Obama's BS comes across phony because the question for Barry/POTUS is: ...if a Politician will promise anything and spend tax-payers to get more votes and more power... ... then it does becomes question of: 1) how much spending of debt is enough to gain political power/control, 2) and who the hell is Barry to lecture about financial responsibility?
Mmm... There is that yes. And that's a matter of subjective ethics. Well all ethics is subjective so I didn't really need to qualify. Bogus, though, is a tricky subject to broach. There's nothing inherently "bogus" about synthetic financial instruments. Derivatives serve an important risk management and price discovery role. There's also the matter of due diligence on the part of the speculator/hedger. And since it appears that you are referring to Goldman Sachs, it seems you are suggesting that the CDOs in question, perhaps CDOs in general, are "bogus" products. From a consumer point of view, it could be construed that way. Consumers in general tend to be less informed since they do not specialize in finance. They are the most easily duped and rarely perform their due diligence before engaging in financial activities. But we're talking about parties who spend millions on due diligence annually. Goldman's failure to disclose the counter-party and the nature of the concentrated pool should not be construed as them having made a bogus product. Had things gone completely differently, such as considerable gov't intervention for mortgages, they would have lost. Had the investors forecasted better, they would have asked for more disclosure considering the risks involved and planned accordingly. As it is, Goldman's forecasting paid off this time around. And now they are being made a "patsy" for the cause of needed, those arguably effective, financial reform. That said, since the gov't collects more revenue from ever increasing profits from wall street, it would seem counter-intuitive for a president to come out and make such remarks. Especially from an administration that has an insatiable appetite for spending future tax receipts. Let's not get swept up in populous ire and a president who fans its flames for the sole purpose of political gain and the forwarding of an agenda that is not in total keeping with the founding ideals of America.
The problem is that when you are selling shitty instruments to the buy side... the buy side is very easy influenced to make decisions which help the agent but hurt the principle. Having bogus investments floating about would be fine if people were only buying them for themselves. But these pieces of shit got AAA ratings and blew up teachers pension funds. I am all for professional wall street gambling. I traded for a living for about 7 years... profitably... but I do not want my taxes to go up because someone on wall street blew up the system with bogus instruments.
Initially, yes, many of the RMBS (residential mortgage backed securities) that made up the CDOs had AAA ratings. And there was some alleged fraud going on with the ratings agencies and well as the banks that originated some of the mortgages contained in the RMBS. But on the whole, as time progressed, things deteriorated and was reported as having done so by multiple credit rating agencies in a quarterly and timely manner. Let's not forget that many of the mortgages in the RMBS were mortgages made to unqualified consumers. Consumers who didn't have a gun to their heads yet took extra ordinary risks. No excuses for the pros, really. They let their greed supersede their responsibility to execute proper due diligence. Their are no innocent victims at the pro level. And not many at the consumer level either. The only innocent victims are such as those you mentioned - pensions. I'll add responsible homeowners who saw their property values decline because of the rash of foreclosures and the ancillary businesses that serviced the local economies of these communities. Likely a few other innocents also associated with the fallout.
there are a lot of victims at the consumer level. millions who never played these games are out of work and probably in poor countries who rely on pennies falling off our counting table there are many who wnet from abject poverty to dead. your points are well sounding but reason always seems to be on the side of power.
But how do you objectively quantify and attribute the blame seeing that these victims as described above are always the victims of recessions. And of course, recessions are inevitable. I'm not unmindful of victims per se, it's just that there seems to be a bit too much scapegoating and too little accountability from all parties. The US federal government as well as foreign governments are MAJOR players in the culpability game. Yet wall street, specifically Goldman Sachs, is taking an undue amount of populous flack all things considered. It's almost religious in nature. Back when we used to blame sickness on evil spirits until someone came along and discovered germs and their mode of transmission. Though we still have an element in modern society who still believe that sickness is an incarnation of evil as a result of sin. (Pentacostals, I'm looking at you.)
Well said. Blankfien described the situation perfectly when the one senator(i forget his name), kept grilling him on shortselling something which they were selling to customers. He basically said that to every transaction they are looking to sell or buy, they are looking to sell or buy for a reason, they are not in the business of charity, if they think something is going down they sell. If they think something is going up they buy. The people on the other side of the transaction who were buying obviously thought that what they were buying was going up in value otherwise they would not have bought it. What does it matter that Goldman was selling at the same time they were trying to go short? Obviously if they were willing to sell at a certain price the reason why was because they didnt think it was going to go up anymore, or they thought it was a good price to sell at. They are not in the business of charity, and it is not their fault that they won spectacularly. If you want to blame someone for the mess blame fannie and freddie who were largely to blame for all these shitty mortgages. It is interesting that both fannie and freddie are exempt from the current financial reform. How can you possibly blame an invesmtment bank for taking a directional bet on which way they think the economy is headed. Perhaps we should blame AIG for selling Credit default swaps, perhaps we should blame bear and lehman brothers. No, those guys dont make a convenient scape goat since they lossed betting heavily in the wrong direction. Even though in reality it was the losers who actually brought down the system. It is funny cause any way you look at it in real life the losers always bring the system down, and the people who win based on the losers failures always become the scapegoats. GM going down, blame Toyota, Bear stearns going down, blame Goldman, Someone cant find a job, blame rich people. Big government budget deficit, blame the rich, housing prices dipping, blame the banks, not all the idiots who took out mortgages they could not afford. It is always the fault of the winners, no one ever points a finger at themselves anymore.
No probably not, but it is a perfect insight into the way in which he thinks and has governed thus far, soak the guy who worked his ass off to make 300k last year so that some guy who didnt work can have all the benefits, cause after all the guy making 300k has made "enough" money.
You think Obama was directing him comments to some hard working independent trader who made 300K? Sheesh... Do you ever pay attention to the context of Obama's statements?