Who is to blame ?

In your opinion is anyone to blame for the present financial crisis or did it just sort of happen ?

If people are to blame should they be tried and punished ?

How would you punish them ?

 

I'm surprised you didn't put this in the P&R forum.

1) probably an oversimplification but mostly congress, with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd as primaries

2) Yes

3) Public execution, preferably something medieval.

 

What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral.

This is making the rounds this weekend.


Also,
From Ritholtz' site:Hey Mayor Bloomberg! No, the GSEs Did Not Cause the Financial Meltdown (but thats just according to the data)


...4. Conservatives sang a different tune before the crash: Conservative think tanks spent the 2000s saying the exact opposite of what they are saying now and the opposite of what Bloomberg said above. They argued that the CRA and the GSEs were getting in the way of getting risky subprime mortgages to risky subprime borrowers.

My personal favorite is Cato’s “Should CRA Stand for ‘Community Redundancy Act?’” from 2000 (here’s a write-up by James Kwak), which argues a position amplified in its 2003 Handbook for Congress financial deregulation chapter: “by increasing the costs to banks of doing business in distressed communities, the CRA makes banks likely to deny credit to marginal borrowers that would qualify for credit if costs were not so high.” Replace “marginal” with Bloomberg’s “on the cusp” and you get the same idea.

Bill Black went through what AEI said about the GSEs during the 2000s and it is the same thing — that they were blocking subprime loans from being made. In the words of Peter Wallison in 2004: “In recent years, study after study has shown that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are failing to do even as much as banks and S&Ls in providing financing for affordable housing, including minority and low income housing.”

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Ya just have to laugh. Republican think tanks are complete and utter bullshit.

 

Failed politicians just disappear off the radar for a short while, clutching large pensions and perks. There seems to be very little judgement on their term of office. They may have contributed to the troubles of the country or even done something worthwhile.

It may well concentrate minds of budding politicians if they are somehow held accountable and punished if they do a bad job or rewarded if they do a good job! If a business owner does a lousy job the business goes into bankruptcy and also the owner. Serves him right you may say. But what if the whole country goes into bankruptcy ? They print more money !!