Cliff Notes: WHO fucked the economy up?
 

I don't claim to be a student of anything except making porn money. Surely there's some Einstein out there that has a 1-2 sentence explanation on who fucked the worldwide economy and I WANT TO KNOW IT NOW.

Explain...

the super rich super greedy moneychangers of the world and the stupid politicians and civil servants like Greenspan who let it all go down.

the masses should pick up their pitchforks and torches and lynch them all. but we won't - we'll sit like doofuses and accept what's happened without a peep.

In the end it doesn't matter.

The blame game is not going to solve the problem, and even if there was one man with a pointy beard behind a curtain pulling levers that controlled the fate of the world....

I am sure he does not have three trillion USD laying around.

:2 cents:

It's the same people who shot Kennedy, made Jimmy Hoffa disappear and are keeping the truth about Big Foot and UFO's from us.

Yup. The CIA

i'll accept theories too.. i have not the slightest idea how this could have happened.. not that im watching cnnmoney or reading financial sites or anything..

how can this shit happen? teach me. i'm dum.

its only a big lie. the economy is not fucked.
its all an artificial created paranoia by the media and the ones who controll them.

:2 cents:

One word.. Greed.

Greed got us where we are today.

in the end when historians write about it the answer will be one word - greed. people wanting and taking more than they are entitled to, worked for or paid for - money for nothing.

just googled the question and read an interesting article that puts blame on the computer software the investment world uses called 'quants' that make all the trading decisions for them. the old 'garbage in garbage out'.

we all did. we were spending money we didnt have, taking risks that ended up not panning out, investing huge resources into systems that are being dismantled/downgraded now

a micro example is myself. i buy a house, it goes up in value, i feel richer and spend more (because i have more equity in the house), i take loans out against mortgage equity.

house loses value, like it did, i have to draw it all in, thus change in lifestyle

good question

greed is good, but its different than money for nothing.

the determination to acquire $$ is good

so basically there's no obvious explanation.. just a bunch of allusions of this and that.. nothing specific

that's true - when greed is ambition and backed by something productive it's good.

the world economy has been turned into one giant casino at best and at worst one giant Ponzi scheme.

Greedy Realtors, Home owners, Escrow people fucked up. Keep pushing the housing market up, with bad loans. Banks lending out money to people with 500 fico scores. Sum it up Greed. The bail out going to the people who put us in the mess. Fuck the banks, going to make 300 fake cashier checks, so I can pay my bills

well there are more specifics but i'm sure not going to present myself as an expert - the US housing market/sub-prime lending collapse is the biggest part of it - the tip of the iceberg probably.

Who? All of us...

here ya go - the 25 who destroyed the world economy:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...iduals-economy

also some background:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_crisis_of_2008

2 Primary contributors...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-Steagall_Act - repealed/changed in 1999

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_(finance)

Large notional value
Derivatives typically have a large notional value. As such, there is the danger that their use could result in losses that the investor would be unable to compensate for. The possibility that this could lead to a chain reaction ensuing in an economic crisis, has been pointed out by legendary investor Warren Buffett in Berkshire Hathaway's annual report. Buffett called them 'financial weapons of mass destruction.' The problem with derivatives is that they control an increasingly larger notional amount of assets and this may lead to distortions in the real capital and equities markets. Investors begin to look at the derivatives markets to make a decision to buy or sell securities and so what was originally meant to be a market to transfer risk now becomes a leading indicator.
(See Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report for 2002)

Leverage of an economy's debt
Derivatives massively leverage the debt in an economy, making it ever more difficult for the underlying real economy to service its debt obligations and curtailing real economic activity, which can cause a recession or even depression.[8] In the view of Marriner S. Eccles, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman from November, 1934 to February, 1948, too high a level of debt was one of the primary causes of the 1920s-30s Great Depression. (See Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report for 2002)

The blame game won't solve the problem, but knowing what caused it can help keep it from happening again.
Blaming cigarettes doesn't cure lung cancer, but it sure does help for the rest of us to know not to smoke.

To answer the thread starters question....we all fucked it up. Everybody wanted something for nothing, the realtors, bankers, homeowners, politicians, investors....EVERYONE.

Now, usually there are laws in place to protect us from turning the nations financial systems into a giant Ponzi scheme, the same way there are laws to keep us from turning the interstate highways into the Indy 500.
We need to get past this mindset that regulation is bad and holds the economy down. On the contrary, nobody can prosper when there is no rule of law. :2 cents:

the guardian link looks just like what i was looking for.

