Reply #4: That's predictable [View All]

[jtuck004]

But a reading of any of the half a dozen good books on this make it crystal clear that the phony ratings on the bonds made up of thousands of mortgages induced their sale to unsuspecting buyers, and the insurance (credit default swaps) that were sold 50 or 100 times on the same bonds, many times without even an underlying bond (just a bet) totaled over hundreds of trillions of dollars - sold without enough reserves to possibly pay off all the claims, which range in estimates from $450 trillion to $700 trillion. Nobody knows, since it was all off the books, and still is today.

On the other hand the mortgage market was about $13 trillion, with about $1 point something of truly subprime. So, literally, the entire subprime group of homes could have been purchased for $1 trillion and the loans rewritten, people foreclosed, whatever.

Instead it led to about $23 trillion of bailout money loaned or paid to the largest investment banks both here and in other countries, as well as companies such as GE, McDonalds, etc. They have made hundreds of billions in interest without public accounting, (we know this because they received treasury bonds and the interest).

Most of what they are saying has been debunked by several sources, but these congressmen are citizens with a right to put out what they want, regardless of how silly and wrong it is. And there will always be a market for that kind of stuff.

The question is, given that most people operate within their own experience, many will believe their story, because the real issues cannot be explained in a short news story. Or even if they can, the news folks have moved on, and all we hear are these echoes of the talking points which try to point the finger of blame anywhere else but at the people who destroyed so many people's lives. And are continuing the same behaviors.

Maybe if Goldman Sachs hadn't been the second largest contributor on the Open Secrets list, http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=n00009638">here..., and had a few less ex-employees in the governement, or their lawyers and chairman sitting in on meetings, (all of this is documented pretty well in other posts, btw) we would be hearing more of the story, and maybe seeing more changes.

As I recall "Bailout Nation" takes this issue on directly and refutes it pretty well - he even has pretty charts that show how private funding (in the billions of dollars) and predatory lending had a much earlier, larger, and longer lasting impact than anything the GSE's did, (and some portion of what they did was right along the same line, but with not near the impact).