A federal inquiry has blamed Greenspan and Bernanke for failing to regulate dangerous financial products that caused a housing bubble and widespread financial meltdown.
Irvine Home Address … 9 SPRING BUCK Irvine, CA 92614
Resale Home Price …… $549,000
Everybody plays the fool sometime
There's no exception to the rule
Listen, baby, it may be factual, may be cruel
I ain't lyin', everybody plays the fool
The Main Ingredient — Everybody Plays the Fool
Nobody is perfect. Everybody plays the fool sometimes. We hope we put people in positions of power who know what they are doing. Sometimes, these people fail, and when they do millions suffer for their arrogance and their ignorance. The sad conclusion of the government commission on the financial crisis concluded the entire ordeal was avoidable. If a few key people in power had made different decisions, we could have averted a housing bubble and the near meltdown of our financial system.
Financial Crisis Was Avoidable, Inquiry Finds
By SEWELL CHAN
Published: January 25, 2011
WASHINGTON — The 2008 financial crisis was an “avoidable” disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a federal inquiry.
The commission that investigated the crisis casts a wide net of blame, faulting two administrations, the Federal Reserve and other regulators for permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors and risky bets on securities backed by the loans.
“The greatest tragedy would be to accept the refrain that no one could have seen this coming and thus nothing could have been done,” the panel wrote in the report’s conclusions, which were read by The New York Times. “If we accept this notion, it will happen again.”
While the panel, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, accuses several financial institutions of greed, ineptitude or both, some of its gravest conclusions concern government failings, with embarrassing implications for both parties. But the panel was itself divided along partisan lines, which could blunt the impact of its findings.
Many of the conclusions have been widely described, but the synthesis of interviews, documents and testimony, along with its government imprimatur, give the report — to be released on Thursday as a 576-page book — a conclusive sweep and authority.
What is shocking to me is that this report got so much right. Government reports are usually whitewashes of their own ineptitude. This report points out the failings accurately which is rare by government standards.
The commission held 19 days of hearings and interviews with more than 700 witnesses; it has pledged to release a trove of transcripts and other raw material online.
Of the 10 commission members, the six appointed by Democrats endorsed the final report. Three Republican members have prepared a dissent focusing on a narrower set of causes; a fourth Republican, Peter J. Wallison, has his own dissent, calling policies to promote homeownership the major culprit. The panel was hobbled repeatedly by internal divisions and staff turnover.
The majority report finds fault with two Fed chairmen: Alan Greenspan, who led the central bank as the housing bubble expanded, and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, who did not foresee the crisis but played a crucial role in the response. It criticizes Mr. Greenspan for advocating deregulation and cites a “pivotal failure to stem the flow of toxic mortgages” under his leadership as a “prime example” of negligence.
It also criticizes the Bush administration’s “inconsistent response” to the crisis — allowing Lehman Brothers to collapse in September 2008 after earlier bailing out another bank, Bear Stearns, with Fed help — as having “added to the uncertainty and panic in the financial markets.”
Like Mr. Bernanke, Mr. Bush’s Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., predicted in 2007 — wrongly, it turned out — that the subprime collapse would be contained, the report notes.
Democrats also come under fire. The decision in 2000 to shield the exotic financial instruments known as over-the-counter derivatives from regulation, made during the last year of President Bill Clinton’s term, is called “a key turning point in the march toward the financial crisis.”
That was an Alan Greenspan decision. As head bank regulator, he had the authority to regulate credit default swaps as insurance or allow them to exist in a wild west environment of zero regulation. He chose to allow insurers and hedge funds to concentrate risk to the point that it destabilized the world economy.
Timothy F. Geithner, who was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during the crisis and is now the Treasury secretary, was not unscathed; the report finds that the New York Fed missed signs of trouble at Citigroup and Lehman, though it did not have the main responsibility for overseeing them.
Former and current officials named in the report, as well as financial institutions, declined Tuesday to comment before the report was released.
The report could reignite debate over the influence of Wall Street; it says regulators “lacked the political will” to scrutinize and hold accountable the institutions they were supposed to oversee. The financial industry spent $2.7 billion on lobbying from 1999 to 2008, while individuals and committees affiliated with it made more than $1 billion in campaign contributions.
