I don’t have much affection for the British. I think of them of an example of what not to do and where we will be in all to short a time. There TV is entertaining more so than ours for the mindless stuff. As classes and sophomoric as the gifts givin….

Dont get me wrong, bankers and lenders are culpable too, especially in terms of making them into securities and poisoning the entire market but lets be fair, CRA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started us down this crap strewn path of economic comprehension failure.

Growth depends on credit. The banks are the main source of allocating credit into the economy. The government can’t effectively replace them with their own program and smaller banks would take years to build up the infrastructure of the bigger banks.

If financial institutions fail suddenly they can take counter-parties down with them, which is why more than $100B has been put up to manage the AIG mess.

dedalus on March 11, 2009 at 11:11 AM

While I don’t necessarily agree with what you say, let’s assume it to be true. The unintended consequences of these actions are worse then letting the banks fail in the first place. We are where we are largely because the government has continually interfered in the free market. Incompetence must be allowed to fail. Risk is the great counterbalance of the market and must be allowed to function or the free market system cannot work. We are at that point in our country now.

King of the Britons on March 11, 2009 at 11:35 AM

It would be cheaper, and more financially sound to let the failed banks fail, and give the remaining well managed banks loans to allow them to give credit at levels sufficient for growth, but at an interest rate that only allows profit if the “consumer” loans are sound.

Not answering the phone is a way of hiding from the bill collector… “China calling on line 1″.

RalphyBoy on March 11, 2009 at 5:37 PM

yep. and once we depend on China for everything as its getting to be, we’ll have to kiss every square inch of their butts to keep us in clothes, shoes, furniture, electronics, repair parts, etc. . Ask yourself, how many China made things do I use everyday? China’s Auto sales reportedly went up. Did ours? nope. Its all to make China a prosperus and powerful country. Nice for them huh? Look at it. Its been going on for several decades and its one of the first places Hillary ran off to under her new office.
What does China depend on us for? How could we ever have political leverage on them when they get out of line? Say hello to your new owners.

Wow. Can’t even answer the phones. At Treasury. In the midst of an ‘economic crisis’.

Barack Hussein Obama: Historical Failure

Problem solved….

Thanks for the compliments. I try to help people understand what has happened here since I worked the last 15 years in the mortgage industry at a pretty high level.

Lots of blame to go around. Bottom line is everyone trusted the bankers to know what they were doing. They didn’t.

rockmom on March 11, 2009 at 11:26 AM

Okay since you are a resident expert explain mark to mark or mark to model, What ever it is called to a layman.

The phrase ’slow motion train wreck’ comes to mind…

Which begs the question, how long do you think it will continue? another month? a year? all four years?

Onus on March 11, 2009 at 4:39 PM

Nov 2010 looks good for being the bottom. It’s all uphill after that.

Which begs the question, how long do you think it will continue? another month? a year? all four years?

rockmom on March 11, 2009 at 11:10 AM

I prefer to think of it as all those he’s tossed under the bus have finally not only jammed the wheels up into their wells, but have outright clogged the powertrain. “Thump thump thump” has turned into “click-click-click-click.”

Press 4 if you’re using a rotary phone

Snowed In on March 11, 2009 at 1:28 PM

+1

I’m sure they won’t have a hard time finding a receptionist or two.

Oink on March 11, 2009 at 10:11 AM

The application part is easy. It’s convincing them to drink the Kool-Aid that is the hard part.