Let's Talk.........I mean REALLY Talk.......

[P@triot]

The free market operates flawlessly.

How can anyone take what this guy seriously after an insane statement like that? You know you aren't dealing with a thinking person in touch with reality.

It's like a lefty saying something like "government operates flawlessly".

You know no one is home and the winger-talk-radio was left on loud.

For once....we agree! How could anyone take a person seriously after an insane statement like that? I mean, what's next - there is no relationship between deaths and population?!?

 

[P@triot]

Fact: Record number of people on food stamps under Barack Obama

FACT: THIS RECORD WAS SET BY EVERY PRESIDENT.

How can anyone take what this guy seriously after an insane statement like that?

Hey....what do you know....we agree again! How could anyone take a person seriously after an idiotic statement like that. Food stamp recipients have drastically reduced under some presidents. There certainly wasn't a "record number of people on food stamps" under Ronald Reagan.

Now tell us again how there is no correlation between births and population so we can all have a good laugh at your expense again

 

[AntonToo]

What I said - and what is 100% true - is that the true free market does operate flawlessly because people and businesses are responsible for risk and so they don't take bad risks.

NO, that is NOT TRUE to anyone that actually has some understanding about how business ACTUALLY works in REAL WORLD. You sound like a total right wing tool when you say ridiculous nonsense like that.

Businesses take on bad risks quite often. Business are operated by humans with all of their limitations including short-term reward prioritization and narrow self interest.

Yea, really.

 

[rightwinger]

I tend to follow the money

The blame goes to those who were speculating on an inflated real estate market while a complicit government looked the other way

I doubt many poor people were making a fortune during the real estate bubble

Yes, the rich got richer but to ignore the Democrats who voted for legislation over the years using tax payer dollars to back risky bank loans is partisan blindness.

How can we fix a problem if we don't admit it exists or existed?

Bush had a Republican Congress for six of his eight years as President. If he saw a problem, why didn't he fix it? He ran for President in 2000 and 2004, if it was an economic condition capable of bringing down our economy, why didn't he raise the issue?

 

[AntonToo]

I tend to follow the money

The blame goes to those who were speculating on an inflated real estate market while a complicit government looked the other way

I doubt many poor people were making a fortune during the real estate bubble

Yes, the rich got richer but to ignore the Democrats who voted for legislation over the years using tax payer dollars to back risky bank loans is partisan blindness.

How can we fix a problem if we don't admit it exists or existed?

Bush had a Republican Congress for six of his eight years as President. If he saw a problem, why didn't he fix it? He ran for President in 2000 and 2004, if it was an economic condition capable of bringing down our economy, why didn't he raise the issue?

The whole premise of "legislation over the years using tax payer dollars to back risky bank loans" is BS. What GSEs were "backing" was AAA rated securities based on private institution mortgage inssuances.

Who the hell are congressmen to make the determination what is "risky" or not risky? They were dependent in their decision making on the risk management information which unfortunately did not see much past the mass market delusion that real estate was a down-side-free commodity.

 

[P@triot]

Businesses take on bad risks quite often.

No...really....they don't. And on the rare occasions one does, they pay the price instead of all of society.

Why are you even bothering to respond? You lost all credibility when I proved everything you said was made up bullshit by an immature partisan hack.

 

[P@triot]

I tend to follow the money.

Yes you do! Your vote follows it right to whatever idiot politician "promises" to throw the most amount of it at you in pitiful government table scraps. But what does your greed and parasitic mooching off of society have to do with this discussion?

The blame goes to those who were speculating on an inflated real estate market while a complicit government looked the other way

Yeah....and we went into Iraq for "oil". There is nothing more comical than a tinfoil hat liberal that gets all of their "information" about a subject matter from Hollywood.

Speculation doesn't collapse economies junior. Government regulations and incentives interfering with the free market and causing massive loans to go to people who can't afford them and don't pay them back does...

 

[P@triot]

The whole premise of "legislation over the years using tax payer dollars to back risky bank loans" is BS. What GSEs were "backing" was AAA rated securities based on private institution mortgage inssuances.

Who the hell are congressmen to make the determination what is "risky" or not risky? They were dependent in their decision making on the risk management information which unfortunately did not see much past the mass market delusion that real estate was a down-side-free commodity.

