In article >, sf wrote:

> On Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:32:34 -0400, Goomba >
> wrote:
>
> >blake murphy wrote:
> > foreclosures
> >> have skyrocketed. yep, it's all in our heads...
> >>
> >> blake
> >
> >What *exactly* did Bush have to do with mortgages again? The way I see
> >it half the people having mortgage problems were people who overbought
> >assuming they were going to make a killing when they flipped the house.
> >Housing prices readjusted (look at California who led that trend) in
> >many areas because they were just insanely overpriced. There were also
> >certainly mortgage lenders who got sloppy and allowed unqualified people
> >buy more home they couldn't afford which I can find fault with. Yet
> >somehow I don't see how Bush (or Clinton before) as being responsible?
>
> They did nothing to stop predatory lending practices even though it
> was obviously a train wreck waiting to happen.

After the stock market crash and the Great Depression of 1929 in the US,
it was pretty obvious what had happened. People were buying stocks on
margin, and getting mortgages with insufficient down payments. The
government passed laws to keep this from ever happening again.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for the speculators in the latest
mortgage fiasco, but I am incensed that our government had to buy out
the irresponsible companies. The mortgage lenders didn't care that they
were making bad loans, because they sold them as soon as they were made.
The buyers of the mortgages didn't care, because they were borrowing up
to 97% of the money, so it just wasn't their money.

--
Dan Abel
Petaluma, California USA