Financial Reality Check: As early as 2003/2004, there were warnings in the NYT and major news-

[Mike 03]

papers about irresponsible mortgages, incoherent, incomprehensible CDOs, dangerous Credit Default Swaps, and even though I usually side with my loyal Dems on most issues, these hearings that focus on the Rating agencies and Goldman Sachs are hindsight witch hunts IMHO. This is such bullshit. Anybody with a brain saw that there was way, way too much leverage, too much free credit being extended to unworthy (stated salary) borrowers, and why on earth should an investor not short those idiots to make money?

Please. It was obvious that these mortgages were doomed.

But more to the point, what is wrong, as an investor, with shorting a company that is making such dumb, moronic decisions that it is obviously going down? I would short that company! I would short a mortgage company that is making irresponsible mortgages. I also respect a brokerage firm that does the same.

Shorting is not illegal; some times, it is not only responsible, but almost obligatory.

Are we now this stupid, that we don't even understand that there are two sides to every transaction, and have to be?

[Duer 157099]

1. Have you ever found yourself both short and long on the same security?

I hope not. In essence, that's what GS was doing if they advised their clients into a position opposite of their own.

See how easy?

[FreakinDJ]

2. Shit - Right here at DU since 2002

Fuck anyone with a couple of Brain Cells could see it was a "False Economy"

Shit I dare you go search My Own Post as far back as Jan 2003 - I knew it was floated paper money not worth a damm

[sandnsea]

3. Aw christ, That's Why They Wrote The Damn Things

They planned it. Don't you get it yet??

[blm]

4. Heck, Kerry tried directing attention to balloon loans and shady mortgage deals in 2004 campaign and

added a plank to the Dem platform to put an end of these practices.

The corporate media completely ignored him, never furthering his remarks or discussing their implications, and by 2008 they acted as if the subject had never come up.

I don't agree with your casual view about this, but, DO agree that there were a few people who noticed what was going on and did talk about their concerns publically.

[LiberalAndProud]

5. So, you're saying we don't need to regulate because only the stupid

were fleeced?

I didn't have anything invested in deriviates, credit default swaps, cdos or any of the other confusing instruments we are discussing today, yet when the housing market collapsed, as a taxpayer, I got stuck with the bill, and the world economy was brought to the brink. So what if everybody should have seen it coming, because there was no apparatus in place to stop the train. The people who confidently assured us that they would do a fine job of policing themselves, didn't.

Unacceptable, and should be criminal.

[sandnsea]

6. Exactly, they knew they were doing it

And the only way they could continue doing it was to write these mortgages and get people into them, any way they could. Not only did the taxpayers have to bail them out, but we're also the ones suffering from the collapse and the ones helping out friends and family who didn't understand what was going on and how it would blow up in their face. Damn right it should be criminal. I am so sick of people blaming the victims.