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Technology Stocks : Applied Materials No-Politics Thread (AMAT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FJB who wrote (23551)	9/26/2008 8:30:16 AM
From: NAG1	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25522

Some interesting posts for a no politics amat thread. Some food for thought. In my mind, the problem wasn't that the door was opened for home ownership. The problem was/is that irresponsible loans were made. Loans could have been made that people could actually have repaid. Loans could have been made that were actually based on the income that a family had. Loans could have been made that were based on the real property values, not the overly inflated ones that drove up costs. Did the rule changes make these things possible? Yes. Did the rule changes force the banks to do this? NO. They could have acted responsibly but they got greedy and the regulators could have stopped all of this from happening. But then everybody was getting fat and sassy and people were making gobs of money so it was ok for the time being. The rule changes opened the door to lots of things. What happened once people stepped through the door was a matter of choice. People/Institutions could have been responsible, but they weren't. With that in mind, I would bet that most of the mortgages that were done in Clinton's time are much more solid that the ones that were done in the lax regulatory atmosphere of the last 8 years. So there is plenty of blame to go around. The only way not to get into this position again as a country is to honestly assess what happened without all the political agendas that get injected. Neal