Everybody is broke, including whole countries. I heard somewhere that total global debt is over 100 trillion! Simply put, progressive government programs were built with borrowed money, and they are not self-sustaining, they are draining. China holds the mortgage note, and the progressive version of the American Dream has turned into a nightmare.
So, Where did all the Money Go?
In the throes of the 2008 crisis, the money didn’t disappear. President Bush explained that it was "stuck," and "clogging the system." Not the disaster he made it out to be, but not good either.
Finance and the banking system facilitates business transactions that power our economy. Think of the truck that regularly delivers goods to your grocery store. The store manager doesn’t stand on the loading dock and write a check in order to get the driver to unload. No, the driver unloads and presses on. Revolving credit accounts facilitate this and millions of other daily transactions. If the financial system locks up, so do these accounts, freezing economic activity.
Making a Bad Situation Worse
Tarp favored large institutions over smaller ones, and our banking system is in even worse shape because of it. Wall Street is gambling bigger than ever, and Uncle Sam is behind them with promises of credit if they shoot craps again, which they will indeed.
community banks have given way to big banks and excessive industry concentration; profits are increasingly driven by risky trading; leverage is taking precedence over prudent lending; compensation is out of control. This toxic combination leads to continued taxpayer risk and threatens long- term U.S. prosperity. (Bloomberg)Still Too Big to Fail
Fortune Magazine explains that the Dodd-Frank Banking Scam made provisions for too big to fail institutions to have "living wills," which are agreements on how to break them up if another crisis happens. This is folly:
These "wills," which banks are currently discussing informally with regulators, are a weak, pathetic substitute for what Washington should have really done: that is, break up "systemically important financial institutions" into much smaller pieces. Or segregate their federally-insured-deposit parts from risky things like creating and trading derivatives. (Fortune)The Fortune writer has nailed it, but alas, it will never happen because it curtails the profits of the banking giants and politicians can't extract bribes from them with such a simple plan.
International Banking: A Multi-Tentacled Monster
One ugly scene that some analysts are imagining involves a default by Greece leading to losses inflicted on banks in other European countries that own large amounts of Greek debt. [...]The Gig is Up
Those losses could then cascade to the United States because the American and European banking systems are so interlocked, lending billions of dollars to each other every day.
American banks and insurance companies may also be liable for the biggest share of default insurance payments to European institutions if Greece or other countries fail. And the trillion-dollar money market fund industry could also suffer.
About 44.3 percent of money-market fund assets are European bank debt... (NY Times - Worries Grow)
The beast is strangling us, and we've done it to ourselves. If our progressive governments had not gone into hock to the tune of tens of trillions, these international Snidely Whiplashes would not now be tweedling the ends of their pointy mustaches and threatening us with foreclosure. Our politicians, paralyzed with fear and cowering like the trapped rats they are, don't know what to do other than borrow even more.
It has sent the message that we have hit the moment of demosclerosis. Washington is home to a vertiginous tangle of industry associations, activist groups, think tanks and communications shops. These forces have overwhelmed the government that was originally conceived by the founders. (David Brooks - Who is James Johnson)The solution is clear but impossible: Get out of debt and disentangle the federal government from its sweaty pornographic embrace with high finance and big business. The federal government should not be Wall Street's drinking buddy. It needs to be the cop with the nightstick who cracks the big banksters over the head when they reel out of the saloon drunk and begin marauding and threatening innocent citizens.
The answer to the question, of "Where did the money go?"
The answer is that it never existed in the first place. The money was conjured out of thin air. That's what credit is, and it must be paid back.
30 comments:
I wish I could find room to disagree with you, Kurt. Unfortunately, I can not and our government seems to be intent on digging the hole we are in even deeper. The consequences are sure to come and I am afraid the sight will not be pretty.
Not looking good. Most folks do not realize we are and have been kicking into the IMF kitty around 18 percent the last I heard. This IMF Lagarde gal will finish it for us. I read she is planting the Chinese and third world countries onto the Board. Oh this Frenchi hails from Chicago- what a coincidence.
The game of robbing Peter to pay Paul is almost over. Peter's pocket is empty and Pauls pocket has a hole in it. One can ignore reality only so long and then reality smaks you in the head or somewhere lower down thw anatomy.
Where did it go? Well where did it all come from? No, I am not referring to the symbolic paper the Treasury prints.
Money of today is based on a house of cards being nothing of value backs it, the numbers are all in cyberspace which go unseen and this is not limited to the U.S.
