As the federal government scurries to prevent the subprime mortgage crisis from sending the economy into a deep recession, many of us are asking why it waited so long to intervene. As it turns out, the government wasn't exactly sitting on its hands. Instead, for reasons that now appear hopelessly shortsighted, an obscure federal agency torpedoed legislation from a handful of states that would have made institutional investors far charier of buying mortgage loans that were likely to go belly-up. If the legislation had been permitted to go into effect, the crisis we now face would probably look a lot less grim. The right question, then, is not why the feds did so little. It's why they did so much.This is the sort of realization that's going to close down the Republican Party altogether.
Arkadyevitchizing America since 2006
By the time you panic, it is way too late -- Lee Raymond, New York Times, July 6, 2008
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies a theft from those who are hungry and not fed; from those who are cold and not clothed. This world-in-arms is not spending money alone; it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. Dwight D Eisenhower, 11/16/53
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
The states tried to avert the housing bubble disaster
Via unsettling economics:
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