Bankers always make great scape goats and the certainly behaved irresponsibly but you could just as easily apply the statements you made to the middle class homeowners who tried to turn their homes into piggy banks and signed mortgage agreements that no one in their right mind would have signed and foolishly bought a bunch of McMansions that they couldn’t afford.
Hey, after Social Security gets privatized, old people are going to have to get their cat food from somewhere!
Circle of Life!
“We had to lend them that money. They fucked up, they trusted us!”
Not buying it.
[Bolding mine]
This might just be the stupidest thing I’ve seen on this website.
I’m going to have to look up some of your other stuff to see if this is a one time attack of fuckhead stupid or if this is your normal output.
So, to be clear here, we aren’t REALLY talking about the top 1%…we are talking about some undefined subset of the top 1%, possibly only the top 1% who are bankers or in investments or have something to do with Wallstreet…right? Or are we just talking about and even smaller subset of the top 1% composed of just the Hankster and folks like him?
Just trying to get straight what we are ranting about here, since it seems the goal posts are ever changing…and kitteh needs snackage.
-XT
Let me just point out that it takes two parties to make a mortgage agreement. And which do you think understands the risks the best - (a) the bank, which writes many thousands of mortgages, and slices and dices them by classes of risk, or (b) the homeowner, who may be party to a half-dozen mortgages over the course of his entire life?
Yeah, homeowners made some bad decisions. But they had every reason to think, “if the bank is lending me this money, they’re doing so because they think I can pay it back, and they’re the experts.” I’m sure there were some exceptions, but by and large, the homeowners who got into trouble were played by bankers, and the bankers fully deserve to take the hit.
So please don’t give me any of this sob story about how the poor, helpless bankers were taken advantage of by unscrupulous homeowners. Fuck that shit.
How, pray tell? Those of us who have seen our employment histories, retirement accounts, mortgages, savings, etc. get shredded by the economic downfall wrought by the subject of this pitting would be happy to know.
I just told you upthread. My BIL took a massive risk and put all his savings into starting a business. If it had failed, he would be in a world of pain. But that what a risk IS. And it didn’t fail. Though a combination of luck, timing, and hard work, his business succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. He got contracts to do energy audits for nationwide businesses like Safeway and Lowes. Now they use much less energy than before, over 70 people have good jobs, and he has oodles of money.
Well obviously whatever you were doing was wrong so just do the opposite of that and then you too can be rich.
So your argument is:
[ul]
[li]Don’t blame the bankers for taking risks with other people’s money to get even farther ahead[/li]
[li]Do blame the homeowners for taking risks with their own money to “catch up”[/li][/ul]
Or have I missed something?
And no doubt, consistent with your philosophy, you would also agree to the following:
Citizens have no standing to complain; they ceded that when they elected officials to act on their behalf. These officials approved the laws and policies of the government; if the citizens object, they have only themselves to blame for electing officials who lack the courage to do what’s right. Or they could vote with their feet and move to another country. Where are the benefits of democracy now? Why do staunch democrats suddenly think these problems need to be dealt with? Catfood I say!
The following isn’t even consistent with sanity, much less my philosophy. Try again.
It’s comical how generous people are with their theoretical piles of cash.
I’m somewhat sympathetic to Greenberg’s lawsuit as a general matter, though I might not be up on all the details (& I’m certainly not taking a position on its legal merits).
The problem here is that once the government took control of AIG, it did not have the same incentives to act on behalf of AIG shareholders as would another controlling entity. In this case, the government’s overriding concern was the health of the financial system as a whole, not AIG specifically. So if - for example - the government felt the financial system would be helped by aiding other financial institutions at the expense of AIG, it would do it, and the shareholders would pay the price.
As one example, a company in financial distress can typically drive a hard bargain with the creditors, and convince them to accept a lot less than 100% payment for their debts. In this case, the government made AIG pay 100% to counterparties, because they did not want those counterparties to suffer losses. But the AIG shareholders had to pay up. And so on.
Of course, if it’s true that the only alternative for AIG would have been bankruptcy, as some on this board seem to be assuming, then this is not particularly relevant. However this is undoubtedly not Greenberg’s view of things, and he undoubtedly believes that the company could have been saved under far less onerous terms than were imposed by the government. IIRC, at the time of the crisis Greenberg offered to help AIG deal with the situation, but was rebuffed by management (with whom he was severely at odds at the time).
In this context, I’m not sure how big of a deal it is that the BOD agreed to the deal. Contrary to what some think, the BOD are not the be all and end all of a company, and any number of shareholder lawsuits have proceeded in opposition to actions of BOD in the past. In addition, it’s possible that the BOD did not appreciate at the time the extent to which the government was looking out for the interests of AIG’s counterparties and the financial system as a whole versus those of AIG itself.
[Somewhat OT, but as a note to the world of the 1% - of which Greenberg is a member. My FIL was at one point worked in a senior financial capacity for a Non-Profit Institution of which Greenberg was a benefactor. At one point, the following situation arose. The NPI was making some sort of fundraising drive, which was to culminate in big donors being honored at some sort of dinner. Greenberg had pledged a large sum of money (I forget the amount but let’s say it was $3M). The problem was that they then approached some other 1% guy, and he promised $5M. And now they had a problem. If Greenberg showed up to the dinner expecting to be the Big Benefactor and discovered that some other guy had given significantly more than him, he would lose face. OTOH, they couldn’t well go back to Greenberg and tell him hey some other guy is giving more, because that would look like they were trying to squeeze more money out of him. So what to do?
What they did was to contact Greenberg’s executive secretary. They explained the situation to her, and asked her what she thought they should do. And she simply brushed it off. “No problem, he’ll also give $5M.” Didn’t even bother to ask Greenberg.
Now that’s a rich guy.]
Your first clause is more accurate than your second.
I am sure you think there is a gotcha in there somewhere. Please post again when you find it.
That’s a bit like saying, “The problem here is that when the EMTs inserted the breathing tube down the non-responsive opera singer’s throat, they didn’t take care to not damage his vocal chords.”
Please reread the fourth paragraph of my post.
Doesn’t change much, really.
If we extend PunditLisa’s analogy, Greenberg’s offer to help with the situation is analogous to the guy who held the victim underwater then trying to push the EMTs out of the way and insisting that he can do a better job of saving the person he had just been trying to drown.
… and those of us who took no risks at all and are still “in a world of pain,” what of us?