Reply #32: Ah, have you not read anything about why we are in the mess we are in?

[truedelphi]

And by "We" I mean most of the nations of the world...

The mess has nothing to do with the houses that were sold to poor people who could not afford them. There are simply not enough poor people in twenty thousand universes to create the quadrillion dollars worth of indebtedness.

It has everything to do with the exotic investments that were basically the gambles the financial firms created - and yes, those were based on the premise that the subprime mortgages would eventually go unpaid. But if they hadn't bet on those mortgages, they could have made up similar exotic investments, er, bets, on the price of oil, or the cost of tulips, or anmy number of things.

And to this day, the banks and financial firms are still arguing that they cannot survive if they have to have regulations! Although anyone who has read a History of America, 1915 to 2001, knows that the bankers and Fiancial Hot Shots in this country and elsewhere, always made at least at tidy eight percent while being regulated by Glass Steagall. And it has only been since the repeal of GS that we have these continuous economic "crises."