Much like health insurance, no one actually sees the cost and are less inclined to worry about it.
To further show how messed up we financially are I offer the following [edited] email exchange between me and a friend I’ve known since grade school who was the CEO of a large multi-national corporation. The implications are profound:
[BACKGROUND: I recently contracted to buy a second house as a lon-term investment, with the idea of renting it to a friend at a favorable rate with the option to buy. Financial advisors approved the idea. My longtime friend, henceforth to be known as LTF thought well of the idea, and asked just yesterday how the real estate project was going?]
FT: The project, unfortunately, is officially stalled. We’d scheduled the inspection for today, but unfortunately the bank could not come up with a clear title, so they've asked me to withdraw my offer, but retain right of first refusal if they can produce the title in the not-too-distant future. You'd think they'd ascertain all that before putting a house on the market, but ...
So it's back to the drawing board. There's no end of houses on the market, so eventually we'll find something. It all takes patience. At least we're no worse off than before we started the project.
LTF: I can relate to your quandary re the house. Here's a good one for you. Our friends, G and F have two children: D married to L, both H. S. teachers, with 2 children, and a daughter, M, also a H.S. teacher, married to R with a child on the way.
D and L paid 450K for a condo now worth 250K and just "walked away"' from the mortgage with Bank of America -- no short sale or bankruptcy. They went and bought a home in C Valley and are now renting the condo to M and R\ without paying B of A a dime.
The bank can't find the Deed or Title to the Condo and have done nothing to evict D and L. M pays the insurance, HOA fees, etc. and lives essentially rent-free. Apparently, according to G, his son D has told him that the bank has lost records to thousands of homes and have taken no action on any of them. Since no transaction has taken place D and L's credit was not affected, and they were able to get a new mortgage for their C Valley home. Since they are both teachers they can afford to pay the mortgage on the new place. They walked from the other, because they didn't feel like paying a $450,000 mortgage on a $250,000 Condo.
G and F are political Conservatives and somewhat conservative religiously and do not approve of D and L's actions. I’, not sure i do either, but it’s a Brave new World out there, and standards have changed radically. What amazes me is how B of A can lose thousands of mortgages and have no idea as to the whereabouts of titles. To think I own stock in B of A, what a way to run a company!
FT:My very quick response to the real estate situation you described is
CHEESE-US-KEE-RIST!!!
Apparently, this is becoming The New Norm, and bodes ill for the integrity and viability of property ownership in the future. I have heard that because of sloppy-to-non-existent research on titles, etc. those in default on their mortgages could possibly stay forever in their homes free of charge. The downside, of course, is never being able really to own or to sell the place. You're TRAPPED in a mess. So, apparently, is the USA. I blame Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and the likes of Tim Geithner for this. What say you?
LTF: AMEN!!!
Discouragin,’ ‘aint it?
~ FreeThinke
I blame the banking industry for failing to do due diligence, as well as the financial markets who bundled, bought and sold these rotten mortgages. Everybody had dollar signs in their eyes, and in the rush to make more, got burned.
So the government picked our pockets to make the bankers whole again.
Who's to blame? We the Stupid Sheeple who put up up with it.
What exactly does progressivism have to do with any of this???
JMJ
Smoke and Mirrors...and we're even running out of them.
I heard Dennis Prager yesterday talking about this situation again...yes, Europe's economy's broke from their huge and long-time welfare state and our leftwing can't wait to grow ours just to get votes. man
@Jersey: What exactly does progressivism have to do with any of this???
The idea that the state can be all things to all people has bankrupted us, and it has bankrupted Europe as well.
There is nothing in the US constitution about providing housing, health care, unemployment insurance, food stamps, charity, or retirement to the citizenry.
It's a beautiful idea, but it's a fairy tale, and it's all unraveling.
The progressive dream is really a nightmare that we cannot escape.
Jersey asks:
"What exactly does progressivism have to do with any of this???"
Progressivism is akin-to-if-not-strictly-synonymous-with Marxism.
Progressivism means systematic weakening of the Rich, the hallmark of which is Forced Redistribution of Wealth from the Haves to the Have Nots by any means fair or foul.
It means DEFICIT SPENDING.
It means suspending the rules of sound business practice to give special breaks to the "disadvantaged" that would not be given to anyone else.
It means the forced dissolution of standards of Common Sense and Common Decency that have sustained us for hundreds of years.
It means that those on whom Progressivism has heavily imposed are almost certain to resort to CRIMINAL ACTIVITY to get back what they rightfully regard as SOME of THEIR OWN.
