EXACTLY!!! Actually, it was the culmination of several bank-sponsored projects, at the heart of which was the false premise that risk could be spread in such a way that no one had any. I worked for a major financial institution at the time. Three years before the crash, I had lunch with one of our top securities people who was just starting to sound the alarms that so-called mortgage securitizations were a time bomb, no matter what fees they might be generating in the short term because the losses they would take when the assets went bad would dwarf the income. And it did. In spades. And, like most corporations, this one expressed their gratitude at her early warning by forcing her out the door. But the best part is that those banks and financial institutions are still doing business exactly the same way.
No. They commit those resources to keep the government strong, but targetted againt their competitors. Not true. For a statement to be defamatory, it must be -found by the court- as untrue. That's not the same thing as actually being untrue. There is no right for a medical patient to keep his medical records confidential. There is only Hi Tech and Hipaa.
Because someone's government chose to bail them out instead of allowing every single individual to learn a damn lesson. Just like with the 1929 crash, the Great Depression, we're on nothing less than the road to serfdom, something that even Orwell supported in his forward of the same-name book by Friedrich Hayek despite his disagreement with the Austrian school. But do not think these banks are doing it alone, it is a government monopoly they are members of that is the problem, that Federal Reserve printing the notes we're forced to use from the threat of violence.
Exactly. Here I was thinking that anybody who got an ARM loan was a fool who got exactly what they deserved (to lose their house) and I was saving up money to get my first house affordably when they did lose it. Looks like I was the fool, because I didn't consider that the government would bail them out and I would have to pay for the bail out with my tax money. So, not only would I not get an affordable house, I would be forced to pay for others to keep the house I would have got.
Yeah. Know how many $10k school loans I qualify for? At least enough from Full Sail University that'd have covered everything for me to go there online or offline, and I never did take it. I often joke that it was because I'd have been required to use both Mac hardware & software when I've my own computer that can emulate MacOS just fine (which is true by itself, I build computers cheaper to do better than any Mac any day of the week), but the reality is I looked at the situation, knowing that I may never even have to pay it off on the basis of school loans now being covered by the government entirely, and still refused because I don't want to be indebted by so much.
And here I thought it was because the banks and financial institutions were able to block any kind of meaningful regulatory reform. Also, the bailouts, while unappetizing, did keep a lot of people employed. Because as bad as the job loss was with the crash, it actually could have been a lot worse. At the same time, the recovery could have been a lot more thorough had so many millions of jobs not already been shipped abroad.
Oh you must mean the kind of regulatory reform the bigger banks supported to keep smaller banks from taking their power. So it's more important to keep people employed than to let them learn a lesson? In this post-Nuremberg era, those employees were just as wrong as their employers.
No, I'm talking about the kind of regulatory reform that caused the foofs on Fox News to scream about "socialism". By the way, the worst corruption wasn't on the part of the public-facing banks, it was on the part of the financial interlopers who pretended to "manage" risk. I know I'm probably going to regret asking, but I can't help myself. How can you possibly justify that statement?
So yes, it is the regulations the giant banks wanted. When you're requested or ordered to do something, whether you know it is wrong or not, and it is wrong, you're just as guilty as those ordering you by going through with it. The bank employers needed their employees just as much as the employees needed their employers, in order to instigate this travesty. In fact, because employment is voluntary unlike a government draft of any sort, these employers deserve more than just losing their job as they voluntarily helped the few giant banks.
"I'm just doing what my boss tells me to do." That kind of thinking is what got this country in trouble and keeps us in trouble. It is a reflection of the messed up democracy that people think we live in where the decision makers give orders and people follow them unquestioningly.
As to point one, the giant banks were screaming the loudest. Oh, I know, I know...that was all a ruse, because they were behind it and wanted it to look like they weren't. As to the second...well, it's so far off the mark from any reasonable standard (particularly with regard to the Nuremburg reference) that I see no basis for continuing this discussion. Have a nice day.
You keep treating all banks as the same animal, Ed. Here in the real world, large banks buy politicians, small banks don't (due to lack of money).
Exactly. Employees that do something wrong are guilty of it, regardless of whether their employers do/don't order them to or they know or don't know it's wrong. Losing their job is the very least such people deserve. Employers like these big banks have no ability to do things on their own (well they might have the ability but normally it wouldn't be so effective).
Of course. My point is that banks are not the only corporations that exert incredible (and damaging) influence on government.
