Fitz! for old time’s sake!

Chimpy got caught on tape blaming the economic woes on Wall St. because “they got drunk”…

-G

Ian!

“It takes one to know one…”

EPU’d from downstairs I think it will fit

In other news, young conservatives are worried about the intellectual poverty of their movement leadership.

Can’t imagine why.

Well the GOP used to call itself the party of ideas Reagen tried out his ideas the market went up but living standards for the average worker went down but who cares Reagen made people feel good by making them hate Foreigners and minorities!
Now Bush 2 has been trying out Reagen’s ideas to the Extreme yep its not only the little people getting hurt its the rich.
Just how did the GOP ever expect to make money if their workers have less and less money to buy the stuff their factories make?
Easy Credit!
But wait what happens when the bills come?
Who cares I’m making money now
but your in debt
but I have lots of cool stuff I don’t need
That was bought on credit
But I’m to big to fail Bush will bail me out!
Bush bailing out the rich with the poor tax payers money is where we stand today. Bush is the Anti Robin Hood!

Is there any good news on the money front today? According to reports it will take $25 billion to bail out Fannie and Freddie – that’s your money, folks. I say no.

This blog really opened my eyes to this issue of fees being charged by servicers. Basically getting a mortgage is like a credit card. You sign on the dotted line, you get the money but they get permission to rake you over the coals for unreasonable fees whenever they want to. Considering how expensive it is to own and maintain a home, just the idea of these fees scares me. I am so glad I am a renter.

Mortgage Servicing Fraud Blog

http://www.msfraud.org/

Mortgage Fraud Blog

http://www.mortgagefraudblog.com/

Mortgage Fraud Blog is eye opening because it demonstrates all of the crazy schemes that people were perpetrating on the banks and how it just perpetuated the bubble. Sometimes the banks and brokers were complicit. Either way we all lose.

Oh and while I am at it stop the Fannie Freddie bailout, because if the government debt doubles, well all our dollars will be worth about five cents. Welcome to a third world currency crisis. I will take by lumps with 10% inflation thank you very much.

Is there any good news on the money front today?

I don’t have any disposable, invest-able income, so I haven’t lost a dime.

does that count?

I don’t think we necessarily need to call it equally shared culpability. But consumers do have to take responsibility: for their level of knowledge or ignorance; for the amount of common sense they have, or lack of it. If you buy a home – for most people, the largest purchase they will ever make in their lives – without educating yourself about what you’re doing, you need to take some responsibility for what you’ve gotten yourself into. Ask yourself – does buying a house with no money down really make sense? Does it make sense that there is something called a no-doc loan? Does that sound like a good thing? Should I be buying a house if I have $20,000 in credit card debt? Why do I have $20k in credit card debt? Yes, I do think lenders need to take the bulk of the blame, along with our government that refused to step in and regulate when regulation would have done a lot of good. But consumers are not blameless.

Why bail them out? Let the market weed out the winners and the losers.

The Bush administration economic scheme has been to mortgage the future, make hay with all the borrowed money, and then hand the mess off to the Democrats, who will waste their time trying to fix all the Republican mistakes, and will get blamed for all the belt-tightening required to fix the mess.

Bob in HI

a repeat:

“Recession-Plagued Nation Demands New Bubble To Invest In”

(headline at The Onion)

Counts with me ’cause I don’t have any extra cash lying around either. Wouldn’t put it in the market if I did.

“good news?”

Well the DOW is up (cause oil is down)

That’s about it.

The mortgage, real estate, housing sector is only possible with credit and so that means that there will be all sorts of money moving into the wallets of people who do little for it… like transaction fees, and points and closing fees, and commissions.

So every idjit believes in the american dream of owning a home, but it can only be done when you put yourself in debt bigtime and commit to 40 years of hard labor to pay it off… unless you don the spec thing and sell at a profit and play the game driving the cost up every time there is a transaction.