This coming from a guy who attempted to explain away the monumental failures of Barack Obama by claiming that "every president experiences record high numbers of people on food stamps". Forgive us if we ignore every ignorant thing you say here as you been known to just make shit up as you go.

 

[ChrisL]

SEC Enforcement Actions Addressing Misconduct That Led to or Arose From the Financial Crisis

Click on the link and read because there is more.

Excerpt:

• Citigroup - SEC charged Citigroup's principal U.S. broker-dealer subsidiary with misleading investors about a $1 billion CDO tied to the housing market in which Citigroup bet against investors as the housing market showed signs of distress. The court approved a settlement of $285 million which will be returned to harmed investors. (10/19/11)
• Commonwealth Advisors - SEC charged Walter A. Morales and his Baton Rouge-based firm with defrauding investors by hiding millions of dollars in losses suffered during the financial crisis from investments tied to residential mortgage-backed securities. (11/9/12)
• Deutsche Bank AG - SEC charged the firm with filing misstated financial reports during the financial crisis. Deutsche Bank agreed to pay a $55 million penalty. (5/26/15)
• Goldman Sachs - SEC charged the firm with defrauding investors by misstating and omitting key facts about a financial product tied to subprime mortgages as the U.S. housing market was beginning to falter. (4/16/10)
  • Goldman Settled Charges - Firm agreed to pay record penalty in $550 million settlement and reform its business practices. (7/15/10)
  • Fabrice Tourre Found Liable - A jury found former Goldman Sachs Vice President Fabrice Tourre liable for fraud relating to his role in a synthetic collateralized debt obligation tied to subprime residential mortgages. (8/1/13)
• Harding Advisory LLC - SEC charged a Morristown, N.J.-based firm and its CEO for misleading investors in a CDO about the asset selection process. (10/18/13)
• ICP Asset Management - SEC charged ICP and its president with fraudulently managing investment products tied to the mortgage markets as they came under pressure. (6/21/10)
  • ICP and President Settled Charges - ICP and its president Thomas Priore agreed to pay penalties and settle the SEC's charges (9/6/12)
• J.P. Morgan Securities - SEC charged the firm with misleading investors in a complex mortgage securities transaction just as the housing market was starting to plummet. J.P. Morgan agreed to pay $153.6 million in a settlement that enables harmed investors to receive all of their money back. (6/21/11)
• Merrill Lynch - SEC charged the firm with making faulty disclosures about collateral selection for two CDOs that it structured and marketed to investors, and maintaining inaccurate books and records for a third CDO. Merrill Lynch agreed to pay $131.8 million to settle the charges. (12/12/13)
• Mizuho Securities USA - SEC charged the U.S. subsidiary of Japan-based Mizuho Financial Group and three former employees with misleading investors in a CDO by using “dummy assets” to inflate the deal’s credit ratings while the housing market was showing signs of severe stress. The SEC also charged the deal’s collateral manager and portfolio manager. Mizuho agreed to pay $127.5 million to settle the charges, and the others also agreed to settlements. (7/18/12)
• NIR Capital Management - SEC charged the two managing partners of the Charlotte, N.C.-based investment advisory firm for compromising their independent judgment and allowing a third party to influence the portfolio selection process of a CDO. Scott H. Shannon and Joseph G. Parish III agreed to collectively pay more than $472,000 to settle the charges. (12/12/13)
• Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. - SEC charged the St. Louis-based brokerage firm and a former senior executive with defrauding five Wisconsin school districts by selling them unsuitably risky and complex investments. (8/10/11)
  • RBC Capital Markets - SEC charged the firm for misconduct in the sale of unsuitable CDO investments to five Wisconsin school districts. The firm settled the charges by paying $30.4 million to be distributed to the school districts through a Fair Fund. (9/27/11)
• Wachovia Capital Markets - SEC charged the firm with misconduct in the sale of two CDOs tied to the performance of residential mortgage-backed securities as the housing market was beginning to show signs of distress. Firm settled charges by paying more than $11 million, much of which will be returned to harmed investors. (4/5/11)
• Wells Fargo - SEC charged Wells Fargo's brokerage firm and a former vice president for selling investments tied to mortgage-backed securities without fully understanding their complexity or disclosing the risks to investors. Wells Fargo agreed to pay more than $6.5 million to settle the charges. (8/14/12)
• UBS Securities - SEC charged UBS Securities with violating securities laws while structuring and marketing a CDO by failing to disclose that it retained millions of dollars in upfront cash that should have gone to the CDO for the benefit of its investors. UBS agreed to pay nearly $50 million to settle the SEC's charges. (8/6/13)

