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The Real Cost of the 2008 Financial Crisis

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Re: The Real Cost of the 2008 Financial Crisis

#191
post #2

But what was the alternative to the bailouts? Another depression? I feel we made it across fairly well.

The alternative was to let capitalism administer its punishment to reckless speculators.

Instead, they were made whole again at the cost of years worth of future demand pulled forward by easy money policies. Worse, the sense that "we made it across" has caused way too many people to jump back on the risk/debt wagon with gleeful abandon.

The crisis wasn't resolved, but merely postponed.

Re: The Real Cost of the 2008 Financial Crisis

#192
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Confidence in the market , and preventing panic was the highest priority, which is why no bank executive was punished in any meaningful way. Frontline did a great piece on this, which I watched years ago. Not sure if this is it: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/meltdown/ I believe it also explains why the election hacking of 2016 wasn't and isn't being addressed fully. If the US were to admit actual votes were…

When people who know what they're talking about talk about "election hacking," they know that no actual hacking took place. They were Facebook ads. That's it.

I agree that we shouldn't claim votes were changed without evidence, but you are forgetting about the DNC hack and subsequent email leaks.

Re: The Real Cost of the 2008 Financial Crisis

#193
post #173

Just a personal observation / data point as a lot of folks everywhere are saying "put bankers in prison" any time they recall 2008 crisis. This is from the US, no idea how things played out in other countries: Government shares a significant portion of the blame for this crisis. It required raising affordability of homes (i.e., loans) for lower income families. They might as well legislate away entropy, friction or g…

You see a similar thing with student loans. You can't make any reasonable system work when you set the requirements to be that everyone should be able to afford to go to college and free market lenders are the ones responsible for making that happen. I imagine that the first condition is one that most people agree one. So instead of making college cheaper for those people who can't afford it, we decided that we need to entice more lenders to make loans that are financially unsustainable. The end result is we need to guarantee the loans that private businesses give 18 year olds. You see it time and time again where there is a easier and more logical solution that the US refuses to implement because it is a little bit socialist. Instead we go with a more complicated and less practical solution that is more pro-business.

Re: The Real Cost of the 2008 Financial Crisis

#194
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bailouts are controversial, but it's the bailouts AND the complete absence of criminal responsibility that's inexcusable. It is well known and documented that the financial crisis was no accident; everybody who headed the financial services industry to the state it was in did so knowingly , knowing full well the inevitable consequences, but not giving a damn because the arrangement let them to become handsomely w…

I hope this doesn't come across as me trying to justify what happened but can anyone be explicitly about what laws were broken and who should have gone to jail? I know there was a bunch of outrage but want to cut through all that and get at exactly the issue.

Those who repackaged toxic assets while misrepresenting the contents and the risk.

Re: The Real Cost of the 2008 Financial Crisis

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They were Facebook ads. That's it." If you think Russian "election interference" (does that term make you feel better?) was limited to "Facebook ads" you either haven't been paying attention, or are just trolling. I'm going to guess the latter.

I've been checked out for a bit. Did they finally come up with concrete evidence? Are you saying they actually altered vote tallies?

[deleted]

Re: The Real Cost of the 2008 Financial Crisis

#196
post #2

But what was the alternative to the bailouts? Another depression? I feel we made it across fairly well.

If we're going to be capitalistic, apply Bagehot's dictum (from 1873) "in times of financial crisis central banks should lend freely to solvent depository institutions, yet only against sound collateral and at interest rates high enough to dissuade those borrowers that are not genuinely in need" [0]

I feel like, jail or no, the financial executives who got us into the mess - and who haven't really gotten us out yet - ought to be former financial executives that are working as, e.g., baristas.