Every wonder why the lender you borrow from sells you loan and why we have this madness? Because they don’t really have the money THEY lend unless they sell someone else’s mortgage to get the cash to lend you so bank lending is a ponzi scheme. And add to that that banks are allowed to lend 10x what they actually have on deposit. So they are literally “printing” money every time they make a loan.

Who needs to work if you can sell and trade securities? But the ponzi scheme is unravelling just about now and the wall streeters in the gov are in place to rescue the shareholders tell us that these institutions are too big to fail and to big to bail.

The people are taking it up the butt again.

Halliburton’s sales are booming.

a combination rhetorical/dumb question: Why is it that when oil goes up – gas goes up, but when oil comes down, gas – stays the same?

i said this earlier on the lake but it bears repeating……. we are soooo fucked!!

Then there are the 20% who have no equity at all in their home, or even negative equity. These mortgages are typically well in excess of $100,000, and it is this pool of homeowners who are candidates for foreclosure. About 2.5% of all mortgages are in foreclosure, and this number is rising rapidly. What happens when a homeowner tries to forestall losing their home?

These fees are often in the thousands of dollars on a typical loan. Penalty interest rates are set at usurious levels in excess of 25%, and the combination of fees and high interest costs is increasingly resulting in foreclosure and loss of the home to the bank.

20% of homeownwers have no or negative equity and the economy is getting worse so its seems reasonable to expect that the 20% number will get bigger and the 2.5% of mortgages in foreclosure number will skyrocket.
Along with the number of banks that fail.

I just have one more comment about this whole system that I find rediculous. It comes down to one thing the theory of “Too Big to Fail”. At the end of the day my sister who is in the “mortgage backed security business” said she was not worried about her job because her company and many others involved in this mess are “Too Big TO FAIL”. If they are too big to fail they are too big to be unregulated. I think these companies have to take the regulation so we don’t have to bail them out because they are too big to fail.

As for the proposed bailouts on the table now. I say we don’t bail out investors. Period. We need the treasury for other things.

Banks make their money on transaction fees. that’s why they charge you for touching your money.

also, has anyone else noticed that the whole financial sphere has turned into a bunch of salespeople focused on their own commission vs. profitability? you have to keep running and sooner or later you run out of road.

Sparkles…you still have the best moniker ever!

1) The cost of crude is only one factor in the cost of gasoline- transportation costs, refining costs, marketing costs, and other things are also factors.

2) There is usually a lag of some weeks between the change in oil prices and a change in gas prices.

You are mistaken the Federal Reserve will borrow money from China based on the Promise that American Tax Payers will pay.
We really need to make sure that voters understand this any tax increase Obama does should be called the tax to pay for Bush invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

If the govt. lets Mae and Mac fail- it could bring on a depression- not only investors would be hurt…it ain’t gonna happen.

“Too big to fail” – the other side of that coin of course is “too small to succeed.”

As for your sister’s job – Bear Stearns was “too big to fail” in the sense that J.P. Morgan Chase (and the government) took it over, but a lot of Bear employees lost their jobs. The rainmakers quickly found new jobs at Chase or other banks, not so lucky many others lower on the food chain. Isn’t that always how it works.

Yes they might be too big to fail but if they take our tax payer money they should be regulated and that includes CEO pay and no more lobbying at all to make the regulations easier.
Also I want either stock from the companies we give money to given at fair market value or for their to be a strict repayment plan with interest included.

Yep

If goopers haven’t proven the bankruptcy of the idea of zero regulation yet- they never will.

My worry is how many more things are we going to bail out? We’ve done the airlines and others and I don’t think my tax dollars should go to save failed businesses when we need roads, bridges, schools, health care, etc. Don’t mean to sound unconcerned about investors but where does it stop?

the entire monetary system of the fed is a ponzi scheme;

they print money, then give it to us a a percentage above the value of that money, (this is the prime) and we are supposed to pay all of that money back including that prime

this means there is never enough money to pay back the debt we aquire by getting the money in the first place

it is a bizzare model to be sure

As the government puts our kids money into these to big to fail institutions is it getting something besides forestalling failure?
Is it getting equity for the money?