 

[ChrisL]

SEC Charges Former Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Executives with Securities Fraud; Release No. 2011-267; December 16, 2011

The SEC's complaint against the former Fannie Mae executives alleges that, when Fannie Mae began reporting its exposure to subprime loans in 2007, it broadly described the loans as those "made to borrowers with weaker credit histories," and then reported — with the knowledge, support, and approval of Mudd, Dallavecchia, and Lund — less than one-tenth of its loans that met that description. Fannie Mae reported that its 2006 year-end Single Family exposure to subprime loans was just 0.2 percent, or approximately $4.8 billion, of its Single Family loan portfolio. Investors were not told that in calculating the Company's reported exposure to subprime loans, Fannie Mae did not include loan products specifically targeted by Fannie Mae towards borrowers with weaker credit histories, including more than $43 billion of Expanded Approval, or "EA" loans.

Fannie Mae's executives also knew and approved of the decision to underreport Fannie Mae's Alt-A loan exposure, the SEC alleged. Fannie Mae disclosed that its March 31, 2007 exposure to Alt-A loans was 11 percent of its portfolio of Single Family loans. In reality, Fannie Mae's Alt-A exposure at that time was approximately 18 percent of its Single Family loan holdings.

The misleading disclosures were made as Fannie Mae's executives were seeking to increase the Company's market share through increased purchases of subprime and Alt-A loans, and gave false comfort to investors about the extent of Fannie Mae's exposure to high-risk loans, the SEC alleged.

In the complaint against the former Freddie Mac executives, the SEC alleged that they and Freddie Mac led investors to believe that the firm used a broad definition of subprime loans and was disclosing all of its Single-Family subprime loan exposure. Syron and Cook reinforced the misleading perception when they each publicly proclaimed that the Single Family business had "basically no subprime exposure." Unbeknown to investors, as of December 31, 2006, Freddie Mac's Single Family business was exposed to approximately $141 billion of loans internally referred to as "subprime" or "subprime like," accounting for 10 percent of the portfolio, and grew to approximately $244 billion, or 14 percent of the portfolio, as of June 30, 2008.

The SEC's complaint alleges that Mudd violated Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act") and Rules 10b-5(b) and 13(a)14(a) thereunder, and Section 17(a)(2) of the Securities Act of 1933 (the "Securities Act"); and that Mudd aided and abetted Fannie Mae's violations of Sections 10(b) and 13(a) of the Exchange Act and Exchange Act Rules 10b-5(b), 12b-20, 13a-1, and 13a-13 thereunder. The SEC complaint also alleges that Dallavecchia violated Section 17(a)(2) of the Securities Act and aided and abetted Fannie Mae's violations of Sections 10(b) and 13(a) of the Exchange Act and Exchange Act Rules 10b-5(b), 12b-20, 13a-1, and 13a-13 thereunder. Finally, the SEC complaint alleges that Lund aided and abetted Fannie Mae's violations of Sections 10(b) and 13(a) of the Exchange Act and Exchange Act Rules 10b-5(b), 12b-20, 13a-1, and 13a-13 thereunder.

 

[AntonToo]

No...really....they don't. And on the rare occasions one does, they pay the price instead of all of society.

"rare"? What is "rare" and how did you measure it? Does that "rare" not contradict your prior statement that unregulated market operates perfectly?

When a business dumps contaminants into river, land and air, that business pays the price? Really? NO, not right - they are taking the profit and externalizing costs on to the rest of us. This is not a rare story, it's quite EXPECTED story in absence of regulations.

When a business uses insider information to swindle other investors out of their money, that business pays the price? Yea? Really?

When a business monopolizes market to drive up prices and profits that business pays the price? Yea?

When a business passes off it's risky loan origination in fancy derivative packages, the business pays the price? Yea?

When a business is based on nothing but a pyramid scheme it pays the price?

No silly, far from perfectly aligned, the natural order is that business interests are often at odds with "all of society". Business will squeeze as much profit as possible, while giving little to no shit about anything else including the broader socio-economic system that sustains it.

