It will blow them out of the water!

Add to the list most Americans too!

http://consumerist.com/252491/snl-skit-dont-buy-stuff-you-cant-afford

Funny stuff from back when SNL was good.

Reading between the lines, Skybill, I gather that you think that the mortgage meltdown was caused by poor folks who bought houses that they couldn't afford. If that's what you think, you couldn't be more wrong.

If it was true, you would have blame President Bush because it was he who back in 2002 was pushing his "ownership society."

What a concept... And I can afford the book

Pete, Chill man. It's comedy.

It aired in Feb of 2006 long before the mortgage meltdown.

BTW, it wasn't just poor people. It was anybody who bought a house and couldn't afford it. The slime ball mortgage companies added to it. The blame must be shared.

Ya, remember that countrywide TV spot :

ONE eight six six...66 FASTER...you've got the Green light....( ya da da da da da...)

That thing ran over and over and over from about 2002 to 2006

estad unitas

Skybill wrote:
The blame must be shared.

Yeah and it's high time you conservatives admitted the Republican deserve some of it.

The deserve most of it.

Pete try --"They" instead of "The". Also it was our friend Bill Clinton who opened the door on FHA. Please give credit, where credit is due.

FHA deserves no credit or blame. Those loans are self insured and have performed reasonably well, all things considered.

If you want to truly lay blame on the mortgage mess, it's the PRIVATE lenders (read, not Fannie or Freddie) that were offering the most toxic loans thanks to record low interest rates and investors who didn't care what they were buying. All they cared about was yield. Think about it: If you could borrow money for 3% and then lend that money out to a someone buying a home and charge them 9% with tons of fees, all while being backed by the asset of the home itself, it was a boon for these guys.

The subprime mess started with these guys, and because financing was cheap and easy, it drove house prices up too high. Once home values starting dropping, the dominos started to fall from there and affected Fannie and Freddie.

I'm not saying that Fannie and Freddie are perfect, but they are definitely not the culprits to this mess, they're a victim if anything.

Independent commission to investigate cause of economic crisis:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=7405560

Will have subpoena power, "investigate wrongdoing."

About time.

On a related note, the authorization of harsh interrogation is being referred to AG: ""No one is above the law."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=7403602

Along with the low interest rates there was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which rolled back most of protections from the Great Depression era legislation (Glass-Steagall Act 1933).

Back on Nov. 4, 1999 Sen. Dorgan (D-ND) predicted the mess we are in today.

Video 1 - Dorgan on Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act

Video 2 - Continued

And Brooksley Born, as head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, foresaw the unregulated trading of derivatives as dangerous:

http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2009/marapr/features/born.html

And the derivatives are the big mess.

Those toxic loans are a problem, but when bundled and over-leveraged MULTIPLE times, and MIXED with otherwise GOOD NOTES, we have a huge over valuation problem.

That's the scary stuff. That's also why we can't really let the larger banks and investment banks fail.

The allure of huge profits from the rollback of the regulations helped drive this mess home. AIG would insure anything, and now it's all coming home to roost.

.....Please give credit, where credit is due.....

Just don't give it to those who can't afford it.

....we have a huge over valuation problem.....

and that is in the upper end.

Too many homes in the 250K plus category that were over valued and forclosed. Bank won't want to sell them for their "REAL" value....

Not too many forclosures west of the Cascades under 100k (different story in the rust belt)

The reality is EVERYTHING is worth ONLY what someone will pay for it. I might have paid 300k for home, but if the only buyer is offering 100k THEN that's what it's worth. Somebody has to eat the difference. The mess will only clear when buyers and sellers can agree.

Supply and demand. Too much supply right now. Simple as that. We've got to let the crap get flushed out, we reset, and those that gambled and lost start over, those that didn't continue on.