at some banks, incompetence at other.
So Bernanke may have been right about subprime. He just did not see all the other blowups coming.
Surely the best argument in favor of free markets ever delivered with completely clueless irony. No one is smart enough to unravel these relationships, which is why you do not implicitly or explicitly turn over hundreds of billions of dollars to a single man or to a government committee to "fix things."
For the record, I didn't predict it either. Sorry about that.
Thanks, Ben. What the hell do we pay you for? But then again, Greenspan didn't get it either.
And these were the "whiz kids". What, were they just guessin'?
When a person make a “mistake” as huge as this, isn’t he supposed to resign?
Bernanke, the best and brightest Washington has to offer..../s
Perhaps he should....errrr.....read what real economists have said for the past 3 years or so...
And still this man’s job is secure.
And oh by the way....my “mistake” helped Barrack Hussein Obama to get elected...what a coincidence...I became stupid to create a panic so a totally inexperienced Muslim Marxist could be elected president of the united states...so much for my higher education...I’m sorry....will you forgive me? I’m blushing from the shame...
The password is “Jerkoff”
“Experts” always draw high salaries, wear nice suits, act smarmy and superior and then when it all blows up they just say, “How was I supposed to know?” And people fall for it over and over again. Like they say - the most important factor in the success of a “raindance” is timing.
In case you wanted to add something to your list of attributed quotations.
Harvard University graduate ... I see a pattern. Havard = losers.
No doubt!
this is the guy who wrote his ph.d. thesis and specialized in the depression.
When all hell started breaking loose about this stuff, I saw a report, on FNC I think it was, about a woman in Michigan who had EIGHT (That’s more than John McCain) properties that she acquired using these sub prime mortgages. They never said what she was doing with them. However, they did say that, when things started to go downhill, she took off for her former home in Mississippi and let the properties go into foreclosure. I only saw the report one time but it sure was a quick lesson for me in what kinds of shenanigans were being pulled with all this sub prime crap.
Cramer has no idea either. Has he gone to rehab for his speed habit yet? Only explanation for his delusory advice.
Conservatives said "Buy American." The UAW took conservatives' money and used it to buy the presidency. No, thanks. Buy American-made Hondas and Toyotas.
You may enjoy this
Two people who were totally right about this whole thing for the past two years have been the most ridiculed people on FR: Ron Paul and Glenn Beck. Flame me too, it won’t change anything. We’ll have to cough up some XXX billion more dollars for my grandchildren and their children to pay off with hard labor. It won’t end until the entire financial/corporate market is under government control. And Lord knows how efficient and economical the feds are.
Yes, if he had any shame, but I actually want him to stay and suffer and face the cameras, knowing that none of us believe anything he says.
Paulson was the other parrot, repeating over and over that the crisis was contained, even though the market was clearly indicating otherwise at the time.
OK, your profile page is just really really funny!
I've heard a lot about this kind of thing going on -- anecdotal, but still too many times for it to be irrelevant. I suspect too many of the banks/mortgage lenders just threw caution to the wind -- I mean more than they had to, even looking down the barrel of the gun of the Clinton Justice Dept. Being a natural cynic (hey, I'm from MA!), I further think there was probably a lot of fraud and collusion between the mortgage companies and favored speculators taking gross advantage of the relaxed credit standards.
Is this the Cramer who said buy Bear Stearns. LOL -- he obviously had no idea either.
Idiot could have just read Willie Green’s posts, before he was banned.
I have a question. We’re told when the foreclosures started the value of these securities went down. Haven’ there always been foreclosures? Why was it so bad this time? Is it because the value of the property plummeted as well when during “regular” foreclosures the property value stays the same or appreciated. Am I correct?
“An ex is a has-been. And a spurt is a drip under pressure”
When Bernanke used the Great Depression as a measuring stick to determine his impressions on where the market was heading nowadays, he failed to calculate a most crucial factor.
Back then, people were, for the most part, honorable.
Today, they are not.
I think so too.
Don’t hang Bernanke alone. Barney Frank has been quoted as saying he wants to “roll the dice” and allow these mortgages to go on, despite the warnings the GOP was giving in Congress at the time (2003?).
Bernanke, you’re doin’ a heck of a job.
It is almost as if the Man upstairs is giving us one last warning about running a corrupt government.
“Gee, I never realized that making loans to people who were unqualified would ever be a problem.”
Bernanke knew he was “wrong” at the time he made those statements - they were made for political purposes.
Or maybe he was so fascinated by it, he just had to have one for himself.
The GOP had all three houses from 2000-2006. They did nothing to address these issues. They just let Barney Frank and the minority Dems control the field. Don’t forget to lay blame at the Republican Party’s cowardly feet, too.
You’re right. I remember following threads where his views were slammed. There was one other freeper (I can’t recall his screen name) who used to post housing bubble threads long before the housing market tanked.
According to an IBD article the other day the current total of all bailouts authorized is $3.8 Trillion.
You got almost twice as much coming back as you thought.
sorry....couldn't help it.
:)
I polished off at least 3 bottles between Nov. 5th and Nov. 9th. It’s a good thing they can’t arrest one for driving under the influence of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. I’d have lost my license.
And the incoming Obama administration is bringing in Geithner as Treasury Secretary... the guy heading the NY Fed Bank, who agreed with Paulson & Bernanke that subprime was not a systemic risk, who worked with Paulson & Bernanke on the various bailouts, who crafted the TARP-trap with Pualson & Bernanke and then decided to change it mid-stream, who argued in Sep-08 that we needed to spend $700B within days and then come mid-Nov hasn’t figured out how to spend 1/2 of it.
Beck claims (I don’t remember it personally) he was predicting “Dow 7500” when it was at 14000 and climbing.
Now (as of last Friday) he’s predicting “Dow 5000 or lower”.
Ex-Texan?
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