It’s got:
- Steve Forbes (see other blog post :-) )
- Greed
- Free markets
- Govt intervention

Texas does not allow it’s citizens to invest though LendingClub (or other peer-to-peer lending) either… I believe the history is that Texas got burned in a housing crisis back in the late 80s / early 90s and hence started strict regulations on the mortgage industry. This is why Texas did not have a huge runup in housing prices, and also suffer the collapse. With heavy regulation Texas is still growing faster than most (all?) the other states in the union.

As for greed: correct you can’t regulate greed away, but you can regulate the mortgage industry so this type of crisis will never happen again.

I don’t think I did anything wrong, yet I got paid down huge last year, and my property assets have declined in value because of the system. I’m not angry, I’m just focused on trying to learn from the experience and make sure I don’t suffer as much again in the future.

FS

Thanks for the response.

Do you sense people are angry because of the ballooning US deficits?

I agree the best situation is when everybody is doing better but shouldn’t this come about by rewarding success vs the gov’t picking winners & losers and then paying for it with future taxpayer obligations? How come there isn’t a large number of people who are fighting this?

By the way, I do agree with the theme of this post. Resentment and jealousy are not productive emotions. And there is no point in getting angry over something in which you have no control over. However I do think people should be standing up to do the right thing and holding our government to account.

Henry Paulson, Bernanke and Greenspan should be held to account and not overlooked. In this case Bernanke should not be renewed and Paulson should be investigated and tried for fraud. Goldman Sachs should be investigated for fraud in front running trades with the high frequency trading. Obama should be held to honoring his campaign promises.

I get a bit frustrated with all the cheerleaders, including the media, who overlook enforcing the principles that should make America stronger.

-Mike

Totally agree. I’m looking at it more like this. The past couple of years, the shareholders of the company didn’t do so well from owning Goldman Sachs.

I bet you the employees did extremely well regardless of the firm’s performance. It seems like profits funneled into the pockets of the Ibankers vs Shareholders.

http://www.traderbots.com/stocks/Stock.aspx?symbol=gs

We can only rationally determine what people deserve if we can understand the revenue they bring in. What if they bring in $10 million in revenue for the firm? Is a 5-10% payout egregious? I don’t think so. If they only brought in $2 million for the firm, I’d say yes.

I made $3.3/hr at McDonald’s for a reason when I was in HS. The market determined that wage, and I was probably producing $30/hr in revenue.

Best, FS

Fraud is not OK. But who exactly is committing fraud? Is it the CDO sales person to an institution money manager, the money manager, or the actual homebuyer buying more house than he can afford. Is fraud being committed by the appraiser, the mortgage loan officer, or the seller of the home to the homebuyer? What about Greenspan, or the President?

We can try and blame the world and get upset. Or we can try and educate ourselves and do what’s right on our own and for our immediate friends and family.

Feel free to read our Open Letter to Vikram Pandit at Citigroup to get more of a sense of where we’re coming from.

FS

You don’t mind paying for the actions of Fraud by means of increased taxes in the future?

When I say fraud, I’m talking about suspending mark to market and putting the toxic assets of select institutions on the balance sheet of the US taxpayer. That and allowing all the small banks to fail (99 and counting in 2009) while supporting the big guys by access to 0.25% reserves which also penalize people who have cash in the bank as their interest rate drops to zero.

When I say fraud I’m talking about the FHA program where people can use the federal tax credit and put less than 3% down and buy houses, today, under the same conditions that created the sub-prime disaster… because the buyers today effectively fit the definition of sub-prime.

So you are basically saying that fraud is OK as long as everybody feels richer. In that case, why doesn’t everybody stop paying taxes and we all can feel pretty good about it.

Except for the people who do pay or who are forced to, I’d imagine they would be pretty upset!

-Mike

But do they really deserve such big bonuses. If I were a shareholder, I’d be irate. The company seems to exist for the benefit of employees, and not as much the shareholders (owners of the company).

http://www.traderbots.com/stocks/Stock.aspx?symbol=gs

@BG
Our government has been trying to regulate and control for over 200 years and have proved no more successful than any other government in history. Just look at the impact of Sarbanes/Oxley, what a joke! Collectively our countries companies have spent billions trying to meet these regulations. Was it regulation that caught Bernie or Stanford?

Require transparency, maybe. Regulation too often has unintended consequences.

Gen Y, you actually have nice clips on your site all the time. Can you shoot me an e-mail and explain how you do it? Cheers