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davelj
Participant[quote=mike92104]I voted yes on 19.[/quote]
I read somewhere recently that something like 60% of Californians under the age of 60 are in favor of Prop 19 and once you get over the age of 60 it flips the other way proportionally. Which is pretty predictable. But, what it suggests is that even if Prop 19 fails this time around, eventually legislation like this is going to pass in a whole bunch of states. As today’s geezers die off, the voting block in favor of measures like Prop 19 is going to grow in percentage terms. I bet within 25 years a large number of states will have legalized marijuana. The demographics are too powerful.
Participant[quote=mike92104]I voted yes on 19.[/quote]
I read somewhere recently that something like 60% of Californians under the age of 60 are in favor of Prop 19 and once you get over the age of 60 it flips the other way proportionally. Which is pretty predictable. But, what it suggests is that even if Prop 19 fails this time around, eventually legislation like this is going to pass in a whole bunch of states. As today’s geezers die off, the voting block in favor of measures like Prop 19 is going to grow in percentage terms. I bet within 25 years a large number of states will have legalized marijuana. The demographics are too powerful.
Participant[quote=mike92104]I voted yes on 19.[/quote]
I read somewhere recently that something like 60% of Californians under the age of 60 are in favor of Prop 19 and once you get over the age of 60 it flips the other way proportionally. Which is pretty predictable. But, what it suggests is that even if Prop 19 fails this time around, eventually legislation like this is going to pass in a whole bunch of states. As today’s geezers die off, the voting block in favor of measures like Prop 19 is going to grow in percentage terms. I bet within 25 years a large number of states will have legalized marijuana. The demographics are too powerful.
Participant[quote=SK in CV]The RTC was actually better than most commercial lenders, and the steals people got from the RTC are legendary.
[/quote]Speaking of the RTC and steals… I’ve got a buddy who works for a firm that just bought $1.7 billion (unpaid principal balance) from the FDIC for $460 million. Now these loans are all pretty crappy, hence the 73% discount. But here’s what’s going to happen at the micro level. Let’s say there’s a $10 million credit to ABC Company. The bank that underwrote the original loan has failed (which is how the FDIC ended up with the loan), so no one’s beating down ABC’s door anymore. So, my buddy’s company will go to ABC and say, “We now own this loan. We don’t want to liquidate your company. $10 million was obviously too much for you to service. But if you can service $5 million and find a bank willing to lend it to you, we’ll let you out of the obligation for $5 million.” ABC will likely find a bank willing to re-underwrite the credit at $5 million (my two banks are doing a little bit of this), so my buddy’s firm will end up with $5 million on a credit for which they paid about $2.5 million, or almost 100% return. And the FDIC eats the other $5 million.
So, while the RTC was not resurrected this time around… it sure feels like the good ‘ole days! File under: History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.
Participant[quote=SK in CV]The RTC was actually better than most commercial lenders, and the steals people got from the RTC are legendary.
[/quote]Speaking of the RTC and steals… I’ve got a buddy who works for a firm that just bought $1.7 billion (unpaid principal balance) from the FDIC for $460 million. Now these loans are all pretty crappy, hence the 73% discount. But here’s what’s going to happen at the micro level. Let’s say there’s a $10 million credit to ABC Company. The bank that underwrote the original loan has failed (which is how the FDIC ended up with the loan), so no one’s beating down ABC’s door anymore. So, my buddy’s company will go to ABC and say, “We now own this loan. We don’t want to liquidate your company. $10 million was obviously too much for you to service. But if you can service $5 million and find a bank willing to lend it to you, we’ll let you out of the obligation for $5 million.” ABC will likely find a bank willing to re-underwrite the credit at $5 million (my two banks are doing a little bit of this), so my buddy’s firm will end up with $5 million on a credit for which they paid about $2.5 million, or almost 100% return. And the FDIC eats the other $5 million.
So, while the RTC was not resurrected this time around… it sure feels like the good ‘ole days! File under: History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.
Participant[quote=SK in CV]The RTC was actually better than most commercial lenders, and the steals people got from the RTC are legendary.
