You are unemployed and want a new job, under a Democratic president you have a better chance of getting one!

[TruthNotBS]

says the guy who doesn't understand what the term root cause actually means. It's truly clear and is what factually occurred.

It's what the term root cause is. What created the demise. The fact bad loans existed created the issue. Perpetuation is a symptom of the root cause-bad loans. You aren't educated enough to understand. You're ahead of your skis.

means absolutely nothing.

the fk he wasn't. HE WAS SPOT FKING ON!!!!

Did that impact bad loans?

Hilarious. You know not what you're talking about.

I think you should get an actual education.

JC456, it's ironic that you're lecturing me on understanding the term "root cause" when it's clear you’re only grasping part of the picture. Yes, bad loans were part of the problem, but to call them the sole "root cause" of the 2008 financial crisis is a fundamental misunderstanding of how complex systems work. The bad loans were indeed a trigger, but what turned that trigger into a full-blown crisis was the way those loans were bundled into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), given misleading ratings, and spread throughout the global financial system. It was the systemic risk created by these practices that led to the meltdown, not just the existence of bad loans themselves.

You dismiss the packaging and selling of these bad loans as meaningless, but that's where the real danger lay. Banks and financial institutions, driven by greed and enabled by deregulation like the repeal of Glass-Steagall, took these risky loans, bundled them, and sold them as safe investments. This spread the risk across the entire financial system and made the eventual collapse much more devastating. Without these practices, the impact of bad loans would have been much more contained. So, no, it’s not "hilarious" that I point this out—it’s a critical part of understanding what actually happened.

Your insistence that Todd was "spot fking on" doesn’t change the reality that he’s oversimplifying a complex situation. The crisis wasn’t just about bad loans; it was about how those loans were handled by a deregulated financial system that prioritized short-term profits over long-term stability. If you can’t grasp that, then maybe it’s you who needs to step back and get a real education on the subject. The worst economic disaster in modern history wasn’t caused by bad loans alone—it was caused by a system that allowed and encouraged those loans to be turned into financial weapons of mass destruction.

 

[TruthNotBS]

Todd, it's clear that your sarcasm is a cover for the fact that you don’t really have a solid understanding of what caused the 2008 financial crisis.

My sarcasm is to mock your ignorance about the crisis.

You keep insisting that the problem was simply bad loans,

Obviously good loans didn't cause the problem.

The real problem was how those bad loans were bundled into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and sold off as safe investments,

Nope. MBS may have made the problem spread further or faster, but a bad mortgage losing $100,000 in value loses $100,000 whether sitting on the balance sheet of
Iowa First National bank or sitting in an MBS owned by Iowa State Teacher Pension Fund.

This was made possible by the deregulation, including the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which allowed banks to take on these risks without sufficient oversight.

Nope. Glass-Steagall wouldn't prevent the bad mortgage, wouldn't prevent the bank from selling it to Fannie, Freddie or Countrywide Financial and being made into a crappy MBS.

What do you think caused the recession? And how would you have avoided it?

Economies are cyclical. Something new starts to make money, people pile in, excesses occur, losses start to happen, people run for the exits. It's human nature. Anything you try to do to stop the rise or the fall is probably more expensive than the loss you would avoid.

That being said, the government's good intention of helping poor credits risks buy homes they couldn't afford was a stupid idea. It contributed to rising home prices; people jumped on the bandwagon.

Normally there would be a limited demand for the crappy mortgage paper, but the government pressured banks to create it, CRA etc. Banks aren't stupid, they saw they could sell to Fannie, Freddie, Bear Stearns, Lehman, Goldman, Countrywide, so they did.
Instead of holding crappy paper they sold it to people who wanted higher yields or who could turn it into MBS.

Nationwide housing prices had never fallen before, so this crappy MBS must be safe.
Create some more. Poor risks were getting homes with Bush's HUD mandate for Fannie and Freddie to buy 30% subprime loans, so Clinton hiked it to 40%, 42%, 50%.

That seemed to work, so Bush hiked it to 52% then 56%. What could go wrong? DURR.

As for your snide remarks about socialist banking, let's set the record straight. In a socialist society, education is a right, not something you have to go into debt for.

Bla bla bla.
Obama socialized student loans. He fucked up. It put people deep in debt for degrees they never finished or for degrees with little market value. Great job, moron.

Todd, your attempt to mock my understanding of the 2008 financial crisis with sarcasm doesn’t change the fact that you’re oversimplifying the issue to an absurd degree.

Let's break this down: you keep saying that the problem was simply bad loans, as if the crisis would have happened regardless of how those loans were handled. But that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how financial systems work. Yes, bad loans were part of the problem, but the key issue was how these loans were bundled into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and sold off as safe investments. This wasn’t just about spreading the problem further or faster—it was about turning what could have been a contained issue into a global financial meltdown. The fact that these bad loans were misrepresented as safe investments was a direct consequence of deregulation, including the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which allowed banks to engage in these risky practices without sufficient oversight.

You dismiss Glass-Steagall’s relevance, but you’re missing the point. Glass-Steagall wouldn’t have stopped bad loans from being made, but it would have prevented commercial banks from taking those bad loans, turning them into securities, and selling them off as safe investments. This separation of commercial and investment banking was crucial in preventing the kind of systemic risk that led to the 2008 crisis. By removing that separation, the financial system was set up for disaster when the housing market inevitably faltered.

Your explanation that "economies are cyclical" is a cop-out. It’s an excuse to avoid addressing the specific policies and deregulation that exacerbated the crisis. Yes, markets go through cycles, but the severity of the 2008 recession was not inevitable—it was the result of a series of bad decisions, including the push to make homeownership accessible at any cost, the repeal of protective regulations, and the unchecked greed that led financial institutions to gamble with the global economy.

As for your remarks on socialist banking and student loans, you’re mixing up the issues. Obama’s handling of student loans wasn’t about creating a socialist banking system; it was about trying to make education more accessible in a flawed system where education costs are skyrocketing. The real failure is the capitalist system that forces people to go into massive debt just to get an education. In a truly socialist system, education wouldn’t be something you have to go into debt for—it would be a guaranteed right, fully funded by the state, so that no one would have to mortgage their future just to get a degree.

So before you mock what you clearly don’t understand, maybe take a step back and consider that the very system you’re defending is the one that led to the disaster you’re so quick to blame on everyone else.

 

[beagle9]

JC456, it's ironic that you're lecturing me on understanding the term "root cause" when it's clear you’re only grasping part of the picture. Yes, bad loans were part of the problem, but to call them the sole "root cause" of the 2008 financial crisis is a fundamental misunderstanding of how complex systems work. The bad loans were indeed a trigger, but what turned that trigger into a full-blown crisis was the way those loans were bundled into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), given misleading ratings, and spread throughout the global financial system. It was the systemic risk created by these practices that led to the meltdown, not just the existence of bad loans themselves.

You dismiss the packaging and selling of these bad loans as meaningless, but that's where the real danger lay. Banks and financial institutions, driven by greed and enabled by deregulation like the repeal of Glass-Steagall, took these risky loans, bundled them, and sold them as safe investments. This spread the risk across the entire financial system and made the eventual collapse much more devastating. Without these practices, the impact of bad loans would have been much more contained. So, no, it’s not "hilarious" that I point this out—it’s a critical part of understanding what actually happened.

Your insistence that Todd was "spot fking on" doesn’t change the reality that he’s oversimplifying a complex situation. The crisis wasn’t just about bad loans; it was about how those loans were handled by a deregulated financial system that prioritized short-term profits over long-term stability. If you can’t grasp that, then maybe it’s you who needs to step back and get a real education on the subject. The worst economic disaster in modern history wasn’t caused by bad loans alone—it was caused by a system that allowed and encouraged those loans to be turned into financial weapons of mass destruction.

And what role did the government play in it all ? Was it sort of like the role it played with manipulating social media platforms to sway an election or policies in the government's favor ?

 

[TruthNotBS]

Nope. Banks wrote a giant pile of crap.

Splitting the crap up into 1000 piles wasn't the problem, the problem was the crap.

If they had kept the crap on their own spreadsheets, there would still be a huge problem.

Todd, your focus on the "pile of crap" that were bad loans misses the broader and more critical issue: how that "crap" was weaponized through the financial system. Sure, the bad loans were a problem, but bad loans have existed before without triggering a global financial meltdown. What turned this situation into a catastrophe was the way these loans were bundled, leveraged, and sold off as safe investments, spreading the risk throughout the entire global economy. This wasn’t just a matter of banks holding bad loans—it was about creating financial products that were designed to fail and then selling them as if they were low-risk.

If those bad loans had stayed on the original banks' balance sheets, the damage would have been far more contained. Yes, those banks would have faced significant losses, but the entire global financial system wouldn’t have been dragged down with them. The real problem was the securitization process, which allowed these bad loans to be mixed into complex financial products, obscuring their true risk and spreading that risk across countless investors, institutions, and even countries. This is what made the crisis so pervasive and devastating.

So no, simply keeping "the crap" on their own spreadsheets wouldn’t have created the same level of systemic risk. The crisis was as much about the financial engineering that allowed this risk to be distributed across the entire economy as it was about the bad loans themselves. Ignoring that fact is ignoring the true nature of what went wrong.

 

[jc456]

JC456, it's ironic that you're lecturing me on understanding the term "root cause" when it's clear you’re only grasping part of the picture.

dude, repeating the same nonsense over and over again, doesn't change my post. I think Todd would be on board with that as well. You think you're going to get a different response, or are you geniunely this stupid?

Yes, bad loans were part of the problem,

Bad loans were the problem, corrected that for you.

but to call them the sole "root cause" of the 2008 financial crisis is a fundamental misunderstanding of how complex systems work.

You are fundamentally willfully ignorant of what is root cause.

The bad loans were indeed a trigger,

The bad loans were indeed the trigger, and why it's a root cause. Hilarious

but what turned that trigger into a full-blown crisis was the way those loans were bundled into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), given misleading ratings, and spread throughout the global financial system. It was the systemic risk created by these practices that led to the meltdown, not just the existence of bad loans themselves.

yep, so if they didn't exist, nothing would have perpetuated down the line as explained to you already.

You dismiss the packaging and selling of these bad loans as meaningless,

well there wouldn't have been those packages without the bad loans. Totally meaningful.

but that's where the real danger lay. Banks and financial institutions, driven by greed and enabled by deregulation like the repeal of Glass-Steagall, took these risky loans,

they were bad loans with no way of securing funding from the folks who couldn't pay them. That is the root cause. Galss Steagall had nothing to do with that.

bundled them, and sold them as safe investments.

they wouldn't have if they didn't exist, right?

This spread the risk across the entire financial system and made the eventual collapse much more devastating. Without these practices, the impact of bad loans

foreclosure with owners who had no money to pay them off.

would have been much more contained. So, no, it’s not "hilarious" that I point this out—it’s a critical part of understanding what actually happened.

What's hilarious is you

Your insistence that Todd was "spot fking on" doesn’t change the reality that he’s oversimplifying a complex situation. The crisis wasn’t just about bad loans;

bad loans created the crisis, right?

it was about how those loans were handled by a deregulated financial system

it was? so the poor folks who received the loans weren't the issue by not paying on them by the banks forced to give out the bad loans? The banks that sold them were fking smart as hell.

 

[TruthNotBS]

And what role did the government play in it all ? Was it sort of like the role it played with manipulating social media platforms to sway an election or policies in the government's favor ?

The government did have a role in the 2008 financial crisis, but it’s important to understand that it was a combination of government actions and private sector greed that led to the meltdown. The government, through policies like the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and other initiatives, did encourage homeownership, which led to an increase in subprime lending. However, it’s a gross oversimplification to blame the government alone.

A key aspect was the deregulation that occurred in the years leading up to the crisis. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 allowed commercial banks to engage in risky investment banking activities. This deregulation enabled the creation of complex financial products like mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which were instrumental in spreading risk across the financial system.