Things that can’t go on forever don’t.

Here are some other really good rundowns I’ve run across

Why are Financial Terrorists (JP Morgan Stanley…etc.) getting away with attacking America?

The Dark Side of Wall Street and the planned economic collapse of America

The Alarming Parallels Between 1929 and 2007 by Robert Kuttner

if only Sander, if only

The difference between 1929 and now is that we have 3 times as many people, they are better informed because news travels around the world in a flash and a whole lot of them are armed. Everyone knows who the rich are and they won’t be able to hide from the raging public.

Yeee HAW!

If it were just about investors- the sentiment might be to let em fry in their own fat- but it’s NOT- the general economy could be thrown into a coronary by the failure of those two.

Can we afford to keep doing it? That’s the real question and I don’t think we can since almost everything is going into the war on terra.

Digg this post.;)

Nope, not much chance of equity for the government. The mantra, as always:

Privatize the profit, socialize the risk.

Well maybe the question is “can we afford NOT to”

I’m too depressed about this shit. I can’t think about it anymore. No more articles about the working poor and people in debt from the NYT. CAN’T TAKE IT.

I need me some Puppy Channel.

from huffington:

An ABC-TV outlet in Houston, and now the Houston Chronicle, have posted a video taken at a political fundraiser for Pete Olson, featuring George W. Bush last week — capturing some embarrassing/revealing moments after, he noted, he had asked cameras to be turned off.

The first moments form the July 18 event find him speaking almost incoherently in admitting, for once, that his friends in big business had screwed up: “There’s no question about it. Wall Street got drunk —that’s one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras — it got drunk and now it’s got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments.”

Then, making light of the foreclosure crisis, he said: “And then we got a housing issue… not in Houston, and evidently not in Dallas, because Laura’s over there trying to buy a house. [great laughter] I like Crawford but unfortunately after eight years of sacrifice, I am apparently no longer the decision maker.”

Govt. should do a hostile takeover and pay below market rates for mae and mac..Shareholders would get shit and taxpayers would get the companies..

Only fair way to do it.

After the things get back to health- do an IPO and pocket the profit.

surprise, abc carries the holy cya water.

Wall Street now sees it’s job as inventing “New Products” by takin the old shit that’s layin around and wrappin it up in shiny new packages…Bankrupt.

My fiancee owns a home in So.Cal that she and her husband bought before he died– at the time, they were DINKs– Double Income, No Kids (at home). But then her husband died, and she “gave” the house to her adult daughter, and moved to Hawaii. Now her daughter can’t afford the mortgage, and the shrinking market has eaten up all the equity in the house. They’ve tried to refinance, but even with that, the daughter can’t afford the mortgage payments. So they are considering foreclosure as an option, but then the daughter will be left with no place to live (and will have to find new living quarters that are much smaller and not as nice, so she doesn’t like that idea.)

Another example of how families are being squeezed.

Bob in HI

Is that the Republican Party’s marching song?

Bob in HI

How much does it cost to print a $1 bill?

How much does it cost to print a $100 bill?

Yeah, I’d say it’s a ponzi scheme.

The interesting question is “Why can’t the daughter afford the mortgage?” Did the rate go up? Did she lose her job?- or could she NEVER afford it?

As long as we print “in God we trust” on it.
Joke is that bill is the God

Let’s make it perfectly clear. Republicans have made vast fortunes on the suffering of the middle and lower classes. They are the rubes that are ripe for the pickings. It’s the Republicans social Darwinism at it’s finest. Any risk will be dealt with collectively so it’s the best of socialism and a rapacious capitalism. Until Republicans are held accountable either in a court of law or on the streets this shit will go on and on and on. Until Americans wake up to the fact that the Republican economic theory works great for the rich but not for the “average” American Republicans will continue to perpetrate this sham.

