Subprime straight talk
Redistributing wealth from the responsible to the irresponsible. How's that for the social policy process at its very finest?
If I see another sob story on the evening news about some teary-eyed mollusk brain losing a home he could not afford, who compounded his debt by borrowing and then spending every penny of equity out of it, and who then got caught when he wasn't able to flip it in time, I may lose my supper.
In the immortal words of the Fugs, Who dealt this mess, anyway? It all stinks, from beginning to end. It's flagrantly obvious that clueless buyers and greedy lenders is a toxic combination, yet regulators somehow managed to doze through the entire build-up. Now they're running around trying to get the bail-out train cranked up, not because the nit-wits and quick-bucksters deserve it, but just because there are so damned many of them. They're all victims, you see, of each other, forming a daisy chain wrapped around the neck of responsible borrowers, lenders, and, of course, the taxpayers.
What we learn here is that mindless, grasping stupidity in large enough numbers becomes a kind of cunning. There's some irony I can do without.
It does not take a rocket surgeon to recognize that to now reward borrowers and lenders for this kind of behavior will guarantee even larger numbers next time. But, hey, since everybody involved here seems to operate on the time horizon of a four-year-old, what could be less relevant than that?
In "Going Under in a Lexus," Advice Goddess has her say and, boy, so do her commenters.
Byron
If I see another sob story on the evening news about some teary-eyed mollusk brain losing a home he could not afford, who compounded his debt by borrowing and then spending every penny of equity out of it, and who then got caught when he wasn't able to flip it in time, I may lose my supper.
In the immortal words of the Fugs, Who dealt this mess, anyway? It all stinks, from beginning to end. It's flagrantly obvious that clueless buyers and greedy lenders is a toxic combination, yet regulators somehow managed to doze through the entire build-up. Now they're running around trying to get the bail-out train cranked up, not because the nit-wits and quick-bucksters deserve it, but just because there are so damned many of them. They're all victims, you see, of each other, forming a daisy chain wrapped around the neck of responsible borrowers, lenders, and, of course, the taxpayers.
What we learn here is that mindless, grasping stupidity in large enough numbers becomes a kind of cunning. There's some irony I can do without.
It does not take a rocket surgeon to recognize that to now reward borrowers and lenders for this kind of behavior will guarantee even larger numbers next time. But, hey, since everybody involved here seems to operate on the time horizon of a four-year-old, what could be less relevant than that?
In "Going Under in a Lexus," Advice Goddess has her say and, boy, so do her commenters.
Byron
posted by Byron | Tuesday, December 04, 2007
2 Comments:
". . . yet regulators somehow managed to doze through the entire build-up." If we didn't learn the lesson during the S&L "crisis" or LTCM or the Asian meltdown, let's learn it now: government does two things really well - nothing and overreact. That according to a Great American.
It may give you a bit of comfort to know that these borrowers who thought they were cutting a fat hog in the butt now owe the IRS taxes on the money they borrowed. That "free money" over the years counts as income. Idiots don't even get to claim it as capital gains. Now, if we can get the feds to stick to maintaining roads and shooting folds who wear diapers on their heads.
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