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Pastimes : Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: c.hinton who wrote (1605)	8/12/2008 2:21:53 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3816

the market blew it in 29 and again in 87. The government (including the fed) blew it in 29 on in to the 30s. As for 87, the market did pretty well in both the 80s and the 90s. otherwise there is no balancing monied interests. Big government is more likely to help monied interests by restricting competition (both directly, and in less obvious ways like increasing regulation which big companies can deal with better than small or medium companies, and which can be tilted to favor those with influence)

To: c.hinton who wrote (1605)	8/12/2008 7:11:42 PM
From: alanrs	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 3816

see bear sterns. I'm of the opinion that this whole mortgage mess is the consequence of THE GOVERNMENT frowning on the practice called 'red lining'. Once banks were required to lend to people who were not credit worthy, they devised a way to do that without putting themselves out of business. Once the method was in place it was applied across the board, since it apparently worked to spread the risk of bad loans. And here we are today. It is hard to separate the cause from the effect. Like the drug problem. I believe it would be much smaller if drugs were legal, across the board regardless, as they were a century ago. Or if banks only loaned based on traditional credit criteria, not in response to a government that encouraged home ownership. Or if bear stearns and freddie and fannie were allowed to go bankrupt. Or if there were no fannie or freddie to start with, the government response to the last real estate fiasco. Or if.... I'm not much of a typist, the whole subject bores me, the era of big and intrusive government is well in place and will not be rolled back anytime soon, it's hard to get people to see the role of government in starting these distortions, I don't enjoy pissing in the wind. ARS