<p>Nobody is giving anybody a pass except for people like you qdogpa…</p>
<p>Divert the attention away from the bank crooks and onto other areas…like customers who have no experience with mortgages…</p>
<p>The rates are so low because your banks blew up…and the banks need capital at negative real interest rates to survive.</p>
<p>I am going spend some time in reality now…</p>
<p>No, i think you are passing 100% blame on the bank crooks, but none on the poor public who didn’t understand what they signed for…you don’t need a college degree to understand that rates increae,hence your payments might also…that said, there were many who were victims of out and out fraud</p>
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<p>Here is a perfect example of horse waste. Because banks lend to payday lenders all of a sudden those lenders are responsible for payday loans. In most states, payday lenders are regulated by those states. If the states don’t want payday lenders, they can get rid of them and limit their interest rate charges. It isn’t the job of New York banks to stop lending money to businesses because some self righteous “journalist” does not like it.</p>
<p>Fannie and Freddie also played a huge part in this mess. In fact I believe they owned the vast majority of the subprime mortgages.</p>
<p>The politicians in Washington wanted banks to lend money, so they did. This is the result.</p>
<p>What I also love is this garbage about how bad it was for banks to be bailed out. Most of them have repaid their TARP loans with interest. Compare that to the people who walked away from mortgages and created their own bailout. Compare that to the auto industry which has not fully repaid the government and never will. </p>
<p>What would have happened to the banking system if banks had not received bailouts through TARP? A depression would have occurred because if there is no financial system, there is no economy. Yes, its that simple. Having a banking system is far more important than any other industry in America. What banks want to pay their employees is their own business and the business of their share holders. It is not the business of anyone else.</p>
<p>They didn’t bail out the banks. Only reporters think that. What was bailed out was the FDIC. The government would gladly let bank shareholders go down the drain (as they should go when they make overly aggressive loans).</p>
<p>Its important to maintain the fiction that deposit insurance can possibly work.</p>
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<p>There is a lot of bad information out there about Fannie’s and Freddie’s part in the mortgage crisis. They backed none of the true subprime mortgages. F & F had stricter borrowing standards. Those loans were made in the private sector. They did relax their borrowing standards too, but nothing like we saw in the private sector. </p>
<p>What they did do is invest in the subprime mortgages by putting millions in mortgage backed securities in their portfolio so they got slammed along with everyone else. In that regard, they were also a victim.</p>
<p>One shout out for the banks. As far as Bank of America, they have provided us great service, they don’t charge us any fees…pretty much for anything, gave us a much larger loan than we asked for, at a much lower rate than expected. Always top notch service, at least at my local bank. So apparently with all this going on I’m supposed to be angry at them, but personal experience overrides theoretical irritation.</p>
<p>Well…I just saw Margin Call…</p>
<p>It is the FDIC’s fault.</p>
<p>I guess when I was talking to GS about their leverage…I was dreaming too…</p>
<p>dstark - what did you think of the movie? It plays very much like a horror movie - which I guess it really is.</p>
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<p>First of all, the TARP loans were not the only part of the bailout, but let’s just examine the fact that the TARP was originally supposed to be used like it was in the S&L bailout, which would have benefitted the homeowners as well as the banks, but it was then just funneled to the banks to keep them above water as their CDO scams fell apart.</p>
<p>Then, there was the purchasing of AIG in which the government made whole goldman, morgan, as well as various foreign banks, to the tune of billions of dollars. This means, they invested in high risk instruments and not only recouped their investment but all of the income they would have gained had the investment turned out well. Yeah, wink, wink. Paulson, ex goldman CEO also spear headed this little bail out. This money is simply profit for the banks courtesy of the US taxpayer. However, this, apparently, is not considered redistribution, for some unknown philisophical reason.</p>
