So - who is really to blame for the credit crunch?

[DodgyAgent]

Who's to blame? The government for sitting on its arse and watching personal debt spiral out of control.

If national governments are for anything, it is heading things like that off at the pass.

We on here could see what was happening six years ago, so they should have done.

I can just see it.. CUK takes over Bloomberg

[interested]

Root causes are:

Community Reinvestment Act 1977 and it's amendment under the Clinton administration which required financial institutions to lend to people who basically wouldn't have got credit before.

Cheap money - Greenspan's fault

Hideously complex derivatives invented by too clever by half bankers.

There's a section in Berkshire Hathaway's annual report by Warren Buffet where he basically says he can't understand half the derivatives on the market and we're doomed if they ever unwind - this was from a few years ago.

[Troll]

Root causes are:

Community Reinvestment Act 1977 and it's amendment under the Clinton administration which required financial institutions to lend to people who basically wouldn't have got credit before.

Cheap money - Greenspan's fault

Hideously complex derivatives invented by too clever by half bankers.

There's a section in Berkshire Hathaway's annual report by Warren Buffet where he basically says he can't understand half the derivatives on the market and we're doomed if they ever unwind - this was from a few years ago.

do you also read the New York Times?

[Pickle2]

do you also read the New York Times?

from 1999?

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...=&pagewanted=1

[HairyArsedBloke]

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

[sappatz]

credit crunch

the answer is simple : George Bush, Tony Blair and the brainless anglos who voted for them

[MrMark]

The correct answer is : Sarah Beenie. Who is now under protective police surveillance.

[Cyberman]

Root causes are:

Community Reinvestment Act 1977 and it's amendment under the Clinton administration which required financial institutions to lend to people who basically wouldn't have got credit before.

Cheap money - Greenspan's fault

Hideously complex derivatives invented by too clever by half bankers.

There's a section in Berkshire Hathaway's annual report by Warren Buffet where he basically says he can't understand half the derivatives on the market and we're doomed if they ever unwind - this was from a few years ago.

Oh... so it wasn't Adam Applegarth and Northern Rock's business model after all !!

[AlfredJPruffock]

My first reaction would be to nominate Greenspan who basically turned the dot.com bubble into the property bubble - but surely the root cause of all this is the fiendish Saddam who boasted that the Iraq War would break the US economy - now its clear that the Iraq War was a very clever deception by Saddam to drain the US economy - perhaps we should invade again as a protest.

[interested]

Oh... so it wasn't Adam Applegarth and Northern Rock's business model after all !!

Nope - my post referred to the root causes, not the subsequent actions by banks.