^I feel ya. A lot of people are putting total faith in the same system that just collapsed all over everybody. A lot of people are going "Hey, it's okay, Washington is taking care of it!" "It's all right, Bush is on the job!" Oh really? I feel SO much better now.
If you were fine before and during this crisis, you'll probably be fine after.
There are lots of lives that need a helluva lot more of a push than "hey, credit is being unfrozen!" Call me skeptical but I imagine the people who need credit won't have access to it once things keel over. The demographic that needs it is the same one that helped usher in this mess. A (good-sized) handful of bad apples have spoiled the bunch.
unsurprisingly marley, you know fuck-all about the credit and financial markets.
you have legitimate gripes when you normally begin shrieking about racism or god knows what, and when you have experienced that, by all means, your opinion is relevant, but you know absolutely nothing about the financial markets...*NOTHING*
and the whole "blame the rich, blame the executives, blame Bush blah blah blah" is a tiresome, not to mention incorrect and ignorant refrain.
if you knew *ANYTHING*, your absurdly trite "hey credit is being unfrozen" jibe would not seem merely as amusing to you as it did when you wrote it.
the people who "need credit" are precisely the people who this crisis has *FROZEN*...so yes, unfreezing the *PARALYZED* credit market, *WILL* affect people who could not afford to purchase homes because they were not reliable debtors, yet got loans through sub-prime mortgages, and whose home value has now plummeted to far less than the value of the mortgages they took out that they could not afford...
this whole collapse has to do with lenders (those meanies) writing 100s of billions of risky sub-prime loans, made easier to write by deregulation brought about with the help of people in both parties influenced by money from wall street and mortgage firms like oh i don't know, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and those loans made to folks who were too risky to get regular loans...(you know, those folks that people like the Clintons, and democrats who say that everyone, even folks without the means should be able to get loans to buy homes, to create equity even if they don't have the money...remember those sweet fannie mae and freddie mac commercials from the Clinton years, where the low income family moves into the nice suburban neighborhood even though they had virtually no credit, but now they are happy because they have their own home?) and what happens when people who cannot *afford* loans (the downtrodden or less well off who "deserve" credit, according to the democrats) and the sub-prime lenders (the"rich" lenders who are "predatory" for now offering money to credit risks, since they have less regulations to do so) find themselves over the barrel in an economy where the credit markets have frozen and are on the verge of total collapse.
so yes Marley "credit being unfrozen", is in fact quite a big deal, to save our entire economy from a complete collapse, because you cannot bother to understand the difference between your personal prejudices and the facts that both the democrats and republicans, the sub prime lenders and the poor downtrodden credit risk people and families, many of whom are poor and middle class have all contributed to this unmitigated disaster.
and the credit markets being unfrozen from their paralysis and teetering on the verg of total collapse state, is in fact a good thing, not a bad thing...
and if you paid any attention, you would understand that is why Dodd and Schumer were in the process of demanding foreclosure protection for all those millions of credit risk families who have now lost, are losing or will lose the homes that they could not afford in the first place.
so the next time one of you wants to dump the blame on the republicans, or those evil wall streeters or mortgage lenders, remember this:
it takes two to tango.
-it takes a republican to want deregulation of the sub-prime markets
-it take a democrat to want a credit risk, poorer family to have the ability to get a home mortgage much easier than before, through a big lender, like say Freddie MAc or Fannie Mae
-it takes a poor or middle calss family, without the means to afford a housing mortgage, who now, with the support of sweet good natured, supportive democrats who want the best for all the good folks, to go and get themselves a big mortgage on their dream home, value of say $250,000...for which they need to put up only say $25,000
-it then takes a big "mean" lending institutuion, who emplys tens of thousands of americans to say "hmmm, well our business is lending, and the sub-prime market is deregulated, so we can offer a previously unfeasible and inadvisable loan to folks who might not be able to afford it, because the republicans say we can, and the democrats say these people deserve to own their own home even though they can't really afford it...so let's do it!...these folks will get their brand new out of reach dream home, we will make a higher rate than on normal loans because of the risk...and ideally everyonne is happy!!!!!"
Unfortunately, neither the creditors nor the debtors, the democrats or the republicans foresaw the housing market collapse and bingo, everyone is covered with shit...if you were not a sub-prime lender, or a sub-prime debtor, then this was not in fact your fault. Since most sub-prime debtors were people who did not have enough credit or money to get a conventional loan, they are the ones who took advantage of the lax credit environment of the sub-prime market, along with the lenders, to make a buck or buy a home...which happens to be what most americans do. show me the last time an american doesn't take advantage of a chance to make money or buy something on credit that maybe they shouldn't have.
Everyone else is covered in the shit from both the lenders and debtors taking advantage of something they knew was a big risk but they were greedy enough to want.
that is the risk/reward chance you take, and both lost their shirts and it is affecting everyone else.
so now, when you have Dodd and Schumer whining that the folks who did not have the credit for the loans they received, should get to actually keep the homes they could not and cannot afford, because the home mortgage is 225,000 and the value of the home has now fallen to 100,000 because they must be protected alongside the lending institutions, who were given incentives in this risky and relatively unregulated lending sector to actually make loans such as this which is exactly the point of the existence of the sub-prime market, you will forgive me if i don't think of the "poor and downtrodden" first...since the taxpayers are going to be paying for the bailout for *THEIR* homes, that they got on *THEIR* crappy credit, which should not have been loaned to them in the first place.
what is going on *NOW* is both parties covering their asses for an entire sector of the economy, the sub-prime lenders and debtors, that has led us to collapse, because *BOTH* parties should have know better.
now the rest of us have to bail out those folks who wanted to take advantage of a sector of the credit market that both parties promoted as a means of profiting for getting essentially something for nothing (debtors for being allowed to buy homes they cannot afford at the government's urging, and creditors for lending the money they know will likely have a higher risk even in a normal credit market, with the knowledge that the government deregulation offers a large area for profit from this)
so now the bill falls on everyone else to bail out the institutions and the folks who could not afford to take out those loans but still did, and the two parties that allowed this mess to happen with their absurd philosophies about deregulation (republicans) and what people actually deserve credit (democrats)
both parties fucked this up royally, along with the lendors and debtors who scrambled in with $$$$$$$ in their eyes.
so *THAT* is why your retarded last paragraph, MArley, should give you pause when you talk about ""hey, credit is being unfrozen!"....because those who needed the credit that you now decry them not being able to get, are precisely part of the "bad apples" you so eloquently referred to. The demographic you described as needing it the most, are the people you normally canonize as being the downtrodden and exploited...because they were the ones who tried to take advantage of getting sub-prime loans...they are just as much at fault as those who loaned them the money.
*THAT* is why the credit markets being unfrozen is a big deal, since it is frozen and paralyzed, because the credit markets affect *EVERYTHING* not just all those bad apples you describe.
so the next time you go on one of your rants marley, at least know what the fuck you are talking about.