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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs

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To: RMF who wrote (36614)	8/29/2009 5:51:20 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) of 71588

Well, that makes a great case for the bankers and mortgage brokers that brought the country to the brink of a depression worse than the 1930's. The best that could be said about that comment is that its simplistic. Of course they paid a role, but so did home buyers buying houses they couldn't afford but hoped to flip or refinance when home prices "inevitably went up", and politicians, regulators, and others who pushed policies that helped create the housing bubble. Or even home buyers who bought houses they could afford at every higher prices, they didn't do anything immoral or unethical, but they drove the bubble as well. The general perception that prices are going to keep going up and up, is going to generate these types of actions, to try to blame just one set of players gives an incomplete picture. But that's digressing off on another topic, so for the sake of argument I'll assume for the rest of the post that they where near 100% of the cause, and that they did so mostly through a pursuit of profit that was in some way immoral. That says just about nothing about the general pursuit of profit. The fact that people do stupid and even immoral things in the pursuit of profit doesn't change the point that the pursuit of profit is probably the most powerful beneficial specific motivation in the world. Also your lead statement is more directly false. "Well, that makes a great case for the bankers and mortgage brokers that brought the country to the brink of a depression worse than the 1930's." Beyond the point I mentioned about them not being solely to blame. 1 - It doesn't make a great case for the bankers and mortgage brokers. Talking about the benefits of the profit motive and how its generally a very good thing, does not make a case for any/every specific pursuit of profit. 2 - "The brink of a depression worse than the 1930s", is fiction.

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