We, as citizens of the world have failed. How could us homeowners have let this happen?
Oh, and the mental midget in my other thread who was saying we have a mental recession?
I think we should all feel a little shame that we have not let our politicians and oil companies build a new refinery for 29 years. We are all directly responsible for the sky rocketing costs of gas, because...well...I'm not sure any more.
I just know that there are many flag wavers shouting the mantra " supply and demand " and " personal responsibility " while everything goes to hell.
Keep waving that flag.
I should have not allowed the median home price in my area to be $550000 when the median income is $50000.It was brought about by the astonishing short-sightedness of central bankers and politicians in Britain and the US who kept interest rates artificially low for more than a decade. A huge inverted pyramid of credit was built on top of the expectation of yields from British and US mortgages. Believing that house prices would rise for ever, and that even if they faltered the Bank of England would cut interest rates to reinflate the bubble, the banks began to lose any sense of financial risk, and started to relax credit standards and lend irresponsibly. Private-equity firms were allowed to borrow huge multiples of their real assets. Banks started to hide their lending in off-balance-sheet devices such as structured investment vehicles.
As house prices fall, this all turns into reverse. Loans de-leverage, derivatives degrade, margin calls are missed.
Oh, and the mental midget in my other thread who was saying we have a mental recession?
It seems like Gramm is standing outside of the chicken coop, blood and feathers are on his muzzle and he says; " hey, if you didn't lock those chickens in there I wouldn't have eaten them. Take personal responsibility boy. "Gramm’s role in the swift and dramatic recent restructuring of the nation’s investment houses and practices didn’t stop there.
A year after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed the old regulations, Swiss Bank UBS gobbled up brokerage house Paine Weber. Two years later, Gramm settled in as a vice chairman of UBS’s new investment banking arm.
Later, he became a major player in its government affairs operation. According to federal lobbying disclosure records, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department about banking and mortgage issues in 2005 and 2006.
During those years, the mortgage industry pressed Congress to roll back strong state rules that sought to stem the rise of predatory tactics used by lenders and brokers to place homeowners in high-cost mortgages.
For his work, Gramm and two other lobbyists collected $750,000 in fees from UBS’s American subsidiary. In the past year, UBS has written down more then $18 billion in exposure to subprime loans and other risky securities and is considering cutting as many as 8,000 jobs.
I think we should all feel a little shame that we have not let our politicians and oil companies build a new refinery for 29 years. We are all directly responsible for the sky rocketing costs of gas, because...well...I'm not sure any more.
I just know that there are many flag wavers shouting the mantra " supply and demand " and " personal responsibility " while everything goes to hell.
Keep waving that flag.