Instead, a decision was made that the bloated mortgages that had been issued, would be turned from bad collateral into 'sound collateral', keeping asset prices high. It's like resolving Ford's problems with exploding gas tanks back in the 70's by arranging to buy all the bad cars.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Bagehot

Re: The Real Cost of the 2008 Financial Crisis

#197
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see this sentiment fairly regularly on HN. It's the idea that laws can sufficiently encapsulate ethical behavior (the rules) when they're strictly enforced, that they're the best thing we got, so live with it. > But there are many behaviors which aren't "crimes" but which are morally repulsive. I don't agree with that concept. I don't think it's possible to legislate morality and the entire concept is downright s…

> I don't agree with that concept. I don't think it's possible to legislate morality... We don't have to "legislate" the morality but we do have a responsibility for doing _something_. "Rule of law" means nothing if one class of people has subverted the law, enforcement and governance to their benefit at the expense of everyone else.

> We don't have to "legislate" the morality but we do have a responsibility for doing _something_.

If the government, or specifically the justice system, is going to be involved in that "_something_" then we need laws that can be enforced by prosecutors and interpreted by judges. If you want that to include actions that is currently legal but which you find morally reprehensible (ex: the actions of these finance executives) then that needs to be codified in law before you can go after them. And that's literally legislating morality.

> "Rule of law" means nothing if one class of people has subverted the law, enforcement and governance to their benefit at the expense of everyone else.

They haven't subverted anything. They've taken advantage of a system that is available to them. Ditto for veterans who get subsidized school or home loans, Tesla drivers who get $7,500 in EV credits, small business owners who get SBA loans, or anyone else that takes a dime from the pool of money we call public spending. You could argue that anyone of those programs is to the benefit of only the receiver and the detriment of the rest of us[1].

And there's already a system in place to change it. Elect politicians that will make the changes you want and understand the positions of the ones that are currently in power.

With all the demonizing of wall street in regards to the 2008 crisis, most fail to go back to the true cause of the crisis, i.e. the repeal of the Glass-Stegall Act[2] via the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act[3] signed by President Clinton in 1999. It took almost a decade but the entire "too big to fail" concept grew from that repeal.

[1]: I generally don't like qualifying my statements but for clarity, I'm saying you could argue it. I'm not saying that I would necessarily argue against those (well except the EV one which is asinine...).

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_steagall

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bl...

Re: The Real Cost of the 2008 Financial Crisis

#198
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bailouts are controversial, but it's the bailouts AND the complete absence of criminal responsibility that's inexcusable. It is well known and documented that the financial crisis was no accident; everybody who headed the financial services industry to the state it was in did so knowingly , knowing full well the inevitable consequences, but not giving a damn because the arrangement let them to become handsomely w…

I hope this doesn't come across as me trying to justify what happened but can anyone be explicitly about what laws were broken and who should have gone to jail? I know there was a bunch of outrage but want to cut through all that and get at exactly the issue.

The credit rating agencies knowingly and fraudulently mislabelled the loans as "AAA" when they were in fact, junk:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating_agencies_and_the...

[Edited to add] also perjury:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-peop...

Re: The Real Cost of the 2008 Financial Crisis

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope this doesn't come across as me trying to justify what happened but can anyone be explicitly about what laws were broken and who should have gone to jail? I know there was a bunch of outrage but want to cut through all that and get at exactly the issue.

There was a time when fractional reserve banking [0] was considered simple fraud (it wasn't called "fractional reserve banking" at the time, it was "bankers using for personal gain assets that were owned by another and stored for safe keeping at their bank.") So, as banking gets complex, the laws get complex. Once we decide fraudulent (fractional reserve) banking is legal, most of the rest can be whitewashed with eno…

By that logic anyone who gave out a loan should be thrown in jail. After all there was a time when charging interest of any kind was considered usury and was illegal. Once we decided that usury banking is legal, most of the rest can be whitewashed with enough handwaving.

Re: The Real Cost of the 2008 Financial Crisis

#200
post #2

But what was the alternative to the bailouts? Another depression? I feel we made it across fairly well.

If we're going to be capitalistic, apply Bagehot's dictum (from 1873) "in times of financial crisis central banks should lend freely to solvent depository institutions, yet only against sound collateral and at interest rates high enough to dissuade those borrowers that are not genuinely in need" [0] I feel like, jail or no, the financial executives who got us into the mess - and who haven't really gotten us out yet -…

We shouldn't get any banking advice from anyone from the 1800's.
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