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You're not wrong, but I always wonder why this is a reply when suggesting we charge and prosecute the bankers. To create an equivalency? To change the subject?

• okboomer9 5y ago
• rr808 5y ago
  Because the investment banks took loans and repackaged them, then didn't do anything illegal. The most sketchy thing they were accused of was repackaging loans when they should know the documentation was fraudulent, ie borrowers were lying on their forms. Its a long chain of paper pushers who are blaming each other, I'm not convinced anyone is worse than the others, just GS is most famous.
  • bcrosby95 5y ago
    Actually, the transfer and repackaging of loans was not done legally, and courts had to rubber stamp massive amounts of backdated paperwork when cleaning up the mess so the houses could actually be foreclosed upon.
  • worik 5y ago
    > Because the investment banks took loans and repackaged them, then didn't do anything illegal. They did very illegal things. They lied, flat out lied, to their customers about what was in the financially engineered structures. Lied. That is a crime (in civilised jurisdictions, and in the USA)
    • rr808 5y ago
      Please tell me which customers you are talking about? Is it the hedge funds who bought billions of CDOs but says they didn't understand what they were? Are they the people you're concerned about.
      • worik 5y ago
        The banks they sold them to. And yes, the hedge funds. They misrepresented these products. The learnt that the ratings agencies had made a mess of the rating too late, they were on the books. So they sold them as fast as they could, lying to the customers. It does not matter if the customer was a hedge fund, a bank, or you. Lying about financial products is a crime.
        • rr808 5y ago
          They didn't lie they passed on the documents that were signed by the borrowers.
          • worik 5y ago
            They lied. They also passed on the documents that were signed by borrowers, who were also lying.
• LanceH 5y ago
  The bankers were doing what we wanted them to do by giving us loans, even when we didn't qualify. Now they're continuing to do what we want them to do by being the villains. As long as they get paid...
  • Retric 5y ago
    Bankers where ultimately using other peoples money to issue loans so they didn’t care if the information was accurate and therefore not only didn’t check but actively falsified the information themselves. That’s how you get this kind of crap: “How much do you make? It varies, I made 50k last year. That’s going to be a little tough, hmm let’s say next year went well, how much could you make? I don’t know 60-70k. Great 70k is going to make this all very smooth.” The applicant assumes he’s being clear when getting a loan from the company he’s talking to. Meanwhile the company is only interested in selling Fake AAA bonds and just needs warm bodies to sign some paperwork.
• otikik 5y ago
  There's a certain group of people who self-identify with the super rich, even with the ones that are orders of magnitude more wealthy than them. An attack on the rich is perceived as an attack on "their group". So they retaliate, usually against the poor, which they otherize.