Union thugs go down in MI

[Brainfade]

A Wall Street article defending Wall Street, and holding everyone else responsible lol. Sorry CA I will pass. This is where this becomes a partisan issue. If you truly beleive that those are the points that caused the market to collapse and NOT the investment banking, we are too far apart to even begin a conversation :nice:

Do you absolve the govt-enablers (starting from Clinton or even Carter and going through Bush) of any responsiblity? I think the govt gave the bankers the keys, they (along with Fannie and Freddie) went on a rampage, and the govt looked the other way. They're all in it together. I have posted on this board a link to a PBS frontline video that describes exactly how it all went down. Check it out during the holidays!

[The Outsider]

lol. You included the entire United States in there, didnt you?

Well, such a big mess certainly cannot be the responsibility of one party. And by people, I don't mean the ones who borrowed with responsibility. There is this perception that Wall Street creating all these complex instruments and derivatives is the root cause of all this. It's not so simple - these derivatives and complex instruments allow people to hedge risks, loan more effectively, quantify the different kinds of risks involved everyday and the presence of these instruments is the reason behind a lot of good things in the economy where the common man benefits. However, like every good thing it is prone to being used for greed. This is where the regulatory bodies and politicians should have been and still should be responsible to ensure that the safeguards in place do not allow the exploitation of these instruments. Rising home prices were a cash cow for the banks - they had no incentive to regulate themselves, though some of the good ones did like Goldman. Wall Street loved marginalizing the regulators and playing around the regulations whereas no one in the regulatory bodies or in Washington sought to get involved in the process, hire people who understood these derivatives and their risks and streamline their trading. On the other hand, you had people borrowing irresponsibly by putting down $10,000 on a $400,000 home when they had monthly take home salaries of $4,000. How is that sustainable? Yeah the banks should not have made such loans, but the borrowers can't run away from the responsibility either, they should not have taken out such loans. I know I would never do so. I don't agree with all the bailouts though and the subsequent acquisitions and buy outs have only made more "too big to fail" entities. Nor do the regulators even now spend enough money and time hiring people who understand the complex financial world even now. The best such minds still work for banks rather than the Federal agencies in general. It's improved, but even now a lot of the risk regulations that banks have to comply with are completely naive and ad hoc.

What are your thoughts on regulations like SOX?

I don't understand these regulations in any great detail, but my view is that SOX or Dodd-Frank or any such regulations do not understand the complex web of financial instruments. They are mostly superficial and ad hoc in nature. The numbers that banks have to adhere to seldom have a strong fundamental basis. They come across as things created by politicians and lawyers rather than economists and mathematicians. I don't know if that's by accident or by design to keep things fuzzy enough for a lot of subjectivity and loopholes, but that's the impression I get.