Simple. Concise. To the point.

That was both great and horribly tragic.

Where do I go to see a professor interviewed who can make sense of this financial mess and describe the policy choices going forward in a simple, easy to understand way most people can get?

Either the frackin' Comedy Channel or internet to see clips if the Daily Show.

Anyone for some mobs with torches and pitchforks to go seize some broadcast media outlets?

That was both great and horribly tragic.

Where do I go to see a professor interviewed who can make sense of this financial mess and describe the policy choices going forward in a simple, easy to understand way most people can get?

Either the frackin' Comedy Channel or internet to see clips if the Daily Show.

Anyone for some mobs with torches and pitchforks to go seize some broadcast media outlets?

Hi, I am congress. What is a default of the swaps??

Above, Jack Roberts says: "Basically she did a pretty good job but, like a lot of liberals, she oversimplified the deregulation argument.

She implies savings and loans were doing just fine until deregulation came along. Actually, REgulation Q that capped passbook savings account interest rates at 5 1/4% at the same time S & Ls were primarily limited to making longterm real estate (primarily housing) loans created the initial crisis during the double-digit interest rate period of the late 1970s. Deregulation was proposed in response to this crisis and proceeded to create a new one."

Jack's comments don't reflect reality. The credit crisis of the early 80's affected most major lenders, not just S&Ls. Deregulation was done largely in small increments as financial institutions, especially the big banks, campaigned for a "level playing field" which they said would allow them to compete with other less regulated players. Banks wanted a piece of the big action. They lobbied hard over the years for the right to participate in activities outside the mainstream of banking. The floodgates opened in the 90s and look what happened. Like the nefarious criminals at Enron, they didn't do very well in these non-mainstream businesses except when they resorted to shenanigans and complicated smoke-and- mirrors schemes like the securitization of bad loans dressed up as highly rated investment opportunities.

The key here was the constant drumbeat in the industy over the last three decades for "deregulation" so they would be allowed to venture into business activities not permitted to them in the recent past.

Strict bank regulation is needed. Strict oversight of other Wall Street players is long overdue.

Oversimplified and proporting overregualtion to make up for regulators and politicians mistakes. A few months ago Barney Frank was saying that Freddie/Fannie were solvent and posed zero risk to the taxpayers if there were to go under. Whoops. I'm guessing the regulations won't regulate politicians.

It wasn't long ago Dems were advocating to look into the future not, to turn back the clock back to the 80's. Over regulation will bring back double digit mortgage rates and double digit unemployment.

jonnie

and deregulation brought us 40% home devaluations and 12.1% unemployment in Oregon.

Home prices have double several times since the 80's in Portland. A 40% decrease from a valuation after doubled several times is still a huge increase.

Since the downturn how many homes can you buy in Portland for $100k?

I remember in the mid 90's several homes in NoPo were valued between 100k to 200k (even along Willamette Blvd). Even with the downturn you'll be paying over 150K for a crackhouse.

Wait, so mp97303 doesn't believe in the whole "housing bubble" thing?

To take the essence of Kevin Phillips book "Bad Money" and keep it brief the causes of this disaster were corporate avarice and political corruption and incompetence, three elements that are still in play. Contrary to Jack's opinion, Phillips blames Wall Street for the origin of derivatives and other concoctions few, if any, people understood.

To the preceding I should have added the excessive debt taken on by the government and the people.

Brilliant. And so were Stewart's comments.

Jack's using a "stawman" -- claiming falsely that liberals and progressives were/are against changes in regulations to adapt to changing times and circumstances. It is just not so Jack.

"Liberals" and "progressives" are always so outnumbered by other politicians in Congress and the White House who are on Wall Street's payroll it doesn't make any difference what they are for or against. Among the more obvious pieces of evidence for this claim was the activity in the first stages of the bailout when senators and representatives rubber-stamped (Ex-Goldman Sachs CEO) Paulson's and Bernanke's two-and-a-half-page blank check to do what they wanted. The rigged hearings led by Sen. Dodd and Rep. Frank were just too obvious when they excluded any voices that might have dissented, no matter how respected they might have been.

