The idea of bailing out a company really p----- me off.
Except:
1. We're in this mess because of the changes, in the 1990s, to
force lenders to finance housing to low income borrowers. As anyone with a grain of sense could, and did, predict at the time:
a. housing prices in general would escalate
b. people would wind up in houses they could not, in reality, afford
2. The above required (again, thanks to Congress), a dramatic change in lending. "No-doc" loans, "low doc" loans, games with FICO scores, radical ARM mortgage loans, etc. I probably don't know all the games played. The bottom line is, to comply with the new federal requirements, lenders had to get very creative.
3. The killer, I think, was when the ARMs adjusted. Upward. In a sinking market. At that point, people started to default.
4. As they got close to default, they tried to sell their homes. And prices plummeted.
5. When prices began dropping, eventually financial institutions had to begin taking the losses.
6. To make a long story short, the losses piled up until the Federal Government had to step in to prevent a complete melt down.
No one has yet stepped up to suggest any of the actions that could allow the private sector (read "Market") to fix the problem. For example, reduce the reserve requirement on commercial banks. Or eliminate capital gains taxes on mortgage securities containing x percent sub-prime loans.
But then, that might involve, or lead to, the public actually figuring out who created this mess.
Not gonna happen.
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