[quote=Arraya]….
With the bubble you either think:
A: The banks did it for immense profits with no regard for consequences due to their rapacious and addictive nature.
or
B: The banks did it because of immense pressure from irresponsible borrowers and politicians who took advantage of the banks naivety and good nature
With the bailouts
A: The banks wanted to stay in business and are using every trick in the book to transfer losses to the tax payer and keep RE values as high as possible for their own survival purposes and to keep the billion dollar bonuses flowing
Or
B: The banks, continuing down their naive and trusting path, are under considerable pressure from irresponsible citizens and politicians to continue lending and make underwriting as loose as possible.
I pick A on both. You seem to pick B…….
[/quote]
I pick both A and B. Both are hugely important here. Any strong political action is successful only if:
1. It can enrich a small group of people enough to get them to lobby and contribute to our politicians
and
2. It can benefit enough voters that the politicians can gain votes from supporting it, with the help of their marketing campaign funded by the extra contributions
Both the bubble and the bailout got lots of both types of support, and would not have been possible without both.
