The Master Speaks
You are really missing something if you don't read Paul Krugman's column today. Always good, this time out he's brilliant. A sample:
"Talk to conservatives about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in which government bureaucrats, not greedy bankers, caused the meltdown. It’s a universe in which government-sponsored lending agencies triggered the crisis, even though private lenders actually made the vast majority of subprime loans. It’s a universe in which regulators coerced bankers into making loans to unqualified borrowers, even though only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was subject to the regulations in question.
Oh, and conservatives simply ignore the catastrophe in commercial real estate: in their universe the only bad loans were those made to poor people and members of minority groups, because bad loans to developers of shopping malls and office towers don’t fit the narrative."
The whole thing is brilliant- the best short description I've seen of the economic idiocy that created the mess we are now in. Please do yourself a favor and read it.
Comments
Forced to make subprime loans by the government. Freddie and Fannie crumpled before any private business did.
"only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was subject to the regulations in question."
The complete regulation, fannie and freddie, but BOA,BoNY, 1st Union, Naitons Bank, as well as other were coerced/forced into making billion dollar commitments to the CRA, all in all totaling over a trillion dollars.
Again, to argue the banks did this to themselves requires you to believe that these bankers are idiots and have no idea what they are doing.
You know what happens when undergraduates at State universities get into arguments with Nobel prize winners?
Well, it's happening again.
They point out the holes in nobel prize winner's arguments until people realize that the man is a politician, not a scholar.
Obama has a nobel prize. So does Al Gore. The Nobel prize seems to be a stamp for stupidity rather than one of intellect.
I could argue all day with Obama, Gore, or Krugman, and win.
Well my 20th Birthday is in March, but I know you'd miss me until then so I'll stick around.