Specifically in the case of the Real Estate Debacle: Progressive legislators Bonnie Fwank and Chris Odd sponsored legislation that FORCED the banks to lend money to UNQUALIFIED BUYERS WHO HADN'T A HOPE IN HELL OF EVER PAYING IT BACK.
This opened up the floodgates, so that a huge number of unqualified buyers and dishonorable speculators rushed in to purchase property. This formed a real estate "bubble." In other words it drove up the prices of real estate artificially, and caused a drug on the market.
The bankers knowing they were poised to lose their asses in these unsound deals forced by the "Progressive" government, "bundled" them up and sold them as "securities" to naive, unsuspecting buyers in hopes of staving off a crisis in the banking industry.
The rest is history. The bubble burst. Real estate crashed to unprecedented lows. Legitimate, longtime homeowners lost 50 to 65 percent of the equity in their investments. Homeowners started to default or just "walk away" from their "upside down" mortgages.
Now, buyers with cash often can't get clear title to investment properties, because the banks, pressured by federal regulations to commit economic suicide, didn't perform due diligence on the barrage of new, essentially worthless mortgages they were forced to write, and so now we're in a stinking mess.
At least that's how I understand it. If anyone wants to correct me, I'd be glad to get more information on what this is all about.
~ FreeThinke
Where did it go? Well, let's start with the housing market where the banksters took the suckers for a nearly 8 trillion dollar ride. Pretty good chunk of change.
Comments today by Gary Schilling are pretty nasty, a further substantial increase in under water mortgages. Now Schilling has been too pessimistic in the past but he has a good record on the direction of housing prices.
Another good year and we'll have prices back to 1990's level. But nothing is going t step in and until this market stabilizes, this economy is going nowhere. Michele Bachmann can whine about jobs all you like but no housing stability, no growth.
Train in the tunnel.
When the government FORCES the banks to screw up, is it fair to BLAME the banks for doing so?
Bankers cannot make money legitimately issuing "loans" to well-known, sure-fire DEADBEATS.
~ FreeThinke
How did the government "force" them to screw up?
Did the force Lehman Bros. to leverage bad paper at 50 to 1?
Just how was Countrywide "forced" to do anything? It was a major player and it was completely unregulated.
Did the government force the brightest guys in the room to bet that the housing market could increase perpetually? That's what they did. Now if your bookie put everything on the over and didn't lay anything off what would happen to him?
But the boys on the street were not only greedy, they were freaking stupid and you still defend them?
The free market (LMFAO) FAILED. It did boom-boom all over the rug and the walls. Adjust your thinking to reality. I know it's tough for the right to do that but it is important that you do.
I can only repeat:
Progressive legislators Bonnie Fwank and Chris Odd sponsored legislation that FORCED the banks to lend money to UNQUALIFIED BUYERS WHO HADN'T A HOPE IN HELL OF EVER PAYING IT BACK.
This opened up the floodgates, so that a huge number of unqualified buyers and dishonorable speculators rushed in to purchase property. This formed a real estate "bubble." In other words it drove up the prices of real estate artificially, and caused a drug on the market.
The bankers knowing they were poised to lose their asses in these unsound deals forced by the "Progressive" government, "bundled" them up and sold them as "securities" to naive, unsuspecting buyers in hopes of staving off a crisis in the banking industry.
The rest is history. The bubble burst. ...
I didn't even mention the corruption and stupidity in the administration of Fannie and Freddie.
BUT, I'd be the first to admit there is an unholy -- and wholly unseemly -- partnership now between Wall Street and Washington that forces us taxpayers to bend and spread while Goldman Sachs, Obama, Ben Bernanke,Timothy Geithner, Eric Holder and their minions screw us unmercifully in a frenzied orgy celebrating their flamboyant Abuse of Power.
BUT it all started -- as far as I can see -- with a stupid, cynical, ill-advised, vote-buying initiative to "level the playing field" made by liberal politicians namely Frank and Dodd.
I see it as part of the determination to institute the New World Order -- i.e. One World Government administered by elite oligarchs who know allegiance to no party, no nation and no ideology other than the consolidation and continuous aggrandizement of their already immense power.
Party politics are as relevant in today's world as the buggy whip.
I'm as against Corporatism, Communism and Ecclesiasticism all of which are reincarnations or variations of the Feudal System.
I am not the enemy of liberalism per se; it's a most beguiling fairy tale. I am the enemy of TOTALITARIANISM and STUPIDITY in all their many and varied forms.
