http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=518034
No one has a right to be pissed, we have no one to blame but ourselves. I don’t understand why people in this country have such a hard time accepting blame!
adavydov7 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I don’t understand why people > in this country have such a hard time accepting > blame! adavydov7 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I don’t understand why people > in this country have such a hard time accepting > blame! adavydov7 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I don’t understand why people > in this country have such a hard time accepting > blame! adavydov7 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I don’t understand why people > in this country have such a hard time accepting > blame! People in this country are pussies. Myself included. If there is a scapegoat you’d better be damn sure were going to ride that b!tch till she breaks.
Was not happy about this at all. Not so much the actual tax, but the spirit of the tax. Where is the blame for the GSEs?? AIG??? etc…? Some banks didn’t even want TARP. Not saying Banks didn’t have a significant part, but I’m so tired of this populist outrage. The worst part of it is that nothing is really getting fixed. “It was the banks fault that GM and Chrysler did so poorly…” you’ve gotta be fcking kidding me!!! You can’t get me to buy your shitty cars… so you take my money anyway. Dicks.
CFABLACKBELT Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Was not happy about this at all. Not so much the > actual tax, but the spirit of the tax. Where is > the blame for the GSEs?? AIG??? etc…? Some > banks didn’t even want TARP. Not saying Banks > didn’t have a significant part, but I’m so tired > of this populist outrage. The worst part of it is > that nothing is really getting fixed. > > “It was the banks fault that GM and Chrysler did > so poorly…” you’ve gotta be fcking kidding me!!! > > > You can’t get me to buy your shitty cars… so you > take my money anyway. Dicks. +1 Lets buy some pontiac Aztecs for all the people who claim banks were behind their terrible designs. Do these people even listen to themselves?
eureka Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > ^^^Definitely agree on the GSEs. > > But, we’re back to the obvious begining: > > The government was responsible, the fed was > responsible, the GSEs were responsible, the > mortgage brokers were responsible, the banks were > responsible, the homebuyers were responsible. > > What happens when everyone is responsible? Then > no one is. +1. Main Street, Wall St, gov’t, individuals, banks, etc. Their is a lot of blame to go around.
Aztecs, were the sh!t. I mean you could sey up a tent in your car!!! How the fuk did this never take off??? I mean how? My head is about to explode from the awesomeness of that one vehicle!
adavydov7 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > No one has a right to be pissed, we have no one to > blame but ourselves. I don’t understand why people > in this country have such a hard time accepting > blame! The mess is created by Americans as a whole. Congress, Fed, banks, mortgage underwriters, equal rights to housing, consumers…and the list goes on. EVERYBODY in the system is at blame. Well, let’s all share the blame together…single out the banking industry will only hurt financial consumers.
Not saying Wall Street is to blame, the GSEs should have stuck to their bread and butter and kept their lending standards. There is plenty of blame to go around, but I think that if we actually enforced financial fraud laws on mortgage brokers who were encouraging lying, advisors who were shorting the securities they were selling to their clients, etc then people would have been more mindful of the consequences. When there is no sheriff in town, the locals are going to run wild. If the law of the land is lie cheat and steal, then maybe its a land I dont want to live in.
kkent Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > eureka Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > > +1. Main Street, Wall St, gov’t, individuals, > banks, etc. Their is a lot of blame to go around. Right, but the whole point is that since we just say everyone is responsible there is no solution down the road. Down the road somebody needs to be clearly responsible so that there are consequences if things get f’d again. Bizbanker is kind of hinting at it with the sheriff in town analogy, i.e. there has to be regulation. The key is figuring out where the regulation is most effective at stemming the problem. I would say that where the regulation is most effect is at the simplest level, because regulators are generally not equipped to assess the risk on the high level, i.e. AIG’s CDS. This actually starts with community bank regulation and mortgage regulation. The problem at this low level is the sheer volume, which is why instead of hiring tons of examiners there should be a standardized system which mortgage lenders are required to use to show that they are not making absolutely ridiculous loans. You could set the constraints pretty wide, so there would still be competition and there would still be some dumb lending but the complete catastrophe would be reverted. We’d get a nice 15 wave instead of a tsunami.
^Sure there is! Let the market do its fing work like its supposed to. Let the companies fail, the people get foreclosed on and kicked out of their home, politicians/execs who clearly committed fraud or other laws go to jail (i.e. not to Treasury or government). Simple.
eureka Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > if things get f’d again They will. You’re trying to solve an unsolvable problem.
