Quote:
Originally Posted by chasedude
One word makes our entire country run, GREED
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It wasn't greed, it was stupidity. This entire economy is built around trying to make more money for yourself.
Stupidity in the lending industry led to a paper loss which sent people into a panic.
The media has made things infintely worse by telling people that everything sucks. Think about it: Everyone said we had to pass that stupid bailout or the banks would collapse. 700 billion in debt is rammed down our throat, none of it is doled out (Paulson's sitting on it) and yet the banks are still here.
How could that be?
Answer: the stupid stimulous wasn't needed...ever. The banks weren't crashing, the debt service wasn't going to make us sell off Alaska. Things were pretty good outside of a few bad banks and a handful of really cruddy regions where land prices were way too high and an adjustment was necessary. But once that sucker went through, the folks that control most of the country's money realized we'd just made a large mistake and pulled out of the market.
The economy wasn't actually as bad as it was made out to be. When the media tells everyone that the place is going down in flames, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nobody hires, nobody spends, the multipliers don't work and we stall out.
[begin politics] Had the media not been so hell-bent on painting everything as dire and horrid to get Obama in office, we'd be out of this thing by now. The big 3 meltdown (again arguable) and every other true major drop has been a reaction to a non-existent panic. The only actual problem was the real estate market when sub-prime fell. What nobody mentions is that most of the losses were centered among land speculators/developers. A bunch of idiot land speculators taking a bath on real estate does not fuel an economic crisis, jackass manipulators in the media do. [/end politics]
Bottom line: The media and a stupid federal government (both sides of the aisle) screwed us on this one. They created a recession from an isolated market correction.