Hope I don’t sound like a whiner when I trash morally bankrupt and self-serving politicians who refuse to acknowledge the effects of their “lawmaking.”

So, Phil, take your pick: was it your stupidity or venality that inspired your monumental bill? Or will you admit to a total lack of inspiration and put it on the doorstep of the financial lobbyists who helped you write the bill?

Your choice dude.

Your facts are wrong and you are assigning blame to others for problems an individual is perfectly capable of dealing with, which is pretty much the definition of a whiner.

JBP

Phil Gramm has done nsome good in exposing the danger of a uncontrolled big spending government. However, he has done much more evil by creating the conditions that have led to a total breakdown of the commercial banking system.

Thomas F. Roeser does a disservice to his readers by ignoring these negative and corrupt aspects of Gramm’s policies. What a clown!

No, my facts are not wrong, just too briefly stated.

In no way do I support the deadbeats who apply for credit knowing full well they can’t meet the terms. Additionally, I don’t support those who don’t first do the research before amassing huge debt.

Nor do I place all the blame on the low grade credit hustlers who gave loans to deadbeats.

I do assign blame to politicians like Gramm who create an environment where these two groups thrive off of each other. Additionally, there are the investors (supposedly responsible financial “experts”) who bought up all the bad securities thinking they could make a quick buck. At the top of the financial food chain are the CEOs and CFOs who turned a blind eye to everything going on below, presumably in interest of keeping their shareholders happy.

My point is that deregulation tends to allow all the crap that would normally reside at the bottom to the cesspool to rise to the top and drive the environment.

If P. Gramm failed to see that when he attached his act to a major spending bill, then exactly what does tha make him?

More people own their own homes today than ever before in the history of the United States. This is due (within a context of economic prosperity) to a general relaxation of regulation in the banking industry, thanks to Sen. Phil Gramm.

Free people make bad choices as well as good choices. Some of them chose to buy homes they could not pay for, and in many cases second homes they could not pay for. The point is, they made those choices themselves.

The professional whiners of the media and politics will always want to blame someone else (greedy executives etc) for poor decisions.

When its time to grow up and accept some responsibility, rather than blame, perhaps we can accept that the individual knows quite a bit more than the politician does about his own economic preferences.

–as an aside Investment Bankers and the very rich (Joe Lewis, Jimmy Cayne etc) lost 95%+ of their net worth on housing investments…did anyone who walked away from a negative value mortgage even lose a dime?

JBP

That’s exactly my point. P. Gramm, a “professional whiner”, seems to pointing fingers at the American public for imagining hard times. Yet he’s mum on the effects of his deregulation bill.

You say that more people own homes today than any other point in history and that this is the result of deregulation. This is true. But does this factoid justify the near destruction of the banking and financial system? Probably not. I’d rather see slow steady growth with a lot of renters than a volatile economy that falls as quickly as it rises.

By the way, Jimmy Cayne walked away from Bear Stearns with 61 million dollars — quite a pay day for someone who tanked a company. And who knows what other assets he has stashed elsewhere. Also, I doubt you’ll see Joe Lewis living out of his car or standing in line at the soup kitchen any time soon.

Realistically, what kind of risk do types like Cayne and Lewis face? Is having to opt for gold plated bathroom fixtures on their yachts rather than platinum really a risk? Or how about having to downsize their collectible car collection from 25 Rolls Royces to 10?

Choices, choices. Life is so hard.

So go ask the average Joe if it’s fair that he gets laid off with no compensation while some CEO collects millions in severance for driving a company into the ground.

Calling for responsible behavior is not whining. Blaming others (Cayne, Lewis etc) is whining. The average individual can take all the risks he likes, but only folks like Cayne and Lewis get scorn when things go wrong.

JBP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:TX06_109.gif#filelinks

One thing I learned in the navy is that ultimate responsibility for a ship lies with one individual — the captain. How can anyone give kudos to Cayne and Lewis during the good times, but when their decision making falls flat, place the blame elsewhere?

I admire the average individual who goes out there to hustle an honest buck. If he/she fails, I have no scorn.

To believe that Cayne and Lewis were clueless about the hundreds of millions they were raking is amazingly naive. Am I supposed to believe they had no concept of “subprime”?

You remember that old game called “Time Bomb”? The one where you passed a “bomb” around til it blew up in someone’s hands? Well, that sums up the subprime mess. A bunch of investors passed the sub-prime backed securities around. Their only hope was that they weren’t going to be the one they blew up on. Unfortunately, it all got out of hand to the point that everyone was holding the time bomb.

Nice judgement on their part.