[/quote]Speaking of the RTC and steals… I’ve got a buddy who works for a firm that just bought $1.7 billion (unpaid principal balance) from the FDIC for $460 million. Now these loans are all pretty crappy, hence the 73% discount. But here’s what’s going to happen at the micro level. Let’s say there’s a $10 million credit to ABC Company. The bank that underwrote the original loan has failed (which is how the FDIC ended up with the loan), so no one’s beating down ABC’s door anymore. So, my buddy’s company will go to ABC and say, “We now own this loan. We don’t want to liquidate your company. $10 million was obviously too much for you to service. But if you can service $5 million and find a bank willing to lend it to you, we’ll let you out of the obligation for $5 million.” ABC will likely find a bank willing to re-underwrite the credit at $5 million (my two banks are doing a little bit of this), so my buddy’s firm will end up with $5 million on a credit for which they paid about $2.5 million, or almost 100% return. And the FDIC eats the other $5 million.
So, while the RTC was not resurrected this time around… it sure feels like the good ‘ole days! File under: History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.
Participant[quote=SK in CV]The RTC was actually better than most commercial lenders, and the steals people got from the RTC are legendary.
[/quote]Speaking of the RTC and steals… I’ve got a buddy who works for a firm that just bought $1.7 billion (unpaid principal balance) from the FDIC for $460 million. Now these loans are all pretty crappy, hence the 73% discount. But here’s what’s going to happen at the micro level. Let’s say there’s a $10 million credit to ABC Company. The bank that underwrote the original loan has failed (which is how the FDIC ended up with the loan), so no one’s beating down ABC’s door anymore. So, my buddy’s company will go to ABC and say, “We now own this loan. We don’t want to liquidate your company. $10 million was obviously too much for you to service. But if you can service $5 million and find a bank willing to lend it to you, we’ll let you out of the obligation for $5 million.” ABC will likely find a bank willing to re-underwrite the credit at $5 million (my two banks are doing a little bit of this), so my buddy’s firm will end up with $5 million on a credit for which they paid about $2.5 million, or almost 100% return. And the FDIC eats the other $5 million.
So, while the RTC was not resurrected this time around… it sure feels like the good ‘ole days! File under: History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.
Participant[quote=SK in CV]The RTC was actually better than most commercial lenders, and the steals people got from the RTC are legendary.
[/quote]Speaking of the RTC and steals… I’ve got a buddy who works for a firm that just bought $1.7 billion (unpaid principal balance) from the FDIC for $460 million. Now these loans are all pretty crappy, hence the 73% discount. But here’s what’s going to happen at the micro level. Let’s say there’s a $10 million credit to ABC Company. The bank that underwrote the original loan has failed (which is how the FDIC ended up with the loan), so no one’s beating down ABC’s door anymore. So, my buddy’s company will go to ABC and say, “We now own this loan. We don’t want to liquidate your company. $10 million was obviously too much for you to service. But if you can service $5 million and find a bank willing to lend it to you, we’ll let you out of the obligation for $5 million.” ABC will likely find a bank willing to re-underwrite the credit at $5 million (my two banks are doing a little bit of this), so my buddy’s firm will end up with $5 million on a credit for which they paid about $2.5 million, or almost 100% return. And the FDIC eats the other $5 million.
So, while the RTC was not resurrected this time around… it sure feels like the good ‘ole days! File under: History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.
Participant[quote=CA renter]
Good post, dave, and think you nailed the elusive nature of the truly guilty parties in the financial system.I would disagree, though, about the lack of knowledge regarding the eventual outcome of these “innovations” in finance. I’m not involved in finance (other than trading), never took an econ or banking class, and wasn’t privy to the inner workings of the mortgage market, but could easily see where things were going back in 2004. If I could see it, surely “the experts” could have seen it. It’s hard to believe that so many people who had that much power were so completely incompetent.[/quote]
Well, let’s be honest here – I’m sure that you saw that it would all “end badly” back in 2004. As many of us here at the Pigg were discussing at this website as the peak neared. But did you realize the extent of what AIG was up to? I doubt it. Did you realize what Paulson and Magnetar were up to? I doubt it. The intricate maze of CDOs? I doubt it. I could go on.
I think plenty of folks – many fellow Piggs – strongly suspected that housing prices were going to drop significantly, we’d have a wicked recession, and that some number of banks were going to fail – and this was an extreme outlier view back in the mid-noughties – but with the exception of a small handful of folks (maybe Taleb and a few others – I would add Paulson and Magnetar but in fact they helped to MANUFACTURE the crisis), very very few folks predicted the extent of the damage. Most folks who identified the bubble and tried to profit from it probably started a few years too early (because the bubble should have been arrested back in, say, 2002) and had their asses handed to them by the time it actually burst. Such is that nature of markets. I’m not excusing anyone here – make no mistake – just pointing out that there’s a very large gulf between saying, “Houston, we have a problem” and saying, “Bernanke, the financial system is about to collapse.”
