| > I feel like lots of people forgot about 2007/08 and the impact on so many people around the world. To be clear, banks did not cause the 2008 economic implosion. If you run through root cause analysis, what comes out on top as the trigger event for the avalanche was US politicians distorting markets through legal action that enabled giving mortgages to people who would have never been able to buy a home otherwise. Sounds altruistic, yet, in reality, it ended-up being a destructive force. I remember a documentary where they interviewed various people who bought homes around that time. This one woman worked at McDonalds, essentially made minimum wage and was able to buy a $500K home due to laws that allowed such distortions as "no docs" loans with full federal guarantees. That and other legal components that eventually resulted in the creation of derivatives where banks could package small fractions of thousands of mortgages into investment vehicles. The game, then, was to write mortgages, slice, dice and package them into CDO's and sell them as quickly as possible at a profit. Sure, one could blame banks and investment firms for this. No doubt. However, I think the important element to understand here is that, if the government tells you that, not only it is legal to do these things, but they actually want you to --because they want everyone to own a home-- well, what do you do? Not a good analogy, but, on our roads we have speed limits set by government action. Around where I live it's 65 miles per hour. People drive anywhere between 60 and 80. Lots of people (most?) drive well above the limit. In other words, there's an argument that says it is human nature to push things a bit. Absent enforcement, some people would drive 100+ on a regular basis. The genesis of the 2008 crisis is related to the removal of financial speed limit signs by government. Not only that, they also effectively said "we want you to drive at speeds we all know are dangerous and irresponsible". Politicians got votes when people were happy because they could buy homes. When the house of cards they created collapsed, we all ended-up paying for it. I don't blame banks. There is no way in hell 2008 would have happened --no way-- without government removing the speed limit signs. This business of buying votes with handouts has destroyed many countries. The 2008 economic implosion was just one example of this. Latin America and other nations have lots of examples in their history of governments using money and economic policy to buy short-term happiness from the masses in exchange for votes...only to drop them on their heads after the fact. |