Posted on 09/30/2008 12:40:10 PM PDT by agooga
google the author and date.
No, it’s not just you. I don’t know rather to laugh/cry or throw a brick at the TV when I hear him talk about “the Wepublicans causing the mortgage mess because of dewegulation”.
The main culprits are poor risk management and corporate governance at the large financial firms. That's the obvious conclusion no matter how you spin it.
Which is why I don't think it's correct to pin this on the GSE's and the CRA. What were the risk managers at these other lenders thinking? Or were they asleep?
What were the boards doing? How come not a single director at Lehman, WaMu, Wachovia, or Bear raised any questions about their subprime exposure?
No one held a gun to their head and forced them to copy what the GSE's were diong. If they hadn't copied them, there would be no crisis.
If they had decent corporate governance systems in place, they wouldn't have.
Which is why I maintain that it is bad corporate governance, NOT the GSE's or the CRA, that caused the mess.
Businessweek is Newsweek in financial drag.
The Congress has the responsibility to put appropriate regulations on the corporations so they would have corporate governance systems in place. The Black Caucus along with Barney Frank blocked the request for regulations starting as early as 2003 for Freddie and Fanny. That is on the record and irrefutable.
IMHO, that's the prime culprit in this mess.
The financial markets are gagging on something (or so they tell us). The more time we have to observe and analyze, the better our prospects for understanding and communicating the real cause of the mess and formulating a solution.
Miron says there is no need for a bailout, that Wall Street's current 'credit freeze' is based upon the HOPE of a bailout, and Miron says: GET RID OF FANNIE/FREDDIE and the CRA.
Link to what a real economist thinks here:
http://schulzkelaw.com/jeffrey-miron-no-bailout-abolish-fannie-mae-cra/
He previously spent 12 years covering finance and technology for a variety of publications in Washington, D.C., and New York. He created an Internet and politics beat at Reuters in 1997 and was a freelance contributor to Wired. Pressman graduated in 1988 from Columbia University, where he was news director of the radio station, with a bachelor's degree in history.
bookmark
Without it, one could say that the loosening would not have happened. The CRA did have broad support for it's intentions which were good, but like any government program, it can work both ways, and it did.
bump
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