[quote=gandalf]….The parties on Wall Street made the majority of the profits off what they knew to be a swindle. That is why my ire is directed at ‘Wall Street’…..[/quote]
Hang ’em high!
I am all for true accountability, and that would send people like Greenspan, Bernanke, Paulson, Summers, Rubin, Dodd, Frank, and Geithner to prison for life. They were entrusted with the public interest and used it to enrich their friends. And with them would go people on Wall Street like Dimon, Blankfein, and half the senior people at the investment banks, hedge funds, private equity funds, rating agencies, mortgage brokers, etc. who made millions from what was essentially fraud.
But who actually made the most money from our giant asset bubbles? Wall Streeters walked away with hundreds of billions. But there were gains of many trillions cashed in during the bubble years. Who got most of that money?
Well, the people who got the most were the net sellers of assets during the bubble. They have in their bank accounts most of the money that is the mirror image of the losses everyone is now gnashing their teeth about. That’s a lot of homeowners who congratulate themselves on good timing.
It’s a lot of baby boomers who got fat defined benefit pensions based on unsupportable bubble returns on the pension assets. The most egregious examples are public employees who voted themselves pensions that were unbelievably generous in amount and age of eligibility.
It’s not something we like to think about. “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
Edit: Oh, and inflation is just another way to send the bill for all this to….. someone else, namely the savers of our society.
