Frankly, I think we have been done a terrible disservice by the

[jtuck004]

current administration's decision to continue the bailouts and save the big banks instead of closing them through the FDIC. It has become quite clear that the recommendations of former employees and friends of investment banks that worked or work in our administrations was colored by their predisposition to cover up the mis-deeds of their business associates and friends, not a dispassionate analysis of what would have been best for our nation. That $15 trillion could have been put to far better uses; the money that was given the banks is just buying Treasuries to soak up the interest as profit rather than being lent out. The proximal cause of our financial crisis is the $140 trillion (or more) in toxic assets, and attempting to hide them away from the market by supporting prices until the "financial fairy" delivers a new economy under our pillow makes the tales of Don Quixote sound downright reasonable.

With over 30 million unemployed, underemployed, or discouraged and dissappointed among our neighbors, our security and energy is being sapped. We could, and damn well should, create a jobs program to put people to work, because the offshoots of that will create the new business that drives hiring. (It's almost creepy the way they are throwing money at existing businesses while trying to convince everyone that either big business or small business will hire in the face of no demand for their products. Do the people in charge of our tax dollars not read the same things we can? It's NEW businesses that are responsbile for most hiring folks. Mr. Obama, if you would step out on a stage with a time-limited plan to bring us into the 22nd century and put some people to work on it, the results would do more for this party than any amount of bashing of the people that voted for you).

That said, I think it's hugely funny that their own actions might bring about the demise of the jobs in the investment banks that caused all this tragedy and pain. Our government has a second chance at letting them eat their own cooking. I hope they take it instead of trying to pay them to bury it.

From market ticker...

...
This is NOT a "minor clerical error."

It is NOT correctable at this point in time.

These securities are FATALLY DEFECTIVE. The parties with the legal duty to check these facts did not do so.

...

...these MBS are sold first and filled after!

So it's much worse than "we didn't know." It's "we took the money, then we build the security and didn't look, even though we told you we would."

There's no fix for this without something like an RTC structure. You have to put these loans back on the securitizers, and let them (if they can) stick them back on the originators.

If this blows up the big banks (and it will) then use Dodd-Frank's "Resolution Authority" and take them into receivership and resolve them.

More here

:rofl:

[Just One Woman]

1. Hindsight is 20/20

We do the best we can with the information we have and the resources to do it with. With that said, I share your sentiment.

[CJCRANE]

2. Foresight can also be pretty good

for those who are paying attention.

There was a large contingent on DU who saw the crisis coming several years ahead.

I took their advice and starting paying down my debts in mid-2007 and by the time of the "financial 9/11" more than a year later I had savings to fall back on.

[Just One Woman]

3. you were lucky

I saw it too, but as one of the working class poor, I don't have much debt, or much choice. Survival is the name of the game. I know one thing. I will be getting the hell out of the south as soon as I can.

[RKP5637]

6. I often wonder where is the best place to live, anymore. Years ago there

were a lot of places to live and things pretty much worked, more or less... but anymore, it seems to be all over the place as to the best place to live. There are some areas of the country I would avoid too, I don't know if that's a fair assessment, but I just know areas I would avoid too.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. Same here.

And I credit the Market-ticker, as of early 2008, for literally saving our retirement fund,
plus watching the obvious bubble growing in Ca. a few years earlier.
We did the same thing you did, starting 2002, actually: paid off all debt, grew a savings account, stop all un-necessary expenditures, planned the BIG retirement move, etc.
And it worked.
So far.
But if what is coming down the pike is as bad as Ticker and few other guys I have trusted over the years are saying,
it is time to stock up on basics big time. BIG time.

[jtuck004]

5. I am not so sure characterizing this as hindsight is anything

more than helping people who should be taking responsiblity avoid it.

This problem extends back to the big investment banks purposely moving people into the government to help change laws and policies so that financial decisions would be more favorable to them. Even Bill Clinton said he got bad advice from Rubin (ex-Goldman Sachs chairman) over signing the Commodities Futures Modernization Act (which allowed the toxic assets to be kept off the books and hidden away from those who would see this malfeasance on the part of the banks).

When the current administration took over TARP and the dozens of associated programs had already been implemented, bailing out the investment banks with taxpayer dollars. Scores of well-versed and knowledgeable people disagreed vehemently with this, noting what it would cost this country, as well as the fact that the very banks that were being bailed out were tapped to help design self-serving solutions. Bernanke was the Fed Chairman whose non-feasance contributed to this tragedy, yet the current administration selected him for a second term. Articles, written well before these decisions were made unveiled the fact that Geithner had a cozy and continuing relationship with the people who ran these investment banks, and for him to push a decision which would benefit them hardly qualifies it as dispassionate or objective. All these facts were known before the decisions were made, so to rely on this group for "facts" seems almost foolhardy.

