[Uncle Miltie]

"the same predatory deals that brought down Greece"

Nobody held a gun to the Greeks head forcing them to go into debt they couldn't repay.

Don't like the terms of debt? Don't go into debt.

Jeez. A few thousand wasted words above.

[wolfcreek]

“Don’t like the terms of debt? Don’t go into debt.”

Hmmm, it’s a shame nobody told OUR FedGov that.

I think the article was predicting our future.

[henkster]

I agree but the point of the article is that public officials who didn’t understand finance were bribed to agree to loan arrangements that were very bad for their constituents.

Local governments need to use debt to finance major capital projects just as we need debt to finance ours, like homes. It is not feasible to tax people to pay in one or two years the cost of a major project, like a road or wastewater plant. Like it or not, wastewater plants are damned expensive things. And your average voter would scream if he were hit up for the costs on a “pay as you go” basis. Just like you wouldn’t want to live in a home you could only afford to pay cash for.

So you spread out the cost over a period of time less than the life expectancy of the asset. That’s responsible fiscal policy.

The point here is that predatory banks bribe the decision makers to sell out for personal gain. It is no longer an “arms-length” transaction where the public figure represents the borrower’s interests.Then everyone is “shocked” when it’s a crime.

I’d say some of the fault lies with citizens of Birmingham for electing a bunch of crooks. I’ll bet they were democrats.

[parsifal]

You a nut. How can you read this and totally miss the whole point the way you do? You must be one of them Libertarians.

parsy, who is shaking his head.

[Dasaji]

You know what? There’s A LOT more to this than what your eye is seeing. These banks PRECISELY took advantage of small-town mentality and the tendency of some humans to turn on their greed switch - this was calculated, this was planned. Has nothing to do with borrowing more than you can afford to pay back.

These banks are looking to bankrupt (no not bankrupt...financialy annihilate) each and every state one-by-one so that TOTAL and complete servitude of the American people will be pledged to them even MORE than we are already.

Ever read “Confessions of an Economic Hitman?” It’s going on RIGHT HERE under our noses, not just in third world countries.

[desertfreedom765]

“Don’t like the terms of debt? Don’t go into debt. “

The problem is when other people go into debt in your NAME.

[LomanBill]

"We didn't truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market," says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency -- the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] -- who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country's key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. "They were totally opposed to it," Born says. "That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?"

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/

[GOPJ]

I’m with you. It’s like the people who want to blame credit card companies for MAKING them charge stuff they didn’t need. Gimme a break.