(12-28-2017 11:36 AM)Marc Mensa Wrote:  

(12-28-2017 11:09 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(12-28-2017 09:28 AM)Marc Mensa Wrote:  

(12-28-2017 08:51 AM)VA49er Wrote:  

(12-28-2017 12:31 AM)Marc Mensa Wrote:  Wall Street was flush with foreign money... money looking for safe investment... and there was no safer investment than the US housing market. At the same time, Fannie and Freddie were both on the sidelines during this period as a result of an accounting scandel, which freed Wall Street up to step into their place. Call it a perfect storm, call it what you will, but it was hardly Democratic political policy that prompted the crash. It was unadulterated greed.

The crisis was caused by, in no particular order....stupid business, stupid govt, and stupid individual citizens...all driven by greed. To blame one and not the others is silly.

while I agree with your statement, this is an occasion when government gave the banks exactly what it wanted and thats zero oversight.

Total bollocks. There was no point at which banks were not heavily regulated. The problem was at least in part conflicting regulations.

Once the bad loans were in the system, the crash was pretty much inevitable. All of the Wall Street stuff was maneuvering to try to forestall the inevitable using classic risk management tools. The problem was that the whole system had become so infected with toxic loans that there was no way to deal with it using classic tools.

Part of the problem was that no regulated entity was big enough to take on the risk. So the risks had to be laid off on non-regulated entities. And the regulators were up to their eye teeth in plans to do so. Everybody wanted the hot potato off their plates.

Quote:Derivatives fell inder the purview of the toothless CFTC and Rubin, Summers, Snow, Bernake, Greenspan, Clinton, & Bush received in exchange an artificially inflated bubble economy and kudos for their economic acumen. Greenspan is the one constant and later said his mistake was thinking capitalism would protect itself. Well, this is one case when it obviously did not. No, this was a case of laissez faire gone wrong... because all the players (borrowers, mortgage banks, wall street) were using and losing someone elses money.

Except it wasn't laissez-faire that went wrong. It was regulation that went wrong. It wasn't deregulation that was the problem, it was bad regulation. By the time deregulation entered the picture, we were already way past the point of no return.

100% wrong... but you certainly sound convincing

He is not wrong however as usual there is more to the story which has been explained adnaseum on this board.