Financial Crisis Preventable

As someone who used to work at one of the investment banks that played a major role in the ongoing financial crisis, none of this is new, especially in the wake of dozens of great book detailing the who, what, when, and why.

That so many people on Wall Street to this day (including my old co-workers and college friends) still don't acknowledge the extent of their role in the crisis or the dangerousness of moral hazard/'Too Big To Fail' means we'll be revisiting this again in the next decade, and I doubt the US economy can withstand an assault equal (but most likely greater) than this one again.

Too many Americans believe that financial legislation passed after '08 is effective enough to prevent this from happening again: they could not be more wrong.

Whatever regulatory measures have been passed are toothless in the face of financial innovation by men seeking astronomical profits, consequences be damned. I hope to expand upon this in another thread because it's been bothering me for some time.

 

you can't prevent human greed and corruption.

 

We can mitigate them, but we have the wolves tending the sheep.

 

Please do. A friend's ked that i knew is workinng for Morgan Stanley and I see him drinking the kool-aid month by month. Next thing he will be justifying making millions for a job that is widely known to do nothing much except redistribute income fom the masses to Wall Street.

 

The report does knock down — at least partly — several early theories for the financial crisis. It says the low interest rates brought about by the Fed after the 2001 recession “created increased risks” but were not chiefly to blame. It says that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants, “contributed to the crisis but were not a primary cause.” And in a finding likely to upset conservatives, it says that “aggressive homeownership goals” set by the government as part of a “philosophy of opportunity” were not major culprits.

Anyone who has paid attention and has some education already knows this. After once again watching deregulation destroy the economy, conservatives stuck their heads in the sand and blamed everyone and everything except what actually caused the problem: corporate greed and deregulation.

This is like the CBO report about the healthcare reform bill lowering the deficit instead of costing more money. It just doesn't matter what the facts are people will ignore them.

 

Forecasting numbers 10 years down the road are called estimates, not facts.