Both dems and republicans fucked it up.
The dems pushed for programs so that poor people could buy homes they couldnt afford and woulnt be able to pay back.
The republicans backed banks that lent money to people who couldnt afford it, then sold those loans to other banks knowing they were crappy loans the people who got them couldnt pay back.

None of this shit is new. It is the second coming of the same old horse. Maybe a bit bigger, or smaller than before. Open a history book.

S&L bail out of 90's. The financial mess of the 70's. The great depression, etc.

"The only thing new in this world is the history you DON'T KNOW"...
:2 cents:

this seems to be one of the key issues at the heart of the crisis.. not the only one or the most major, but it seems to rear its head in alot of the 'expert' analysis i'm reading

If things get as bad as some people around here are predicting, the public is going to demand some necks to figuratively (or literally) put the noose around :2 cents:

basically banks gave credit to people with no hope of repaying it so they could repackage the debt and resell it with bogus aaa ratings given by crooked rating agencies.

there ya go.

ps: the mortgage aspect is just one small part of it - all sorts of credit from credit card to auto loans were given away for the same purpose.

I take issue with that. It would be abso-fucking-lutely stupid to push for poor people to get homes they couldn't afford...that would just make them more poor.

What the democrats did want to do was stop the process of "redlining", which was banks refusing to give mortgages on property in certain neighborhoods. (i.e. black neighborhoods)

The thing that most heavily contributed to the current crisis was the speculators. People thinking they could flip properties for huge profits with no risk.
These weren't poor people, they were upper middle class and rich people.

The only thing needed to prove that point is to look at what government has done so far to try and mitigate this crisis.

There are umpteen refinance programs available, to turn an ARM or subprime loan into an FHA loan with a low fixed rate. There are programs where the bank will lower the principle of the loan to 90% of current appraised value (thus forgiving a large part of the debt) and giving out a low fixed rate mortgage for the remaining principle...so that people can remain in their homes.

None of these programs have helped stem the tide of foreclosures or stop the bleeding on home prices. You know why? They're only available to people who actually live in the houses that are being foreclosed on.

The vast majority of the houses underwater whose mortgages aren't being paid are "investment property". It's not row houses in the projects, it's beach condos in Miami. :2 cents:

Many factors contributed.

A major one is a small group of people who have been continually ass raping the country's economy for their $1,000 lunch dates, private jets, lavish vacations and enormous bonuses which equal more than the GNP of entire nations.

They've lived like royalty while doing business shortsightedly at the expense of the people that actually work for a living.

Everything is ok, world will end in 2012... hahahahaha

..... lol

Republican ideology (No Gov't oversight).

both parties have some blood on their hands - can't make one out to be more of the bad guy than the other on this one.

i hope Obama puts his foot down hard on the Wall St weasels. These people do nothing that benefits anybody but themselves and the super rich - we're not talking about rich by porn industry standards - people with hundreds of millions.

It happened because the US is not the biggest producers of NOTHING.

Our banks use money, that does not exist
People speculate on things that do not exist
People invest in things that do not exist
and worst of all the American People are LAZY!

Good thread here, we all are guilty of causing this. As one person mentioned people wanted something for nothing. This goes all the way back to FDR and his programs which we are never going to be able to pay for.

It goes back to us not listening to Alexander Hamilton, who did not want us to have a national bank. What happened in 1913?, the federal reserve bank was created. Which as
you all know is a private bank.

We have 53 trillion dollars of unfunded mandates, SSI, Medicare and so on. Wait until all
of this comes due. Our currency is not backed by gold, thanks to the federal reserve act.
We are in big trouble and I don't see anyway out of this.

We can't print more money, which in turn devalues our dollar.

Anyone else think that when you look back on the last decade, a shitload of looting was going on? It was a giant snatch orgy... and by snatch, I don't mean anything good.

I see so many people getting down on adult companies for pc cross sells, etc., but fuck... have the credit card companies themselves behaved any better? The banks? Looting customers for fees at every turn. Talk about shady billing practices, most banks that offer CCs have written the book on that shit.

The owners of federal reserve, world bank, IMF and those who were involved in Credit Default Swaps. All of which are pretty much one in the same.

Which brings me to the answer to "WHO fucked the economy up?"

