You’ve noticed, I’m sure, the continuing corporate media refrain: Those irresponsible people ran up their debt and got mortgages they couldn’t afford!
This, of course, is bullshit. We have lots of evidence that mortgage brokers not only lied for people on their mortgage applications, they actually forced qualified minority buyers out of conventional mortgages and into riskier subprime mortgages — on purpose.
Why? Because the bankers made more money by betting against the same mortgage bonds they sold to suckers, and at a certain point in the Ponzi scheme, they simply needed more bad mortgages to maintain the profits.
It’s not that hard to understand — that is, once you ascribe the worst possible motives to the financial services players.
Yet still we have these hacks (either stupid, venal or stupefyingly naive — you decide) who try to turn this whole mess into a morality play by blaming the victims of the con — but not the investors, mind you! The people who got tricked and trapped into the mortgages that would inevitably go bad were the cold-blooded people who tried to milk the system!
Although I don’t believe there’s a hell, it would be pretty to think so.