I think it sounds more like trying to appease political opponents so that other legislation could be pushed through, regardless of the cost to the taxpayers and the economy, under some conception of a "greater good". And while that is certainly a useful strategy, letting the foxes design the cleaning of the henhouse is a bad idea until you are sure the chickens are safe. And now, with 30 million people unemployed or underemployed, a number that is almost guaranteed to increase over the coming months, we are told all the help has been used up, paid to the investment banks. I think the priorities were, and may still be, wrong.

I'm all for cheer leading the team when they are playing well, but when they hand-off the ball to their opponents on some flaky promise of future cooperation I think they need to be called on it and told not to do it again. If one can't stand on principle, what good is it?

But you may be correct. Thank you for the thoughts.

[Just One Woman]

7. I agree

However, given that the supreme court gave corporations the right to voice with money allowing foreign enemies to shape our elections after President Obama was elected, I think the game changed. I'm not sure we have the referee anymore. I agree that we all are frustrated with the amount of compromise and deal trading, and principal must absolutely be held. But the game is going to change again. That outcome will be determined by how many democrats actually get out and vote this November. It is going to get interesting.

[jtuck004]

8. Yup.

And thank you.

The more I think about that Supreme Court Decision the more I think what they have done is made it necessary for people to no longer think in terms of working for someone, but of having to own at least a small part of the business. Given that some business will almost always have more money to influence elections than individuals (most of them anyway) it may be in our strategic self-interest to start training people to buy and own business so they can direct the assets.

As you said, we will vote our votes in November and see what happens. I do wish there were more populist oriented Democrats who would stand up for what I see as the real strength in this country, the people, as opposed to the "corporation", but what we have is light-years ahead of the thinking put forward by the opposition. At least we have that.

[northernlights]

10. it didn't take hindsight or even a degree in finance to know

that the repeal of glass-steagall would ultimately lead to this debacle.

It also didn't take hindsight to know that the real estate market was a massive bubble built on fraud. I sold my condo and bought a mini-farm in 2003. With no job (my own world blew up after the one-two punches of hi-tech crash and 9/11) I had more than one realtor try to lure me into buying double the property I told them I could afford by taking out a mega-mortgage and lie about my income.

Under W, various state attorneys general tried to push back on the fraudulent mortages, and were squashed. That was public knowledge. Years in advance, the FBI warned about the threat represented by the fraudulent mortgages. That was also public knowledge. Multiple leading economists warned, warned again, and warned again. They publically pleaded with him, in editorial after editorial. And they have been dismissed, ignored and marginalized.

The only thing that was in question for the last 11 or 12 years was exactly when this bubble would pop. And by 2008, that was public knowledge.

On the one hand, Obama initially only had that public information available to anybody who cared to look. And since he's actually been in in the white house, he's only had the information handed to him after it's passed through filters.

On the other hand, Obama chose the filters, and apparently chose to filter out what was widely known before hand, and which *should* have been paid close attention to by anybody professing to be the leader in government.

Hindsight is 20/20 only goes so far. He made disastrous mistakes in underestimating the depth of the problem and disastrous mistakes in who he chose to surround himself with. There were people begging right from the start of his presidency that the "bailout" needed to go to Main Street, not Wall Street. He chose to turn a deaf ear and instead focus on his personal pet project of forcing millions of people to buy a shit health insurance product that won't do anything to make health care more affordable or more available. Instead, rather the opposite.

I also don't buy "the evil republicans wouldn't let me" line. W got every effing piece of shit he wished for without a majority in congress. He rammed his shit down our collective throats without even a peep from the supposed opposition.

Personally, I would have been better off had McCain won. Then I would have known without a doubt the light ahead was a train coming the other way and I would have completed my program to get the fuck off the tracks. Instead, I let myself fall for that false hope and now I'm on the brink of getting mowed down with no way off the track.

At this point it pretty much doesn't matter to me which party wins. Either way, I'm likely fucked, despite all my planning and preparation. I have only myself to blame, of course, for falling for that false hope. Won't make that mistake again, not that it matters.

I will do what I can, of course, to get through this if only for the sake of my furfamily. Failing that, I will find them homes. I'm never going to get a chance to do anything more that I wanted to do in this lifetime, so I'm prepared to check out. However, if it comes down to it, my creditors can forget about taking my home. I will burn this place the to effing ground before I'll give them that satisfaction. They can try to get it back from a corpse and a burned out hole in the ground. FUCK AMERICA AND THE GREED IT STANDS FOR.

[inna]

9. K&R

Unfortunately, the system is still fatally defective; we're simply counting time to another inevitable "crisis" until Too Big To Fail are broken.

As for "the demise of the jobs in the investment banks that caused all this tragedy and pain"... you're more optimistic than me, but... from your keyboard to God(dess)'s ears. :hi: