Sure it was avoidable if frand and dodd hadn’t forced the banks to lend to deadbeats.
If the dimrat party hadn’t blocked all of GW Bush’s attempts to reign in Freddie and Fannie.
If the media didn’t jump on the bandwagon of the “redlining” story.
If most of the banks chosen not to participate in this ponzi scheme.
Lots of ifs, but it all lies with the democrat party. They figured a way for force the banks to lend creating the illusion of prosperity while at the same time grabbing more control over the banks operations.
End result was that they won the election in ‘08 and have nationalized the banking and mortgage industry.
Re post 10:
What you said.
Pointing the finger at one link in the chain is like the story of the blind men patting the elephant and saying what it looked like on the basis of their local touch.
If one thing had been different, a lot would have been different. The banks were forced to look for outlets for the bum paper that resulted from their forced lending. The mortgage processors like Countrywide sprang up to take advantage; the securitization market and the GSEs helped move the risk along. If any link in the chain had been broken—say some regulator had balked at the underwriting standards... then sales would have fallen off, because the dodgy loans couldn’t be made; the securities would have been better; the housing prices and overbuilding wouldn’t have taken place.
But, the driving force was the government-led push to raise home ownership above it’s natural level, confusing people who own (have built equity) with those who merely rent from the bank (or whoever holds the note), and calling both “owners.”