Credit Crunch Villains

[Spare Moody]

My point is if these investors werent so greedy, we wouldnt have to think about learning it. Its pretty much down to dick swinging. Guys saw other blokes making more money and they wanted a piece and it became a game of oneupmanship.

that's one of the downfalls of capitalism but other economic structures have a lot WORSE drawbacks. you can't just tell people "don't be greedy." that's stupid, unrealistic, and impossible to apply.

all you can do is find a particular system that's been, being, or under threat of being manipulated and regulate it to ensure consequences don't happen. but it is physically impossible to predict and avoid every single possible economic ****heap.

[Spare Moody]

You may have known what you were getting into, a lot of people didnt. They were duped by the media, banks and government into thinking it was fine that they could just borrow credit and there be no consequence. If the banks didnt offer all this 'free money' (which is what it was almost marketed as) then people wouldnt take it and they would have been more prudent and have a sound financial base.
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people would have taken the money. are you kidding me??? people will NEVER reject money regardless of how solid it's backing. perhaps financial institutions wouldn't have created the financing but they didn't see this coming. as a matter of fact....NOBODY did.

don't give me this whole "the people got screwed speech." not gonna happen. i worked with 1,000s of them and they all had the same attitude. they weren't duped. everything they agreed to was all in writing. real estate financing, stock trading, entrepreneurship.....they all contain risk. sometimes you win, sometimes you don't.

[Iamnotausername]

that's one of the downfalls of capitalism but other economic structures have a lot WORSE drawbacks. you can't just tell people "don't be greedy." that's stupid, unrealistic, and impossible to apply.

all you can do is find a particular system that's been, being, or under threat of being manipulated and regulate it to ensure consequences don't happen. but it is physically impossible to predict and avoid every single possible economic ****heap.

I agree, that capitalism is the best system we have and that we cant predict and avoid every economic mess, but we can certainly attempt to stop people running riot financially with no accountability for their actions. At least then we can actually in some way make it slightly more manageable, rather than just pick up the pieces of a mega-****storm.

[Spare Moody]

I have no dount we'll work through it. I'm gonna make this clear. Me and my family are in no way gonna be affected by this apart from having a slightly less disposable income. We never borrowed money we didnt have. We bought our house when prices were last rock bottom and the house has gone over triple in value of the original price. Infact I am actually going to benefit from this as whilst everything was booming I was not gonna be able to afford a house(**** renting). Now within a couple of years I am gonna be able to get a decent size house which I may stand to do well on when house prices peak again.

What my problem is is that ,I had to spend 4 years at university with sons and daughters of these investor types and the attitude turns my stomach. its all about the money to them. They know they cant be touched and they dont give a **** if their actions impact on ordinary workers, cos hey, theyre still rich. They are just perpetuating an outlook passed down to them. nothing will change and in 20 years we may very well be in the same situation again. Whereas with a bit more prudence, whilst there will still be dips and peaks, it would be better for everyone.

dude i hate materialistic smug elitist attitudes too but it is what it is. you'll ALWAYS have this in any capitalistic democracy. you'll have rich *******s and poor crybabies.

[Iamnotausername]

people would have taken the money. are you kidding me??? people will NEVER reject money regardless of how solid it's backing. perhaps financial institutions wouldn't have created the financing but they didn't see this coming. as a matter of fact....NOBODY did.

don't give me this whole "the people got screwed speech." not gonna happen. i worked with 1,000s of them and they all had the same attitude. they weren't duped. everything they agreed to was all in writing. real estate financing, stock trading, entrepreneurship.....they all contain risk. sometimes you win, sometimes you don't.

I never said they wouldnt take the money. Of course if a bank offers you money, no one will reject it. My point is that if they werent being offered it in the first place, they wouldnt know about it, and would be forced to be more careful with their finances. For example the sub-prime loans. With the policy of calculating what you can afford, then stretching it a bit. Then a couple of years down the line stretch it a bit more. If they just bought what they could afford, instead of having unstable carrots dangled in front of them, it would most probably have provided a cushion for the blow of a recession. This is like falling into a pool of broken glass

In britain, monetarism, is still relatively new(late 80's), before that people could only purchase property if they could prove beyond any resonable doubt that they were secure enough to pay it off. recently the banks have just been loaning money at will in full knowledge that its clients cant pay it off, then when the **** hits the fan they pick up their pound of flesh. thats how gangsters act, not how people in charge of the economy should be acting IMO.