Your simplistic notions about super-efficient gobamint free economy is nothing but right wing Utopian fantasies that do not have any real world basis.

 

[Divine Wind]

Bush had a Republican Congress for six of his eight years as President. If he saw a problem, why didn't he fix it? He ran for President in 2000 and 2004, if it was an economic condition capable of bringing down our economy, why didn't he raise the issue?

Why didn't Clinton?

As has been stated repeatedly before, this crisis didn't begin with Bush. It didn't even began with Clinton. It began under Carter and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977.

Here's How The Community Reinvestment Act Led To The Housing Bubble's Lax Lending

• How could a piece of 1977 legislation be significant to the deterioration of mortgage standards 25 years later?

The CRA was not a static piece of legislation. It evolved over the years from a relatively hands-off law focused on process into one that focused on outcomes. Regulators, beginning in the mid-nineties, began to hold banks accountable in serious ways. Banks responded to this new accountability by increasing the CRA loans they made, a move that entailed relaxing their lending standards.

• That’s still too early. Why would changes in the mid-nineties result in a mortgage boom a decade later?

Throughout the nineties banks, as banks lowered their mortgage standards, mortgage rates remained high. The laxity was spreading but the incentives for borrowers to re-finance even under relaxed standards remained low. New buyers often still didn’t know that some of the loosey-goosey mortgages existed. Speculators had an internet bubble, so they weren’t yet attracted to real-estate. Treasury rates were not yet so low that investors seeking yield would pour into mortgage backed securities. Securitization levels were low enough that banks weren’t yet willing to fully embrace the loose standards. The historical data on default and loss rates from the lax lending were not yet available, so they weren’t embraced by banks or the broader market.

But as the years went by, these factors changed. The Fed pushed interest rates down. This made refinancing more attractive, and created an investor demand for yield. Fannie and Freddie popularized low-income securitization. Low defaults and loss rates from lax loans made them seem not as risky as previously expected. A shrinking consumer asset base thanks to the dot com bust created a demand for home-equity loans and high loan-to-value loans, as consumers exchanged high-interest credit card debt for low interest home debt. Speculators seeking higher returns and ordinary home buyers became aware that lax lending standards would allow them to buy bigger homes with little or no money down.

In short, the lax lending standards created in response to the CRA had dug a pit that was waiting to get filled when the circumstances were right.

• Ah ha! So it wasn’t the CRA that caused the mess. It was everything else!

Of course it wasn’t the CRA that caused everything. The CRA was a factor in lowering lending standards. This was a necessary, although not sufficient, cause for the mortgage mess.

 

[Divine Wind]

For those who couldn't follow that, perhaps this will help:

The Financial Crisis for Dummies
The Financial Crisis for Dummies
It all started with legislation. The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 was designed to make it easier for low-income families to get mortgages. But due to a long string of misguided and probably politically-motivated amendments, revisions, and related legislation over the next 25 years, the CRA train left the tracks and good intentions turned into idiotic mandates.

One by one, checks and balances intended to ensure that lenders didn't write bad loans were removed. And by 2002, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) required pseudo-government agency Fannie Mae to dedicate 50% of its funds to back affordable housing. We're talking hundreds of billions of dollars to back bad loans.
In effect, politically-motivated congressional leaders were responsible for creating the subprime mortgage crisis, which I like to think of as a deadly virus.

In addition, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and, to some extent, then treasury secretary Robert Rubin, kept interest rates down and supported sub-prime loans. That was an important catalyst for spreading the virus.

Then the bankers found a creative way of getting all those risky loans off their balance sheets by packaging and selling them to investors and institutions all over the world. But they couldn't have done it without help. Rating agencies like Standard & Poor's and Moody's essentially told the banks how to structure mortgage-backed securities in such a way that the agencies could rate them as investment-grade when they weren't.

That's like the banks and rating agencies knowingly infecting the entire world with the deadly virus.

Another key catalyst was then-Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee Phil Gramm pioneering the exemption of over-the-counter derivatives, such as credit-default swaps, from regulation. Greenspan and Rubin also supported deregulation of derivatives.

And that's pretty much what nearly turned the American subprime mortgage crisis into a worldwide financial meltdown.