Anyhow, I think when you’re heavily compensated not to see something, you’re unlikely to see it. You put blinders on and say, “No one else is seeing anything, so everything must be copacetic.” Compensation – especially when it’s enormous – blinds people to alternate scenarios.
And here’s the other major problem with our “financial leaders” from the last several years: most of them arrived at their position as a result of adverse selection. Allow me to explain through use of an example.
A business partner of mine rescued an ailing bank during the mid-90s. Recapitalized it, cleaned it up, ran it extremely well and sold it in 2001. He sat back and said, “Things are getting crazy. Time to hit the eject button.” Everyone made a crappile of money. But the bubble kept inflating. Anyhow, based on his considerable prior success he was asked to run a much larger bank a couple of years later. He thought things were even more crazy but he was bored, took the job and didn’t invest any of his own money. He got there and basically said, “Folks, we gotta slow this train down and tighten up some things because it’s really crazy out there.” He was fired within a year. He didn’t really care because he didn’t need the money. But the larger point is this: most of the cautious bankers (or financiers, if you prefer) had been weeded out by the time the bubble burst. They had either sold, retired or just moved to the sidelines (like my friend). Most of the folks who remained at the top had only known expansion and bubbles and couldn’t really fathom any other condition. And if they could fathom it and tried to slow their companies down, they were pushed out. If you saw that the emperor had no clothes, you were long gone by 2006. So, the length of the previous expansion engendered a LOT of adverse selection in the top ranks of banks, investment banks, etc.
So, combining adverse selection with blindness-via-compensation, I find it very easy “to believe that so many people who had that much power were so completely incompetent.” In fact, in hindsight, it looks fairly predictable.
Participant[quote=CA renter]
Good post, dave, and think you nailed the elusive nature of the truly guilty parties in the financial system.I would disagree, though, about the lack of knowledge regarding the eventual outcome of these “innovations” in finance. I’m not involved in finance (other than trading), never took an econ or banking class, and wasn’t privy to the inner workings of the mortgage market, but could easily see where things were going back in 2004. If I could see it, surely “the experts” could have seen it. It’s hard to believe that so many people who had that much power were so completely incompetent.[/quote]
Well, let’s be honest here – I’m sure that you saw that it would all “end badly” back in 2004. As many of us here at the Pigg were discussing at this website as the peak neared. But did you realize the extent of what AIG was up to? I doubt it. Did you realize what Paulson and Magnetar were up to? I doubt it. The intricate maze of CDOs? I doubt it. I could go on.
I think plenty of folks – many fellow Piggs – strongly suspected that housing prices were going to drop significantly, we’d have a wicked recession, and that some number of banks were going to fail – and this was an extreme outlier view back in the mid-noughties – but with the exception of a small handful of folks (maybe Taleb and a few others – I would add Paulson and Magnetar but in fact they helped to MANUFACTURE the crisis), very very few folks predicted the extent of the damage. Most folks who identified the bubble and tried to profit from it probably started a few years too early (because the bubble should have been arrested back in, say, 2002) and had their asses handed to them by the time it actually burst. Such is that nature of markets. I’m not excusing anyone here – make no mistake – just pointing out that there’s a very large gulf between saying, “Houston, we have a problem” and saying, “Bernanke, the financial system is about to collapse.”
Anyhow, I think when you’re heavily compensated not to see something, you’re unlikely to see it. You put blinders on and say, “No one else is seeing anything, so everything must be copacetic.” Compensation – especially when it’s enormous – blinds people to alternate scenarios.
And here’s the other major problem with our “financial leaders” from the last several years: most of them arrived at their position as a result of adverse selection. Allow me to explain through use of an example.
