12/01/2008
Greed and irresponsibility
'Too few bankers challenged the wisdom of lending poor people more money than they could afford to buy houses that were over-priced. As for those who did best out of capitalism, too often they flaunted extravagant lifestyles. No wonder the public has turned on them with a vengeance now that capitalism has gone off the rails.'
The above was quoted from The Telegraph and posted at TOC. It succintly tells the same story around the capitalist world of greed and profit at all cost, without morals and responsibility. Bankers just want to lend as much as they could for profit. Developers just build and build to sell at ever higher prices. And everyone singing, oh so clever. Profit is good. No one, including the bankers, bother to ask whether it is value for money. Sell the properties as high a price as one can get. To be able to get suckers to buy is a great talent. The suckers can die later, doesn't matter.
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4 comments:
Banks have so much money generated through leverage lending, they have to find avenues to generate more lending to make as much money as they can.
So much has been written about the sub-prime mortgage issue, people forget that the credit card business in the US is also saddled with rollover debts of almost a trillion US$, just as big an amount as the sub-prime mortgages. And it is going to surface when jobs are lost and there are massive defaults.
The article is utter nonsense.
Look up the CRA -- community re investment act. The CRA essentially forced banks to lend to less-creditworthy borrowers, at the risk of court/punative action.
Capitalists seek to make profits -- as much as they can. They do it and have been doing it for eons. That is why we have such a fantastic modern world.
Blaming capitalists for "greed" is akin to blaming Dracula for his "blood addiction" -- a waste of time, a totally fucking idiotic enterprise, and a blatant admission of the lack of knowledge on private enterprise and its importance to everyday survival.
Even something as baic as brushing your teeth in the morning requires billions in investment and millions of man-hours to make something as basic and mundane as that to happen. We simply take it for granted. Another "boring" example: flick the switch, a light comes on. Again, no one even gives the matter a second thought, but there is a huge multi-billion dollar capital structure enabling that activity to take place, along with the huge human capital to keep the activity happening.
"Greedy" capitalists make things happen, while most of the chattering classes moan and groan about a standard of living our grand parents couldn't even imagine.
you are right man! now we have the biggest financial crisis of all time. capitalism on its own can be good. in the hands of small greedy capitalists, not too bad.
in the hands of big greedy capitalists, big things happened, like now.
I cheer everytime capitalists lose their money from making "bad choices" in the market — we can all learn from the mistakes of others.
However these capitalists are manipulated by govt. And they are also protected from failure by govt. On top of that, as a reward for their "bad choices" the govts of the world throw big loads of money at them... so much so that many of these buggers actually made money for themselves by screwing up BIG TIME with other peoples' money.
You'll find, at the root of nearly every EVIL in human existence is THE GOVERNMENT.
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