It wasn't regulator capture that prevented oversight. It was the incompetent leadership of Alan Greenspan. The federal reserve can be viewed as the ultimate form of regulatory capture. The banks have set up their own regulator with the federal reserve that can do whatever it wants. The federal reserve reports to no one. Congress could revoke their charter, but so far, only the Ron Paul fringe has suggested that.
The report does knock down — at least partly — several early theories for the financial crisis. It says the low interest rates brought about by the Fed after the 2001 recession; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants; and the “aggressive homeownership goals” set by the government as part of a “philosophy of opportunity” were not major culprits.
Amazing. The report is correct on all counts. Each of the items listed above has been erroneously identified as being causes of the housing bubble, mostly by political operatives posturing for advantage.
On the other hand, the report is harsh on regulators. It finds that the Securities and Exchange Commission failed to require big banks to hold more capital to cushion potential losses and halt risky practices, and that the Fed “neglected its mission.”
Right on. The federal reserve abdicated its responsibility to the collective wisdom of the market. The infallible genius of the herd took prices over the cliff.
It says the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates some banks, and the Office of Thrift Supervision, which oversees savings and loans, blocked states from curbing abuses because they were “caught up in turf wars.”
“The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire,” the report states. “The captains of finance and the public stewards of our financial system ignored warnings and failed to question, understand and manage evolving risks within a system essential to the well-being of the American public. Theirs was a big miss, not a stumble.”
I know I beat up on Alan Greenspan quite a bit, but let's take a look at the questions he asked and the answers he accepted during the housing bubble, and I think you will see why I hold him in such low regard.
First, it was brought to Greenspan's attention on many occasions that the price-to-income ratio, the price-to-rent ratio, and the aggregate debt-to-income ratio was well outside of historic norms. He surmised this was because the strong economy he engineered was creating many households, and the innovations in the mortgage industry were getting people into homes and boosting the owner-occupancy rate. In short, he was a genius for allowing these other financial geniuses to create such prosperity… or so he thought.
What Greenspan did not do was ask a few simple questions. (1) How can people finance so much money with such a small income? (2) Can borrowers fulfill the terms of these new loans and sustain ownership? (3) What happens if the new innovations in finance fail?
With a little intellectual curiosity from the perspective of new buyers, I believe that any reasonable person could have figured out that prices were built on an unstable base of toxic financing. I am shocked that the head banking regulator, a man with years of education and training and the research budget of the federal reserve behind him, this man could not see the housing bubble. He needs to check his glasses.
The report’s implications may be felt more in the political realm than in public policy. The Dodd-Frank law overhauling the regulation of Wall Street, signed in July, took as its premise the same regulatory deficiencies cited by the commission. But the report is sure to be a factor in the debate over the future of Fannie and Freddie, which have been run by the government since 2008.
Though the report documents questionable practices by mortgage lenders and careless betting by banks, one striking finding is its portrayal of incompetence.
It quotes Citigroup executives conceding that they paid little attention to mortgage-related risks. Executives at the American International Group were found to have been blind to its $79 billion exposure to credit-default swaps, a kind of insurance that was sold to investors seeking protection against a drop in the value of securities backed by home loans. At Merrill Lynch, managers were surprised when seemingly secure mortgage investments suddenly suffered huge losses.
By one measure, for about every $40 in assets, the nation’s five largest investment banks had only $1 in capital to cover losses, meaning that a 3 percent drop in asset values could have wiped out the firm. The banks hid their excessive leverage using derivatives, off-balance-sheet entities and other devices, the report found. The speculative binge was abetted by a giant “shadow banking system” in which the banks relied heavily on short-term debt.
“When the housing and mortgage markets cratered, the lack of transparency, the extraordinary debt loads, the short-term loans and the risky assets all came home to roost,” the report found. “What resulted was panic. We had reaped what we had sown.”
The report, which was heavily shaped by the commission’s chairman, Phil Angelides, is dotted with literary flourishes. It calls credit-rating agencies “cogs in the wheel of financial destruction.” Paraphrasing Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” it states, “The fault lies not in the stars, but in us.”
Of the banks that bought, created, packaged and sold trillions of dollars in mortgage-related securities, it says: “Like Icarus, they never feared flying ever closer to the sun.”
Phil Angelides failed in his bid for governor of California. It looks like he did a great job writing this report for the government commission.
