How can people blame the free market instead of the government's easy credit policies for the Crash of '08?

Nice try. Banks are in the business of assessing risk and supposed to be good money managers. They put their straw boys in to suck down all the loans they could get then resold them out of the country as fast as possible, but not fast enough.

You're going to say its government policy for a bank to loan money to people they know can't repay it? Nice try, but it isn't cutting it.

Policy did play a part, but the bottom line is the government can't force banks to take bad risks with their own money and certainly ACORN didn't force anyone either.

Greed lead to this plain and simple and if government was behind it the banks were more than willing partners knowing damned good and well they would get bailed out if it backfired. And it did and they are.

There are things that I think you're overlooking...

1. When the Community Reinvestment Act was initiated, there were some protections in place as well against predatory lending practices. The Community Reinvestment Act has been around for about thirty years, so why the problem now? Deregulation.

2. While a poor person might not be accustomed to the complexities of home buying and mortgage loans, the banks were. The banks used predatory lending practices to make loans that they KNEW were high risk. So they made the loans, bundled them and resold them to strip off their fees and pass on the risks. Now on PBS (2/6) ran an interesting piece on this very subject, of particular interest is 'reverse red-lining'.

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/506/transcript.html

3. Clinton and a veto-proof Republican Congress killed Glass-Steagall in 1999. That's what allowed those fraudulently rated 'exotics' to be passed throughout, and to contaminate, the banking AND speculative investment market pool. And the rating firms played along in the game.

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/446/index.html

http://www.counterpunch.org/kaufman09192008.html

It's convenient to shift the blame for the economic crisis from the banks to poor people, but on closer examination that theory really doesn't hold water.

we've a capitalist approach. The regulation isn't useful and lots has been rolled lower back. What are human beings doing suitable now? people who've money are procuring up low-priced genuine property, on a similar time as banks throw families out of their properties. Banks might even throw a relatives out, rejecting a private loan exchange; then sell the valuables for a lesser cost than the changed own loan; they're punishing human beings, they like their credit ruined so as that they are in a position to cost them greater costs whilst they arrive lower back for the rest. So families get thrown out, the wealthy swoop in and purchase them at the cheap, to tutor them for earnings. Thats organic earnings that doesn't something to make jobs or stimulate genuine monetary enhance. So ultimately costs will upward push lower back yet another bubble will form and the full ingredient will crash lower back. this is the unfastened industry, this is capitalism, regulation would not reason hypothesis and bubbles and crashes. those are unfastened industry issues, and human beings view people who lose each thing as collateral injury.

Exactly. The Free Market was never allowed to be free. Liberal social engineering is what caused the collapse. Home ownership is not a right.

The current crisis is the natural consequence of the government's tinkering. It was inevitable.

The current massive, unprecedented government power grab will, inevitably, case a more massive, unprecedented collapse in the future.

BUBONIC PLAGUE:

Banks were forced to accept these bad loans by punitive legislation. The ones that didn't play along had ACORN and/or the Rainbow Coalition at their doorstep in 2 seconds. The gov made sure the banks played ball. They formed Fannie/Freddie to make it all seem okay. We all know what happened from there.

The term "predatory lending" is typical liberal misdirection.

-Banks who don't make risky loans are called "racist" and accused of "under-serving urban communities".

-Banks who do make risky loans are called "predatory".

What a freaking joke.

The Government is not to blame. They were the ones that imposed the stupid restrictions in the first place. The government only lifted some of the bureaucratic burdens it but in place. The corporations that decided to accept these loans with the hope that property values would continue to rise 10% per year are the ones that failed. There are still many banks that did not make the stupid loans and are still in business.

We still need less regulation not more. If the corporations can not become viable without any regulation they do not deserve my hand out

Although I agree with you, I think there is plenty of blame to go around. Instead of wasting our energy on this, I think we all need to start banding together in a measure of solidarity. This country belongs to us and we cannot just sit and watch it drain into ruin. We must start making plans to do something. The worst is yet to come if we don't.

It is much easier for the politicians to blame the "free market" rather than point the finger back at themselves.

People can do whatever they want. Ignorance is bliss as the saying goes.

To me it is both. Free market is fine unless we are getting absolutely gouged on necessities. 4.00 a gallon fuel had a huge part in all of this.

I do not understand how people come up with all this crap either. They are so brainwashed by the obama lapdog media that they will or want to believe all of this stuff instead of thinking for themselves.