[Spare Moody]

The governments need to be seen to be doing something, otherwise its just sends the wrong message. Yeah its P.R. but it may actually scare city types into being a bit more careful with other peoples money in the future.

what are we gonna do?? launch a War on Greed! yeah, that'll go down just as good as the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism. not gonna happen. they're actually taking a lot of measures and, quite frankly, doin the best they can.

the problem is that ****'s spiraling outt've control faster than they (or anyone for that matter) can keep up with. the last thing they need to do is prosecute people who haven't broken any laws in the name of looking good towards the rest of the world.

even if that DID happen, it aint scaring ****. people just won't do the same thing but greed breeds creativity. hell, look at the people who hide cocaine balloons up their ass...

[Spare Moody]

I agree, that capitalism is the best system we have and that we cant predict and avoid every economic mess, but we can certainly attempt to stop people running riot financially with no accountability for their actions. At least then we can actually in some way make it slightly more manageable, rather than just pick up the pieces of a mega-****storm.

agreed. but we do this by regulating policies not by going after The Man. if you try to discourage people from greed then you'll actually create a worse economic situation. believe it or not, for the most part, greed is one of the biggest factors in economic growth. sure, it needs to be regulated at times but not in a manner that will throw the baby out with the bath water.

[Iamnotausername]

what are we gonna do?? launch a War on Greed! yeah, that'll go down just as good as the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism. not gonna happen. they're actually taking a lot of measures and, quite frankly, doin the best they can.

the problem is that ****'s spiraling outt've control faster than they (or anyone for that matter) can keep up with. the last thing they need to do is prosecute people who haven't broken any laws in the name of looking good towards the rest of the world.

even if that DID happen, it aint scaring ****. people just won't do the same thing but greed breeds creativity. hell, look at the people who hide cocaine balloons up their ass...

I'm gonna dispense with facts and purely go on my own opinion here.

They may be taking measures and doing the best they can, but at the end of the day they are gonna be going back to their mansion and 5 cars and living the life of a king. If there was a measure in place that would put their standard of living in danger they may make a few more sacrifices. They simply cannot empathise with the ordinary worker because they live in completely different world. My problem is that the taxpayer has to pick up the bill for all this. Its not too much to ask that the investors dont get their million pound bonuese for ****ing up and actually go without until they fix it. If things go well when they deserve their rewards. They shouldnt still be rewarded when it all goes wrong.

[Nicky_Hatton]

As much as the city bankers are to blame, it's the people even higher up who said the daft idea of bonuses based on mortages or whatever the scheme was. They get paid for allowing sub prime mortages, and then kind of debt factoring by bundling large amounts of sub prime mortages up and selling them to other banks. The sub prime element means they have basically no way of paying for their mortage and their house gets repoed, whilst the banks who purchased the mortages will get **** all. They will then be down millions/billions in assets which are pretty much intangible as no one will pay the credit, as they can't. It's kind of created a cash flow future crisis.

Anyway this in turn has lead to banks been much less willing to lend to each other, and thus the collapse of the mortage market, and the decline in competition for mortages. The banks can't afford to pay out a hefty amount of cash to get it back in the long term, when they need it now.

The average folk who own houses are the worst affected, as mortage rates and payements have hiked up to cover the costs of the sub prime mortages. It's ridiculous.
Not to mention getting on the property ladder in the first place.

They should just write the debts off, it's their own ****ing fault. Take a big ****iing hit, and learn a lesson. Don't **** around with the mortage market, and offer mortages to people who can't afford them. and ultimately this has only occured due to wanky bonus policies, which has lead to bankers increasingly accepting people with no fixed income/whatever.

**** knows how I'm going to get on the property ladder, hopefully this would ahve blown over by then.

[baddest]

Question to you guys. I'm not that good understanding the economy(just got a little background info on this topic). I got money in WaMu, do you think its going to go under, and if so when?