~ FreeThinke
You know, leftists scream it's the capitalists, righties scream it's the government.
IMHO its about 33/33/33
Governmental policy encouraged sales to low income buyers, via quotas and rewards to the financial institutes, and shielded them from risk.
Financials were more than happy to comply, took excessive risk, bundled it and sold it off before it blew up in their faces. Not wanting to limit themselves to the slim profits available on low value mortgages, they relaxed the standards for everyone. Wonderful game of musical chairs, just don't be left holding the mortgage when the music stops.
Buyers overbought, refinanced debt into their mortgages, and over leveraged themselves. Now they whine, everyone with any sense knew that the market could not continue to go up, up, up indefinitely. You took the risk, take responsibility for your actions.
Like my Daddy used to say, if it seems to good to be true, it probably is.
Today everybody wants a free lunch.
Oh God guys... I get the ideology. What I was asking, IN THE CONTEXT OF THIS POST, was how does Progressivism create a TARP, or private institutions "too big to fail," or our dependence on multinational banks???
These are not "progressive" ideas, fellas. These are rich-people-getting-richer ideas.
Blame Free Trade, blame the repeal of Glass-Steagal, blame GMAC, blame AIG... but why would you blame progressives??? What the %$#@ did we do???
I'm a progressive to the core, and there's nothing about any of these things I like, nor does any other progressive I know of! WTF guys???
Christ Almighty!!! I'm a lib, not f'n satan!!!
Don't blame the the consequences of the irresponsibly powerful and wealthy on regular folks like me. We avowed libs and progs are a pretty powerless minority in America these days. It's the cons who've been running the show, regardless of the "party" in "power," for a long time now.
Great friggin' job they've done. The idiots.
JMJ
It all boils down to the BIS and it's various fronts. Institutionalized Marxism provided them the cover they needed.
The fat cats who own the GOP have sent it all to the Cayman Islands and our jobs overseas.
Watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTzMqm2TwgE
You don't paint a pretty picture. However, it is the reality in which we live.
Jersey!
Pace, pace figlio mio.
For Heaven's sake, CALM DOWN. The Furies are not after you. No one wants to see you burned at the stake for consorting with Satan. No one is accusing you of wrongdoing.
Personally, I think you and all the other good-hearted liberals I know -- and there are many -- have been taken in by your own sincere desire to see a kinder, gentler, fairer, more generous-spirited society develop.
I'd like that too -- and so would must of us on the conservative-libertarian side of the Great Divide.
I've been fortunate. I am prosperous, though by no means rich. I enjoy helping others I know who need -- and deserve -- help. If I had my way, I'd love to see everyone reach their maximum potential and achieve a high level of comfort and prosperity.
I don't believe the true battle is between left and right anymore. I have come to believe that we have ALL been taken in and manipulated by the would-be Oligarchs I've mentioned several times who are not loyal to anything but themselves.
These shadowy figures pull strings behind the scenes, and constantly stage crises designed to get us all at each others throats. They do his by agitating, "consciousness-raising, by exacerbating the naturally occurring tensions and differences among various groups and factions.
Instead of fighting each other, we should be focusing our negative energy and desire for reform on The Illuminati -- The Bilderbergers, The Council on Foreign Relations, Skull & Bones, possibly the International Order of Freemasons and The Zionists.
All those folks mean to RULE you and me and all the rest of us. They've been planning it OUT IN THE OPEN for about a hundred years -- maybe more. "They" thrive on the enmities "they" foster and exacerbate.
It's a vicious, deadly serious game. Don't get sucked into always playing it THEIR way.
~ FreeThinke
Off course you can only repeat it, freethinker. You can't come up with anything but the Fox news line.
Barney Frank was a minority committeeman in the Tom Delay house but he had massive influence on policy? Please stop.
Now let's get down to it. Do you believe that the reason for the investment banking industry going in to meltdown was because the system did not have sufficient liquidity to cover defaulted loans made by regulated banks under the CRA. Are you really that naive?
How did the CRA force Lehman Bros. to leverage their paper at an insane 50 to 1 ratio? Please answer.
The investment banking industry and unregulated lenders where among the major failures. How did CRA effect them. Come on, don't turtle like a fringe right winger, let's have your answer.
Governmental policy encouraged sales to low income buyers
-----------------
So what, Flimflam? The default rate for loans made to low income buyers was no higher than the rate in general. Low income defaults were not sufficient to cause the American banking system to melt down. Quit trying to float the pure stinky Libertarian cheese. Because until you guys join with Alan "Ayn Rands Squeeze" Greenspan and admit that the unregulated free market (LMFAO) crapped the bed, we ain't getting anywhere.
