Let's be honest: It wasn't just the banks who messed up. There were a lot of people who tried to buy assets they couldn't afford. That's a reality.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The banks are not lending, at least from what I see. They were so wild and reckless back in the good times that they got burned terribly.
Banks were once places to hold money and were very careful in lending to finance families as they built a future - bought homes, bought cars, took out student loans.
The banking collapse was caused, more than anything, by bad government policy and the total failure of bad regulation, rather than by greed.
I won't dispute that bankers' privileged treatment in the 2008 crash merits populist scorn. But unfortunately, without a bank bailout, there probably would have been a worldwide depression.
Before the arrival of the Credit Union, people who were from the poor background or a working class background couldn't borrow from banks.
It's true that monetary policy was too lax for too long, and the government encouraged lending to people who were unlikely to repay their loans.
People get into debt head over heels because banks make it so easy to do so. Then the banks come along and act like these people who can't or won't pay their bills are the dregs of society.
I went to the bank and proposed that they lend money to the poor people. The bankers almost fell over.
If anything, the bailouts actually hindered lending, as banks became more like house pets that grow fat and lazy on two guaranteed meals a day than wild animals that have to go out into the jungle and hunt for opportunities in order to eat.
Millions of Americans were duped by the federal government and the Federal Reserve into buying homes they could not afford and failed to count the cost. When the financial crisis of 2008 hit, they could not keep up the monthly mortgage payments and defaulted.
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