lawblob said:
This is missing the point. Giving a mortgage to someone with bad credit is still a known variable, the banks knew exactly what they were doing giving mortgages to people with shit credit. Even if some of the mortgages had gov backing, so what, that's not what crashed the economy. What crashed the economy was taking these loans, bundling them into securities in a way that intentionally hid the risk, then trading a security on the open market with unknown risk, and leveraging it 60x face value. The mere weakening of the mortgage market was itself tiny compared to the money lost by bundling them into securities with unknown risk and betting upwards of 60x face value against them.
That's not true at all- the banks , along with Fannie/Freddie had/have mortgage assets in the trillions. The bundling itself more so spread the risk around, instead of concentrating to a few companies, like Countrywide. Perhaps, without the bundling, there would have been less exposure within the major commercial banks, and such banks would not have stopped lending as much when others starting calling "bullshit" on the sub-prime mortgages. Then again, many more homes would have been foreclosed, as the concentration of "shit loans" for such companies would have higher and those companies would have enough capital to write-off much of the "toxic debt." We still would have had a recession of some degree- with or without the loan bundling and creation of the mortgage-backed securities. With the bundling of loans, many banks did write-off much of the debt- they lost billions and many people lost their jobs- don't think that these companies got off without feeling the pain either.
Also, there were many banks and Wall Street firms that were not involved heavily and barely at all in the mortgage-backed securities markets. I found it ridiculous when the protesters started marching towards Jamie Dimon's apartment, as JP Morgan had relatively little investments in such securities. Bank of America was not in that bad of shape either, until stupidly bought Countrywide and later (though was kind of forced) bought Merrill Lynch. The Great Satan Goldman Sachs had far less involvement than Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers, both of which ended up going bankrupt. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers kicked-off the plummeting of the equity markets and ensuing recession. These Occupiers/"Flee Partiers" en masse have very little concept of what actually happened, yet it is very recent and extremely well-documented history.
If people don't take the time to research the specifics of what happened and why it happened and such information is readily available on the internet (though there is no single one source, and certainly highly-partisan sites like the Daily Kos/Media Matters shit or any shitty Tea Party blog will not have much useful info), then I have no sympathy for their ignorance. In fact, I will continue to ridicule them from my ivory tower, as they deserve it.
Alpha-Bromega said:
here's mine; infrastructure investment, public transportation, AFFORDABLE schooling, complte revamp of the public education system, the list goes on but these are absolutely fundamental. Oh some decent healthcare ALA Germany (mix of private and public)
Anyone can list a couple general areas to target; however intelligent legislating involves very specific plans and projects of where any tax money should go.
Infrastructure? What exactly? You want roads to be repaved? That's what the '09 stimulus cash went and a solid percentage went to the making of the signs along the roads that claimed "this road is being paved by the stimulus fund." Repaving roads are such simple projects that they should be a state and local matters only anyway. Now, do you want bridge replacement? That's something much of the country does need, though it takes much time to plan, demolish the old bridge, and to build a new one- with much economic consequences for those who used the bridge and would be awaiting for the completion of the new one. Such bridge replacement projects are certainly not shovel ready and expensive- could use federal dollars. However, the '09 stimulus package did not have enough strings attached to where the funding could go, and thus, the states wasted the cash other things (like state employee pension and healthcare benefits) than the needed bridges.
Public transportation? All major US cities have some sort of rail or subway system and bus system. Now, should most metros expand their commuter rail and/or subways systems? Yes. But is it easy? No, as the costs of adding such rail lines are extremely high. I know for the cases of metro Boston and metro New York, their respective transportation agencies/unions, the MBTA and MTA, are very corrupt. In fact, the last two heads of the MBTA are in jail for corruption. Perhaps, the protesters should be clamoring for ending transportation union corruption?...
Affordable schools? Public schooling is free in the United States. If you mean provide more subsidies to families for charter schools, which usually have much higher education standards, then I may agree to a certain degree there.