Greenspan and Bernanke were incompetent. A massive housing bubble grow under their watch, and they did nothing. Perhaps our understanding of financial viruses is still primitive, and Greenspan will be pardoned by history for his ignorance. He apologized for his mistaken philosophical beliefs that guided him for 40 years inexorably to the abyss.
Alan Greenspan will be the fool who exposed the folly of the efficient market once and for all. Or will he be the scapegoat for central planning and market manipulation by the federal reserve? Whatever becomes of his legacy, you can now add responsibility for the housing bubble and financial meltdown of 2008.
She more than tripled her mortgage
As an example of how lenders at all levels abdicated their responsibilities, the owner of today's featured property was allowed to more than triple her mortgage debt over a nine year period. Doesn't a lender see that a borrower has gone Ponzi? Did anyone care?
- The owner of today's featured property bought at the bottom of the last cycle. She paid $285,000 on 11/18/1998 using a $185,000 first mortgage and a $100,000 down payment.
- On 8/6/2001 she opened a HELOC for $35,000.
-
On 4/30/2003 she refinanced with a $266,000 first mortgage. At this point she has spent all but $19,000 of her down payment.
- On 4/30/2004 she obtained a $150,000 HELOC.
- On 10/18/2004 she got a HELOC for $250,000.
- On 11/22/2004 she obtained a $300,000 HELOC.
- On 2/28/2005 she enlarged the HELOC to $351,450.
- On 11/28/2006 she refinanced the first mortgage for $564,000 and opens a $70,000 HELOC.
- On 4/10/2007 she refinanced with a new $564,000 first mortgage.
- Total mortgage equity withdrawal is $379,000.
- She quit paying last fall.
Foreclosure Record
Recording Date: 01/19/2011
Document Type: Notice of Sale
Foreclosure Record
Recording Date: 10/18/2010
Document Type: Notice of Default
This woman was given this money because of a few key decisions Alan Greenspan made regarding the regulation of credit default swaps which led to a mispricing of risk and a flood of money rushing into the mortgage market.
Irvine Home Address … 9 SPRING BUCK Irvine, CA 92614 
Resale Home Price … $549,000
Home Purchase Price … $285,000
Home Purchase Date …. 11/18/98
Net Gain (Loss) ………. $231,060
Percent Change ………. 81.1%
Annual Appreciation … 5.4%
Cost of Ownership
————————————————-
$549,000 ………. Asking Price
$109,800 ………. 20% Down Conventional
4.84% …………… Mortgage Interest Rate
$439,200 ………. 30-Year Mortgage
$111,614 ………. Income Requirement
$2,315 ………. Monthly Mortgage Payment
$476 ………. Property Tax
$0 ………. Special Taxes and Levies (Mello Roos)
$92 ………. Homeowners Insurance
$135 ………. Homeowners Association Fees
============================================
$3,017 ………. Monthly Cash Outlays
-$393 ………. Tax Savings (% of Interest and Property Tax)
-$544 ………. Equity Hidden in Payment
$204 ………. Lost Income to Down Payment (net of taxes)
$69 ………. Maintenance and Replacement Reserves
============================================
$2,353 ………. Monthly Cost of Ownership
Cash Acquisition Demands
——————————————————————————
$5,490 ………. Furnishing and Move In @1%
$5,490 ………. Closing Costs @1%
$4,392 ………… Interest Points @1% of Loan
$109,800 ………. Down Payment
============================================
$125,172 ………. Total Cash Costs
$36,000 ………… Emergency Cash Reserves
============================================
$161,172 ………. Total Savings Needed
Property Details for 9 SPRING BUCK Irvine, CA 92614
——————————————————————————
Beds:: 3
Baths:: 3
Sq. Ft.:: 1571
$0,349
Lot Size:: 3,024 Sq. Ft.
Property Type:: Residential, Single Family
Style:: Two Level, Cottage
View:: Park/Green Belt
Year Built:: 1980
Community:: Woodbridge
County:: Orange
MLS#:: S645027
Source:: SoCalMLS
Status:: ActiveThis listing is for sale and the sellers are accepting offers.
On Redfin:: 9 days
——————————————————————————
Desireable three bedroom two and one-half bath Cottage Home inside the Loop away from freeway noise with white picket fence on green belt. This home features crown molding, scraped ceilings, hardwood floors and custom window shutters, cozy fireplace in living room; dining room with chair rail opens into private sideyard; kitchen features gas stove and breakfast counter; family room with ceiling fan; bedrooms have mirrored wardrobe doors; patio has brick trim; spacious 2 car garage; near schools, association parks, pools and tennis courts; convenient to shopping.