A business partner of mine rescued an ailing bank during the mid-90s. Recapitalized it, cleaned it up, ran it extremely well and sold it in 2001. He sat back and said, “Things are getting crazy. Time to hit the eject button.” Everyone made a crappile of money. But the bubble kept inflating. Anyhow, based on his considerable prior success he was asked to run a much larger bank a couple of years later. He thought things were even more crazy but he was bored, took the job and didn’t invest any of his own money. He got there and basically said, “Folks, we gotta slow this train down and tighten up some things because it’s really crazy out there.” He was fired within a year. He didn’t really care because he didn’t need the money. But the larger point is this: most of the cautious bankers (or financiers, if you prefer) had been weeded out by the time the bubble burst. They had either sold, retired or just moved to the sidelines (like my friend). Most of the folks who remained at the top had only known expansion and bubbles and couldn’t really fathom any other condition. And if they could fathom it and tried to slow their companies down, they were pushed out. If you saw that the emperor had no clothes, you were long gone by 2006. So, the length of the previous expansion engendered a LOT of adverse selection in the top ranks of banks, investment banks, etc.
So, combining adverse selection with blindness-via-compensation, I find it very easy “to believe that so many people who had that much power were so completely incompetent.” In fact, in hindsight, it looks fairly predictable.
Participant[quote=CA renter]
Good post, dave, and think you nailed the elusive nature of the truly guilty parties in the financial system.I would disagree, though, about the lack of knowledge regarding the eventual outcome of these “innovations” in finance. I’m not involved in finance (other than trading), never took an econ or banking class, and wasn’t privy to the inner workings of the mortgage market, but could easily see where things were going back in 2004. If I could see it, surely “the experts” could have seen it. It’s hard to believe that so many people who had that much power were so completely incompetent.[/quote]
Well, let’s be honest here – I’m sure that you saw that it would all “end badly” back in 2004. As many of us here at the Pigg were discussing at this website as the peak neared. But did you realize the extent of what AIG was up to? I doubt it. Did you realize what Paulson and Magnetar were up to? I doubt it. The intricate maze of CDOs? I doubt it. I could go on.
I think plenty of folks – many fellow Piggs – strongly suspected that housing prices were going to drop significantly, we’d have a wicked recession, and that some number of banks were going to fail – and this was an extreme outlier view back in the mid-noughties – but with the exception of a small handful of folks (maybe Taleb and a few others – I would add Paulson and Magnetar but in fact they helped to MANUFACTURE the crisis), very very few folks predicted the extent of the damage. Most folks who identified the bubble and tried to profit from it probably started a few years too early (because the bubble should have been arrested back in, say, 2002) and had their asses handed to them by the time it actually burst. Such is that nature of markets. I’m not excusing anyone here – make no mistake – just pointing out that there’s a very large gulf between saying, “Houston, we have a problem” and saying, “Bernanke, the financial system is about to collapse.”
Anyhow, I think when you’re heavily compensated not to see something, you’re unlikely to see it. You put blinders on and say, “No one else is seeing anything, so everything must be copacetic.” Compensation – especially when it’s enormous – blinds people to alternate scenarios.
And here’s the other major problem with our “financial leaders” from the last several years: most of them arrived at their position as a result of adverse selection. Allow me to explain through use of an example.
A business partner of mine rescued an ailing bank during the mid-90s. Recapitalized it, cleaned it up, ran it extremely well and sold it in 2001. He sat back and said, “Things are getting crazy. Time to hit the eject button.” Everyone made a crappile of money. But the bubble kept inflating. Anyhow, based on his considerable prior success he was asked to run a much larger bank a couple of years later. He thought things were even more crazy but he was bored, took the job and didn’t invest any of his own money. He got there and basically said, “Folks, we gotta slow this train down and tighten up some things because it’s really crazy out there.” He was fired within a year. He didn’t really care because he didn’t need the money. But the larger point is this: most of the cautious bankers (or financiers, if you prefer) had been weeded out by the time the bubble burst. They had either sold, retired or just moved to the sidelines (like my friend). Most of the folks who remained at the top had only known expansion and bubbles and couldn’t really fathom any other condition. And if they could fathom it and tried to slow their companies down, they were pushed out. If you saw that the emperor had no clothes, you were long gone by 2006. So, the length of the previous expansion engendered a LOT of adverse selection in the top ranks of banks, investment banks, etc.
So, combining adverse selection with blindness-via-compensation, I find it very easy “to believe that so many people who had that much power were so completely incompetent.” In fact, in hindsight, it looks fairly predictable.
