Originally Posted By: OldFolks
>>>That's why I think a more accurate statement of the situation is that the "suits" took advantage of the culture of greed. They didn't create anything. There was not need to. It was already there.
Scotty I too am somewhat tentative about my views, because I'm not an economics expert either. And I agree that many people made bad decisions. But I disagree on a few points.
First: I'm not at all so sure that the degregulation impetus had much of anything to do with desires of the general public, or that the general public understands much of anything about regulatory mechanisms. The breakdown in any distance between coporations and the government has a lot to do with all of this. The very idea of what's good for the public has been replaced entirely by the question of what's good for corporations as if those two were the same.
Second: The "suits" certainly did create something. I don't claim to have a lot of knowledge of "derivatives," "credit default swaps," the workings of "hedge funds," etc. But I certainly question whether any public interest has been taken into account in the creation of these relatively new financial instruments. A lot of the current crisis derives from selling of mortages by those who had no risk at all because they then bundled the mortages and sole them up the line. I heard McCain refer to this as a "Ponzi scheme," and I think it's a decent description of it. Everyone put the risk onto someone higher up the chain and it is the top of the chain that's now going under.