2007-08-25 18:15:52.281529+00 by andylyke 5 comments
W announced last week that the compassionately conservative administration wouldn't aid the victims of the sub prime shell game, and yesterday the second shoe fell, when the fed allowed banks to dip deep into their insured reserves to bale out their mortgage affiliates.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/08/2...ex.htm?section=money_mostpopular
Blame the victims, bail out the bullys??
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comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: made: 2007-08-25 22:35:15.618802+00 by: Dan Lyke [edit history]
I'm unwilling to view anyone who thought they could get a $500k mortgage for $700/month as a victim, but I think my favorite misquotation comes from David Chess's recent note:
"We will use all of the tools at our disposal to delay, however briefly, the inevitable collapse of the U.S. economy." -- Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke
(Edit: Note, that's not really what Bernanke said, that's quoting David Chess's faux Bernanke quote)
#Comment Re: made: 2007-08-26 00:12:00.133617+00 by: meuon
"inevitable collapse" - good quote. Sadly true. How long until, and what will take it's place?
#Comment Re: made: 2007-08-26 06:34:03.169126+00 by: dexev
Dan, the original quote is even funnier than the misquotation, IMHO:
Bernanke Using `All Tools' to Calm Markets, Dodd Says
Whereby Sen. Dodd does not seem to realize that he is, in fact, a tool
#Comment Re: made: 2007-08-26 21:02:50.007858+00 by: ebradway
Dan: Can you site an actual source for that quote? Or, if not, format it to clarify which words were Bernanke's and which are yours? I know you're not an academic and your tenure's not at stake...
As far as victimization goes, the absence of rational decision making is usually a good sign that forces are at play that defy quantification. When I moved to Boulder, my wife and I shuttled around for a day with a real estate agent. She was pushing us on the idea of buying the biggest house possible, preferably one with a mother-in-law apt, so that we could live in the mother-in-law apt and rent out the rest. My thought was, sure we can normally rent the place for $2K/mo but what happens when we can't find a tenant for a couple months and we have a $3K mortgage payment?!? We were also smart enough to check out rentals ourselves and found out that we can rent a place for about 1/2 the going mortgage payment.
My personal beef with bailing out the "victims" is that the net effect would be the Fed validating the inflated prices of the houses. That would be disastrous to the general economy. Floating some loans isn't going to make it tank.
#Comment Re: made: 2007-08-26 23:42:31.498611+00 by: Dan Lyke
Eric, it's David Chess reinterpreting Bernanke and then attributing that to Bernanke, not an actual Bernanke quote. Edited to make that clear. And, yes, it took me reading the article that David Chess linked to (and that I linked to in the quote) to make sure of that, even though I knew the chairman of the Fed couldn't really say something like that.