I’ve started buying gold.

A bit late but still…

I have a question. Why is my bank, Bank of America, now calling me non-stop wanting to sell me insurance, or any number of any other “services”, which I do not want? I do not have credit card debt, or a mortgage with them.

They are simply my checking account of many many years, since the years when they used to be called NCNB, North Carolina National Bank.

I now get 2-3 calls a week wanting me to buy into any number of other “services” that they offer, to the point that I would almost call it harassment.

Why?

Banks have been doing it for years…Next time they call, ask to cancel your account because you can’t afford the time it takes to deal with em.

And the people are better armed. Thank you NRA.

They need your money. You can demand that they take you off the call list – I had to do that with a credit card. They were calling constantly trying to get to to take travel plans, etc.

That’s true and people are not going to sitting quietly while we have a replay of the Grapes of Wrath. Not this time.

Because you cost them money if you are a “good” customer that never overdraws your account or does anything that allows them to hit you with fees. Fees are where they make the money.

You might change Darwinism to cannibalism

I am on the do not call list and still get the calls

Moon of Alabama has a great take on the Fannie/Freddie story…

Are there better solutions than the Paulson plan? Yes, of course there are.

The Paulson plan has no possible upside for the taxpayer only downside risk. It also does not take any money away from the private shareholders of these bankrupt companies. Indeed the value of their shares would soar when the taxpayers take over the risk of these companies’ bad assets. Instead the share holdings should be wiped out and the companies outright nationalized. The owners of Fannie and Freddy debt should also take a haircut. Fannie and Freddy debt always payed higher interest than treasury notes. If the U.S. government takes over these companies, their debt will be as secure as treasuries and should pay the same interest rate.

The CBO letter is just a cover so that Paulson, Schumer, Frank and their like screw the taxpayer with the losses of these companies while protecting their shareholders. That is free market capitalism in its purest form.

social Darwinism or cannabilistic capitalism, they are one and the same. Americans have been taken for chumps for far too long and the chicken will be coming home to roost if the bottom falls out.

I told them that if I got one more call that I was going to cancel my card. Worked like a charm.

I was getting those calls too, you have to call the bank and ask to change your Privacy Settings. It can be done online. There are like 3 different categories, be patient and go thru them all.

If you have a “pre-existing relationship” with a business, they can call whether you’re on the Do not Call list or not.

So the bank that has your checking business can call you and offer other services. If you complain, some will place you on internal do not call lists but they are not legally obligated to do so.

She could afford it then– when she was married and her husband was helping to pay the mortgage. That marriage didn’t work out so well. It’s hard to keep up with a mortgage that pricey if you’re a single mom. But meanwhile, she’s throwing herself on the mercies of her Mother, hoping for another bailout.

The bottom line is that she’s in a bigger, nicer, pricier home than she can afford, without a working husband or a mother to help. If it weren’t for the market meltdown, she could have sold the house and used the equity to buy a more appropriately-sized house. Now, she can’t do that.

Bob in HI

Yep, really gets those feet tapping.

Numerian’s is an excellent explanation and a terrific post, but it doesn’t allow for the Illegal Aliens Theory posited by Mesdames Malkin and Hamsher. I’ll stick to blaming the browns; thanks, though, Ian!

Heh, that doesn’t work so well here in the Isles, Teddy…! ;-)

Also nicely covered in This American Life’s “A Giant Pool of Money”
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_…..sched=1242

Hard for govt. to protect people from that kind of a situation I guess..if she’s upside down on the thing- she will probably just end up walking?

Ask yourself – does buying a house with no money down really make sense?

Sometimes. Find the right “distressed” property and you don’t need a down payment. The right property is one with an owner who wants out badly enough to take a write-down from appraised value.

Does it make sense that there is something called a no-doc loan?

