The traders and bankers screwed it all up and now will get the debts written off…they waste so much money on expenses that you will be shocked…thats where all the money is gone…and now they are laughing at the tax payers expense…it makes my stomach turn…
Heres a good idea, MPs no longer get a “2nd house allowence”
the seven hundred billion dollars legitimate robbery make Russian robbing barons and oligarchs in Yeltsin period look like petite thievs
I know it seems like a terrible thing, but it’s not all as simple as the tabloids make it out to be.
Let’s not forget that this all started with the credit crunch, which was triggered by people borrowing money for houses they couldn’t afford. So you could argue that it’s not the traders but the general public who is to blame for all of this.
I know traders shortselling shares while spreading rumours didn’t help, but that’s criminal and not really the cause of the major problems, it only made it worse.
It’s naive to thing that doing nothing and letting the economic system grind to a halt would hurt the traders more than everybody else. That would have a major impact on all of us, particularly those of us who don’t have stacks of money set aside, the rich would be fine. So something must be done.
And before anybody suggest, no, I’m not a trader and don’t work for a hedge fund or investment bank.
i think that is exactly the problem, the wall street deliberately made their products so complicated to avoid the scrutiny of common sense:)
For hundreds of years banks have avoided lending to people who could not afford to repay.
It is not the customers who recently created “self certification” mortgages or 110% mortgages etc.
I disagree, I think the public wouldn’t have been in the position of being able to take out a mortgage they couldnt afford if the Federal Reserve had set more stringent rules and regulations regarding mortgages and that if the mortgage houses were being HONEST in their evaluation of salaries and what people could afford when people were coming in for mortgages. The mortgage lenders have failed the public by allowing them to take out mortgages that they knew the people couldnt afford.
However, I don’t think that it was the mortages being defaulted that has caused the issue - its the banks and investment houses that bundled portions of mortgages up together and then rated them as being AAA or AAA+ rated loans, which effectivley means guaranteed income and no chance of default…when the banks and the investment houses who were doing the dealing knew that mortgages were being given in instances where people could not afford the loans there IS NO WAY IN HELL they should have been rating these loans as AAA or AAA+…
I agree with you Driesie that something needed to be done, but i think what people are saying is that the people who made the megabucks are no longer in the game and THEY are not going to be affected. The majority of them will still have more than enough money than they know what to do with and they won’t be brought to any sort of justice over what could be coined fraudulent activities that went on regarding the subprime and mortgage crisis…scumbags the lot of them.
In terms of the actual 700bn dollar package, its a shambles in my opinion…it includes a HUGE number of sweeteners that the Senate added to the bill which I think was wrong, but it shows the state of politics when it took millions and millions of dollars in sweeteners for the house of representatives to approve the bill…Sadly, I think that this crisis is going to hit everyone, even the rich who have lots of cash…but as you rightly point out, its the average person who will be hit hardest.
I’ll get off the soap box now! 
The bill the HOR rejected was two and half pages, the one they accepted with the sweeteners was 451. That isn’t a joke - that was how the bill grew between Monday and Friday.
It’s called capitalism or free market. And I don’t want to get into a discussion on whether that’s good or not, note that I didn’t really express an opinion on who there is to blame, I just pointed out that there is more to the story than what many realise.
If somebody offers you a motorbike and says “it’s AAA quality, it’ll last 50 years and a million miles”, then you can make a judgement and believe this or not.
We all had a say in how the financial system is regulated, that’s called democracy.
Again, I’m not taking sides, and it’s a gutting feeling to see the traders who made millions from short selling coming out of this the best, but I don’t believe in removing all blame from ourselves. As a western society, we have failed, and we just have to owe up to that and so what we need to do to sort it.
Bloody hell. That grew faster than a Local Government email using “reply all”.
O.K. It starts with an American institutions loaning a couple of million dollars on a “prime development” that is in truth a swamp in Luisiana and then selling on the debt (as a package with others) to banks around the world.
Unfortunately, now there’s a word, the whole thing has snowballed.
Iceland, yup, a small country, now looks as if it might go bankrupt. We’ll it might if it could, but it can’t file against itself.
Iceland’s banks now owe, or are in debt to, eight times the GNP of the country.
Prime mover in all of this? Greed of the few over the needs of the many.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need 
Karl Marx
(It was never really gonna work - but it’s a nice thought isn’t it?) :)Although - saying that - we’re a bit like that on Bike talk/Questions and Answers/Mentoring etc ain’t we? 
As I recall, there were three pieces in Marx economic model.
One of those was capital.
Ho hum. Another brilliant doctrine gone ti*s uo.
Some fair points there mate… re: the financial rating though, if a financial institution is fraudulently claiming that loans are AAA rated when they are not - then they should be taken to the cleaners and their leaders and the culprits who are responsible should be dealt with, and in a country like the US, it wouldnt suprise me if legal action is brought against people… following on from your analogy, If you bought something from a shop that was incorrectly advertised, you are covered by laws and likewise in this situation, there should be people brought to justice for fraudulently claiming loans were AAA when they were nothing of the sort!
In terms of having a say in how the financial system is regulated…in the UK the FSA are a much better regulatory organisation than the federal reserve are in the US…I agree that in a democratic society you can vote in a party to make changes, but in the case of the US, I really do hope that this situation is a catalyst for them to make the actual changes to increase finance regulations…
I don’t think its about sides with this situation, because i do think its going to affect everyone now… you are spot on when you say that society as a whole needs to accept responsibility…
Fair point. If they anybody has committed fraud by “mis-selling”, then they should be taken to court and made pay for it. I don’t know enough about the rating system, but I have a feeling the problem has been people putting their heads in the sand. Like Old Guy says, it’s all about greed, and that, a lot of us have been guilty off in thinking it was going to be ok to keep lending against our properties (or other goods banks have lend against).
It’s true that banks didn’t used to lend 110% against properties, but I don’t think you can blame a bank for lending that and then repossessing the house if somebody can’t repay. Nobody was forced to take out those mortgages. However, indeed you can say the bankers should be punished for taking to high risks. Shareholders (i,e. owners) of the likes of Northern Rock, B&B, Lehmans, will have paid a price for this risky business they were doing, which is fair.
Internationally, it is a blood sucking evil system.
Normally, if you overspend and have too much debt to pay back, you become bankrupted. But imagine when you have the right to print money, and also you have the only gun available, even you are bankrupted, so what! That’s exactly what America is now. All the debtors, china, Japan, Saudi Arabia and others have a lot of IOUs from America, what can they do?
This “American dream” of prosperity for over 1/2 century is a nightmare for the rest of the world. behind the “dream”are the extortions, invasions, over spending, big deficits, which would lead any other country to bankruptcy/destruction except for America, the number one superpower.
The bail out, by congress, and foreign countries, sustain the unfair economic arrangement, and postpone the emergence of a new and fairer order. American public seem to know, but appear to be powerless, they also knew it was wrong to invade Iraq, but it was not the public who made the decision.
I agree with the above comment - Let’s hope the U.S. publics grasp of foreign and economic policy matures after the Iraq war and the shock of the current financial crisis - perhaps then concepts like ‘fair distribution of wealth’ (at home and abroad) will not be seen as deeply subversive there.
Deregulated capitalism is as bad as communism in it’s capacity to steamroller the masses.