Isnt't the bottom line in all this mess, the people at the top are really to blame? That is the investors of these mortgage backed securites (subprime type). Whether that is individuals, hedge funds, pensions, money market funds, citigroup, morgan, lehman, or whoever else that decided it was a good idea to dump money into these products. (perhaps ignoring obvious red flags). If there was nobody at the top of the food chain buying this crap paper joe six pack would not have qualified for that 300K loan. And on a side note, what about these rating agencys that slapped a AAA rating on these products. Now thats funny.
NO!!! Joe Sixpack is SOLELY responsible because he had the greatest amount of knowledge from the 3 minutes of business news he gets from the evening news every night! The lenders, CEO's, ratings agencies, politicians, etc etc were DUPED! They have no experience with these things and no way to get much understanding of them. It's a good thing they were well-compensated for having been tricked in so dastardly a manner by those joe sixpack intellectual giants!
Since the US keeps shipping it's manufacturing offshore, it has to remain litigious to make those Service Economy stats look good.
How come you don't start a thread stating: " Who is going to bail out the stupid and irresponsible government spending"?
Not following you here??? I named the thread with what came to my mind when I read the article. It could have been named in 100s different ways.
Because in the US it is the middle/lower class that must get the shaft while the executives get multi-million dollar bonuses and the chance to eject with golden parachutes just before the shit hits the fan. Get with the program buddy!
I live in a country that rules in this particular case (loans) according to the following statements: the society has to be protected in case they don't see a certain danger that might occur (rising rates, not enough savings for retirement....) because not everybody is smart enough to see it themself (see the million americans that were so stupid to take these loans and got in problems now). The crooks that try to sell something to "not so smart people" are prosecuted and pay the bill of the victim. The principle is that if you mislead people in financial matters you will be condemned. The proposer of the loans is a professional that should know much better than the client what the risks are. Even big commission may have no influence on the correct information. There has never been given correct information, not on the historical very low rates an,d not on the capability to pay back these loans. In the US the dollar rules., and that's the only thing that is respected in business; humans deserve no respect if they can be screwed. That's how a few rich get richer and the mass gets poorer.