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PostPosted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 9:34 am 
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Article about a recent Bernake speech regarding the policy of low interest rates and the financial collapse


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PostPosted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 9:37 am 
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Perfect Equilibrium
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He should legally change his name to "Lando Calrissian".

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 10:25 am 
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This is the relevant part of that article. Bolding is mine.

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Mr. Bernanke's most cogent critics argue that by keeping rates low and, importantly, loudly promising to keep them low, the Greenspan-Bernanke strategy triggered a global search for higher yielding investments. Geniuses on Wall Street met that demand by turning subprime mortgages into ersatz safe short-term securities. The global demand was almost insatiable, and the fees irresistible to Wall Street and mortgage originators. When they ran out of worthy borrowers, these outfits made mortgages to anyone who could sign his or her name because Wall Street was eager for product to sell to hungry investors.


Basically Wall Street was too blinded by greed to act responsibly.


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PostPosted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 10:28 am 
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Aizle:

It's still Greenspan and Bernanke's fault.

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 10:31 am 
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Aizle:

Your contention hinges on a very flawed premise. That Wall Street Brokerage entities had no counter-party risk in brokering such debt instruments. There is naturally risk and of course that risk is especially high with subprime borrowers, but the risk was mitigated by things such as artifically low interest rates (the tendency to incentivize mal-investment) and a secondary market fueled primarily by Fannie/Freddie guarunteed paper.

Let me ask you something to do with "greed": when you go to Vegas, do you take out home equity loans to play the slots? Why not?? You could win TONS of money.

Did you bet money on the Eagles over Dallas? Did you take out a second mortagage to do so? After all, the Eagles were like 6-0 under Reid in R1 of the NFC Playoffs.

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 10:38 am 
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Someone set us up the Bomb.

Make Your Time.

Bernake's speech makes as much sense, almost.

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 10:39 am 
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Gambling is a tax on people who are bad at statistics.

And while I agree that those Wall Street Brokerage entities had little/no count-part risk, that was due to their lack of ethics and lax regulations around the radical financial products they were concocting and foisting off on the banking industry.


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PostPosted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 10:43 am 
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Aizle wrote:
Gambling is a tax on people who are bad at statistics.

And while I agree that those Wall Street Brokerage entities had little/no count-part risk, that was due to their lack of ethics and lax regulations around the radical financial products they were concocting and foisting off on the banking industry.


No. Greed is a good thing. It's what keeps counter-party risk alive. It's the basis for credit risk, for lending in general. It's what keeps subprime lending in check. Ultimately, someone has to bear the counter-party credit risk associated with the underlying asset: the subprime mortgage.

Gambling isn't about statistics, it's about greed. People gamble, but even more people don't. But ultimately people either gamble or they don't because of greed; greed of the gain they could get or greed to risk and not lose money.

By extending your logic to the general population, we should all be on casinos all the time and constantly buying lotto tickets. Our greed is what keeps us from doing so.

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 10:53 am 
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I think you're overextending the term "greed". Greed isn't simply the desire for wealth or material things; it's the desire far in excess of need (or so is the connotation; I'm not talking about strictly applicable dictionary definitions). In other words, you may be predjudicing your point with the use of that word.

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 11:13 am 
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I believe that definition of greed is certainly applicable in this case.

Either way, regardless of "greed", the relationship between investor and borrower works. Risk is what makes it work. Risk which results from greed, or if not greed, fear of loss which I will qualify more or less as greed. The word isn't so important. "Greedy" investors and borrowers have been around since the dawn of man. It's nothing new. The balance only fails when tampered with.

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 1:26 pm 
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Bernake is a moron. The government kept pushing for unqualified people to be allowed to become buyers.

They incentivized and at times almost demanded that unqualified buyers be allowed to become landed gentry. And when people in the government said "This might be a problem holmes!" they were poo-poo'ed and brushed aside.

**** Bernake, **** him right in his eye.

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 6:11 pm 
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darksiege wrote:
Bernake is a moron. The government kept pushing for unqualified people to be allowed to become buyers.

They incentivized and at times almost demanded that unqualified buyers be allowed to become landed gentry. And when people in the government said "This might be a problem holmes!" they were poo-poo'ed and brushed aside.

**** Bernake, **** him right in his eye.


Indeed. Banks actually recieved their federal rankings not on the quality of their loans, but on how many high risk loans they extended.

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