The U.S. Government did when they deregulated the derivatives market :thumbsup

Who is to blame for the economy meltdown? Deregulation and Derivatives
http://www.southdacola.com/blog/2008...d-derivatives/

Report from 8/11/2000 - Deregulation of Derivatives Would Be a Bad Mistake
http://www.econstrat.org/index.php?o...49&Itemi d=46

Derivatives?Financial Voodoo for the Few
In the 1970s the wizards of Wall Street and their advisors introduced a set of financial instruments called derivatives. They were theoretically designed to lower risks for buyers and sellers, including those in recent times involved in Mortgage-Backed Securities (bonds). The primary use of derivatives is called hedging.

In some respects, derivatives were (and are) insurance-like contracts designed to protect, say, bond investors, from default by the bond issuers. The name, derivative, is used because the value of specific instrument is based on (derived from) something else.

The last few years, the complexity and prevalence of derivatives has escalated so that today there are futures, swaps, options, and other exotic hedges available to the wise and un-wise. All together, derivatives have accelerated and deepened the current economic crisis.
Story here: http://www.sanjuanislander.com/colum...t/part-2.shtml

Related Information
http://www.financialpolicy.org/dsclessons.htm
http://www.financialpolicy.org/dscabmistake1.htm
http://www.democrats.org/page/content/wiki/gramm/
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/bu...pagewanted=all
_

thank you the voice of reason. When people say poor people caused this I really want to say are you that dim witted to actually believe that? Poor people caused credit derivatives? Most of this mess actually can be pointed to phil gramm

It has to be Lizard People

Yes I agree...in 2000, when congress prevented states from regulating derivatives using their gambling and bucket shop laws....things like the "credit default swap" were created, and that's what led to this whole mess.

See folks, we all know a bunch of people got mortgages they could never pay back, on property that was overpriced....what most people don't know is that banks would have never lent the money unless they had what they thought was an insurance policy against the borrower defaulting.
That's where the credit default swap came in. A bank would loan the money and not care if you could pay it back, because they bought this other thing from AIG or Bear Sterns that would pay them back if you couldn't.

The problem was, since they weren't regulated, AIG and Bear Sterns etc didn't have the money to back up these "insurance policies", and once the mortgage defaults started, the whole house of cards started to collapse. :2 cents:

we all did
we voted....for politicians...that did not check (or wanted to check) the large corporations, money institutions & banks....why: we all take everything for granted being blinded by greed

so we all voted wrong, did wrong assumptions and got greedy

assumtion is the mother of all fuck ups

so it's now back to basics I guess and go from there

Juicy - he was overspending on beauty products

Isn't the answer obvious? Tube sites and xsales killed the economy!

That's exactly what it was too.

When you buy a house for $200k and three years later it's more than doubled in value, you can take out hundreds of thousands against your house - money to blow. Our entire economy was based on people borrowing against the rising value of their houses.

There's little honor in most American companies. No shame in making more than 95% of the population while your company crumbles at your feet.

CEO of Japan Airlines took a paycut to the point where he's making less than his pilots. Honor.

lots of CEO's do stuff like that.. 'pay cuts'. salary.. but there's still many millions in bonuses and stock options etc etc

In short, EVERYONE who does not take personal responsibility for being accountable for themselves, their money, their education or their actions. From the link posted earlier:
LINK

Everyone on that list has failed in multiple areas of personal responsibility and accountability.

- People buying homes they can't afford.

- Insurance agencies insuring homes for people who can't afford the home in the first place.

- Banks lending money to people to buy homes when the people can't afford them.

- The Greed of Man. This goes against being responsible for yourself and your actions. Greed is not a virtue. In fact, it is a human character deficiency.

- Wall Street bankers, traders and investment opportunists that find weaknesses in our financial systems and exploit them, rather than strengthen them.

- Credit card companies for allowing their card holders to accumulate debt to such extents that they can no longer afford them, banking on their debts being paid in the "LifeTime" of the card holder. Then buying and selling these "Debts" as "Assets".

There are many other ways to spin this and point fingers, however none are as notable as our financial institutions, policy makers and The People at large.

I know many of you will hate the sound of this since Bush hating has become your religion, but Bush got it right when he said Wall St. got drunk. Over lending led to this, and very little else. The fat assholes at the top of the banks are the cause of what happened and Bush nailed it when he said they got 'drunk'.

cliffsnotes = abbreviated version right?

simple. recall any of your friends getting crazy huge mortgages you know they couldn't afford?.... that is the abbreviated, non-ego inflated answer