Posted by: Vincent | Apr 17, 2009 10:18:08 PM

Please Vinny, regale us with your vast knowledge of economics and explain how the "housing bubble" was created.

mp & vincent, here's how the housing bubble was created.

By people who lined their pockets and their political friends with millions of dollars in a few short months.

mp & vincent, here's how the housing bubble was created.

By people who lined their pockets and their political friends with millions of dollars in a few short months.

It wasn't quite that simple. It also took millions of ordinary people to be gullible, thoughtless or suffer some other deficiency to go along with the Pied Pipers of the mortgage industry.

Bill Bodden:

It wasn't quite that simple. It also took millions of ordinary people to be gullible, thoughtless or suffer some other deficiency to go along with the Pied Pipers of the mortgage industry.

Bob T:

So, if we had to do this all over again, I guess you'd support (among other things) telling Andrew Cuomo and other greedy lawyer types to drop their "red lining" rhetoric (inventing a new "discrimination") and stop the Fanny Mae - Freddy Mac shell game? It was a bipartisan problem to be sure, because the Repubs bragged for the past eight years that home ownership numbers were just fine (never mind that so many were based on no-money down, never mind the income).

Bob Tiernan Portland

Bob T:

So, if we had to do this all over again, I guess you'd support (among other things) telling Andrew Cuomo and other greedy lawyer types to drop their "red lining" rhetoric (inventing a new "discrimination") and stop the Fanny Mae - Freddy Mac shell game?

Bill B:

The fact that other people guilty of human frailties were part of the problem is no justification for letting criminals off the hook.

Bill Bodden:

The fact that other people guilty of human frailties were part of the problem is no justification for letting criminals off the hook.

Bob T:

I have nothing against going after crooks (and fraud, theft etc are all assumed in a free market system, despite what many people say).

Point is that it was wrong to (among other things) force banks to loan money to people who hadn't been meeting minimum qualifications, just so's do-gooder could feel good about themselves. It was a regulation to do so, and it was stupid. Those who foisted this on us have gotten off scott free and are considered heroes in many cases (Barney Fwank, for example). Should he and Dodd, just to name two, be bounced from office, or re-elected? How about the people now serving in the Obama Administration who made loads of money from recent financial business collapses?

So much for tough talk about going after crooks.

NEXT !!!!!

Bob Tiernan Portland

Point is that it was wrong to (among other things) force banks to loan money to people who hadn't been meeting minimum qualifications, just so's do-gooder could feel good about themselves. It was a regulation to do so, and it was stupid.

This is news to me. There are countless stories of people applying for loans who were told by potential lenders to "raise" their incomes so they could qualify for the loan applied for which they dutifully did so that both lenders and borrowers new the loan applications were lies.

As for regulations it appears that banks and related corporations did a thorough job getting their concubines in Congress to write the "regulations" they wanted.

Bob: I would suggest you read Kevin Phillips book "Bad Money" for his analysis. He was a Republican when the party was more civilized and didn't indulge in open thuggery, but because the party has changed so much he may have abandoned it.

How about the people now serving in the Obama Administration who made loads of money from recent financial business collapses?

As an independent I may have more contempt for these people than you do.

Wonderful. It's been long enough that we have second hand accounts trumping the facts. I was a major investor then, and S&Ls were just fine until Reagan deregulated them. Following on from Nixon's price freezes, it was designed to destabilize the economy. The Arab oil embargo, the war in Israel, were all self-inflicted wounds. The first thing they did was make outrageous loans, usually to developers that were on related boards. Some call it degregulation, and I suppose you can call incest that.

It's simple. Deregulating the S&Ls is identical logic to saying that you can abandon your family pet in a State park and it will do just fine, following the laws of nature. If it's meant to. No difference. 41 looted the first S&L at taxpayer expense, the Sharpsville, Texas Savings and Loan Association with his buddy Wagner Carr, in the 1960s. Neal Bush repeated it with Silverado S&L. This is not incompetence. It is how the Bush crime family does business, and we're holding the bag after they've cashed out.

<h2>Bush isn't the most important name in this, though. It's Samuel P. Huntington . It's his philosophy that is being implemented and is nearly complete.</h2>