I’m still amazed that you find SO MANY of these particular examples:
Purchased 13 years ago (should be half paid-off by now), but instead over 10 years later they are trying to sell at TWICE their purchase price – yet IT’S A SHORT SALE… Over a decade later!
A half-million-dollar (overpriced) short-sale on a home purchased for $285k. But the bank should reduce her balance, right, to avoid foreclosure?
I didn’t see anything in this article blaming HOMEOWNERS like this one, and they should!
“I’m still amazed that you find SO MANY of these particular examples”
I am still amazed at how bad these cases are. I thought that perhaps I had documented some of the worst in 2008 and 2009 because the most distressed borrowers gave up first. However, even now in 2011, I still find people like today that were so irresponsible, people who took out so much mortgage money, even after 4 years of writing about HELOC abuse, it is still shocking.
I wonder the degree to which people were using heloc money to pay their mortgages. Say you have a home paid for, then refi at 80% LTV. The cash-out money would last a long time towards payments.
I guess that more often the money went for 2nd and 3rd houses/condos as investments, with some rent money and further refinances and HELOCs pooled together to pay the mortgages, plus some toys to keep up appearances. On second thought, since down payments weren’t required, you may well be right.
Purchased 13 years ago (should be half paid-off by now), but instead over 10 years later they are trying to sell at TWICE their purchase price – yet IT’S A SHORT SALE… Over a decade later!
Hey … come on. Did you not see a spike after 9/11 in European Luxury/Sports cars? How about those 2-tone Rolex watches that are/were so common on middle aged, balding, overweight, Ed Hardy wearing pretenders? Then there’s the middle aged MILF’s in The OC had to go get their boobs enhanced … top it off with a new Louie Vuitton purse. Remember this shit?
Right after 9/11, George Bush told everyone to go out and BUY, BUY, BUY. Alan Greenspan took the hint and promptly dropped the discount rate to 1%. “FREE MONEY EVERYONE, let’s party”!
We’re all rich … selling houses to each other, and moving paper around.
Now we watch the aftermath. :/
Yves Smith had a good entry in the room-for-debate section of the NYTimes. She has a more complete version with the same main idea on her blog. The gist is that terms like “greed, ineptitude or both” are simply not strong enough and not fully accurate.
You can say that a torturer was mean and nasty, but if he’s severed your legs and done even worse, calling him mean and nasty, while accurate, just doesn’t capture what happened. The FCIC could have gone further, but that would have led to real changes, which it seems few want.
Excellent point!
Just think, 3 years after the equity markets went kaput, TARP and Lehman, we still have no true reform. Not only that, but all the Too Big To Fail Banks have all become bigger.
Sometimes I ask myself, have I become jaded due to my age, or is it because of the history that we’re presently watching.
Because of when she bought it seems to me that had she just made regular payments (30 yr. fixed)and sold at the peak of the bubble she might have made quite a bit of money comparatively. Not knowing her interest rate and what this property went for at the peak who knows.
Of course when you factor in the free rent she’s had…maybe her method was better.
Greenspan didn’t see the problem because he didn’t want to. He was wholly (or holy) devoted to the markets. His faith was (was not is) unshakable. His belief that markets are self-correcting and self-regulating were bedrock to his faith. He was really more of a high-priest than anything else.
“His belief that markets are self-correcting and self-regulating were bedrock to his faith. He was really more of a high-priest than anything else.”
Yes, he was an Ann Rand disciple who kept his faith in markets above reason and data.
I’m sorry but I just don’t buy the ignorance excuse. This crap is not rocket science. If you just follow history anybody can understand the effects of federal or centralized banking. He’ll they even give this Financial fleecing a “cyclical” term .. “the business cycle”. As if it has somthing to do with business.
These people are not stupid. They know exactly what the game plan is.
I doubt anything will change. In fact I won’t be surprised when people will have to borrow money for fuel or food in the future. Housing has been controlled by the banks since the first mortgage was introduced after ww2.
There is no such a thing as a free market when govt subities or lending is involved.
Hey Me … did you know that that type of talk used to be conspiratorial, now it’s mainstream.
