Getting back to work

I'm afraid your explanation isn't convincing.

Banks and investment firms represent an authority and a big part of their function is to counsel their customers based on their superior insight into financial matters.

That doesn't mean consumers are without guilt - but they don't represent the core of the problem - and any individual consumer means nothing next to a bank in terms of the power to influence the market.

As for your questionable drug analogy, it would be appropriate to consider the banks as the drug dealers trying to persuade ignorant children to do drugs, because it's safe.

Obviously, that's not the whole truth - but it's far more accurate than your example.

To compare grown adults to children. I am sorry if people don't take enough care to be educated in how to handle their money.

To put any of the blame on the banks is just outrageous. They are there to do a job and it is up to you the person to know when is enough is enough.

Really if you liquid during an crash of a stock market it is the best time to buy and hold on to those stock not sell them.

It is a very tiresome argument to blame others for affairs you should be looking after.
 
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That's hardly fair.

The vast majority of the situation came about because of banks and investment firms that deliberately deceived consumers into believing it was safe to invest in stuff like housing.

Sure, if you have a brain - you'd know that can never last, but most people don't have brains.

It doesn't help that banks and investment firms get a pass, because we refuse to hold them accountable.

How are these not related? You seem to have the same irrational paranoia about banks as some people do with software companies.

I think many people confuse the "evils" of capitalism with an overt desire to BE evil. Of course, I don't even believe in the concept of evil, but you take my meaning.

Yes, there are many potential downsides to letting big corporations run rampant and do things as they please - but there's absolutely no reason to believe that they're out to actively harm the consumer.

Especially when, as you say, they're fully dependent on a goodwill relationship between themselves and their audience.

If even a single concrete example of misusing personal information for something obviously unethical was leaked to the press, the costs involved could be very significant. To implement such practices on a wide scale - misusing the personal information of thousands or millions of users would utterly destroy their reputation and ability to sustain themselves as a consumer-dependent company.

Essentially, if Microsoft really did what so many people apparently suspect they're doing - they'd be killing themselves.
 
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How are these not related? You seem to have the same irrational paranoia about banks as some people do with software companies.

I'm talking about established facts not paranoid conjecture. But I don't think banks are evil or that they wanted to ruin people. They simply had the power to influence the market and they did. End of story.
 
To compare grown adults to children. I am sorry if people don't take enough care to be educated in how to handle their money.

To put any of the blame on the banks is just outrageous. They are there to do a job and it is up to you the person to know when is enough is enough.

Really if you liquid during an crash of a stock market it is the best time to buy and hold on to those stock not sell them.

It is a very tiresome argument to blame others for affairs you should be looking after.

You don't seem to understand the function of a bank at all. Why do you think they hire people to counsel their customers?

This isn't speculation. It has been established that they gave very ill advice during the housing bubble, because they refused to do exactly what you suggest. People tend to trust those with financial authority when they're in doubt about whether to invest. The banks had an incredibly large part to play.

Even if you think everyone should be as smart as you and never trust those in authority who are hired to guide you, I'm afraid the banks must take full responsibility for loaning out vast amounts of money during the housing bubble. It was their choice, ultimately, and no customer can force a bank to loan out money.

I don't think you understand what happened to make this crisis come about.
 
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Please watch this movie and get back to me. I would like to know how this is making things more equal. If you need others to watch I can post them too…

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3162938/

I don't need movies, hard facts is much easier and more practical.

From the time China become the worlds factory until now, more than 600 MILLION people has been lifted from extreme poverty, it is unsurpassed in the history of the world to happen in such a short time period. You are saying that 600 million people getting a decent living standard compared to starving is not making the world a more equal place ?

The huge drawback is of course the consequence on environment, but after all it cannot be but fair that each person are allowed to tax the environment equally it is just the the impact per capita must be greatly reduced.
 