Now, please join Freethinker in trying to explain to the class what the bleep government regulation had to do with Ameriquest, Countrywide and the real players in this fiasco.
We'll leave the morons at Fannie who decided they could double the stock price, walk of with hundreds of millions in bonuses and help tank the system for later.
Now also explain how writing trillions in derivatives which were bets that the housing market WOULD NOT DECLINE had anything to do with Congress. You can't because all your doing is blowing the usual Libertarian smoke.
"Progressive legislators Bonnie Fwank and Chris Odd sponsored legislation that FORCED the banks to lend money to UNQUALIFIED BUYERS WHO HADN'T A HOPE IN HELL OF EVER PAYING IT BACK."
Anonymous, how about then Sen. Obama? He was in on it with Dodd. Chris Dodd and Obama were raking in huge sums of money from AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for their help in allowing banks and mortgage companies to make unsecured loans to
people who really had no way to pay the loans back, and this included making the mortgage loans to illegal immigrants as well.
G.W. Bush warned Congress several times that if something wasn't done, we will be in whole world of hurt. But, every time the Republican members of the House and Senate tried to introduce legislation that would have prevented the Housing Bubble Burst that led to the mess we are in, the Democrats who controlled both the House and the Senate kept blocking the legislation.
Obama has a lot of chutzpa to blame Bush and keep crying how he inherited the financial mess we are in today, from Bush, when in fact, Obama had a big hand in causing it, and then making it much worse.
"Bonnie Fwank" kept the real situation under wraps from We the People, telling us every thing was wonderful and pie-in-the-sky, all the while he was packing fudge with his boyfriend who just so happened to be a fairly high up employee of Fannie Mae.
The MSM didn't help matters any either, because they just kept spreading the manure that it was all Bush's fault, and the public bought into it.
Hey, Ducky,
I never get my opinions from any place other than my own insights and heartfelt perceptions of reality -- which I readily admit always may be highly flawed, but at least they are my own and certainly not those of FOX News -- an organization of which I am often critical and not overfond, because I suspect it of cynically playing a character part merely to attract and hold a lucrative niche market.
FOX is just another arm of the Almighty Media Establishment that distracts us from reality, chooses our candidates for us, and hypnotizes the public into accepting and believing all manner of appalling tommyrot clumsily masquerading as truth.
Frankly, I don't know enough to give you an expert comprehensive opinion on the questions you asked.
I can only say this once again: [T]hose on whom Progressive Statism has most heavily imposed are almost certain to resort to UNETHICAL or downright CRIMINAL activity to get back what-they-rightfully-regard as SOME of THEIR OWN.
If government regulations require businessmen and investors to follow foolish, destructive, self-defeating policies, it stands to reason said businessmen a investors are going to find a way to make up for the unnecessary punitive sacrifices government has forced them to make.
The most obvious example of this occurs when producers of goods and services raise their prices to make up for the deficits caused by tax hikes. The consumer is the one who suffers -- albeit indirectly -- at the hands of government. When taxes become confiscatory, consumers stop buying, businesses shut up shop, and massive unemployment -- and defaults n mortgage payments results. Housing sales drop into the gutter and eventually the nation plunges into Depression.
Greed and panic too are at fault certainly. I know at least two people who have come to grief buying up houses at the top of the market thinking they were going to get very rich very quickly, and wound up filing for bankruptcy. There's plenty of blame to hand all around in this mess, but it seems apparent to me that government policies inimical to the best interests of business knocked over the first domino that started the rapid Decline and Fall.
It appears that statists such as yourself want always to believe the worst of businessmen and the best of government officials. We conservative-libertarians feel exactly the opposite.
As a person who likes to believe he is still somewhat rational, I suspect the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes.
~ FreeThinke
PS: Father Gregori, this isn't really about Obama. Our Dear Leader is a mere pimple on the face of the Demon whose vile breath currently befouls the atmosphere making us peevish and dyspeptic. - FT
Someone tell Father Gregori that Chucklenuts had it in for Fannie and wanted it fully privatized long before anyone had the banking system on the radar.
I refer him to "All the Devils Are Here" by Bethany McClean which has an in depth discussion of the issue.
It amazes me with thew debt Bush put us in with the wars and the lack of revenue the tax cuts for the wealthy, and unfunded Medicare Part D, loons like the Rev. here actually tries to blame Fannie and Freddie for our problems becasue a couple of Dem were involved,even though Bush deregulated them as he did other financial institutions.