<p>Then, Bernake allowed goldman to turn itself into a bank so that it could borrow at the fed window at 0% interest. Special banks too big to fail bailout banks were allowed to borrow as much as they wanted at 0%. then, they could just use that money to make money, which they did. voila. Free money! Better than your own printing press.</p>
<p>So, yeah, the TARP? That was just the second move in the chessgame to keep Paulson’s employer from going under.</p>
<p>“Really razor-sharp…what is bull…that people qualified for prime loans and were given sub prime loans instead?”</p>
<p>Actually, with the ratings agencies involved, it was a classic RICO conspiracy.</p>
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<p>Some of us condemn banks and other financial institutions for making bad loans to people they knew or should have known could not pay back those loans, then slicing and dicing the loans into financial instruments (collateralized debt obligations) and selling them as safe investments, when in fact they were extremely risky investments that ended up being worth nothing. Bad loans brought down the housing sector, but it was the buying and selling of the bogus financial instruments that almost brought the entire world global financial collapse. Random people who borrowed money to buy houses were not the culprits.</p>
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<p>So you think all of this was caused by those big mean first-time buyers bullying the poor weak banks into lending them money they couldn’t pay back? Here’s what actually happened:</p>
<p>The banks paid Congress to deregulate the banking and mortgage industries. Once the old rules of lending were gone, the bankers did the perfectly predictable thing – they made a boatload of bad loans, making a boatload of money in the process. Before the ink was dry on those loans, they packaged them up and sold them as mortgage-backed securities, derivatives, and other risky instruments, making another boatload of money in the process. All of this separated the lenders from the consequences of their actions – they were not the ones taking the losses when buyers defaulted. And when the chickens came home to roost in the markets, you the taxpayer rescued them from their own recklessness. So for the bankers, there was no downside to making bad loans. See the problem?</p>
<p>Before deregulation, it was the responsibility of the bank to determine whether the buyer was credit-worthy or not, not the borrower. Deregulation removed the link between the loan and the pay-back, thus removing the incentive for banks to be smart about lending. In fact, deregulation encouraged just the opposite – it incentivized risky loans.</p>
<p>x-posted with Fang.</p>
<p>cartera45…</p>
<p>What I liked about the movie were some of the details…</p>
<p>the swearing…the scene where the guy was hanging off the building…the strip club scene…especially when the guys were discussing how much the strippers make…the concern about money…including the pay packages…the bonuses dependent on how much s@@@ they could sell…the lack of risk control including the use of historical models…and when the firm just dumped everything…and the caring the firm had for its employees…:)</p>
<p>What did you like cartera45?</p>
<p>Not in the movie…</p>
<p>The bailouts to save the FDIC?</p>
<p>Deposit insurance doesn’t work?</p>
<p>Wow…</p>
<p>Looks like the banks and stock market are opening much higher this AM…Solving Greece’s financial problems last night 
is the impetus…i guess all is well again in the world…</p>
<p>razorsharp…at least you admit the banks were bailed out…</p>
<p>So I guess free markets don’t work?</p>
<p>We can’t let markets freely go down?</p>
<p>Hmmm…maybe it is easier to see what is happening in Europe…</p>
<p>[EU</a> leaders reach a deal on Greek debt and boosting bailout fund to 1.4 trillion — MercoPress](<a href=“http://en.mercopress.com/2011/10/27/eu-leaders-reach-a-deal-on-greek-debt-and-boosting-bailout-fund-to-1.4-trillion]EU”>EU leaders reach a deal on Greek debt and boosting bailout fund to 1.4 trillion — MercoPress)</p>
<p><a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?;
<p>Hmmmm… banks are getting bailed out…</p>
<p>dstark - I like the simplicity of it. No matter the level, everyone just wanted to wake up the next morning with a job. As an executive from Citibank put it - " As long as the music is playing, we have to dance, and the music is still playing." Kevin Spacey was so good and I liked the juxtaposition of what was going on at work with what was going on in her personal life. </p>
<p>What are the thoughts on BOA shifting derivatives from Merrill Lynch to the bank, where they are insured by the FDIC (us).</p>
<p>“So I guess free markets don’t work?”</p>
<p>Can’t work if they don’t exist.</p>
<p>My opinion is BofA is going to get bailed out no matter what…so I did not really give it much thought…</p>
<p>I did buy some BofA bonds…yielding 8.5% because of this belief…</p>
<p>It;'s an investment…cough…I mean a bet…</p>
<p>Can I get bailed out if I am wrong?</p>