I take a break and go to see a movie and this thread runs off and hides without me. Good discussion.

Rharv the "solution" everybody is making a big deal of is simple time. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the system that time won't fix as long as government stays the **** out of it. Many, many real estate pros and economists have been saying for several years now just let the properties go, put them on the market and that's it. The market can't heal itself until this happens but no, it's one lame "bailout" after another, the latest one is the refi thing. Shaving a few points off your rate isn't going to help the fact that your house is 50, 100, even 200 grand underwater depending on what part of the country you're in. Take the poison pill and move on. Trying to manage a free market just prolongs the agony for everyone.

Bonuses and contracts. Look, I know it looks bad to a lot of folks but just because a high level exec doesn't have the glamour of a sports star doesn't make the underlying principle any different. The guy who went to work for Goldman Sachs was recruited away from some other big institution just like LeBron James was. No difference at all. The guy was already making 10-20 mil and accepted another offer, simple as that. When the crap hit the fan, he still has his contract and still legally deserves to get paid. That's it. Your point about illegal activities is of course perfectly valid. If that same exec did illegal stuff then yes he should be prosecuted and some of them are right now but if the guy works for a division of the bank that has nothing whatever to do with all this, shouldn't his contract be honored and what does that say about our legal system if Congress passed some special laws that voids his contract? One further point on prosecutions and it's just my opinion. The administration is treading very carefully about prosecutions because what's these bank execs defense going to be? All the crap they were forced to swallow by politicians of a certain party and it would all come out at a highly publicized trial. That's my point about the protesters being in the wrong place.

Wall Street prosecutions are happening now, just look at that big insider trading case a few weeks ago. I agree some of those mortgages were packaged up and illegally sold as grade A paper when they clearly were not but that's an entirely different point from the banks being forced to do those mortgages in the first place.

Political pressure is the cause of all this hence my point about simply keeping government out of the markeplace and this will work itself out. That's the solution and the lesson for the future but these protesters are brain dead, they don't have any clue about all this. Using the tax code and legislation for social engineering never works.

There are about 250,000 jobs going begging right now because there's nobody with the technical education and skills for them and those companies are asking for more of those special work visas to bring in skilled immigrants to fill them. A lot of our unemployment rate is because of yes, government student loans for courses that have no chance of providing a student with a decent job. Liberal arts, psyche, and all of those "underwater basket weaving" type courses won't cut it in the job market. Millions of completely unskilled illegals are clogging up the system as well but that's a whole other discussion.

Government intervention is the problem across the board here, congress's footprints are all over this crisis and yes both parties are involved but its still skewed maybe 70-80% to one side.

Bob

Last edited by jazzmammal; 11/07/11 08:38 AM.
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