by Rick Lowe
There is an awful lot of blame being placed at the feet of Wall Street and the executives that populate the towers there, by so called Main Street(ers).
It has occurred to me that it was those same Main Street(ers) that had three and four mortgages or were putting their money into so called investments that seemed too good to be true. Yet somehow scorn is being heaped upon those "greedy" Wall Street(ers).
Have we become a world of "victims"?
Sometimes us Main Street(ers) must accept responsibility for our actions and not expect the government, (which happens to be us) to keep bailing us out.
What's your take?
Rick,,,,,, I don’t think anyone is exempted from the ‘greed’ virus to some extent. But what brought it to a head was the ‘perfect financial storm’ between the greedy banks, greedy credit agencies, greedy real estate promoters, greedy wannabee real estate buyers and greedy investors. The banks gave low interest mortgages with nothing down to real estate buyers that couldn’t afford a normal mortgage but that would adjust to normal rates at a later date. The banks also repackaged those toxic, sub prime ‘DDD’ mortgages into blocks of toxic mortgage backed bonds. The sub prime bonds were given ‘AAA’ credit ratings by S&P and Moodys who were financially motivated to lie about the risks. The real estate salespeople jacked up the real estate prices to earn bigger commissions because they could find cheaper financing deals for the buyers. The bond investors didn’t investigate the quality of the underlying mortgages because they trusted the rating agencies and were overly enamored with the interest rate readjustment coming just down the road. Both Wall Street and Main Street played their greedy roles.
We are our own victims and yes we are attempting to bail out our lifestyles but it may cost us much more than we know.
I think Bill Clinton & the Dems helped by forcing the banks to loan money to people who would otherwise never afford it. A lot of this should fall on Bill Clinton, Barney Frank & the rest of the Democratic committee that enforced it, but they are all still there doing even more damage.