On Sep 19, 2008, at 9:18 PM, richardsan san wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 10:11 PM, Bruce Johnson < > [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> >> on Real Time just now: >> >> "There are no atheists in foxholes, and there are no libertarians in >> financial crises." >> >> watched that, it was a weird show. i thought it was going to fall >> apart > near the beginning and end... What I mainly learned was that Andrew Sullivan is a idiot who doesn't have the slightest clue why the economy is bad, or that he's just another 'I got mine, Jack, fuck off!' Thatcherite conservative. He wants to blame it all on those greedy greedy pigs who bought houses they couldn't afford. No, it isn't. The mortgage companies who came up with these stupid loans, got their fees and kickbacks, then dumped the mortgages in securities that the credit rating companies had NO BUSINESS rating as anything other than junk are the primary villains in this crisis. There was constant drumbeat of cheerleading from the top on down about how this 'ownership society' was the endless wealth generator that the previous stock market bubble failed to be. People were steered into complex mortgages on the explicit promises that the value of their house would always go up and rates would always be low; shows spread like wildfire on cable about the glamourous and profitable life of house flippers, and a gold-rush mentality was generated in places like California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona by mortgage originators and developers. "greedy poor people" didnt' walk into a mortgage company and invent the Ninja loans, or interest-only loans. (And I won't EVEN get into the kind of 'brownlining' that went on, steering mostly minority borrowers into riskier sub-prime loans even when their credit should have qualified them for better fixed rate loans.) -- Bruce Johnson U of Az College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions don't have opinions, merely customs --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "StrataList-OT" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/StrataList-OT?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
