If you read that and still think there is some fat cat somewhere who deserves to be strung up, then it’s a lot less clear than I thought it was.
The root problem is, that this setup was doomed from the beginning. The federal government had an implied relationship with Fannie and Freddie, that if they failed they would be covered. By the taxpayer. As usual, its a hell of a lot funner to gamble with someone else’s money. This has been coming for a long time.
There are a few fat cats laughing all the way to the banks...the ones that are still open.
Oh no. It is clear enough. It is just wrong.
When a bunch of guys and galz make collectively $100B's in bonuses over two decades pushing toxic paper into various portfolios and it turns out that the underlying debt cannot be repaid, I don't need to follow the pea under the derivatives shell to figure out who the crooks are. It is the oldest question in under the sun.
Cui bono?
Those are the fat cats that need to be strung up.
My only question is, why are you trying to defend them and what is the basis for the defense? I will take the former as self-evident, but you can defend yourself if you want. As to the latter, that they didn't know what they were doing when the stuck the public with the fallout is laughable. Michael Milken -remember him because he started it all - wrote papers at Wharton describing exactly how to do it, and that is what he did. He went to jail for other things, but not the chief fraud he perpetrated - making the FED bail the banks out for excessive debt expansion. So don't try this innocent they didn't know what they were doing nonsense.