No, but that is just “lenders” being stupid. “Lenders” could be stupid because they were not really lenders. They were dumping the mortgages into mortgage-backed obligations and getting rid of them. We took out our mortgage with our credit union, and had an agreement that our mortgage would *not* be sold. Six years in, they sold our mortgage. Now I have no idea who holds the note on our house. :(

Should I be buying a house if I have $20,000 in credit card debt? Why do I have $20k in credit card debt?

Maybe. If you’ve got 20K in credit card debt and a household income of, say, 40K the answer’s probably no. The money’s not there to service the mortgage and the credit cards. Change that income to 80K, and you can swing it with the right purchase price and budgeting. You’ve got to live somewhere, after all. If the mortgage payment is substantially less than the equivalent rent, buy, if that’s what you’d like to do.

Yes, I do think lenders need to take the bulk of the blame, along with our government that refused to step in and regulate when regulation would have done a lot of good.

The buck really stopped at the regulator’s desks. They should never have allowed some of the insane mortgage contracts that they permitted. Negative amortization on a loan? For crying out loud, give me a break! Doing away with conventional qualification criteria? Accepting statements of income rather than tax returns? Puh-lease!

BC

I don’t know how much of this is true or not, but it sure is on topic and scary:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…..206/554077

Mortgage brokers were at the heart of this bullshit–they wanted the fees and they learned that they could get almost anyone qualified for ANYTHING- and the buyers were certainly at fault in many cases- they figured they were gettin something for nothing and agreed to lie on their applications.

It was all bullshit all day long and now the piper’s waitin ta be paid.

The Do Not Call list does not apply to companies you have doen business with, or not for profit’s.
The logic is exactly that you Bank sould not be fined for calling you with a legitimate business offer or concern. Similarly, charitable organizations successfully lobbied for their exclusion.
The upshot is that your bank or credit card company will seek to exploit their competitive advantage, and debt consolidators create NFP “consumer advocacy” entities; all to disturb your dinner hour.

Of course the Banks were at fault for relaxing the rules to such an extent that they were actually begging the brokers and borrowers to lie.
And it all worked as long as the bubble expanded.
Not so well now.

Now most of my calls are from some assholes calling for some obscure police organization—I suspect that the cops get a penny on the dollar…not for profit my ass.

exactly

plenty of blame to go around.

If the housing market had only co-operated by going up by 20% per year for the balanced of eternity….

But most banks (all banks?) allow you specify that your information is not to be shared with their other business units. In other words, “Don’t call me about anything but our business!”

As an alternative, do your banking with a credit union. Then you’re one of the owners, and you can always run for election to the Board of Directors if the marketing department gets out of hand.

BC

This would be a whole lot more scary for me if I actually had any Money in the bank. Ha! Paychecks go in. Bills get paid. Nothing else.
I’m actually thinking of taking the 405k $ out to pay off the house. I know about the penalties, but I’m seriously Very Concerned about this here depression I hear a comin’.

Mortgage broker: when it’s not your money on the line, you don’t have to worry so much about getting it paid back.

Absolutely – but most offer that as a ‘opt-out’ option.
All I was saying was that the Do Not Call list does not offer protection with an organization you do business with.
It is your responsibility to communicate and negotiate communications terms with them.

New Eli

Yep

Give anyone free bites at the apple- and you’d better stand back- it looks like a shark attack.

punaise linked to The Onion earlier
http://www.theonion.com/conten…..on_demands

and about time!

Yup. You have to opt out. If you don’t, and you don’t want them bugging you, figure out how to opt out.

you can be taken off the lists of customers called/sent advertising for their products – just call them and request that.

my sister who is in the “mortgage backed security business” said she was not worried about her job because her company and many others involved in this mess are “Too Big TO FAIL”. If they are too big to fail they are too big to be unregulated.

I think this is it in a nutshell. What financial institutions want is gamble with money they don’t have and get us through the government to back their debts when they lose.