Bush and the GOP created this mess and the GOP is doing all they can to keep us in it. Average Fox watching Americans lap it up while they are getting screwed
@Ducky: Barney Frank was a minority committeeman in the Tom Delay house but he had massive influence on policy? Please stop.
You can't be serious?
It's not the 1980's anymore. Barney Frank was chairman of the banking services committee, where he extracted millions from the banking industry in exchange for free rein that they used to collapse our economy.
Please at least do some casual googling before clouding this forum with such blatantly false statements.
Bd: Are you just Ducky in disguise? You are even more wrong than he is.
On Fannie and Freddie
Go watch this youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM&NR=1
I know you won't, since it appears you studiously avoid painful truths that rock your world view, so here is an exact quote exchange during congressional testimony at the house banking services committee, which Barney Frank chaired:
Bush Treasury Secretary Snow:
"We need a strong, world-class regulatory agency to oversee the prudential operations of the GSE's"
Frank:
"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not in crisis"
Bush Deficits vs Obama Deficits
http://blogs.ajc.com/kyle-wingfield/2010/07/13/bushs-deficits-vs-obamas-deficits-in-one-graph/
So, if you deplore Bush's spending, you must absolutely hate Obama's out of control profligacy. Obama is running deficits three times larger than Bush's highest one, and Obama has already racked up more debt in two years than Bush did in all eight!
We conservatives rightly criticize Bush's spending, and we excoriate Obama's, so please join us in demanding DC stop the madness.
I will admire how you stubbornly cling to your msnbc and daily kook talking points, even in the face of facts and reality.
Ducky, are you really that stupid?
The government relaxed standards and provided inadequate oversight.
I didn't say it was the low income mortgages that caused the crisis, I said it was the relaxation of standards to promote low income mortgages applied to borderline high value loans that caused the crisis.
It's not the guy with a 110,000 mortgage defaulting on his loan that's the problem. It's the guy who previously would have qualified for a 250,000 loan with 20% down who got a 350,000 loan with nothing down that's the problem.
I'm sure they're plenty of low income mortgages out there in default, but I don't know any of them. I live in a rural area and know plenty of low income people... but all the people I know who are in default seem to be those who the finance industry enabled to buy more house than they could realistically afford along with their 2 ATVs, an RV, and a friggin boat.
The government and the people enabled the finance industry provoking the crisis.
There was a reason mortgages used to require 10-20% down. One, you have your own money tied up in the property and two, with 20% down the bank can sell your house at 80% market value in a quick sale or sheriffs auction and not lose anything.
These people weren't buying homes, they were renting from the friggin bank.
The government played a part, the financial institutes played a part, and you can't realistically sit there and claim the poor innocent victimized buyers didn't play a part. I could have easily gotten one of those loans, I have excellent credit, but I didn't...what's that say? There's a reason I have excellent credit? And I'm not that stupid. Aside from just reading all my mortgage contract papers, I have a fairly adequate understanding of what they say and mean. I've never even used my VA loan as I've always been able to get a better deal on a conventional mortgage.
Can we have relaxed standards and more government oversight and make it work? Probably... but it'll cost you several hundred billion for a new (or augmented) government oversight agency. Is that what we really want or need? Its not a matter of regulation or deregulation, it's a matter of government involvement. Governments legitimate role in finance goes no further than law enforcement, they are not supposed to be incetivizing or deincentivizing anything or anyone.
We'd have been better off if the government had simply paid the 20% down payment of low income families...it wouldn't have been right, but we would have been better off.
Better government just stay out of business altogether. Honestly WTF does Barney Frank know? The ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee has absolutely no experience in financial services. He's a lifetime career politician with a BA from Harvard, a Masters in poli-sci and a JD. His only financial experience is in government budgeting, and that might explain a hell of a lot about why our government budget looks the way it does.
Who gets what position in our government has absolutely nothing to do with experience or qualifications and everything to do with political power and time served.
Believe it or not, getting elected to congress ranks below staying in a Holiday Inn Express as far as qualifications go.
An unregulated free market didn't crap the bed, because we don't have one. Government involvement in a regulated free market crapped the bed because the people in government don't know what the F they are doing, don't fathom the repercussions of their actions, and simply govern under the concept of 'gee that sounds good and will get us a lot of votes from bloc X'.
Consider yourself schooled... or to translate that into the progressive statist tongue "Skooled"!
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