Additionally, government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did play a role by purchasing subprime mortgages, but they were not the only entities involved. Private lenders and Wall Street firms aggressively pushed subprime loans and created the financial instruments that ultimately destabilized the economy. The ratings agencies, which were supposed to provide objective assessments of risk, also failed by giving high ratings to toxic assets, further exacerbating the problem.

So, while the government’s actions were certainly a factor, the crisis was largely driven by a combination of deregulation, private sector greed, and a lack of proper oversight. It wasn’t a simple case of government manipulation; it was a systemic failure involving multiple actors across both the public and private sectors.

 

[TruthNotBS]

dude, repeating the same nonsense over and over again, doesn't change my post. I think Todd would be on board with that as well. You think you're going to get a different response, or are you geniunely this stupid?

Bad loans were the problem, corrected that for you.

You are fundamentally willfully ignorant of what is root cause.

The bad loans were indeed the trigger, and why it's a root cause. Hilarious

yep, so if they didn't exist, nothing would have perpetuated down the line as explained to you already.

well there wouldn't have been those packages without the bad loans. Totally meaningful.

they were bad loans with no way of securing funding from the folks who couldn't pay them. That is the root cause. Galss Steagall had nothing to do with that.

they wouldn't have if they didn't exist, right?

foreclosure with owners who had no money to pay them off.

What's hilarious is you

bad loans created the crisis, right?

it was? so the poor folks who received the loans weren't the issue by not paying on them by the banks forced to give out the bad loans? The banks that sold them were fking smart as hell.

JC456, your insistence that bad loans were the sole root cause of the 2008 financial crisis shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how complex financial systems work. Yes, bad loans were a significant issue, but they were only part of the problem. The real disaster occurred because these bad loans were bundled into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), misrepresented as safe investments, and sold throughout the global financial system. This spread the risk far beyond the original bad loans, creating a systemic collapse when the housing market finally tanked. If those bad loans had remained on the balance sheets of individual banks, the crisis would have been far more contained. It was the reckless financial engineering, enabled by deregulation, that turned a housing bubble into a global financial meltdown.

Simply blaming the borrowers or the existence of bad loans ignores the larger issue of how the financial industry, driven by greed and enabled by deregulation like the repeal of Glass-Steagall, amplified the risk and spread it across the entire economy. This wasn’t just about people not paying their mortgages; it was about how those risky loans were manipulated and sold as secure investments, leading to a collapse that devastated millions of lives. Ignoring this complexity oversimplifies the crisis and misses the real lessons we should learn to prevent it from happening again.

 

[jc456]

The government did have a role in the 2008 financial crisis, but it’s important to understand that it was a combination of government actions and private sector greed that led to the meltdown.

What private sector greed was that? banks forced to give bad loans to people too broke to pay on them? Where's the greed in that?

 

[TruthNotBS]

What private sector greed was that? banks forced to give bad loans to people too broke to pay on them? Where's the greed in that?

JC, it’s disingenuous to claim that banks were "forced" to give bad loans and that there was no greed involved. The reality is that while some government policies did encourage increased homeownership, the private sector took those incentives and ran wild with them, driven by pure profit motive. Banks and financial institutions weren’t just passive victims, they aggressively pushed subprime loans onto people who clearly couldn’t afford them because these loans were highly profitable in the short term. They didn't stop at making bad loans; they went a step further by bundling these risky loans into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), slapping on misleadingly high credit ratings, and selling them off as safe investments. This allowed them to offload the risk onto others while reaping massive profits.

The greed comes into play when you look at how these financial institutions exploited the system. They knew these loans were risky, but because they could quickly sell them off, they didn’t care about the long-term consequences. The focus was on short-term gains and bonuses, not on the stability of the financial system or the well-being of the borrowers. That’s where the greed lies, not in the act of lending, but in the reckless and predatory behavior that prioritized profits over people, ultimately leading to the financial collapse.

 

[jc456]

JC456, your insistence that bad loans were the sole root cause of the 2008 financial crisis shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how complex financial systems work. Yes, bad loans were a significant issue,

would the crisis have happened had the bad loans not existed? BTW, you're more stupid than I gave you credit for.

