Quote:
Originally Posted by kane
Here is how I lay out the blame when it comes to causing the recession.
Bill Clinton/Democrats - 15%
Bush/Republicans - 20%
Various people from the 1970's-1990's - 5%
Dumb people who bought a house they can't afford - 10%
Greedy banks/bankers/investors being reckless - 50%
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"caused"
A simple fact of macro-economics is that economies both expand and contact regularly and in cycles with each being proportionate to the other. NO ONE can prevent an economic recession AND have consistent economic growth. They both go hand in hand. There was a massive boom... and we paid for it with a proportionate crash. That is the norm. One can't be said to be responsible for significant economic growth and then at the same time be said to have played no role whatsoever in the inevitable recession/correction. The real estate bubble happened because as you know, over a long period of time, things slowly got increasingly wacky with lending and there a LOT of blame to go around for that as it happened over several decades. It's also easy to say "Bush" or "XYZ" should have stopped it... but anyone should understand that obviously no one, anywhere ever is going to get on board with making it harder to get a mortgage - which would also have immediate, far reaching consequences economically and politically.
My personally issue with the housing market collapse is that we didn't let all the associated banks and companies like Lehman Brothers etc collapse as well. Instead, companies made shitty and wreckless decisions and then paid no real economic price for it. The tax payers had to pay for it. Even passing a retarded fucking stimulous package to bail out banks under the presumption that they would just pump that money back into the economy and start lending, but they instead just sat on it to ride it all out and see what happens. An exercise in epic retardedness when it comes to legislation and tax payer money