It *used* to be conspiratorial, but that was when they feared that the american people would actually do something about it. Now they know most would rather watch brain mush TV. Most people I talk to in life DON’T WANT TO KNOW…period.
They don’t want to know about fractional reserve banking, groups that direct and control the world, or anything that involves THINKING.
Every now and then the tree of liberty needs to be watered with blood, if liberty is to remain. We are very close to that time, and usually, it’s the little people’s blood like yours and mine.
Swiller, You sound like you just watch the animated film American Dream. LOL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPWH5TlbloU
IrvineRenter, while i usually respect your opinions and observations, how can you be so blind as to the effects of manipulated interest rates on an economy?
It sends false signals to every sector. It breeds widespread malinvestment. It creates the illusion of prosperity.
It is the fountainhead of our current woes.
Read greenspan’s “gold and economic freedom” in rand’s “capitalism: the unknown ideal”. Is it not glaringly obvious his actions of late are a complete contradiction to his earlier writings?
Business and consumer will only make poor choices when the air is clouded with the fog of cheap money.
American, wake up.
AG and Ben are two of the smartest persons we can pick form this plant. But they are also the shameless too.
The Fed chair position just too precious, if you ever watch Lord of Ring you will understand what I am saying. The only care re-nomination, they mortgage this country this China, India already.
Without Fed chair position, they just an ordinary professor, live in an humble 500K house , in a college town.
Bush, Obama and even Ron Paul will re-nominate Ben in 2013 anyway, because they already the Fed to election machine: continue refinancing our country to give an illusion of false prosperity, so the president can get re-elected.
His belief that markets are self-correcting and self-regulating were bedrock to his faith..
How can a man who gooses the entire economy by manipulating interest rates be said to believe in free market forces?
If he had said, “we need the market to correct and that means recession. we need the market to set interest rates instead of us, the fed. recession is the cure. those with unsound leverage positions need to fail. people need to get out of debt, prices of goods need to fall to reach market equilibrium” then you could argue the case he still follows Rand, believes in free market forces, and capitalism.
Maybe she took the money purchased elsewhere and rented this one out.
The list price is close to what is owed.
It appears to me that she’s looking to unwind this at a minimal loss.
If she rented this one, she could easily have been collecting rent w/o making payments to the bank. Similar to squatting, but cash-in-the-pocket.
Exactly,
I think this happens more often than not.
IR
“What is shocking to me is that this report got so much right. Government reports are usually whitewashes of their own ineptitude”
And your basing this opinon on ‘what’? You may have a low opinion of our goverment but congressional reports are generally good. The report on the Space schuttle disaster was right on in identifying the O-ring failure and the 911 report was very good.
Cash-out refinances need to reset property value for tax purposes. There is no good argument against this, and it will serve two good purposes: help balance CA’s budget, and discourage heloc abuse.
correction…
“all” refinances should be reported to the state and trigger a property tax resest. However, HELOCs are not refinances, you are taking out a loan which backed by collateral – your house. Up until the great bubble, HELOCs were not risky because housing values didn’t change that much. They also weren’t as common before the bubble either. So this property should only have be reappraised in 2006 and 2007 for property tax purposes when the 1st loan was refinanced.
On the business side… whole nother problemo… because corps keep business properties for multiple decades, unlike most personal property. Corporate property should be reassesed every 5 to 10 years period.
Of course, this mean re-opening prop 13.
I said cash-out because you should not treat someone who is refi’ing to get a lower rate in the same way you treat someone who is refi’ing to cash-out.
To get a HELOC you need some appraisal. If the appraisal and to-be borrowed total debt exceeds the tax value of the home, tax value goes up. If appraisal > tax value, BUT total borrowed debt < tax value, no reassessment. You're wrong about housing values not changing much. If housing values didn't go up at rates greater than inflation, what do you have prop 13 for? Prop 13, in principle is a sensible rule, but needs slight modifications. I understand the likelihood of change is inversely proportional the insanity index of CA's gov't - iow, not very likely.
all we need are decades of rising interest rates and real estate will not outpace wage inflation.
I happen to have some additional info on this property. First, it is scheduled to go to a foreclosure sale this week, according to my discussion with the realtor this past weekend during an open house. There is also an $11,000 2nd mortgage that the lender is refusing to release that the buyer would have to pay off in order to get it before the foreclosure sale. And last but not least, there is over $3,000 in termite damage to the house that the new buyer would have to pay to repair.
