I had no idea how hard the 8 years of the Shrub had been on Lars. He is acting as if he has lost his mind. Hopefully, after a few years of Obama as POTUS, he will regain his sanity.

The people working on the draft for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 don't believe in regulation either, but they do believe in creating the illusion of oversight. In effect, this draft proposal lets the bookies (Paulson, Bernanke and Cox) decide who the umpires will be in this economic superbowl.

Delete the link above. It seems to be causing a hang-up.

Question: Was this caused by congressional mandates to loan to people who aren't credit worthy (like the conservatives claim?)

Fred,

Absolutely not. That's a way for Republicans to blame the least among us for a problem that was created and benefited the wealthiest among us.

the truth is that scam mortgages and crazy penalties were created by the mortgage industry to reap more profit. And the added fact is that 2/3 of those with subprime loans qualified for standard loans. So these are folks who were pushed into bad loans by mortgage brokers who got commissions from those bad loans but didn't disclose that to borrowers.

If people had been put in the loans they qualified for, this wouldn't have happened (or wouldn't have been as bad in any case). Not to mention all the crazy financial schemes that were cooked up on the back of these bad loans - schemes that even the financial institutions didn't fully understand.

Larson is an idiot. Carla, I clicked on the link so I could stop being a lazy, misfiring correspondent up here. Boy was I sorry! Wish I still drank. The guy is an idiot.

Also, from a friend who caters intimate little house parties in chic neighborhoods that put our small-time decision makers together with candles, booze, flowers and all that - Larson is the feller who shows up with one woman and blatantly puts the make on another. And nobody has the canuches to glare at his boorish misbehaviour.

It will be easier to achieve Lars' dream if we repeal Article I Section 19 of the Oregon constitution, which prohibits imprisonment for debts. Imagine the unregulated perfect world we would live in if CitiBank could have you imprisoned for missing 2 payments on your credit card. Now that would be a free and healthy economy.

Sometimes, he isn't full of bullshit.

I'm figurin' I'm gonna get drafted, again.

If people had been put in the loans they qualified for, this wouldn't have happened

If people had taken out mortgages that THEY could afford, this wouldn't have happened.

Lars doesn't have credibility to maintain his listenership. He's unable to stop contradicting himself on this issue; spinning in his own grease. On one side he's losing his tiny base of "it's all about me" libertarian-zealot business hacks, on the other, he's losing the reactionary anti-government know-nothing crowd. Slim pickings.

But I'd like to see a mockumentary - it may only be 2 - 3 minutes long, about the loneliness of a Lars ad sales rep as the economy craters. I imagine it written by Raymond Carver and starring Michael Cera. At some point, around the 1:50 mark, his dog bites him on the ankle.

Econ 101 lesson:

Just because your mortgage broker tells you that you qualify for $X doesn't mean you can afford a loan of $X. If you don't know how much you can afford, DON'T BUY A HOUSE. It's not for you.

... and then he bites the dawg back.

If I was stupid enough to loan money to someone when I knew they didn't have any way to pay me back, could I get the government to bail me out?

Apparently YES you can, if this congress is any indication.

[Editor's note: Comment impersonating Congressman Barney Frank deleted.]

The comments underneath Larson's rant are illuminating. Oregon Catalyst is supposed to be a conservative blog, but the commenters there are as scornful of Lars as we are here.

Government ought to get out of the regulation business. It is such a confused sentence reflecting a confused mind. Government regulates, is he suggesting it is a business that ought to be privatized? Or, maybe, he means that there be no financial services regulation? Would this be after the US Treasury has written a 700 billion dollar check? Then, if those funds were misspent, who is to blame or accountable? No one, market forces, the invisible hand, just who? I was please to see there was no cogent or related support for his view, on his site.

Yes, oh course Lars, let's get government out of the 'regulation business' so they can run their own affairs just like a Kindergarden class would run without a teacher. Oh, wait a minute, that already happened.

Dolt! The loans were made not because the people were qualified for the loans, but because the businesses thought they would make money. The loan officers wanted the commission and everybody was saying, "Go, go, go, do it now, real estate will keep going up forever! This is the chance of a lifetime."

It was just pure, unadulterated, 100% Conservative Republican Capitalist greed at work.

"It was just pure, unadulterated, 100% Conservative Republican Capitalist greed at work."

Several media outlets noted that Barney Frank, as a ranking member of the committee he now chairs, told the New York Times [NYT] in 2003, “These two entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

In unison the American people got together and pulled the wool over the eyes of the real estate community and got the killer deals on their homes. This was all done without having a MBA or other plaque hanging on their wall.

"If people had taken out mortgages that THEY could afford, this wouldn't have happened"

Actually, the real item is that the thinking became: because you had a "family" (regardless of class and/or income) you were entitled to a home as an American right, and the banks enthusiastically gave into the people's pressure as a matter of good customer service (i.e. we can't say NO to a 'family'). The truth is that if the average American with a family felt they could purchase a home (despite/denying bad credit), the banks had to be customer service friendly and give it to them due to the 'ownership' thinking principal of the republican leadership. The people who were a bad credit risk to begin with, and took the loans anyway, are just as much as fault as the banks who gave them the loans despite the peoples bad credit.

Just because you have money, or a family, does not automatically entiltle you to a home - or anything else (like a Car).

So then I take it that you're in favor of a government bailout for the lenders who were idiots.

You couldn't be more wrong.

Eric,

That argument couldn't be more specious. Customer service is well and good but no business worth anything is going to undercut its own bottom line in order to make customers happy.

If businesses actually followed that sort of "customer service" mantra, then all businesses would sell all products below cost. And they would all fold.

Banks gave out these loans because they thought they could make money. They took a huge risk and are now feeling the consequences - customer service had nothing to do with it.