Ten Years After the Crash, We've Learned Nothing

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Ten years ago, on Saturday, September 13th, 2008, the world was about to end.

The New York Federal Reserve was a zoo. Imagine NASA headquarters on the day a giant asteroid careens into the atmosphere. That was the New York Fed: all hands on deck, peak human panic.

The crowd included future Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, then-Treasury Secretary (and former Goldman Sachs CEO) Hank Paulson, the representatives of multiple regulatory offices, and the CEOs of virtually every major bank in New York, each toting armies of bean counters and bankers.

The asteroid metaphor fit. In the twin collapses of top-five investment bank Lehman Brothers and insurance giant AIG, Wall Street saw a civilization-imperiling ball of debt hurtling its way.

The legend of that meeting, as immortalized in hagiographic reconstructions like Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail, is that the tough-minded bank honchos found a way to scrape up just enough cash to steer the debt-comet off course.

In Too Big To Fail, the “superstar” chief of Goldman, Lloyd Blankfein, along with “smart” Jamie Dimon of Chase, “fighter” John Mack of Morgan Stanley, and other titans brokered the deal of deals, just in time to stave off a Mad Max scenario for us all.

The plan included a federal bailout of incompetent AIG, along with key mergers – Bank of America buying Merrill, Barclays swallowing the sinking hull of Lehman, etc.

With respect to the fine actors in the film, the legend is bull.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/financial-crisis-ten-year-anniversary-723798/

[elleng]

1. SOME of us have learned that 'me, me, me,

greed, greed, greed' always prevails in our 'system.'

[gratuitous]

2. A number of reforms were considered and some were instituted

But after the Tea Bagger "revolution," Republicans methodically dismantled those reforms, blunted the drive for reform, and put the same crooks back in place. So many financial sins were committed, but because they weren't specifically against the law, very few people actually went to jail. Laws meant to make those sins actually illegal were stopped by congressional Republicans.

There were certainly lessons taught, but we refused to learn them.

[Fred Sanders]

3. Great article by Matt Taibbi.

"Even the FBI – not exactly an on-the-ball financial regulator, certainly not to the degree that Treasury or the Fed is expected to be – had warned as far back as 2004 that so-called “liar’s loans” were “epidemic” and would cause a “financial crisis” if not addressed."

And who were the winners, reaping vast profits?

"If you had a retirement fund and woke up one day in 2009 to see you’d lost 30 percent of your life savings, you were the mark. Ordinary Americans had their remaining cash in houses and retirement plans, and the subprime scheme was designed to suck the value out of both places, into the coffers of a few giant banks."

You, dear homeowner, were the target, the banksters organized it all and the regulators stood aside...paid off or incompetent or afraid of the banks...who knows.

And zero prosecutions so of course it is happening again because again huge money is to be made and again the regulators are as corrupt as Shitler permits.

[Sneederbunk]

4. We've learned bad behavior goes unpunished.

[soryang]

5. Griftopia is alive and well

It was only after the public elected Donald Trump that Bernanke had an insight. He realized suddenly that “growth is not enough” (translation: the rich getting richer for eight straight years did not please voters).