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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (177657)	1/17/2009 7:20:29 PM
From: The Reaper	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Jan. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Merrill Lynch & Co. will pay $550 million to settle claims by the Ohio State Teachers Retirement System and other shareholders that it misled investors about assets backed by subprime mortgages. Another splendid use of TARP money. Just the first of many rescues of retirement plans all courtesy of... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . us!

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (177657)	1/17/2009 8:50:48 PM
From: James Hutton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

I see that you've broadened your argument to include Alan Greenspan now. That's OK. No doubt he bears a huge amount of blame. But he came in under Regan. I'd still like some specifics on exactly what Bill Clinton did (other than sign the CFTC Modernization bill and the repeal of Glass Steagall in 1999/2000)? How did Bill Clinton "fabricate" a new economy or productivity miracle? (Greenspan was always touting the productivity numbers as justification for low interest rates or anything else he was pushing). I don't get why you think Bill Clinton was somehow responsible for the bubble mentality. Bubbles are a product of greed (and a lack of fear), again which has been around a lot longer than the last fifteen years. Assuming the magnitude of this bubble (it's really multiple bubbles) is greater than all others before, its root cause is no different, although the catalysts may be. By the way, you couldn't leverage 35-1 until 2004 when the SEC changed the capitalization requirements. He (i.e., the SEC) also changed the definition of capital, so those changes really put the derivatives aspect of today's situation in overdrive. So that wasn't Bill Clinton's fault, unless he was somehow secretly advising Cox. The Rithholtz numbers are interesting. Assuming they're somehow accurate they do put today's bailout in some perspective. "i already explained that. he and greenspan fabricated a "new economy" and "productivity miracle" while simultaneously creating a massive credit bubble. this led to a stock market bubble that left people who had never turned a profit in their lives as $100s of millionaires, if not billionaires. that raised the expectation bar for execs that actually produced tangible goods or services that made a profit. they wanted more than people who couldn't wrestle a profit from a wet paper bag - and those folks made $100s of millions. pondering the bubble in hindsight, it also seems that the bubble mentality (clearly started under clinton and fed on over drive by bush) dramatically reduced risk aversion in people working with OPM - other people's money."