 

[Flopper]

College loans are certainly not free money. In fact, they are one of few loan types that are not discharged in bankruptcy. They follow you to the grave.

Even if college cost came down with lower attendance, they would still be priced way above the reach of the average family. If we abolish loans, college attendance would drop like a rock. Colleges would drop their prices, by laying off teachers, cutting off services to student, and degrading the curriculum, costing less but delivering less. If we are to bring back the economic growth to America that has escaped us in the 21st century we have got to have more and better educated workers, not less.

Just your opinion or do you have facts to back up the nightmare scenario you painted?

As the USA Today Op-Ed article pointed out, a lot of college money is wasted. Cutting their income would force them to be more efficient.

As others have mentioned, we should move more toward CBT like Khan Academy. The first two years are core classes anyway, so it doesn't matter much. Probably half of Junior and Senior level classes could be computer-based with the rest field or brick'n'mortar classroom classes. The savings could easily cut the cost of a four year degree in half if not by 2/3s.

Almost a quarter of college expenses today are paid for with loans. For low income students, loans cover 70% of college cost. Thinking colleges could cut their expense 25 to 50% without seriously degrading the education is just pure nonsense. Without college loans, colleges would return to institutions for the wealthy and the upper middle class with only the very brightest low income student attending.

 

[P@triot]

When a business dumps contaminants into river, land and air, that business pays the price? Really? NO, not right - they are taking the profit and externalizing costs on to the rest of us. This is not a rare story, it's quite EXPECTED story in absence of regulations.

LMAO! We were talking about economic collapse and how the free market forces business to accept their own risk and suffer the consequences of their own failures as opposed to idiot liberal socialism which makes all of society pay the consequences when GM fails or when the government forces banks to make loans to people that can't afford the loan.

What does any of that have to do with "dumping contaminants into rivers"?!?

By the way genius - the worst corporation in world history isn't 1/1000th as corrupt as your beloved government which commits murders, dumps contaminants all over the world, steals intellectual property, steals money, engages in every form of fraud imaginable, and conspire with corrupt organizations all over the world. So why do you suck them off until they blow their load all over your stupid face and laugh at you while you condemn corporations? Because the government can throw a few measly dollars at you will get on your hands and knees and do anything for them.

Hitlery Clinton violated every section of the federal law on classified information and will not face a single charge because people in the government you worship can egregiously violate the law without consequences. If she was a CEO of a major corporation, you would be throwing a tantrum like a small child.

 

[P@triot]

Almost a quarter of college expenses today are paid for with loans. For low income students, loans cover 70% of college cost. Thinking colleges could cut their expense 25 to 50% without seriously degrading the education is just pure nonsense. Without college loans, colleges would return to institutions for the wealthy and the upper middle class with only the very brightest low income student attending.

Bullshit. Pure...unadulterated...bullshit. Even the most entry level jobs in the world include tuition reimbursement. Nobody needs loans.

Furthermore - colleges could absolutely cut their expenses 25% to 50% without the slightest degradation to the quality of education. Harvard University currently sits on over a $36 billion endowment fund. They could allow all of their students to attend the university for free for the next 100 years without cutting a single thing they currently offer.

And before you attempt to backpedal with some nonsense about "Ivy League" schools - Texas A&M currently sits on over a $10 billion endowment and the a University of Michigan currently sits on over a $9 billion endowment. Those are just a couple of examples.

 

[rightwinger]

Bush had a Republican Congress for six of his eight years as President. If he saw a problem, why didn't he fix it? He ran for President in 2000 and 2004, if it was an economic condition capable of bringing down our economy, why didn't he raise the issue?

Why didn't Clinton?

As has been stated repeatedly before, this crisis didn't begin with Bush. It didn't even began with Clinton. It began under Carter and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977.

Here's How The Community Reinvestment Act Led To The Housing Bubble's Lax Lending

• How could a piece of 1977 legislation be significant to the deterioration of mortgage standards 25 years later?

The CRA was not a static piece of legislation. It evolved over the years from a relatively hands-off law focused on process into one that focused on outcomes. Regulators, beginning in the mid-nineties, began to hold banks accountable in serious ways. Banks responded to this new accountability by increasing the CRA loans they made, a move that entailed relaxing their lending standards.

• That’s still too early. Why would changes in the mid-nineties result in a mortgage boom a decade later?

