Posted on 11/23/2008 3:32:59 PM PST by BuckeyeTexan
WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledges he was wrong in believing that there would be limited fallout to financial markets from risky mortgages that soured after the housing market's collapse.
"I and others were mistaken early on in saying that the subprime crisis would be contained," Bernanke said in an article in the Dec. 1 issue of The New Yorker magazine.
"The causal relationship between the housing problem and the broad financial system was very complex and difficult to predict," he said in the piece titled "Anatomy of a Meltdown."
Subprime mortgages made to people with tarnished credit or low incomes were especially hard hit once the housing boom went bust. Foreclosures spiked and financial companies wracked up huge losses as these investments turned bad.
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(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Cramer has no idea either. Has he gone to rehab for his speed habit yet? Only explanation for his delusory advice.
Conservatives said "Buy American." The UAW took conservatives' money and used it to buy the presidency. No, thanks. Buy American-made Hondas and Toyotas.
Two people who were totally right about this whole thing for the past two years have been the most ridiculed people on FR: Ron Paul and Glenn Beck. Flame me too, it won’t change anything. We’ll have to cough up some XXX billion more dollars for my grandchildren and their children to pay off with hard labor. It won’t end until the entire financial/corporate market is under government control. And Lord knows how efficient and economical the feds are.
Yes, if he had any shame, but I actually want him to stay and suffer and face the cameras, knowing that none of us believe anything he says.
Paulson was the other parrot, repeating over and over that the crisis was contained, even though the market was clearly indicating otherwise at the time.
OK, your profile page is just really really funny!
I've heard a lot about this kind of thing going on -- anecdotal, but still too many times for it to be irrelevant. I suspect too many of the banks/mortgage lenders just threw caution to the wind -- I mean more than they had to, even looking down the barrel of the gun of the Clinton Justice Dept. Being a natural cynic (hey, I'm from MA!), I further think there was probably a lot of fraud and collusion between the mortgage companies and favored speculators taking gross advantage of the relaxed credit standards.
Is this the Cramer who said buy Bear Stearns. LOL -- he obviously had no idea either.
Idiot could have just read Willie Green’s posts, before he was banned.
I have a question. We’re told when the foreclosures started the value of these securities went down. Haven’ there always been foreclosures? Why was it so bad this time? Is it because the value of the property plummeted as well when during “regular” foreclosures the property value stays the same or appreciated. Am I correct?
“An ex is a has-been. And a spurt is a drip under pressure”
When Bernanke used the Great Depression as a measuring stick to determine his impressions on where the market was heading nowadays, he failed to calculate a most crucial factor.
Back then, people were, for the most part, honorable.
Today, they are not.
I think so too.
Don’t hang Bernanke alone. Barney Frank has been quoted as saying he wants to “roll the dice” and allow these mortgages to go on, despite the warnings the GOP was giving in Congress at the time (2003?).
Bernanke, you’re doin’ a heck of a job.
It is almost as if the Man upstairs is giving us one last warning about running a corrupt government.
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