This is essentially what CTuttle’s quote at #61 is saying:

The Paulson plan has no possible upside for the taxpayer only downside risk. It also does not take any money away from the private shareholders of these bankrupt companies. Indeed the value of their shares would soar when the taxpayers take over the risk of these companies’ bad assets. Instead the share holdings should be wiped out and the companies outright nationalized. The owners of Fannie and Freddy debt should also take a haircut.

As for Paulson, he is a snakeoil salesman. He’s promoting bailouts not so much of Fannie and Freddie as he says but the shareholders behind them. And of course he is not proposing any regulation to keep this from happening again. Indeed it is already happening again in commodities markets.

Banks collateralizing mortgage securities ignored centuries of legal precedent. Mortgage notes are personal property. They do not have the “legal” and “equitable” title of real property, a legal fiction that made mortgages possible. To be a holder of a note, one had to own the note, that is be entitled to receive the principal and interest. Servicers are not holders in that they have no financial stake in the notes. If the old law is applied without fear or favor, the servicers do not have “standing” to bring foreclosure actions. It may be impossible to identify the holder of the note in the traditional sense since right to the principal and interest of collateralized securities was sold all over the place. Coupled with the fact mortgage foreclosures are “equitable” actions, Courts can and should penalize the lenders for their conduct. They could, were they so inclined, reduce interest rates and the principal due. They would be well within traditional legal doctrine were they to do so.

What you’re forgetting is that at the time they made the decision to buy the house,, it was a reasonable decision: they were DINKs, and the housing market looked good. What the government failed to do was to regulate the housing market to prevent companies like CountryWide from making too many bad mortgages. It was the failure to regulate that pulled the rug out from under my fiancee’s family. If the housing market had not bubbled and then crashed due to negligent oversight, they would have been able to sell the house when their situation changed, re-investing their equity in a more suitable and affordable home.

Bob in HI

The housing market will ALWAYS form a bubble. It’s credit driven and the “real” value of housing is hardly related to the bricks and mortar and the soil.

Having credit available to buyers means they values are bid up because there is apparently too little housing stock.. since population is expanding faster then the housing stock is built. So real estate property only remains stable in cost when the demand is low or nil.

Of course you need to figure in the depreciation of things over time so real estate should be decreasing in value, unless it is well maintained and improved or unless the demand “artificially” raises its value.

Some bubbles inflate faster because they can be used for investing (self fulfilling) which drives the prices up. This is the BS about rising tides raise all ships and so everyone makes out. The speculators and investors inflate the bubble and then cause the collapse.

The deal with housing is that almost all americans are hooked into it since everyone needs to live on real estate and none is outside of the market. So this is taking everyone down and there is really no way to stop it.

Dotcom bubble hurt investors who wanted to get rich quick by gambling. Housing bubble has those guys at work but they were messing with everyone’s homes.

Investors need bubble effects to make out and will move from one to the next because it doesn’t matter as long as the “asset” is inflating quickly, money is to be made trading this “asset”.

Capitalism is a bubble.

Thanks for the link to this, Ian.

Exactly Hugh. Exactly. Wipe them out. They took the risk just like everyone else who bought mortgage backed, CDOs etc and didn’t understand them. My understanding is Fannie and Freddie were explicitly saying they were not backed by the US government but at the same time many assumed they would be backed up by the US government. Well too bad. These folks should not have bet the farm on the US government “probably” bailing out the GSEs. There is no free lunch, even for entities formerly known as the US government.

Nationalizing them seems like as good an idea as any particularly since they used to be part of the government anyway and the impact of the proposed bailout is going to double the national debt. If I were going to double my personal debt I sure as hell would want to get something in return for it. Not just pour an unlimited amount of money down the drain with nothing to show for it and no end in sight.

However, if the result of not bailing them out is financial armegeddon whereas bailing them out means the US government loses its AAA credit rating. I say NO WAY to a bailout. Either way is pretty bad but I am betting that we will not recover in my lifetime from losing the AAA credit rating. I sure as hell don’t want to be paying for all this stupidity in my old age.

