[fanboy123]

Well, without them to pick up the slack we would have almost NO mortgages issued in this country, which some of us might think is bad. The alternative would be for rates to rise (some of us might think this is a good thing, which it might be) and to allow housing prices to fall. This has many knock on effects like crippling pension funds and banks and insurance companies etc etc.

I find it horrible that guilty parties profited/are profiting from their mistakes. But its a complicated problem which is why we are going to go through hell to fix it.

FWIW I this does not excuse govt behavior, which leans far far too much in the way of banker cronyism, which might have been the original point of the article. I am just pointing out that its a complicated situation that is a mess to sort out.

Also I never stated that fre/frn never made bad loans and were not players in this whole debacle. I just stated that they were not the main engine of horrific growth and the "cause" of all of these problems.