Government is not the problem. Government had a PROPER ROLE in regulating the financial markets, as it did since the Great Depression. Dismantling of government regulation of the financial industry over the last 10-15 years is one of the principal enabling reasons for the economic meltdown that’s occurred.
Context matters here, Joe Homeowner is a minor part of the problem. Foreclosures in the ‘retail’ housing market are the tip of the iceberg. In the past 15 years or so, large banks and financial institutions ‘created’ and then lost enormous, titanic sums of money in risky, leveraged and often fraudulent financial dealings.
The amounts DWARF the total sum value of all of the housing stock in America. The sum total value of all of our houses is only about $20T. Conservative estimates put the amount of fraud in the hundreds of trillions of dollars. It dwarfs the entire annual U.S. GDP — every single dollar that changes hands in the US in the course of a year. That’s about 13 trillion per year.
These ‘Banksters’ took our money, then used it to place bogus, leveraged bets in a giant global financial casino, until the music stopped playing, at which point they LOST our money. That’s the fucking issue. That’s why there’s a public bailout, because Citi, Chase, Goldman and the others lost our money. They are at the center of the universe in terms of blame. Joe Homeowner is a drop in the bucket.