Throughout the nineties banks, as banks lowered their mortgage standards, mortgage rates remained high. The laxity was spreading but the incentives for borrowers to re-finance even under relaxed standards remained low. New buyers often still didn’t know that some of the loosey-goosey mortgages existed. Speculators had an internet bubble, so they weren’t yet attracted to real-estate. Treasury rates were not yet so low that investors seeking yield would pour into mortgage backed securities. Securitization levels were low enough that banks weren’t yet willing to fully embrace the loose standards. The historical data on default and loss rates from the lax lending were not yet available, so they weren’t embraced by banks or the broader market.

But as the years went by, these factors changed. The Fed pushed interest rates down. This made refinancing more attractive, and created an investor demand for yield. Fannie and Freddie popularized low-income securitization. Low defaults and loss rates from lax loans made them seem not as risky as previously expected. A shrinking consumer asset base thanks to the dot com bust created a demand for home-equity loans and high loan-to-value loans, as consumers exchanged high-interest credit card debt for low interest home debt. Speculators seeking higher returns and ordinary home buyers became aware that lax lending standards would allow them to buy bigger homes with little or no money down.

In short, the lax lending standards created in response to the CRA had dug a pit that was waiting to get filled when the circumstances were right.

• Ah ha! So it wasn’t the CRA that caused the mess. It was everything else!

Of course it wasn’t the CRA that caused everything. The CRA was a factor in lowering lending standards. This was a necessary, although not sufficient, cause for the mortgage mess.

What a load of bullshit to direct attention away from Bush

Sorry...but poor people did not cause the economic collapse. They lack the cumulative wealth (less than 2/10 of a percent of total wealth) to create a collapse of that magnitude

Want someone to blame? Look at those who were speculating in real estate and drove up prices over 100%...and it wasn't poor people

 

[Divine Wind]

Almost a quarter of college expenses today are paid for with loans. For low income students, loans cover 70% of college cost. Thinking colleges could cut their expense 25 to 50% without seriously degrading the education is just pure nonsense. Without college loans, colleges would return to institutions for the wealthy and the upper middle class with only the very brightest low income student attending.

Thank you for your unsubstantiated, LW sales pitch implying We, the People need to fund college football stadiums and fancy student union halls as a previous link showed on government funding of college tuition.

Meanwhile, some fact:
'Top universities to offer full degrees online in five years' - BBC News
Leading universities will offer fully accredited undergraduate courses online within five years, says the founder of a leading US online university network.

Daphne Koller, chief executive of Coursera, said the technology was available but universities had been hesitant about their "reputation".

So far, online courses have mostly offered certificates for short courses rather than full degrees.

Prof Koller says online degrees can be "more affordable and accessible".

Founded in California four years ago, Coursera has become one of the world's biggest providers of "massive, open, online courses" - known as Moocs.

 

[Divine Wind]

What a load of bullshit to direct attention away from Bush...

You Bush obsession is interesting, but a reasonable, less-than-a-partisan-nutjob, would see I'm blaming both sides for pushing their agendas with a result of steering our economy toward a cliff. To blame only one side is pure partisan bullshit. The difference between you and I is you want to blame "Booooosh!" and only Bush while, as I've repeatedly pointed out, there is plenty of blame for both sides starting in 1977.

 

[P@triot]

What a load of bullshit to direct attention away from Bush.

What a load of bullshit to direct the attention away from liberalism. That failed ideology which abuses and illegally leverages government to coerce the American people.

Sorry...but poor people did not cause the economic collapse. They lack the cumulative wealth (less than 2/10 of a percent of total wealth) to create a collapse of that magnitude.

Sorry...but that too is a load of bullshit (everything you post usually is). It wasn't just "poor people". There were plenty of middle class individuals and wealthy individuals getting risky loans that they ultimately defaulted on because government removed all of the risk from the banks in the private sector.

Want someone to blame? Look at those who were speculating in real estate and drove up prices over 100%...and it wasn't poor people

Speculation doesn't cause economic collapse junior. Government incentivizing banks to make loans to people who can't afford the loans and can't pay them back does. Speculation is just a person's opinion (I realize that you don't know what that word means - it's just a libtard talking points that your masters are training you minions to use). Opinions don't collapse economies genius.