Plenty of blame to go around and yes the dems did promote fannie and freddie to buy buy buy but, as far as the merrills, goldmans, lehmans and bears of the world are concerned... the government didn't require them to do what they did and get leveraged to the hill with shit paper. So that's nobody's fault but stupid executives at these firms. Fannie and Freddie could have gone under and none of this would have been a big deal, but what these idiots did at the investment bank level was beyond comprehension.
What caused this crisis is very simple: lack of respect for leverage. Both by homeowners and by banks.
a perfect storm of greed, selfishness, stupidity and irresponsibility... our culture of entitlement, pandering politicians who socialized credit, gluttonous & reckless financial institutions trying to wring every last penny from conditions, and deadbeats wanting to live beyond their means.
Lenders were forced by regulators to place bad loans. They had to survive so they sold off the risk. I blame that on the Rhodes Scholar that was in the White House, the first black pres. The people that bought all that worthless paper are some first class idiots, first class for sure... highly educated like the first black pres. too... personally I don't think the bailout is going to work for very long, the overall leverage is so incredible that I don't think anybody can fix the problem... I was going to trade my way out of my current situation and I can do that unless they pass a tax on the transactions. This brings up the question of intent... did they intend to do this? Destroy the American economy and kill off speculation? The guy that is proposing the transaction tax says that it's intent is to get a little piece of all the longer term trades and inhibit short term ones.... there must be a philosophical basis for his thinking.. his desire to kill off short term trading... I really hope he fails.. I sent emails to all my congress people explaining how they would kill off liquidity when the bailout is supposed to increase it, and how they would lose tax revenues.......
Sure you can always try to find an immediate cause, but as for the underlying reason: http://www.relfe.com/plus_5_.html
Indeed... Maybe this is a perfect time to pruge an economy sustanined on shopping and home ownership... and put it on a path towards investment, infrastructure, health care and R&D... B
What a shitty video ddog, republican propaganda. I also think most people in this forum know way better what caused the crisis than the BS peddled in that video.