Contributed by: filbert Monday, March 17 2008 @ 12:49 PM CST
A bunch of banks lend money to people they really had no business lending money to. Those people were, in old-fashioned language: credit risks. Surprise, surprise, they couldn’t pay back their loans.
Who’s to blame?
Well, first, the poor stupid dupes who got convinced that home ownership was the key to their financial success, if only they could somehow get a mortgage they couldn’t really afford.
Second, the financial institutions who loaned the money to the aforementioned poor stupid dupes.
But most of all, the ones to blame are the politicians who forced the financial institutions to loan money to poor stupid dupes, in order to buy the votes of the aforementioned poor stupid dupes.
There is a place in Hell reserved for these politicians. This should be a cautionary tale regarding the power of government to do harm while saying it is doing good. But of course, the politicians will, again, get off scott-free and successfully redirect the blame–in this case to those evil financial institutions (and, usually, the Republican Party just, you know, because.)