lol @ top rec'd diary. srsly.
"Blaming the victims"?
People who were making less than 50k a year and got to live in mansions for several years, then finally get kicked out are victims, you say?
Lenders who were giving out mortgages to these people, who, had the housing market continued its long, overwhelmingly upward trend, could've just sold when the payments got to be too much and maybe even turned a profit are "predatory," you say?
Bankers who were faced with a wildly profitable situation re: mortgages and mortgage-backed securities were involved in malfeasance, even in view of the fact that they'd have probably gone out of business if they'd decided to be the first guys to say to their customers, "Oh, that's quite enough for us! If you want these crazy returns on your investments, you'll have to invest with our competitors because we're just a little bit concerned about this housing bubble people are talking about!"
There are no victims in a situation where people make absurd profits for years, others get to live in ridiculously large homes in spite of not making much money, and in which, if all went the way it had been going for years, even if things get a little rocky, people still come out ahead.
You see, we have this system which allows almost everyone to live pretty damn well in proportion to the work they actually do. Even without having any special skills, in America you can get a job that'll pay for a better place to live than the vast majority of your ancestors and also most of our contemporaries elsewhere in the world. More than that, you can afford to eat all sorts of strange and unusual foods, indulge in every description of entertainment, and, if you're a hard worker, provide the same to your family, if any. The price of this system is the so-called business cycle. Sometimes things don't go quite as well as you'd like, though of course, they still go comparatively well.
Ya see, everyone was doing what they thought was best for them and they were all more or less right. That doesn't make them evil. This is the genius of our system: If everyone does what's best for themselves, almost all of the time, things work out well. Sometimes things go wrong, but in recent history, when they have, it hasn't been too bad.
There's no real alternative to this system and anyway, no one's buying. Both major parties are free market capitalists, blogospheric enthusiasm for the Big Rock Candy Mountain notwithstanding. When things go wrong, we've learned, you play some games with government spending to get the capital circulating again. You offer some kind of social safety net to keep non-crazy people from living in refrigerator boxes. You tighten your belt and add some shit to your netflix queue.
Update: I see MajorFlaw is the only one up tonight. Still trolling around looking for your fix of harassment, eh bud?
Update 2: To my other commenting buddy, good luck with that, sport.
Update 3: To MajorFlaw, who's still awake and reloading it seems, I would suggest that tomorrow night, rather than looking for fights online, you go try trolling around your local bars for them (make sure you only pick them with people who look like bad guys, of course). Post a diary about your experience and then we'll talk about who's brave, etc.
Final Update: Gosh, all this substantive political discussion's got me beat. And Flaw, seriously, kid, get help. Healthy people don't spend this much time online.