Who Wants to Argue With This?

[CitadelGrad]

Well, Mortgage Backed Securities had been around for 50 years before the financial crisis.

I don't think there is anything necessarily wrong with them.

The problem is when they started getting into SUBPRIME mortgages.

If the purpose of securitizing sub-prime mortgages is introduce greater risk into the markets through derivatives (and use them as weapons against your own clients, like Goldman-Sachs did), then yeah, there is a problem.

[Ibanez]

Well, Mortgage Backed Securities had been around for 50 years before the financial crisis.

I don't think there is anything necessarily wrong with them.

The problem is when they started getting into SUBPRIME mortgages.

When I worked in the mortgage biz back in 2006/2007, you needed only a pulse to get a mortgage. People were so happy to have a 30yr mortgage at 6%.

[JohnStOnge]

The big picture in this country is that capitalists are smothered by regulation they'd in large part rather not be subject to and the political party they'd rather not have in power has had the advantage for most of the past century. Sure, they have influence. But they are OBVIOUSLY not in control. There's no "capitalist oligarchy."

The only oligarchy we have is the Federal Judiciary. But that's another thread topic.

So my argument against what that very intelligent man said is that his predictions simply have not come true. Even if someone points to times in history where there were abuses those abuses provoked political backlashes. The idea that The People have been separated from influence on their government by capitalists just hasn't proven out.

So did you type that part with a straight face?

Yes. When you say "oligarchy" you're referring to a small group of people in total control. It is VERY clear that "capitalists" are not in total control of this country. If they were Obama would not be President. There would be no Democrats in Congress. There wouldn't be an EPA doing things like smacking down the coal industry. There wouldn't be an OSHA. There wouldn't be a FDA. So on and so forth. There wouldn't be all the regulation of industry that there is.

That there is no "capitalist oligarchy" is pretty much self evident. How someone can look at the nature of the government we have in place right now with all the regulation and demonization of business that goes on and say, "we have a capitalist oligarchy" is totally beyond me. Yes, you can find examples of people who got away with things and got what appear to be favors. But when you look at the big, overall picture there's just no way.