Participant[quote=CA renter]
Good post, dave, and think you nailed the elusive nature of the truly guilty parties in the financial system.I would disagree, though, about the lack of knowledge regarding the eventual outcome of these “innovations” in finance. I’m not involved in finance (other than trading), never took an econ or banking class, and wasn’t privy to the inner workings of the mortgage market, but could easily see where things were going back in 2004. If I could see it, surely “the experts” could have seen it. It’s hard to believe that so many people who had that much power were so completely incompetent.[/quote]
Well, let’s be honest here – I’m sure that you saw that it would all “end badly” back in 2004. As many of us here at the Pigg were discussing at this website as the peak neared. But did you realize the extent of what AIG was up to? I doubt it. Did you realize what Paulson and Magnetar were up to? I doubt it. The intricate maze of CDOs? I doubt it. I could go on.
I think plenty of folks – many fellow Piggs – strongly suspected that housing prices were going to drop significantly, we’d have a wicked recession, and that some number of banks were going to fail – and this was an extreme outlier view back in the mid-noughties – but with the exception of a small handful of folks (maybe Taleb and a few others – I would add Paulson and Magnetar but in fact they helped to MANUFACTURE the crisis), very very few folks predicted the extent of the damage. Most folks who identified the bubble and tried to profit from it probably started a few years too early (because the bubble should have been arrested back in, say, 2002) and had their asses handed to them by the time it actually burst. Such is that nature of markets. I’m not excusing anyone here – make no mistake – just pointing out that there’s a very large gulf between saying, “Houston, we have a problem” and saying, “Bernanke, the financial system is about to collapse.”
Anyhow, I think when you’re heavily compensated not to see something, you’re unlikely to see it. You put blinders on and say, “No one else is seeing anything, so everything must be copacetic.” Compensation – especially when it’s enormous – blinds people to alternate scenarios.
And here’s the other major problem with our “financial leaders” from the last several years: most of them arrived at their position as a result of adverse selection. Allow me to explain through use of an example.
A business partner of mine rescued an ailing bank during the mid-90s. Recapitalized it, cleaned it up, ran it extremely well and sold it in 2001. He sat back and said, “Things are getting crazy. Time to hit the eject button.” Everyone made a crappile of money. But the bubble kept inflating. Anyhow, based on his considerable prior success he was asked to run a much larger bank a couple of years later. He thought things were even more crazy but he was bored, took the job and didn’t invest any of his own money. He got there and basically said, “Folks, we gotta slow this train down and tighten up some things because it’s really crazy out there.” He was fired within a year. He didn’t really care because he didn’t need the money. But the larger point is this: most of the cautious bankers (or financiers, if you prefer) had been weeded out by the time the bubble burst. They had either sold, retired or just moved to the sidelines (like my friend). Most of the folks who remained at the top had only known expansion and bubbles and couldn’t really fathom any other condition. And if they could fathom it and tried to slow their companies down, they were pushed out. If you saw that the emperor had no clothes, you were long gone by 2006. So, the length of the previous expansion engendered a LOT of adverse selection in the top ranks of banks, investment banks, etc.
So, combining adverse selection with blindness-via-compensation, I find it very easy “to believe that so many people who had that much power were so completely incompetent.” In fact, in hindsight, it looks fairly predictable.
Participant[quote=CA renter]
Good post, dave, and think you nailed the elusive nature of the truly guilty parties in the financial system.I would disagree, though, about the lack of knowledge regarding the eventual outcome of these “innovations” in finance. I’m not involved in finance (other than trading), never took an econ or banking class, and wasn’t privy to the inner workings of the mortgage market, but could easily see where things were going back in 2004. If I could see it, surely “the experts” could have seen it. It’s hard to believe that so many people who had that much power were so completely incompetent.[/quote]
Well, let’s be honest here – I’m sure that you saw that it would all “end badly” back in 2004. As many of us here at the Pigg were discussing at this website as the peak neared. But did you realize the extent of what AIG was up to? I doubt it. Did you realize what Paulson and Magnetar were up to? I doubt it. The intricate maze of CDOs? I doubt it. I could go on.
I think plenty of folks – many fellow Piggs – strongly suspected that housing prices were going to drop significantly, we’d have a wicked recession, and that some number of banks were going to fail – and this was an extreme outlier view back in the mid-noughties – but with the exception of a small handful of folks (maybe Taleb and a few others – I would add Paulson and Magnetar but in fact they helped to MANUFACTURE the crisis), very very few folks predicted the extent of the damage. Most folks who identified the bubble and tried to profit from it probably started a few years too early (because the bubble should have been arrested back in, say, 2002) and had their asses handed to them by the time it actually burst. Such is that nature of markets. I’m not excusing anyone here – make no mistake – just pointing out that there’s a very large gulf between saying, “Houston, we have a problem” and saying, “Bernanke, the financial system is about to collapse.”