Well Ian,

that was like a great class. thank you very much. does that guy even know how good a writer he is ?? fabulous. and I look forward to reading y’all’s comments on it.

did you see Roubini ? – 6 min

I could actually understand the good Professor after reading Numerian. Thank You

the entire monetary system of the fed is a ponzi scheme;

they print money, then give it to us a a percentage above the value of that money, (this is the prime) and we are supposed to pay all of that money back including that prime

this means there is never enough money to pay back the debt we aquire by getting the money in the first place

it is a bizzare model to be sure

There has always been a lot of optimism in America and we’ve been lucky enough so far to make it work. I don’t know whether we were exporting that feeling to 3rd world countries or if maybe there was an intentional plan to make them fail and come under our control, but the IMF did just what you said — offer money which with interest payments is too much to be repaid.

Was it a case of our confidence in our system being so great that it had to succeed everywhere else?

I think here there was a slightly more refined view of the system which said the interest rate put pressure on borrowers to know what they were doing and do their best to gauge their ability to repay — or put another way, they needed to know how much profit they could expect from their enterprise or investment and whether that allowed them to repay the loan with interest and profit to boot.

Can we expect the same sensibility from people who live in different cultures and with somewhat different political systems and histories?

In any event it’s pretty clear the power of the Fed to set the interest rate is powerful and the ability or lack of ability of the borrower to properly estimate their ability to repay is variable in the extreme.

Perhaps we’ve just been lucky and optimistic beyond any reason to be.

I’ve started buying gold.

A bit late but still…

Very very late.

Consider this, if you’re late that means others were earlier and they’ve bid up the price. So, you’re buying higher than they did and perhaps buying at THE HIGH.

So, watch closely whether the dollar turns and becomes stronger — that’s when you sell — or if the dollar keeps dropping — that’s when gold keeps going up. Gold and the dollar tend to be inversely related.

With a Dem administration appearing to be on it’s way you need to watch the dollar closely. Yes, you’ve bought late, but you might still make a buck or two before the final HIGH hits.

This is common sense and not advice you’ve paid for or that I have an interest in. Caveat Emptor!

Capitalism is a bubble.

Ideally a profitable company or industry attracts money from lenders and investors who want to get a piece of the action.

One way it goes awry is when a huge chunk of that money goes not to R&D or marketing or mfg, but into a CEO’s pockets. It disrupts the natural process of resource allocation. Think how much the computer & software industry could’ve done if $50Billion hadn’t gone into Bill Gates and others pockets.

Another thing which has been a growing problem (in a way) is the lightning speed at which information travels. Now when there’s a hot stock or industry, then everyone jumps on and sucks money away from other things. If there were a thousand little bubbles it’s one thing, but one giant bubble and the usual collapse can cause huge problems.

Another giant problem we’re facing today is manufactured bubbles of a magnitude we aren’t used to seeing. Sure 1929 was partly manufactured, but that was the whole market. Now it’s more regulated and harder to rig. But, we’ve seen housing which is a huge national ‘market’ rigged by Phil Gramm & buddies who simply changed a law. It’s scary. Then they go into the oil market and speculate — that has worldwide consequences, though the market is probably pretty small in terms of the number of players. Now we’re talking about a possibility of Fannie & Freddie being played. This is horrendous and mostly the result of having sociopaths running things.

This mortgage crisis goes well beyond a bunch of bankers with myopia. I saw this article a few days ago posted on McClatchy News,
http://www.miamiherald.com/sta…..okers.html
It’s a 3 part investigation titled, “Borrowers Betrayed,” starting with “Ex-Convicts Active in Mortgage Fraud,” and it details how Florida state regulators did not regulate the mortgage lenders whatsoever. I can’t believe that this isn’t all over the internet. It completely dispells any illusions that borrowers were at fault for the situation at hand, as many of the brokers who convinced them to take out loans were people with long records of fraud and even violent crimes who were able to get licences to sell mortgages by checking the “no” box on the forms when asked if they had criminal records. Unbelievable!!!