"people were trained"? So you suggest people are some sort of animals without intellect, willpower, intelligence? You mean people had no power over whether they signed under their home equity loans, 2nd mortgage, they did not know that they were paying down less than 30% (do some math, the probability of default on a mortgage already rises SIGNIFICANTLY when you pay down 20% instead of 30%). Whatever you are told you do things because YOU decide to do so, not because some evil banker forces you to. Stop this wining around and seeking excuses. People brought this about all on themselves. And the very same people also staffed banks, the same greed you saw on Wall Street is exhibited in all of us. Its all a matter of how we control it and how much risk we seek for the matching expected reward. Your arguments are idiotic because they deprive humans of any sort of intelligence and willpower. You got 2 choices: a) the average person in the US is incredibly dumb, not knowing what they sign, able to be easily manipulated by some evil forces or b) greed took over and people were seeking unbalanced risks. You suggest the former I the latter. That, I guess is the big difference in our views. But its very short sighted to argue the person on the street had no choice that they were essentially controlled. Yes they were controlled, but by their greed not a smiling mortgage sales man.
buddy, without mortgage derivatives there would be no mortgage market to start with. Who is gonna loan you the money on your house? I am not because I dont know your ability to service and repay credit.
to start with, because their economic forecasts are some of the best. They regularly beat pretty much anyone (except in foreign exchange predictions) because they have better analysts and put in more work than anyone else. In turn they also get rewarded a lot better. Yes its all part of the game. You wine and dine clients. You take them to the strip clubs. You pump out reports and advice and if the guys like you after some time they may come back for their next M&A mandate. Why does WarrenB do business with GS...
you are just so wrong. Nobody would take away my house if I had borrowed credit responsibly, if I took into account the probability of sickness, job loss, and a DECREASE in housing prices. Buddy, whom are you trying to blame for that? Stick it to the lender? What the f..... is this how you do when you lose money in trading, you blame the guy who provided you the remainder beyond your margin? Laughable.
not everyone who lives outside the US is against the US or wants to see Americans fail, maybe you wanna update your antiquated cold war beliefs....
What you're describing is human nature. It's nothing out of the ordinary for an unqualified borrower to walk through the door. In previous years they would have been denied. Why, all of a sudden, did the "denied" stamp find it's way into the circular file? YES, the borrowers have to accept their fair share of the blame but if someone with a 450 credit score walked through the door today would the "denied" stamp still be in the circular file? Not a chance. Lenders today have it in the center of their desk and only set it aside if the borrower has all their ducks lined up. This is how it USED to be and this is how it is again, and how it will remain until the next time.
"not everyone who lives outside the US is against the US or wants to see Americans fail, maybe you wanna update your antiquated cold war beliefs...." I have lived in a number of different countries around the globe. There's a lot that I like about America and I would probably be viewed as pro-American among Europeans especially, though it's not something that I would boast about and I would appreciate it if you could keep that to yourself. Shall I finally get to the point? Well what surprises me is that for every person in the wide world that wants America to do well, there are 10, or more like 100 who wants to see America fail. This isn't a scientific survey, just my experience.
Sadly, eventually America will fail much the way Great Britain failed, the way Rome failed, and the way economic super powers before them failed. It's the natural course that all economic powerhouses take. I think we are witnessing the beginning of the end for the US but that doesn't mean life won't go on. As far as I know, Rome is still there.
If you have a hundred runners, all runners want to be first. What is the big deal, it's simple nature.
I agree capitalism should be tough. - all that creative destruction stuff. What sucks was when GS got paulson to bail them out with billions of taxpayer dollars. Plus we have no idea how many billions or trillions? of bad assets have been lifted out of banks books by the fed. It has been said by elliot spizer the fed paid trillions. I am not sure if that is true - but if it is. http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/25/spitzer-federal-reserve-is-a-ponzi-scheme-an-inside-job/