Touring through the house, the flooring appeared in decent shape, but there have been zero upgrades to anything else in the house. This may be inside the Woodbridge loop, but I’d still categorize it as a fixer-upper. Over the past couple years, it seemed like problem properties used to be confined to the less-desirable fringes of El Camino Real (e.g. along the RR tracks) and Orangetree, but now we’re seeing them migrate further and further into the mainstream of Irvine. I guess the flood of foreclosures and shadow inventory is just too much for the flippers to absorb. Hence the price declines.
Irvine is NOT immune!
-Darth
I’ve said this a million times, and I’ve never, EVER gotten a response… I’ll say it again.
Going back to 2001/2002- what would have happened if Greenspan/ Bernanke/ Anyone suggested tighter mortgage regulations? required 20% down for a new mortgage? require equity for refinancing? Required notarized documentation for loan origination? yeah, that’s right, all you people, yeah you, would have been yelling “COMMUNISTS! FASCISTS! LET THE FREE MARKET WORK! THEY’RE TAKING OUR GUNS!”
So, in the end everyone deserves what happened.
LOL. What a moronic observation. I can just picture the author frothing about the mouth as he typed that.
no, I’m not the one frothing. I’m *imagining* the frothing that would have occurred had *anyone* attempted to cool down the absurdly hot RE market. Think back to then dude- EVERYONE was making insane amounts of money. Everyone who touched RE made 6 figures per transaction it seemed. Just imagine the recoil if Greenspan, or anyone for that matter said anything to try to temper the frenzy.
Go back to 1999, and imagine trying to tell people pets.com is a bad idea. They’ll just scoff at you. As IR as pointed out over and over again, a bubble is inflated by irrational exuberance. You can’t take that away from people.
Of course whoever is benefiting from the current system is not going to want to change it. That’s why the Fed is supposed to be independent – so they can make those politically tough decisions.
I am benefitting from it and I would end the Fed, fiat currency, and fractional reserve banking tomorrow if I was given the chance. I invest based on what is, not on what I would like.
> you, would have been yelling “COMMUNISTS! FASCISTS! LET THE FREE MARKET WORK!”
es:
actually, the groups yelling that were the politicians, regulators and minority boosters bribed by the fees whore class (banks and realtors.)
Anybody who warned about the bubble was shouted down by politicians, which is documented reasonably well online.
“Greenspan and Bernanke were incompetent. ”
I take except to that comment. Both men are extreme bright, versed in acedemic and in practice experence. IR and critics are forgetting who these two men work for. Hint: It’s not the US government.
As for market forces not at working, the market for these bankers include knowing that the corporation/shareholders would pay for their mistakes and if faced with BK’ed, then US taxpayers would be forced to bail them out. They maximized their profit (personal) and left the taxpayers holding the bag. That was the model and it did work. You just feel bad about it because you’re left holding the bag. Suck it up and hand over the money. I’m sure Ron Paul is not the only one in Congress who’s figured it out. The rest just want their share.
Right on, the sooner people accept reality the sooner they will be at peace with what continues to occur and they will make better decisions.
So does your anus hurt?
I mean, that is reality, isn’t it (or you can say you’re not a taxpayer and so it doesn’t hurt)?
🙂
Agree 100%.
BHO and the Feds are doing a wonderful job in exporting inflation and unrest to foreign lands. The unrest destabilized foreign currency and markets, thus causing flight to US currency and market for lower US interest rates and high stock prices. Only thing, the special interest groups will demand sending humanitary aid and peace keeping troops, so the taxpayers will need to buy good to send over and pay for the goods and troops. Hopefully the troops will be using US made ammo and not Eastern European ammo.
You are correct once again. They have been extremely sucessful at utilizing the US strength to minimize the damage at home while inflicting pain else where.
The banking cartel and it’s political chronies are not giving up any time soon.
What’s so hard to understand?
Government Sachs tells the FED what to do.
Print money and buy equities.
Is it just me, or does Ben Bernanke look like Karl Marx?
It’s interesting that these reports now state that there is fault with the Central banks yet each one of them blames them for not REGULATING the underwriting and loans that were made. Government officials, in general, don’t see that policies that distort supply and demand are the root problem. As much as the agencies blame the Central Bank they still receive more power to guide the economy to “prosperity”…LOL