Anyone switching to a credit union with what's going on?

[mjmjr25]

I guess i'm mystified at what the bad behavior of the wealthy is - or more importantly, how it affects you. No one forces any of us to buy stock in one company or another. No one forces us to work at one company or another. I still see it as feeling a need to place blame - sometimes there is no one to blame.

Perhaps you missed earlier parts of this thread (it is really huge now), but the main point is that Wall Street and the National Banks led the economy to topple with the subprime mortgage crisis. Taxpayers bailed them out. The bailout total has been estimated at $12,200,000,000,000.00.

@JT - I didn't miss it, and I realize my most recent posts are going into a much deeper debate...sorry for doing that to your thread

With that said, to echo a point we all understand. WE, the collective WE who bought houses we could not afford are as responsible as any bank or government entity. In most cases of loans that were granted, yes, the banks should have had more safeguards in place absolutely, but again, we the people also made our futures look brighter than perhaps they were.

My sister bought a house for $400,000 in Modesto 5 years ago. I've seen this house. It is worth $70,000 in materials / labor. Common sense should have told my sister, "this house is not worth $400K." Now, her house is appraised at $120,000 and she owes $300K+. Do I feel bad for her - absolutely, she's my sister and I love her. But...she made the choice and it was a poor one. The bank made the choice...and it was a poor one. We can affect our own choices, I think trying to affect the choices of a bank is a much greater feat and i'd rather spend my time and my resources affecting things I can control, things I can change.

[J T]

The banks knew they were making high risk loans. Just like when I talk to crack addict Larry downtown, and he asks if he can borrow $5, I know that I'm never gonna see that money again if I "lend" it to him. The people looking for mortgage loans aren't hooked on crack though, they are hooked on an American dream, white picket fence and all. The banks should have turned them down and they knew that. However, the reason to turn them down is because they are a risk of loss. The banks figured out how to transfer that risk over to the stock market and later to the taxpayer, turning profit all the while.

So while I agree that the borrowers should have been more careful about spending within their limits, the big-money destruction of this comes less from people defaulting on their home loans and more from greedy banking and Wall Street practices. They knew what they were getting into, they knew how to get out of it, and the rest of us are paying the price. Your sister isn't as much to blame as the Lehman brothers, in other words.

[MrPopo]

And the rich keep getting richer and the poor and middle class keep getting screwed over and left to dry. Back in the 1960's, on average, CEOs made 25 times more than the average worker. Over the decades since then, that gap has steadily increased and we now see that on average, CEOs make almost 300 time more than the average worker. This is dangerous.

Why is it dangerous? If the workers are making enough money to sustain their lifestyle then why does it matter that the top CEOs are making astronomical amounts compared to them?

The entire economy does better with a healthy middle class because all business depends on goods and services being purchased. The people at the top can only buy so much. The 99%, on the other hand, can buy a lot. Businesses thrive when the general populous is more readily able to participate in the marketplace and a healthy middle class allows for that.

I agree that a healthy middle class is good. What I don't see is how a CEO making even more money than they used to makes the middle class unhealthy.

[Hatta]

Criminal behavior is prosecuted. This should only affect people who invested in those banks / companies, invest by choice that is.

If you actually believe this, you are extremely misinformed. No executive level banker has been prosecuted for his role in the financial collapse. Compare this with over 800 executive level bankers who went to jail for felonies in the 1980s S&L crisis.

As for the second statement. That might just be the stupidest thing I ever heard. There are millions of people out of work today because of those crimes. The idea that wide spread, systematic fraud hurts no one but investors is too stupid to be worth debunking.

[J T]

I agree that a healthy middle class is good. What I don't see is how a CEO making even more money than they used to makes the middle class unhealthy.

The problem is CEOs in general making more money in relation to average workers. The money paid out in salaries is not an infinite resource, so if more of it is distributed to the CEOs and less to the workers on-average across the country, then that inequality is ultimately damaging the middle class, thus hurting the overall economy.

[mjmjr25]

Criminal behavior is prosecuted. This should only affect people who invested in those banks / companies, invest by choice that is.

If you actually believe this, you are extremely misinformed. No executive level banker has been prosecuted for his role in the financial collapse. Compare this with over 800 executive level bankers who went to jail for felonies in the 1980s S&L crisis.

As for the second statement. That might just be the stupidest thing I ever heard. There are millions of people out of work today because of those crimes. The idea that wide spread, systematic fraud hurts no one but investors is too stupid to be worth debunking.

I wasn't affected. I don't personally know anyone "affected". Are you able to explain how you were affected? I'm being serious. I would like to know.

Again, your argument reeks of entitlement. Blaming someone else (bankers / wall street) because "millions people are out of work" because of them? If they manufactured jobs by cooking numbers, or if jobs had to be cut because of fines, or the money or demand isn't there for them any longer, then those jobs shouldn't have existed to begin with?

Your argument sounds like a Daily Show talking point.

This all comes down to keeping one's own house in order, instead of blaming the maid that it isn't clean.

[MrPopo]

I agree that a healthy middle class is good. What I don't see is how a CEO making even more money than they used to makes the middle class unhealthy.

The problem is CEOs in general making more money in relation to average workers. The money paid out in salaries is not an infinite resource, so if more of it is distributed to the CEOs and less to the workers on-average across the country, then that inequality is ultimately damaging the middle class, thus hurting the overall economy.

No, it's not infinite, but it is increasing. Your point would be correct if we had a zero-sum economy, but that's not the case. The government regularly injects money into the system (which must be carefully done, or else you get rampant inflation). So a CEO making more money in year 2 vs year 1 doesn't mean that the average middle class citizen made less in that same time frame, as they would in a zero-sum economy. Everyone can grow, it's just that the CEOs are growing faster. If the prices of goods as a whole aren't growing faster than middle class salaries are then I don't hink the middle class is being damaged.

[Zing]

There is one thing that I don't see mentioned in the same breath as complaints about the wall street "bailout". The bailout was implemented by the elected congress, not the banks.

Sure, you can say that congress is in the pocket of the banks, or some other similar argument, but that doesn't change the fact that the public actually does have the ability to at least attempt to vote in a congress with principals against lobbyists and corruption. I haven't seen this.

[MrPopo]

There is one thing that I don't see mentioned in the same breath as complaints about the wall street "bailout". The bailout was implemented by the elected congress, not the banks.

Sure, you can say that congress is in the pocket of the banks, or some other similar argument, but that doesn't change the fact that the public actually does have the ability to at least attempt to vote in a congress with principals against lobbyists and corruption. I haven't seen this.

I touched on this earlier. People are protesting in the wrong place; don't occupy Wall Street, occupy DC.

[J T]

There is one thing that I don't see mentioned in the same breath as complaints about the wall street "bailout". The bailout was implemented by the elected congress, not the banks.

Sure, you can say that congress is in the pocket of the banks, or some other similar argument, but that doesn't change the fact that the public actually does have the ability to at least attempt to vote in a congress with principals against lobbyists and corruption. I haven't seen this.

I've tried. One major factor in my voting decisions is whether a politician appears to value the middle class. I try to avoid voting for people that continue to espouse tired old "trickle down" economics plans that are part of what got us into this mess in the first place.

Also, the initial impetus for the Occupy protests was based on one simple demand: have Obama create a presidential commission to separate money from politics so that corporations (financial firms especially) don't have a disproportionate influence in the political process beyond what the general citizenry has. So complaints about congress have been there since day one. Wall Street just symbolizes that this is largely a financial issue, which is why that is the original location of the protest (though there are now Occupy protests occuring in over 900 cities worldwide).