^^^True, but I’d rather not get f’d in the same way, if possible. Variety is the spice of life…it’s the unknown unknown’s that keep things interesting.
The problem is, virtually every loan issued WAS conforming on paper and not BS–many loans were just out-and-out fraud. I don’t see anyway to radically transform the system where people are no longer commiting crime. If you get rid of the GSE liquidity, you get rid of the obscene volume and price inflation of the market, which in itself disincentivises crime. There’s no way of regulating against people lying on their loan applications and lending institutions looking the other way.
How many of those people were prosecuted? What are the laws governing mortgage fraud?
I agree though, they need to make examples of people by prosecuting them to the fullest extent of the law. But how do you prosecute tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people? I’m being 100% serious, we are talking maybe in the hundreds of thousands of people involved in commiting fraud between 2004 and 2007. The incentive was there because of the expected return (I’d argue the returns were so high because of liquidity). Fraud is easy to prove in a court of law but not easy to find initially. It’s not like it’s 1) constitutional or 2) logistically possible to search people’s records after the fact and start prosecuting people because they “fell on hard times.” Where is the initial evidence? Will they really let us start profiling people for their race, gender, etc? “He’s hispanic, there’s no way he makes $300,000 per year.” I mean literally, people would say they were a “financial analyst” and the mortgage banker would google “financial analyst salaries” and take the highest end and write it down. They would also construct phony W2s. These loans all conformed to standards. But there’s just no way to regulate this from Washington, D.C. It’s not logistically possible. Presumably, since laws were being broken, they were already trying to regulate behavior of millions of individuals.
kkent Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The problem is, virtually every loan issued WAS > conforming on paper and not BS–many loans were > just out-and-out fraud. I don’t see anyway to > radically transform the system where people are no > longer commiting crime. If you get rid of the GSE > liquidity, you get rid of the obscene volume and > price inflation of the market, which in itself > disincentivises crime. There’s no way of > regulating against people lying on their loan > applications and lending institutions looking the > other way. True Story. I knew an illegal Mexican immigrant who “bought” at least fifteen houses in TX and FL, ranging $150K-$600K, with 10%-20% downs during 2003-2005. Of course he had no SSN, no credit history, no IRS records, yet somehow he got not one or two, but 15 mortgages … beyond my mind, but it happened.
You don’t need laws preventing lying on loan applications, you only need to the free markets to do their work (i.e. you have to do you DD before you loan money). Republicans try to pin the housing crisis on a disproportionally small sample of people – morons, granted – that bought houses they couldn’t afford. The question is: why did they get the money in the first place? Maybe if standards were in place so that you actually had to show and verify W2 or a bank account statement before any money was lent or MBS were purchased (they actually used to make people prove they can afford a house before they lent them money). Once you have Government putting laws in place making it illegal to lie on a loan application you give the lender cover to rely on the a de facto guarantee, thus, shifting the risk from the lender to government.
Its easy to regulate, I dont understand what all the fuss is about. We regulate stock brokers, lawyers, doctors, real estate agents, etc with licensing through state and federal and private organizations. How can we have had a somewhat functioning financial system with stock brokers for over a hundred years where if the committed a crime or facilitated it they had their license revoked and had to search for a new job. As a banker, I can easily be prosectued if I did half of what these mortgage brokers did, as can my employer. No more job for me, I have to become a painter. Or have pension fund managers get the CFA credential. You commit fraud, no more charter. People are kidding themselves if they think there wasnt a ton of fraud committed and that this mess was created by a bunch of “idiots who cant afford their homes”. Just like the idiots who bought into the internet bubble and lost their stock. Except they didnt have the SEC come and kick them out of their home.
BizBanker, you’re missing the point entirely. THEY DO REGULATE THE MORTGAGE INDUSTRY! It’s one of the most highly regulated industries in the history of man! But government has created the situation that incentivizes crime in this industry–through FHA loans, gov’t subsidies, GSE lending, etc. that has propped up the market and given people ridiculous returns. It’s just like drugs–when there are obscene returns to be had there is crime. It’s a pretty simple equation. In the stock market, you can’t make $500,000 off of nothing down where you could in the real estate industry (and you still can thanks to gov’t programs! I swear to God!). Remember in that time when you could make something out of nothing in the 1920s? Yes, that created crime, bubbles, collapse, and suicide. The only REAL solution is to get gov’t out of the mortgage industry, and that ain’t happening anytime soon. Both political parties thinks it’s some sort of duty of gov’t to ensure everyone owns a house.