Anyhow, I think when you’re heavily compensated not to see something, you’re unlikely to see it. You put blinders on and say, “No one else is seeing anything, so everything must be copacetic.” Compensation – especially when it’s enormous – blinds people to alternate scenarios.
And here’s the other major problem with our “financial leaders” from the last several years: most of them arrived at their position as a result of adverse selection. Allow me to explain through use of an example.
A business partner of mine rescued an ailing bank during the mid-90s. Recapitalized it, cleaned it up, ran it extremely well and sold it in 2001. He sat back and said, “Things are getting crazy. Time to hit the eject button.” Everyone made a crappile of money. But the bubble kept inflating. Anyhow, based on his considerable prior success he was asked to run a much larger bank a couple of years later. He thought things were even more crazy but he was bored, took the job and didn’t invest any of his own money. He got there and basically said, “Folks, we gotta slow this train down and tighten up some things because it’s really crazy out there.” He was fired within a year. He didn’t really care because he didn’t need the money. But the larger point is this: most of the cautious bankers (or financiers, if you prefer) had been weeded out by the time the bubble burst. They had either sold, retired or just moved to the sidelines (like my friend). Most of the folks who remained at the top had only known expansion and bubbles and couldn’t really fathom any other condition. And if they could fathom it and tried to slow their companies down, they were pushed out. If you saw that the emperor had no clothes, you were long gone by 2006. So, the length of the previous expansion engendered a LOT of adverse selection in the top ranks of banks, investment banks, etc.
So, combining adverse selection with blindness-via-compensation, I find it very easy “to believe that so many people who had that much power were so completely incompetent.” In fact, in hindsight, it looks fairly predictable.
Participant[quote=jpinpb][quote=gandalf]Just wondering, where’s the outrage re: financial services corporations and the bullshit mortgage securitization racket these criminals ran for more than a decade? Where are the consequences for Wall Street?
…… Just wondering, where are all of the ‘Angry People’ when it comes to banks? Countrywide? AIG? Goldman Sachs?
[/quote]I think they’re all too busy being up in arms about cops and firemen risking their lives for their exorbitant wages.[/quote]
I think the problem is the ease with which blame can be identified and directly assigned.
The deadbeat homeowners are easy. Living in a house for years on end without making mortgage payments is clearly wrong (albeit technically legal up until foreclosure). If you can’t make the payments, give the keys to the bank and let them sell it to someone else. Don’t fight it through some bogus claim that it’s “yours” and you “deserve” a modification. Move out and let both parties – borrower and lender – move on. So, Joe Deadbeat is easily identified and his actions are transparently wrong. And the issue is easy to understand.
Where the “financiers” (or “banksters”) are concerned, things are more complicated. Sure, there are some easily-identifiable villains: Dick Fuld, Joe Cassano, Stan O’Neal, Angelo Mozilo, and a handful of others. But the rest – that teeming herd of banksters that works just beneath the media radar – are more difficult to identify. And it’s harder to assign specific blame for their actions at an individual level. And that is because for the vast majority of them – as sad as this is – they didn’t actually know they were doing anything wrong. For example, I’m sure that most of the folks in AIG’s Financial Products division were very smart and diligent. They weren’t actually trying to blow up the financial system. But in hindsight we know that very few of them were smart enough to know that their products were flawed and could bring down the financial system in the grander scheme of things. Now, some of this might have been the result of willful ignorance. (It’s hard to convince someone to understand something if their compensation is based on not understanding it.) But I think more of it was just pure ignorance regarding the big picture. And THAT layer of folks has tens of thousands of people throughout Wall Street. So, compared to Joe Deadbeat, not only is it harder to specifically identify that next layer of bankster misfits, what they were/are doing is more difficult to understand to the average person on the street. I would bet that less than 1% of the US Population actually understands the role that John Paulson and Magnetar played in making the whole financial crisis substantially worse than it would have been without them.
Sure, we here at the Pigg bitch about banksters. But to the man on the street, Joe Deadbeat is easier to identify and understand. There is plenty of outrage amongst the populace regarding the financiers… but aside from the obvious villains it’s harder to pin down individuals for specific evil actions.
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