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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (40871)	9/1/2007 10:59:08 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541299

[dupe]

To: Dale Baker who wrote (40871)	9/1/2007 11:00:52 PM
From: Sam	Respond to of 541299

The market was stupid to let this bubble happen. To say that it was "the market" that "let this bubble happen" obscures the real culprits--the executives and mortgage brokers who wanted to do deals that made no sense because they made their money up front and off-loaded the risk onto other people. And the supposed "regulators" under this administration who didn't do anything to curb the practice. And they want to privatize social security. What a swell idea, lol. EDIT: Ok, we can add the people who took out loans they shouldn't have taken. But for the most part, the "regulators" and the brokers knew what they were doing, while I doubt that many of the debtors had a clue that they were doing something very risky. And even those who did shouldn't have been permitted to do it, IMHO, because it affects us all when it is done by the number of people who did it.

To: Dale Baker who wrote (40871)	9/2/2007 1:10:20 AM
From: GST	Respond to of 541299

There is a widespread belief that houses "always" go up in price. In the minds of the public, house prices are about as sticky as anything you will ever see. The calls for bailouts reflect this distortion. Most people do not believe they did anything wrong -- they bought something they couldn't afford yesterday and thought it would go up in price as it "always" does. They did nothing wrong. They see themselves as victims of bad luck -- like being hit by a storm and not due to their own fault. You can say "how stupid can you get", but when it comes to house prices, stupidity is the norm. It is stupid to expect a bailut, but stupidity in the public mind is the norm when it comes to house prices. Then there are politicians looking for an angle the public will buy -- and we all know that politicians on the make are never apt to say or do anything stupid just to buy a vote -- LOL. It is election time -- silly season. Lets see who can get the most silly this time. So far, Bush is doing "a heck of a job".

To: Dale Baker who wrote (40871)	9/2/2007 9:30:32 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541299

Dale, those illustrations of "high end" this or that miss the point of home mortgages. I gather the subprime market, where this started, consists largely of unregulated mortgage brokers and bad credit customers. But the effects of all this clearly reach well beyond either group. And into mortgage areas that are not subprime. I think it needs more regulation. But since losing one's home and going into bankruptcy when the family is right on the margins of surviving, is likely to be an extremely destructive moment, some means should be found to get as many through it as possible. I like the argument that when mortgages were held by the banks who made the loans, folk who fell behind could renegotiate terms since neither the bank nor the mortgage holder benefitted from foreclosure. That doesn't happen with the new structure of the mortgage business. I gather one of the policy goals is to find some way to implement something like it.