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Her in Norway (probably elsewhere too), banks have sold what they called "structured saving packages", advising customers to loan money for investing in funds. They downplayed the risks involved, also the fact that the only ones guaranteed to earn money from it were the banks.

Banks have recently been sentenced to refund customers, because they in this way withheld information necessary for the customer to evaluate the risk.

pibbur
 
Her in Norway (probably elsewhere too), banks have sold what they called "structured saving packages", advising customers to loan money for investing in funds. They downplayed the risks involved, also the fact that the only ones guaranteed to earn money from it were the banks.

Banks have recently been sentenced to refund customers, because they in this way withheld information necessary for the customer to evaluate the risk.

pibbur

Same thing in Denmark. I've heard several radio interviews with bank employees admitting to giving ill advice based on a "popular craze" in the financial sector.

The top people refused to listen to the economic experts and overtly told their employees to advice people to loan money and invest in housing, even when it was all but certain the market would collapse.

How anyone can say they don't have a part to play is beyond me.

Well, not really, if you're completely ignorant of the situation - you might say that.
 
I don't think you understand what happened to make this crisis come about.

Sure I do Greed.

Are we talking the crash of the stock market in the dirty 30's? Those people I feel sorry for having to live through that and don't think any of that was their faults.

If we are talking about what has been growing since the 90's to call me to a huge crash lets say 2007 I sure do understand what happened and what had be growing.

When all the jobs leave because manufacturing has gone to other places for lower prices in stores. Greed.

Buying a bigger house than you can afford. Greed

Buying high end cars boats etc. Greed

Trying to keep up the latest movie star or tv personality. Greed.

I do believe in the US two or three I can remember how many right now of the largest manufacture of home had over produced about 1.5 million homes. So the banks came up with a mortgage call the 4 x4 where you were only paying on the interest of the money you had borrowed to get these homes off the market.

I don't care how uneducated a person just because the bank was willing to give you this sort of mortgage you better know what you are getting into.

So not only were people that couldn't afford that sort of home, lets face they are making smaller simpler homes. They were taking on these mortgages were you sould be lets say making a payment of 2000.00 month and only paying 800.00.

So what did a lot of these people do instead of paying more on their homes? Oh take that money and buy more things because the Jones family did down the street.

When we sold my last home 10 years ago we made very good money on it.

I bought my wife car for cash and put the rest of it down on my new home. The bank had told me I didn't need to put that much down. I simple said I don't need a bigger home or a larger payment.
 
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Sure I do Greed.

Precisely.

The difference between you and I is that you think the people financing the VAST majority of this disaster are exempt from accountability. Apparently, you don't recognise how banks and other investment corporations are supposed to have financial insight - and are supposed to guide people, evaluating risk and potential bad investments.

You keep talking about yourself and your own choices as if that changed anything about the larger issue.

To understand how the world works, it's incredibly important to understand that you don't represent everyone - and not everyone thinks as you do. That's what the banks rely on, in fact.

Personally, I don't care about money or wealth. I've had girlfriends who thought money was nice and something to pursue - and I've told them that they'd have to pursue it alone, as I don't get into that race.

But I don't represent the world anymore than you do.

We live in a world where material wealth represents actual wealth to a lot of people - and a lot of people are brought up to believe that money = power = desirable.

Sure, we could call all of them stupid sheep - just like we could call all religious people stupid sheep.

That's not how I think, though. Yes, we're all stupid - but they're not more stupid than I - they just care about different things.

Even if they WERE more stupid - you're actually blaming people for being stupid. If they're really that stupid, as you seem to suggest they all were, then maybe that's not their own fault? People don't choose to commit financial suicide on a whim. Maybe, just maybe - they were motivated in that direction. But I guess you don't care about that - because YOU think differently.

The people who're supposed to be the experts DELIBERATELY misguided these people who're not like you and I.

Are they without blame? No, no one is without blame here. But the ones holding all the power are the ones primarily responsible.

It's that simple.
 
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