I'm not an economist, and although I have a 401K and a few paltry investments, I mostly don't follow the stock market or speak the lingo. But since I'd been diligently listening to the news, I thought I understood a little bit about what was happening in the subprime mortgage meltdown.
It turns out, I understood much less than I thought, and maybe I'm not alone... follow me over the jump.
So we've been hearing it's the fault of greedy home buyers who ran out and purchased homes they couldn't afford. Or, conversely, maybe it was the fault of predatory lenders who made bad loans. Round and round the blame seemed to go. So I was completely baffled by Henry Paulson's announcement yesterday that it wouldn't help to buy up the toxic mortgages as promised in the bailout.
Peacenik understands that there will be serious consequences if something isn't done to try and halt the collapse of the financial system. Peacenik is not vindictive. But shouldn't someone be charged with something by now? Shouldn't there be some high profile investigations going on? This financial collapse is the direct result of fraud. And taxpayers are now trying to save the people who committed the fraud. This post on Daily Kos links to a long story about what happened. It is worth reading.