Simply blaming the borrowers

I don't blame the borrowers, they took what obammy gave them. Free shit. Never blame the source is your bag.

or the existence of bad loans ignores the larger issue of how the financial industry,

would it have happened without the bad loans?

 

[TruthNotBS]

would the crisis have happened had the bad loans not existed? BTW, you're more stupid than I gave you credit for.


I don't blame the borrowers, they took what obammy gave them. Free shit. Never blame the source is your bag.

would it have happened without the bad loans?

JC, your attempt to simplify the 2008 financial crisis down to just "bad loans" is a classic example of ignoring the forest for the trees. Sure, if bad loans hadn’t existed, the specific circumstances of the crisis might have been different, but that's like saying if the first domino hadn’t fallen, the others wouldn’t have toppled, it misses the point entirely. The crisis wasn’t caused solely by bad loans; it was the result of a financial system that incentivized risky behavior, allowing those bad loans to be bundled, sold, and leveraged in ways that spread the risk across the entire global economy. This was driven by financial institutions seeking to maximize profits with little regard for the long-term consequences.

And let’s be clear, no one was handing out "free shit" as you crudely put it. The real issue was predatory lending practices that targeted vulnerable populations, combined with financial institutions that manipulated these loans for their own gain. The borrowers were often misled about the terms of their loans, while the banks and investors raked in profits. So yes, bad loans were part of the problem, but without the greed-fueled mechanisms that turned those loans into financial weapons, we wouldn’t have seen the catastrophic collapse that ensued. Trying to boil it down to just bad loans is not only simplistic, but it’s also an intentional dodge of the real systemic issues at play.

 

[jc456]

JC, your attempt to simplify the 2008 financial crisis down to just "bad loans" is a classic example of ignoring the forest for the trees. Sure, if bad loans hadn’t existed, the specific circumstances of the crisis might have been different,

drop mic. Conclusion, bad loans caused a string of loan sell offs that eventually caused a crisis. Without the bad loans, crisis avoided right? You have no other element that contributed. It started with the bad loan and ended with the selling off said bad loans over and over and over again. Glad we could put that to an end.

but that's like saying if the first domino hadn’t fallen,

Well if the first domino doesn't fall, then no others do. That's why they push the first domino. Wow, still giving you too much credit about how stupid you are.

the others wouldn’t have toppled, it misses the point entirely.

What other point is there?

The crisis wasn’t caused solely by bad loans;

no one said things didn't happen after the bad loans, but the bad loans created the scenario and without it, nothing else happens. It's really that simple.

it was the result of a financial system that incentivized risky behavior,

No, the government enforcement of banks to give out bad loans to people who couldn't afford them created the scenario, without that, no scenario.

allowing those bad loans to be bundled, sold,

Smart by the banks that got rid of them

and leveraged in ways that spread the risk across the entire global economy.

that's why we should never allow bad loaning practices ever again. right?

This was driven by financial institutions seeking to maximize profits with little regard for the long-term consequences.

correction, driven by government employees like obammy to force banks to give bad loans to people who couldn't afford them.

And let’s be clear, no one was handing out "free shit"

when you give money to someone who has no intentions of paying it back, is a give away. free shit! A house free of charge.

The real issue was predatory lending practices that targeted vulnerable populations,

correction, it was government forced bad loans to those vulnerable populations who could never pay back the loans. good catch.

combined with financial institutions that manipulated these loans for their own gain.

Why did they get rid of the loans? they didn't want to eat the losses. That seems practical. All started by the bad loans.

The borrowers were often misled about the terms of their loans,

The fact they had to pay them back was misleading? are you sure?

while the banks and investors raked in profits.

what profits? So, a bank gives money out and isn't expected to get a return on their money? Your bank doesn't have any interest rate on your mortgage?

So yes, bad loans were part of the problem,

Again, correction, bad loans was the problem. you already accepted that. without them, nothing would have happened. You said it.

but without the greed-fueled mechanisms

Banks not wanting to eat bad debt? hmmmmmmm sounds like they knew better but had no choice.